Differences From Bolo

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This page details the main difference between WinBolo and Bolo. It is useful for people familiar with Bolo to move across to WinBolo with knowledge of the slight differences.

Contents

Physics and Feel

Many players comment that WinBolo "feels" different to playing bolo and the physics are different. This is correct due to WinBolo being implemented from scratch. For a detailed list of differences please see Differences From Bolo Gameplay.

Topology

Perhaps the biggest difference is the networking topology. WinBolo uses a Client/Server topology as apposed to the ring topology that Bolo uses. Being Client/Server WinBolo helps overcomes the latency problem generated by the ring topology Bolo uses. Thus players from all over the world can join the same game. However since the data is centralised servers require the bandwidth of the sum of its clients. Also if the server quits the game all players are dropped from the game. Hopefully in the future the server will be modified to be "floating" and as such move to a new machine. However this is a non- trivial task.

Alliances

WinBolo's alliance system works as follows. A player selects a name(s) in the players menu that he wishes to ally with. He then selects request alliance from the Bolo menu. On the receiving end a dialog box pops up saying "XXXX requests alliance. Accept?" where they can accept or deny. If the new member is allied, then they are also allied with all members in the alliance. When a player selects leave alliance from the Bolo menu all items personally owned (ie captured) by that player reverts to his ownership. Items that are owned by remaining alliance members remain owned by the alliance.

Autoscroll

Autoscroll only keeps the tank in the centre of the screen. It does not move around to focus on pillboxes or other tanks.

ISA Sound Card Menu Item

Enabled by default. Every time a sound gets played the sound mixer must be started and when it is finished it must be stopped. On older ISA sound cards this slows down the games speed because of increased use of the sound cards DMA. Enabling this may speed up the game on older ISA sound cards. There should be no effect on PCI sound cards. (NOTE: On my ISA sound card it makes no difference...) - This option will be disabled if the sounds file is missing or Direct Sound could not be set up. NOTE: ISA Sound card menu item is not available in Linux version.

Key Settings

To set the keys choose "Set Keys" from the WinBolo menu. Check the item you wish to say. A small window will show up saying: "Press new key for item" The next key you press will be assigned to the item selected. WinBolo will only accept one key per item, unlike Bolo’s multiple.

System Info Window

If you run a System Information program such as System Monitor you may notice that the total CPU usage is higher then the total amount of CPU used being used by WinBolo even if there are no other programs open. This is because WinBolo only records the amount of processor it is using. For instance, WinBolo tells DirectX to draw a tank. DirectX will draw the tank asynchronously allowing the calling program to continue running. Thus WinBolo only records it used the amount of time to tell DirectX to draw the tank, where as the System Information program also includes the amount of CPU to do the actual drawing as well.

Tracker

If you enter a hostname (rather then an IP) for the tracker at the beginning of the game it will perform the hostname lookup before it tries to join the game. This can cause significant delays if the hostname does not exist.

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