Bolo
Description
An early networking experiment between BBC microcomputers, Bolo is a top-down tank deathmatch game with a highly simplified physics model, allowing the player not only to move through and among 10 different terrain types, shoot, lay mines, and capture and deploy automated pillbox turrets, but also build speed-enhancing roads, sheltering walls, and water-traversing boats and bridges through judicious use of his lumber-collecting Little Green Man (LGM). Toward what end? Why, the capture of refueling bases and defense of them against enemy human- or computer-controlled tanks.
(This may not sound like much, but in 1989 with sixteen people whooping it up in the Mac lab, it was pretty revelatory. StarCraft was still a long way away.)
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Trivia
Bolo
"Although it is a similar game," says author Stuart Cheshire, "Bolo has no connection with the game of the same name for the Apple II", also a top-down tank game, one whose name was chosen from the nickname for the AI-driven supertanks in Keith Laumer's SF writings. Chalking up the namespace conflict to "an unfortunate coincidence", his choice of the name is said to have been arrived at through suggestion by his Indian wife, Pavani Diwanji, through the Hindi word for "communication" -- in reference both to computer networking but also to team strategizing. He elaborates in the FAQ:
"Bolo is about computers communicating on the network, and more importantly about humans communicating with each other, as they argue, negotiate, form alliances, agree strategies, etc."
References
The first (and for a long time, only) multiplayer map, "Everard Island", is named after author Stuart Cheshire's Sidney Sussex College classmate James Everard with whom he began the BBC micro networking experiments (stringing 50 metres of serial cable between dorm rooms) that would culminate in the development of this game.
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Related Sites +
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An Experiment in Real-Time Networking
Stuart's computer science MS dissertation at Cambridge concerning the design and implementation of the networked tank game. -
Bolo FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions (and Frequently Suggested Ideas) handled by the game's original author. -
Bolo novels by Keith Laumer
Wiki page on the artificially intelligent superheavy tanks from Keith Laumer's sci-fi novels. -
Original Bolo homepage
Repository of Bolo links and old information on projects to clone it and develop Bolo tools. -
WinBolo game tracking and player statistics
A website keeping tabs on online tournament play. -
WinBolo homepage
Information on and free download of WinBolo and LinBolo.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Pseudo_Intellectual.
Additional contributors: Zeikman, Patrick Bregger.
Game added July 28, 2007. Last modified October 22, 2023.