Winbolo.net News

Strict and Tournament Rules.

Ok, this is a general information post. It seems that we all need to be reminded of the proper way to conduct strict and tournament games. These rules are not guidelines, they aren't something that can be followed once in awhile, and ignored other times. This is how things are done. The rules are designed to ensure fair and fun gameplay for everyone playing.

Rule 1
Do not start playing until people join, teams are decided, made, the game is locked and the go is called. If you should choose to ignore this rule and start playing. The usual response is everyone who joins after you will create a massive team against you and smash you into the ground so quickly you may as well not even have tried. If you become a repeat offender of this nature, your access to the game servers could be revoked. For those of you who do not understand what the go is, its simple. 1........2.........3...........go!!! is the typical way the game is called.

Rule 2
Do not farm before you see the go scroll. This rule is simple to understand, if you decide to farm before everyone else this gives you an advantage. This means its unfair for everyone else. This is not acceptable.

Rule 3
Do not jump the go. Wait until the word go enters your scroll bar before doing anything. Do not accelerate, do not farm, do not collect 200 dollars. Do not move until the word go is seen. The only movement allowed before the game starts is to get onto the correct side for the teams that were created. Some people seem to be under the impression that moving is allowed the moment they see someone start calling, this is incorrect. Do not move until you see the go on your message bar.

Rule 4
Do not start on land. This means if for whatever reason your pushed onto land (people starting on top of you can do it sometimes) drive into deep water, and respawn. There is no exceptions to this rule. If your on land, waiting for everyone else to take a base before going is still unacceptable. There are no excuses, if your on land, die, respawn and drive back to your side, tell everyone else to wait before calling. It happens sometimes, people will understand.

edit:
Rule 5
If you join a strict game, and you notice bases are taken, just quit, the game is in progress. Someone probably forgot to lock, or unlocked to allow a player who dropped connection to rejoin. It happens, don't screw the game up for them, find a new game to play. Or start your own game.

Ok, that's the basic rules of strict and tournament games. If you do not follow these rules your access to all game servers can and will be revoked. How long it is revoked for is up to the owner of the game server in question and of course, how bad the offense was.

Typically the way things like this get dealt with is simple, if you offend, we try to talk to you about it. If you act reasonably, understand the rules and agree to no longer misbehave, then great. Otherwise, sorry, we don't want you ruining the game for everyone else.

Happy boloing.

Min

WinBolo 1.17 Released

WinBolo 1.17 is now available for download.

Full change list can be found on the Wiki.

Thanks to Min, jhood and Sticks who are largely responsible for all the code that have gone into this new version.

1.17 test version.

I changed Minbot and the open game spawner I'm running to run the 1.17 test code, if you want to use minhiriath.xen.prgmr.com you will have to download it.

http://www.winbolo.com/downloads/wb117-testa.zip

Give it a go and let us know if there are any major issues.

Jason8 has also switched his bot over to 1.17 testa.

Min

TeamSpeak 2 Server

There was a Ventrilo server setup for players on my server. However, it has a cap of 8 connections at once. There haven't been many times that cap has been hit but it's an annoyance when it does happen.

Because of this, a TeamSpeak 2 server has been setup. Click here for directions on how to connect to it.

If you wish to see who is currently on the server, click here to view the status of the TeamSpeak server. It will show the channels, any users in those channels, and the status of those users.

Current IP of TeamSpeak server: teamspeak.shnozwanger.org

|Jason8| also has a Ventrilo server running on his box if you wish to connect to it. The address for that one is just.ruiningthegame.com with a port of 3784

Current Games RSS

In addition to the three RSS feeds that currently exist for WBN, we've added another RSS item available for all to use out there: the current games feed.

The current games feed displays the map name and server:port as the title, with the following listed in the description:

Game Type
If it's locked or not
Version
List of WBN players
Neutral bases
Neutral pills

WinBolo 1.16 Released

WinBolo version 1.16 has been released.

What a milestone, the first open source release including contributions from Min, Sticks, jhood.

Download it now

More details about whats new and changed in the announcement.

WinBolo 1.16 Released

WinBolo 1.16 is now available for download.

The most noticible change is that the game play has been changed to be closer to the original Bolo game. Full list of changes are as follow:

WinBolo and related utilities are now free software and released under the terms of the GPL version 2. For more information see: http://www.winbolo.org

Game Play

* A lot of changes were done to WinBolo's game play to make closer to the feel of bolo.
* Tank acceleration, deceleration and automatic slow down rates have been changed to match Bolo.
* When hit by a shell the tank now slides in the direction it has been hit rather than getting moved there straight away.
* Changes to the base regeneration of stocks algorithm. Bases now regenerate new stock at a rate of one unit per 20 seconds per player.
* Pillboxes now shoot slightly faster.
* The time between when a player dies and when they can restart has been changed to 7 seconds.
* Swamp now takes 4 shells to turn be destroyed.
* Tanks can no longer build underneath their boat.

Networking
* RSA public key encryption. To prevent players from compiling their own clients and exploiting cheats within the games source code a test is done on joining network games to ensure that only official clients can join official servers. For more information see the WinBolo wiki.
* Dedicated server: IP addresses are now displayed with incoming information request packets.
* Dedicated server: -autoclose flag no longer closes the server when all bases are taken.

Interface

* New game opening dialog.
* Static is now drawn on the screen when a player dies. Note this changes the skin file format and older skins will no longer work correctly. Skin authors will need to update their skins to work with 1.16.
* The scroll wheel can now be used to change the gun sight range.
* Fixes drawing problems on Windows Vista.
* Players behind a NAT firewall now have their IP address displayed correctly in the networking info dialog.
* Number of free pillboxes in a game is now displayed correctly in tracker game search window.
* A single road square in water now displays the water colour correctly.
* Fixed crash on network game startup from within the game client when the inbuilt map “Everard Island” is used. – Note: Starting a game server from within the client on Vista or newer operating system has been currently disabled. Please use the dedicated server to start games.

WinBolo source code under the GPL

See www.winbolo.com for details.

Or the new wiki: www.winbolo.org

Winbolo Source Code now Available

The WinBolo source code is now available to download.

It can be downloaded from http://winbolo.googlecode.com or from http://www.winbolo.org

A wiki has been setup on http://www.winbolo.org

The source code includes the complete source code to WinBolo client & server, LinBolo client
& server, Tracker, Log viewer, WBN game ranking website, JBolo alpha/prototype,
WOME (CGI based map editor) and sample brains created.

A development forum has been setup.

----------------------

From the top level readme:

Here is the complete source code to WinBolo client & server, LinBolo client
& server, Tracker, Log viewer, WBN game ranking website, JBolo alpha/prototype,
WOME (CGI based map editor) and sample brains created.

License
=======
All source files code copyright 1998-2008 John Morrison and released under the
GNU GPL Version 2 except where noted. All graphic and sound files are copyright
1993 Stuart Cheshire.

Source code for WinBolo was taken from the 1.15 release possibly with additional
fixes.

Why?
====
I had always stated my main reason for not open sourcing WinBolo is that I still
had things I wanted to work on. I said that I would consider releasing it when I
wasn't interested in working on it any more. I've never lost interest in working
on WinBolo, however as life goes on I have come to accept the fact I will never
have enough time to work on the things I wanted to. Rather then let the community
die due to inaction from me I have decided to release the source to WinBolo and
all WinBolo related things.

I started this project 10 years ago. The first WinBolo release was 9 years ago.
This was my second "real" sized project in C. (WBN was my first PHP application
as well) - The code is fairly easy to follow and commented. Hopefully this allows
others to pick up the project and continue with it, or use it as a learning tool.

I have started a wiki at http://www.winbolo.org/ with more information on the
design, network protocol and file formats. A list of project ideas are also
listed there.

Thanks to
==========
Firstly: Stuart Cheshire

Those that contributed to the community in one way or another from testing,
hosting, running game servers, teaching others to play: Canuck, sheeps, Min, ten,
LRL, jhood, Nemokrad, Wonka, Killjoy, suicidjky and the everyone else I've
missed.

From the old days on #bolo: Jolo, Kax, Max, Mecca, Plastic Fist, Wharf Rat, Nix,
Wilfred Verkley, Canuck, db48, Min, sheeps.

VB play testing team: John Bettiol, Cameron Deane, Robert Dragoi, Adam Fawns,
Charles Henden, Jacqueline Stark, Nathan Keynes

GU play testing team: Todd Becker, Daniel Everton, Luke Morton, Cameron McNiel,
Ben Muller, Daniel Thomas.

And finally all the players past and present.

John Morrison
12/12/2008

Statistics

Its been 5 years since WBN made its way onto the web.

Here are some statistics of where we are today.

Anyone want to guess what percentage of those maps are Chew Toy 3?

More news coming soon.