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.

awsome good work!!

Thanks for the GPL'ing it!

sry, but

:(

the maps aint dieing while owning all bases no more :/

$$$$ wrote:

the maps aint dieing while owning all bases no more :/

Yep, that's the spawner owner's decision on his configuration. He decided he wanted to encourage people to play strict and tournament games more so, the game will only close when you and all your enemies quit.

Min

i see ty

Cola wrote:

sry, but

:(

You will adapt, it's human nature! :P

Thanks so much for everyone that worked on this! It means alot to the community for this release.......

Nemokrad wrote:

Cola wrote:

sry, but

:(

You will adapt, it's human nature! :P

How appropriate that it's Darwin's birthday today.

bunkkksauuuce. bottie doesnt do 1.16 yet.. :cry:

zet wrote:

bunkkksauuuce. bottie doesnt do 1.16 yet.. :cry:

Use http://chat.efnet.org and change the channel to #winbolo A bunch of us are there and you can use boombot which is upgraded to 1.16.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_REWBqFJvI

just puting my 2 cents in on the new version. glad to see you guys were able to pull something off and im sure we all appreaciate the effort. now the short hand review.

likes
1. static- reminds me of the old days and it is more fair.
2. sliding- better game physics and also reminescent of the old days.
3. scroll wheel for gunsight- im sure some ppl will appreciate this
4. tracker display for pillboxes- always nice to have good info

fine and dandy but no big whoop
1. new interface starting screen- guess that denotes something new
2. pillbox fire rate - doesnt seem too different but ok.

negative change
1. the tanks top speed is now too slow- this impairs dogfighting and just getting around the map and makes for getting stuck on terrain a lot more easily and annoying when you do get stuck. i think you need to bump up the horsepower to the old limit boys cause i cant drive 55!

improvement still needed
1. tank friction (stickiness) - the old mac bolo allowed tanks to glide past each other in close quarters much more easily. it really affects gameplay in winbolo and would let teams operate in small spaces much better if it were fixed.


ok thats it and thanks for the new version guys.

Lancelot wrote:

negative change
1. the tanks top speed is now too slow- this impairs dogfighting and just getting around the map and makes for getting stuck on terrain a lot more easily and annoying when you do get stuck. i think you need to bump up the horsepower to the old limit boys cause i cant drive 55!

I'm pretty sure the top speed of the tank was not touched. What was, of course, was the tank acceleration and - I believe - deceleration of the tank. So if someone is coming at you wide-open-throttle and you're sitting still, yes, it's going to affect you running away. I also noticed that when going from boat onto land it seems to take a smidge longer.

Lancelot wrote:

improvement still needed
1. tank friction (stickiness) - the old mac bolo allowed tanks to glide past each other in close quarters much more easily. it really affects gameplay in winbolo and would let teams operate in small spaces much better if it were fixed.

The tank physics are up there in terms of priorities. Along with the collision detection, I think that the pillbug and having to End Process a winbolo.exe are at the top of our fix-list for the next release.

And - as always - if you find problems or have suggestions, take a look at the project ideas and differences from Bolo gameplay pages on winbolo.net or open a ticket on Trac. Now that the source is released and is available to everyone, it won't hurt to offer up your opinions or resources to the community. Right now there's maybe three of us besides Elvis sumbitting code. So if we don't know what the community really wants, we're just going to fix what we believe what the community needs.

Lancelot wrote:

ok thats it and thanks for the new version guys.

You're welcome.

Hey guys, thanks to all that worked on the release.

So is this where we post bug reports? :)

For me, I lose all ammo/mines/trees/etc indication once I start playing, so I have no idea what my status is.

And my oh so common setup is: MacBook Pro 2.53 bootcamped with XP Pro.

I test it out some more to get a better idea what's going on though.

You lose the status bars on XP? Thought that was only a Vista issue. The official bug reporting procedure is to create a new ticket on the trac here: http://www.winbolo.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

Lancelot wrote:

fine and dandy but no big whoop
1. new interface starting screen- guess that denotes something new
2. pillbox fire rate - doesnt seem too different but ok.

Pill range was modified, pillfire rate was slowed slightly, you haven't noticed yet, because you obviously haven't done any pillbox takes yet were the pillfire rate is most noticeable. I think you'll appreciate it once you realize what its effected.

Lancelot wrote:

negative change
1. the tanks top speed is now too slow- this impairs dogfighting and just getting around the map and makes for getting stuck on terrain a lot more easily and annoying when you do get stuck. i think you need to bump up the horsepower to the old limit boys cause i cant drive 55!

Top speed has not be changed. So, if your seeing a change in it, your unfortunately mistaken. Tank acceleration was modified, not top speed. It now matches macbolo. Sorry if you got used to it being faster.

Min

Thanks for all your work around WinBolo Elvis ! I will test it soon :)

Didn't you guys fix the lgm bug in 1.16... theres too many glitches.. just makes the new version shit..

zet wrote:

Didn't you guys fix the lgm bug in 1.16... theres too many glitches.. just makes the new version shit..

And this kind of statement is about as helpful as a kick in the balls, Which lgm bug are you referring to? we've had more than one, we had a lgm compass bug that was fixed, what exactly are you talking about? do you have a link to a gamelog that shows the behavior your having issues with? can you replicate it? do you even know what your talking about?

What glitches? be specific, explain exactly what your talking about, don't assume we know, because we probably don't.

Min

zet wrote:

Didn't you guys fix the lgm bug in 1.16... theres too many glitches.. just makes the new version shit..

poof your fixed.

this new version was no easy task, and the time put into it was strictly voluntary. so before u call this new version "shit" maybe think about it a bit more. :idea:

zets comments are not constructive, however they reflect perhaps a misconception about the goals of the winbolo team and those of the general player. I don't think most players realize what the current coders are doing is trying to replicate macbolo pretty much as it played in its last version so any and all changes they make are good in their view from that perspective. Since most current players of winbolo never played macbolo they are expecting the priority to be on fixing bugs and errors of the current game, not in duplicating macbolo.

i can say in some ways the new release is an improvement and in others i am left wanting for perhaps a different goal, to just make the best game period and not necessarily strive to just replicate macbolo. After testing version 1.15, 1.16 and macbolo this past weekend I have determined that:

1) version 1.15 acceleration is the best since it allows you to overcome bad terrain enough to give u a chance of surviving a decent number of encounters as to make it worth struggling to escape and not just accepting death when someone gets the drop on you.
2) macbolo deceleration is the best since you stop quite quickly and can line up takes and stop from going off into deep sea when u need to. version 1.16 is close to this and is probably fine.
3) version 1.16 does not have sufficient acceleration and needs to be tweaked to favor a little more get up and go and it looks like a little more top speed, esp on grass, swamp and rubble.
4) also while the tank slide is good i think that because the tank does not have enough acceleration you get pushed around a little too much compared to macbolo although i do like having it again i think it all comes down to tank acceleration.

I am still doing more testing to come up with quantifiable numbers of some kind but since the distances and speeds and very small im still trying to find the best method of measurement. I will however report back the results at some point. To players who are unhappy with the new version as i am (at least in this respect) i would advise posting your displeasure in a specific, rationale and polite way. The guys worked hard on this and i do understand that and if you dont like it theres still version 1.15 where u can host your own games (which i may do). anyway things will improve or they wont but either way lets stay civil.
Until next time, happy boloing....

Lancelot wrote:

Since most current players of winbolo never played macbolo they are expecting the priority to be on fixing bugs and errors of the current game, not in duplicating macbolo.

Hey hey now, what makes you think fixing bugs isn't a priority????? The part you left out of this is ... making physics changes is -easy- fixing bugs is -hard-. We've been working on the bugs as we can, physics changes on the other hand are most of the time as simple as changing a single number! super easy. Bugs are much more difficult to narrow down. We've been working on the easy stuff first, harder stuff later. This version's main feature was the RSA key authentication.

Lancelot wrote:

1) version 1.15 acceleration is the best since it allows you to overcome bad terrain enough to give u a chance of surviving a decent number of encounters as to make it worth struggling to escape and not just accepting death when someone gets the drop on you.

Just trying to make it like macbolo. For us to try and 'make a better game' we'd all have to get together and -agree- on something. With this community, that isn't very likely. As it is we can't seem to agree on adding in things like pill massage and superboom.

Lancelot wrote:

3) version 1.16 does not have sufficient acceleration and needs to be tweaked to favor a little more get up and go and it looks like a little more top speed, esp on grass, swamp and rubble.

grass swamp and rubble speeds were not changed, they are the same as they've always been, which is clearly stated on stu's disseration, and tested on multiple occasions, I can practically guarantee that we won't be changing the top speeds in the game currently.

Lancelot wrote:

I am still doing more testing to come up with quantifiable numbers of some kind but since the distances and speeds and very small im still trying to find the best method of measurement. I will however report back the results at some point. To players who are unhappy with the new version as i am (at least in this respect) i would advise posting your displeasure in a specific, rationale and polite way. The guys worked hard on this and i do understand that and if you dont like it theres still version 1.15 where u can host your own games (which i may do). anyway things will improve or they wont but either way lets stay civil.
Until next time, happy boloing....

As far as physics changes are concerned, I'd recommend people just get used to it, I made as many changes as possible to minimize changes later on, if I end up slightly tweaking acceleration because I got it wrong, I doubt people will complain because its pretty close. If we end up tweaking slide, people won't complain because it will be minor. This is the version I expected people to bitch on, because so many things got changed at once.

If you notice a glitch, or a bug, or something weird, post as much information as possible so we can try to debug it! seriously, posting 'this version is crap because of glitchs' is not helpful, we don't know what that means, if you can repeatably cause a glitch to occur, document it, report it, so we can fix it!!!. We are actively fixing things, for example, I just fixed the invisiwall(invincible wall that looks like road) problem the other day, and I've been further investigating the pillbug(were you plant a pill and it becomes your enemies and starts shooting at you), I'm also working on the deep sea in the middle of the map issue that we are still seeing occasionally, If you've noticed the deep sea in the middle of the map on 1.16 let me know, I added some code to try and fix it before, and I don't know if it worked properly.

Min

zet wrote:

Didn't you guys fix the lgm bug in 1.16... theres too many glitches.. just makes the new version shit..

Yes, the LGM bug should be fixed. And by LGM bug I mean two occurances.

• 1. When your LGM compass points to NW mines. It's actually pointing to the map location of (0,0) - the origin basically.
  2. When you can see your LGM on the map, and your LGM compass points to where he's at but when you drive over him, you can't pick him up.
  [/list:u:8f6ae5be92]
  Both of these happened because your tank never received information about where your LGM was. And you never received information about your LGM because you never saw your LGMs parachute.
  
  If you see another one, let me know, I'd be interested in seeing it happen. That being said, you can't always capture that as bot operators don't upload logs or even keep logs of games.
  
  Lance, thanks for your feedback. The problem when you say "best" is, what does that mean? It's best based on what criteria? That it's easier to recover after someone screws up? Or is it because it's truer to MacBolo?
  
  And therein lies the rub: where to go with WinBolo. It started out as a clone and we are simply following that up. For instance, now notice that you cannot build under your boat. In WinBolo versions pre-1.16 you could build road - or even a block - under your boat. Now you can't. Why? That's the way MacBolo did it.
  
  Also with 1.16 we experienced some scope-creep. We completed what we thought should be done for that version and then kept going. The result is that we fixed some things that might not have been expected until 1.17 but were thrown in 1.16. It was supposed to be small fixes. I imagine if we stuck to the few goals we set for 1.16, it should have been released a month or so ago.