* * * * *
                                        
                           “Tanks for the memories …”
                                        
> > At the awakening of the worlds, when
> > all were alone, and, isolated, fought
> > many and varied battles unaided,
> > a voice was heard to cry, “Bolo!”
> > and warriors found their brothers in arms.
> > 
> 
> The game takes the form of a tank battle for up to 16 players, set on an
> island. Players enter the game with their tank on a boat, somewhere off the
> coast of the island. They move to the island's shore, and leave the boat to
> drive up onto dry land. Players can shoot at each other, lay mines which
> only they can see, and engage in battles with the automatic pillboxes which
> are found on the island. They can also form teams to work together as
> allies, and can alter the map in various ways. For example, when a mine
> explodes, it leaves a crater. If the crater is adjacent to sea or river, it
> will flood with water. Players can build bridges over rivers, and buildings
> to make a fortress wall, and farm the forests by cutting down trees, to
> provide the materials for all this building. The forests also grow, not
> under the control of the players, but in a semi-random fashion designed to
> appear realistic. All these changes to the map must be communicated to all
> the other machines in the game so that all players see an identical map at
> all times. This is the central problem of the project—the maintenance of a
> distributed replicated database, where some data, such as the location of a
> particular tank, has a primary site (that player's machine) and some, such
> as the map and alliance information, does not.
> 

“"An Experiment in Real- Time Networking. [1]”

Dan W., my friend from FAU (Computer Science and Engineering @ Florida
Atlantic University) [2], was a big fan of Bolo, but I didn't realize it was
the result of a university dissertation.

[1] http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/dissertation/
[2] http://www.cse.fau.edu/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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