WinBolo Release Notes (changes since 2.1)

Log Viewer

The log viewer has been overhauled with a new user interface providing much more information.

• Live seek: the map now follows the slider while you drag it, and you can step one tick back or forward with , and .. Slower playback speeds were added.
• Instant seeking in long recordings: jumping around a log that ran for days no longer freezes the viewer.
• Events panel: the full list of events in the log, with a checklist of which kinds to show. Click an event to jump to it.
• HUD panel: every tank, pillbox and base in team colours. Click a tank to watch the game from that player's side.
• Overview panel (Ctrl+7): pillbox and base counts for each team in one table, with share bars.
• Tank panel (Ctrl+8): the selected tank's shells, mines, armour and trees, drawn with the game's own gauges, plus what its builder is doing and how many pillboxes it is carrying.
• Armour and shell bars can be drawn above each tank on the map (Options menu).
• Dockable sidebars: panels can be docked to the left, right, top or bottom of the window, or left floating. The layout and window position are saved and restored the next time you open it.
• Neutral bases and pillboxes now use the game's own artwork, and teams use the colours set in the Team Colours dialog.
• Spectating a live game now uses the same panels and layout as the Log Viewer.
• Open the Log Viewer from the replay: the after-game replay has a new button that opens the round in the Log Viewer, in its own window.
• Round logs now record each player's lag, and the Log Viewer can show it, including a "See what this player saw" view. This is off by default while it is being tested.

New Tutorial

• A new Tutorial scenario walks through the game in seven stations: bases, the builder, pillboxes, blocking a pillbox, shooting a builder, and finally a real fight against a bot on an island. The goals for each station are shown in a panel and ticked off as you complete them.
• You can drive on to the next station at any time, and a goal you skipped stays on the list so you can come back to it. Checkpoints between stations set where you respawn, and reset pads put the harder stations back to their starting state.
• The Classic Tutorial, the original Bolo/WinBolo tutorial from 1993/1998, can still be played from the map list in single player.

GIF Tools

• GIF length control: a seconds field beside the GIF button sets how long the GIF will be, from 1 to 15 seconds. The replay's seek bar shows a band covering the part that will be recorded, and you can drag the end of the band to change the length.
• GIF gallery: every GIF you make is now kept in a "Your GIFs" window, newest first, with the date, map and players. Click one to play it.
• From the gallery you can copy a GIF to the clipboard (to paste into Discord or a chat program) or save it to disk.
• Recording mode button: the GIF and crop controls on the after-game replay are now hidden until you press the new movie camera button, which keeps the replay uncluttered when you only want to watch.

Map Maker Random Maps

• A new random map type, Map Maker, makes maps in the style of the classic Bolo map makers, with 15 presets including Berserkir, Sluggo, Black Lightning, Deathhand, Megawatt, Palpatine and Chew Toy.
• Each preset sets the map's symmetry, outline, terrain mix, islands, mines and level of detail, and you can change any of these afterwards.
• A style panel lets you set the choices that make each preset distinctive, such as its road layout, its shape or whether it has a walled maze, or leave them to the seed.
• A Size control now works for every random map type, from 24 squares across up to full size, with the rest of the map filled with deep sea.
• Randomize values now makes a new map in the same style rather than jumping to a completely different kind of map, and lock buttons keep the values you want to hold.
• Diagonal roads are drawn as joined staircases, as on the original hand-made maps.
• Dedicated servers can use Map Maker maps with -randommap maker or a preset name, and set the size with -randommapsize.

Scenarios and Mods

• Scenario text window: the status line and announcements from scenarios and mods are now drawn in their own window, which you can move, resize and pop out, with sliders for the text and background opacity.
• Up to four announcements can be shown at once instead of each one replacing the last.
• Scenario popups show web addresses as links you can click.
• Scenarios can now fix more lobby settings, such as no bots, no mods, classic mode, the view settings, line of sight, positional sound and smart pings. The lobby says when a setting is fixed by the map's scenario.
• Scripts can now name their author and when they were last updated, which is shown in the lobby and the details dialog.
• Picking a map that has its own scenario now replaces any scenario you had already picked, so the most recent choice is the one that plays.
• New supplied mod: Tank Hits Set Off Mines, which brings back the 2.1 behaviour where a shell hitting a tank also sets off a mine underneath it (see Gameplay changes).
• Mac Bolo Rules now respects the starts players picked in the lobby, and each part of it can be turned on or off in the lobby.
• Virus: the horde now attacks pillboxes and bases together instead of one or two at a time, and infected players can build. New settings control drowning and a "bite" time, which defaults to one second, so a survivor who dies soon after an infected hit is infected.
• Survival: the defenders' starting puddle is smaller, and a defender killed repeatedly at the start is moved to a safer start. Short waves now still attack in groups.

Bots

• Bots sent to a square by an order now drive onto the square itself rather than stopping one short.
• When several bots offer to take an order, the bots now consider whether they would need to stop to refuel or are in the middle of a fight first, so the bot that takes the order is more likely to get there quickly.
• A bot busy shooting a pillbox says it is busy, and a bot on another order can hand its old job to a teammate before taking the new one.
• A shot at an enemy tank near a pillbox no longer counts as an order to attack the pillbox.
• On a dedicated server, each team's starting bots are now named from that team's own naming style.
• Bots shooting at a moving builder now aim further ahead of him and fire from further away, so they hit him far more often.
• A bot that cannot drive around a wall to reach an enemy tank close behind it now shoots through the wall instead of waiting.
• A bot drawing pillbox fire for a teammate now steps behind cover as the pillbox hits it, and moves on to the next cover before that wall breaks, so it lives through the job.
• Pillbox Tag: the hunter bot now attacks a built pillbox, instead of only fighting the tank that guards it.

Hosting and Servers

• Server names and descriptions: hosts can give their server a name and description, which the game finder shows instead of the address.
• Spectator delay for client-hosted games: games hosted from the game now delay what spectators see by 30 seconds by default, so they cannot tell players where everyone is. The delay can be changed on the Hosting tab.
• Dedicated servers can add mods to every lobby with -mod, make them required with -mod-required, or fix the list with -mod-locked.
• Dedicated servers have a memory report (-memreport), and the System Info panel in the game shows the same memory figures.
• Round logs now record the server's performance statistics every 30 seconds.

Gameplay Changes

• New default keys: new installs now drive with W, A, S and D instead of E, S, D and F. Existing players keep their saved keys.
• A shell that hits a tank no longer sets off a mine on that square, as in Mac Bolo. Mines laid behind a fleeing tank are no longer cleared by shots at it. The Tank Hits Set Off Mines mod brings back the 2.1 behaviour.
• Pillbox shots are tested against where your tank really is, not where it was a moment ago, so lag no longer makes pillbox fire harder to dodge.
• The builder starts a little further away from the tank when the builder leaves it, he is less likely to die from a pillbox hitting the other side of the tank.
• A builder is no longer killed by a player's shell when the shooter's screen did not show him out of his tank.
• The builder now slows down on the square he is building on, according to its terrain, the same as on every other square.
• Leaving a boat onto a road or a base now needs the same speed as leaving onto grass, as in WinBolo 1.17 and Mac Bolo.
• Pillboxes dropped by a dead tank are now placed in a spiral around it, as in Mac Bolo, instead of drifting off to the right.
• Allied pillboxes no longer disappear in pillbox view, and the ally view and pillbox shells move smoothly.

iOS and Android

• This version brings the iOS and Android code up to date and Beta versions for testing will be available in the next few days/weeks.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the mouse pointer not moving with the map as the view scrolls, so the build square stays under the pointer as it did in 1.17.
• Fixed single player sometimes not showing changes bots made to the map, such as a tree that had been cut down.
• Fixed the builder being drawn slightly up and to the left of where he is.
• Fixed lobby commands stopping for good after a map change on a network server.
• Fixed the lobby map chooser jumping to the top when a map was clicked.
• Fixed Use This Map ignoring the map shown after opening a folder, or keeping the previous game's map.
• Fixed the full screen map showing the last game's map at the start of a new one.
• Fixed a random lobby map keeping the previous map's scenario.
• Fixed the WinBolo.net map list staying empty after a failed load.
• Fixed a connected controller turning auto-slowdown on regardless of the saved setting.
• Fixed the lobby chat leaving text input on during a game, which stopped Right Shift firing with some input methods.
• Fixed the in-game Key Setup repeatedly asking for a key when Space or Enter was bound.
• Fixed the macOS build not asking for microphone permission.
• Fixed images not showing in the news window
• Fixed the HUD kill counter not moving in Joust.
• Fixed bots keeping a scenario's orders into the next round after the scenario ended.
• Fixed a server hang when a dead tank's pillboxes had nowhere to land.
• Fixed a server keeping a record of every explosion its bots saw for the whole round.
• Fixed the replay leaving a sliver of a tank behind beside its name.
• Fixed replays and game info being read wrongly on big-endian systems.
• The map name is now written into the game log when the round starts.