Lobo is Logo Bolo: a re-envisioning of the classic tank game by Stuart Cheshire in NetLogo. Below you will find a short tutorial on how to play, some known bugs and limitations, and credits.
TUTORIAL
-------
...
BUGS / LIMITATIONS
------------------
In the original Bolo, the map takes up many screen widths and is scrollable with the tank at the center. "follow" by itself wouldn't work, because NetLogo does not allow objects off-screen. I spent a while trying to figure this out, at one point essentially rewriting the rendering engine and using a table of "actual" patch coordinates that was translated into "virtual" patch coordinates each frame Ð not only was this very slow, but it was very overcomplicated and I wasn't able to do everything I had wanted. Instead, the map was made one screen size.
In the original Bolo, patches are not merely colors - they have patterns on them (grass has little green lines, forests are spotted, roads have white stripes). This was not possible in NetLogo because patches can only have a single color.
Time was also a limiting factor: I had planned a lot of additional features found in the original Bolo, like a nicer GUI for showing armor and ammunition, water as a ground-type (which drowns your tank). These were skipped so more work could be spent on general polishing and testing.
CREDITS / MISC
-------
* Stuart Cheshire for the original Bolo game. Some graphics used in this project (tanks, pillboxes, and bases) were heavily based on old sprites taken from Bolo.
* My dad for introducing me to Bolo many years ago, and for helping me simplify the original Bolo game into something possible with NetLogo.
* Josh Hofing for advice on implementing certain features and emotional support.
This project is available on GitHub at https://github.com/earwig/lobo. I used it for syncing code between my netbook and my desktop when working on the project away from home.
Ben Kurtovic
13 years ago