The following features are all planned for Bolo, but it may be some time before they are done.
• Security measures to stop people from cheating.
• Sound to accompany incoming message.
• Allow man to defuse mines that you can see.
Alliances
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• Some kind of visual indication on the screen when another tank is requesting an alliance with you.
• Names and/or colours to identify teams (chosen by the person who starts the alliance).
• Should have some better division of possessions when you leave an alliance. At the moment, the alliance members keep everything when you leave, and you get nothing.
Bases/Pillboxes
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• Ability to switch to remote view from a base, like the way you can with pillboxes.
• Also views from allied tanks
Graphics
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• Numbers next to ammunition indicators (both tank and base) to give a precise count.
• New screen layout to fill a Mac II screen and show larger graphics. This obviously involves redesigning all the graphics characters, since just enlarging them will look unacceptably 'chunky'. This view will not show more information than the standard sized screen, it will simply fill the monitor better.
• Make Bolo use an off-screen GWorld for its drawing, to improve performance when used on an Apple 8•24GC display card with the acceleration turned ON. This is a low priority because so few people use this card, and you can easily turn acceleration off.
Network
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• Digitized voice communication — like battlefield radio (probably only feasible with Ethernet or faster).
• Improve the Game joining dialog box to the new System 7 style -- TAB to switch panes in the dialog box, letter keys to select zones and players etc. (like the new Chooser).
• Direct modem communication for people who have modems, but don't have ARA.
• Improve performance of Bolo over AppleTalk Remote Access connections.
• Also, possibility of giving each game a name to identify it.
Misc
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• Ability to save full game information, including who the players are, who they are allied to, who owns which pillboxes and bases, who can see which mines etc. At the moment, only the map itself is saved.
• Some kind of concept of 'winning' the game. At the moment, people just play until one player or team of players have such an overwhelming superiority that the others concede defeat and go for a drink instead. It might be better to have a formal definition of when the game ends. On the other hand, it might not -- real wars continue until the losers surrender.
• Procedure for 'voting' to make changes to game options, like changing from 'Open' to 'Tournament', setting or changing the password, or 'locking out' any new players. This is quite hard to do, because it is hard for every single machine to keep track of all the votes from every other machine, to decide what action to take. When new players join, how do they know what everyone else's current voting preferences are? When players leave, do their votes just disappear? If they were the last dissenting vote for something, then does their leaving precipitate the change? What happens if someone walks away from their machine and leaves it running on autopilot? Can the other players vote to ignore the vote from that machine? What if they leave TWO Bolo autopilots running? How many votes do you need to vote to ignore other votes? This problem is harder than it might first appear.
