 
Bolotomy


a
BOLO
map utility







by
Alan Witmer
&
Jerry Halstead
Shareware, ©Menial Warts 1993, $8.00 US 
 
 

What it is:
Welcome to our new utility for the Macintosh game Bolo.  Convinced that Bolo is the best game imaginable for a handful of networked Macs hooked to various engineers (or whatever populates Macs at your site), we set out to make it easier and faster to get *newer*, *better*, and *faster* maps.  Who wants to spend countless hours fussing over a map editor trying to get the right "look" when you could spend those countless hours dominating your peers in Bolo?  Not us.  So we spent some countless hours putting together the enclosed program so you could have the coolest maps on the block AND still have time to play the game.
Bolotomy reads in a PICT file and converts it to a Bolo map.  Along the way you will be able to preview how the final map looks and easily remap colors (or shades of gray) to types of terrain, place bases and pillboxes, and tweak the size of your PICT.  The interface is pretty easy (hey, it's my first one!) and the resulting map is awesome.

What it is not:
Unfortunately, due to time and budget constraints, Bolotomy  is unable to take care of your financial planning, word processing, or photo touch-up needs.  Bolotomy is neither Photoshop nor BoloStar, both very fine programs and both created for the sole purpose of augmenting Bolotomy (ok, this is an oversimplification).  Also, Bolotomy would be a bad program to show off the speed of your Mac plus with, heh.

What it needs:
This program is not suited for a black and white Mac.  You must have color or gray scale so that varying shades of colors can be mapped to varying types of Bolo terrain (there are 16 types of terrain so 4 bit graphics will work).  Bolotomy was developed and tested entirely on Quadras running System 7, so your performance and ability to run may vary widely.  We are making no claims or guarantees of use ability, compatibility, or functionality with this program.  If Bolotomy sounds like something you need or want to try then do so at your own discretion, taking whatever precautions you feel necessary (remember: backup often, backup well).  We welcome feedback and suggestions. 

How it works:
Once you've loaded a PICT you will see your picture in the left window, a preview window on the right, and a button bar and coordinates window along the bottom.  As you move the cursor in the left window the preview window shows what a small section of the resulting Bolo map looks like.  Also, while you move the mouse in the PICT window, the bottom window displays your x,y coordinates, the "shade" or "level" value of the pixel your cursor is over, and the terrain currently mapped to this value.  There is also a quick reference in the bottom window showing which keys to hit when remapping the terrain.  So, for example, you are at a pixel position of  34, 100 and the value shows 68.3, which is one of the default values for River.  If you hit the T key this River(and all others points on the map with a value of  68 to 68.9) turns into Tarmac (road).  You could also hold down the T key while dragging the mouse to change a bunch of values to Tarmac.  Experiment, you'll get the hang of it.

The Windows:

PICT window:  all of your pointing, clicking, zooming is done here.  The pixel your cursor is over represents a value that gets turned into Bolo terrain.  Hitting a key, like G for grass, changes the pixel (and all others with that value) to grass.

Preview window: only used for displaying a preview of Bolo terrain.  Moving and clicking your mouse here does nothing (except drag the window around).

Bottom window:  a strange, dragable window with five buttons, a status area, and a quick reference for which keys relate to which terrain.

The five buttons in the bottom window are Cursor, Zoom, Base, Pillbox, Mine toggle.Cursor, Zoom, Base, Pillbox, and Mine toggle:
Cursor allows you to point, preview, and change terrain types, the mouse cursor is changed to a crosshair in the PICT window.
Zoom lets you click and drag a frame over the part of the PICT you want to fill the screen, it changes the cursor to a magnifying glass.
The Base and Pillbox buttons allow you to place these items into your map, the cursor remains a crosshair.
The Mine button toggles mine placement: with the button depressed all future terrain changes become mined terrain (i.e.. G changes the current screen value to mined grass).
There is also a Landscaping option (command-L) under the Settings menu that gives you a more numerical approach to assigning values to terrain.  
Once you have set things up the way you like, select Save from the file menu.  You are prompted for a destination and Bolotomy cranks out your new Bolo map.  Fire up Bolo and see how you like it.
NOTE:  increase the size of the program to read and display bigger or higher rez pictures: Bolotomy LOVES memory, yum, yum. 

Too cool stuff
Some of the partly hidden, but ultimately useful functions in Bolotomy include the ability to change the picture alignment and scaling.  If you fired up Bolotomy with your favorite PICT before reading this you probably noticed that the picture was scaled to fit in a 230 by 230 pixel window.  This can play interesting tricks if the original picture was something like 400 by 200 or 1024 by 860.  If the effect isn't the desired one you can use the Zoom feature or pick one of the options under the PICT menu.
The PICT options are:
Scaled - the default setting of making the entire PICT fill the window.
Best fit - puts PICT in window with a small border framing it.  It maintains the original pict's vertical and horizontal ratio.
OneToOne - this tries its best to put the PICT in the center of the window with its original size.  Best for PICTs smaller than 230x230.  Larger PICTs will be cropped.
"Everard Isle" style - shrinks the PICT down to a small, Everard Isle sized map.  Good once the novelty of driving forever to get to your base on a big map wears out.
Custom - this contains the settings from the last Zoom.  It defaults to Scaled when a PICT is first opened.
You'll find under the Edit menu (Command-Z) that you can Undo the last PICT change.  Cut, Copy, and Paste just sit there and swallow mouse down events for now.  There is also a smooth shoreline algorithm that turns the area bordering oceans and land into river.  You can toggle this on or off under the Settings menu.

That's it.  You now posses the tools to make the best maps on the planet, you are only limited by your imagination and stockpile of PICTs (visit a BBS).

Not cool enough:
Features for the next release include:
¥Under the settings menu the preview More or Less will be activated, allowing you to see more (or less) map terrain in the preview window.
¥ More options for the PICT menu: maybe a crop command?
¥ Zoom out.  Holding the option key when in zoom mode will show a - (minus) in the magnifying glass and allow you to zoom out on the PICT.
¥ Starting positions for boats.  The most favorite second release feature for Bolo map makers.  We'll do it too, just wait and see!
¥ Bigger, faster, better.  Natch.

Excessive enough:
Due to a certain amount of "newby-itis" on my part (Jerry) the interface may be a little too much for the task at hand.  My job was to learn and program the Mac interface section so Alan's cool mapping techniques and algorithms had a place to live.  There are probably a few things I could have left off (50-100k?) but it was too much fun.  I'll restrain myself sometime in the future and become a stodgy, bit banging, sprinkler systems programmer with toggle switches and alligator clips like my daddy and his daddy before him.


The Money part:
You know the rap: if you like it, pay for it...blah, blah, blah.  Actually we would love to get enough money to support our pinball and coffee habits with this, but if you haven't registered Bolo we'd prefer to see money go to the author, Stuart Cheshire, first (er, and then to us).  Since without Bolo there would be no Bolotomy and we would have to do real work ALL of the time.  Although, if you find yourself helplessly hooked on Bolotomy, we'd appreciate mail telling us about your addiction and $8.  Or, better yet, take a picture, try to make a Bolo map of it by hand, multiply the time taken by what you normally get paid an hour and mail the check too:

The Menial Warts
Jerry & Alan
c/o Fostex R&D
2 Buck Rd, Suite 2
Hanover, NH  03755

Make the check payable to Jerry Halstead or Alan Witmer.

...whatever the case, be sure to e-mail us with your likes, dislikes, feature requests, and favorite PICT used to:

fostex!jerry_halstead@dartvax
fostex!alan_witmer@dartvax


