Bolo Buddy is a Macintosh application which helps you find and join Bolo games being played over the internet. Including the double-click to start the application, joining an internet Bolo game is just five clicks away (double-click to start BoloBuddy, double-click on the game to join and click the “Join” button in Bolo).
Bolo Buddy Features
• Configurable pop-up menu for choosing bolo trackers.
• Auto-launching of Bolo with all fields filled in when a game is double-clicked.
• Tracker header info can be hidden so only the game info is shown.
• Open Transport savvy. Runs under MacTCP, as well.
• FAT binary. Runs native on both PowerPC and 680x0 machines.
• Fully user-configurable via the Preferences dialog.
Using Bolo Buddy
• When you first start Bolo Buddy, it will connect to the default tracker and display a list of Bolo games (if there are any running). To cancel updating, click the “Cancel” button, or press either Command-period or or the escape key. To update the list of Bolo games, click the “Update” button.
• To join a game, either double-click it or single-click it and press the “Join” button (or just return if Join is the default button). If you click on a specific machine name, Bolo Buddy will choose that machine. Otherwise, Bolo Buddy will parse through the game information to find a machine name.
If Bolo Buddy complains that it could not launch Bolo, try rebuilding the desktop on your computer (holding down command and option during startup until you are asked if you want to rebuild the desktop).
• Option-clicking the text will behave in the standard TextEdit manner, like a normal word processor. This is handy if you want to hilight the map name or some other text so that you can copy it to the clipboard. (This behavior can be reversed in the preferences dialog.)
• If you don’t feel like reading through all the advertisements and news contained in the tracker information header, click the “Hide header” box.
• Choose “Preferences...” from the Edit menu and modify Bolo Buddy’s behavior to suit your desires. Clicking “OK” will save the preferences.
• If you’re confused about what something does, try turning on Balloon Help.
What do I need to run Bolo Buddy?
You need a computer running MacOS System 7 or higher. To use the network features you need a connection to the internet and suitable networking software (Open Transport or MacTCP).
Known limitations
• Bolo Buddy may not start on a machine with Open Transport installed if that machine has been booted with extensions off. It should bring up a dialog explaining that there’s not much you can do without networking, but instead it just doesn’t start. Other programs (e.g. Newswatcher, NetPresenz and Quid Quo Pro) have the same problem. But some TCP-ish programs will start. If anyone knows how to work around this, please contact me.
Thanks!
Stuart Cheshire, John Norstad, Darth Vader, Jolo, TEWE, Cliffa, Kukulcan, Black Lightning, LGM and all who have given feedback, both good and bad.
How to Contact the Author
Easiest way to get in touch with me is by e-mail to kev@ray.abo.fi. I’ll be moving from Finland to Sweden in the near future, so I won’t bother giving a postal address here. If you ‘finger’ to kev@ray.abo.fi, though, you will find my current mailing address there. — Kev
Frequently Asked Questions
Following are some questions (and answers) that are sometimes asked about Bolo Buddy:
“Why reinvent the wheel? Bolo Finder works fine.”
True. Just give Bolo Buddy a try, though, and you’ll see why I bothered to write it at all. If you’re a newbie it can be pretty confusing to figure out how to join an internet Bolo game. The WWW version of the Newbie’s Guide to Internet Bolo still gets 8-10 hits a day, indicating that there is still confusion. Imagine if all those people started playing Bolo!
I know that currently with BoloFinder you can double-click a game if you’ve got IceTEe installed, but that’s not very well advertised. Also, Bolo Finder is pretty outdated now, and is neither PowerPC nor Open Transport native, which Bolo Buddy is. Also, Bolo Buddy’s got those other nifty features like the popup menu and “hide header” option. More features are on the way, too.
“Why isn’t my ‘Hide header’ preference saved?”
This is not a bug. Occasionally, important information is actually included in the headers for the Bolo trackers. In order to ensure that this information is noticed at least once, Bolo Buddy shows the header by default when you start the application. Your wish for hiding headers is then granted as long as Bolo Buddy is running. (Actually, if you’ve read this far I’ll bother to tell you that if you hold down option as you check the “Hide tracker header” box it will remember it between sessions.)
“Bolo Buddy doesn’t launch Bolo when I click Join!”
Try rebuilding the desktop on your computer. Do this by holding down both the command (Apple) and option keys during startup until you are asked if you want to rebuild the desktop. Also, make sure that you have Bolo 0.99.5 or later.
Version History
1.0.1 (23 February 1997)
• Fixed bug that could put the default button outline in a window other than Bolo Buddy’s.
• Fixed bug where status wouldn’t update if auto-zoom was disabled. Thanks Cliffa.
• The error message for when you try to launch Bolo without enough memory now makes sense.
1.0 (13 February 1997 – Finally final)
• Added gobs and gobs of balloon help, and a Bolo Buddy Help item in the help menu.
• Rewrote updating so that the window is not redrawn several times when resized or zoomed.
• Enabled cut/copy/paste/clear from the menu when in the new/edit tracker dialog.
• Moved several more static strings from hard code to STR# resources.
• Fixed bug where “Update” would sometimes be disabled on machines with MacTCP installed. Thanks to Scott Wieser and Cliffa for helping nail that one.
• Fixed bug where clicking outside the general prefs box would sometimes cause Bolo Buddy to crash.
• Modified the “About...” box, and various other minor cosmetic changes.
1.0b3 (6 February 1997)
• Fixed a potentially crash-causing bug (writing to uninitialized struct). Thanks to Carl Osterwald for pointing that out.
• Minor internal rearrangements, mostly to help me keep my sanity.
1.0b2 (5 February 1997)
• Added support for joining machines running on ports other than 50000.
• Added zoom box and a clever zooming algorithm.
• Added “auto-zoom on update” preference.
• Changed “auto-update on open” pref to “auto-update on open or tracker change”.
• Removed hard-coding of default trackers. They’re now in a ‘STR#’ resource so they can easily be changed if the defualt trackers change in the future. (I’ll of course update them in new versions of Bolo Buddy, but in case I die it’ll make it easier for others. :)
• Improved support for multi-monitor systems.
• Various cosmetic improvements/minor bug fixes.
1.0b1 (15 January 1997)
• Now FAT instead of 680x0 only.
• Added menu equivalents for Update and Join buttons. Moved Prefs... to File menu.
• Join button now reads “Launch Bolo…” if no machine selected. Will launch w/o URL.
• Rewrote cursor-adjusting routines. Created 2 more spiffy spinning cursors!
• Fixed text display bug when updating tracker if window was narrower than full width.
• Fixed ugliness on window activate/deactivate.
• Minor modifications to Preferences... dialog. (Thanks, Darth!)
• Cleaned up and improved alert routines, and made cute little alert icons in a fit of boredom.
• Runs correctly even if no networking is installed.
• Minor facelift for the little fella’s face.
• Other things I’ve forgotten about.
0.9d4 (9 January 1997)
• Removed all reference to Bolo Spy. This will come in version 1.x (x ≥ 1). :)
• Added cursor adjusting routine.
• Added autoscrolling on normal TextEdit clicks (when option key is down).
