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The Tracker is a server software application that stores a list of active games. It is how the WinBolo clients receive a list of active games when using the built in tracker search function.

The current official tracker address is: tracker.winbolo.com running on port 50000

The tracker also provide a HTML output on: http://tracker.winbolo.com:50005/[http://tracker.winbolo.com:50005/]

The [[Tracker Source Code]] is available.

== Protocol ==
The tracker uses a combination of UDP and TCP for receiving updates from WinBolo servers as well as responding to game list requests from clients.

=== Input ===

The tracker listens for [[Information Packet]]s via UDP that are sent from the WinBolo servers. Servers provide updates every 3 minutes and games are purged after 10 minutes of no activity.

=== Output ===

The tracker listens for TCP requests and sends back a human readable list of games. The format of the list is in the format of <ITEM>=<VALUE> and each line is separated by a set of new line characters. (\r\n)


{| class="wikitable" 
|-
! Field
! Value
|-
| TVERSION
| Version of the tracker information. Version 1 the most current version of the tracker information format.
|-
|MOTDL
|Number of lines in the Message of the day.
|-
|MOTD
|Each line of the message of the day.
|-
|GAMEXXX
|Address,port of the games server. The XXX represents the sequence number. 000 for he first game
|-
|VERSION
|Version of WinBolo running.
|-
|MAP
|Name of the map being played.
|-
|PLAYERS
|Number of players in the game.
|-
|BASES
|Number of free bases in the game.
|-
|PILLBOXES
|Number of free pillboxes in the game.
|-
|HIDMINES
|Whether hidden mines are enabled or not.
|-
|BRAINS
|Whether brains are allowed (no/yes/yesAdv)
|-
|DELAY
|Game start delay.
|-
|TIMELIMIT
|Timelimit on the game. (-1 unlimited)
|-
|STARTTIME
|Time the game was started. 
|}

An example of the tracker output is below.

<pre>
TVERSION=1
MOTDL=2
MOTD=This is line 1 of the message of the day
MOTD=This is line 2 of the message of the day
NGAMES=2
GAME001=address1.com,27500
VERSION=1.01
MAP=Test Map
TYPE=Tournament
PLAYERS=5
BASES=5
PILLBOXES=5
HIDMINES=no
PASSWORD=yes
BRAINS=yesAdv
DELAY=60
LIMIT=-1
STARTTIME=8
GAME002=address2.com,50000
VERSION=1.01
MAP=Everard Island
TYPE=Open
PLAYERS=3
BASES=11
PILLBOXES=10
HIDMINES=yes
PASSWORD=no
BRAINS=no
DELAY=60
LIMIT=-1
STARTTIME=8
</pre>

== Windows Compilation ==

You will need to download the [http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32/#download PThreads for Windows] files.

Place the header files in your INCLUDES directory and the .dll and .lib files into your LIBRARY directory.

== Trivia ==

* The first WinBolo tracker was written in Visual Basic by Plastic Fist and later maintained by Andrew Roth. It ran for two years on a windows 95 desktop in Jolo's office at Duke University.
* Older versions of the tracker outputted the STARTTIME parameter as a non-readable two byte