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This page gathers most of the questions and observations that have been made in forums around the world or privately via email shortly after the release. The author's answers will give further details about the game itself as well as shed light on the spirit behind it and on future plans.
Thank you to all those who shared their opinions and expressed their doubts!
Q1: Is BOH a remake of Alien Breed?
A: BOH was inspired also by Alien Breed, but it is quite different from it. Neither it wants to be its successor. Indeed, here is what you can find in the "TRIVIA" section of the user's manual: "As regards the gameplay, BOH was inspired by these C64 titles: Wizard of Wor, The Amazing Spider-Man and Impossible Mission; from a technical point of view, inspiration came from the MS-DOS version of Shadowlands and a coin-op Formula 1 game (maybe Tail to Nose); other games that influenced it are Alien Breed, The Chaos Engine and Ambermoon for the Amiga computer".

Q2: This game looks weird/bad: what's with such low resolution and blocky graphics?
A: BOH is meant to have a strong retro feeling, that is why graphics are 2D and have been pixelled by hand, and the resolution is low with respect to modern standards.
At the same time, there are also more modern elements like: full screen interpolated rotation, field of vision, 24-bit ray-traced lighting with virtually unlimited light sources, 8-bit alphachannel, window/screen zooming, 7 audio channels, sounds volume based on dynamically calculated field of sound, 7 different enemy AIs - all of which calculated in real-time by just the CPU and running at 50 FPS (unless automatic frame skipping kicks in on less powerful machines).

Q3: What resolution does the game run at?
A: The visible area is always 320x240 pixels.
Such low resolution has been chosen on purpose to achieve a retro feeling and because pixels are beautiful! - more information about this can be found in the previous answer.
The area can be zoomed by 2x, 3x and 4x both in window and in full screen mode.

Q4: The full screen rotation makes me feel somewhat dizzy.
A: It could be an effect of monitor distortion: please make sure you are using a screen mode with 1:1 pixel aspect ratio (i.e. the chosen resolution should have the same ratio of your monitor). For more information, please refer to the "CHOOSING THE BEST FULL SCREEN MODE" section in the user's manual.

Q5: The sudden appearance/disappearance of tiles gives me a headache and/or look unprofessional: would it be possible to make them fade in/out gradually?
A: Indeed, that is a design choice that is integral part of the tile-based engine and that contributes to the retro flavour.
I do understand that, at first, this little "visual shock" may be irritating to some (to whom I apologize), but it must also be said that, before the release, nobody of those who saw/played the game ever complained or just hinted at the problem altogether, and that, after the release, I did not receive any complaint whatsoever from customers. Therefore, I am totally confident that we are talking about an effect of little or no importance.

Q5: At a higher resolution and/or with 3D it would have looked a lot better!
A: The game looks how it looks because that is exactly how I wanted it to look. That is its visual identity and it is not going to change. (See also here.)

Q6: Why is not there any background music during the game? Why are enemies so quiet?
A: As regards music: in general I do not like background music because in real life rarely there is one (and, if there is, often it is because we intentionally turned it on). Speaking of the game, f.ex., which music could one possibly expect to find in places like those found in the game? So, I replaced the background music with the ambient noise (which has also the advantage of being much less CPU-hungry than decoding complex sound data).
Monster sounds are a bit more complicated issue. Ideally, it would be very nice to have enemies making noises. And, indeed, originally enemies were supposed to emit sounds. However, that would have required:
  • additional audio channels, i.e. more CPU strain due to mixing, which would not have been a nice thing given the demanding calculations needed for the rest;
  • more work to produce themes, which is already quite demanding.
At some point, during development, I had decided to limit the enemies sounds to just those made by the two closest enemies... but then an idea struck me: what if I included a gimmick that beeped when an enemy was in the surrondings? So I added the short- and long-range detectors, which made the functional aspect of enemies sounds much less important, and gave up on enemies sounds altogether.
Anyways, I tried to enrich the aural experience by treating sounds with care:
  • the ambient sound volume depends on the size of the area the player is in - so, in a (very) small area it is barely audible, whereas in vast areas it becomes a solid presence;
  • the volume of the other sound effects depends on the distance of their sources from the player: a metal door that opens in the distance is hard to hear, but the floor cracking under the feet does emit a very audible alarm signal;
  • the volume of some sounds depends also on the size of the source (f.ex. a large pool of bubbling acid makes more noise than a small one).

Q7: Why is not there mouse aim? Can you add it?
A: No, sorry, I will not implement it, as it would change the gameplay in a way I do not like - I always wanted and still want the controls to be as simple as those of the good ol' games (to be precise, what I have in mind is 1-button joysticks). Moreover, the game is not focused on action (it is not a shooter, as it might seem at first), so I always try to avoid elements that give the action aspect more importance.

Q8: Is there strafing? Is it possible to strafe and turn at the same time?
A: [short answer]

The full version of the game included strafing until update12, although turning simultaneously has never been possible. Strafing has been removed by update13.

[long answer]

Initially, the game did not have strafing, because I wanted basic controls. Not much before the initial release, a friend asked me to add it. I did, albeit reluctantly because that inevitably required more buttons. Therefore, I decided to add just a button that would change the action of the turning buttons to strafing. After a while, another friend told me he would find more comfortable to have dedicated buttons, instead of having to press the strafing activation button in conjunction with the turning ones. Despite I liked the idea of adding two more buttons even less, I found that request more than reasonable, and so I granted it.
However, I had never been happy with how much more complicated than I originally wanted controls became. That thought had been haunting me more and more, especially in the light of the simple facts that strafing:
  • is completely unnecessary: all missions can be finished and fighting enemies is absolutely very possible even without it (by the way, I never use it and I have designed and deeply tested all the missions without considering/using strafing);
  • makes creating themes more demanding, as additional sprites have to be created (and they are even among the hardest ones) - this is not bad just for me, but for whoever decides to have a go at creating a theme;
  • calls for the possibility of turning at the same time (as the question this is an answer to does), which would require an even more refined control method (exactly the opposite of my original idea).
At some point I came to the conclusion that adding strafing was a mistake in first place and that is why, as said above, I eventually fixed it for good.

Q9: BOH does not allow me to blast everything that moves, to easily get rid of baddies... and I want more weapons, more action!
A: BOH is not a shooter. BOH is first and foremost an exploration game. The action is a key component as well, but it serves the purpose of making exploration thrilling. Do not focus on action - that will lead you nowhere.

Q10: Sometimes making the wrong choice leads to a no-way-out situation, forcing the player to abort and retry: this is unacceptable, especially when there are no elements to take a decision!
A: One of the key components of BOH is puzzles. More precisely, exploration mixed with and based on puzzles. If one was allowed to always find the way out no matter the choices, what would be the point? Where would be the real challenge? The gameplay would only become much less rich.
That said, most of the times there actually are clues (maybe just not so obvious): by paying attention to the missions introductory words (and sometimes even names!), the message points, the elements found in battlefields and the maps layouts, the player can make educated guesses.
It is true, however, that sometimes (most commonly in the missions labelled "[very] hard") it is just a matter of trial and error: that is acceptable thanks to the fact that the player can freely retry whenever he/she feels like or ignore the missions that contain such aspect and enjoy the other ones.

Q11: Why is not there a savegame option?
A: The possibility of saving would have made the game much less challenging and rewarding. You are allowed to start any mission you like at any time, but, once the choice is made, you will have to do your best to bring out the chosen mission.

Q12: Can third parties develop expansions? If so, will tools be made available to download for free?
A: Yes, I would love to see expansions from others.
However, I will not distribute any tool for a very simple reason: no special tool is required at all! Missions and translations can be created with just a plain ISO 8859-1 text editor; to produce themes, instead, besides the text editor, you can use your favourite graphics and sound tools.
The developer's manual available on the DOWNLOADS page illustrates all the technical aspects regarding missions and themes.

Q13: Will there ever be a BOH 2?
A: I have plenty of ideas for totally different games, which probably will come first. Anyway, the sheer amount of updates, in practice, already made BOH 2 available for enjoyment... and at no additional cost!

Q14: Why a boxed product?
A: One of the project's goals was to provide Amiga users with a tangible product, since it is something the Amiga market in general had been missing for a long time.
Besides that, I did not want BOH to get lost among millions of other games available via digital delivery: it is a deep product which I poured lots of love and work into, so I felt it deserved to distinguish itself also in that regard.
Another reason is that I want people to be able to read the user's manual comfortably - the manual helps a lot in fully enjoying the game right from the start, so that is important.
If you can bear the additional expenses, I recommend you buy the boxed version to fully enjoy the product.

Q15: The game is just not worth the price: classic Amiga games like Alien Breed looked already better and modern games are on an much higher level.
A: I can not - and I do not want to - discuss personal preferences. So, preferences aside, this is what I can say.

First of all, that is a comparison between apples and oranges: the engine of BOH is conceptually different from that of any other game, because it wants to achieve precisely the aspect the game sports. Then, technically speaking, since BOH might seem less advanced than it actually is, the aspects discussed here should be taken into consideration.
Maybe your opinion will change, maybe not: you are the judge, but make sure you do not overlook those aspects.

As regards the price, please keep in mind that (technical aspects aside):
  • the game is unique: you will not find anything similar anywhere;
  • the numerous missions guarantee tens (and maybe hundreds!) of hours of play;
  • the development took about 3 years;
  • the customer gets the game for all the supported platforms and he/she is allowed to install it on as many privately owned machines as he wants;
  • the investment to produce the physical copies is all but negligible;
  • quick and careful support is offered publically and privately;
  • BOH is a difficult product to place in the market because of today's dominating culture, because of the giants in the industry and because of the competition of many other great indie titles;
  • the price compares reasonably with the other indie games on the market.
I am sure the price is fair.

Q16: Sacrilege! The Windows version on the same CD of the AmigaOS one?!?
A: BOH is a risky project by a passionate (and unemployed) developer backed just by kind friends: producing two different CD-ROMs would have been a lot more expensive and would have affected the end-user price; moreover, Amigans that want to support the project but do not have AmigaOS 4 (yet) can still buy the game and enjoy it.

Q17: Can you port BOH to this platform (PS3, NatAmi, C64, etc.)?
A: Please consider that:
  • the game already runs on 5 different OSes, covering 99% of the computers on Earth;
  • I do not own all the existing platforms;
  • I do not have money for more platforms;
  • I do not have room for more machines;
  • the porting effort for some platforms could be substantially high*;
  • not all platforms are powerful enough*;
  • maintaining more versions would become too demanding;
  • not all ports necessarily make sense commercially.
For these reasons, no further ports are planned at the moment.

*To make BOH easily portable (and, admittedly, also for personal enjoyment), everything is done by the CPU and no hardware-specific feature has been exploited: since the technical profile of the game is not as low as it may appear (see Q2 and Q6), power is a key factor; moreover, the suitability of the platform architecture and the availability of certain tools are also fundamental requirements. This means that some platforms are just not suitable. In particular, also the platforms that could theoretically run BOH nicely thanks to their specific features are not suitable because a substantial re-write/adaption effort would be necessary and maintenance would a lot more demanding than usual.

Q18: Can you port BOH to this handheld (iPhone, PSP, Nintendo DS, etc.)?
A: Besides what said at Q17, BOH is not suitable at all for handhelds: its main elements are reduced visibility, dark graphics, small details and such, all of which would make the playing experience on small LCD screens a pain. On top of that, controls could be an issue as well.

Q19: Can you port BOH to classic Amiga machines?
A: Getting classic CPUs and chipsets to run the game acceptably - and still with a noticeable loss of quality - would require a complete and specific implementation from scratch, which, as explained at Q17, is not possible.
Please note that it has been reported that expanded classic Amigas running AmigaOS 4 are able to run the game decently.

Q20: Is there a missions editor?
A: One of the design goals was to allow the creation of missions by means of just a plain text editor. And, actually, that is how I made all my missions. For this reason, I will never develop an editor.
However, a web-based editor (albeit outdated, due to the updates released subsequently) already exists thanks to the efforts of Mark Ashley, a nice fan: please go here to learn about it.

Q21: What technologies have been used to create BOH?
A: BOH has been made mostly on an AmigaOne XE (PPC G4 @ 1GHz) running AmigaOS 4.
  • The code is 100% C, written with FrexxEd (old M68k text editor) and compiled with gcc from shell.
  • Graphics have been drawn mainly with Personal Paint (old M68k pixelling application).
  • Music has been composed with MilkyTracker and HivelyTracker.
  • Samples have been recorded with AHIRecord and processed with AmiSoundED and Audacity.
  • Other tools used (alphabetical order): ImageMagick, make, MakeCD, OggEnc, OpenOffice.org, pngcrush, PNGTool, SoX, svn, The Gimp, TuneNet, TVPaint and a few other custom ones.
  • The only external libraries used are SDL, SDL_mixer and SDL_net.


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