What?
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Bomber Bastards is a multi-platform bomberman clone with some extensions. The game can be extended in lua, which makes it possible to add custom elements and AI players without recompiling. The maps support animations and can be bigger than the screen. Multiplayer games on a single computer can be played either in split-screen or in fullscreen, smooth scrolling allows for larger maps than in the classic bomberman games. SDL is used for the cross-platform graphics. A network mode (local and internet with a central server) and an adventure mode are part of the todo list, but are getting close. |
News
| March 1 | Version 0.1.8 This is mainly a bugfix release. I broke a lot of stuff improving the sprite engine, sorry ;) Bonusses are displayed again (*sigh*), and when a player dies, you will see a dying sequence again. |
| Feb 25 | Version 0.1.7 This release should be a little more stable on windows. Scrolling configuration works much better, you can do it through a menu. Also the resolution and other video settings can be changed through the menu now. Split screen works great now, especially in a high resolution like 1600x1200. A new game option has been added: you can choose if you want to count suicides as negative kills or not. Hint: use kamikaze attacks on your opponents. A new sneaky bonus has seen the light. I'm not entirely satisfied of it yet so it's going to change a little in the future. What is does is make your opponents' bombs disappear from the field. The bombs are lost, the players don't get them back. |
| Feb 14 | Version 0.1.6 - Valentine's Edition ;) A lot of new graphics improvements. Sprites now have layers, for instance you can walk under trees and through doors. This also had consequences for event handling. Collision checking is more efficient, and interaction more generic. Integrating this with lua will be a focus point for the next version. Bomberbastards now has support for joysticks (only tested with my antique 2 button joypad). Two new bomb types have appeared, the atomic bomb (destroys every object in a square) and the power bomb (flames pass through destructable walls). And as always, a lot of things have been fixed/enhanced. The code seems to be pretty stable on linux and win98, but I experienced some slowdowns and unexplained crashes with XP (not my machine, so I couldn't check the cause) |
| Jan 21 | Version 0.1.2 This project is not dead, far from it. I'm currently working on the graphics engine, and it's been quite a lot of work, since I want this game to run smoothly on older machines, both with linux and windows. There's still a lot of work to do, but the framerate seems to be much more playable in 800x600 16 bit colors on a P2 200. Player statistics are saved after every game. Statistics include number of bonusses (bonii?) harvested, number of bombs, matches won and played, number of deaths, kills and suicides, and the total playing time. These figures will probably be quite interesting after a while. Is this player a suicide machine, a serial harvester or a mean killer? Just ask the numbers.. |
| Jan 6 | Version 0.1.1 Added game modes, ie. it's now possible to win a game. You can play the game in two ways: survive a round to score a point or reach a number of kills. There is also a timelimit. In case of a tie the game continues until there is a clear winner (unless everybody is dead =) ) The custom game options and field name are saved and restored the next time the game is started. This avoids a lot of browsing through the menus. It's also possible to make presets that include field, players and/or game settings, just create a .cmd file in the preset directory. |
| Dec 31 | Version 0.1.0 - New Year Release I compiled a little demonstration of the work I did during the holidays for windows. Some things are still a little buggy, but this starts to look a lot more like a game, with menus to select levels, add players and change options. |
| Dec 17 | Version 0.0.5 I moved tilesets to a seperate folder. There are two types of them, one type for simple maps, one type for extended maps (many pictures/animated backgrounds). Ani files are in the same folder as the animation pictures, so you can just add a folder with graphics or map information to extend the game. Player animations are also in their own folder, uh for the same reasons. It's possible now to customize the game settings (items you start with, split-screen, bomb-velocity etc) on a per map basis. This works for the Bomber Bastards field formats (same syntax as the .cmd files) and for the Atomic Bomberman maps (well most of those settings). There is also a beginning for startlocations, but it's not quite finished yet. Read the testgame.cmd for more information, you will notice it became a bit simpler. |
| Dec 14 | Animations in frames per second. Seems like the basics, but it had to be done (a long time ago) Anyway, it shouldn't look like total crap on those P4's anymore.. Magzimum has gone berserk ! When he discovered Gimp he mutated into some kind of graphics generator, and produced tileset after tileset.. And now he's entering obscure trigonometry into Povray. Watch the compulsory screenshot ! |
| Nov 28 | Version 0.0.3 I got lua to compile under windows, which means there's a new windows binary !. Rejoice, everything seems to work, and it is faster than under linux |
| Nov 26 | New map format: use several graphics for the same tile type. for instance, a breakable wall could be drawn as a brick wall in some places and as a plant in others. Check this to understand what I mean. Moreover any animation can be used as a tile, which basically means that map get the ability to drive you crazy with glittering, flashing, rotating and bouncing background graphics. |
| Nov 24 | mutiple tilesets, check out Magzimum's desert tileset |
| Nov 20 | Added an A+ pathfinder for the ai's. It works fine but isn't quite adapted to what I made for in the first place, ie run to a safe place. I will probably use a breadth-first algorithm for that one. |
| Nov 15 | scripting seems to work. It's possible to animate between 50 or 100 'stupid' objects and the game is still playable. |
Forum
Visit the forums.
Download
For downloads see this page on sourceforge. If you're running windows and you're not interested in source code, choose the latest file from the
bbbastards-win32-bin package.bbbastards-all contains the source code and the graphics (no executable), and bbbastards-src-only only contains the source-code (duh!)
Screenshots
Planning
| in progress |
Faster graphics Make game run faster on slow computers. Don't redraw everything for each frame. Optimize scrolling. Use linked lists to manage objets in game cells. Use sprite layers to draw things over the player. |
| in progress | Scripting and Computer Opponents Define the Bomberbastards lua API. Make several kinds of script object helpers (Moveable, TileHandler, GameHandler, Bot). Improve the Bot support library (A* pathfinding, breadth-first escape plannig etc). Let bots play as players. |
| in progress | User Friendly Menus Push/Pop menus. Define custom menus from .cmd files. Create Directory menus. Provide feedback about options on menu labels. |
| version 1.0 | Structure game settings Game settings are getting a bit numerous throughout the code. I need a standardized mechanism to get/set variables of different kinds, keep track of the authorized values, and override other settings. |
| version 1.0 | Grab and Throw bombs An important bonus in every bomberman clone that respects itself. |
| version 1.0 | Display a map overlay For bigger maps and network play. Show bombs outside map as dots on the border. |
| version 1.0 | Map Editor Support .map and extmap support. Add prefab scriptobjects. Add startlocations. |
| version 2.0 | Network play LAN play with key broadcasting. Internet play with minimal ping tree. Battlenet like internet server. |
| version 3.0 | Adventure version Once upon a time, on a planet far far away, there were some dudes called the Bomber Bastards. When on earth, Dr Bomber's evil mutant bombermen are about to take over the world, the Bomber Bastards are called to the rescue... *grin* |
ChangeLog
Resources and products used
| Graphic tools | |
| the Gimp | Open source painting program, used for animations and tiles |
| povray | Raytracing program with a useful C-like language |
| Imagemagick | This collection of command-line tools is perfect to convert the format of pictures, cut them in pieces, combine them in all kinds of ways, preview animations, and lots of other things. We couldn't do without. |
| Microsoft paint | There might still be some graphics that were first created in this uh.. program |
| Compilers | |
| GCC | The C++ compiler for linux. What else ? |
| Borland free compiler | And this is the one for windows, since I didn't want to depend on environments like cygwin or mingw. |
| Libraries | |
| libSDL | SDL is a free cross-platform multi-media development API. |
| Lua | Little cross-platform scripting language that can be linked to a C program, and only adds about 150 kilobytes to the size of the executable. |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Vim | The Vi improved editor. A bitch to learn, a pleasure to work with. |
Hosting and project support
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Maintained by stilgar, stilgar1@nospam.gmx.net Please remove nospam from mail adress if you need to contact me Last update: 25 Feb 2002 |
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