Nieuw logo

Nieuw logo

Today I, Jaimy, have worked on our logo. It is also implementen in our new background but it is not very good to see. So hereby I publish the logo:

Project Progress

Project Progress

What have we done since we started all of this Bomberness? Well because we are such a motivated team we got started right away! We started with making a basic Bomberman game.
We are not totally done yet, but done enough that some of us can start puzzling with the bigger picture of the project.

Aart started with making a core as the base to build our game on. This core contains and engine, a resource manager, and input helper and other things to have a solid foundation of the game.

Bas started to make a bomb class, not a triviality in bomberman, while Marciano started the player class. These two classes need to be linked in different ways. Ways like knowing which player planted which bomb, and knowing how many bombs has one player already planted. Thus the two guys need stick their heads together and finish their two classes.

In the meantime, Aron made a level loading system that he has finished already. How does the loading work? A level is read from a text file and then loaded in a grid of tiles. These tiles can represent a wall or a box, even the start position of our player(s). With this grid we can also check collisions with, for example, a bomb. When a bomb explodes, it explodes in a + shape. We will add an upgrade for the bomb to explode in different forms, but for now a + shape will suffice. But before an explosion can be drawn, it needs to check if it can explode in the direction it wants. Therefore it needs to know what kind of tile stands next to it. And this is easily done in a grid.

But there are some little details that need to be dealt with first. Because since we check the collisions with tiles from the grid, how should the player walk? If we let him walk freely, with some pixels per update what will happen if a player is half in one tile with an explosion and half in one that is safe? Is the player hit or not? There are multiple solutions. The one we are implementing now is that when the player walks, it walks from tile to tile but with a smooth transition. So it looks like you walk with a velocity of some pixels per update, but in reality you are not.

Now we need to put everything together to make a basic version of the original bomberman game.

Because the original game is almost done, some of us have already been busy with some of our improvements. So has Ricardo been busy researching the AI and making a plan to implement it in our original game. He has to wait until everything of the basic game is done and ready to use, because the AI needs to use all kinds of information. A computer controlled player needs to know the distance from him to his nearest enemy or box to destroy. He needs to “understand” not to walk in the range of his and other peoples bombs. We would also like the computer to have some sort of tactics to attack others or defend himself. It is not a small task that Ricardo has to do.

Meanwhile Aron started making an InputHelper class, so that the keys used in our game can be set to anyone’s desire. We mean, in a way that the player can configure his own control keys. So, if you want to play our game with an X-Box controller or just with your keyboard, it is possible! It has kept Aron busy for the past few days, but we all believe he can do it. 

lighting as it is now

At the same time Aart has started working on a lighting system. What do we mean by lighting system? Well, it means that we can put the whole level in the dark and give every player a flashlight which lights the room a little bit for them. Aart had the system working pretty fast, but then (unintentionally) made modern art while trying to set two sets of light sources in the game. Fortunately this is going better now but it keeps him busy nevertheless. Tuesday, this should work so that we can even make different colors of light. After that he is going to work on a haze effect. This is an effect that you see in the air near something that is really hot. And what is hotter than an explosion? (I can think of some things but that is not really the point right now) With this haze effect we can make the explosions look more realistic. Another effect to make the explosions look more realistic are particles! This is what Bas and Jaimy will be playing with in the coming days.

We will give you a big update like this in 2 weeks and if there is something to say before that you will see it on the blog!

See ya!