And finally...

THE RELEASE

after a little bit of tweaking, here it is, the release. It's a little bit late because i forgot to make this post XD

Download

P.S. if you wan't to link back to this game don't link directly to the download, link back to this page. It is not allowed to link directly to the download or host the setup file somewhere else!

Humans out there,

DID  YOU KNOW THAT 97% OF THE WORLD ISN'T EXPLODING RIGHT NOW!? THAT'S BULLSHIT! PLAY KABOMB!*

Ahum. Fresh start.

Hello! Aart here, presenting you the newest updates on KABOMB.
As you obviously noticed, we have a slogan and a name for the game now. It took us a while but here it is.

The game itself is almost finished. We are currently fixing as much bugs as we can, after which we will publish the game on monday January the 28th. Lets see what we have!

The level editor is fully working!

Place the players, walls, and even TNT, where you want. save the level, and play it. It's easy.
There is an option to generate a random level, which I think is pretty cool. It is also possible to create a random level when selecting at level selection, if you want a quick play.

You see what this is? That's a fully functional menu! All menu's are working now, and there some useful things you can customize here. Want different controls? I mean really different controls? We added support for Xbox controllers, so do wathever you like. By the way, you can see the games' logo in the back.

But the game itself? Yes, good question! It looks awesome if you ask me. Zombie, Pirate, Alien, and Ninja sprites, combined with snow, sand and grass maps, it look great, and it's all drawn by Jaimy and Bas.
The HUD is working too. Keep track of your upgrades, and make sure you explode the other players in time, or you will be drowned in...

..Lava! We are still busy with the vulcano in the middle, but the hot stuff is working!**
I think it combines very well with the lighting I made.

So, that's how the game looks right now. As I said, we will be busy fixing as much bugs as we can before we public the game. We already thouight there was some stuff we could improve about this game, but today we got feedback from people outside our developers group. There was a bèta testing day near us, and Ricardo, Bas, Aron, and I went there to show our game. Here other developers played our game and told us what they thought could be done better. Manuel Kerssemakers from Abbey Games was there, and provided some really useful feedback. Thanks Manuel!

An example what could be done better, was that the menus are not intuitive enough. Some menus needed explanation by our team members to be used, and this is not what we want. People also wanted the effects to be more obvious, so I will be working on that. There was alot more ofcourse, but I will not be talking about too many details. Everything will be good by monday!

It was fun talking about KABOMB, but I have to start working again. Hopfully we hear what you think of the game next week!

Aart

*Diclaimer: Not yet, wait until monday!
**Not at all intentional

Not the end of the world, but the end of the chrismas break

Greetings to all of you out there. I hope you all had a nice christmas and new year and you all had some time to rest. However, unfortunately, the holidays don't last forever so it's back to work. This time it's up to me to share some more of this sinus, apple and orangey goodness.

Although we were busy celebrating the holidays, some work was done. Jaimy made good progress on the level editor:

You can drag the blocks from the right hand side of the screen to the grid to create your own levels. and these levels can be saved to a file so you can play them anytime you want. However, the editor is long from done. Several restrictions are missing, deleting blocks is not possible, and the control of the editor isn't very intuitive yet. but all these things will be fixed in the upcoming week and I'm sure Jaimy's work is going to result in a great editor.

Aart has primarily been working on the graphical effects, heat haze in particular. The effect is now working but still needs some tweaking. I wanted to show you guys how it looks but unfortunately it's impossible to see on a screenshot and I'm too lazy to post a video.

Speaking of video's, I created a little intro for our game yesterday. It's precisely 5 seconds long and took me about 4 hours to make (including watching tutorials).

Marciano has been working on the special abilities the races will have, they should be almost finished but unfortunately the code is not available to me yet. that means that I can't show you how they look or work.

Bas has continued his creative tour and has created several more sprites. Sand and palm trees for a beach-like look, snow and ice for the opposite and a volcano for a very special type of level. Furthermore, he made sprites for crates and TNT boxes, boxes that will eventually be able to explode but they will have to be implemented first.
Bas has also made (and I'm quoting him) "another crappy piece of music"
Donwload it here

Ricardo, is as always, busy inmproving the AI. He has fixed several bugs, including ones causing fatal errors (like the infamous nullReferenceException), making Aart a happy person because the crashes anoyed the crap out of him. 

I myself have been busy working on a HUD (heads-up display). When you play the game you can now see how many lives you have and what powerups you have collected. 

This HUD also contains a timer displaying the time left before the game ends. Traditionally in the final stage of the game the level will start to fill up from the outer side, becoming smaller very quickly. Stand in its way and you die.

That's it for this time.

Next time you will probably be seeing  an almost finished game, and maybe even a trailer.

Greetz

Aron

Christmas, magic and the end of the world

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!

I'ts the 21st of december, and I'm afraid it's been another two weeks; it's time for another blog post.
Yes, time goes by fast, but so does the progress of our development!


Last wednesday was a day in which we had to give a very short (and by very short, I mean 5 minutes) introduction to our game and show our progress. I believe we've advanced fairly well over the last few weeks, with considerable progress. Watching the presentation of some other teams, I might add that we're quite ahead of some of them, and we should be proud of that! Come on, other teams, hurry up and finish a demo already ;)!


Thanks to Aron and Jaimy, we have a working menu. That's right, you can now actually click on buttons to do things, like selecting a character and thus choosing to be a pirate (everyone wants to be a pirate), or, better yet, assigning custom keybinds! Making the wish of 4 people on 1 keyboard come true!

I probably want to go up when I press that arrow button...

Aron has also made this fancy slider, which we'll certainly use in the future. Soon you will be able to control the volume of the music (more on that later), sound effects (bombs make noise when they explode, mind you) and voices (every race will have custom remarks regarding the actions performed in the game, expect them to laugh in an extremely evil manner as they exterminate their foes).

Look at the pretty colours!

As we've not died yet (I wonder where that apocalypse is hanging out...), we can continue blowing things up in our game, with the addition of the computer trying to blow us up!

That's right, the AI is functioning and deadly, albeit not fully completed. Ricardo has been working hard to make this happen, and all is faring well. Not only will the computer blow up destructible tiles and grab powerups (all the while avoiding getting caught in explosions), it has some nasty tactics, making dodging a deadly fate a hard task at times. And the AI will become even smarter in the near future, oh dear!


Aart has been busy adjusting his engine to allow for sprites to be displayed from top to bottom, as to create an isometric effect. It's pretty much my fault that he has to do it at this moment, as he now has to revise quite a big part of it... Sorry! There seems to be a bit of a problem when it comes to showing particles and making sure they are correctly layered, as these are drawn using a different technique, called alpha blending. Good luck with this, Aart, we know you can think of a solution!


Mars has completed the special bomb for the pirate, alien and zombie. He has been thinking of new ideas to put in the game and has recently started playing with sprites. He's had some problems testing out our game before, somehow, because his GPU is a little outdated. This christmas, he'll finally get his hands on a new computer, which should run the game without any problem. Yay for technology!


Jaimy and I have been making some new sprites. The main four races have been completed, check 'em out!

Exterminating, sneaking, braaaaains and keelhauling everywhere!

There's also some scenery lying around which will be using in the future, as we are planning to add more types of landscapes into the game!

Fancy brawling at the beach? Gliding on ice, while staying warm using the heat of some fresh bombs? Making sure that volcano doesn't erupt, so its lava can't accidentally burn someone? 

It's going to be available soon. Stay tuned!

The major part of random level generating has been completed, keeping the old layout, while also making a new type of random map available, using a custom and very secret algorithm ;).

It is time for me to go. 

I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and until next year!

-Bas

PS: I've made some crappy music for the game which you to listen to while we're gone (even though we might post something during the holidays as well). If your ears start bleeding, you'd better stop listening.

https://soundcloud.com/bird-eater/sets/bomberman

PPS: 42 is the best number.

PPPS: The world isn't ending.

Another two weeks of work

Heya guys, Mars here presenting you with the latest update!

We've invested quite some time into the project over the past two weeks. Luckily, we're already ready to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor, as we already have a working version of the game. And even though it's far from finished, it's still a lot of fun to play.
Pretty much everything of the regular Bomberman is programmed, the AI and the various menus being the exceptions. 

Aron has managed to finish the InputHelper class, making it easier for us to assign buttons for each action per player. There isn't a menu for this yet, he and Jaimy are working on that. Another nice feature is the fact that we are able to use the controllers from the Xbox 360 and differentiate between them. This makes gaming with four players simultaneously a lot simpler than having four people hassling on a single keyboard. 

Ricardo should be able to start working on the AI now, as the player and bomb classes are finished. You'll find out in the next big update (perhaps even sooner!) how much progress he has made.

In terms of Game-design, we've added four different races to play as, each with their unique perks and special bombs. Ever wanted to be a Pirate battling Aliens? Or a Ninja eager to blow up some Zombies? Well, you can now, as those are the races you're able to play as.

The races aren't implemented yet, but we can give you a list of their special weapons. These weapons will appear as power-ups on the field and they differ per race. You'll only be able to have to one of these power-ups at a time, so if you collect one while you haven't fired your current on yet, it will go to waste.

Aliens will be having a neutron-bomb who's explosion is powerful enough to pass through walls. It's reach is limited, but it's a star shaped explosion, meaning it will go off everywhere in a three block radius. Please note that while the bomb is able to pass through the indestructible walls, it will not destroy them.

The Pirates' special weapon is the cannonball. It can't be placed like regular bombs. Instead, it will be launched in the direction the player faces. It will explode on impact, unless it collides with a player with the kick bomb power-up. 

Gas-bombs will be the ninja's special weapon. They won’t cause an explosion like the other bombs, but they will spread a lethal gas across the passable tiles. Bas will be working on this bomb. Seeing as he already made the path finding, he'll be able to use that to determine which tiles will be affected.

Last but not least there's the zombie-exclusive bomb, my personal favorite, the Zombomb! Once placed, the Zombomb will wander back and forward across a straight path. It will chase after anyone it sees, meaning everyone with either the same X or Y coordinate, without a wall between that player and the bomb. It explodes when it comes in contact in contact with another player, or when it's been walking around for too long. It isn't fast, and it's blast range is really small as well, to prevent it from being overpowered.

Also, every race will have their unique passive abilities as well, but to be honest, we aren't completely sure what those should be...

Moving on from the races, Jaimy and Bas have been working on the game's graphics, giving us the sprites for both the pirate and the alien race. The background sprites and those for the walls, both the destructible as the indestructible are also finished. As you're able to see in the screenshot below, there's currently no grass being drawn under the exploding wall.  

We've ran into other bugs as well while play-testing. one of them was that kicked bombs stopped my colliding with a player, would move again as soon as the player stepped out of the way. Luckily for us, the problem was easy to fix, and gave us a few good laughs as well. The lighting isn't done as well, you can see that the lights surrounding the player will pass through the edges of the field.

One other bug we've encountered was an ammo hiccup. If somebody picked up an extra bomb power-up, while they already have one or more bombs out in the field, the maximum number of bombs that player could place was increased again after their bombs exploded.

This is all for now, we hope to see you again in two weeks, but remember, if we have anything else worthy of posting here, we'll make sure to do that too!

Thanks for reading, and have a nice weekend!

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!