BomberDuder: Bomberman clone

@saik0u said:

Hey mr. Wash !

I have been working on some characters and ideas of my own lately, and just saw this post. You think you can use something like this ?

I only have what you see in the image as of now, but i guess i could try to make additions if you want any art.

Those are pretty damn fantastic! Would love to see where you go with em but they don't really fit the irl head pics I'm using right now in the game characters... Though if you were able to make one for each of the current character roster, I might be able to use them in the HUD somehow. Maybe in the power up bar area or something. That's a lotta work though =P

I'm seriously open to almost anything. You've obviously got talent so how bout takin a stab at some level tiles or a general bg for the gameplay area or a title screen or just about whatever else =D

I could take a stab at some tiles. characters are quite time consuming, but i might be OK with some more generic pieces that don`t need to look right in 4 different angles, and have to look like someone we know :P
I can`t give you a time table, but i will post stuff here for you to judge if i have the time.

I totally get you. Art takes a lotta time which is why I'm goin the cut out head route in the first place =P I can devote prolly around an hour a day to coding and getting things working right but that's not nearly enough time to do stuff like create art assets, find sound bytes and stuff like that. I'm hoping the community can pull through and lighten the load a bit in exchange for being part of something super stupid and a line in the credits =P If you do tiles, Go nuts. I'll take anything. It'd be ideal to have an unbroken and a broken state for anything that like, you know, explodes. If you want to do an entire theme, you could make a bg sprite that encompasses the entire play area and tiles that go with that as well. I don't think I'll get enough assets to warrant it but if I did, I'd prolly add a level select screen =]

Dave Lang obviously delivered in spades when asked for a back of head shot =]

@fobwashed I am not a professional, I'm not even an amateur, but I wanted to help out and my Saturday morning was free. So I made some short audio clips (.mp3) of Will Smith from the infamous Exzécutable incident. I don't know if I'll have the time to do more but I wanted to get the ball rolling and encourage more learned Duders to get involved.

DOWNLOAD: 7 Will Smith Sound clips and for a limited time only, Ryan Davis soundclip saying "Nuh Uh"

@lazy_sheep1: Super awesome =] Could you email them to me at Fobwashed@hotmail.com? I tried to navigate that site and it ate my browser -_-;;

Added throwing.

My gameplay mechanics edge lasted all of a few hours. Darn.

I feel like that's about all the base mechanics I wanna throw into this. I'm gonna prob spend the time I've got left filling out heads and implementing special abilities... Though, punching is tempting.

@fobwashed: Yeah, punching seems like a pretty quick one to throw in once you already have throwing.

@bribo: When I started reading this I thought of Buckfast as a power up, glad someone else thought of it!

Another idea I had was a Windjammers themed power up. Not sure what it would do, perhaps a crazy explosion like one of the power-ups in Windjammers or perhaps it's a disc you pick up and throw? IDK man now you got me thinking of ideas.

Here's a 48x48 Windjammer disc:

I think it looks a little funky but I touched it up some after moving up to a 48x48 image. It's straight out of a Windjammers screenshot so if you're not trying to use assets from other things then obviously it's not usable. Not sure if you had ideas for like usable items or powers/power-ups that last a short time after picking up but this could potentially be one.

Hello again Mr. Wash!
I tried to come up with an idea for a background, and have made it halfway through the first pass.
The final image would be tighter, with more detail and color corrections. I would also try to add more crap on the ground and cameras, screens and cable bordering the left side of the play field.
Does this seem like something you could use?

I just wanted to throw this out there before i got too deep into something you can`t use.

Give me a shout if you can use it.
Or if you have any comments.

-Bob

@saik0u I love the idea behind it! I have a few things you may want to consider though. The big one is that the arena has to be fully contained in some way so that it makes sense players can't run out of the battle arena. Bombs that are thrown or bounce off the edge of the arena also appear on the opposite side so it'd be nice if that somehow made sense in the level design. Finally, if you see the latest vids, it'd be nice if the HUD elements being overlaid near the top didn't clash with the bg.

Thanks for puttin in some hard work! Lookin forward to seeing what you come up with!

Yeah the arena border "problem" did cross my mind. My suggestion would be to just stack the shit out of both the left and right "pants areas" (as Brad Muir would say) with cans, bottles, games, cables, "tricasters", boxes, posters, plastic containers, bags of Swedish snacks and other small and medium sized objects that are relative simple in design.

I think that the contrast in detail between the relative barren play field, and the visually complex "pants" will inform the player that this is an area you are not meant to pass.

I would need a little more width on both sides of the play area tho. Is there room for more, or would you like to keep it as tight as possible? I don`t know your limitations, so just tell me if the size and proportions are off. If we could nail the right dimensions for the background image early on, i would just keep sending you iterations on the image, so you at least have something half finished if you run out of time.

I have kept the UI-design in mind when making this. That is why the top area is rather bland right now.

By the way, when is your deadline? I am going on a mini vacation this Thursday, and if you wanted to take this to Pax, i guess there is limited time :P

(Btw: I am also 9 hours ahead of San Francisco time)

-Bob

/edit:
Oh by the way, when you say "thrown bomb appear on the opposite side" Do you mean pacman style, exit right -> enter left-> ?

I just had a silly idea. If we assume this game is recorded by the control room, you could have a REPLAY graphic appear on the screen when a bomb leaves the arena. The newly spawned bomb entering the arena from the opposite side could be inserted via tricaster for the show. Insert a different textured bomb with badly cropped borders and use that ghetto explosion animation Vinny has in his royalty free video clip library. Might be a funny reason for the looping bomb, and would be easy from a graphical perspective. Don`t know if it will complicate the programming tho. :P

@saik0u I pretty much have control over everything so if the play field needs to be repositioned or say the screen itself needs to be larger, I could do that but I'd like to keep it at its current size so I don't need to rework the select screen. Deadline is prob Wed night because that's when I'm flying out to Boston.

The replay idea is interesting but out of the scope for how much time I've got left. Prob won't be working on it at all this weekend as I'm in Portland till Sunday night. If you check out the latest video, you can see how the bomb transfer currently works. Basically like any old bomberman game. It's up to you to try and enclose the arena any way you see fit. Do you have any idea what the breakable and non breakable solid tiles will look like? I currently updated and just threw in crates and rocks from Spelunky for more graphical placeholders. Holla if U need anything else =]

Heyo.

I am still uncertain about how much space i have to work with, regarding the outside of the play area.
Is the image i posted last too big, or does that size work?
Looking at your youtube video, it seems that the play area is 15 x 11 tiles, surrounded by a border of 1 tile. (i assume each tile is 64x64px) If this is what you mean by "current size", i would not have any room for set dressing. If this is the case, and you want to stick to the 17x13 tile dimensions, i guess the priority would be to replace the rock and crate designs, since none of my background image would be visible.

I could help with the design of the select screen, if that needs to be changed, but i guess the issues would show up in the programming part, and make things harder for you ?

-Bob

Yo.
Here are some Non destructible and destructible blocker tiles. You think this could work?

-Destructible: Amazon box.
Mailbag, box city, review copy of games.

-Non Destructible: Xbox One & PS4.
Not even the drunkest Dave Lang would dare to damage the Giant Bomb equipment. Even in a battle to the death with bombs.

@saik0u: Those tiles look pretty darn slick. Nice work.

@saik0u pretty hot =] I'll try throwing em in when I get home later tonight =] any chance you could put together a post explosion torn to shreds box? And could I get a clean floor with nothing on it to lay down as the base? =]

Dropping the BASE !

I tried to make a broken box tile that wold look slightly different from the undamaged ones to avoid traverse-ability confusion. Hope this is ok. (looks a bit janky in the GB forum, but i think it will blend better on the floor.)

Any update on how much design i can add to the outside of the arena ?

@saik0u pretty much whatever you want. It'd be nice if the design included a barrier for the arena itself =P As far as I can tell, things look solid!

@fobwashed: Allright, cool. How many pixels of width do you estimate that is on either side of the arena?

@saik0u I mentioned the screen size earlier somewhere. I've got it set up in a way that I can move the arena and HUD elements around. You can set it up whatever way as long as the arena fits in screen and makes sense with room up top for the HUD. I'm on a phone in Portland so I don't have access to any of my files currently -_-;;

@fobwashed: Sweet! Thanks for the info. I will see about fleshing out the set dressing tomorrow.
It would be cool if you could post a screenshot or video of the art being implemented. Might give me a better understanding of what changes to focus on.

@saik0u: Here's a vid of what the stuff you sent me looks like in-game.

That's the full screen so mainly it'd be nice to have some like, borders. I didn't do a bomb toss since the item didn't come up but it basically goes up to the invisible wall then teleports to the opposite side. Besides not having borders, the tiles look pretty nice.

If anyone else wants to add some tile sets, still totally open to it. I've set up a way to select which tile set to use so per game, people can choose the level =]

Nice!
Looking at the video, it seems that i have forgotten to scale the arena-texture down.
The square patterns on the floor were supposed to line up with the tiles.

I get of work in 1 hour, and will try to post an art update later tonight.

Hoy!
I did some tiny updates to the arena outside. I do not have much time before my vacation, but i think i might get to update the image with some more details before i leave.
This image is not cropped the way it should, so you can just try to use it however you see fit in the meantime. Hit me with some suggestions if there is something you feel is missing, that you would want in the game before Pax.

-Bob

@saik0u: Hey. I went ahead and resized then cropped it to fit and this is what it looks like now.

The bottom seems a little bit empty and it's a bit of a shame that the stuff on the right side gets cut out =\ Still, it looks pretty solid to me. I may push down the level say 20~30 pixels to have more space up top. It'd work well with this map image since the bottom is pretty plain looking. It'd also let Shaq get the clean attention he deserves =P

Pushing the arena down a bit sounds like a good idea. the bottom is as you say pretty plain, and i don`t have any bright ideas of what to do there :P
Don`t worry about the cropping of the sides. I misunderstood how large the arena was going to be early on. my bad. At least now i know where to add detail for the last update.

-Bob

Drake's on a plane =P

@hamst3r has graciously provided some awesome announcer work =D Thanks duder!

IT'S LIKE THE INTERNET REACHES INTO MY BRAIN, PULLS OUT MY DEEPEST FANTASIES, AND MAKES THEM REAL!!!!

Hey duder.

Here is my last update for the background.
It is not very pretty, or different from the last ones, but i am out of time :)
Crop it however you like, and have fun at Pax!

-Bob

@saik0u: Solid =] I moved the play area down just a tad to reduce the blank wall on bot and increase upper hud space. Thanks duder =]

@fobwashed: Maybe due to the horizontal length of the level you could start with a pan or a zoom to show off the detail outside the play arena? Maybe have the players rush in from outside the arena area in a skippable introduction at the start of play where the cropped art is showcased?

I considered it, but my time being severely limited, I think it'd be better spent on gameplay at this point. If I revisit this after PAX, that's something I may look into =]

@fobwashed: I hear you. Anything specific you still interested in adding before you leave that a reasonably knowledgable Photoshop hermit can assist with?

Oh wow. This is super freaking slick. I may help out by making some sounds. Feel free to send me a list of sound effects you need and I'll see what I can do.

Here's the download for the PAX version. It's incomplete but fully playable =]

Enjoy!

This is much better than that "let's make a game" thing I tried in 2012.

Hey! I pretty much just threw this together to play during queues at PAX so it's pretty much done as is at this point =P Thanks tho!

See above! Though if I ever do decide to tinker with it again in the future, I'll hit you up =D

I think I remember a few GB games being put together in the past. If I've learned anything from trying to build a game, reducing scope to a bare minimum is key... KEY! Thanks =]

@fobwashed: sure was fun uninstalling all that spyware that i declined during the setup.

@afrofools: That "Let's Make a Game" thing just had far too many issues. A Bomberman clone is far simpler and smaller in scope than anything that people were trying to do on that.

Weird. Spyware from the download site or from the install in the zip?

I'm still not sure what it was they were trying to make. From the outset it seemed like there were too few people generating assets and programming with too many people spitballing ideas and taking on a design role.

That was definitely one of the problems that it faced.

I went ahead and uploaded the game to GameJolt. You can download and play it here =]

All those download links in the original post, so many potential viruses!!

Is this the bad internet, or the exciting one?