Rival Bombs: Another GB Bomberman Clone

Yeah, that's right. You've probably already seen BomberDuder from @fobwashed, but there's another Bomberman clone in this town. Admittedly, this idea spawned from the head of @fobwashed with the primary goal of producing a functional Bomberman clone to play while waiting in PAX lines.

While I did start working on this prior to @fobwashed starting his, I actually haven't made quite as much progress on the mechanics at this point. I've only got very basic movement and bomb mechanics at the moment, but now that I have a bit more free time I should be progressing at a decent clip and will hopefully catch up to him soon with kicking and throwing and what not.

I have a long list of features I'd like to implement (using the best Bomberman - Saturn Bomberman - as the blueprint), but for the time being, it's basically just a race to make something vaguely functional and fun within the next 1.5 weeks. Whether or not I continue to work on it after that is up in the air.

I'm working in Haxe/OpenFL with the HaxeFlixel framework. I plan on compiling Windows, Mac, and Flash builds - I'll probably out of convenience only be doing Flash and/or Windows builds of the initial demos that I post here. I'll also eventually open up my GitHub repository for anyone that wants to dive into my code for whatever reason.

I'll keep this blog post updated as I progress and make some demo builds available along the way.

Latest Build - 04/10/2014

Looks good. I look forward to checking out a demo sometime. Keep us updated.

Ha, box city, great idea for a level.

That's awesome. I look forward to seeing more of this collaboration.

Really cool!

Also, is that...Brad?

Aw shit yeah! This is also sort of a weird coincidence I'm not at liberty to disclose just yet!

The rivalry and beefing has spread from the Bombcast to our sacred forums. No one is safe!!

Looks neat.

Ha! That brad looks soo good.

Daaaaayumn, Chaser. That's some mighty fine Giant Bombermanning there.

i guess the only way to know which of these bomberman clones is the best is going to depend on who has the biggest booth at PAX East.

Goddamnit, Box City for the arena is pretty fucking clever.

@chaser324: You're doing great work, as per the usual.

You can find an in progress build located here.

Not too much to see. It's just Brad moving around and dropping bombs, but it's a starting point.

The one challenge that's already starting to become apparent is the hit boxes. My initial collision detection stuck pretty strictly to the grid layout, but that made even basic character movement feel awkward and frustrating. I've already started making adjustments such as applying a subtle nudge to push the player into alignment with the grid - notice that you don't have to be lined up pixel perfect to walk between two walls. Configuring all of the hit detection in a way that makes the game both fair and fun is going to take some tweaking.

As always, when you start trying to imitate some of these classic games of the 16-bit era, you very quickly realize how much refinement was put into their seemingly simple mechanics.

On deck: basic pickups - speed/bombs/power, death

Finally.. I can become Vinny.

Rival Bombs X BomberDuder

New build with some minor updates.

Added in a bomb shake animation and screen flash/shake (might have to remove the screen effects if they get annoying with several players). Also added basic player death, but I need to do further testing/tweaking to make sure it feels fair that you were hit by explosion.

Of course, any and all feedback or suggestions are appreciated.

New build with Speed+, Bomb+, and Range+ items.

As always, feedback is welcome and encouraged.

On Deck:

• Bomb Kicking
• Bomb Throwing
• Basic UI
• Win Condition

@dudeglove: Well, with two Bomberman clones in the works, we're looking to change that.

@dudeglove: I was trying to evoke Nic Cage in Honeymoon in Vegas, but it might be too much of a pull or just not play in pixel art form. I might change it.

Gerstmann looks like he could eat someone hole with that huge mouth of his. Great job though. The sprites look amazing and Box City is a pretty clever reference.

The first thing I thought when I saw Rorie's sprite is that it looks like Hitler in a dog costume. I don't know if this tells more about me or about the sprite.

Awesome work, by the way.

New build.

• Some music/sound, all subject to change. Current music is from http://www.nosoapradio.us/, a great source for some cc-by licensed music to freely use in games.
• Bomb Kicking (will eventually make this a powerup but right now player just starts with this capability)
• Increased bomb fuse time a little bit.

Also, the HaxeFlixel preloader is kinda busted, so I removed it. Let me know if you have any issues with it not loading.

New Build (4/4).

• Bomb Throwing (while still standing on placed bomb, press and hold bomb button again to lift, release to throw) - It still needs some work, but the basic mechanic is in there, including properly wrapping around the edges of the map. Collision with the player is not handled at all right now...I think you just get stuck in the same place as the bomb when it lands on you.

New Build (4/5).

• Added "mad bomber" - after dying you rotate around playfield and can shoot bombs.
• Added punch mechanic (needs a sound effect and/or animation to give it impact).

This looks very cool indeed!
I really like the sprite-look you are going for.

High five!

Ughh... did you not readPatrick's article on how bad clones are for the gaming industry?!

Also, Brad's walking animation makes me smile.

@andorski: Damn...he's going to be pissed when he finds out that I'm renaming this game to 2048 Flappy Bombs.

Rounding out the cast. I'm not entirely happy with all of them, but it'll have to do for now since I'm short on pre-PAX development time.

Poor Rorie, doomed to a life of being a perceived furry.

@chaser324 That is awesome work. The music loop makes the game more fun.

Not gonna lie: Brad's cheek area/chin need something done. They are rather large. Beyond that, sounds like the best idea ever!

PAX 2014, the year of the Bomberman.

New Build (4/7).

This build adds the new QL inspired title screen and Xbox 360 controller support.

I didn't quite manage to complete the player select screen this weekend, so this is a bit of a hacked together build.

If you want to try out the Xbox 360 controller support:

This build will add a keyboard controlled player and a player for every active controller that it detects while on the title screen. So, if you want to use a controller, make sure you move the sticks around and tap a few buttons while on the title screen. In theory, you should be able to do up to eight players in this build if you happened to have seven Xbox 360 controllers around.

No guarantees that the game won't explode if you try using non-Xbox 360 controllers. I imagine it would probably work, but the button mappings would just be horrible.

Please note that controller support in Flash can be pretty darn flaky. Occasionally it for some reason doesn't count your controller as active no matter how much button tapping and stick flicking you do. In that case, the only answer right now is just to refresh and try again. Once I add a separate screen for player select, I should be able to make this a bit more robust. If I can't get it working well enough, I'll just fall back to only releasing native Windows/Mac builds (if you'd like one of those right now, just ask me for it).

New Build (4/9).

Basically complete character select screen (still using all Brad art at the moment). Some improved controller support and keyboard controls (allow Z or Y for bomb drop to help with QWERTZ keyboard layouts). Primarily just need to add in character art and more audio to get it ready for PAX.

New Build (4/10).

Since airports aren't exactly the best place for programming, I don't think I'm going to get anything else done. So, I'm proclaiming this the "PAX build".