Super Bomberman Versus - My Dream Fangame

[Alefy San]

Yo, when I was a child, I guess my favorite video game franchise was probably Bomberman. Though I have never played that many Bomberman games(just the NES and SNES ones), this franchise was fire for me! This was the only franchise I would make fanfics about, record the songs with the audio recorder in my dad's old Java phone just to listen to them at any time, and with the exception of Guitar Hero, I guess Bomberman was truly the franchise I have always grinded to play as good as possible... I didn't even had internet at that time. I would even make theories, discover new things in the games, etc. It was also one of if not the first game I've ever played(though it was a bootleg edit).

So... ever since I was a kid, there was a fangame that I have always always dreamed about. When I was a kid, I began programming in Scratch(around 2016), and I thought that it was my chance to make my dream come true, but I was wrong. Scratch was very limiting, and with the time, I began learning new engines, new programming languages, become better at programming, but with the time, my projects were become way too ambitious each day. Recently, I was not just making games for fun anymore like in the Scratch era, I was just grinding and wasting my time with something out of my reach. I even stopped making fan games. Either because I thought of them as "a waste of time that could get a copyright strike at any time", or they would become so ambitious that I would never be able to make them in my spare time.

So recently, I was playing Super Bomberman 3, my favorite in the franchise and I have remembered why I even started making games in the first place. Now, I want to finally make my dream fangame come true. Ever since the beginning, I like to call it Super Bomberman Versus. I don't wanna reveal any details yet, specially as I can just stop working in this game at any time, but... I have already started working on it since yesterday. If I ever have any update, I will be sure to showcase it here. Also, there is a chance I might update some of the Super Bomberman franchise sheets on TSR.

And also, I'm using this as a opportunity(what a hard word for a non native English speaker) for me to learn Direct3D 11 programming and improve my skills with C(I began using this language recently, but I'm loving it so far. It was also the language used for the PS1 Bomberman games AFAIK). And even if this game never happens, at least I can learn something.

I am looking foward to this. Hopefully I can make this fangame happen someday. Thanks everyone for reading. Hopefully you guys don't find this post cringe. 

[Alefy San]

Right now I'm working on a simple character selection screen. At the moment I have nothing to show as I have just a totally empty window. But I guess I can share some of my plans.
I am working on palette system right now, this is why it is taking a rather long time for me to render anything to the screen. I am also embedding the assets directly into the executable as if it was just a simple SNES ROM. So rather than loading the assets from PNGs for instance, I am looking directly at the original sprites, copying their palette color values, and copying their palette indexes into the executable in a hex format.

Regarding the character selection screen, I have a very old idea on how I want it to look like. I really love the SB4 character selection screen, and I am doing something that primarily resembles it.

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And the SB5 selection screen is also being taken as inspiration.

And a final thing I am using as inspiration for the character selection screen is the character customization screen that is also from SB5:

This one is a little harder to explain, but as my character selection screen gets more complete you guys will see why.

See ya! I am hoping that later this day I can have a simple sprite rendering to the screen already.

[Alefy San]

Yo, hello again! I am currently still working on the menu. I did not update this thread for a little while because I was working on some more basic features like rendering and window management. Today I finally got to display something onto the screen. Now I guess I can start working on the menu's graphics. I just wanted to make something very clear, I will be ripping all of the sprites I use, so I will not be using the ones on TSR. So please don't think I am not giving credits to people just because I have used a sprite that was already uploaded on TSR. If I ever use any sprite from the site though, I will make sure to give proper credits to the ripper.

See you soon!

[Alefy San]

Welcome back to another update! Alefy San here! ^-^

I have been continuously working on the battle menu since my last post. The rendering code is getting almost done, at least for what I need so far.

This is how my game is currently looking like:

Yeah, yeah, I know. It is nowhere near pretty so far. I still got a lot of work to do on this.
First I need to animate the background. Then I need to tile these textures. And then I need to work more on the character and stage selection things. And also, I haven't started working on the input yet.

As you can see, I am using sprites from the Super Bomberman games. I am using a custom palette format I have created. This is going to help a lot for recoloring the playable characters with different palettes. I have created a custom Python script for converting PNGs into this custom format.

I am also very glad that I am managing to learn a lot by working on this game, especially about Direct3d and the Windows API!

Unfortunately though, for some reason Windows, Edge, File Explorer and EVERYTHING YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE detects my game as a virus. Compiling with /O2 kinda helps a little, but it's still a bad thing to occur. I hope that as my .exe gets bigger in file size and my game starts to become more complete this can soon fade away.

But anyway, let's talk about some specs. I have always been a performance maniac. I like to create games to be as optimized as possible!
There is not that much in the game so far, but while running the game it uses 3.8% of my CPU(and it is a old and slow one) and just 6.1MB of RAM. The file size of the executable so far is about 100KB with optimizations. I am embedding all the assets into the .exe, so it will somehow work like an old game's ROM. I am trying to make this game run perfectly fine on even the most potato PCs, but you will need to have at least Direct3d 11(and a Windows 7 or higher, apparently). And if you have a 32 bit computer, please don't worry. I will make sure to distribute downloads in both 32 and 64 bits!  

There is still so much work for me to do! I hope this game turns out to be amazing! See you all in the next update! ^-^

[Alefy San]

Quick update to show how things are shaping(pun not intended) currently:

[Alefy San]

Oh, hey! I have made significantly progress since my last post! But now I think I will have a little break from this project, for now. I will begin working on a hobby project of mine. Don't worry though, this doesn't mean this project is cancelled. I promise I will get back to it in a while.

[Alefy San]

Very minor update:
I might continue working on this game again very soon. I still have its source code and I have learned a lot since last time.
I wanted to make some other fan games too, mainly a Mario one... but I fear that Nintendo is gonna send a nuke to my house for making fan games. (you know what I mean )