Bomberman Evolved

By: Tim

On: January 23rd, 2007

Bomberman Evolved is a project by six students at the University of Aalborg in Copenhagen as part of the third semester of their medialogy course, and was brought to my attention by one of the students, Bo Hagen. Been in development from October using C++, with SDL and OpenGL. The tracking is based on a webcam imaging a mirrored sphere.

They are currently debating whether to continue development through their next semester, which is focused around audio, and are concentrating on ways to implement voice triggering or other audio technology.

Feel free to comment with any development ideas! – Capuchin

  • Albert Lai

    Dang, this is very cool.

  • Ryan A

    Way cool…but how do they drop the bombs?

  • Jimmy

    It looks like bombs automatically drop at a regular interval. I imagine the ‘next semester’ extensions would include some way to drop a bomb by shouting.

  • Xander

    Haha, that’s very cool. I think they have some kind of remote in their right hand that drops a bomb, or maybe the thing on the roof reads brain patterns. I’m not quite sure how you would implement voice triggering and audio things into it, bomberman has always been a series where innovation is fairly unwelcome. Some changes work out okay but the importance of each game is that it nails the basic formula. Personally I just like the idea of clicking my fingers and having a bomb explode rather than push a button, but then I guess that’s just the anime hero in me.

    Maybe you could implement a microphone into the bomb remote so that you could shout ‘Ice!’ or ‘Blast!’ into it to change the power of your bomb to extend the radius or add a destructible barrier or something. I don’t know, I can’t think of anything that isn’t really gimmicky. Maybe increase the blast size according to how loud you shout ‘BLAST!’ or some other familiar incendiary onomatopiea. Very interesting though, impressive stuff.

  • Bo Hagen

    Bombs are dropped using a wireless mouse. :)

    We did some research into different kinds of gestures, but due to limited time, resources and the simple fact that we used a spherical mirror to track player positions severely hindered our progress.

  • Jimmy

    Oh, a wireless mouse. That makes more sense.

    Shouting ‘BLAST’ would probably feel a bit silly. Better to let people use their voices for talking to each other instead … especially if they add some sort of team-play mode.

  • August

    Hi :) i am actually one of the guys from this project.

    About adding sound, next semester is about this theme. We have had some short discussions about using wireless bluetooth headsets with voice triggering and where you only get sound that is important to you.

    Ryan A –> By using a wireless mouse (we intended to use gestures, but it was to hard to track with current methods)

  • Myster_EE

    Cool guys! This is awesome!
    Only comment I can say is……Keep it up! :)

  • negative zero

    very nice

  • Xander

    “Shouting ‘BLAST’ would probably feel a bit silly”

    I think if an insane bomb carrying super deformed astronaut trapped me in a maze and proceeded to hound me until he finally blew my giblets skywards, I think I’d shout anything if you told me to.

    But in the context of the game, point taken. *grin*

  • Flux

    Could you lay tables out on the floor to mimic the layout of the blocks on-screen … only the ones you can’t blow up obviously :)

  • August

    Hi Flux.
    We will explain everything on http://www.bombermanevolved.com

    Unfortionatly it is not possible to mimic the layout on the floor, because the size of the map depends on the size of the person playing.

  • Xenon

    Great!
    And it’s also one of my favourite games :)

    Keep it up!

    P.S.: What is the song that you have used as “soundtrack”? It fits perfectly with the video :)

  • moi

    This is very cool!!!!

  • nick gold

    this is a great project, reminds me of some of the funky stuff i did back in school. :) not sure if any of the project team is looking to get into game development professionally, but this is definitely the kind of thing to reference when you put in your job apps!

  • DaVinceCode

    wow this is kewl… maybe should make this into a product. then we can enjoy this on my PS3 :)

  • Christian

    Fantastic! How long did you spend in carrying out this project?
    There is much to be done. A set of distinct gestures are expected to be developed and standardized. Maybe some sensors can be fixed on the vertical walls. In this way, more gestures can be recognized.

  • JIMBO

    Will three mirrors resolve the problem detecting gestures by player?