Windows Bobblenauts (local multiplayer deathmatch game great for quarantine)

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Stuck inside with family because of corona? Well here's a demo of my local multiplayer (up to 4 players) little deathmatch game. It's kind of like a mash-up between Duck Game and Divekick. Try to headshot your opponent while avoiding their attempts to headshot you. The more shots you miss, the bigger your head gets. If your head gets -too- big, it will explode! Play with a friend or against the AI.

So far, the core gameplay loop is done. I'm still working on getting profile management going, alongside full controller support (currently you can't use a controller to navigate the menus, only play the game) and a lot of the options screen (including key/controller bindings). Plenty more heads coming, alongside different game modes. Have a go and let me know what you think.


Download
Itch.io
GameJolt

Controls
  • Keyboard
    • Shoot - Left Shift
    • Boost - Spacebar
  • Gamepad
    • Shoot - A
    • Boost - B

UPDATES
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25/02/2020
- I rebooted the project as I reminisced about simpler coding times. The artist had long since moved on to other projects, so I gutted the project of it's existing art and made my own. It's a little over halfway done I'd say. Here's the new format (as shown at the top of this post):
And here's the project as it stood before I let it lie for a while:



13/05/2018
- I started working with an artist and rebuilt the game engine around them. So there's the 'playable' version which is out of date now and uses the old scummy graphics and then the 'non-playable' version, which I haven't uploaded anywhere yet (due to the fact that I'm still building the thing) and contains all the new art.

So far most of the behind the scenes coding is completed, with basically the profiles page and the victory page left to do (and then just POLISH POLISH POLISH). I'm hoping to have a fully functional alpha/beta build with the new artwork done within the next two weeks.

For comparisons sake, here is some old art vs new art:

Old


New


Old


New
 
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FROGANUS

Guest
haha let me call you out- this was for ludum dare 34? 'growth' and '2 button controls' right??
reminds me of my entry- i made pufferman 34, (where you play as a bootleg bomberman with an inflatable balloon head).

i tried HEADSHOT as a solo player. nice presentation! its funny and runs pretty smoothly.
the control is kinda tough though, i guess the low firing rate combined with lack of any maneuvering or dodging is kinda frustrating.
maybe you could implement some subtle things to randomize the flow a little bit. it seems easy to run out of strategy so to speak. also it seems there's no need for any other strategy than shooting high, where target is at the loft of his jump otherwise i couldn't hit, but again, i didn't get deep into 2 player mode playing alone.. making an AI character for 1 player mode would probably be really easy for this type of game, i'd recommend implementing something..
 
Ah, you're wrong about ludum dare =P Started this yesterday, after burning out a little bit on my main project. Kinda funny how perfectly it fits into the themes though, hahaha (I haven't joined a game jam so far).

I probably should've outlined the 'idea' of the controls a little better. You only get one shot and one 'float' per jump, but I could definitely see how that might be a little frustrating. I'll see how it plays with the ability to fire multiple times per jump. I know what you mean about the strategy as a single player, but with two players, it's a -lot- more fun (the 'float' is basically useless if you're playing solo, removing one of only two buttons, hahaha). Basically, at its core, it's a party game. The end goal is to have a friend or two over, choose what game mode you want and have a 20 minute tournament or whatever.

An AI is something I really should probably do and as you said, it won't be very hard at all. Definitely on the to-do list. Thanks for taking the time to check it out =)
 
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FROGANUS

Guest
dang i was sure it was that jam, funny how it would have fit..

also, duh, i somehow missed the 'float' command which it pretty crucial for control and strategy.
otherwise, yeah it seems smooth and fast- i'd like to try 2player or with AI.
 
New update out. Polished up a lot of stuff and got a bunch of background systems working. Not a whole lot more to do before it's finished (just the addition of custom profiles, changing the settings and any additional maps/bodies/etc I want in there).
 
A pretty big update. A lot more of the menus and stuff are working better now, as well as preliminary two player gamepad support. Also, updated art! You can create a profile, choosing a name, a logo and a 'head'. AI has also been implemented so you don't have to play against yourself if you have no-one around. It's still rough around the edges, but it's a lot closer to the release stage now.
 
Yet another update, this one comes with some...uhhh reversal of progress, if you could call it that. Basically rebuilt the engine after I started working with an artist, so it now looks a lot better but is less feature complete than it was before, though you can still play the old version. Maybe one to two weeks on a playable demo of the new version.
 
T

teamrocketboyz

Guest
game is looking great, can i ask how did you get to use what im presuming is vector art? i cant seem to get any art to look as crisp as you have in that screenshot.
 
Yeah, so the original art IS vector, but I get it in .png. So the only real trick is getting large, high quality base art to work from. The heads I get in at 226x226 and I'm thinking of asking him to bump it up to 500x500 or so, and the background is unscaled at 1920x1080. I'm lucky though, in the sense that the actual game arena is fairly simple, so I can get away with images being large and there's not any slowdown due to page swapping or whatever (or not enough for me to care about optimizing it at least).
 
I've been taking a break from Floramancer to work on this a bit more as a "fun" project compared to the behemoth that Floramancer has become. It's also been a fun way to learn how to be a better artist as I've had to redo all the artwork (the artist who was doing Bobblenauts with me is loooong gone). Here's a gif of the rejiggered gameplay and art:


Still a fair amount to do, but it's back up to the point where it was when I abandoned the project and being able to just make graphics when I need them rather than wait for someone else has been a god send.
 
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