BomberClone

BomberClone 0.11.9, an Atomic Bomberman clone (SDL 1.2 on sdl12-compat, up to 8 local or network players), is Debian’s 0.11.9-9 with two patches of ours. Its played session (2026-10-26, about 5 minutes against bots) had a 50 fps median, no crash, the picture right (4:3 with bars at the sides) and the sound effects and music heard; the gamepad works in matches but not in the menus.

Packages and patches

bomberclone, bomberclone-data (0.11.9-9+ps3.N, packages/bomberclone), replacing Debian’s; in no suite.

• 0001: main() returned after gfx_shutdown() without snd_shutdown() or SDL_Quit(), so SDL_mixer’s audio thread was still running while exit() ran the libraries’ destructors. With SDL 1.2 provided by sdl12-compat (over SDL2 and SDL3, as in Debian now) the thread then called into torn-down state, and the game segfaulted on every quit, from the menu or on SIGTERM. Now it closes the audio and SDL first.
• 0002: full screen by default (it started in a 640x480 window on the desktop); the saved config and the Options menu still change it.
• 0003: the pads work the menus (they read the keyboard only): every menu and wait-for-a-key screen reads events through s_fetchevent, which now hands them a pad’s hat or first stick as the arrow keys, the first button as Return and the second as Escape (Cross and Circle on a DualShock 3), and a DualShock 3’s D-pad buttons and Start too. In a match a DualShock 3’s Start opens the game menu (which the pad then works) and its D-pad moves as the stick does (any pad’s hat too). Tried on the PC with a virtual DS3 (evemu, the hid-sony layout): the main menu, the manual’s pages and back. On the PS3 (2026-10-29, the dev build, run.sh smoke bomberclone pad, the virtual DS3 beside the console’s own): the pad’s events moved through the menus with no key (the Configuration menu open at 20 s, the highlight on its “Ok” at 40 s; ps3-bench-20261029T000433Z-smoke-bomberclone-pad).

How it performs

Played (rules 2.0, Mesa ps3.860, kernel .786, bomberclone ps3.758): 50 fps median, 1% low 28, 2.1 s of stutter a minute with a 2.4 s longest frame, a 16.5 s load, 62 MB RSS. The sound: 219 xruns, one audible dropout in the play (9 more around the screenshots, the recorder’s own). The player quit from the menu, cleanly. The played test (rating/test.toml) sets its settings file ~/.bomberclone.cfg aside per session; the recipe (benchmark/recipe.sh) is for sessions only, no benchmark.

Known problems

• The gamepad worked in matches but not in the menus: BomberClone’s menus read the keyboard only (as on the PC). 0003 makes the pads work them (checked on the PS3 with a virtual DS3; a real pad in a played session is still to come).
• The HUD text is small at 1080p (12 px: Player1, Bombs, Range, Speed at the top).