How it's built, patched and set up for its played test. The numbers are under Test runs.
Mr.Boom 5.5 is a Bomberman clone built on SDL2 (through sdl2-compat) that runs the game’s original 320x200 picture stretched to 1920x1080. Debian’s build reached the welcome screen at a median of 52 to 55 frames a second in two sessions, with the DualShock opened and sending events, but both ended in a segfault within about 15 seconds. The cause was the game’s translated 8086 code assuming little-endian registers, and our package ps3.872 fixes it. That fix passes the recorded demos under qemu and has not yet been played on the PS3, so nothing about a match is measured.
Mr.Boom 5.5, a Bomberman clone for up to eight players (SDL2, pads first). Debian’s ppc64 binary crashed within 15 s of every start on the PS3: both played sessions of 2026-10-26 ended in a segfault in the game’s own code on the welcome screen (Scrap). The cause is a big-endian bug in the SDL2 build, now fixed in our package; the fix passes every recorded demo under qemu, and the PS3 check is still to come.
Packages
mrboom(5.5+ds-1+ps3.N, packages/mrboom, Debian’s source with one patch), replacing Debian’s. In no suite. It has its CI workflow and goes through testing first.- 0001 defines
MSB_FIRSTfrom the compiler’s byte order when the libretro header isn’t used, so the emulated 8086 registers get their big-endian layout in the SDL2 front end too (the investigation). - Fullscreen is already the default: rendered at 1920x1080 through sdl2-compat, the 320x200 picture stretched to 16:9.
How it performs
The two sessions on Debian’s 5.5+ds-1 (Mesa ps3.860, kernel .786) reached the welcome screen at 52-55 fps
median before the crash, 13-14 s of play, a 15 s load, 58 MB RSS. Nothing about play is measured yet. The
played test (rating/test.toml) starts /usr/games/mrboom (no menu launcher of ours); the
recipe (benchmark/recipe.sh) is for sessions only, no benchmark.
Known problems
- Debian’s build crashes within half a minute; our fixed package (ps3.872) waits for its PS3 check.
- Esc on the welcome screen quits the game outright (upstream behaviour, unchanged).
What the next session checks (docs/TESTS.md, batch mrboom-be): the welcome screen’s text and the attract
demo for a minute, the DualShock 3 joining as player 1 (any button), Space adding bots, a full match on 2-3
levels and back to the menu, no segfault in dmesg, the picture against the PC (palette, sprites, no garbage),
the music and effects by ear; then mrboom -e -z from a terminal, which should end SUCCESS check demos.
Investigations
Build
| Packages | mrboom |
|---|---|
| Suite | not in the game suite yet |
| Game data | comes with the packages |
Our source packages
- mrboom source
Played test
What a played session sets up (rating/test.toml); the medal comes from these sessions only.
| Process | mrboom |
|---|---|
| Set aside | ~/.mrboom, ~/.config/mrboom, ~/.local/share/mrboom (the game starts on fresh defaults) |
| Command | /usr/games/mrboom |