BOMBA is a small multiplayer game written in C using UDP sockets (Winsock 2) and multithreading. Players join a match by manually entering the IP addresses of the participants and pass a virtual bomb before it explodes.

The project is mainly educational and focuses on low-level networking, custom protocols, and concurrency.

1. Each player starts the program and enters:

   • Their public IP address
   • A nickname
   • The IP addresses of all players (up to 4)

2. Players announce their presence using a custom UDP protocol.

3. Once all players confirm their presence, the game starts automatically.

4. A master player is elected:

   • The player with the highest IP address (numeric comparison) becomes the master.
   • The master generates a random bomb timer and sends the first bomb.

5. When a player receives the bomb:

   • They must press a key to pass it to another random player.
   • If the timer expires before passing the bomb, the bomb explodes and that player loses.

6. When the bomb explodes on a player:

   • All other players win.
   • The program terminates.

• Language: C (C11)
• Platform: Windows
• Networking: UDP sockets (Winsock 2)
• Concurrency: Windows threads
• Communication model: Peer-to-peer
• Max players: 4
• Default port: 6000

Each instance of the program:

• Opens a UDP socket to send packets
• Runs a dedicated receiving thread to handle incoming messages

Communication is based on single-byte message headers:

Nicknames are embedded directly in the packet payload following the header byte.

The game does not use a server.

Instead:

• Each player compares all known IP addresses
• The player with the highest numeric IP value becomes the game master
• The master initializes the game by generating the bomb timer

This approach keeps the architecture fully decentralized.

This implementation has several known limitations by design:

• ❌ No duplicate IP detection If two players share the same IP address, they are treated as the same participant. This is unlikely in WAN scenarios but still possible.

• ❌ No fault tolerance If a player closes the program while holding the bomb, or if the bomb is sent to a disconnected player, the game gets stuck and cannot continue.

• ❌ Manual IP entry All IP addresses must be entered manually, which is error-prone and not scalable.

• ❌ UDP reliability No packet loss detection, retries, or ordering guarantees are implemented.

These limitations are accepted to keep the project simple and focused on learning.

.
├── bin/        # Executable output
├── build/      # Object files
├── include/    # Header files
│   ├── bomba.h
│   └── mySocket.h
├── src/        # Source files
│   ├── bomba.c
│   ├── main.c
│   └── mySocket.c
└── Makefile

make

Produces:

bin/bomba.exe

Requires MinGW:

sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64

Then:

make

This still produces a Windows executable:

bin/bomba.exe

⚠️ The executable cannot run on Linux.

make clean

Removes:

• build/
• bin/

This project was created to practice:

• UDP socket programming
• Custom network protocols
• Multithreading
• Peer-to-peer coordination
• Makefile-based builds
• Cross-compilation concepts

It is not intended for production use.