Creating and Selling a Fighting Game

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
101

A little confused on what you mean by hitboxes here, all moves have a blue hitbox (which is the area they can be hit) and a green hitbox (the area of attack). If you mean a collision between 2 green hitboxes, yeah thats what I plan on adding eventually.

Attacks have similar amounts, but they are most certainly different. Compare a move like Jiro’s Backflip Kick with Aroon’s Push Kick, the hitstun is quite different. I’ll try to add more variety in the future though.

Wow. I’ll attempt that. Its weird though because he has no down attack motion while in the air. Does this work with Jiro?

When you say too fast: Do you mean the actual animation of the throw, the startup time, or the hit stun on the player being thrown?

Air Recover allows further attacks to be performed and recovers slight amount of health (very small) and stops pushback and float when in the air, also ends the combo. There’s certainly nothing stopping someone from juggling a thrown opponent, but yeah given the current move properties for Aroon and Jiro this really isn’t possible. I still need something to differentiate Throws and Holds though.

102

No, but I have had enough professors with blatant, illogical biases towards open source/java, or microsoft to be know that people are as set in their ways about software development as they are about religious beliefs, and this discussion is yet another example of that.

103

I’m sure to many people it is.

Just for the record, I would like to clarify one thing. I’m not necessarily anti Java as a language at all. It’s just not used much in games. My main point being, finding help, examples, and utility libs is going to be much harder than say C# w/ XNA or C++ w/ DirectX. If the question was about what to use for web development, my stance on Java would be completely different.

All these things are just tools. And it’s about picking the right tool for the job.

Carmack stands mostly alone here. DirectX is used in far more Windows games than OpenGL, DirectX is used on the 360, and the PS3 and Wii use custom libs.

But whatever. For the most part it really doesn’t matter what underlying drawing API you use, since you’ll have to wrap it if you really want to handle multiple console platforms anyway.

Which I suspect is what most people in this thread would be doing. That’s why I suggested that combo. If someone was developing for another platform, my advice would be different.

It doesn’t automatically mean their stuff is bad either. For the most part, using either OpenGL or DirectX at the coding level isn’t dramatically different. What is different is the amount of tutorials and help you can find on the web, the level of support in 3rd party tools, and so on.

That’s fine with me :smile:

104

Yeah I meant the green boxes sorry i guess I was not that clear.

I guess I am just used to light attacks having very little hit stun so it seemed strange.

I have been trying to figure out exactly what is causing the bug but it happens like 4 out of 10 tries so there must be something I am not seeing. No I have not been able to do it with Jiro

As far as throw speed I think its just a matter of how long each frame of the throwing animation is displayed for. It feels almost like a launcher rather than a throw. I guess the real question is how do you want throws to be used in your game. Most games that have air recovery also have a risk reward situation associated with it. As it stands it seems to me like the person being throw has no reason not to recover every time they get thrown.

Of course this is all theory fighter at this point. I was just interested in what type of fighter you are aiming for. As it stands now there are a lot of defensive options which tend to lend them self to a game focused on large combos and speed but at the same time you had mentioned old school sf as a guide which is a game based more on pokes and controlling space.

Anyway I should stop spamming up this game making thread with my questions and just post on your games forum or pm you.:sweat:

105

There is nothing wrong with using Direct 3D. It is still used a lot. Just because one person says something, doesn’t make it true everywhere. When carmack was the front runner of graphical tech everyone would take what he said as gospel, but he no longer holds that position, so now we try and think for ourselves sometimes. Not saying he doesn’t know his shit, but he isn’t looked at like a god anymore.
No console actually is running OpenGL. They are very similar, but not the same thing.

Nobody said that you would develop games in C#, but writing a non engine tool in C# is crazy easy. Tool development in C# is viable, even at a large scale.

where do you work? blizzard? id? epic?

outside my job I use D3D and opengl and C++, opting for MFC over C# .net stuff (I know, it’s stupid). I haven’t written render code in quite some time though.

Do you also hate on visual studios cause it’s microsoft?

–Will read other stuff and comment later

106

“Sony chief technical officer Masami Chatani reconfirmed that the PS3 will support Open GL/ES as its standard API…”

It IS OPEN GL (it’s even listed on opengl.org).

Just because it has custom extensions (which are common for every developer to implement) doesn’t mean it’s an entirely new API.

Why do you people insist on making things up?

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Oh and BTW, Carmack and Id Software are still the front runner, they just don’t release games often because they have no reason to (Don’t bother trying to argue this).

107

Why do you insist on making things up and/or guessing about things? A three year old press release, from Gamespot no less? LOL.

Yes, you can use a somewhat modified form of OGL on the PS3 in tandem with that really awesome in-bread piece of crap CgFX. The OGL-ES API, however, is mostly there for convenience. It’s built on top of the real, lower-level API. Most of the serious developers don’t end up using it because it’s more efficient to use the underlying API directly. This is especially true on the PS3 since it’s graphics chip sucks ass and many people need to resort to offloading some of the normal rendering duties onto the SPU chips.

Like I said before, if you write cross-platform console games, you’re gonna need to create your own interface and write custom underlying code for each platform. There is no magic cross-platform bullet.

I thought we agreed to let this debate die…

108

Why would it matter how old the article is – are you trying to insinuate they don’t use opengl now?

And it’s also not AND/OR, they use a modified version of OpenGL ES 2.x as the standard API.

It’s not OpenGL-like, it is OPEN GL.

You keep twisting this into a ‘magic cross-platform bullet’ thing when that was never the point.

If all of these platforms use OpenGL and you were limited to one API then you would be better off knowing OpenGL than Direct 3D.

It’s not really something you can argue – the PS3 doesn’t use a modified version of Direct 3D, and neither do these other platforms.

Saying, “Oh well, it says OpenGL, but there are details that are different” doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know OpenGL to program on these platforms – you sure as hell can’t use anything from Direct 3D to do it.

If people in the know followed your logic then why do so many PS3 dev sites link directly to opengl for their resources and tutorials?

Now with all that said, yes you still need to know Direct 3D for the xbox/360 and it can help your resume for Windows, but enough of the strawmen and personal issues.

109

All I was trying to insinuate is that choosing an old link to a PR blurb on a game player’s(not game developer’s) website and then spouting off falsities as facts is funny to me. Nothing more, nothing less.

And yet still, after I’ve explained that the PS3 doesn’t really use OGL at the lowest level, you feel the need to continue to go on and on about how OGL is the standard. I don’t get it. Why?

No they don’t. Here are the facts:

The PS3’s low-level graphics API is called LibGCM. “PS-GL”, an OpenGL variant, is an optional wrapper around the real graphics lib that they provide to people for ease-of-use. It can help you get things up and running quickly, but it’s not what most people use for shipping games. Like I said, the graphics chip on the PS3 is a pretty awful, and typically you need to eek out as much speed as you can. Thus, people tend to use the low-level LibGCM API directly and, on top of that, they often offload some of the work to custom code written for the SPU chips.

I never had a point. I said use whatever works best for you. I said Use Flash or C# w/ XNA if you want to get something going quickly. Or use C++ w/ DirectX if you want experience with what professionals use. It was then that you chimed in about how C# was crap because MS ripped of Java and how OpenGL is preferrable because it’s cross-platform.

I’m sorry, but neither of those are true. C# is a fine language. It’s great for making games on Windows and it’s the only thing enthusiasts can use to make a game on XBox right now. And, other than for a *very *small handful of people, OpenGL is a dead API for game developers. You can like it or hate it, but that’s the reality.

More importantly, none of this really matters much. If you get a job as a graphics programmer on a multi-platform console game then you probably won’t use *any *of these APIs. You’ll use whatever in-house wrapper they’ve created around them. So, unless you’re the guy writing the initial wrapper, you won’t do very much at all with native OGL, LibGCM, DX, calls.

So again, just use whatever works for you. If that happens to be C++ w/ OGL, then good for you!

I sincerely have no personal issues with you at all. I even pos-repped you earlier in this thread for that post with links for artists. I just don’t want to see any mis-information spread.

110

Sorry I didn’t think to check gamespot when answering this. I went down the hall and asked our render guys.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to use openGL, but telling people not to learn something is just wrong. The more you know about anything, the better. You will encounter all sorts of things as you move around in the industry, and the more you have learned the easier it will be for you to pick up whatever home made stuff the company actually uses to make their games. Knowing anything is good, and I can’t think of a company that will look at a resume and say “hey you know C#, we aren’t going to hire you” I have no problem with your preferences, but telling people not to learn things is only hurting them, and that’s not fair to them.

There has also been a lot of talk recently, and some good articles, about indy developers who are working without a heavy programming background and producing really spectacular things. The game is what’s important, and being bound by a certain tech, just because someone says it’s the industry standard, will discourage and hurt people. Let people enjoy what they are doing, because it’s the passion that matters. There are lots of programmers here that came from copmputer science degrees, which don’t teach shit about graphics or game programming, and they have learned and picked up things just fine.

btw, Cry engine broke more ground than anything ID has done recently.

hey SweetJohnnyV, where do you work? can you say?

edit:
hey GStick, Showdown Academy looks cool. When I get time I’ll give it a real play and comment on it. Good job on pushing forward alone.

111

I would imagine a lot of people, particularly programmers get tangled up with notions that they must use a certain tool, and the product begins to become defined on what its built on more than what it was originally intended to be. I just don’t understand these blatant biases people have over languages and tools, over something like programming.

112

Hope you come back with a lot of suggestions and maybe even some rants. People pointing out what’s wrong and what needs improved helps out a lot.

113

damn. nice thread. I’ve been working on some characters for a fighting game here and there. I’m doing the work in 3ds max and applying a cel shader to the models then rendering the frames out. I have no “team” to speak of so I just might give that fighter maker shit a go just to see if I can get one character working or something. Looking forward to seeing some of the projects in here develop.

114

The crytech engine is a joke – it runs like crap on so many systems it will be a while until anyone can make a game with it that runs well.

The Doom 3 leak ran better when it came out on my old ass computer that didn’t even support pixel shaders compared to my 7800 gtx on the crysis demo.

On top of that you can’t even compare how many games have licensed Id tech compared to Crytech – even Unreal is leaps and bounds beyond Crytech as far as licensing tech and creating a playable game.

tech-demo != game

Microsoft is forcing people to use Direct 3D and C# to put out games on XNA because they are monopolistic asses.

The xbox’s vid card supports open gl just fine and if the system was exposed to the public there would be opengl support (just like xbox linux).

I’d rather have the option to use whatever I want then be rail-roaded int some BS microsoft plan if I don’t have to.

Anyways, the ENTIRE team at id software is smaller than most of the programming departments at other companies because they are pure talent and 0% bullshit.

If it wasn’t for John Carmack driving pixel shader technology with hardware vendors for as long as he did then games out now wouldn’t look anything like what they do (and that doesn’t even take into account what he did with polygons, 32-bit images, networking/online gaming, surround sound, etc over the years).

Also before Doom 3’s physics engine what was there – ut2k4 ‘physics’?

Now physics are expected as the standard and actually give decent performance.

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Take a look at this:

  • In 1999, Carmack appeared as number 10 in TIME’s list of the 50 most influential people in technology.

  • On March 22, 2001, Carmack became the fourth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed upon those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements in the video and computer game industry.

  • In 2005, the film Doom featured a character named Dr. Carmack, in recognition of Carmack who co-created the original game.

  • In March 2006, Carmack was added to the Walk of Game, an event that recognizes the developers and games with the most impact on the industry.

  • In January of 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada, John Carmack and id software were awarded with two Emmy Awards. The Science, Engineering & Technology for Broadcast Television, which includes broadcast, cable and satellite distribution, and secondly, Science, Engineering and Technology for Broadband and Personal Television, encompassing interactive television, gaming technology, and for the first time, the Internet, cell phones, private networks, and personal media players. id Software is the very first independent game developer to be awarded an Emmy since the Academy began honoring technology innovation in 1948.

  • In September 2007, Carmack appeared on Discovery Channel Canada Daily Planet, featuring his rocket designs along with the Armadillo Aerospace team.

  • In 2008 Carmack was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Quake’s pioneering role of user modifiability. He is the only game designer ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for his creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter video games. Along with Don Daglow and Mike Morhaime, Carmack is one of only three game developers to accept awards at both the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards.

I could go and on restating the obvious, but why bother?

115

The PS3 uses opengl ES, and there are direct calls to memory and other ‘tricks’ to speed it up like I’ve always said.

Here let me spell it out for you:
John Carmack on Id tech 5: “…its a OpenGL title on the PC and Mac right now, obviously D3D on the 360, and the PS3 its kind of an in between where its Open GLES but we do a lot of direct command buffer writing there. If necessary we can move the PC version over to DX10, but theres not much strong pull for us to do that. All of the toolset is in OpenGL, I wouldnt want to convert everything over.”

Are you going to tell me John Carmack is just calling it opengl ES for shits and giggles?

Also notice how OpenGL is anything but dead.

Unreal Engine 3 is using OpenGL.

CryEngine 2 is using OpenGL.

Serious Engine 3 uses openGL

WoW uses openGL (just like WC3 and diablo 2 and every other game they put out with hardware acceleration).

I guarantee you Diablo 3 will use OpenGL.

As consoles become more complex of course they are going to need more software calls – this has nothing to do with a chip ‘sucking’.

Tim Sweeney of Epic:“I expect that by the time of the release of the next generation of consoles, around 2012 when Microsoft comes out with the successor of the Xbox 360 and Sony comes out with the successor of the PlayStation 3, games will be running 100% on based software pipelines.”

Welcome to the reality outside of shitty xna c# games.

Oh and get over your ego.

John Carmack > You * 100

116

Ashenwraith, I give up. Believe whatever you want.

I’m the Technical Director at a new start-up called White Moon Dreams. I was at EA before this, and the last shipped game I worked on was Command and Conquer 3. Where are you at?

117

It’s one thing to say you like D3D better, but saying opengl is a dead API is going over the edge of opinion and into fantasy.

Can’t you at least admit that’s a bullshit assessment given the wide-spread support in upcoming titles?

118

sigh I’d really like to let this issue die, because it simply doesn’t matter that much.

Like I said, almost every company writes a wrapper around the underlying API. Very few professional people spend much time writing native D3D or OGL code.

For the record, I don’t actually like either API. They both have their problems. However, they also both get the job done just fine.

I wouldn’t call half a dozen titles wide-spread support. But sure, OpenGL is very much alive for game developers that publish their games for Mac and/or Linux. Fair enough?

119

well, to get away from the API debate here’s low poly dwarf I’m gonna use in my lame attempt at using FM.
http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/6604/dwarfmu0.jpg big image
Still adding shit to him. don’t want to go with normal mapping etc… Since I’d like to stick with a hand drawn look and I’m being lazy. Gotta get the illustrate plugin for max set up to get the look I want though. Tryin for a more of a watercolor look than this DP head I did sometime back
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/8439/dp4wx9.jpg
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7486/dp2jb4.jpg
cel shader with pretty much default settings. Hope I’m not derailing this thread…Yeah, I know FM isn’t the greatest but I wanna see my shit in motion in some sort of engine. I worked on a platformer years ago with some guys from gamedev but it fell through when the programmer got a real job :confused: so, my only outlet has been UT characters etc, which really don’t thrill me as I haven’t done an FPS model since the Q2 days.

EDIT: this is also my way of lookin to help anyone who has a project in the works and wants t go the 3d rendered sprite route. I’ll update you guys as I go if you want/need to see my animation/texturing skills etc… Just throwin that out there.

120

Yeah I get your point. I love carmack too, and I was pretty much a drooling fanboy seeing him. This is no longer the time that the Quake engine is the only engine out there. The current unreal engine and the cry engine are both better engines right now. He has still done more for this industry than I ever will, and I have a huge amount of respect for him, but he is no longer the one lone god of rendering.

Also pc gamer recently ran an article about how to build a crysis running box for only $500. I didn’t build one myself, but I figure they weren’t lying about it. The specs looked capable enough. It pushes things technically, but pc gamers are used to paying for graphics now.

I’m a systems designer at Big Huge Games.

I agree that we should let the api argument die. This is a good thread, we don’t need that.