Fantasy Strike - easy to execute fighting game

[luckyjim]

Characters have 6HP now, and another major change is that there is now an interesting implementation of tick damage. If you block a move a few times your HP bar will start to flash and then you will actually take a hit if you continually block. If you don’t block an attack for a while though your HP bar will return to normal.

http://www.sirlin.net/fantasystrike

That’s the same system already in Pocket Rumble, and from what I’ve played of that game it works quite well so far, especially for a game with a set amount of health points like Fantasy Strike and Pocket Rumble both seem to have.

[doctorfedora]

Yeah, the chip damage system works very well (and again, it definitely isn’t guard break) for a limited-discrete-HP fighter. Also you guys Rook is so fuuuuuuuuuun

Basically, the way chip damage works is:

• First of all, everyone gets a set number of discrete hit points that are represented as blocks, similar to Pocket Rumble but in smaller numbers (so the “standard” number is six, while Rook, the new grappler, gets eight), and as a general rule, each hit does 1 HP of damage.

• If you block regular attacks (A button) then you just sort of… block them.

• If you block special attacks (B or C) then the first one you block makes one of your HP blocks turn orange, the second one you block makes it turn red, and the third one chips it away. If you don’t get hit or block attacks for a bit, it recovers like SF4 gray damage.

So yeah, the implementation is pretty similar to Pocket Rumble, because it’s basically the only real option available for limited-discrete-HP fighters, and it works well in both. You can’t just sit around and block all day, but it also prevents blocked specials from being overpowering (or, at worst, equivalent to simply landing them in the first place).

[Kristoph]

this game is really fun. from what i’ve played, it kind of feels like “ST with some divekick juice.” even with just 3 attack buttons the characters feel really meaty. well-worth putting in the patreon support imo.

i’m really liking the big graphical update they made to Grave in the latest update too

[Remy77077]

i’m really liking the big graphical update they made to Grave in the latest update too

Yeah the graphical improvements with each build have made a few drastic leaps. Definitely a good sign the final product is going to look pretty decent if not excellent for what is essentially an ‘indie’ title.

I’ve been struggling to get good local opponents with time to play lately though, but should get some extended games tomorrow, looking forward to seeing what they make of it - it will be a mixed crowd of varying degrees of fighting game experience.

[tataki]

How does the game look like? I wanna see a vid…

[Kristoph]

^ There are no vids for this game yet since (other than Grave) the graphics are a huge WIP.

A fourth character, Valerie, has been added to the game.

Basic summary: Two-hit rekkas (that work in the air), chicken wing (goes SUPER FAR in the air), a speedup mode that activates every 8 seconds and gives her one chance to do three-hit rekkas or cancel chicken wing into chicken wing. Air super is an even better speedup mode that lasts a while. She does have a divekick.

In other words, she’s got sort of a Fei Long-ish thing going on.

[ArtVandelay]

So am I supposed to get hyped for this without ingame footage?

[Komatik]

“Hey, give me money to fund this thing that plays awesome without seeing how it plays!”

Not my kind of deal.

[JohnGrimm]

How dare you question David “Our Lord and Savior” Sirlin.

[ArtVandelay]

How dare you question David “Our Lord and Savior” Sirlin.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

[JohnGrimm]

How dare you question David “Our Lord and Savior” Sirlin.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Yes thank you, that was the joke.

[tataki]

“Hey, give me money to fund this thing that plays awesome without seeing how it plays!”

Not my kind of deal.

His Patreon is for everything he does, not just for this. Among them are games that people have already bought, played, and loved.

[Remy77077]

Yeah quite right tataki. If you’re not into his other stuff then Patreon backing is definitely too big an ask for most people, but eventually there will be screens and footage and maybe a kickstarter etc for the actual game… so if you’re interested in seeing where this goes, it’s worth knowing about at least. Honestly I only backed the Patreon to try out this game though, cos conceptually it’s exactly what I like - and I’ve found it so much fun I’ve continued to back it.

Plus it’s hard to contain the hype when you are already backing it, playing it and enjoying it y’know

I just finally had time to write up some more stuff about the game and the SFV beta. The full article is here but not trying to link-bait nonsense, so here’s the bits about Fantasy Strike that are relevant to this thread

http://www.agoners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/grave_rook_1024x768-tiny.jpg

Time for a Fantasy Strike!

Enough about SFV for now, I also need to mention that this even more interesting fighting game is coming along really well. By backing it’s creator on Patreon, I’m able to get access to updated alpha builds periodically. This is intriguing by itself to see how the game is being developed over time. The latest build now has four of the Fantasy Strike characters available – Grave, Jaina, Rook and Valerie – and there’s already an enormous amount of variety in moves and playstyles available within the simple-to-execute systems the game is using. What’s particularly interesting for me, is, given the discussion above about how my character choice in fighting games has been in good part determined by how well I could execute their moves, as well as the utility of those moves, that in Fantasy Strike I am able to execute everything. Once you realise this includes all the combos too, this is actually a completely new experience even for me in fighting games – and actually has my mind boggling about how to even pick a main. I first imagined what a Fantasy Strike fighting game could be like (and what got me into Yomi, Puzzle Strike and other Sirlin Games originally!) thanks to Sirlin’s first article about the character Onimaru from back in 2012. The concept of a no-combos fighting game character appealed to me so much as it covered one of the major weaknesses in my execution ability – I’m awful at long rapid strings of motions and presses needed to do most combos in most fighting games these days. So I loved the idea of including a character, even in a really complex fighting game, that was tailored to my execution abilities, even if not my playstyle particularly. But now that Fantasy Strike is going with it’s super-easy to execute design, it’s opened up the possibility of playing as pretty much anyone for me – and I have no idea who I’ll end up favouring when the game is finally released. Maybe I will actually prefer to play a rushdown style combo character when I’ve got the ability to execute all of their attacks? Right now, if I had to pick a main I’d probably say I enjoy Grave the most, as I really like his fireball based gameplay, his wide variety of options, and both his super moves – but it maybe just because he’s the character that I have the most experience with, as he’s been in every build since the start – or perhaps it’s just because he is the most graphically complete so he looks the best too… On the other hand I have really enjoyed playing Rook too already, who is nothing like any character I’ve ever mained before in a fighting game – so I’m really not sure, and this open world of possibilities is incredibly exciting to think about, and highlights a wonderful aspect that simplifying execution has on a game.

At the time of writing I’ve not yet been able to play vs anyone else on the current build – and I’m too good at fighting games for playing the basic alpha AI to be that much fun for me – I don’t think I’ve ever lost a match to the AI, even whilst messing about with new moves and characters. However, on one of the previous versions with Grave, Jaina and Rook, I did get the opportunity to unleash the game on a decent sized group of fighting game fans for playing some really fun casual matches – and the result was great. I think everyone enjoyed the game, and particularly players that weren’t as adept at Street Fighter style games were loving the fact they could now access all the moves and tactics thanks to the easier execution. One newer player who struggles to do SF-esque special moves, who is more familiar with 3D fighting games, even managed to beat almost every other player in my group at one point at “winner stays on” – which proved to be lots of fun hype amongst my friends. It was really great to see someone, who wouldn’t normally get that kind of opportunity to beat players with years of execution practice, able to win a good share of matches at a new fighting game – and again, this is courtesy of the great design of Fantasy Strike.

I think the best comment one of my friends made was: “even at this early stage, you can tell this is going to be something brilliant” – to which I agree. Dragonheart!

[Pertho]

I’m hoping the game is going to be good. My cash is always tied up on stuff to buy his games (desperately wanted to buy the Fantasy Strike that came with all the decks) and haters be damned, I love me some HDR. I won’t say I have high hopes because he is doing a lot of really alien things but definitely curious.

Do wish that he’d do a small gameplay trailer so people could understand how its going to play. Jump button and one button for normals is some weird shit to have going on.

[Sirlin]

Glad you like, Remy! Yeah it really is quite a thing when you can play any character you want, because you can actually fully control all of them, including their combos and techniques. And thanks for contributing, we’re just an indie effort here so we don’t have millions of dollars. Anything we get goes right into all my projects, which right now are the Fantasy Strike fighting game and the Codex card game.

It’s way too early to show vids and screens right now. Fantasy Strike is not nearly far enough along graphically to do that. I’m sure you understand, it would be like SF5 showing vids at a point in their development when they still had some placeholder models and animations, which would just lead to negative press about how it looks bad or whatever. We’re focusing on gameplay development right now, and are just starting to polish the visuals. It will be many months before it’s publicly presentable. In the meantime, we thank everyone who has joined our Patreon and we’ll continue to give patrons updated builds so they can see the development process. Remember that Patreon isn’t a thing where you pay for a product. It’s to support specific creative people in whatever it is they do. So my Patreon gives patrons a look behind the scenes as a thank you. As for publicly showing the game in order to get people hyped, we’ll definitely do that once we’re far enough along.

[Smashbro29]

How dare you question David “Our Lord and Savior” Sirlin.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

I liked it. I want it for PC.

[CanadianDstryr]

it would be like SF5 showing vids at a point in their development when they still had some placeholder models and animations, which would just lead to negative press about how it looks bad or whatever.

Word to KoF.

Love the card game, love Puzzle Strike. Been meaning to try out Codex.

Can’t wait to see the game in a presentable state.

[Remy77077]

Finally something more I can share with SRK - Sirlin’s made the latest alpha build notes available publically here:

Fantasy Strike fighting game, January build for Patreon patrons

Thank you to all the patrons supporting the Fantasy Strike fighting game. The $25+ patrons are getting builds of the game as we go (latest build here), as we aren’t actually ready to show the game publicly yet. In the meantime, your support is helping us keep going to the point where we can eventually get a lot more players involved. Our team is incredibly grateful.

There’s a lot of new things in our latest build, so I thought I’d share the change list publicly so you can see the kinds of things we’re working on, even if the build itself is just for patrons (feel free to sign up!). We have worked on gameplay-related things, as well as non-gameplay things. The highlights are:

–A new character!
–”real” alternate costume colors for some characters
–First steps toward new menus
–Performance improvements

I’ll give a list of gameplay-related stuff first, then go into the non-gameplay stuff.

GAMEPLAY

SETSUKI
–New playable character!
–Setsuki is the most difficult to play character with the highest skill ceiling right now. This is because she is based on the idea of “speed”, so to fulfill that, she can do a bunch of stuff really fast. She has the fewest hit points in the game (five), so that means to be effective, you have to actually use her tools well. See tips at the end of this section.

–Normal moves do cancel to specials, but the specials don’t actually combo. Instead, they create mixup opportunities.
–Normal moves DO cancel to super. Tacking on guaranteed extra damage costs her meter, in other words. (A fair exchange for her various other advantages!)
–B special is a teleport kick. This can go through the opponent to cross them up, even in the corner. Hold the button down to instead do a special throw (wow).
–C special is Starlight Tumbler (aka hooligan throw). When she tumbles in the air, you can press the C button again to throw them (air to air or air to ground). You also have the option to press A to divekick from this move, or even super to air super from it. This move CAN be yomi countered (that’s when the opponent lets go of all controls) in order to prevent it from being unbeatable as a meaty attack.
–Air A is a divekick, note that holding back or forward let you change the angle of the dive.
–Air B is a kunai projectile. Note that holding back or forward let you change the angle of the kunai. This move is very useful to throw out just before approaching the enemy.
–Air C is “Flying Fox”. This is a floaty air dive move. Although its priority is low, it’s a very deadly move because you can cancel it to itself on hit or block. Even if you don’t hit with it, you can perform another air action after it, such as second Flying Fox (even a backwards one that runs away), an air kunai, or divekick, or a super.
–Ground super is a very fast dashing attack. The startup is vulnerable, but the speed and distance is so great that it can punish a lot of things and extend your combos.
–Air super is an air parry. It currently has the same implementation as Grave’s air parry, though later on Setsuki’s will work a little differently and have more of a ninja flavor to it.

Tips:
–Be aware of your max damage bread and butter combo. Air C (Flying Fox), air C again, normal attack when you land, super. That’s 4 damage. It takes a bit of practice to perform the Flying Fox properly to do that, but it’s not actually difficult.
–An air kunai can cover your approach with Flying Fox.
–Go crazy with lots of quick stuff like hooligan throw, cancel to dive kick, jump and flying fox, land and teleport kick, etc. Once you are able to actually control all that stuff you’ll be all over the place and can hit opponents with things they “should” block just because they are so confused.
–If you land a double palm attack (forward + A), it’s often worth it to spend the super to get a guaranteed 2nd damage. But at the very least, be ready to do a mixup with either teleport kick / teleport special throw, or hooligan throw into either “really throw” or divekick or air parry super.

GRAVE
–His projectile now has back / neutral / forward versions that are slow / medium / fast because that’s what you expect anyway. Before he had neutral (slow) and non-neutral (fast) to make sure that all commands work even in a possible future 1p mode that had enemies on both sides of you. We’ll relax that requirement and make the commands whatever they need to be for the main mode, then slightly modify them to work in that other mode if we ever actually make it.

JAINA
–no change

ROOK
–no change

VALERIE
–Revised a lot of things. I’m not really happy with her previous version OR this revised version, so she will likely see several more changes in the future. The issue is that rekka punches are inherently super good in this game and so she’s a rushdown character that a) can do crazy damage and b) can get in easily, always. Also, the way characters fly when hit out of the air does not really work properly yet, and the issues with it hugely favor Valerie by making juggling with rekkas easier than it should be.
–You can now do rekka 1, 2, 3 all the time, rather than only in manic mode.
–Manic mode removed (it existed only for the reason of stopping you from doing rekka 3 all the time.)
–Rekka 3 no longer combos. The animation has been replaced with Flying Rainbow Stroke (aka chicken wing), so that it’s obvious that it wouldn’t combo.
–All three rekkas do block damage. That means if you block all 3, you’ll take 1 point of real damage but you could have done something to hit that 3rd hit probably.
–Rekka 1 and 2 now have back / neutral / forward versions that go short / medium / far distance.
–Walk speed slightly increased.
–Divekick replaced with a more normal air attack. This slows her down when she’s trying to get in, but the attack itself is pretty good. Very wide, so it’s good at crossups.
–Ground super (Chromatic Orb) now has 13 frames of invulnerable startup after the super flash.

GEIGER
–Flash gear (aka flash kick) startup increased by 2 frames
–neutral kick startup increased by 4 frames
–Time spiral (aka sonic boom) shorter hitstun. This combined with the change to the neutral kick means that point-blank time spiral no longer combos into neutral kick. This was a weird-feeling bread-and-butter combo for him, so it feels better that you don’t have to worry about doing it anymore.
–The input detection for differentiating between “press” and “hold” on his backfist (for traveling forward vs not traveling forward) has been improved. It is less likely to make you travel forward when you didn’t want to. But it STILL needs work and will likely be improved again in the future.
–It is no longer possible to have his air special gear and ground special gear on the screen at the same time. If you have one of those on screen, and activate the other, the first one will be destroyed and your new one will appear. By allowing them to both be on at once (in the previous build) it meant you were basically forced to constantly spam them a lot, which did not feel very “Geiger-y”. I’d rather he mostly stays on the ground and does sonic booms than constantly has to jump around.
–Air special gear is slightly buffed because of the previous change. It travels slightly faster and it will not be destroyed if Geiger blocks or gets hit. That said, its overall power level is low (somewhat intentionally). We might adjust or revise this move entirely in the future. It’s difficult because he doesn’t even need this move and we don’t want it to be a thing he does all the time, whatever it is.
–Air super. Your super meter no longer refills while the Cycloid gears are on the screen. (Was way too good.)
–Ground super has been completely replaced. We tried many versions of time stop, and they were always too weak or too strong. It was very hard to deal with it, so it’s been replaced with a move sort of like Charlie’s multiple sonic boom super. Geiger can throw three gears with this, and he can delay the gears too. The graphics for this super are so placeholder that it does not yet give the feel that we want. The real animation will start with a “time stop” where he fills up his gear meter 3 times, then gameplay will resume. This first pass doesn’t have that, but does have basic functionality.

GENERAL
–Super flash (the cinematic at the start of supers where the game is briefly paused) increased across the board for most supers. They don’t have proper animation, but this is to test the general timing to make the supers a bit more dramatic.

NON-GAMEPLAY

–New alternate colors! Grave, Jaina, and Rook all have 8 costume colors now. This is the first time we’ve had intentionally designed alternate colors, as opposed to just stuff for testing purposes. (Note that these are the three characters that have “real” character models. The other character models are placeholder.)
–The placeholder character models now have different 3D shading applied to them. This is not important because their models and shading will be completely replaced anyway, but this makes them look less awful in the meantime.
–Rook now turns into a big stone “trap” when he does his air C move that pounds the ground.
–Jaina now has a new model for her bow. (Note that it still doesn’t correctly show her flame arrows yet).

–Main menu revised. In the middle of the screen, the menu emphasizes the main modes where you actually play. Other features that aren’t about playing are below, and use icons so they look different from the gameplay modes. Then tertiary features are small and in the corner, to give more focus to the main modes. The “Play” menu item will lead to online play, but as a temporary measure it’s hooked up to single match vs CPU right now. Many functions shown on the main menu are not actually implemented, but I want to start getting things in place so we get a sense of how to organize it all.
–The menus are designed to work with mouse OR gamepad. They are designed to look good on your computer screen OR tv that’s across the room. That said, this version broke mouse support in some situations and we know that. The mouse still mostly works, but we are aware of several bugs with mouse use on the main menu items in the upper right corner and on the character select screen and we will fix them in a later build.
–Character select screen revised. It now shows 3D characters at a more reasonable size and orientation. It now also has on-screen UI for selecting costume colors.
–There is now a smooth flow from character select -> stage select -> versus screen (the screen showing “Grave vs Jaina” before the fight starts). Various elements stay constant across these three screens so it all feels coherent. 3D character animation also works smoothly across these screens now.
–The versus screen now stays up longer on purpose, rather than going away so quickly that it feels like a glitch. During this time, a quick pre-fight music fanfare plays, but the music itself is placeholder. (Note that all other music you hear in the game is real and finished music from OC Remix.)

–Graphics settings completely revised, now simplified down to 4 settings (very low, low, medium, high). On setting below high, we managed to improve graphics quality AND improve performance too (nice trick!). This was possible because some of the tradeoffs on quality vs performance in our previous builds really made no sense. Lower setting disabled some graphics features that mattered a lot, in order to keep other features that don’t really matter much.
–Screen tearing used to occur on about half our graphics levels, but now never happens, even on the lowest setting.
–The background was rendered as blurry in some areas on about half our graphics levels, but now it’s never blurry, even on the lowest setting.
–In previous builds, the shadows were not handled well some of the medium settings. One of those settings made shadows so transparent that it was hard to even see them, yet you were still taking the performance hit for rendering them. On another setting, the shadows were very visible, but the quality was so low that they appeared jagged to the point of being obnoxiously glitchy looking. In our current build, the top three settings have shadows at high / medium / low quality, where they still look reasonable no matter the setting. The lowest setting has no shadows at all. In future builds, we will eventually add “blob” shadows to this quality setting.

Tip: If you’re trying to run the game on a low power computer, especially laptops, remember that in addition to changing the graphics quality from lowest / low / medium / high, you can also change the resolution. Running it in 720p rather than 1080p might help you a lot on low-spec computers.

That’s a ton of changes in this build! We have lots more in the works too. New menu features, new character models, and even some new animations are finally in the works. Stay tuned on Patreon for more updates!

[PSYCH0J0SH]

Patch notes for a game that’s completely invisible and basically doesn’t exist. Alright. Cool. Yeah.

[Remy77077]

Here’s some more patch notes just to annoy @PSYCH0J0SH … http://www.sirlin.net/posts/fantasy-strike-patch-notes-august-2016

But more importantly, first officially released screenshot at http://www.fantasystrike.com/

I know they are nearing the point where more stuff can be shared publicly too, hurrah!