I’m making a small (and unpaid) fighting game for a project at my school. The game will be played for a week during lunch and I expect most people will play it casually, although I want to have some kind of depth since there will be a competition at some point. I made a fighting game last year too, but since I had little to no understanding of fighting games and didn’t do any research it sucked (luckily the casual people didn’t notice and I was praised regardless). Which is why I’m trying to do proper research and planning this time around.
Since people will have relatively short time to learn characters for the competition and to ensure they will understand the basic gameplay I’m trying to do a pretty simple basic attack button layout.
X and A will always be “safe” attacks, X being short range and A longer range.
Y and B will be “unsafe”, Y being short range and B longer range. this applies to both ducking low attacks and regular standing attacks.
low and overhead standing attacks for shuffles would be accessed by holding back in combination with a button press according to the image below (while basically still having the same traits regarding range and being “safe” as explained above)
The problem is, I want to have some basic character types going on. like a grappler, rushdown and some sort of melee character with good range but bad up close (no zoner though since the scrubs will ban it from the competition, which they did last year).
Is it possible to have this system on basic attacks for all character archetypes?
I’m not too familiar with playing grapplers and I probably won’t be able to change the system after I’ve already programmed it due to time restraints.
If anyone has some feedback or (if the system seems bad) ideas I’d be very grateful, I don’t want to make shit this time (although being realistic it definitely won’t be exceptional either)
here’s the special move system I have in mind btw. Again, with the casual people in mind (I dont want them pausing the game and checking the special moves list)
The systems possible, for certain archetypes. Grapplers can have a safe grab or a risky grab (XA and BY) respectively.I think by these buttons alone a nice meta game is already developed. Also, banned Zoner characters? Really?
I’m a little bit more reassured now The grappling idea is good, didn’t think about that. I was actually planning on using RB for grabs to appeal to the casual people, but it’s probably worth to sacrifice them for that mechanic.
Also yeah, the tournament last year was pretty weird. It wasn’t a zoner character they banned actually, the character just had a bunch of teleport attacks. It won many casual matches and the people running the stuff noted that and banned it because of the unusual high win rates (the problem actually being most people didn’t know how to block). I probably won’t do a zoner character cus it’ll just end up getting banned anyway, people like to call things “cheap” or “cheating” when it doesn’t work out for them
eRKSToCK. Wow really? I suppose if it were up to them, they’d ban 3pt shots in basketball, Curve ball pitches in baseball, and Snipers in FPS too. There attitude is why fighting games will never appeal to the casual gamer. The casual gamer wants something that they can pick up and enjoy. Fighting games by design are competive and require some effort by the player to get decent at it. Which is the exact opposite of what most casual gamers look for in a game.
Learning how to deal with zoning and teleports requires a degree of practice and experience. Not a lot but a bit. But casuals or “scrubs” be like “Stop spaming fireballs it’s cheap!” “Teleports are OP!” “This stuff shouldn’t be in the game!” And then they get frustrated and quit because they get frustrated. Even if you offer to teach them, they’re not interested because they have no intentions of learning to overcome such challenges in a game.
Fighters have to become easy mode or have a shit ton of Fan Favorite characters to appeal to casual gamers.
@BB_Hoody I’m actually mostly a casual player myself, which is why I want to get people into fighting games by attempting to make it more accessible With this game I want to try and get the attention of the real fighting game people in my school which I probably didn’t get last year
Well I’m all for getting people into fighting games and I commend you for your efforts. But fighters shouldn’t have to be put on easy mode for them to be accessible. I suggest making a good tutorial mode that teaches the mechanics of the game and basic combat. And character specific tutorials that teach you how to play with a character and how to utilise specific moves.
Sure you could dumb the game down since it’s just a project. But if you ever plan on making a fighting game for profit. Making a fighter too simple will kill the longevity of the game meaning that people may not buy it if they feel they’ll get bored with it quickly.
@BB_Hoody I agree with you and I definitely don’t want to dumb the game down, actually the only thing I specifically want to dumb down is making special attacks. As you can see from the pic
I want to basically give people a chance to use special moves without having to go into practice mode first, but that’s about as dumb as I will make it. I don’t really know if this affects gameplay too much except for only having 4 special moves though?
@MajormelisThere the system I have in mind for combos is basically the same as ST but with much more forgiving timing. Basically, if you input an attack while in animation it will carry out that attack next (as long as the animation you’re in is an attack) regardless if its a cancel or a link
Well Smash Bros has that 4 special moves system that’s simple to execute and that series is doing great. It made the game easy to pick up while the movement options and mechanics allow for depth and complexity. So yeah that can definitely work.
The grappling idea is good, didn’t think about that. I was actually planning on using RB for grabs to appeal to the casual people, but it’s probably worth to sacrifice them for that mechanic.