Notice 3d fighters rarely have projectiles? How on Earth would projectiles even work in such a game anyway? Can’t you just sidestep? I’ve seen Virtual On mentioned as an example of a fighter with projectiles, but let’s be real, the game ain’t a fighter, the perspective of the cameras is from behind the character, and 3d fighters are supposed to have the camera done in a sideview, like Tekken or VF. This is the same reason Dissidia is not a 3d fighter, the camera perspective is more like a third person shooter like Unreal or Gears of War than a fighting game. How would you even be able to see the melee attacks your character is doing or see how they look in general, when all you see is their back most of the time?
I think KoF Maximum Impact is the only real 3d fighter that did projectiles, and did it right too.
I feel Tekken did it right…not in the commands and slow executions, but overall. If they sped projectiles moves up so that a simple sidestep wouldn’t save you, but a faster 3d movement (tohshinden-style side-roll or something) would, that would be cool.
the trick is in keeping the sidestep advantage low, basically if character sidesteps projectile he should be unable to dash in and counterattack recoverying opponent in same moment. The role of projectile is to keep opponent at bay, hence the role of sidestep should be only the evasion, but not the forward movement + counterattack
Only partly correct. Proper projectiles should also act as a setup, to either give your opponent another attacking hitbox to worry about on screen and/or to force them to move in a way that guarantees damage to them. In other words, there needs to be a way to replicate the classic shoto trap (hadouken to force a jump in that results in them eating a DP) in 3D working against a sidestep instead of a jump in.
you can sidestep in that game but it’s similar to rolling in that you are vunerable for a brief moment at the end and also some of the attack strings will track stepping. in regards to fireballs this is how it would work best
Or, alternatively, you could make them jump in instead of sidestep. Make the fireball wide, quick, and hit low. The opponent’s only options are therefore only to either jump over the projectile or block low. Of course, to make people actually want to jump, you’d need to make utilizing the Z-axis a much more attractive thing to do.
I can think of two ways that could be worth exploring besides what was already mentioned. The first is related to multiple projectiles, and that would be a wave attack as a projectile. If the projectile emanated as an arc, then sidestepping isn’t possible 'cause if you stay at ground level, you’re going to get hit. Some characters could even get a 360? wave attack to catch someone who mistimed a a jump over.
The second way is to make it just like some 2D characters: allow the player to choose the direction based on button presses. If the opponent sees the start-up animation and sidesteps the wrong direction, they get nailed.
You could even combine the two. Imagine something like Juri’s fireball in 3D. Depending on which button you press you get a crescent wave going out low, high or angled up. Now you’ve got something that controls space instead of being a futile effort.