How do fighting game designers assign moves to characters?

[jedpossum]

Yeah, a lot of the times the unfinished or other character’s animations are used as placeholders to do the minimum amount of work needed to see if an idea is good.

It can end up being REALLY funny sometimes, when you’re using a different character or placeholder model tinted differently to get an idea across without having any art assets.

Seeing a projectile that’s just a random character model… that never gets old. I’ve seen a character’s head cropped out and used as projectile in a 2D game.

Well I don’t mean copies of the sprite I mean balance differences. Like one version of Sentinel’s super(Since I’m talking about CotA there is only one super) used to have a ton of homing projectiles come out of it then at the location test it was a few waves that went straight forward. Eventually those projectiles just got removed.

[Reno]

I had an earlier thread on how do game designers know what moves work for a character but I have a question similar to the earlier one. How game programmers and designers assign and create moves for a character? What strengths and weaknesses the characters have? How they preform their moves and techniques? And how they play most of all? Given the amount research done on Shoryuken forums as well as other sites, I can see how the characters do their moves and what to look our for.

The truth is there is a ton of work that goes into a fighting game (the same can be said of any video game) and that is something that consistent. I ask these questions because I am somewhat curious as to how much thought is put into creating a character for a fighting game. I might be beating a dead horse but I need to know how they assign moves to a character. I know with characters like Ryu, Ken, Kyo and Liu Kang, their emphasis is more on simplicity and to try to give the player a feel for the game. It is different for everyone but most people seem to agree that most these character are easy to use yet difficult to master.

Most of us know that the motion for Ryu’s fireball is Down, Down Forward but why did the Capcom designers assign this motion to the fireball? Would it had worked just as easily if back, back, then forward? Or if it hold back to two or three seconds and then release? Ryu’s fireball is known to have a decent recovery or at least in Street Fighter II. Compare to Guile’s fireball that requires you hold back two seconds and then release forward. Why didn’t Capcom give Guile’s Sonic Boom a similar input like Ryu’s? Is it because it would had made Guile to powerful or is it because his defensive playstyle doesn’t allow for it?

Zangief is the most unique character motion wise, he doesn’t charge attacks or inputs like Cammy or Fei Long yet in order to do some of his moves you need to rotate the stick 360 or 720 degrees to utilize. This may not be entirely accurate but the question still stands, why assign those motions to Zangief? Could he had played like any other input character in the game? Could Capcom had substitute the 360 and 720 motions for something else? Maybe I am not getting it but I just need to know how fighting game designers know to this motion or this input to a character.

Charge moves were initially put in for players who couldn’t do motions for special moves. You have to remember that when SF2 first came out, doing fireball or shoryuken motions were completely alien to everyone, so the designers had the foresight to include characters like Guile, Honda and Blanka that didn’t rely on those motions. Then to balance it out they gave those moves different startup and recovery times. The thinking is that moves like Ryu’s fireball would come out fast but have slow recovery, so a move like a sonic boom would have long startup (because you have to charge it) and would have short recovery.

If you think about the motions themselves they tend to closely match the animation of the character too. This is a way to clue the player in on how to do the move even if they’ve never played the character. Zangief’s 360 makes him spin, so the motion in itself is a clue that you need to do some sort of spinning motion to get it out. Chun’s lightning legs animate in a way that suggests you need to press some buttons super fast. Likewise in a 3D fighter like Virtua Fighter, Akira’s dashing elbow is a double tap forward then punch, because that’s what the animation looks like.

Inputs are really one of the reasons why past SNK fighters got a lot of flak; they were way too complicated compared to the move that came out, and they didn’t really match

[rtdzign]

Back in Street Fighter 2 I think they were just trying shit and wanted all the characters to be different.

Nowadays, I really just think that they think of a special move, and assign a motion based off of the archetype.

[Sonic_Reaper]

Moving away from the discussion of inputs …

I think what Ratio 4 said made a lot of sense. And you can simplify that concept even more. To best understand it, like anything, would be to experience it first hand. And luckily, theory and design, as a discussion, aren’t difficult to engage in, regardless of who you are or where you stand on the topic.

Hakan was a good example. The “birth” of a character, starts with ONE concept, on which the rest of the character and his or her traits are based around. Turkish Oil wrestler in this case. It can be simplified beyond that, and that’s an important note to make.

For example, perhaps the designer does not want to be bound by a particular physical descriptor. So a character is created first with the goal of being a counter character. Kasumi Todoh of SNK fame is one example. Her final design could have been anything, but the primary feeling I get from her is that she focuses on counters. The tools she is given complement this, and allow her to set up situations where she can counter her opponent. Grappler characters, are probably similar. However, in this case, usually they go hand in hand with larger, slower, more hulking wrestler types. This isn’t set in stone however, which is where you get some interesting and refreshing grappler types like Shermie from, again, SNK fame.

Just my two cents on the subject. The input and special attacks and moves, I figure evolve after the initial creation process. Using Guile for example, the initial concept may have been a character that controls space really, really well. And the character was built up from there.