I reckon it would be possible to emulate BB using Mugen but it would be frigging hard.
6 years later…
I’m guessing quite hard, though at least in this case, it’s much easier for you patch the eventual problems that arise if you keep it to a computer (initially).
That was a great read, thanks. Between that thread and the Vanguard Princess one, I’ve been inspired to foolishly think about a fighting game, though I agree with Zinac that it will likely remain a pipe dream (especially since I have like nine other projects ahead of it, only two of which I’ve somewhat started).
Still, I think I might just make thread tomorrow concerning something.
Speaking of appropriate threads, this may not be the correct thread to ask it in, but I’m wondering: What’s stopping someone from making a general version of Mugen that’s actually workable and customizable when it comes to system features and not just being able insert different colored bars or SSJ5 Psycho Darth Sephiroth?
(Or is Mugen just too far gone in its coding? I know that it seems like any and every Mugen made game has problems with OTGs and damage scaling seems to have problems as well, so…?)
nothing. just download a clean install and work on it from there.
it depends on how its coded.
Thanks for trying to help, but I think you completely misunderstood that first question.
I know how Mugen works. Trust me. I used it briefly a couple of years ago.
I think 2D Fighter maker might be a better option than Mugen. I believe it requires zero or little coding. Which is a plus for anyone who doesn’t program.
Well so long as it offers an option to do more advanced coding. Because unless you want something ultra-simplistic you really do have to know a bit of tricks in order to create more original systems that will make your game interesting.
Ah, thanks for that bit of information, Zinac.
I thought that 2D Fighter Maker also had problems considering what was said the Vanguard Princess thread. (Not that I expect to find a program with no problems, otherwise someone would have suggested it earlier and/or it would be far easier than it likely is.)
As for the “original systems”, well, I’ll probably just make a thread about that.
I’m not going to argue that but this guy is starting out. Mugen is a mess so I wouldn’t touch it personally.
Mugen is actually very good if you know what you’re doing. The level of customisation is extremily versatile especially if you enlist the help of a visual interface like Fighter factory.
it;s ahard as fucki9ng tits; real talk mothercucker
I have worked with people(and work with people) Who create fighting games. I have also been a major part of a fighting game being made and I can tell you from personal experience, It is one of the hardest things i have ever done in my life. I think another forum remember here also works on fighting games as well. Zinac, I think it is. Correct me if i am wrong
Yes its hard.
There is one hurdle I think most aspiring independent fighting game developers on this board forget about and that is that no matter how good you are at programming or artistry somebody has to design the gameplay. That means designing good character archetypes and drawing hitboxes.
The methodology used for doing this is pretty much unknown. I think most people who have made doujin games have just winged it, but I bet the big developers have entire design documents and strategies that categorize the different tropes of fighting games and make design easier.
Not to disagree with your assessment with regards to characterdesign megaultrasuper, but I think you may be putting too much stock in the difficulty of it, especially since as you said, you could always just use cliches/tropes. (Hell, that’s what Stereotype Fighter…er Street Fighter was mainly built on.)
I personally wouldn’t worry about it too much having thought up at least 8 characters in just the past three or four days and figuring that it’s most style and solid gameplay that takes precedence over character style and choice (more so the former than the latter) since you can’t please everyone anyway.
(However, I think about character types and such like that all the time given my other projects, so perhaps I’m underestimating the difficulty for other people.)
Still, it seems like it’s even easier with TVTropes around, though TVTropes may ruin your life.
With regards to game design, I’m going to try to get that thread out that I was talking about yesterday before I have to leave in an hour.
(Although I still have things to do since I only woke up half an hour ago. Stupid insomnia.)
In my time trying to develop fighting games, I’ve come across many idea men. I’ve seen my share of terrible designs. It’s alot easier to say you can just design character off of archetypes until you gotta actually decide what moves gets animated, and then convince people to draw hundreds of images! This was one of the failings of SkullGirls’ design fyi…
I’m sure. I apologize if I gave the impression that it was easy; I was merely disagreeing with megaultrasuper in that it should take precedence over more objective things like solid systems or balance when it comes to gameplay. (Although perhaps megaultrasuper didn’t mean to say that; it’s difficult to tell).
People will always have different tastes. I mean, even if there was a really solid KOF game (one that was even more solid than XI or 98 or 02), I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t play it simply because of how metrosexual the designs are. While this may seem like it proves the point of megaultrasuper was saying, I doubt a lot of those people would be willing to give many things a try and thus “losing” them isn’t a big loss anyway IMO.
Also, I would imagine that if you took control of everything yourself, then the whole getting an artist to animate said archtypes is a moot point, but like you’ve said before, that’s mostly a pipe dream. We can’t all be ex-Capcom design employees like that Vanguard Princess guy.
Also, what is “SkullGirls”? It sounds familiar and I vaguely remember it being mentioned on this subforum about a year ago.
This is [media=youtube]ZtdGFLt1inY"[/media]… avoids the :lame: 300 joke.
Think about this:
You are a fighting game developer. It’s time to design your characters normal attacks and special moves.
You set down to do it and realize you have no frames of animation to draw the hitboxes on top of so you have nothing to go on at the moment.
Ok, time to draw some frames of animation then right? Well, you think up some moves for the artist to draw and now you want him to make them. But there’s a problem. In order for you to tell him what he needs to draw you need to have some vague idea of where those hitboxes are going to be that you are going to draw over the not-yet-existant-art.
It’s a paradox, you need the art to draw the hitboxes right, but you need the hitboxes to draw the art right. One of them will be shitty the first time around.
The solution is that you must become something of an artist yourself to make good hitboxes. You can draw crude silhouettes of your character to give you something to go on. Then you draw your hitboxes.
At this point you either make up some crude test sprites yourself, or you get an artist to do it for you.
I’ll assume you already have an engine ready you can drop the frames of animation and the hitboxes into. Don’t even worry about damage or hit properties at this point. Moves either hit or they don’t.
Now you have a playable fighting game. You can mirror match your one character against itself. You begin playtesting.
Oops, one move is beyond broken. It outpokes every other move in your characters arsenal. The game boils down to that one broken move. This is unacceptable and you have to go back and redesign the character.
Now, skip forward a bit and you have redesigned several times probably to get this one match of your one character to feel pretty fair. All the characters moves are useful in different situations and the game feels good.
I’m just throwing a number out here but I bet you couldn’t do all that in a week.
Now, it’s time to do character #2!
Start the character design process over from scratch, but multiply the complexity of design exponentially. Now your game has three possible match-ups. 1-1, 1-2, and 2-2. All these matches have to be “fair” and need to be roughly as common as one another in the game. Otherwise they will never occur in the context of competitive play and your time spent designing them will be for nothing.
Think about this process even for 8 characters. It would be long and arduous to say the least. That doesn’t even take into account the damage and hit properties of each move. For a game with 16 characters or so this becomes completely unmanageable unless you build design guidelines for yourself that will allow you to know ahead of time that something won’t be broken. Things like “no hitbox can be larger than this x-y” or “no hitbox can hit low higher than this y point” or “no single move can be active for longer than this period of time”.
You can’t make “stereotype fighter” either. Nobody wants to play a game that is just an inferior clone of another game. If you’re going to put yourself through the game design process making up clever character designs is the one redeeming value. That’s the “fun” part.
You’re right though about the fact that character personality and looks have a ton to do with making a fighting game. It’s equally important to gameplay. Games like Vanguard Princess and Arcana Hearts would be played much more commonly in the USA if they had a more masculine theme. But the anime-girl theme is incredibly popular in Japan, and the designers know it. That’s the audience they designed to and the were extremely successful. If you want a game to be popular then you need to know that the character personalities will be appealing to at least some large group of gamers.
Personally though, I think that is a load of shit and I would make exactly the type of game I wanted to make and damn the consequences. If nobody thinks it’s cool then whatever. Somebody will appreciate it somewhere. It’s a dice roll anyway that some games catch on and some do not. For whatever reason Samurai Shodown never made it to the big time. That game series had an equally large budget and as good of gameplay as any game for it’s period. Other games might have crowded it out, maybe the aesthetic just wasn’t that appealing, it could be anything.