sounds like a really interesting way to present a fighter. I like the idea of the input system that is being designed. pretty cool stuff.
This sounds like a really cool feature.
I don’t just see it being used for cool combos: I see it being used for crazy reset mixups as well. Imagine having 2x the time to set up something like that. Not to mention being able to catch your opponent off-guard by speeding up time all of a sudden. :bgrin:
Yeah there’d be various practical application for it: linking into that big slow move that you can’t normally combo into but would like to use because of it’s good hit properties, getting behind the opponent while they’re still being knocked down and continuing the combo in the opposite direction to get them against a wall, setting up for a charged unblockable by giving them less time to get away from it, setting up a bunch of stuff for wakeup etc.
Though to be fair, perhaps damage should be scaled a bit more in this state so that it isn’t abused, especially if we make it so that getting meter isn’t hard.
speaking of which, we’re also thinking of placing dots on each frame of animation along with the hitboxes detailing where the character’s head, hands and feet are. This might be good for mapping particle effects to follow character limbs and stuff like that. (in the case of a fire punch for example.)
Hit boxes visible in training mode please.
Eventually I think we’re going to try to strive to create a training mode that is actually fun to use and not a chore. This means putting in just about every feature you might want in training mode, though I don’t know how realistic that might be. But hey, patches patches patches!
If I can suggest ripping an idea off- assuming you have burst as well, why not tie in the mechanics , similar to how SamSho Special did it?
Maybe even give the characters personalities- where Angry chars can do better bursts (Bursting gives a damage boost for a while?), while peaceful chars can do better “meditation” This could also be a modifier to how they gain meter. Angry chars get more meter from getting hit and having their specials miss, peaceful chars get it from blocking and attacking, or soemthing like that. Once you use your system you are without meter rest of round.
One char might be good at both.
In SSVSP that system worked really well, but it didn’t translate over to Tenka as well since it wasn’t universal.
Differring system moves based on personality sounds like a great idea. But wouldn’t that lack of uniformity make it hard to balance?
Either way, that does really sound cool and it would really work to some character’s strengths. (Pyre being a violent character would make him a candidate for an angry burst - he could short out and explode. Yawn on the other hand is a peaceful personality, so he’d be able to heal himself by setting up his solar panel and taking in sunlight and so on.)
Alright, so you have two things going on that seem to be the main focus for characters. Mecha and personification.
Mecha - the mecha market is HUGE, at least in Japan. The 2 most popular franchises being Gundam and Macross (both being roughly 30 years old and still as popular as ever).
Within mecha there is some personification (it is not as popular in mecha as it is with animals but it is there).
Valsione from the super popular Super Robot Wars series and some of the robots from the GaoGaiGar series (yet another extremely popular series which gets homages in way too many anime shows even if they have nothing to do with mecha) [media=youtube]ANpcimIOgac[/media] .
Then you have Mecha Musume stuff like Busou Shinki. This is usually in the realm of mecha girls, where the girls are personifications of a certain weapon/vehicle. Then there is cosplay. This is where the girls dress up as robots from different shows.
Next is personification of non-mecha stuff. Best example I can think of right now is Moemon. There’s two sides to moemon. First is where the pokemon have been changed to look like cute girls (and thus moe)
and then you have the cosplay side as well, where the trainers dress up as their pokemon, just how they do in the games
http://safebooru.donmai.us/data/e2816f067b58ec43a4e5efe126fbc181.jpg.
You are definitely on the right track when it comes to appealing to a certain niche group. The most important thing is though, characters should have very distinct personalities. By that I mean you want to cover every personality cliche from tsundere to yandere and not missing any of them. Unfortunately I don’t think this will appeal to mainstream people but will definitely appeal to weeaboos and the japanese community if you play your cards right.
As far as how these creatures come to life, there’s multiple ways to do it.
- Digimon route, they come from other dimensions and need the bonds with humans to strengthen them etc.
- Pokemon/Sekirei (leaning more towards Sekirei here) where these creatures come from many different parts of the world and the trainers have to collect and build an army to stop something or someone from being bad.
- YuGiOh! route, the cards contain these monsters and they come to life with magic and such.
- Megaman Battle Network .EXE etc/Dragon Drive, you go to a digital world where the main character (aka you) must go and pick a girl and fight/train etc etc.
And yes, I understand that you want to have a non-kiddy storyline and such and the examples above are all kiddy but they aren’t meant to be used as a storyline but rather set what is their purpose in that world. All the stuff I mentioned above is extremely popular because the player gets an attachment to the characters because the characters are nothing more than another belonging, some extension of themselves or mainly a pure aspect of life that they believe just isn’t there anymore. What happens after the little things are in the world can be completely irrelevant as to why they got there, though they should be connected of course.
As far as mixing animal and mecha go, the designs look great and fit the animals pretty well and have all the features that let you know “Hey this chick is a dragon!” Don’t feel bad about borrowing ideas and concepts from other franchises. It’s done all the time and unless you blatantly and 100% completely copy something, no one’s gonna give you shit for it. Actually, if this was a Japanese game no one would give you shit for it because companies actually encourage this sort of stuff because in the long run it increases the popularity of their own works. Unfortunately the rest of the world isn’t as nice.
Wow that was a very interesting read. Thanks a lot. Now I guess I understand why Summer Wars is so popular, or at least the avatars are.
As for personalities, we have most of the big ones covered: Modest but confident protagonist, hot-blooded violent rage rival, Tsundere psychotic, obnoixious cute girl pretending to have class, cold-natured teacher, charismatic yet merciless leader, sadistic jerk, cute effeminate slacker, faithful apologetic military girl, try-hard badass gun-toting priest and so on.
So if we were to market this to a japanese crowd, we really should think about having the game translated to japanese, with japanese voices for the characters, right? Might actually be quite fun to research on that.
Another thing I forgot to mention, there are certain clothing and such styles and such to consider when making a character.
Two common traits for tsundere characters seem to haveare that they flat chested and/or sport twin tails. Little things like these give hint to the users as to which type of personality to expect from a character. They don’t necessarily have to follow this (I for one I am extremely tired of Rie Kugimiya’s tsundere crap so it would be great to see something fresh) but it is something to consider. Quiet (not necessarily shy) girls usually have long dark hair but I’m sure you have all that covered.
As a first project I say just concentrate on making the game first. If there is enough interest you will definitely start getting emails for translations. Katawa Shoujo seems to have a pretty good following among the Japanese crowd even though it’s been developed by non-Japanese so as long as you hit the spot you will definitely get a following.
Well our Tsundere has 9 tails lol. Well…sort of like tails. They’re sheathed swords that float behind him, giving the illusion of tails. It’s also a male. Tsundere don’t always have to be girls, at least I think. <_<?
The two tails thing probably comes from that old japanese legend about the Nekomata, or magical demon cat.
It’s perfectly fine for a male to be tsundere, though it is not something you see very often.
And by twin tails I meant the hairstyle with two ponytails, one on the left and another on the right. http://danbooru.donmai.us/data/2848b858d102789627d609513dd3aa81.png
But yeah, nekomata do have twin tails.
So your male character is a tsundere kyuubi? That has the potential for some good comedy.
By the way, “cyber/mecha/technology+animals/var.creatures” franchise is called Digimon if I’m not wrong. It too has fox characters, dragon characters, alot of designs, alot of ideas for special attacks. No reason for you not to dig there.
yes please make your designs even more shallow by basing them around anime personalities
you saying you wouldn’t play a street fighter game or character if you found the characters to be airheads?
everyone in sf is an airhead to begin with, what are you talking about
As opposed to most characters in fighting games which have no personality because very few companies actually bother to expand on them by including proper story modes? Yeah, you’re totally right. 
And herein lies a very important dichotomy.
SF characters are semi-offensive caricatures of certain races/nationalities (at least if we talk SFII). We can hash out their character in a sentence. They are beloved all over the world.
Guilty Gear characters are semi-original creations that ape some anime cliches/style quirks. We can hash out their character in a sentence as well. Until a few years ago, they were shat upon by other members of the fighting game hobby.
It’s not the personality in depth we care about, it’s what we can get in broad strokes. “Proud karate guy” is more iconic than “Tsundere tanuki girl”. People like iconic characters, and if you can add your own quirks to said iconic characters, than even better. If your characters are too weird or outside of an iconography, then people won’t respond to them as well. Unless you make something so bold that it forms it’s own iconography, which I don’t see happening here.
A design doesn’t have to be shallow just because it’s based on a popular archetype. Variation and how it’s handled is what makes them unique or not.
@Black Shroud Digimon is only cybernetics in a few cases. Most of the time they’re just stylised monsters. We’re actually focusing more on ‘soft’ technology with our characters. Think Metal Gear Solid’s living mechs and the ninja suits, or evangelion units. That sort of thing.
@ KMD most of the character archetypes we’re using are not too wacky. They’re pretty common at base level, but each character has rather human quirks rather than just being perfect archetypes, and backstories that delve into their psyche on a more personal level.
As for ‘tsundre tanuki girl’ you’ve kind of summed up the points of her personality that don’t matter. I could say the same about Ryu by saying “determined muscle man”. Setsuna (our tanuki) isn’t a tsundere first and foremost. She’s a young prodigy character, being a multi-talented detective/novelist/idol singer so she has that super star complex. She’s also finicky and and is obsessed with the concept of balance (hence her Yin-Yang design)
a more accurate way to sum her up would be ‘self-absorbed girl’ or ‘posh girl’
Proud karate guy is more iconic than Tsundere tanuki girl because the series became popular with those character designs in them. If street fighter was originally a game with moe characters and had achieved the same level of popularity, then the tsundere tanuki girl would be an iconic character archetype. Mario is a fat plumber, Sonic is a blue hedgehog, both are iconic characters as well mainly because in their time there wasn’t really quite anything like them. Also, things like popularity are pretty hard to measure right off the bat specially when you have shows like Gundam became popular AFTER the franchise was canceled.
Guilty Gear was trashed upon by the American community mainly, but Europe and Japan ate the designs up and licked them due to all their deliciousness (aka things that appeal to them). Guilty Gear was designed with a more obscure/indie mentality in mind, thus all the Rock/Heavy Metal references.
Ryu is pretty damn generic when it comes to designing a character, this becomes even more obvious if you’ve seen a lot of anime that pre-dates the SF franchise. He has many of the traits that would make him generic anime character #54954. Another thing to keep in mind is that many stereotypes eventually turn into or are tied to cliches and are used as ways to enhance certain traits.