If your intent is to distribute for a profit I wouldn’t recommend MUGEN. Afaik it’s not for commercial use. Fighter Maker and Game Maker are good if you want to sell your game.
Alright, that is good to know. Thanks. 
I’m going to be honest, and don’t take this wrong, but it’s going to take you a long time before you can even start to consider making a game. it sounds like you’d want to be the programmer, but haven’t started college yet. Programming is something that takes quite a long time to learn. There are different languages and the harder ones you don’t want to start with. If you’re going to be a CS major you usually start with the language ‘python’ or possibly ’ java '. Both can be used to program games, but ’ C ’ or ’ C++ ’ is what you should really get good at if you want to make games. Well I guess it depends on your platform. I’m a web guy that is also interested in games so I choose FLASH for my game stuff. In that case you would want to learn ActionScript 3.
Basically all I’m saying is that right now where you are, with little to no programming experience, it’s best not to set your sights so high. Games come waaaaay down the road when you get really good at programming.
It kinda sucks, but C++ is probably what you will need to learn, it’s used for pretty much everything. But you will definitely need to know Java as well, it’s quite easy though, you might already know it. Personally I don’t know much of that though, I’m a designer. Well an aspiring designer.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take it the wrong way. 
And I don’t expect to make games the first day out of college. :lol:
man, oh man do I have a lot to learn. 
:oops:
[details=Spoiler]I have 5 major game ideas I want to make in the future when I get in the biz, and a few other minor ones too.
- This fighter,
- a Zombie survival game (that takes some aspects from DR),
- a Robot Fighting MMO (that offers at least 10x the customization options of Custom Robo and draws a bit from it)
- a real-life simulation MMO that teaches kids about Wages, and to prepare them to live on their own and stuff like that.
- and my Magnum Opus that I’ve been making notes for and coming up with mechanics for for just about 2 years now. (I wish to keep secret for now)
(might get sued for #2 and #3 :
)
But yeah, it also sounds a little unreasonable to make them all though. :lol::lol::lol:[/details]
MMOs are absolutely unreasonable lol. Think about how many professionally produced MMOs fail terribly. I don’t see why you would be sued for those, unless yo u steal their game mechanics of course. Also, paraphrasing one of my lecturers, ideas are cheap, even your best idea is worth nothing to anyone else until you have something concrete to show people. Even your most well thought out game will not resemble your initial idea at all. First semester of uni/college/whatever you call it where you are will hammer this into you pretty hard.
If you are writing an engine, C++ would be best. And really, it’s hard to put a time frame on it. It also really depends on what you call “advanced” and if you don’t really know what you are doing right from the start, it will be a very difficult task. If I had an engine I’d be designing a game right now. XD
It’s not that C++ is better, it’s just what everyone uses and if you want to make a serious game (ie more than just you working on it), the easier others can access your code with their knowledge the better. C++ is kind of annoying, I don’t know it, but that’s why I’m a designer, not a programmer XD. XNA I think is needed if you want to put your game on Xbox, but it’s not widespread elsewhere obviously.
alright get me an artist, because i have had the framework for a good game for about a year now
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Probably not much longer than 3-4 months for the more advanced engines. The rest of the time would be spend tweaking stuff like frame data and physics properties. It took me about 1.5 months to code my fighter engine up in XNA (C#). It’s currently only missing throws. Once I figure out how I want to implement them, it should only take a couple days to code it up.
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It can definitely be done in C#. C# is fairly widely adopted now so plenty of people know it. I wouldn’t recommend C for coding a game. The lack of libraries would make it painful. Then you have to worry about licensing issues when you grab the GPL ones. Unless it’s an iPhone game. Objective C is just C with some added syntax. But there are iOS libraries you can use.
C++ has certain advantages over C# (portability is definitely the biggest one) but you might not even care about that.
Ok, I got myself a good C++ tutorial online. 144 pages. Oh boy, that’s a doozie. :oops:
I"d also like to add that you have to be pretty good with math too. Also, The_Killah29, programming is sort of hard at first… but one day down the line it just sort of clicks and things begin to make way more sense.
I’m above average at math so I think I’ll be ok in that aspect. Otherwise I learn anything with computers pretty quick. I was more taken aback with the ammount of reading I have to do with this tutorial. :lol::lol:
Come back in a year or two when you have something more than ideas.
Be sure to bring at least a single thing.
(Hunh. We both seem to going the “defined by elements” route, but we’re going in rather opposite directions. Interesting.)
Well, since everyone above pretty much covered everything else and since I have no real knowledge of programming or spriting/modeling, the only piece of generic if valid advice I can give to you is to read this: Make Games - Finishing a Game.
As other people have already rightly stated, it isn’t as simple as that, unfortunately. This is especially true when it comes to acquiring help for such nebulous designs.
But go on.
Hmmm…20 characters to start off with seems like a lot, especially when you have to consider all the match-ups. Even just an “initial 8” is a lot when considering all the match-ups (56 when not counting the 8 mirror match-ups), especially since that’s not counting the bosses–you generally have more leeway them, though, since they’re neither playable nor meant to be “balanced” per se, so they should be fine as so long as you can ensure every character can actually win against them at the hardest difficulty or whatever.
Getting past that, it’s rather difficult to tell what you actually want to do, even design-wise beyond the “element” personified thing. So far, all I can really tell is that this seems like it wants to focus on weapons and the combatants are likely to be non-human, but still generally humanoid. That is at least a starting point given there’s been a few weapon-based (2D) fighting games with the Samurai Shodown games and the much less talked (or played) Weaponlord game (which IIRC, “invented” parrying).
Speaking of which, it would be a lot easier to try you at least come up with the barest of character designs if you gave us the story behind this concept, even if the motivation is “universal concepts take form to kick the stuffing out of each other”, and/or the most general sense of a direction you would have the overall game go in. Do you plan for it be like a Street Fighter game where there’s rather limited movement and a focus on spacing and such? A KOF game, which is still somewhat about spacing but is more generally focused on Rushing Down? An “animu” game where everyone has air dashes (in which case, lolis are doubly necessary)? What exactly?
I’m not asking you to have a super detailed response to any of this (obviously), but even I’ve thought of stuff for my game idea and I’m not planning on making that any time soon (for a number of reason). Characters names and designs are all done as are general focuses, the story and even color palette ideas.
So…yeah, what exactly do you see this headed from a design standpoint?
P.S. I will give you credit for putting both Good and Evil as concepts in quotations. It’s nice to see a (potential) game not be so absolutist about such concepts. …Of course, a lot of that credit is somewhat sullied by you then using “Thunder”–quotations mine–as a label when I assume you mean for that to be electrical/Lightning. If it’s actually sound-based, then double-kudos. Otherwise I really don’t understand why people and games do that so damn often when Thunder and Lightning are pretty much distinctly separate, even if they largely occur together.
I will check that link out ASAP, thanks.
I know that this wouldn’t be simple, almost nothing is. But I’m not above asking help. And I do thank everyone for helping
BTW, what did you mean by ‘defined by elements route’? If you don’t mind me asking?
Yeah I know 20 characters would be hard to do, but I never said I thought making any game is easy. It will take some time but I’m sure I and my teammates would be able to do it. At least I’m not doing 35, 50 or even 56 like Capcom has done. XD.
A weapons-based fighter on a 2D fighting game (I don’t mean 2D graphics) is the plan. as you may have noticed all of the looks I’ve done so far all have a weapon, or will have one when I’m done with them. They will all have the humanoid body and you’ll understand it when you see below.
As for the story, the Universe is coming apart at the seams by an unknown entity (Fear as it will later be revealed. Also the unplayable boss character) and all the concepts/deities (can be decided later) chose a group of humans (who are the most willful and strongest of heart and mind) to find out what’s going on and put a stop to/fix the problem. The reason they fight is that they still retain their human personalities (which played part in their selection proscess) and tend to get on each other’s nerves, leading to fights. Eventually they come to their senses, over come lots of crap and their fears during their journeys and join together to save the universe. When that is done they get sent back to Earth or their other planets with wiped memories, but having a tiny hint that they were, for but a moment, a part of something bigger.
This is a little hard to say since I’m still in the middle of planning and learning, so I can’t say as of yet. Sorry. :oops:
Philosophy class, Buddhism (and Fallout XP) teaches you alot. 
I know good and evil are two sides of the same coin and what you do could be considered both depending on who you ask.
And yes ‘Thunder’ is sound with sonic attacks that cause shockwaves with, shall I say, a few ‘electrifying’ results (only a small amount of his moves, like 2 or 3 will do this). Should probably change Thunder to Sound so people don’t get confused. :rolleyes:
I believe that Thunder and lightning are considered the same just because they happen relatively close together and it’s just easier to consider them the same.
My good tutorial i got is a little but to complicated (could be because I haven’t been in school for a little over a year :lol:). I may have to get the “For Dummies” version as a back up, just in case. 
(Damn it. I always see something only after someone quotes it.)
Well, this is going to be a rather…involved response, so I’ll probably end up using a spoiler tag or two.
Not a problem. It’s not like I wrote it or anything as evidenced by it being actually coherent.
Hmm…how to explain this without side-tracking this thread or giving too much away on my end while still getting the point across. I’ll use spoilers here since I’m doubtless going to fail when it comes to trying to be concise about this.
The Usual Abject Failure
[details=Spoiler]Let’s take Street Fighter’s Dhalsim. When you think of or see Dhalsim, what’s the first attribute of his that comes to mind? Is it honestly his Yoga Fire and other flame-related moves? Probably not. They’re definitely a good chunk of his arsenal (even if no one ever really uses Yoga Blast) and something that you would expect Dhalsim to have no matter what game he appears in, but they take backseat to his stretching abilities and, arguably, even his teleportation ones. Dhalsim can spend entire rounds just poking at you & jumping or teleporting away way whenever you get close and never using his fire-related moves and still generally do well/win. Similarly, there’s nothing in his visual design that even suggests he “should” be able to spit fire at you; pretty much every still image you see of him has him stretching in some bizarre, inhuman way with little, if any, flames coming from his mouth.
But perhaps Dhalsim is too atypical to be a good example since, due to the length his limbs and his general play-style, he generally doesn’t have to pull off combos or even use special (or super) moves at all to win; for this same reason, this is why I didn’t automatically use Kazuki or Sogetsu or a couple of other people from Samurai Shodown despite mentioning it just above: that game is very normal-focused as a whole.
So, I’ll instead use Kula Diamond. Right from the get-go, you can tell she probably going to be ice-themed from the blue hair and the ice skates that you can see in most still images of her. In-game, it’s even more apparent that is the case even before she throws a single move since, if you pay attention to her idle animation, she’s pretty much constantly surrounded by small swirls of ice. And, well, once she gets going, you literally have to blind not to see the ice theme, especially since she’s one of the few “elemental” characters who has a good deal of elemental representation going even into her normals, as seen in pretty much all her :c: moves. As much as she may annoy me at times, I can’t deny that Kula is a very well-designed character (visually).
Now, as for what I mean for “defined by elements”, it’s basically trying to create a game where every character comes across at least half as well as Kula from a visual standpoint, both inside the game (since otherwise some people are going to constantly be wondering how the character is representing what they’re supposed to represent, which is distracting) and outside the game (for marketing purposes and attempting get people’s attention with “loud” and/or likable designs). That automatically limits a lot more what you can and can’t do from a design standpoint. So now you not only have to worry about how a character will generally play (whether they focus on trying to get in, keeping away, multiple hits because they have low damage, power singular hits while generally being sluggish or otherwise limited in opening you up, a grappler, etc.), but you’re also generally more limited to how a character can enact that play-style when it comes to how their moves look and perhaps other properties.
However, you don’t necessarily have to go as extreme as having your Fire character be constantly ablaze like Cinder from Killer Instinct (mine isn’t, outside of maybe in her other “form”) or your Ice character having literally ever move of his (or hers) be ice hitting you like Iceman (mine doesn’t, even though he makes all his weapons out of ice). Your aims are a bit…odd compared to mine, because pretty much all my characters are human (or look human) sans like three characters, none of whom are in the first game. Additionally, the first game is only going to have 12 people in minus the two bosses–well, technically 13 with Flame character’s other form I mentioned–and so there’s less chance of (visual) overlap.
On the one hand, you’re a lot more confined to visual designs when it comes to your six elemental characters just because they’re supposed to be outright incarnations and avatars of elements rather than just people who have that type of power (for reasons I’m not going to get into) like mine. On the other hand, when it comes to your other 14 characters, you have a lot more free-range (within reason) due to how abstract most of those concepts are. So you can have Peace be a Gentle Giant archtype who throws your ass around with counters like Goro Daimon or a moe-looking genki girl “loli” that constantly flashes peace signs…and throws your ass around with counters like Goro Daimon with equal reason; given that I have to agree with Divinus’s assessment being true, I would unfortunately suggest the latter. Of course this can backfire by having some concepts that are so open-ended, such as “Chaos” or “Order” or “Good” or “Evil”, that they could easily begin to step on each others’ toes. But I’ll get into that just below, especially since this was (of course) longer than I wanted it to be.[/details]
Is that what you meant? Or were you asking for more specific examples of what I had planned?
The thing is, though, Capcom has never, to my recollection, ever made 20 characters from scratch at once. Street Fighter (II) started out with 8 characters, then added the 4 bosses (as playable characters) and then the 4 new challengers. That’s only 16 characters over a course of years and several editions by the time Super Turbo came out–well, 17 including Akuma and obviously this isn’t counting the O. versions of anyone, partly because they’re not visually different at all.
Similarly, citing Marvel 2 as an example of “lots and lots characters” with sprite work being done is probably an one of the worst examples since, off the top of my head, Capcom “only” had to make up 8 sprites completely from scratch even in that game of 56 characters: Ruby Heart (how I miss thee), Sonson, Amingo, Tron Bonne, Servbot, Cable, Jill and Marrow. Literally everyone else’s sprite came from another older Capcom game, whether it was one of the versus games before that, Children of the Atom, Darkstalkers or, of course, Street Fighter (Alpha).
If Capcom had made all 56 characters from scratch in the relatively short amount of time in-between MvC1 and MvC2, then I could perhaps see your point, but they didn’t, so…yeah; there’s a reason that Morrigan’s sprite-work is so infamous. I don’t think any company has ever done that, actually, even SNK considering how a good deal of the characters in KOF originally came from Fatal Fury or even Art of Fighting.
Regardless, the fact is that you and whatever teammates you can scrounge up would still be doing more simultaneous work than Capcom (or any other company) has ever done just on sprites or models alone. Nevermind having to co-ordinate with those teammates, to worry about their schedules or what happens if they leave and to invest a good deal of time planning time-consuming things related to a large amount that isn’t related to sprite-work/model-work like match-ups, trying to make sure one’s characters playstyle doesn’t obviously obviate another and overall balance/coherence.
So, if you’re not doing 2D graphics, but are doing a 2D fighting game, I’m guessing you just mean a game where there isn’t side-stepping, correct? (Or free-roaming side-stepping or whatever. I’m not going to pretend I’m at all familiar with those concepts.)
I see. Nothing much to say here except with regards to what I put in bold: If they’re all humans, then why are other planets involved at all?
This would hardly be the first piece of fiction where a threat to “the entire universe” were dealt with in such a geocentric fashion. So, yeah, I’m not sure I see the point of involving other planets if those beings are just going to be human as well.
Fair enough. As I said, I didn’t expect anything depth about system. That’s one of the harder things to plan out.
Oh, I don’t think most people would be confused about Thunder even if you made it entirely electrical attacks. It’s just a pet peeve of mine, which is also why I gave you kudos for not making Good or Evil absolutist concepts, which most people would also be fine with.
By the way, you should check out these http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits, some of the videos, especially those in the first 2 seasons are quite good. They basically give you a dot point summary of what uni will be like for you. Definitely paralleled my experiences pretty closely. Some of the terms they use might be kind of odd to you, such as ludus and gamification, but it’s all explained pretty well and entertainingly as well.
Basically, you have no idea what you are getting into, no mater how determined you think you are, nothing is going to happen the way you are planning it. I’m not saying forget your ideas, but just take into consideration that you won’t be making a game to compete with Capcom or Aksys in the next few years.
Doesnt Marvel 3 count since all the models couldnt have possibly come from another game? Or were you talking about sprites?
@Killah - Maybe your best thing to do (as well as going to school for it) would be putting your concepts into one of the aforementioned game programs and maybe finding other people who would be willing to help based on what they see. For example, if you have the character designs and system, you could make two characters in MUGEN and then program them to fight as if they were in your dream game (like giving them parries, instant kill moves, Rapid Cancels, and/or whatever else your system would have). This way it’s not JUST an idea and more people can see visually what type of game you’re trying to make.