She uses Photoshop and draws at the real pixel resolution, and then my engine blows it up x3. The native resolution is x3 what it looks like it is so that the movement can be smoother and the hitboxes can be more precise. She might switch over to GraphicsGale, but that hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve been reading Pocket Rumble posts on other forums and communities, especially discussions not started by yourself, and there is still a quite strongly negative opinion about the sprites. People boldly claim you’re ripping SNK off and stealing their work. I know it’s not true, but how does that affect you? Are you planning to rework on the graphic style again, should this kickstarted project not be funded?
I personally feel like you can’t pull off the “pocket” sprite style without people whining about ripoffs. It’s simply too unique not to remind people about MotM for example. So you’ll either have to live with haters talking about calling SNK so they’ll sue you, or do something completely different… And possibly be hated for something else.
It’s frustrating, but ultimately something we just have to deal with when making the game so obviously trying to look like an NGPC game. It’s important to remember we are still in pre-alpha, and while we are most likely
keeping the same NGPC fighter style sprites, we are going for 3S level of smoothness in animations, the absolute maximum you can possibly get out of this resolution. Right now the animations are not a good representation of what the final product is going to look like. I think the smoother the animations look, the less you are going to hear about rips.
just read the update y’all posted. really great stuff. I appreciate the transparency. it must be very frustrating with regards to graphics complaints. the goals that you’re setting out to accomplish are fantastic.
I just wanted to let you know that I’m trying to signal boost this KS as much as I possibly can. there’s so much passion that I can feel with every little bit of information that you folks put out.
also, I wanted to extend myself as a person for voicework; I’d really like to contribute in any way I can. I can PM you with some samples…etc if you’d like. I hope some fellow SRK members feel as strongly as I do as well.
cheers~
I just noticed the damage in the game seems very low. Even with simple things like DP into Super.
Tenchi’s super isn’t really powerful because of the damage (it doesn’t do much more than a full upkick connect), it’s powerful for 0f startup, high speed, eating other projectiles, and because you gain meter so quickly. At the moment, both Tenchi and Naomi have ~50 percent corner combos (although Tenchi has to catch you in the air with antler DP to pull that off), which is great because we want corner pressure to be a HUGE deal. You won’t be doing massive damage off of BnBs (~18 percent), but there is definitely high damage stuff in the game.
50% damage off corner combos only sounds low. You should be able to at least get close to that off a hit-confirm into super, like 3rd Strike.
18 percent isn’t that much I don’t think. That’s like give or take SF4? Maybe a bit lower. (Assuming 200 damage average BnB damage with 1k HP average)
There’s quite a lot of supers in 3S that are 0-2f. Akuma’s SA1 and Ryu’s SA1 (Both FB Supers) are 2f and 3f respectively.
and
The current design plan right now is to make the game mimic a tournament match in a 3 round structure (so much so that the loser can swap characters at the end of the round). High damage is really great when you are running a local tournament with multiple games in a match, but it kind of sucks when in you are in a ranked 1-game-only online environment. I don’t think you should lose ranking from a grand total of two bad reads. This could have been remedied by having more rounds, but that felt kind of awkward and calming down damage solved the problem a lot less awkwardly. I do think we are definitely higher damage than SF4 though, although I don’t play SF4 much anymore so I can’t really confirm that. I think it’s important to mention that Tenchi is the ONLY character that will have hit-confirm into super, other characters have EXs and Roman Cancels and transformations, so basing our game’s damage off of the current hit-confirm to super is weirder than in other games.
We are definitely in too early of a stage to commit to the damage, and I think beta testers will have a LOT of say as to whether or not we continue to enforce this, but as of right now we are designing it around the ranked online environment.
Only one character with a hit confirm to super? That kinda tones down the “3S-ness” of it. I mean, one of the factors that made meter so important in 3S was how much having it changed the match ups and for a number of characters, that was due to the damage option they suddenly had off a hit confirm from meter. Now in a game that seems to want to emulate this meter dynamic from 3S, having the “hit-confirm to super” character not do much damage of a hit confirm kinda takes away from that.
It’s too early to tell if ~30% off of a BnB with meter is a weak damage option relative to our game’s damage, especially because Tenchi gains meter so quickly. Like I said, we are trying to keep those numbers small because we are balancing around ranked one-game matches. I think damage numbers for all characters are something that are going to naturally fluctuate as we get some of the more ridiculous characters in there (ex: Quinn’s RC transformation in a game with no damage scaling), but right now these numbers seem like a good fit for both Tenchi and Naomi with ranked matches in mind.
At the very least, I can promise you this: the numbers aren’t going anywhere but up from where they are now.
IMO, 30% is fine if said character has multiple stocks. But with only 1 stock, the meter option might not present enough of a threat or consequence for a bad read, considering that the player will have to rebuild that meter after use which means that the opposing player may be open to risking taking that 30% hit if just to deprive them of meter.
This’ll be especially problematic for Naomi since she needs to charge for meter which, if we think about it, she won’t really get to do much in the middle of a heated match.
Naomi gets a minimum of half a bar off of most knockdowns, and that’s assuming you don’t want to give up your oki. You’ll only be getting knockdowns from overhead/uppercut/DP, but those are frequent enough that even if you are playing maximum rushdown you’ll be getting a good amount of charge.
If you hit someone with a super with Tenchi, even in someone’s face, you can safely do two antlerairs for a quick 30% gain in meter. I’d consider that pretty threatening assuming the Tenchi player will be doing normal shoto stuff after that. Tenchi gains meter quick enough that he almost doesn’t need stocks for supers to be a constant threat.
the damage stuff is going to differ wildly depending on peoples’ tastes, but the main thing about “high vs low damage” for me isn’t really ‘how much max damage can you get?’ so much as ‘do pokes/stray hits feel painful?’ high max damage is nice too but playing vega in ST for example, i like feeling as though i really am winning when i stab the dude in the face three times or whatever.
an example of what i don’t like is sf4 dhalsim where the dude keeps you fullscreen for a year and a half but you’re still just not dead somehow. that game actually has pretty decent max damage because of ultras, but only the supermega beefiest normals feel satisfying to smack the opponent with.
damage looks fine; as long as using your meter actually feels like you get something for it (aka NOT SF4 series), then you’re golden.
there’s nothing worse than having a game with 30% BnBs and then using half of your meter lets you do 36% instead. also important is giving characters with meter a lot of utility: Tenchi looks like the master of this with a quick-charging meter and infinitely useful 0f super fireball that prevents options/can follow others.
regardless of zzzz-length HD combos, KOF XIII really got meter management & utility w/ EX moves right.
Simple fix, BnB’s do 25-30% depending on the character and with meter it goes up to 40-45%. Problem solved.
Not really. XIII’s focus on EX moves made a lot of non-meter reversals and anti airs garbage. There are very few regular DP’s/flash kicks that are worth a damn in favor of making EX moves a stronger tool. You can say that it gave EX moves more utility than the meterless counterpart, but only because it stole that utility. That isn’t good design to me. They did a better job with EX fireballs, but those aren’t things you see super often.
As for meter management, the only major thing XIII did correctly was move HD and drive cancels to a separate bar. That cleans up a lot of the mess 02 had and leaves your main bar for guard cancels and EX/Supers. That being said if XIII had less of a combo focus and people were using guard cancels and EX moves more, you’d be fighting to keep meter. As is people are okay with blocking and getting put in bad situations because one cr.B is all it takes to turn everything around.
5 days left and $3.5k to go until this finally gets funded, let’s do this!
I’m fairly sure the only thing this kickstarter project lacks is exposure. I’m confident that you will make it (even if it is without stretch goals) but if the project fails and if you could restart another one right after this one, you should go for it. Most people who backed would most likely do it again, I know I would, and you’d have extra days to get noticed by more potential players, websites or youtubers.
Did the 2BF guys ask you to put Zubaz in the game or was it your decision?
they got the “design a boss fight” reward tier.