Shattered - New Fighting Game in Development

d3v · August 29, 2014, 6:32pm

Depends. Mike is keeping the security on the assets in Skullgirls tight since he does want to prevent certain kinds of modding. Especially since I think he does charge to license his engine.

DangerOnTheRanger · August 29, 2014, 8:08pm

There’s thankfully quite a bit of leeway legally-speaking between do-whatever-you-want-with-our-stuff and this-is-ours-no-looking-no-touching. You might want to poke around Creative Commons’ license chooser and see if one there floats your boat - if I had to guess, you’d probably like CC-BY-NC-ND or CC-BY-NC the most; the former lets people redistribute your art for free as long as they state that you made it, but doesn’t let them (legally) modify it, claim they made it, or charge money for their own copy. BY-NC is the exact same, but it allows people to legally modify your art (which may prove handy for MUGEN fans), though they can’t charge money for that either. The Creative Commons licenses have a pretty good track record of being legally solid licenses, so I wouldn’t worry too much about whether they hold water in court or not.

Keep in mind you don’t have to license your code under the same license if you don’t want to - heck, I’d advise against putting the code under any of the Creative Commons licenses since those were really only meant for art/plaintext anyway and it’d technically allow someone to legally stick your game up on a torrent site or other normally illegal download facility. The most prominent example of dual-licensing of a commercial game I can think of is id Software’s Quake and Doom series. id Software periodically sticks their older game engines under an open-source license (GNU General Public license version 2, or version 3 for Quake 3, Doom 3 and later, I think), but they always keep their art under a proprietary license - there’s no reason, legally speaking, you could have the art under a license like CC-BY-NC-ND and have the code/executable under a license that doesn’t allow people to do anything but run the game. The spriterippers and MUGEN enthusiasts get their sprites, you prevent anyone from making a dime off your artwork without your say-so, and you keep full control over your game’s code - everyone’s happy.

Still, I’m no lawyer. Obviously you want to consult a real lawyer who went to school for stuff like this before making any serious licensing decisions, if possible. Far as I can tell there should be no issues with using something like CC-BY-NC-ND or CC-BY-NC for your art and then locking down your code as much as legally possible, though.

BurnYourEgo · September 3, 2014, 2:59am

This is probably the first time on this site someone should legitimately summon ultra david for advice, or better yet contact him directly for proper legal advice.

COAL · September 9, 2014, 11:54pm

More Pre-RFD updates!
http://blog.team18k.com/gameplay/pre-rfd-updates-2/

We’re a few weeks along, and Red Fight District III is coming ever closer. We once again have a batch of changes to share with you!

One of the major complaints by alpha testers was our mockup grab, which consisted of mockup sprites and the inability to throw your opponent forwards, which made it useless when applying pressure on a cornered opponent, as it would throw the opponent out of the corner.

One of these problems has now been resolved! We now have a fully sprited version of the throw animation, and we are hard at work to implement the ability to throw your opponent forward.

http://youtu.be/Gxtjuo9ZzW8

The previous blog showed you our newly added superstop, and while this was a nice start, the pause without any effects was a bit awkward. The screen now becomes dark for the duration of the superstop, and a quick screen shake effect take place. This is however not apparent on youtube, as it cuts half the frames of animation (and thus, the shaking frames).

Of course, these superstop effects are still not final, but the superstop should be easier to read visually now.

http://youtu.be/GAXDHBr3A7I

We’ve lengthened the stage vertically and added vertical panning to the game. Vertical moves such as uppercuts will now be followed by the camera, adding an extra bit of visual oomph.

http://youtu.be/DqRG-NoEw5s
Attentive readers might notice we’ve changed the properties of the Hard punch dragon punch a bit.

Finally, we encountered this funny ‘little’ bug a few weeks ago. Why did we wait before showing it to you? We wanted to kill it dead, so you could not recreate it at RFD. Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/qZfwk5EqOuk

COAL · September 11, 2014, 11:11pm

AND the RFD bracket is full!

phoenixnl · September 23, 2014, 12:18am

We’ve got another update for the upcoming RFD tournament! This time a couple of big and important visual and and audio updates!

http://blog.team18k.com/gameplay/pre-rfd-updates-3/

Pre-RFD updates #3

RFD is coming ever closer, and once again we’ve added a couple more changes to the game that are highly noticeable.

The first change is one we alluded to in the previous post already. Not only do we have a new and fully animated throw, now Julia can also throw the opponent in forward and backward.

Several testers expressed the desire to have some sound in the game. Attacks now make sounds on whiff, on hit and on block, as you can hear in the showcase video we’ve included below. None of the team are experts when it comes to audio, so these initial sound effects are only temporary. Nevertheless, we feel that it certainly makes the game feel more complete, even in this early stage.

Having sound allows for easier reactions (one’s reactions on sound cues is significantly faster than that of visual cues), and overall just gives a lot more impact to hits.

Another feature we’ve implemented that we really wanted to be in before RFD, is the combo counter. Although figuring out what combos and what doesn’t, is quite intuitive with Julia, having the game actually tell you what combos and what doesn’t helps tremendously with any game you first pick up, so we’re very happy to have it in.

Player 1 and Player 2 have had the exact same colors for a very long time now. And while for showcasing some new features, or just practicing combos, this is hardly ever confusing, it certainly can get confusing in the heat of battle. We have now implemented a new color palette for Player 2 Julia, so that now you’ll know exactly who is who when playing! If by any chance you have a variation of colorblindness that still makes the two Julias hard to distinguish please let us know, we’re more than willing to tweak the colors.

http://youtu.be/jWA4ghhLXX8

MajormelisThere · September 27, 2014, 10:25am

damn, those sounds sound nice and meaty

COAL · October 6, 2014, 12:51am

Time sure is going fast! New update time!

There is only one week left until Red Fight District (RFD) starts, the final countdown has begun! We are very pleased with the state of the game right now as it feels stable and balanced, there are still some minor bugs that need to be fixed, but we have locked down the code in terms of gameplay changes and feature additions until after RFD so we don’t have to fear for sudden bugs ruining the game! We still have a lot of visual and audio content to add (not to speak of additional characters), but we have made great strides when it comes to the playability and presentation of the game in these past weeks.

One of the latest additions is an updated Shatter animation which now has some visual effect and sound effects to make it clearer when you have shattered your opponent.

http://youtu.be/V5Oo4gxqx3Q

Saturday the 4th of November we held a final playtest session with Shoutcaster/Marvel Fanatic WrathTheFurious (who will be commentating our finals on the RFD stream!), Marvel player CorrezZio, Team18K animator Bob Sagat and coder/designer Phoenix. It was a joy to see the excitement of players and how fast they picked up Julia’s combos, blockstrings and tricks. We’re very thankful for WrathTheFurious and CorrezZio taking the time to test the game with us!

Here’s a nice snippet of hype moment where Phoenix lays down the pain on his opponent.

http://youtu.be/3XAMFbs4hCY

We recorded more than just this snippet, the following video clocks in at just under an hour of Shattered gameplay between Phoenix, WrathTheFurious and CorrezZio. Sadly, we did not really keep track of who played when, so we only know that Phoenix was p1 and Wrath was p2 for the first few games. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/Vm5xuEtKW2s

The tournament at RFD will be held on Saturday, and by the current schedule the finals will be streamed at 8pm (GMT+1), it will be streamed by the Hadoken.eu. Of course, the schedule is subject to change, so if you want to be kept up to date about the progress of the tournament and when it will go live, make sure to follow us on Twitter

Coal

Bob_Sagat · October 9, 2014, 1:27am

Not too long 'till the first Shattered tournament!

This is the first dream event of the twenty first century!
If you choose the wrong colour palette, you may just loooooooose.
The winner of this tournament is the strongest player in the world!
Julia is as good as they come!
Any Julia can win the tournament!
Only ability- GREAT!
I knew this game was in your heart!
The minimum wage fighting 2014 is about to begin!
Hardcore fans have been eagerly anticipating this event and now the waiting is finally over…
Check your training wheels at the door, ladies and gentlemen!
This is gonna be one incredible battle, that won’t easily be forgotten!
The time has come, with the new history, that’s going to unfold…
You can feel the intensity in the air as the hopes, dreams and hearts of these warriors are about to be put to the ultimate test of skill!
What they’re after is: the title of the world’s strongest!
Now, ar-ar-are you ready to ge-ge-get it on?!
This is gonna be a tournament to remember!
Live and let die!
Go for broke!

I know that you’ll. Be. Theeeeeeeere…

COAL · October 10, 2014, 6:30pm

Tomorrow is going to be a big day for us! We just handled some last minute business for tomorrow and we’re almost set to go!

T-shirts!

http://i.imgur.com/axpuWC6.jpg?2

Folders!

http://i.imgur.com/Jgn46T6.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/5eMq63I.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/IL9q0qG.jpg?1

COAL · October 20, 2014, 1:18am

(I hate how the blogpost will otherwise show up at the last post of this page)

COAL · October 20, 2014, 1:22am

Red Fight District was a blast! Get ready for a blogpost with all the ins and outs!
http://blog.team18k.com/showcase/rfd-showcase-report/

Last weekend was one we have been looking forward to and been working towards for quite some time. The third edition of Red Fight District, one of the European major tournaments, was held last weekend in Amsterdam and we were there to show off our game!

We had our setup close to the entrance of the venue, right next to Team Reptile, another Dutch developer who you might know from their projectile fighting game Lethal League.

http://blog.team18k.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/playing.jpg

On Saturday we ran an official RFD Shattered side tourney. 16 people signed up, and we ran a single elimination tournament. Players had about an hour to familiarize themselves with the game, which a lot of the competitors made use of.

For the participants of the tournament, as well as for generally interested people, we printed some info leaflets with a short explanation of the game system and Julia’ s moveset. For anyone that is interested in the contents of this leaflet, we’ve uploaded the PDFs: Inner pages and outer pages.

In the evening Armshouse streamed the semi-finals and Grand Finals with commentary from WrathTheFurious and our own Phoenix.

The semi-finals were Fulaani vs. LLL.Emersion and LLL.MBR vs RSD.RobinRamirez. Sadly the semi-finals between LLL.MBR and RSD.RobinRamirez were lost due to technical issues.

The finals were between Fulaani and LLL.MBR and can be seen in full below.

http://youtu.be/fRdUHNNhD_8

We want to congratulate LLL.MBR for winning the first tournament, he received one of the Shattered T-shirts that we had made!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bzuo1Q3CMAAOEIC.jpg

Sunday day was dedicated solely to free play. Many people got to play the game, and many were very enthusiastic. Some people gave very useful concrete advice, while others gave us many ideas to tweak Julia indirectly. We’ve already been hard at work to tweak some hitboxes and properties of her moveset.

On Sunday, RFD was also visted by the guys at Pixelcake.nl a Dutch game website. They made a really nice two-part report on Red Fight District. In the second part Phoenix was interviewed to talk about the game, which can be seen below. Sadly, for the international community, the interview is in dutch and the youtube translation is horrible beyond comprehension (but pretty hilarious), but for all you Dutchies, go check it out!

(skip to 4:38)
http://youtu.be/xCCzZAf2nRI

The Preview, photos and Part 1 of the report by Pixelcake.

We would like to thank RCR and the rest of the Red Fight District crew, for having us at there, we had a fantastic time. WrathTheFurious for helping out with the commentating of the finals and James Bardolph for streaming them. Correzio, Traumatisch and Bounze for transport. Finally, we would like to thank Dr.Grammar, Fulaani and RSD.RobinRamirez for the many hours of play they have put into the game, giving suggestions and ideas.

We also finally updated the front page post a bit.

AsteriskBlue · October 20, 2014, 1:40am

Just saw some of the footage. It looks great already guys!

Monpochi · October 22, 2014, 5:47am

Seriously loving the look and feel of this game. I popped in at the blog and saw some of the other characters slated. Imma try and do some fan art. :#

phoenixnl · October 22, 2014, 11:26am

Awesome! We’d love to get fan art!

COAL · October 22, 2014, 2:14pm

Oh man thats really great!

I hope you won’t be too let down if characters change quite drastically after you fan-arted them, only Julia is really finished in her looks.

truendymion · November 1, 2014, 9:03pm

That manual looks sick! I love full color manuals.

COAL · November 4, 2014, 1:05am

This time a somewhat more indepth blogpost written by Phoenix!

http://blog.team18k.com/gameplay/new-gameplay-changes/

Post-RFD Gameplay changes

RFD was a great chance to get a lot of playtesting in. Watching the players play the game exposed several bugs and gameplay issues that we have fixed in the past weeks. We’d like to walk you through some of the changes we’ve made.

An issue that multiple testers had been commenting on for some time now, is that the position that Julia’s projectile spawned made it very difficult to jump over the projectile and punish. We have designed for Julia to be a character that can set up fireball traps, and when anticipating a jump-in, could use her anti-air normals and special to punch the opponent out of the air.

But the projectile spawned so high, and so close to Julia’s body, that in some positions, it was possible to throw a projectile, and anti-air the opponent with the next projectile if they tried to jump over.

We’ve moved the place where the arrow appears more to the front which should solve this issue. Moreover, it has some side effects we’re very happy with. Julia can now cr.HK into her projectile from much further away, make it a much better string to poke with.

For example, cr.HK xx qcf+HP now combos after two blocked light attacks.

http://youtu.be/XPN5vBJJF5g

The super suffered from the same problem as Julia’s projectile. It was a bit too easy to anti-air with, moreover, it spawned so close to Julia’s body that it was quite difficult to combo off it. By moving it forward significantly, it is now a lot easier to use st.LK to beat out a low attack and cancel into super and have it actually combo.

Also simply confirming into super off cr.LK xx cr.LK xx st.LK, is now a lot less range dependant.

http://youtu.be/AWD3iYHy7HE

With Julia’s normal projectiles, the qcf+LP gives a slow projectile and qcf+HP gives a fast projectile. Before, Julia’s super would only travel with one speed (the speed of the light projectile). We’ve now added to option to choose between the two speeds. We’re still playing around with the variables, but we like how the fast version allows for some long range reaction punishes.

http://youtu.be/28Dh3nShj64

Some of you who have watched the RFD grand finals may have noticed that sometimes an airborne opponent would drop out of the super fireball after one hit. We’ve tweaked this, so that this should no longer happen now.

Finally, Julia’s flying kick attacks always whiff on crouchers, but it is her most damaging special. We wanted it to be a bit easier to convert into maximum damage off a full jump-in combo, and for that we’ve made it so that Julia’s crouching hard punch now forces stand on crouching opponents, so that cr.HP into qcb+HK always hits.

http://youtu.be/JnpvoBRZr6k

As some of you may have heard, YouTube has finally added 60fps support. We’re really excited about because Shattered, and fighting games in general, look much better at 60fps. Right now it is only possible to watch 60fps videos in the Chrome web browser, but it will likely be available for other browsers soon too. From this post onwards, we’ll try to to upload 60fps footage whenever we can!

Shinjojin · November 14, 2014, 5:44pm

Hmm, looks pretty interesting.

COAL · November 17, 2014, 5:30pm

Time for a new blog update with some info about our upcoming character Ushah!
http://blog.team18k.com/characters/ushah-development/

Now that Julia is mostly finished, we’ve started development on Ushah. We had already decided on most of his moveset set, had created some artwork and had written down a rudimentary background story, but now we have truly commenced to give him form both visually and gameplay-wise.

In terms of appearance the biggest obstacle we have to tackle is the mechanical arm. We have to figure out the shape of the arm, the position of the moving parts and how to convert it into a proper scale for the sprites. Here is a small part of the recent concept art.

http://i.imgur.com/q1IR7F1.png

http://i.imgur.com/8MtKFaj.png

One of the earlier development sketches of Ushah’s arm that Bob Sagat has created.

http://i.imgur.com/aGFl1Co.png

The design of the mechanical arm has gone through some revisions and developments. This more solid armor-like version of the arm, is the direction we are moving towards at the moment. The ‘wrist’ portion widens outwards like a cannon muzzle. The steam gun in Ushah’s arm can release its steam shot around the hand this way.

http://i.imgur.com/Sp9xGT9.gif

A study of the new arm design in motion. It looks solid from different angles.

We’ve started to make a mock-up version of Ushah. Right now it is just his standing and crouching moves, with the framedata implemented as originally designed. This way we are able to quickly see what feels off, what should be adjusted and how. We’ve made a compilation of some of his moves and move properties in the video below.

http://youtu.be/afkIzko1vo8

The first clip shows: cr.LK xx cr.LP xx st.LK, Julia tries to retaliate with st.HP, but Ushah presses his st.HP, and the armor on hit st.HP blocks Julia’s attack and hits her.

The next clip shows: cr.LP, cr.HP, a basic link combo, followed by cr.LK, cr.HK, showing that Ushah’s cr.HK knocks down on hit.

We are exploring some unique super mechanics for Ushah. As a grappler, Ushah tries to limit his opponent’s movement to get in and grab them. His super lays down screens of steam with his mechanical arm/steam gun. This steam will impede the movement speed of the opponent, making it easier for Ushah to get in close and really hurt his opponent.

We’d like to put a call out for any concept artists that would be interested in helping along with Shattered. Some of the characters are already fairly fleshed out, other characters still have a long way to go.
Many fighting games have rather typical anime-look. We really want to distinguish the look and feel of Shattered by giving it more of along the lines of American and European comic book style, rather than the Japanese look so many fighting games have.
Do you think your artwork would fit the style we’re aiming for and are you looking for a chance to help along with the development of the game, please contact us at djono [at] team18k.com.
The development of Shattered is currently purely a labour of love, and all development is done in our free time, extra help would be really appreciated.