TRAF - Brazilian Fighting Game in Development

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
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**UPDATE: **

Link to download the first beta: https://onanimstudio.itch.io/trajes-fatais-minimal-beta1

Link to our Crowdfunding page: http://trajesfatais.com/kickante/en/

Please, download the beta and if you see potential for the game, support it! Kickante accepts contributions through PayPal so you can pay safely.

Hello everyone!

I’m Emir Lima, programmer of TRAF, a new fighting game current in development. We are a small team working in the game in our narrow spare time.

The game has a simplified concept of having only one single button for all attacks. The normals and specials are achieved pressing the button while holding a direction on D-Pad. The super/ultras are also simple to execute: pressing Down, Down + Button or Forward, Back, Forward + Button.

The main idea is to allow many possibilities while having to memorize fewer things. The inputs are made to be more intuitive, so it reflects the intention of the player. If you want to attack upwards, just press Up + Button; if you want a low attack, press Down + Button; a long range attack, Forward + Button and so on.

All characters are being designed to have unique gameplay, so not all “forward + button” will be an attack that the character stretches itself. It could be a projectile, a teleport or even a slow attack with autoguard/armor.

Another feature is that an attack can be cancelled with ANY other attack so it’s easy to execute combos. The player needs sufficient power bar (to perform the cancel) and hit at the right time.

Due to be in development, some content are still being finished, like background, HUD and effects.

Here’s a video showing the main features present at the moment and a brief battle of the two characters available (enable english subtitles in youtube):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c3rQnBhAQ4

An updated video of the game:

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2

I’m gonna play a big devil’s advocate here while your game is still in early stages and able to improve:

You are creating the control scheme with the assumption that having a million command normals and 1 button is easier than having several buttons. But this assumption is wrong. Having to go back to neutral from blocking or from dashing to do a neutral+button is inherently harder than just pressing a different button, which allows me to do use the normal in footsies with ease. Doing a combo of ABCD is easier than let’s say b+A, d+A,u+A,f+A. Which of the 2 examples you can input faster on a controller?

And which existing games use u+Button for a command normal? None that I can recall, because walking a bit forward as an “execution error” is not as bad as getting an accidental jump, which people WILL get.

The 1 button thing is no more than a gimmick for marketing, not for actually playing. In practice, if your game has too many actions per button then the accessibility goal will simply not be achieved. Even Divekick requires way more execution than it should have been, because of A+B doing a different action altogether, so even in there you can get execution errors when trying to do specific things with specific characters.

And let’s not even get into the Mortal Kombat motions of special moves. f,b,f+A? Take a pad and try inputting this motion as fast as possible, and tell me you see no possible execution problem in this…

The smart design behind circular motions for specials is that they don’t overlap movement you’ll normally do in a game. So in SF you can do your footsies and press f,b,f,b all you want, a special will never come out when you won’t want to, but with MK motions you’ll have to limit your presses during movement just to not get special moves by mistake. If a motion is too simple it tends to overlap too easily with other stuff. So if I block something with a charge character, then try to move forward a bit and throw or use a close normal and a sonic boom special comes out instead.

Also having this sphere system is going to give new players a hard time because it forces the risk reward to constantly change. If I punish a dragon punch in a fighting game I can always do the same punish regardless of opponent life. Now I’ll have to look at the sphere and calculate a different punish every time, because the sphere getting emptied forces you to cut the combo short, or do a different combo altogether.

3

I think the control lay out going to hinder the game in some ways. I understand the idea of trying to keep the game simplistic but I feel this direction going to hurt in the long run.

Like whats the buffer input like? their reason most fighter use 22 motion but never 66/44 motion for attack because these are usually accompany by other command such as movement option and we see in the vid TRAF has Walk, dash.run, Jump, and hop’s. depending how these movement options are done, he special/super may be over lapped in trying normal and such.

t I don’t think this’ll make the game less complex or simple, your just conditioning player to play differently. Yeah players may not have to remember complex movement but if players option are dynamic and large then their still going to be memorization, your saying character going to be unique so match ups are going to need memorization base how polarizing they are from each other, lets not forget how the mechanics are going to function. And your team want to accomplish all this on a single button? Im not confident of this design choice as of now. I’ll need more details on other mechanics or little explanation of design choice, I don’t see why this game can op to have additional button or two so control don’t become so cubersom.

I can only see the warrant for this design base off its platform, IF this game was design with like mobile phone, tablets, or some platform where multiple buttons can’t be accommodated then i can understand and respect the design choice. Though question why you choose to make game like this for such…delicate market.

This has concept that worth exploring but I feel left out on some important details. You’ll no doubt get some attention but personal for me I am bit Underwhelmed. I’m weary with developers who tried to make “Simple yet depth game”. it snot that it can’t be done but it can’t be done on premises of traditional fighter mechanics. This is apparent when you look at how you address possible infinite issue because of TRAF nature of high combo potential.

4

Thank you guys for the feedback. I’m here primarily to listen to the community and improve the game or even change some aspect of his design whenever it is better.

Regarding the simplified input, the proposal is not to deliver an easy system only for the sake of accessibility, but just a different one. Imagine that traditional fighting games followed a path laid down by Street Fighter. We want to explore a different path from that.

It’s true that the traditional “dance/zigzag” of the footsies of Street Fighter could not be the same with attacks varying according to the direction held while pressing the attack button, but that’s the point of not cloning SF.

Every great fighting game has its own neutral game, what defines its whole rhythm. The SF rhythm is completely different from the rhythm of GG, and from KOF and from MvC and so on. We are trying to give an own rhythm for TRAF as well.

The majority u+button will be of dragon punches. One quick and effective antiair. It has to have its risks, and even with simplified inputs the player is prone to commit execution mistakes. You can look at this input as the classic “hold d, then u + button”, but without the first command. :smile:

That’s more or less what we expect. Execution of the combos are easier and juggling too. Instead of creating such a direct limitation to juggling, imposing maximum amount of hits or something, we prefer to test this new idea. A step to the player to decide how to continue a combo. The points are give freedom to the player, allowing creation and improvisation, making each match an unique experience.

We’re making a video explaining the depths of the system. The video above was just to explain the basics of the game for a contest here in Brazil.

5

Well your words give me courage and you seem knowledgeable about the genre. I look forward to that video.

Besides that I applaud the art. its very pleasant to the eyes and the character look nice. Hope to see more.

6

If u+button is already an instant DP, why not just add a special move button and have a smash-like (sort of) control scheme but with a regular fighting game?

7

We want to try an experimental concept. The reason for require the button press combined with a direction is to make the execution more intuitive. Instead of an arbitrary button for each attack, you will know, for example, that all attacks made holding forward will have an effect focused ahead of you regardless of your character.

It can be difficult to understand just by reading a text. I hope you try the game and comment your experience with this concept. We’re really open to all feedback.

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I like this concept. I like people who do things that others think can’t be done. You’re not necessarily trying to be a SF or anything else gameplay wise, but I like that it does have that visual look and the animation is really nice. You will have challenges gameplay wise with only one button, but it will be will be very exciting if you can find a way to overcome those hurdles and make it something as truly accessible with the smallest amount of buttons possible.

Like to see what you come up with and if you can make this work. I like the characters designs and the music is rather RPGish. Very interesting.

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I dunno, Smash Bros. kind of proves that it’s able to work.

10

Thing is that there’s a option to take off “tap up” for jump for smash games.

11

Lucy Fernandez? The mugen character?

12

True, but there’s some people who play with it anyways. It might or might not be a problem…

Like maybe a grounded up attack is up+attack at the exact same time, whereas to an up air attack you confirm being airborne first and then press the attack button.

13

Yes! :wink: Onofre “OnOff” Paiva, the creator of Lucy Fernandez is the Game Designer and Animator of TRAF. It’s pretty cool to see someone noticing Lucy.

14

Eu lembro daquela história da ASW ter ‘roubado’ umas ideias dele pro BlazBlue… Tá muito bom isso aí, continuem firmes e parabéns!

I remember that history of ASW ‘stealing’ some of his ideas for BlazBlue… Liked it a lot, keep it up and congratulations!

15

There’s a couple games that does this, it’s weird at first though.
This one.
Storm 3
Robot thunder or raging thunder or somethin.
Ultimate ninja [ps2] where you had to press the button then on the second press you choose a direction, since that locked the movement in place for that games engine as it didn’t mess with the input scheme of things.

For example doing a non directional input didn’t hinder the movement, like an example doing a 25 hit with zabuza is simple even with that layout because of this.

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Rising Thunder.

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TRAF is fart spelled backwards, don’t know if you noticed

without knowing more about the game it sounds similar enough to suguri that i would rather play suguri. similar control scheme, probably a lot less frustrating to play.

but hey you probably care more about what the casual crowd thinks anyway. that’s who you’re trying to appeal to with the control scheme right

18

Yeah, if you want this to do well in English-speaking communities, I recommend giving it a name that’s catchy and easy to pronounce, for starters.

Since the game is about costumes, you could do an alliterative name (like “Cosplay Clash” or “Disguised Duel”) or something humorous (“Masquerade Brawl”, a pun on masquerade ball).

The artwork and animations are quite nice, that Lucy character is very sexy.

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Yeah! We’re thinking about to open a voting for a better name in English. If we translate the original Portuguese to English it would be something like Fatal Suits/Fatal Costumes, however we would like to keep the acronym TRAF and build a English name for it.

Oops! We didn’t noticed that. : P

Not exactly. The complexity of the great titles from nowadays were built over time. We don’t want to just follow the same formula of them, but create an own, following another route. This complexity can be built edition to edition, until consolidate a new path where the expectations of the players will be different. It’s about regressing a bit in time and take a less explored road. If we achieve a good level of complexity with one single button and without difficult commands, just with control of time and space, imagine when we start to add more elements in the system.

Thank you! Next week we will reveal the third character. Keep an eye on our project. : D

20

Will there be a trap character.