Hi there,
My name is Daniel Esteves and I’ve been a game developer for almost 15 years. Ever since I can remember I had a passion, like most of you, for fighting games. However if experience has taught me anything is that how hard it is to develop a game by yourself. Thats where I had the idea of building something called Universal Fighting Engine (UFE).
UFE is a toolkit designed to help you develop your own 2.5D fighting game, using a highly customizable open source* framework and easy to use visual editors. Those who studied fighting games have probably realized just how complex even the smallest thing is when dealing with balance and frame data. Charts upon charts of information you just can’t see while playing, not to mention the highly complex aspects of hitboxes and unique physics. That’s where Universal Fighting Engine comes in. UFE provides you with an open fighting game engine ready to use, highly customizable data frame and easy to use character and move editors similar to those used by Capcom, NetherRealm and Double Helix to create games like Street Fighter 4, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3.
Feature Spotlight:
[list]
[] Robust Move and Character Editors
[] A.I. Support (Random A.I. included on all versions)
[] Story Mode
[] Support for Mecanim as well as Legacy animations
[] Precision Hitboxes
[] Combo System
[] Throw/Grappling move support
[] Custom Input Manager
[] Cinematic move options
[] Automatic Hitbox Setup for Mixamo Auto-rigger characters
[] Easy to use UI
[] Open source GUI Scripts
[] Mobile Controls (requires Control Freak)
[] Compatible with cInput
[] Easy 3rd party implementations
[] Over 140 animations included*
[] 3 ready to use characters
[] Several free to use sound effects and music files
[] No programming knowledge required
[*] For full list of features visit www.ufe3d.com
[/list]
(*) Description refers to UFE Source and UFE Bundle versions
(**) This is a demo of UFE Bundle (has Fuzzy A.I. loaded). To see how Random A.I. behaves, switch the engine under the main menu’s options.
An engine doesn’t need to be a stand alone application to be considered an “engine” =)
But yes you need Unity to run this toolkit. You can get Unity for free at www.unity3d.com.
Yes. Spheres consume less memory and they give more variation when building your own hurtboxes. I got inspired by Marvel vs Capcom 3 for those. Later I will probably be releasing an alternative hitbox solution using squares instead of spheres.
Yeah but when you say Engine you usually mean the software package behind everything, the most basic part. For example, Unreal Engine is the base, which you could use Havok physics or SpeedTree plug-ins and such. RedKit is another engine, and CryEngine as well, and of course, Unity.
I’ve never heard of anyone using one of those and then building a template on top of it and calling that an open source engine. Especially since there are true open source engines out there like Crystal3D and so on. Whether or not they’re any good…
It would be like Netherealm saying they built a fighting game engine on Unreal, which is just Unreal engine using custom camera angles and other programming tricks, but it’s still Unreal.
Anyway, I don’t want you thinking I’m a jerk or anything I am just looking at the details. Unity3D is not os, and it’s only “free” in the sense that you could build a game with it and release it without fear of lawsuit and there is a point at which you can no longer use Unity free once you start making money. It should be very clear when dealing with licensing and when you say open source, it really needs to be clear what is what, especially since Unity is not open source.
I’m still interested in this though, don’t get me wrong.
I don’t see why you’re splitting hairs, no one has proposed selling any games made with this toolkit. If someone makes something they think they can sell, then they pay the $1500 for Unity pro. WIth kickstarter and indiegogo funding new games these days, such a think it definitely doable.
I feel someone is poking a lot of holes lol =)
Yeah man Unity 3D is absolutely free. The only things inside the Pro version that you can’t have with the free one is some extra graphical effects. I mean I know it. This entire kit was built using Unity 3D free =P
If the boxes are going to be completely 2d just attached to the character x,y and not the skeleton it’ll be about the same if you don’t bother with rotation.
My problem with mugen as an engine. No matter what you did even if you made the character frames and hitboxes correctly It will still behave wrong.
As for the mash up deal. No matter what, if the game is open enough and easy enough to mod somebody is going to do it just look at the GTA SA, GTA4 mods, or any elder scrolls game.
I guess i should clarify, i hope someone would take this and actually try to make a decent game as apposed to ONLY the dumb character mash packs that you get with mugen. Outside of maybe two or three examples, i can’t think of anyone ever having done this w/ the mugen engine.
What? The GNU license is free. Basically, if you use a software that adheres to the GNU license you can do anything you want with it, you can even build commercial software. The only thing you must do is give back to the software project IF you change any of the code. If you don’t change any of the code, then you owe them nothing. This obviously doesn’t apply to any audio or visual assets if you were to build a game using and open source engine, like id Tech 4. But if I change a rendering routine and program new graphical effects into the engine, then that must go into the source code project, which is really no big deal as everyone wins.
I’m also not splitting hairs, if someone says they made a fighting game engine and that it’s open source, then I want to know what exactly that entails. If it’s tied to proprietary software, then it really isn’t open source, so I want to be sure the claim is true and there is no misleading here. That is all.
Anyway, this still looks handy, and it’s nice that there are tools for people to mess around in. I hope something good comes of it
Most likely, since the template will be possible to edit you can probably do it, the underlying engine Unity isn’t limiting anything to 1v1.
ah oh well hopefully I can whip up a custom mesh in that time I already have a fighting design doc whipped up n some concept work for it this tool kit just may be the kick in the pants I need lol
