Totally true. I often prescribe remedies for patients at my local hospital. Sometimes a doctor comes in and tells me to get the f*ck out. The nerve, right? Just because I’m not a doctor, doesn’t mean I don’t know that a human has ten fingers and eleven toes!
this thread just seems like a lot of pissing in the wind to me. OP admits he is unable to contribute to developing a fg due to lack of skills or time, but still wants to talk about why other people aren’t doing it, or theoretically what it takes to build a fighting game?
Defensiveness is at an all time high around here… must be an age thing…
And yet, here I am trying to sustain a constructive conversation about it. There are people out there with the skills and time that might not yet have realised that this stuff is possible. There seems to be a huge segment of the community ready and willing to put time into 1-frame links in their living rooms and arcades, clicking like buttons, tweeting and doing what they want but not willing to take the jump from hobby to profession.
In fact, want I wanted to do was to open it up, see what other people think, draw on the experience of others. Dpn’t you people know how this works? You want to try something big, try something new, you start by doing a little research. Maybe I’m overreaching, that’s fine but I’m still interested in what it takes to make a FG. Perhaps when I am in a situation to do so, this preliminary research may have helped.
There is an over abundance of negativity all over the internet and on SRK especially. I suggest that it may be possible to do things differently, refocus efforts… and I’m the asshole? I’m the theory fighter? Mate, I would build games if I could. Just not the space I’m in at this time. Might be in 10 years, but with bills to pay, kids to feed… shiyat, it’s all I can do to play, let alone skill up to make. Guess that makes me a self-pontificating asshole. So be it.
I think anyone with the skills realizes how hard it is. And I think if you were really interested in researching, you’d be checking out some game development forums, and not asking SRK where 99% of posters don’t have the skills, knowledge, resources or the time to do it, just like you! It just annoys me that you started this thread coming from the point of view that there’s too much talk and criticizing, yet your only contribution is more of the same.
It’s such a simple answer that the thread is longer than it needs to be.
The path is easy to talk, but hard to walk.
I’ve got so many ideas for things, I’m a creative tour de force, but applying those ideas takes one of two things, money or time, both of which are high priced commodities, especially as a 30+ year old who’s married with a kid and a full time job…and I’m not unique in circumstances.
Me? I got fed up with how RPGs were played - especially as someone who was heavy into fighting games. So I started designing my own RPG (back in like 00) that was designed to fix the big issues I had (one character at a time, lack of attack combinations, etc). I already knew how to program in Basic, VB, and C++ and at the time was learning/studying C. I was adept to various image creation software, wsa learning 3DSMax, etc. I was also a musician who kept his head in software. I had all the pieces. But its HARD to do by yourself. I loved my ideas so much, it went from an RPG to a TV series, but that was too time heavy, so it became a book, but that was too much, then it became a manga conceptually, but that wasn’t realistic, and right now - 13 years later - I’m working on a graphic novel ‘series’ with characters all inspired by that original RPG. It’s HARD.
Then just to pour the listerine known as ‘reality’ into the wound, what alot of people on here see as fun, or what would make the perfect fighting game - would be boring as hell to even them. Conceptually - the Vs Series is one of the BEST things to happen to fighting games since 2 in 1s. Why? Team dynamics help to cover for imbalances in characters, and having a flexible system (what people enjoy - options) creates imbalance, so with team dynamics, its actually easier to create the style of fighter that you want. For instance, in UMvC3, what’s the MOST damage a combo can do? 33%. No matter how strong Vergil is, or Phoenix was, they were/are only 33% of the health of a team, and can only do 33% at a time. There are no ST ToD comboes…yet that same adrenaline is there. The fighting game everyone on here would make would have 20 characters who played like Ryu boring.
Then you have to apply another level of reality to it. As a musician I see it all the time, it doesn’t matter the quality of the product, if you don’t move units, it amounts to nothing. If you develop the perfect game, but cna’t get proper distribution, proper advertisements, etc - it’s going to all be for nought.
It’s just effing hard to do and extends beyond the will power of a single individual.
- :bluu:
MikeZ and his team made a really good game with Skullgirls but nobody actually plays it.
It’s all Mahvel.
I have 3 fighters that are in development in my head right now. Give me a $7500 back bro.
I suspect it’s just that other people are paying attention. Most of the “we” who have actually seriously tried have indeed gotten directly involved in either the games they love or helped with others or created their own. Even ignoring the industry-tied collaboration, if you watch Kickstarters for fighting games or look at the games popping up every now and again in this forum, the people with initiative have realized that this is possible and are already doing it. The only people NOT doing it at this point have simply not stepped up to do it. Depending upon what you want to do it’s pretty brutally hard, as Unreallystic points out quite well, but it certainly is possible and has been directly concretely proven to be so by members of SRK.
I’d close this thread as being utterly pointless, but I’m generally loathe to close threads unless needed. I’d generally suggest that the appropriate title of the thread would be “why aren’t I doing it”, since the presented query is clearly centered around your own lack of involvement. I’m in the credits for a Capcom game for even my minor contributions, and I’ll get to always find gleeful joy in that. If you actually care, step up. If not, figure out why you’re not doing what you theoretically want to do and then simply apply that logic to every other uninvolved member of the community. :tup:
there was a school of unique Western fighters during the 80s/90s, spanning across arcades, computers and consoles.
but with the demise of western arcades, fighters were ignored for other genres
as a result this gave Japan free ground to dominate the genre.
btw, doujin fighting games really show the way to Western developers.
like this one:
*There is this comment that Japan Indie scene just had eroge/porn novel games, but this is not true. Japan Indie scene is also pretty much based in Arcade games, like Fighting, Shooting and Puzzle games. They had an impressive amount of Indie software since the 80’s on **PC8801/98/68k **platforms (i can recommend Chorensha 68k from this era). They jumped to Windows in the end of the 90’s with games like Queen of Heart 99, who this team was reformed as “Watanabe Seisakujo” and finally create Melty Blood, then they change their name to “French Bread”. Melty Blood was a really important step in quality and was some of the most important titles with **Touhou *series for a new wave of inspiration for Indie developers in Japan.
Those doujin games were really low budget, but had a lot of dedication and fan support. Especially the latter played an important role.
What did you do to get in the credits?
Actually the most typical way indie devs keep costs down is simply by getting free / cheap help if they can’t get a publisher. Typically professionals that do this during their off time. So some programmer for some company and some artist from another get together and do what they do for a living just … in there off time for only the hope of a product at the end. This is just a very fragile environment that takes a lot of dedication. Most small fighters released by 2 or 3 people have 1 or 2 really dedicated artists that just get shit done. I mean if you can get all that for free the only cost is your time.
Churning out a fighting game is an issue for 1 reason and that is animation. Animation is hard, most other things are easy. You can’t just have shit shake around and put some crap song in the background like most 2d ios games. You also can’t rely on a physics engine for animation like Angry birds or something like that can. The amount of animation to make anything that looks decent is just much higher. There are some that aren’t to bad, but those are your kinect style BS or joke fight party game things you play. You aren’t going to make that move that everyone talks about for a few weeks when the game starts or is like “OH SHIT” when they see it. That takes tedious work and skill.
MUGEN says hi
Omega tom hanks vs Rare Akuma
The amount of bickering and arguing would quickly escalate, people would be arrested for assault and battery and perhaps murder. Looking at the SRK threads and how passionate and easily upset people get, there is no way you could have a game by committee. You would need one guy/gal to be the head designer/leader, someone everyone respects. The rest would support with ideas, but leader would have authority and make final calls.
What didn’t he do? 
One gigantic caveat is that balancing a game isn’t the same as making one from scratch. the undertakings are completely different in magnitude in both work and needed team. One is literally a part of the other.
But basic copyright laws and/or lack of tools mostly prevents us from balancing an existing game, so making one nearly becomes a requirement if you want official recognition. That alone will be an obstacle to most people because they want to balance but not create and there’s actually nothing wrong with being stopped by that. The ones that will go on despite it are the ones who actually want to create, and that’s a much harsher path.
The short answer is to not make everything. Or at least not at once. For the longest time Mike Z, to bring him up again, tested his engine with existing capcom sprites since he is a programmer and cannot draw (the cat doesn’t count). If your thing is gameplay or graphics, then use one of the canned engines, Mugen or fighter maker, because they’re excellent and while they may not be exactly what you want they have all the tools you’ll need for a long time and learning to work through their constraints is good practice in itself.
In fact if you just want to learn to balance (or test your balancing skills) Mugen is an excellent opportunity: grab a handful of already implemented characters. They’ll be implemented but obviously not balanced (and god knows things can get a little crazy with Mugen), so they’re excellent raw materials. You start with two or three and you test and change things so those characters become balanced, then you add more into the mix and continue. Sure, whatever release you make will not be considered “your” work by netpeople but no less so than if you’d been invited to balance MVC3. At least your name will be on the release.
(the only problem with canned engines is netcode but you’ll have to live with it, which is a shame since good netcode opens your game to much wider public testing. Good netcode isn’t that arcane things some devs make it out to be, and input-based netcode combining delays and rollbacks a la GGPO is actually not hard to implement once you know the theory and constraints and pro devs that avoid it usually do so out of ignorance (“we don’t need it in japan because our infrastructure is lightning fast, why isn’t yours?” mostly). Bolting it on an existing engine that wasn’t built to answer to those constraints can be dark magic though)
If you do want to make everything, well, chances are you can’t. Even the Vanguard Princess guy used fighter maker and public domain music and sounds. However, you can have a team to help you make the things you can’t. The catch here is, you’ll need to have an interesting project, and for that you’ll need to have done something concrete already (and ideas aren’t concrete). That’s where the more limited thing you made following the previous paragraphs will come in, as a proof that you aren’t all talk.
Also don’t aim too big, both in project size and team size. The reason you’ll never see a “SRK community” game is it’s too big to be a team. You’ll see individuals from that community making games, but not the community as a whole because things don’t work like that.
I guess I should have been more specific in my use of the term “we”. I really intended to use it as a collective for the FGC.
The butthurt between whether it should be a ground based fighter or an animu fighter would be fun in of itself.
That’s why I like games like Skullgirls and Killer Instinct. They are basically fighting games made by the FGC for the FGC. I really would like to see Killer Instinct take off and be that game that shows people that there’s a lot of stuff fighting gamers are still looking for that they’re not getting in stuff that they must pay 60 bucks for. Just have to see if they hold true to what they say about not rebalancing the whole cast every 2 months.
If 4Chan of all sites can come together and make Katawa Shoujo
I do not understand how the Whole of SRK wound’t have enough talent to make our own fighting Game.
i wrote my own engine quite a while ago i just wasn’t able to find artists who were willing to work for the same pay i was working for (none)
here
http://www.sf4remix.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaJuxiHPxDg
me and Zeipher are working on this instead
Cool we got a programmer, any artist who are willing to work for free?
Now we need a concept, whats the central theme or plot of our fighting game, you know the excuse why have everyone beating the shit out of everyone else?
Screw it, You know what if this is a SRK fighting game, let make it Star SRK forum members as the fighters?
There we have a concept an a possible source of Characters