Characters, Articles/Props, Stages, and Assists

Characters and articles have the exact same capabilities.  I haven't made any assists yet, but i figured they'd operate similarly.  I don't think assists require any "AI".  They show up, do a fixed attack or get hit, and leave.  The only difference between the three (and stages) may just be scripting.

At the moment, stages  only support music, a single animation and collision masks.  However, that limit is completely arbitrary.  I've been thinking about just giving stages the same amount of capabilities as characters.  That means they could have their own scripting/moveset to make them interactive (stage hazards?).  For those of you who make stages, what kind of support would you like? 

Customization (Chars, stages, assists)(Scrapped) [Low Priority?]

Update May 2015: Community customization has been scrapped due to non existent community interest. Supporting customizations for others takes time and work. Due to circumstances, the disadvantages greatly overcome the advantages.

I might scrap the idea of supporting community customization, at least for now.   I'd have to actually teach people how to use all the non-user friendly tools and scripting stuff that's required to know.  In the end, I think it would be a better idea if I just coded everyone's character and stage.  To be blunt, it's not like there are many finished characters or stages right now.  The advantage is that I can create them better, quicker, and they'll be less prone to bugs.  However, I'd need in-depth information, gotta code every character, stage and assist, and there is bound to be misunderstandings in communication and thus require a bit of back and forth.  During school, I have no daily internet connection, so I won't be available that much.


That said, please organize your spritesheet in a way that's easy for me to use the frames.  Make it obvious which animation is which.  Please align animations.  I'd rather have extra white-space than have to manually align frames by hand.  I can make use of GIFS too, so if that'd be easier for you to do, then please do so instead.  GIFS are the easiest way for me to import an animation since all I gotta do is load them.  GIFs should have the animation be in-place.  However, I'd really appreciate if you also made additional gifs of the movement along with other information, like attack bubbles or an example of the move against an opponent.

I would also need good in-depth information about the actions themselves.  How fast does he/she move on the ground?  For attacks, how much damage and knockback do they do, literally?  What about the direction of knockback?  Where are the attack masks located (its a circle, so a position and radius).  Is it a strong hit, or a normal one.  The same goes for specials.   Give as much info as possible, even if you feel it's redundant.

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Scripting

Scripting is entirely done in Lua, mainly using coroutines.  Lua is the core of movesets.  There are events, requirements, actions, and subactions,  If you want a scripted stage, then that means it'll make use of the moveset system.  It's no problem, though. 


An action is just a coroutine that's called once every game step.  When an action is changed, the next action will execute immediately to allow for chained actions that visually don't do anything without costing a game step.  There is only ever one action playing at a time per moveset.  Actions usually set a subaction at its start.

A subaction is similar to an action.  Except, it's called once per animation tick.  It defines the animation to play, and there can be multiple subaction ... sub functions executing at the same time.  I still have to work out some things that should happen when a subaction ends, like resetting the character to a consistent state.  More info later, if needed.

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Animation

I've created an animation tool and engine but the the tool isn't user friendly.  I'm only naming the main features for those of you who want to be creative.  Otherwise, ignore the list.

The engine supports:

• Traditional Frame by frame animation
  
• Skeletal Animation
  
• Key framed animation
  

• Linear and Jump/Step Interpolation
  
• Root Motion Translation only (moving object by animation)
  
• SubAnimations (it just means using another animation within the current animation - a sub animation.  Look at Chaoxy's stage.  The cogs and floor are a great example.)
  
• Importing GIfs as an animation into the tool
  
• Exporting animations as a sprite sheet or GIF
  
• Opaque, Translucent, and completely Transparent sprites. (Fully transparency can happen if the sprite tint is animated)
  
• Palettes and Palette animation.
  

If there are any questions about what you can do, animation-wise, just ask. 

Palettes

Palettes are supported by the animation engine, but not by the game engine, yet. I imagine that it would only require me to load a different palette file, which sounds pretty simple.  Palettes would be unique on a per-character level. 

Note: In the animation engine, a palette file is more of a collection of separate grouped pixel palettes in a single file.  Why?  This is to allow fading and switching between palettes in animation - animateable palettes.  However, alternate "costumes/colors" in the game sense are separate palette files atltogether.  Er, more info later.  If anyone wants to be creative and has questions, ask.  I'll provide visual examples if needed.

Collisions [High priority, need info]

In the fighting system, collision masks are restricted to circles.  I usually refer to them as "bubbles".  Honestly, I have no good reason for such a restriction.  The collision detection system is, ofc, done and working.  It's the same system as the normal collision system for the stage.

However, I still need to program in the actual responses, like hitlag and going into the hurt state.  Although, I'm not entirely show how it should be done game-wise.  I'm not familiar with the "rules" of getting hit, or atleast how it's supposed to work in tFR.  I've played Soul Calibur, so I might build off that, unless that's an issue.  

Oh yeah, I recently thought up how to go about directional defending. I really wanna use Robo9's super beam thing as a test so I might make a GIF of it later.  There will also be support for sweet spots.  

Menus [Medium priority, Content needed]

This will probably be easy to do. I already have an idea about how to go about it.  The main thing keeping me from implementing it is that I'm unsure how the menu is supposed to look, content-wise.  I've seen this, but I don't see any backgrounds.  Also, I still gotta make the menu creating tool which will be easy.

For anyone who wants to make the menu sprites, I'm able to support intro, idle, and outro animations.  You can also do a few other subtle things, but I'll give more info later, if needed.  

Menus:

• Title screen
  
• Main Menu (Scrapped, unnecessary)
  
• Character Selection Screen
  
• Stage Selection Screen
  
• Other? (options, control configuration, etc?) (Scrapped, unnecessary)
  

Effects (GFX, SFX) [Content needed]

We're really lacking in the effects department.  There are no sound effects or GFX at all.  There should be common effects, that are shared between all character and character specific effects.  Why separate them?  In case the game ever gets to the point where people can make their own content, it'd be easier to add character effects without affecting shared effects.

AI (Scrapped) [Low Priority]

Update May 2015: AI has been scrapped from the game. There will not be any PlayerVsCPU matches since this kind of AI takes time.  Since community interest is non existent, it seems that AI wouldn't be worth the trouble. Of course, PlayerVsPlayer will remain.


I haven't given much thought about how AI is going to work.  I'll have to do research on how it's usually done since I have zero experience with this kind of AI. 

Online (Scrapped) [Low Priority]

Update May 2015: Online has been scrapped from the game. Since community interest is non existent, it seems that Online wouldn't be worth the trouble and time. Of course, PlayerVsPlayer will remain.


Hmmm...Zero progress here.  I'm thinking about using Lidgren for the networking.  From what I researched, only inputs should be sent over the connection.  This means that the game has to be deterministic, so I'll have to do a little bit more researching.  It also requires that both player's have the exact same content.