THE FIGHTERS RESOURCE - Official Thread

[Kosheh]

i love how busy this topic is getting now!

I guess you guys do need a programmer. And some structure.

I'm a professional programmer, made a half dozen game jam games, two full years of projects courses as team leader for college level design, and I've been programming for the better part of two decades.

Shit, I knew Game Maker when it was still called Animo. I've made games in bunches of languages, and looking at this project... While Game Maker isn't perfect, it is something that people can easily learn and to organize the resources. Particularly if there are few programmers, it might be ideal for branch development of the expected caliber.

I dunno what I'm trying to say and don't want to step on any toes, but I could do it. I've wanted to build a fighter before but graphics were always so numerous that I never had the resources to do so. Seems like a perfect solution to me. I'd use Game Maker and comment my coding explicitly that way if I ever had to step down (like Robo wants to) it'd be easy enough to get the important stuff to the next guy who comes along.

If this sounds appealing, I could whip up a demo of the mechanics relatively simply.

The other thing is establishing a solid design document. I'll read through the thread beginning to end to get a solid idea of where you're at so I'm certain that I could do what you guys want. But from the last ten pages or so, it doesn't seem beyond my ability. But I'll read and confirm while waiting for a reply.

it's true
this sounds kinda promising, and i know this isn't my project, but i'm kinda torn

if we have a premade fighter engine, then literally Johnny Everyman can work on his character solo, create the hitboxes and submit it to the project in like
a github. then, we'd just have another guy import it into the game and tweak the damage values.

idk, i'd worry that having a centralized programmer for a fighting game is kinda cool, but it's a lot of work for one person
though with the new gamemaker suites can you develop multiplatform stuff? like - EXEs for Windows and APKs for android devices? :0

that might be hecka cool.

[TomGuycott]

Why should it matter? If he wants to build an engine from the ground up, let him do it. It doesn't stop me from fiddling around with the pre-made engine business, and there's virtually nothing I can help him do if he's building it from the ground up in terms of a programming aspect, and then there's a higher chance of anything being done at all.

Either way, things are being done, just in two different ways. I know in most cases that sounds like a bad idea because resources are being spread thin, but in a normal situation both parties know how to work what they're doing. In this case I don't have the means to do the Game Maker programing, so I'd be dead weight in that regard.

[RabidPeep]

I have the HTML5 module for Game Maker Studio as well as as the standard professional version. So EXE files and stuff for browsers for the other platforms.

As for how to make it easier for non-programmers, I could create first an API for people to test/build their characters in and generate ZIP files to be added. Sort of like a demo environment for debugging purposes. Allowing for tweaking of values and other things, think of it like the sandbag training mode in the Smash Bros games, except you can tweak the numbers too for different attacks.

The controls and behavior don't really seem that complicated to me. Then again, I've programmed some ferociously hard stuff like heuristic learning software for vision-based packing problem environments, which is a mathematically 'hard' problem due to being technically solvable in polynomial time, but not realistically possible in linear time. That's a fancy way of saying a program can be written to perfectly solve every case, but an individual case could realistically take until the Pyramids erode to dust. To get around that I built/taught a program to learn to solve those problems like a person - it looks at it, does a few dorky bumps and grinds to get a feel for the 'shape' of an item, then compares it to other objects it knows on a proximity basis, then uses what it already knew or found out to nest the parts tighter and more efficiently onto the program so that it can be transposed to GCode for laser cutting machines to efficiently use sheet metal. All within minutes instead of possible years. Yeah it messes up, but as you teach it more parts, it screws up less and less often.

By comparison, a fighter like this is... more of an amusing challenge than actually being too hard. I said I was a professional, and if anyone can understand - I hope that i was clear enough - what I said in the last paragraph, you'll be impressed and know I'm not blowing smoke out my ass here.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

The OP's a good start for the basics of the game.

It's good to know you're a professional, I'm hoping to see something shaping up. It's one thing to make promises, but another to fulfill them. In any case, annotating your code and sharing would indeed be a good start!

As for 2DFM2K, I haven't got to grips with it yet (just managed putting together animations) but it looks feasible.

[RabidPeep]

Yup, I've read through about the first twenty pages, atm trying to find a some of the resources (background, one of the more generic character sheets, any music or title screens) used so I can begin doing some of the preliminary setup. I think though I'll aim to recreate everything Robo's shown so far.

I'll be curious to see how much he's shown.

Edit:
Alright, so if I've got this right, it doesn't look like this ever got very far between Robo, the other guy, and then back to Robo. I can see why your faith in programmers is somewhat lackluster.

Someone suggest me a free screen capture program - I'll make a video of where I get tonight. I'll just go with what feels right for a fighter and fully expect to change a bunch of shit. But lets get some real progress before I get all your hopes up.

[Lexou Duck]

okay one tidbit i think would be useful to programmers :
under each frame of your spritesheet, try and write how much time the frame lasts so that animations can remain faithful to the artists' original intentions (im not sure in what unit though, cause it can be either in centiseconds or number of frames in 60fps...)

[RabidPeep]

What I've been doing is using a master class to hold that sort of information. That's CS101 kind of stuff, the part that'll take a long time is basically getting feedback from everyone that everything feels right about their character. Don't worry about me. I'll show off what I've got in about five hours or so, depending on when I eat supper.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Yup, I've read through about the first twenty pages, atm trying to find a some of the resources (background, one of the more generic character sheets, any music or title screens) used so I can begin doing some of the preliminary setup. I think though I'll aim to recreate everything Robo's shown so far.

I'll be curious to see how much he's shown.

Edit:
Alright, so if I've got this right, it doesn't look like this ever got very far between Robo, the other guy, and then back to Robo. I can see why your faith in programmers is somewhat lackluster.

Someone suggest me a free screen capture program - I'll make a video of where I get tonight. I'll just go with what feels right for a fighter and fully expect to change a bunch of shit. But lets get some real progress before I get all your hopes up.

Right here, Zee.

[TheShyGuy]

torn if we have a premade fighter engine, then literally Johnny

A1) Everyman can work on his character solo, create the hitboxes and

A2)submit it to the project in like a github. then,

B) we'd just have another guy import it into the game and tweak the damage values.

C) i'd worry that having a centralized programmer for a fighting game is kinda cool, but it's a lot of work for one person

You guys (not just Kosheh) need to leave the technical stuffs mostly to programmers.

Movesets don't need to be hardcoded, they're just data. They can be, but don't need to. That means, using a game engine built from the ground up can support A1 just like that premade engine you brought up. A2 and Bbecomes redundant now since, if a moveset is just data, it can be added to the game without having to rebuild the program -anyone and everyone can make their own moveset without even needing to go through the programmer. There is no middle man.

C doesn't sound all that bad anymore since the core programmer only handles the core engine. The content (movesets, levels, etc) is all data, which the community can pitch in at any time.

[RabidPeep]

Yup, I've read through about the first twenty pages, atm trying to find a some of the resources (background, one of the more generic character sheets, any music or title screens) used so I can begin doing some of the preliminary setup. I think though I'll aim to recreate everything Robo's shown so far.

I'll be curious to see how much he's shown.

Edit:
Alright, so if I've got this right, it doesn't look like this ever got very far between Robo, the other guy, and then back to Robo. I can see why your faith in programmers is somewhat lackluster.

Someone suggest me a free screen capture program - I'll make a video of where I get tonight. I'll just go with what feels right for a fighter and fully expect to change a bunch of shit. But lets get some real progress before I get all your hopes up.

Right here, Zee.

This is beautiful. Thank you, saves me from having to deal with Youtube or any crap like that.

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

GRAPHICS RESOURCE POST
this took a while to compile (oops i rhymed), and some of it might not be up-to-date; i know chris2balls edited his run after posting his sheet last, and chaoxys i think is still working on some new animations. also, i had some difficulty finding robo9's sheet, so his is probably not the final sheet either. still!

Characters:
-Gilbert
-Vipershark
-Mighty Jetters
-Sol
-Robo9
-Chris2Balls
-Ocksford
-Meta
-Neko
-Chaoxys

Backgrounds:
chris2balls helpfully supplied these in this post!

Other:
-Assist Characters (does not include assist characters not made by gors)
-Other (HUD, menu stuff, fonts, bonus stage assets, etc.)

now that we have these all in one spot, working on the game should be much, much easier.

[Lexou Duck]

also i didnt really read much of gors' ideas for the game but why dont we try and find something unique for it, to seperate it from other fighters

take for instance super smash bros, i think they were the first to throw in the idea of damaging to make the enemy fly offscreen for victory
thats a pretty original idea and works great

i mean i dunno i feel like the average lifebar fighter game thing has been done too many times

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

alright, finding the backgrounds is getting a bit tiring for me. as far as i know, the only stage backgrounds made were by nicktendo and chris2balls, so if you guys could post those here, that'd be great.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

I posted these backgrounds a few pages ago, but I'm sure I've missed some...

Edit:

[RabidPeep]

So far so good. I'll fix the fudgy ground collision later (mostly belting out the framework). After Ocks runs off, I show the way I'm loading the graphics in. Basically I'm programmatically mirroring the images to cut down on graphics loads so that when full characters are loaded in, it's not wasting space.

Only thing is that means that the shading wouldn't be right - but has anyone even been doing that where they made separate left/right sets of their animations? I didn't see any of those, just a design question is all.



Edit: Fuck, that gif maker is gorgeous to work with.