TFR Guidelines [READ]

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Thanks for clarifying. I'm not here to stir up a shitstorm, curious more than anything else.

I have one last question: so, we know that posting for banned members isn't allowed: however, if we want to post Metaru's progress for TFR, how do we go about it, without breaking the rules? I'd gladly create a thread for his character and other work, then post the images he provides me with. Is that a reasonable compromise?

[Vipershark]

That sounds good to me.

[Petie]

Fine with me as well. This is kind of a special circumstance in that he's participating in a project so posting his contributions is fine. That rule is really in place to avoid people becoming proxies for banned members as they try to post or get back onto the site.

[Kosheh]

Looking back at the last page, we discussed mechanics a little bit, but in order to streamline this...i noticed this in CBL's topic

crappy is a fast character with a frail body and slightly-less-frail ego. he attacks with a variety of eccentric moves designed to play keep-away or protect himself.

stats out of 15 *s:
Health: **
Attack: **
Defense: **
Speed: *****
Jump: ****

A very brief description of his character and a stat counter out of 15 asterisks.

I think this is actually a really good idea - though health and defense in a fighting game is pretty much the same thing and variable jump heights aren't really a thing in fighting games (the boon being the midair character's hurtboxes in midair)
character attributes are more obvious when you're browsing through them, and it makes things easier for Ton when he's programming each character.
additionally, you could technically have character palette swap fighters and using this system, they'd play completely differently!

opening up the floor: what should the different areas be to spec in? (also, post them in the Player topics, even if your character isn't completed/confirmed in the game)

I'd suggest
HEALTH (for example, every character has base 10000 health, and every * adds another 1000 to the health bar)
ATTACK
SPECIALS (as in, you could have hard-hitting specials but crappy attacks, or vice versa)
SPEED
GOGNIO (this would have to be discussed: it could be how OP their GOGNIO is [or moreso, its likeliness to hit and how much damage is done], or how quickly their attacks charge up the GOGNIO meter)

GOGNIO moves could also be balanced separately and instead RANGE could go in its place (as if you play a strong long-range poke game, your speed better be low to compensate)

[[robo9]]

though health and defense in a fighting game is pretty much the same thing and variable jump heights aren't really a thing in fighting games (the boon being the midair character's hurtboxes in midair)

I honestly believe the Health/Defense thing depends on the game. Health being a how much health you have, and a defense being sone percentage deal that takes into account how much of your health is taken per hit. (If I'm being unclear, which I fear that I am, say an attack removes 100 health on an average character. If another character has half the defense of that average character, they would lose 200 health. I feel like having both the health and defense can make the characters more varied

I just kind of fell that it's kind of a bad idea trying to rank the Gognio, Range, Specials, etc because they can't be measured by a specific number. I may think my character has a 2 Star special stat, but someone may argue that it's more of a 4 star and that my stat spread is overpowered.

[TomGuycott]

Jump and Defense can come into play in a fighting game. And example would be characters like Potemkin and Iron Tager in Guilty Gear and BlazBlue respectively. Potemkin was extremely slow and could barely jump at all, but had the highest health in the game. Tager I don't think could even jump at all, but I could be wrong, it's been so long since I played it.

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

i interpreted these stats as not literal representation of the character's abilities and performance in terms of those specific mechanics in-game, but rather as figurative representation of the character's strengths within their moveset. i guess? i looked at it from a similar perspective as the character stats in streets of rage, which pretty much mean nothing for how the character controls and only give the player a vague idea of how characters function in relation to other characters. for example: i thought of jump being high for crappy in that he has good air game and a specific move that has to do with jumping, and speed being highest because many of crappy's attacks come out quickly. (he also moves fast, go figure)

but if we want to talk real stats, i can still see the current stats being used meaningfully: health could represent how bulky the character is when it comes to taking damage; more health, less damage done. basically a defense stat, while the real defense stat would work for chip damage, referring to how well the character's defense move works. i agree with sportoise in that trying to gauge gognio and special could be a problem and still turn out vague.

[Kosheh]

though health and defense in a fighting game is pretty much the same thing and variable jump heights aren't really a thing in fighting games (the boon being the midair character's hurtboxes in midair)

I honestly believe the Health/Defense thing depends on the game. Health being a how much health you have, and a defense being sone percentage deal that takes into account how much of your health is taken per hit. (If I'm being unclear, which I fear that I am, say an attack removes 100 health on an average character. If another character has half the defense of that average character, they would lose 200 health. I feel like having both the health and defense can make the characters more varied

They're kind of the same thing though - if a character has a 11000 HP attack bar, the enemy's attacks are going to do much less damage than one with a 10000 HP health bar. That's going to be reflected in the attacked character's health bar. In a sense, more HP is essentially the same as a defense stat: adding defense to that is only going to artificially "increase" their health bar by subtracting damage from every hit - so weaker characters would hit even weaker. If there's chip damage inflicted, you'll notice that the higher health character takes less chip damage anyway as well due to their higher HP

I could see "defense" being part of an argument, but that has to be used extremely sparingly: if a character has super armor which halves damage taken -- I could a "defense" stat being used there, but otherwise not...really.

Using defense as a gauge to judge how chip damage affects individual characters (I think that was mentioned) would completely wonk out characters and possibly cause matches to become turtlefests ):

[water dog]

Defense is effective health. Unless you make defense decrease things like stun time and the like, I would say it has no place in a fighting game.

[Kosheh]

I just kind of fell that it's kind of a bad idea trying to rank the Gognio, Range, Specials, etc because they can't be measured by a specific number.

oh oops forgot to follow this up

Gognio yeah probably :/ but range and specials would yeah - be more or less guessed (and that's fine)

Everyone who's a melee fighter with an average poke game would have generally a two star ** or three-star *** range. For characters with very short range, the number would be much smaller and for physical keep-away characters (Tom Guycott), it would be higher.

[Kosheh]

Double posting - can I propose a taller idea?
I know I'm not C2B or Tellis or Tom Guycott, but if I could suggest something to get the ball rolling on character balance and creation, etc.

I'd like to encourage that creators of any and all characters that are really WIP and have a bit of work to go (for instance, uhh, any character or assist in this subforum, but if you want a named example...um, recolorme I guess, AshuraAlchemist and E-Man) post at the very least a stick figure of their characters' animations (even idle animations count here) once they come up with one, even if it's a rough idea.

We're not gonna criticize you over a stick figure (though editing them would be a good exercise in character anatomy, posture and action poses!), but it's moreso for ballpark estimates.
I mean, I personally wouldn't tell anyone to completely redo an animation (unless it really, really stinks) and probably neither should you. But in the scenario that you're not sure "Hey, would this fit within the game and not be underpowered as heck?" it's a little easier to tell you "hey, you could do this animation and it'll look cooler and more powerful" without you, the spriter, feeling like "augh crap I have to hammer out this sprite and make it look good and everything" - if your basic outline is already there, it's easier to make a finished, more polished-looking product. :]

There's also a lot of characters on this board that are literally one sprite and the creator hasn't done any work on them to progress the character (sorry E-Man, making an example out of you), so this'll help quite a bit.
It'll give pretty much anyone, regardless of ability, uh, the ability to make a functioning character for use later on.
And it's a lot less daunting in the long run to work off of stick figures you made in the past to finish up your character animations.

Spoiler

I hate to single people out but some users won't feel like they need this when creating their characters. This is fine. But you might want to consider adopting the idea so you're a good role model for others.

Thoughts?

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

That seems like a good idea! Maybe a bit more than stick figures (maybe rough blobs of colour or something) to improve readability. The prerequisite for this kind of work would be to have the concepts behind the moves, though. People like Crappy Blue Luigi, and maybe even recme or TomGuycott already have the ideas down, but not necessarily the WIP animations.

However, I'm a bit adamant, because this could encourage people to post roughs of all their animations, be content with that and never come back to finish what they've started again.

[Kosheh]

However, I'm a bit adamant, because this could encourage people to post roughs of all their animations, be content with that and never come back to finish what they've started again.

Then... that's their loss...?

If you don't flesh out your roughs after making them, yeah - there's still no 100% obligation to finish it, but there's also no obligation for us to include that in the v1.0 product.

also quirky little brainchild i just had

can we have a release system that's like

version 1 will have (minimum) 4 completely-written characters, 8 properly-programmed assists and 4 properly-written stages. Unfinished characters can just be uh, omitted from character select? lol
And release that as "The Fighter's Resource [Cool Subtitle]"

Then after 4 more characters/assists/stages are completed, add additional engine features and release v2.0 "The Fighter's Resource Turbo Hyper Fighting"

And then with each release of four additional characters/assists/stages, make it a full-number release and add two more adjectives into the subtitle so by the time we actually have 30 characters we'll have like v6.5 "Super Grandeur Fighter's Resource Mega Hyper Fighting Car-Wash Turbo Change-Into-A-Truck-On-Fire-Mid-Flight Giga Sometimes-On-Steroids-But-Sometimes-Not Ultra Just-Kidding-Straightedge Alpha Pet-Me-Dog Impact Edition"

just a thought

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Yeah! I meant if they had all their roughs up in the game engine, but ran off without finishing their work, it wouldn't be cool. As you said though, doesn't mean they'll be included in the final game - which is why I think the idea of creating a placeholder fighter with which people can tinker around whilst working on their character could be pretty useful.

[Kosheh]

SORRY I know I'm asking a million questions about game balance, etc. but this one's more of a hypothetical, hoping we can stir up some mechanics discussion (actually, would it possible to just make a new topic for this kind of talk instead of using this topic?)

do you suppose there's leeway for characters to have one special that has varying attack strengths for special attacks - and if so, how?

I was thinking something along the lines of a key/button-hold system to increase attack strength (if that's possible in FM2K - imagine you do a special and hold down a button, and your character reaches a certain part of the animation before their animation stops and they start to turn red. When they're like 25% opaque, it's half charged and you can let it go to let out a slightly more powerful version of that attack - like, for example Chris2Balls' baguette summon can be charged to spawn taller baguettes that shoot out of the ground.

IDK we don't have much leeway in that regard. For basic fighters on the Neo-Geo Pocket Color that was addressed with pressure-sensitive buttons, but we don't really have that luxury on keyboards and FM2K. ;P