Katawa Shoujo fightan game

[Synapsis]

Bear in mind that most special moves are not spammable. I've based this on the fighters that I play (MUGEN, Melty Blood) which use an energy system for specials, which maxes at 300%. So Kenji can use Mad Rant and stun everyone for 3 seconds, but if it uses 200% energy to do so, he won't be able to use it again for a while. The only ones that wouldn't have an energy cost would be weak attacks such as Brush Toss, which probably doesn't really qualify as a special anyways. And of course remember you could always change the effects. If one character is way too good at stunning, change some of his/her stuns to just do damage instead. I never was any good at actually balancing my characters, I just make them as they pop into my head.

Finishers are a whole different story. They always cost 300% energy, and often have additional conditions that must be met to use them, such as be at critical health, or have 50% more health than the enemy. They are do-or-die attacks that are meant to end the battle right then and there, provided someone is lucky enough to actually use it. They come with great risk, but if used properly the effects are devastating.

I originally made my post for my ideas on Rin's mechanic, everything else just got added as I thought of it. Most of the posts I saw here gave Rin a bunch of kicks and kung fu moves or whatever, but I didn't see any that explored her capabilities as an artist. I see Rin as a fighter who is relatively weak at the start, but becomes steadily stronger as she slowly transforms the stage into her personal art studio. Every attack is another brushstroke, and in the end they all come together to create a beautiful, yet deadly, masterpiece.

I'll just stop here lest this develop into another ridiculous wall of text.

[Julia]

Synapsis, your ideas are brilliant. Especially the paint stuff for Rin, I love the idea of her finishing attack using all splashes of paint from previous attacks.

[Ricardo Nation]

Oh, dear. People say "fighting game" and I just can't leave well enough alone. Hello, I registered just for this topic! :S

A couple things: if you have any plans to make anybody in any way care, don't use Mugen. You'll get laughed at. And yes, people shilling Mugen, you do get laughed it. It's a powerful engine lacking anywhere near enough quality control to have it taken seriously.

Also, I don't think people have put quite enough thought into any of the movelists they've come up with yet. Anything based on Melty Blood certainly doesn't seem like a good place to start...

Either way, I think some people are walking the right direction thinking to put presentation first in this case, but it can't be completely eschewed in favor of gameplay. There are certain traits that are going to have to be discarded and certain ideas that are simply never going to work if people would ever want this to be any more than a curiosity. My suggestion (and, okay, I'd be glad to pitch into a gameplay discussion, and I maybe should since I play fighting games at a competitive level) would be to come up with the pace of the engine first of all, examine the playstyles that have or could worked in a similar engine in the past, figure out what playstyles to mime, and THEN start figuring out who goes in what hole.

From where I sit, Super Turbo is the greatest fighting game of all time, but I know that's not necessarily going to be the most popular viewpoint, so I'm not going to sit here and throw out specific ideas all the while thinking of a very barebones engine. Instead, I think we should just pass the ball to the people who stand the biggest chance of doing real work on the game, i.e., the people who have stepped up and offered to do code or graphics and see what they'd want. Your move, C# guys!

[EternalLurker]

From where I sit, Super Turbo is the greatest fighting game of all time

I lol'd. But other than that, welcome to the forum. ^_^ We'll agree to disagree. Very, very vehemently.

As for the Mugen comment, of course people laugh at Mugen, but you acknowledged that the engine is powerful and that's all that really should matter. Look at Katawa Shoujo in its original form. An H-VN revolving around cripples? People laugh every time anyone tries to introduce 'em to the game. Doesn't matter as long as the final product's worthy of attention.

Also, Melty Blood's a valid source of inspiration for movelists; the approach angles in Melty Blood aren't what screw with balance, only the damage and Tohno Shiki's goddamned five billion invincibility frames per move. Well, for normal moves, anyway. Melty Blood's supers are stupid with regards to gameplay; Arc Drives are just far too dominant.

Speaking of Melty Blood versus Street Fighter...For those of you who get at least the very basics of fighter gameplay, here's a very general question so Dick and I can perhaps look into balancing this and making gameplay fun as the project progresses: are you guys looking to make something as combo-heavy as Melty Blood or Fate/Unlimited Codes, with massive combo damage scaling, or something as focused on single hits as the original Samurai Shodown, or something in the middle? (A few more names: most Street Fighter games fall closer to the latter end, Guilty Gear to the former.) Combo-focused games are usually not as friendly to fighter newbies, but they tend to look a lot more awesome, so if, as Dick notes, presentation is key here, then that might be a better track to take.

Or you could make something like Marvel vs Capcom, in which case I will immediately be distancing myself infinitely from this project. >_>

Also,

start figuring out who goes in what hole

inb4 "Hisao in Rin's"

[Ricardo Nation]

As for the Mugen comment, of course people laugh at Mugen, but you acknowledged that the engine is powerful and that's all that really should matter. Look at Katawa Shoujo in its original form. An H-VN revolving around cripples? People laugh every time anyone tries to introduce 'em to the game. Doesn't matter as long as the final product's worthy of attention.

Well, I left it out of the first post, but you also need to take futureproofing into consideration, or more specifically, that Mugen isn't ready for it. It's not going to upscale nicely to work on Windows Vista or 7 from what I understand, and from what I remember even XP can be finicky with it sometimes, although this could be erroneous. It's outdated technology, either way. C# coding is not going to run into any such problems.

It's also worth noting that Mugen would leave a lot of things open for people to just tear apart good work, which is kind of crappy for anybody who might have a hand in such a project.

Finally, with a custom-built platform, it can be expanded however people want. Though it's possible that this project will never lift off the ground, why would you limit yourself right at the planning stage? It seems kind of insane to cut out a feature like potentially having netplay integrated into the game, if it's at all possible to begin with.

Also, Melty Blood's a valid source of inspiration for movelists; the approach angles in Melty Blood aren't what screw with balance, only the damage and Tohno Shiki's goddamned five billion invincibility frames per move. Well, for normal moves, anyway. Melty Blood's supers are stupid with regards to gameplay; Arc Drives are just far too dominant.

Most things are valid inspirations, but leaping straight to copying its meter system is probably a misstep. This also kind of ties back to "why limit yourself at the planning stage?" If this project went that route of having a flight-heavy, chain-combo heavy system, there's no reason to think that it couldn't have a more creative, interesting and fun set of rules that govern gameplay.

Combo-focused games are usually not as friendly to fighter newbies, but they tend to look a lot more awesome, so if, as Dick notes, presentation is key here, then that might be a better track to take.

This I have to pause and take issue with. Combo-heavy games are active and full of motion, but that doesn't necessarily have bearing on personality. Robert Garcia's habitual clothes straightening in King of Fighters XII, or Q's dusting off his coat in Street Fighter III both take place in very grounded, less combo centric games. It's not about how much you have going on at once, it's about what you do with what you have. I'm sure having Hanako running away wailing nervously and flinging books over her shoulder at her opponent could work equally well in either setting, for example.

[EternalLurker]

Mugen's not going to upscale nicely to work on Windows Vista or 7 from what I understand, and from what I remember even XP can be finicky with it sometimes, although this could be erroneous. It's outdated technology, either way.

The makers are known for updating the game without any care at all for back-compatibility, but I've never heard any complaints about OS issues. 'Course, I don't follow the fighting game scene much these days, so I'll take your word for it barring further research, but having just done some now I still haven't noticed any. Erroneous OS complaints from computer-illiterate users, yes, but legitimate ones, not yet.

Finally, with a custom-built platform, it can be expanded however people want. Though it's possible that this project will never lift off the ground, why would you limit yourself right at the planning stage? It seems kind of insane to cut out a feature like potentially having netplay integrated into the game, if it's at all possible to begin with.

Indeed, but for a first project it may be better to start with an existing engine with the intent to develop our own if things work out, that's all. It was just a more reliable way to get the project off the ground more quickly, but if people are willing to start working on an engine right away then that's certainly preferable.

Most things are valid inspirations, but leaping straight to copying its meter system is probably a misstep. This also kind of ties back to "why limit yourself at the planning stage?" If this project went that route of having a flight-heavy, chain-combo heavy system, there's no reason to think that it couldn't have a more creative, interesting and fun set of rules that govern gameplay.

Certainly; I was just referring to normal moves. MB's meter system is not worthy of replication anyway.

This I have to pause and take issue with. Combo-heavy games are active and full of motion, but that doesn't necessarily have bearing on personality.

Indeed, but those are things that more seasoned players like you tend to notice. My comparison was between games which are more friendly to fighter newbies and those which are less, and people who are new to fighting games are usually too distracted by what's going on to be able to notice sprite subtleties. Darkstalkers has more subtle awesomeness hidden in its spritework than any other game I know, but it goes unnoticed by people new to the genre. Flashy combos are things even new fighters can notice.

[Snicket]

[pages of text]

Ok (despite not have an engine decided) we need to figure out the move set for each character. IS it going to be the standard; kick, punch, crouch, and block. with having a variation of such. (ex: crouch + upward punch = *uppercut*) Or are we going to do have some extreme moves like it MK, MB, or GG.

I bring this up since, whose ever doing the sprites and backgrounds will have something to work with. We can always decide on style and color pallet latter. We could just use place holders, so others can see what were going for.

As for specials and finishers, that will all depend on what engine we use. There are a few i've been looking into that use either C++, C#, or XNA. Though none i've seen have the 'power meter' that a lot of you guys want to have in there. though i can keep looking, but it may boil down to a combo of moves to perform the special attack, rather then a meter.

-edit:

I did manage to come across an engine that has a power meter and uses XNA

http://code.google.com/p/xnamugen/

-its pretty much a mugun clone made with C# code. Though unfortunately, it doesn't have all the options available.

BTW- If we do use a C#, C++, or XNA. IT wouldn't be very difficult to play it with a 360 controller.

[Ricardo Nation]

Ok (despite not have an engine decided) we need to figure out the move set for each character. IS it going to be the standard; kick, punch, crouch, and block. with having a variation of such. (ex: crouch + upward punch = *uppercut*) Or are we going to do have some extreme moves like it MK, MB, or GG.

I bring this up since, whose ever doing the sprites and backgrounds will have something to work with. We can always decide on style and color pallet latter. We could just use place holders, so others can see what were going for.

Well, if there are even people spriting...

Anyways, why wouldn't it be standard "kick/punch/crouch/block?" That's the basic idea of all 2D fighting games. Everything, ultimately, comes from Street Fighter. Now, yes, we could play with how many attack buttons we need (no block buttons please, ugh), and maybe try and have something crazy like BlazBlue's drive system, but what beyond that do we need to know?

As for specials and finishers, that will all depend on what engine we use. There are a few i've been looking into that use either C++, C#, or XNA. Though none i've seen have the 'power meter' that a lot of you guys want to have in there. though i can keep looking, but it may boil down to a combo of moves to perform the special attack, rather then a meter.

-edit:

I did manage to come across an engine that has a power meter and uses XNA

http://code.google.com/p/xnamugen/

-its pretty much a mugun clone made with C# code. Though unfortunately, it doesn't have all the options available.

BTW- If we do use a C#, C++, or XNA. IT wouldn't be very difficult to play it with a 360 controller.

Isn't the point of using boilerplate code to be able to add to it? Couldn't someone know knows one of those languages take the basic info that's been coded involving how collision boxes work, how characters move, etc., and add new features or edit the existing work? Or did I miss something?

[EternalLurker]

BlazBlue's Drives aren't a mechanical system as Arc's hyped it up to be. They're just a way to establish the fact that characters' movesets are notably different.

Anywho, Snicket, spriting is a slow, time-consuming job, so if you want the spriters to have something to do for now then they can start on the basic movements for each character: neutral, crouching, turning, jumping up, jumping forward, jumping backward, walking, dashing, backdashing, and blocking. Even without attacks they'll have their hands full for a while, I assure you.

[Snicket]

@ Dick Nation

No i was saying that are we going to use anything else other then the standard move set....Or at least thats what i meant. Also i was going trying to say that there area few fighting game templates out there. It just depends on what engine we use.

@EternalLurker,

I know

[Warwick]

Has anyone played the "Rival Schools United by Fate" series of games? My friend got Project Justice and I enjoyed it for that one evening of wackiness we got out of it.

[Ricardo Nation]

oh hi there I got banned over my username (not hard to make a new one, btw)

Anyways. Yuck. Rival Schools.

I've been trying to steer this away from something that's long on ideas but ultimately short on execution, which might just be futile. I, of course, am one of the people who could be very long on ideas and very short on execution, as I have no artistic skills and the only coding I've ever done is for the web (and that's been entirely in markup rather than proper executable code, to boot). Hell, I don't really have any skills useful to game making, other than some practiced talent at organizing projects.

That said, I arrive back at where I started, which is to say, there needs to be a focus on the people who have the real talents and skills at creating proper assets for a game, and their input. I could talk all day about theoretical concepts, but if somebody is going to spend their time coding or drawing sprites for a project, they deserve a voice first.

NOW!

Here's the real question: Is there anybody here who has those talents and is actually willing to commit to building this? If you are, step up and be a champ, and start making declarations about the game you want to play. Everybody else has to dance to the beat of your drum.

[EternalLurker]

I'd PM you, but you don't have a username, so I have to post in here. Any way we can chat outside the forum to create movesets and basic gameplay mechanics, then share a finalized version here for critique by the others? Since you wanna be useful, that's the best way to do it. Most people here who can code probably don't know as much about fighting games as you.

[Ricardo Nation]

Aura gave me an assist in fixing the original account. Cheers~

Go ahead and hit me up with a PM - I don't know how useful theory fighter is going to be, but I guess if we can encourage anybody, it'd be worth it.

[EternalLurker]

Well, I'm assuming that even in a game that's just supposed to be fun we'll want some semblance of balance. It pisses me off when the most fun characters to use are just unplayably bad, in any game.

This post will contain a constantly updated quote of the most recent PM between myself and RN. Feel free to comment on flavor, including move names and spritework, but unless you're confident in your knowledge of fighting games I'm pretty sure we can handle the balance discussion. Suggestions for Misha and the Nurse's moves would be nice, however. I don't have many ideas for either aside from lol-drill-attack and lol-injection. (If anyone says TRIDENT MOSQUITO I will cry. Laugh, then cry.)

Let's go for high aerial mobility rather than the heavily ground-based mechanics of Street Fighter. Double jumps, air-dashes, etc. are what I mainly meant when I say Street Fighter looks boring to newbies in comparison to most such games (most tourney-viable characters in Darkstalkers have quite a bit of aerial mobility).

lol movesets. Let the general role discussion commence, then! Here are a couple to get us started.

Hisao: the Gouki, with a very solid game in every category but disgustingly low health. During recovery from special moves, he leans over and clutches his chest for a few frames, especially after his projectile. Gets a double-jump and an air-dash. Normals have a good balance of range, startup, priority, and recovery.
---dragon punch: standard Shoryuken. Light, Medium, Heavy vary in height and damage. Maybe Heavy triple-hits like Gouki's, dunno. Can be done in air. Clutches his chest the entire way down and for a couple landing frames. Projectile invulnerability, but instead of complete invulnerability to other attacks (as most Shoryukens have) he's just got super armor; he'll take damage, but he'll hit you and knock you down anyway. We don't wanna give him invincibility frames because he really needs to be a low-defense character; running into Emi in the halls has a chance of killing the boy, after all.
---projectile: the balls he throws at the end of Shizune's route in part 1. After each move he leans over clutching his chest, so these are all high-recovery, low-startup moves, and they inflict knockdown, enabling okizeme but meaning they can't start combos even if you super-cancel out of the recovery. Light: one fast ball. Medium: Just about as fast, throws two balls in a = pattern (so the higher one can be ducked, but will hit low jumpers), slightly longer recovery. Heavy: More noticeable startup than the others, throws three somewhat slow-moving balls in a <- pattern, very long recovery (if this gets dodged, you'll get punished hard) as he leans over and pants heavily. His heavy projectile is meant to be a pretty good keepaway tool against anyone who doesn't have a teleport or exceptional aerial mobility. Note that Hisao's not stable enough to throw projectiles from the air.
---to be done: a special move with decent range that works in air and on ground, possibly a Tatsumaki equivalent

Lilly: to be done, but will have brutally good mixups, especially in her okizeme game.

Rin: to be done, but will have a fairly unorthodox combination of DoT paint-splashes and the like, and she'll have 1-hit super armor since it's so hard to get her attention

Emi: the Chipp Zanuff, with crazy rushdown and general mobility. Her dash is stupid-fast and very low to the ground, she gets a double-jump and three air-dashes, and her moves are quick. To emphasize that she's the healthiest character, she has high HP in spite of being fast! In exchange, her damage is low, her priority is low, her two jumps are pretty short (so Hanako's keepaway game will give her trouble), and she has a pretty nonexistent wake-up game, so okizeme-whores like Lilly will be a major issue when they knock her down even once.
---to be done: an Alpha Blade -like move, a Resshou->Rokusai/Senshuu mixup special-set but a full 3-chain, and a dive kick special like Tenma Kuujin Kyaku only way scarier (kinda like what Cammy had in the shitty MvC series)

Hanako: to be done, but will have a godly keepaway game. That's what Hanako does, after all: keeps people away. <_<

Shizune: to be done, but will be based around Risk, with cannons, cavalry stampedes, and the like

Misha: to be done

Yuuko: to be done

Muto: to be done

Kenji: the turtle killer. Kenji hits like a man. A manly man. High damage, quick overheads, strong command throws, and enough blockstun to be the best tick thrower in the game by a mile. His Heavy normals involve smashing whiskey bottles on people's faces, among other manly attacks. Cons: his walk and dash are stupidly slow compared to everyone else, as he tiptoes around warily; his normals have major recovery, so a whiff or an instant block gets him punished hard; his range is utter crap, which affects his comboing ability adversely due to his high knockback; and his stronger moves have surprisingly low priority for a damage-oriented character, though his jab is a pretty good poke. He also only gets one double-jump or air-dash.
---I Wear A Hat Now: Kenji's Ashura Senkuu equivalent (Light/Medium/Heavy change the distance as normal), he fades into the background as he "teleports" across the screen...by speed-tiptoing around, one hand securing an invisible hat on his head. Unlike Gouki's version, though Kenji's doesn't go as far, he can link IWAHN into itself once. Therefore, if he does it twice in the same direction, he goes quite far (well past the normal Ashura Senkuu distance), or he can juke around by doing a Heavy IWAHN to go far towards his opponent, and then a reverse Light IWAHN to suddenly shorten the total distance he travelled. The recovery on this means he can't attack out of it as a reliable crossup on anyone with reflexes better than those of a snail, but it's a safe approach since he can block within just a few frames of the invincibility ending.
---to be done: anti-feminist command gropes -- err, throws -- and a Close Curtains, Thwart Snipers projectile reflector like Rose's

Nurse: to be done