the point is you SHOULD have a vertical slice by now, that should have been the first thing you made. The fact that you've moved onto other aspects of development before finishing the core mechanics of your game is extremely telling, it absolutely blows my mind that you all though finishers took precedent over core gameplay.
Road of the Dead isn't a fighting game; you cant make a fighting game piecemeal, it's a massive interconnected system where every mechanic effects every other mechanic.
You keep making excuses like "we're new to this" and "mistakes will be made" but I clearly remember mike offering his insight a long time ago. The fact that you both acknowledge your fallibility and yet also ignore advice from a seasoned developer is the most baffling thing I can imagine.
I mean you had your pet project and your dealt with it with flying colors and I'm happy for you.
I don't think you understand what the skullgirls dev team has gone through to bring this product to fruition. If your team isn't willing to put the level of work up front that lab zero did, you should go back to developing for publishers.
Bottom line, here's what I think y'all need to do.
1.)
Stop promising things we both know you can't possibly deliver. I think it's fair to call it a scam if you're trying to get money from people with false promises, even if you don't intend it that way. Either stop the kickstarter, or alter it drastically to ONLY include work on Vincent.
2.)
Play more fighting games. This is going to be really important for the next step, and you should not even consider further development till you have a thorough understanding of the genre. Learn the key games inside and out, I'm not a programmer but I'm sure there are resources for looking at the code of some of these games. Just play them and critically analyse what works and what doesn't. Street fighter, Mortal Kombat, Anime, versus games, just do it. Play online and watch tournaments. If you dont have it,
I will give you copy of skullgirls.
3.)
Make the vertical slice with what you have. You promised this a long time ago and yet it's still not here. Halt animation, you have plenty of frames to make a gameplay demo, and the art isn't as important at this stage in development. If the kickstarter continues, all that money should go to
you as the programmer. When Skullgirls was early in development Mike made something like 3 characters out of an incomplete filia as a proof of concept. Vincent needs to have all his hitboxes and hurtboxes in order and the core mechanics need to be nailed down, you absolutely need a firm foundation for further development.
4.)
Don't come back to kickstarter. You're fundraising opportunity is long over. Go shop it out to those big names you were talking about. Get funding from a publisher. You cannot make a game of your scope on crowdfunding alone. Lab Zero was only able to be so successful with their crowdfunding because they already had a product, and even then they were only able to add 5 dlc characters, which is nowhere near the size of their original roster. You do not have the clout to get anywhere near this level of success, especially with the history of botched campaigns.
6.)
Tighten your scope and cut corners. You don't need an insane number of frames, I think it was brought up in the last thread that you were animating sprites with more frames per second than skullgirls? That's completely ridiculous and a waste of resources. Cinematics like finishers are completely unnecessary. if you're serious about making a fighting game, and don't just want to make an animated feature, throw those ideas out the window. Complete waste of resources that will just bore players after one or two times. There's a reason people press start and rematch at the end of mortal kombat matches, people don't want to see the same fatality or winning cinematic over and over again.
7.)
Listen to Mike. He's done all the grunt work and made all the mistakes so you don't have to. Even people that actively dislike skullgirls admit that he has created one of the most solidly built fighting games there is. Watch every panel he's ever given, read every piece of advice he's tried to give you, just do it. The level of craft and attention to detail the guy puts into his coding makes AAA devs look like absolute chumps.
As burned as I am on this project, I think you could pull it through if your team is willing to put in the work. Furry art is not me jam, but the animation is fluid and the talent is there. At the end of the day people just want a quality product, if you come back with something good people will accept you with open arms. I'm a big indiephile so I'll be the first in line. There's no vendetta against the project, we're just calling it like it is.
