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Spotlight How to Make Fighting Games: Mike Z explains the dos and don'ts

Being fairly new to the SG community... I would have to say after seeing the video and reading all the comments here I cant understand some of the jargon used such as wave dashing frame delays and even the whole C.hp...
... but if anyone can humor me and if i may ask what was the first fighting game ever made?

wave dashing is the act of cancelling a dash (usually with a crouch) to recover from the dash quicker so you can dash again sooner.
frame delay is how many frames (how long) it takes the game to do something after given an input. this only really matters for online. frame advantage is how many frames you recover before your opponent from a situation (this can usually be positive or negative, negative being bad for you)
C.hp is short hand for crouching hard punch. you might also see j.hp which is short hand for jumping hard punch.

Im pretty sure the accepted first fighting game is street fighter 1. it had special moves and combos and different characters (even if you could only play as ryu)
 
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I am something-percent-sure that the game actually didn't drop with that and it was added in SDE.

So.

Moot point, since the omission of an in-game movelist was due to constraints on time and available resources, not because anyone thought the game shouldn't have a movelist.

It's also one of the very first omissions that was addressed in the following patch. So.
 
Moot point, since the omission of an in-game movelist was due to constraints on time and available resources, not because anyone thought the game shouldn't have a movelist.

It's also one of the very first omissions that was addressed in the following patch. So.
Alls I'm saying is "the game itself should help you rather than requiring outside resources" sounds funny when this game was dropped without a movelist. Nevermind the advance techniques of the game, some people want to know how to do their characters moves when playing.

And the following patch took 6 months to drop. So.

(Damn, how come somebody gotta take things seriously every time I talk)
 
Alls I'm saying is "the game itself should help you rather than requiring outside resources" sounds funny when this game was dropped without a movelist. Nevermind the advance techniques of the game, some people want to know how to do their characters moves when playing.
That's not a design decision? Mike even says there's stuff that could be added to or improved in skullgirls. Nobody's saying "what's in skullgirls" and "good ideas for fighting game usability" are the exact same thing.
And the following patch took 6 months to drop. So.
What? I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
 
Can't a nigga just point out some shit that he found funny or ironic, slap a ":p" on the end of it, and just leave it that? God damn.
 
First fighting game is Karate Champ I think. Could be wrong.

First competitively legit fighter is definitely Street Fighter II.
 
this is what happens zid. i TRIED to tell yah.....No i didn't
You shoulda told me... coulda saved me all this grief... now I'm all grief-y...

Anyway, I was thinking about infinite prevention. @Mike_Z you said in the video that you would want other games to borrow from Skullgirls when talking about IPS, but what about other methods of prevention? I think I've heard you say once or twice something about other methods other games use, like increasing gravity in some games or I believe BB's "you can only do combos for so many seconds" or whatever (I don'tplay BB, so I don't know what they do). My question is, what methods of Infinite Prevention are in games that you explicitly disapprove of, which ones do you think are acceptable, and are there any other ways that you could maybe see a different IPS working (one that's totally different from your system)? Also, you mentioned that restands are usually not allowed cause they can cause other resets. What are some of the problem moves that tend to lead to infinites, if there are any?
 
Good vs bad combo proration* systems in fighting games is something I find really interesting. I'd like to see a whole presentation just on that. Some games do it really well, others seemingly don't pay attention to it at all.

UMvC3 comes to mind as a game that does it really poorly. There's scaling off of assists and throws that's severe but does it matter at all? You can touch of death off almost any touch. Its so easy to do its laughable. I always wonder why a developer would implement scaling off that sort of thing and then mess up combo proration so bad that you can still kill off that stuff anyway.

*Proration right? I'm spelling this right D:
 
This kind of fell to the wayside a page back, but to anybody who thinks that health totals should differ-- how much more health would Thor need to make Phoenix a 5:5 matchup? (Keep in mind, Phoenix has essentially the minimum health since any hit will kill her)
 
Actually Thor doesn't have it all that bad against Phoenix right now. He has some setups with his command throw that will instantly kill her when she transforms and his air mobility lets him get around her bullcrap in the neutral game.
 
Can't a nigga just point out some shit that he found funny or ironic, slap a ":p" on the end of it, and just leave it that? God damn.

When it's something that they got massive shit about for ages when it's something that they really wanted in and only couldn't because they wanted the game to be able to come out? I can see why they might be a bit touchy about the subject. :P
 
When it's something that they got massive shit about for ages when it's something that they really wanted in and only couldn't because they wanted the game to be able to come out? I can see why they might be a bit touchy about the subject. :P
How long you gotta wait to make a joke? I mean, Skullgirls pounced on that Decapre wound after like a week, if even (edit: looks like it was actually like two weeks), with a big showy video and a whole character dedicated it. But I'm an asshole for a year and a half after they dropped the patch making a one sentence joke?

I may have over reacted a bit, but I am just really tired of arguing over stupid, meaningless things.
 
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Thank you Mike Z.

I dedicated my life to game Art,Design, & development and I plan on going to college after I complete the 12 grade next year for Game Development degree. I spend most of my time Analyzing the games I play, listening to the story and getting the feel for the games style. I also make my own characters and stories for games I plan to make, even mapping out details of the gameplay.

Skullgirls is one of my favorite games of all time, not to mention one of the best communities. This video helped me a lot and I will always reference back to it whenever I feel I cant make something better.

Games that inspire me: Legend Of Zelda, Sonic(Original), Mortal Kombat, Touhou, Blazblue, Forza, COD, Battlefield, Pokemon, MvC2 and so many more.

And Skullgirls Inspired me with a passion! :FIL::FOR::PAI::PAR::PEA::SQG::VAL::BIG::CER::DUB::ELI::FUK:
 
My question is, what methods of Infinite Prevention are in games that you explicitly disapprove of, which ones do you think are acceptable, and are there any other ways that you could maybe see a different IPS working (one that's totally different from your system)? Also, you mentioned that restands are usually not allowed cause they can cause other resets. What are some of the problem moves that tend to lead to infinites, if there are any?
Long story short - I hella disapprove of BB's time-based junk because then combos with long bounces or you being off by a frame or two can make it drop. Same-move-proration is bad because it's arbitrarily designer decided, and they can be wrong or make poor choices (same with Fatals).

Restands are often not allowed because designers seem to think that if you don't have restands then all you have to do is limit juggles and ensure that every ground combo ends fairly early with either a knockdown or a juggle. In practice this doesn't really work, though.

Acceptable-to-me infinite prevention methods are ones that:
1 - Actually work to prevent practical infinite combos. This should go without saying but lots of them fail the basic test. Guilty Gear has infinites even with extremely heavy-handed hitstun/pushback/gravity scaling, so does CvS2, etc etc. This doesn't even mean "prevent 100% combos", which is stricter, just "prevent a combo from going on forever given infinite opponent health".
2 - Are based around the specific combo you're doing, rather than a set limit that applies to all combos, so you are not just trying to find the easiest combo that reaches the same limit as all other combos (e.g. not Maximum Damage or time-based).
3 - Are based around WHICH hits happen rather than WHEN they happen, so that being late by a frame or two at a spot where there is still hitstun to spare doesn't break your combo later (e.g. not time-based at ALL).
4 - Do not have exceptions designed into them, because exceptions mean infinites (e.g. not MvC3 TACs or moves that just ignore hitstun scaling entirely, GG ignores ground combos, etc).
5 - Cover every possible hit scenario, not just some of them (OMF2097's pretty great juggle limit system completely ignores projectiles).

Bonus points for these features, which IMO really should be required:
6 - Not being dependent on the combo starter, whatever you determine to be the "starter" (i.e. not giving different results depending on whether you start with LP or LPx2 or j.H into LPx2).
7 - Not breaking multihit moves or canned followups (e.g. specials or supers not comboing into their final hits later in combos in GG).
8 - Not making the same chained or cancelled series of hits behave differently later on in a combo.
9 - PROVABLY preventing infinites in some sort of formalized way rather than hand-wavy "Yeah combos will eventually end" mumbo-jumbo.

More bonus points for varying levels of transparency to the people who are gonna play the game:
10 - Being understandable at all by dedicated players, rather than "just try the combo and see if it works".
11 - Being explainable at all without having to play the game and find out when it will stop your combo. (Not necessarily the same thing as "being understandable by players" - you can understand that MvC2 has undizzy and basically how it works, or that 3s has set hitstun values per juggle number, but you can't figure out when it will stop your combo since it is partially timing-based.)
12 - Being easily explainable, at least in basic principles. "Don't start a chain with a move you ever hit with before", for example. Sure, you can stretch combos beyond that, but if you adhere to that in SG your combo will never be stopped.
13 - Displaying relevant info so that players can figure out if a combo should work if they had better execution. (In most games with hitstun deterioration nothing tells you how long the hitstun of the move really was when you used it in your combo just now, so you can't really know if the next move would connect if you were just a LITTLE faster...then again, most developers are against displaying frame data of any sort so this is unlikely to happen.)

And finally, extreme bonus points for:
14 - Enforcing some sort of fun frequency for two-player interactions, cuz that's sort of the goal of stopping infinites, just more focused: If you're gonna stop combos arbitrarily you might as well use that power for the benefit of the players. (For example MvC2's system prevents most practical forever-loop infinites but does nothing about repeating a would-be-stopped-later-on meterless loop combo for 100% damage, and MvC3's system does nothing at all about this point. GG's system is very good for this, minus the "practical infinites exist" part. And yes, SG's system did not initially do this at all.)

I tried very hard to make sure SG's system meets all this, and I initially failed at #14 because I didn't think it was important enough.
That alone was enough to make the game pretty derpy out of the gate.
(I think it's pretty decent now, but that's just my view. :^)
 
I hella disapprove of BB's time-based junk because then combos with long bounces or you being off by a frame or two can make it drop.

2 - Are based around the specific combo you're doing, rather than a set limit that applies to all combos, so you are not just trying to find the easiest combo that reaches the same limit as all other combos (e.g. not Maximum Damage or time-based).
3 - Are based around WHICH hits happen rather than WHEN they happen, so that being late by a frame or two at a spot where there is still hitstun to spare doesn't break your combo later (e.g. not time-based at ALL).
How does this go along with the Undizzy deterioration? Hitting a button after a reset one frame earlier loses me like 2000 damage on the next combo, due to not being able to do my ender.
P.S. The difference between 239 and 240 on the bar is pretty hard to see (especially in a match), which means I am usually going to trigger burst here, as I don't even notice that I filled it up by accident; let alone the difference between 199 and 200, so I can't adjust my combo after noticing that I pressed the button too early

8 - Not making the same chained or cancelled series of hits behave differently later on in a combo.
Stage1-2-3 kind-of go against this? Parasoul [j.MK j.HP, j.MK j.HP, j.MK j.HP] works in Stage1 and is going to trigger burst everywhere else. I mean, even if you say "aside from Starters, because #6", the Stage3 business (Filia being able to do [j.MP j.MK xx AD, j.MP j.HK] after the first launch, but not after the second or later; Parasoul being able to do [j.LP j.HP xx L.Toss, j.HP] only after the first launch, etc) is most definitely "same chained or cancelled series of hits behave differently later on in a combo" ('Works fine' vs 'Triggers burst' is as different as it gets)

1 - Actually work to prevent practical infinite combos.
Only practical ones, so ones via Tool Assistance are fine?
And what does 'practical' refer to, "So difficult that nobody is gonna get more than a few loops off" (eg Bulleta Sakocombo), "So hard that people can't even hit the first one"?
 
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its intereting watching this video and seeing how fighting games are even regressing with omissions such as efficient button checks, no rematch options etc.

this sort of stuff should be in EVERY fighting game, theres just no excuse for things like that to be excluded anymore.

did you know that USF4 does not have an option for delayed wakeup for the training dummy? one of the biggest changes to the game and it gets left out of training mode. they do have an *AWESOME* lag simulator to prepare you for the crappy netcode though. i need to stop being surprised by capcom anymore.
 
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nah usf4 is an exception

the entire thing was just lazy as fuck and rushed, if evo was held later on in the year they probably would of put a DWU option into training.

doesnt help that capcom doesnt have much money either
 
its intereting watching this video and seeing how fighting games are even regressing with omissions such as efficient button checks, no rematch options etc.

this sort of stuff should be in EVERY fighting game, theres just no excuse for things like that to be excluded anymore.

did you know that USF4 does not have an option for delayed wakeup for the training dummy? one of the biggest changes to the game and it gets left out of training mode. they do have an *AWESOME* lag simulator to prepare you for the crappy netcode though. i need to stop being surprised by capcom anymore.
From what ive heard... Some companies actually have PATENTS on certain training mode features... Idk if that was on the up and up... But yeah it shit my shit.


One of the great training mode features that ive only seen in one or 2 games is soul calibur 1 and 2 move list. Simply click on the command list move with the appropriate button and the command list would do the move for you and show you the button inputs and correct timings and everything.

So if you wanted to see what a move was, instead of having to memorize its sequence you just had it be shown to you. It was good even for basic moves like standing attacks cause you could look at the move on a new character to get a feel for there pokes while still getting all the command list info like hits low, what it chains into and from etc etc etc.


A command list like that is only really needed in 3d fighters, but if you had it do all specials, all normals, all air normals and crouched normals and command inputs... It could still be very good in a 2d fighter.


And when you COMBINE that with a hitbox viewer like sg has, AND a clear pause screen... Man, shit would be heaven.
 
Patents on training mode features? Such as?

Also Dead or Alive (at least on 3DS) also allowed you to playback certain moves and combos by tapping them on the touch screen in training.
 
@Mike_Z

Have you worked on other games?

And for my money, your points 10-13 should be borderline required as well. It is a fairly obtuse genre, and anything done to minimize that is an A+ in my book.
 
What other patents does Namco have? And how long have they had it?
 
Just for fighting games? Because Platinum Games has had minigames on loading screens for a while now.
 
i know this isnt the feature request thread but to bad im going to do a feature request anyway because its relevant to the recent conversation.
1) how hard would it be to make the undizzy bar change colors when it is over 240? would be a very simple way to see if you are already to far without looking for a tiny gap in the side.
2) is there a way to put the undizzy value of the last combo you did on the training mode data screen? so when i mess up doing a combo and go over and get auto bursted on i can see how far i was over without doing the math (because im lazy like that...)
 
How long you gotta wait to make a joke? I mean, Skullgirls pounced on that Decapre wound after like a week, if even (edit: looks like it was actually like two weeks), with a big showy video and a whole character dedicated it. But I'm an asshole for a year and a half after they dropped the patch making a one sentence joke?

I may have over reacted a bit, but I am just really tired of arguing over stupid, meaningless things.

Not to really drag things out but, good god man, I think you're the only one over reacting here. Go back and read the responses and point out where anybody called you an asshole.
 
Not to really drag things out but, good god man, I think you're the only one over reacting here. Go back and read the responses and point out where anybody called you an asshole.

Please people, comments like this don't help. Why take the time to tell him he's over reacting when he's already admitted to over reacting in his own post? He's just irritated because people on these forums have a tendency to turn a passive comment into a full blown argument.

Also @Zidiane I think you misunderstood Viro's joke. He wasn't saying that vanilla SG had a movelist in the tutorial, he was jokingly pointing out that you could reference your move inputs by actually going through the tutorial :P

In an attempt to stay on topic, I agree that it's somewhat difficult to gauge where I am in my combo with regards to Undizzy. Ben's suggestion of having the bar change color sounds like a simple solution that would help greatly.
 
Oh good, Vulpes. You know you're responsible for my irrational hatred of foxes, right?
How does this go along with the Undizzy deterioration? Hitting a button after a reset
That's after your combo is over, which is not in the scope of that post.
If undizzy were immediately reset to zero there'd be none of this.
I specifically prefer it not to do that because I LIKE what else having it carry over does for neutral. (I like that thing you hate.)

>Not making the same chained or cancelled series of hits behave differently later on in a combo.
Stage1-2-3 kind-of go against this? Parasoul [j.MK j.HP, j.MK j.HP, j.MK j.HP]
[snip]
Filia being able to do [j.MP j.MK xx AD, j.MP j.HK]
You missed the point.
Any infinite prevention system has to interrupt the combo at some spot. Choosing to interrupt it at a spot where it is generally easier to confirm the interruption rather than during a series of hits that the player will be doing quickly is preferable.
j.MK-HP is a series, j.MP->MK is a series, but any spot where you can block is a new series so all your examples are wrong. (Whether an airdash cancel should be considered a new series is up to the designer, I consider it one because it shortens combos.)
For a negative example, MvC2 will interrupt things like s.Jab->cr.Strong->s.Fierce xx Proton Cannon, meaning the opponent gets to block the super (which you CANNOT do slowly enough to confirm into) and kill you, and this is compounded by undizzy falloff making it happen seemingly at random spots. GG will interrupt K->S->H xx DP, allowing the opponent to tech and punish the whiffed DP.
Having a full combo section always either work or not is better, IMO.

Only practical ones, so ones via Tool Assistance are fine?
And what does 'practical' refer to, "So difficult that nobody is gonna get more than a few loops off" (eg Bulleta Sakocombo), "So hard that people can't even hit the first one"?
In general an infinite prevention system should get rid of all infinites, but it only matters for human play that it get rid of ones that humans can do, ne?
I said "practical" because if there are infinites that require things like inputs faster than humans can do them or frame-perfect execution for every rep every time like Abel's infinite in SF4 or BH's pillar infinite or Psylocke's OTG infinite in MvC2, they are irrelevant for general play.
A properly designed infinite prevention system would prevent all types anyway, but preventing infinites in match play is all that really matters.

Have you worked on other games?
I assume you mean fighting games...so, KI, and I gave BB advice early on.
For other genres, yes, here.
 
I feel like Undizzy is a very elegant and simple way to limit combos, but I can see how having it as your only combo restriction could lead to problems like a combo made entirely of one move.

IPS, I always thought was a little clunky from a player standpoint but it certainly does its job. The game doesn't really explain it though, which is a problem. Doesn't help that the training dummy isn't set to Burst by default, I've seen several people doing combos in training mode on Stream and they're doing burstable combos without realizing it.
 
I feel like Undizzy is a very elegant and simple way to limit combos, but I can see how having it as your only combo restriction could lead to problems like a combo made entirely of one move.

IPS, I always thought was a little clunky from a player standpoint but it certainly does its job. The game doesn't really explain it though, which is a problem. Doesn't help that the training dummy isn't set to Burst by default, I've seen several people doing combos in training mode on Stream and they're doing burstable combos without realizing it.

I actually hold almost the exact opposite view. Undizzy seems imperfect but necessary. I like what it accomplishes, but I don't love how it accomplishes it. That it is transparent takes away a lot of my gripes though (I can see when I just need to super/sweep to finish it up).

IPS is a little unwieldy at first, but the more I play the more elegant it seems.
 
I like that thing you hate.
It always seems like someone is saying this when Mike Z is involved in a conversation.
For other genres, yes, here.
I want to add a portrait to your database.
2177974-mikez.jpg

(Also, why isn't Skullgirls on that page?)
 
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Doesn't help that the training dummy isn't set to Burst by default, I've seen several people doing combos in training mode on Stream and they're doing burstable combos without realizing it.
Wait....it's totally set to "1st hit" by default! Been that way forever. When is it not bursting?
[tests it]
So if I delete my savedata then run the game it is SET to "1st hit" but they do not escape because it isn't loading the option properly. If I quit the game and run it again then it works correctly.
Bug with blank savedata is now fixed, but otherwise it seems to be properly defaulted. ?

I want to add a portrait to your database.
(Also, why isn't Skullgirls on that page?)
Go ahead, and I have no idea.
 
About half circles:

I have messed around with characters with half circles so much, that I mostly do the motion itself through muscle memory (or whatever other word I could have used).

Playing Dhalsim in Street Fighter 2 messes me the fuck up. :(
 
The quarter circles are a masterpiece in my opinion... instead of having to waste a button or two solely on a special (some old fighting games do that) you can use the quarter circle and two buttons... so you can use the two buttons as a different move entirely or each seperately when the quarter circle motion isnt used... only time its inconvienent is when you try to tie in a special to a combo but other than that... i think theyre... beneficial
 
Wait....it's totally set to "1st hit" by default! Been that way forever. When is it not bursting?
[tests it]
So if I delete my savedata then run the game it is SET to "1st hit" but they do not escape because it isn't loading the option properly. If I quit the game and run it again then it works correctly.
Bug with blank savedata is now fixed, but otherwise it seems to be properly defaulted. ?

SEE? that's something i like about Lab Zero: you can speak with them directly, they test it, says what could be wrong and fix it without chargin' for an arcade edition
 
SEE? that's something i like about Lab Zero: you can speak with them directly, they test it, says what could be wrong and fix it without chargin' for an arcade edition
In other news, Skullgirls Encore: Cashgrab Type Q4 2014 will be a $15 update in late September, so if you want those last previously-stated-gonna-be-free-DLC characters you better start saving.
 
In other news, Skullgirls Encore: Cashgrab Type Q4 2014 will be a $15 update in late September, so if you want those last previously-stated-gonna-be-free-DLC characters you better start saving.
Stop playing games with my heart ;_;