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Beast's Fury Kickstarter is Live!

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It's interesting watching people be dicks for no reason.
Enough people gave them the money they said they'd need for them to reach the goal. You can't really crap on that unless they don't accomplish what they said they would.

Re: framerate
Beast's Fury runs at 60fps, I am sure. It'd be suicide otherwise. Ain't been no 30fps serious fighting game since forever, except the new Jojo's. Games basically should never run at 30 anyway. :^)

Re: "animated at 30fps"
Since I talked to them and asked this same question, I will clarify: "it's animated at 30fps" means the animators are working with a 30fps base, not a 24fps base.
It does NOT mean that there's one frame per every 30th of a second in game - the length of time a frame is held for varies per move, as with any other game. It would be prohibitively expensive to animate everything at actual 30fps, not to mention looking worse on a lot of actions. (Frames in SG are displayed anywhere from 2-4 times depending on the needs of the animation, generally. Some frames are at 1, some are at 6-8, etc.)
This whole line of thought is basically meaningless since it's unrelated to how many frames are displayed in the game per second. I guess it sounds nice as PR to people who don't know what it means? The only time you will get a different frame every 1/60th or 1/30th of a second no matter what is going on is if the game's in 3d, since you can interpolate 3d animations to any timestep you want.

Also you can't really use how many frames per second are drawn or displayed as any sort of comparison point - Third Strike uses 3-5 repeats per frame on average, but some parts of things like walk cycles or complicated fast motions are at 1 or 2, and some parts of slower motions are at 8-10. Does that alone imply SG is "better animated" in any sort of meaningful way since we average fewer repeats? Heck no. You can display hella frames of a terrible animation and all it means is you wasted frames. All that matters is how good you think it looks at the end.

Where you PUT the frames that you do draw has a lot more to do with it than that. If you need a comparison point for fighting games because you want judge things, look at the hitstuns. If hitstuns, particularly air hitstun, are basically one static frame (Denki Bunko whatever Climax, I'm looking at you!) then in general the game probably has fewer frames than it should, and is covering a lot of the intervening motion with effects. One of the reasons people think 3s looks so good is because they basically don't cover anything with effects, it's all animated properly.
 
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Mike_Z said:
Some good shit about frames I just learned
So...
Less frames than you need=more time in certain frames; More than you need=frame skip?
 
Mike_Z said:
It's interesting watching people be dicks for no reason.

I'm a little bitter, yeah, but I have plenty of reasons.
 
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Mike_Z said:
It's interesting watching people be dicks for no reason.
Enough people gave them the money they said they'd need for them to reach the goal. You can't really crap on that unless they don't accomplish what they said they would.
Yes. This.

Mike_Z said:
Where you PUT the frames that you do draw has a lot more to do with it than that. If you need a comparison point for fighting games because you want judge things, look at the hitstuns. If hitstuns, particularly air hitstun, are basically one static frame (Denki Bunko whatever Climax, I'm looking at you!) then in general the game probably has fewer frames than it should, and is covering a lot of the intervening motion with effects. One of the reasons people think 3s looks so good is because they basically don't cover anything with effects, it's all animated properly.
God damn. I've been trying to figure out why Climax looks so particularly underanimated and I think this is exactly what's been bugging me.
 
Stonechimes said:
You sure about that? I have a distinct impression of seeing somewhere that Skullgirls animations run at 24 fps while the gameplay runs at 60 fps.

That might be a more accurate number, though it's a little more complicated than that. I was attempting to generalize the average number of individual frames per second in-game, though breaking it down that way doesn't make any sense at all in hindsight. Mike sort of already went over this. They might animate at a base of 24 fps when illustrating the cells, but the actual framerate by which each cell plays back differs between the source animation and the actual in game implementation because the game runs at 60 fps. It also doesn't necessarily mean that there are 24 frames for each second of animation. For example;

Let's say that a move in Skullgirls consists of exactly 12 frames animated at 24 fps. Let's also assume that it's evenly animated on 2's, meaning each frame plays exactly twice. This of course means that the animation lasts exactly 1 second and consists of 12 unique animation cells. In order for this to playback in the same manner when running at 60 fps, each cell would have to be held for 5 frames instead of 2. But it's usually not that straightforward. More often than not, frames will selectively be animated at different rates (2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, ect.) depending on how the animator wants the animation to look. So even if the source animation is animated at a base of 24 fps, this doesn't mean that there are 24 animated cells for every 60 in game frames.

The Beast's Fury developers have stated that they are animating at a base of 30fps. Again, this doesn't mean that there are necessarily 30 cells for every 60 in-game frames. In fact, there probably aren't any instances in which this would be the case except for perhaps idle animations, and even then I doubt it. But unlike the Skullgirls animators, those working on Beast's Fury seem to be adhering fairly strictly to a higher framerate regardless of what is being animated. This, in my opinion, means a lot of arguably unnecessary in-betweens in places where frames could just be held. This is purely my own conjecture based on what I've seen of their game demonstrations thus far, but what they've shown of the game is fairly telling. Whether or not the animation looks good isn't dependent on the framerate (and is also a matter of opinion of course), but differences in framerate will effect how an animation looks for a number of reasons.

Hopefully I explained that well. Also, sorry if I come across in a patronizing manner.
 
So I asked Mariel about this meaningless base framerate junk, and she said for SG it's 30. Not sure where people got 24.

Regarding the fact that animation quality is unrelated to frame-display-rate, and that you don't need a lot of frames to look good:
Double is animated at something like 12 FPS (on average she holds frames for 5 each, like in her idle and walks), and she looks AMAZING. It's just that Bahi and David IApologizeIForgotYourLastName are both supergreat animators. Using more frames for the same animation would make it look worse, which is something most people don't appreciate.

WrestlerGuile said:
So...
Less frames than you need=more time in certain frames; More than you need=frame skip?
Frameskip, the term, generally has to do with the game running at say 66 frames per second but drawing only 60 of them.
If you have more frames than you need for an animation you cut frames out, and I guess yell at the animator, but the resulting animation is still displayed at a maximum of 60 fps.

Cellsai said:
I've been trying to figure out why Climax looks so particularly underanimated and I think this is exactly what's been bugging me.
Climax is just particularly underanimated. It was probably a very small budget. That one guy's telephone pole swing is like 5 frames, and his car door charge holds one pose in the middle for most of the animation.
 
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Okay, that's why the animation was bugging me for the idles, it looked way to unnatural.
Thanks for clearing that up guys.

Another thing why Skullgirls looks really good is because the animators know how to use their keyframes, they display tension before the release.

Like the height of Parasoul's b.HK, where her leg is aright up in the air, that has the most tension and then the slam is the release, making feel powerful. (Also props for Mike for enhancing this with screen shake.)

The idles so far don't have any of the tension and loose they look loose and all over the place.
 
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Mike_Z said:
If hitstuns, particularly air hitstun, are basically one static frame (Denki Bunko whatever Climax, I'm looking at you!) then in general the game probably has fewer frames than it should, and is covering a lot of the intervening motion with effects.
I've actually been watching a lot of Dengeki Bunko gameplay footage lately and I somehow hadn't noticed this. But now that you point it out, it's hard to NOT notice.
 
So, are there any instances where it would be better to cover the lack of animation frames with effects?
 
To be fair, the wiki says that they are animated at 24fps and are variably held for 2-5 frames, not just 2 :)

But either way, It all comes down to the same thing. Even if all of the animations are done at a base of 30 fps, Skullgirls is still full of animations that run at variable frame rates. Something like Double's Idle that's animated to a base of 30fps with 12 unique frames is going to be animated on 2's and 3's. When running at 60fps it'll be animated on 5's. But however you look at it, it runs at 12 fps even though it was animated at a base of 30fps...

So at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the base framerate is cuz Mike has to set the frames to playback based on a timesheet that runs at 60fps :P

But regardless, I still am of the opinion that the style of animation in Skullgirls looks better than that of Beast's Fury largely because of their choice to animate at such a high framerate. Even if both animation teams use the same base framerate to animate, It's clear that the Beast's Fury guys employ a much heavier use of inbetweens rather than holds. Sometimes it looks great, but more often than not it doesn't. But ehh, I'm still going to keep an eye on the game. Even though I'm not that interested in it I'd like to see how everything goes from this point forward.
 
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TechPowah said:
So, are there any instances where it would be better to cover the lack of animation frames with effects?
When you are forced to due to budget/time/memory constraints or if you have particularly bad animators.
In general, I would avoid doing this whenever possible. It's something we stuck to on Skullgirls, and I think it shows - our effects are generally fairly minimal and used to help in spots where the character would be moving part of themselves a large distance in one frame.
Effects are useful to enhance moves, but if your rush is a one or two frame static loop with a giant sparkly slash on top of it, you can do better. (The Umineko fighter, and to a large extent UNiB and BB do this type of thing quite often.)

If you want to see how well animated a game is, look at it without effects (or ignore them) and watch what the underlying character is doing.

I will say this - French Bread does really know WHERE to put frames so they'll be the most useful. You can see it a lot in Melty Blood, where the startup of normals is super well animated but the recovery is much less so, because in practice you always see the startup but you rarely see the recovery. Warachia in particular is noticeable for this.
 
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Pretty sure using the Kickstarter page for that is a breach of their TOS.
 
WrestlerGuile said:
I still don't trust their ability to make a breakdown piechart or any other breakdown chart. I don't think I'll ever see one. Ever.
I don't think they asked for nearly enough, but I'm sure it's all going toward the project.
 
I don't think anyone actually doubts they're putting their money towards making the game. Yeah, they didn't know what they were doing the first time and made some mistakes, and I personally am not sure they've learned everything they needed to in order to justify making another kickstarter (especially on the exact same project), but they ARE working towards their goal.
 
Mike_Z said:
When you are forced to due to budget/time/memory constraints or if you have particularly bad animators.
In general, I would avoid doing this whenever possible. It's something we stuck to on Skullgirls, and I think it shows - our effects are generally fairly minimal and used to help in spots where the character would be moving part of themselves a large distance in one frame.
Effects are useful to enhance moves, but if your rush is a one or two frame static loop with a giant sparkly slash on top of it, you can do better. (The Umineko fighter, and to a large extent UNiB and BB do this type of thing quite often.)

If you want to see how well animated a game is, look at it without effects (or ignore them) and watch what the underlying character is doing.

I will say this - French Bread does really know WHERE to put frames so they'll be the most useful. You can see it a lot in Melty Blood, where the startup of normals is super well animated but the recovery is much less so, because in practice you always see the startup but you rarely see the recovery. Warachia in particular is noticeable for this.

Man I had a feeling about that with Melty's animation. I could never put my finger on it really.

:O
 
They just started the paypal donations, but these guys should at least show somewhere how much funding they've got from the paypal, and how much closer they are to their extended goals.
Paypal is kinda riskier to throw money at, since it's not absolutely enforced like in KS that they have to deliver the goods.

Also people generally like to see the progress from something they did.
 
You know what? If there is any reason for BF's success, it should be lorddirk. He's such an amazing artist and animator and the work he does looks so clean and professional! It seems BF is getting those zoom-in body damages that Mortal Kombat has. In fact, I'd say it shares a lot with Mortal Kombat such as fatalities.
 
Fedora_Ninja said:
Paypal is kinda riskier to throw money at, since it's not absolutely enforced like in KS that they have to deliver the goods.

Kickstarter products are NOT enforced
 
Steam needs more of these.And phantasy star online 2.
 
Baiko said:
Steam needs more of these.And phantasy star online 2.

Steam needs to look at what is just being green light, there is some major junk on there, but yeah Steam could all ways benefit with more great games.
 
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WrestlerGuile said:
It seems BF is getting those zoom-in body damages that Mortal Kombat has. In fact, I'd say it shares a lot with Mortal Kombat such as fatalities.
Now THOSE are a waste of time and money because they contribute nothing to gameplay, and are much more time-consuming to make in 2D.
That makes me pretty sad, if true.
 
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Mike_Z said:
Now THOSE are a waste of time and money because they contribute nothing to gameplay, and are much more time-consuming to make in 2D.
That makes me pretty sad, if true.
Unfortunately it is true.
 
upload_2014-6-24_21-30-29.png
upload_2014-6-24_21-32-26.png
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12091784/
 
Don't even feel like saying anything anymore.
 
It looks like crap because I didn’t give a shit and had a few problems trying to get GIMP to do what I wanted it to, but I tried doing something similar to their X-ray thing to see how long it would take. That effect looks like it was partially done through filters or masking and may not take too much time for someone that has a pattern down and isn’t working with a poverty graphics editor designed by people that hate convenient interfaces.

2cqh36r.gif

One of the reasons their effect looks better is because the fracture patterns aren’t as busy or complex. It also didn’t seem like the propagation was animated in too much detail either. It’s less like the X-Rays from MK than it is Hanzo’s stuff from SamSho/Samurai Spirits.

I'm not even really in to this game, but I don't see how this particular thing would eat up much of their budget as long as they don't expand on it too much.
 
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Lots of the throws look like they have victim-specific frames or even whole animations. For example, I don't really see Vincent getting grabbed by the leg and slammed on the floor being able to be reused for another throw that isn't exactly that action again. That's the stuff that takes the time.
 
It seemed that way to me with some of their older stuff too. I just didn’t get why people were getting worried about the X-ray shots in particlar because those seemed like they would be fairly easy to do as they were presented.
 
Aw, c'mon. can't they just give up on making it a fighting game and transform it on a beat'em up? it'd require less frames and less work on the balancing side while allowing more variety of characters (enemies needs far less sprites than playable chars on many games)

it'd also give a more linear approach on the plot while STILL being fun.
 
But a beat em up isn't a fighting game. That's a pretty big difference right there!
 
I say they aren't experienced or funded enough to make a fighting game. A beat'em up could use less frames and be cheaper to make
 
Just recently decided to check on Beast's Fury's progress. They recently posted these couple vids on their Youtube.


No lie, the vs screen looks really cool. But, this product doesn't look even close to being done any time soon. The Kickstarter promised "2-3 months" for a polished demo with Vincent and Don (it's been 3 months give or take a couple days). I also quoted the Facebook guy as saying "Vincent is nearly done and will be ready almost immediately with full time work" during my little Q&A earlier. I'm not sure what's going on exactly.
 
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they need another kickstarter
 
I guess they spent all their time on that vs screen.
 
Stonechimes said:
I guess they spent all their time on that vs screen.
you know. . .it really looks like that is the case
 
What a shame... it's still a long ways away from being playable, even as a beta demo.
 
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