Beast's Fury - Updates & Discussion

[Cellsai]

Honestly, the issue is not really that this is the 3rd (5th?) crowdfunding attempt. It's that this is the third attempt and whoever is in charge of making the budget seems to be refusing to learn from the previous ones.

By this point you should be clearly aware that $25,000-$30,000 is not enough money to cover the costs of making one character to the level you are aiming for, and yet that is consistently how much you've been asking for.

Jumping from 2 unfinished characters to The Full Game was just a bonkers decision with that budget in mind.

People were clearly willing to believe you could follow through on your promises, or at least take a gamble or cut you some slack on the first two campaigns, but your team's unwllingness to adapt your goals and budget are doing a pretty brutal job of kneecapping this 3rd campaign.

 

[Arcana]

is 25k enough money to create a fully playable, balanced, version of a backer's character?

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

Just throwing it out there that SG asked for 150k for 1 character that was already in development. Additional 25k for story mode + stage. And this was a budget staked at the lowest price possible thinking it would never be funded. The Beasts Fury team is saying it will be able to fund 8 characters and a fully playable game at 10k less than what it took to build 1 character. This is the problem.

Also music/audio only gets 1%, and QA gets 3%. If they aren't getting much of a check, what's to stop them from doing a half assed job and moving on to something that actually pays?

 

[DukeMagus]

And i'll say the same thing AGAIN:

Why not try something simpler, and cheaper using the idea you have and matching the funds you're asking for?

Beat'em ups are fun and use a tad less frames than a full fledged HD+60FPS HD fighting game. And they make a story mode flow a tad more naturally IMO.

Hell, even Lab Zero had to cut some of their ideas for skullgirls (namely the "Complete" story mode).

Maybe even an RPG using the sprites you have to make the special attacks!

All are viable (and cheaper) options and all need a tad less fine tune on the balancing side.

 

[Evil-Dog]

So admit it. The demo is not good!

Did you miss the part where I say our demo is not worthy of fighting games and that it's between shit and gold, but closer to shit? lol, I do admit mistakes were made. What I stand by is that we did plenty with the money we had, sure, less than some, and certainly more than others.

I'm not saying we did something you can't. I'm saying we did something you DIDN'T - but should have.

I didn't say you said that, I, myself, am saying you did something BF can't, you had a project in your head, you had the technical skills to make it, the knowledge to see it through and do it well, Beast's Fury is a project in someone's head, someone without the technical skills to build a game, make prototypes and iterate, so people are hired to make it, me, animators, the game designer who knows where he wants to bring the game to, etc. So YOU could work on your own time as long as you wanted while you had your other jobs or however you made revenues. That's what I'm saying.

I'd like to add that I don't believe in donating to a project that is not the primary aim of the people working on it - if you have a regular day job and this is a side thing, I don't think you should be soliciting money from people (multiple times) since you already have a source of income. That's just wrong.

But I'm an indie developer, I have income when I make and sell my games, this is a project that would become the focus of my time and bring income while I work on it.

you keep pointing out your previous industry experience

Again with the backhanded insults as if I'm just boasting about whatever I did before, I mentioned one game when talking about vertical slices, and I mentioned the games I worked on WHEN SOMEONE ASKED FOR IT. If people keep saying we don't know how to make games, I'll keep saying I make games for a living, AAA titles and indie titles, doesn't mean I'm the best game dev who ever lived but if I don't have the credentials to work on a fighting game with a game designer, the criteria for someone who actually could are absurdly extreme by your standards. And if people keep saying we don't have the fighting game knowledge, I'll keep saying our game designer does. What I take in are actual feedback, stuff you said, stuff people say, it's all going in my files for review and considerations.

Simple question that might put some of this to rest: Considering that you're so confident in this new budget, should this current campaign succeed are you willing to say that you won't be starting yet another one until the demo is complete with all promised features/characters/etc.?

Until the DEMO is completed? Did you mean the game?

John Romero had lots of industry experience

lol I...can't deny that

150k for 1 character

You must be mistaken, because that's one person with a pretty good salary working full time for 3 years lol

 

[Arcana]

You must be mistaken, because that's one person with a pretty good salary working full time for 3 years lol

it looks a lot more than a good salary for one person to me

 

[Vadsamoht]

Until the DEMO is completed? Did you mean the game?

Sorry, yes. I re-worded the post at one point and forgot to proofread the result. I mean the game as promised in the various crowdfund campaigns.

 

[alexpi]

Quick google search suggests that 1 animator with no experience should earn around 40k a year. Programmer around 50k. Another 40k for an artist. 60 for a tech director. 50 for a sound engineer. 55 for a composer. So, assuming everyone is paid entry level wages, that 295k per year with no QA, marketing, or anything else. So, if you manage to have 1 guy doing each thing, and they finish on time, 150k would pay for 6 months of work at entry level wages. Plus, ya know, you still need QA, submission fees, office expenses, etc.

lrn2business bro

 

[Evil-Dog]

I mean the game as promised in the various crowdfund campaigns.

The game has been promised in one campaign, this one. And yeah, pretty sure they're not gonna ask for more until we're done. I would agree it would be a bit ridiculous at this point :)

it looks a lot more than a good salary for one person to me

Everything except the actual animation cost is already covered. We have our break down done already and we're going with the costs of the animation studio which is much less than 30k for a character. So that 150k looks really bloated for a BF character to me. Though I'll agree that there's being safe like SG did, while people threw bags of cash at every campaign they did, we don't have that luxury so we have to go with cheaper, but I believe in the plan, we can make it.

 

[Arcana]

and yet look what fighting game only needed 1 kickstarter to be successful and look at which one is on like their 8th or something

*mic drop*

 

[Evil-Dog]

and yet look what fighting game only needed 1 kickstarter to be successful and look at which one is on like their 8th or something

OOOOOOHHHH! Mom's spagetthi, read what I said to Mike, there's a stark difference in how the two projects are being built. i.e. Personal project vs "hired" project.

*mic drop*

I actually laughed out loud at that lol

 

[Cheesedragon]

There are plenty of people who worked on Star Wars Battlefront II with me that have amazing skills and talents, and there are some who

worked on Star Wars Battlefront II with me

Star Wars Battlefront II me

WHAT?!?

I may have something very important to tell my friend about one of his (and probably a thousand other's) favorite game of all time, as an incentive to play Skullgirls...

 

[Skullmageddon]

---You must be mistaken, because that's one person with a pretty good salary working full time for 3 years lol

That's honestly what it takes when you break everything down appropriately. The people you're paying have developed skill sets, the development time is fairly extensive, and there are a great number of small factors that contribute to the cost of development. At the most basic level, you have your in house developers that need to be paid. It's expected that they receive the most because, ideally, they have the most experience and are doing the most crucial work. You then have contract based work to pay for, including contract animators for inbetweens/cleanup, voice actors, composers, and any other various things that may come along such as folly artists, contracted programmers, etc. Certain aspects of implementation require a lot of time, such as putting together, tweaking, and finalizing hitboxes. You also have to budget for QA tests as well.

Not only did they budget appropriately for their IndieGoGo characters, but they did so having already developed the full game. This meant that they were working efficiently and effectively, as they were way beyond the point of attempting to figure out how things work. They simply needed money to develop new characters, and all that that implies. Now the best part is the fact that their budget proved to not be enough in the long run. They're not inexperienced. They work efficiently and effectively. They know exactly what they're doing, and they're really good at it too. Yet they found themselves working for wages way below what their skill sets should provide them.

Not only that, but you guys are promising content such as animated cut scenes and a short movie after developing a cast of 24 characters. Now I don't know what that entails exactly, but considering the animated scenes I've seen from you guys so far I have a good idea of the quality of work that it would require. "Short movie" (in addition to cut scenes) already implies a decent amount of non-gameplay centric animated content. Consider for a moment that the average cost for a single episode of an Anime is budgeted at around 140K. It's common knowledge that the oversees animation market is fucked and that many animators oversees barely (if at all) make liveable wages working as animators full-time. In other words, 140K isn't nearly enough for about 22 minutes worth of animation. Now consider that an average American cartoon (22 mintues) is budgeted at around 500K. Obviously you would budget differently than the average American cartoon, but my point is that the current IGG campaign is barely even budgeting for the animated cinematic segments that it's promising let alone the 24 characters leading up to that point...

This right here is why the current IndieGoGo campaign is so painful to look at. Not only is the low budget unrealistic, but it sets a poor example for what the people doing the work are actually worth. These people trained hard to be able to do what they do, thus they should be paid accordingly.

 

[Evil-Dog]

These people trained hard to be able to do what they do, thus they should be paid accordingly.

And they will be paid with the amount they asked for when we did the breakdown of all the sprites and animations needed for each character with them.

 

[Kai]

WHAT?!?

I may have something very important to tell my friend about one of his (and probably a thousand other's) favorite game of all time, as an incentive to play Skullgirls...

I might be misremembering, but evidently Mike actually had something significant to do with the Jedi mechanics? It's hard to get straight what you hear secondhand. @Mike_Z help me out, here.

Not only that, but you guys are promising content such as animated cut scenes and a short movie after developing a cast of 24 characters.

This is the craziest part, to me. Like, how is it that everyone on the team isn't looking at this and saying, "there's no fucking way?" This being completed is pure fantasy, no matter how I try to think it through.

 

[MysteriousJ]

and yet look what fighting game only needed 1 kickstarter to be successful and look at which one is on like their 8th or something

Man give this thread another few days and we'll be saying this is beasts fury's 100th kickstarter.

Though I'll agree that there's being safe like SG did, while people threw bags of cash at every campaign they did, we don't have that luxury so we have to go with cheaper, but I believe in the plan, we can make it.

One campaign. They had a working game to show, which was proof they could manage their money and deliver what they promised with that budget, and then some. That's why I donated.

 

[Skullmageddon]

And they will be paid with the amount they asked for when we did the breakdown of all the sprites and animations needed for each character with them.

Before I move further in my argument, it would be helpful to have a better understanding of what the work they're actually doing entails. I'm assuming it's just the character frames required for gameplay, and that their work in no way involves any cut scene animation or work of that nature? Are they animating any of the cut scene based finishers or anything like that?

 

[Evil-Dog]

which was proof they could manage their money and deliver what they promised with that budget, and then some. That's why I donated

Well it was proves that Mike Z knew what he was doing and worked a lot, for a long time, for free, on the game before trying to get any funding, with that rational, someone who have a game idea (like BF's owner) cannot try crowdfunding to fund it, correct? Because he's not someone who is able to work on a game on the sideline, for free, for years.

Before I move further in my argument,

You don't need to move ahead with your argument, we have a budget that we established with them including everything that needs to be animated for each character and that's what we're going with.

Are they animating any of the cut scene based finishers

Oh regarding finishers, keep in mind that Don's finisher is waaayyyy too long, and all finishers will be much shorter.

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

Personal project, hired project. Whatever. The main thing is that people THREW MONEY AT YOU (68,863 USD) to do a thing. Instead of throwing money at a mysterious company and twiddling their thumbs waiting for a product, these guys coulda gotten themselves lunch or something. Dollar menu. Hella tacos from Taco Bell. A beer keg.

However, 68,863 wasn't enough to fund a demo with a fully balanced, playable character. 150k (a lil more than half) shouldn't be alarming.

and these pie charts are a FUCKING EYESORE. Can we get a brighter font, better labels, and colors other than blue, black, and purple? I feel sorry for color blind people.

Spoiler

 

[Evil-Dog]

and these pie charts are a FUCKING EYESORE

Lol yeah

 

[dead]

Finishers shouldn't even be considered at this point, they take too many unique frames. You have to animate a new finisher for don for every new character.

 

[Evil-Dog]

Finishers shouldn't even be considered at this point, they take too many unique frames. You have to animate a new finisher for don for every new character.

It's nice and included in the animation costs.

Ok everyone, let me completely turn the table here, explain to me what you would have the BF team do NOW, I don't wanna hear about the past or the mistakes or how the project should have been dealt with 3 years ago, or how previous funds where allocated, I don't care, I wasn't there for most of it. I wanna know, what should they/we do now at this moment. Give me the one best option in your opinion and explain why that's what should be done.

 

[Skullmageddon]

*edit --- Sorry, this isn't a response to your request. I was typing this out before your last post :P

I do need to go ahead with my argument, because it's rather disheartening to see the industry move forward as though things like this aren't an issue. Just because they agreed to the work doesn't mean they're getting paid what they should be getting paid. Animators in Korea struggle to make a living wage with their full time jobs. They agreed to the work and likely knew what they were getting into. But does that mean they're making what they're actually worth? I don't think so.

What we have here is a developer that can't afford to pay what they should be paying, and contractors that are willing to undersell their skills because they need to find work. Not only should the developer not be attempting to pay people for work they can't afford, but the people they're paying shouldn't be accepting the work. Of course, the developer wants to move forward and produce a product while the contractors want work, so that's how we get to where we are now. Nonetheless, it's painful to watch...

Well it was proves that Mike Z knew what he was doing and worked a lot, for a long time, for free, on the game before trying to get any funding, with that rational, someone who have a game idea (like BF's owner) cannot try crowdfunding to fund it, correct? Because he's not someone who is able to work on a game on the sideline, for free, for years.

Right. In other words, Mike Z put forth the time and effort required to get the job done. BF's owner hasn't done this because he either "can't" or for whatever reason "doesn't." If he's not willing/able to commit the time and effort necessary to do the important aspects of the work himself, nor capable to manage the funding and business aspects of the work, then good luck to everyone on the development team. You're going to need it ;__;

You guys need a PR guy who's job is to simply take bullets for the team. Someone that you can slap a kevlar vest onto, throw into the pit, and just say "good luck." I don't like yelling at you, you seem like a cool and nice guy. Plus most of these things we're throwing at you aren't really your responsibility to deal with. I just don't have anyone else here to argue with D:

 

[MysteriousJ]

Well it was proves that Mike Z knew what he was doing and worked a lot, for a long time, for free, on the game before trying to get any funding, with that rational, someone who have a game idea (like BF's owner) cannot try crowdfunding to fund it, correct? Because he's not someone who is able to work on a game on the sideline, for free, for years.

Yep! Selling a product that doesn't even have a prototype yet is pretty damn hard.

 

[Evil-Dog]

I just don't have anyone else here to argue with D:

It's ok, like I said, it's the absolute Zen Master training :) The only serious problem I'm having right now is the nonstop lenghty replies I'm getting that need addressing, I'm gonna have to start replying with much simpler straight to the point answers, cause my stuff isn't progressing since I'm back here.

What we have here is a developer that can't afford to pay what they should be paying, and contractors that are willing to undersell their skills because they need to find work

That's not it at all. There's a common agreement beyond just a flat pay, hence the lower flat rates.

BF's owner has done this because he either "can't" or for whatever reason "doesn't." If he's not willing/able to commit the time and effort necessary to do the important aspects of the work himself

Because he's not a developer or animator, he actually can't build prototypes and iterations for years.

Yep! Selling a product that doesn't even have a prototype yet is pretty damn hard.

Well I wholeheartedly disagree on your assumptions that only devs can make crowdfunding after spending years working on their game. It's one good way to go about it but not the only way. It's up to the donors to judge for themselves if they wanna give a project a shot at existing or not based on what's presented in the campaign. And there's a risk for the project to fail and they know that. Most people here absolutely don't believe in the plan and budget proposed, I think it's fine and if enough people think so too, then we're good, if not then that's it, I won't have a fighting game to finish programming :)

 

[North888]

It's nice and included in the animation costs.

Ok everyone, let me completely turn the table here, explain to me what you would have the BF team do NOW, I don't wanna hear about the past or the mistakes or how the project should have been dealt with 3 years ago, or how previous funds where allocated, I don't care, I wasn't there for most of it. I wanna know, what should they/we do now at this moment. Give me the one best option in your opinion and explain why that's what should be done.

Finished Don and Vincent. You can work on the other chars and maybe show progress demos or w/e, but for now, I'd say finish those two. They're the two that most ppl know for this game, and adding in more characters will just be a hassle. Additionally, I would include in that "Finish Don and Vincent" any unique frames that ARE NOT part of a finisher. Got a character that's part of main 8 and characters need a unique frame for each character in response to said cast member? Plan ahead and make that now. Obviously not implemented, but have these assets ready to go when you need them. It makes implementing things easier and you find you backtrack less and maybe even find a use for that one frame for that one move.

 

[Fedora_Ninja]

explain to me what you would have the BF team do NOW

1.) Focus efforts solely on completing the demo.

• There are still things from the first list I dumped from Ver.5a that are still existent in ver.10a.
• Several points that I have made are neither getting a rejection or acknowledgement, and no changes in patch notes say otherwise. Idk what the hell to make of that.
• In the demo's current state, I honestly have no idea what this game is trying to be. All I'm feeling is a really stiff SF4 with no input buffering, anti-airs, or reversals. Please finish this so I can at least try to grasp a feel of what the team is going for gameplay wise and what the team's idea of balance is.

2. More communication

• Make your own forum. As far as I know (and I didn't even try to look), we're the only fighting game community seeking communication with the BF team. There's no way in hell the USF4, Marvel, and MKX communities would even bother looking at this. They don't even look at SG. Case in point, this forum is probably the only forum to communicate with the BF team.
• Like Skullmageddon said, you're the only one from the BF team we can bitch at. And you've only been on the team for so long and have the answers to only certain questions. We need communication with the rest of the team so we can specifically direct questions to the specialized leaders. We don't ask Mike art questions, why ask you to ask (insert name of BF art director)?

ecause he's not a developer or animator, he actually can't build prototypes and iterations for years.

So how does he contribute to the team? Is he just the idea guy that yells at you if it doesn't match his vision?

 

[Raptor1138]

I might not be an expert on these things, but I just want to simplify things by saying that it just looks like you're looking for an external solution to an internal problem. The problem is that you have not make a worthwhile fighting game after ordinary people paid you to, the solution your team has provided is to ask for more money and cry about how everyone is mean to them. I don't want to be mean, I genuinely wish this project the best of luck on every regard, but it doesn't seem like this team is financially, skillfully, or even psychologically prepared to reach anything close to the ambitious final project, and yet remains adamant in its belief that they are taking the best course of action despite all evidence to the contrary. The simple solution is to give people a product they want to pay for by any means necessary, because if you can't do that, this project failed the moment it was conceived.

 

[Skullmageddon]

I don't really know what you mean by common agreement. Not really a big deal though, I'll just move on from that line of argument. Instead, I'll try to respond to your post regarding suggestions for how to potentially move forward.

The gameplay. That needs to be the most immediate focus, pure and simple. Right now, the game doesn't play the way it needs to play. I know you have a list of things to fix and that you're learning a lot along the way. Regardless, the most important aspect of a fighting game is simply how it plays. I don't want to be told that it will play well. I need to be able to download the demo, play it, and genuinely want to play the game more. The game isn't there yet. Aside from that, focus on finishing up Don and Vincent. Don't even think about the other characters for now. If you can develop the demo to the point where it has solid gameplay and two fully implemented and well developed characters then I would actually be very excited.

TL;DR Finish the demo. Make it really good. Don't do anything beyond that. Once you have that much, focus on reaching out for further funding.

Also, it might be worth reaching out to Mike one more time. His expertise and knowledge is worth an incredible amount when it comes to developing fighting games. If you guys make a serious attempt at taking a step in the right direction, then who knows. He might even be willing to share some advice without being angry about it :P

 

[Flotilla]

Ok everyone, let me completely turn the table here, explain to me what you would have the BF team do NOW, I don't wanna hear about the past or the mistakes or how the project should have been dealt with 3 years ago, or how previous funds where allocated, I don't care, I wasn't there for most of it. I wanna know, what should they/we do now at this moment. Give me the one best option in your opinion and explain why that's what should be done.

• Scrap finishers. Obscenely-costly character-specific non-essential animation shouldn't even be considered until there's a fully-functional game.
• Don't even entertain the idea of having short animated movies or animated cutscenes. Skullgirls was made by a small team working on a budget of $1.7 million (and they went unpaid for a decent chunk of that), and even they couldn't afford such frivolous things. $645k is not some pie-in-the-sky amount of money that would let you do these sorts of things; if you indeed want to make a game with a full roster of 24 characters, you will be hurting BADLY for money if your budget is $650k. You cannot afford animated cutscene anythings.
• Focus on Don and Vincent. NOTHING ELSE. No publisher will be interested in a game with tons of half-finished stuff, but most projects that get picked up by publishers start as a small (but polished) chunk of the game that the developers want to make. Mike referred to this as a "vertical slice", and it's what the Beast's Fury team should strive to make.
• Accept that you are novices, and do not understand how much things cost. You acted as if $150,000 is a large amount of money to create a single character. For a character with over 3,000 frames of hand-drawn 1080p animation created by an animation team + small army of contractors, professional voice acting done in-studio with a voice director, months of programming work by an industry veteran (who would normally be paid some $80k+ annually), and a story mode with tons of high-detail illustrations, $150k is a fucking PITTANCE. You cannot claim to confidently know how much the facets of your project will cost when you've held two Kickstarters in the past and have still failed to deliver on the promises made in them (Don and Vincent are not complete). Have some humility, and adjust your goals to be more realistic.

 

[dead]

What do?

1.) Stop promising things we all 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. You do not need to finish don, and production on him should not have started till Vincent was finished, put him on the back burner.

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.

Also holy shit what does your director even do? Ideas are cheap.

 

[Tomo009]

Yeah honestly the things I mostly want first up is a playable demo, you've committed to 2 characters at this point, I would have been fine with (preferred even) just 1. But at this point I guess a playable demo with 2 characters, vs mode and perhaps some basic training mode features assuming those wont eat into making other more important things work in time for the demo.

Have those 2 characters to a point of polish where they no longer feel a bit janky, no extremes in power between them. I assume you are aiming at least for that.

HIT STOP, HIT STOP, HIT STOP!!!! Good feeling hit stop, camera shake and hit sparks so the basic feel of the game is GOOD already. I want to feel it when my attacks land, especially heavy hits.

 

[Evil-Dog]

Focus efforts solely on completing the demo.

About your points and all, everything is in my list, you made several massive lists that I have here, I haven't gone over everything yet we were actively adding stuff to the game with the spare time I now allocate to BF. Like I said, if I have questions about these points I'll let you know, otherwise you can try the builds to see if it still happens.

Make your own forum

Yeah not sure why that's not a thing

you're the only one from the BF team we can bitch at

Your resident punching bag.

So how does he contribute to the team? Is he just the idea guy that yells at you if it doesn't match his vision?

The whole idea of the game, story (there's a lot of it), characters and all that, I mean yeah he's an idea guy and as much as I would normally diss "idea guys", I do enjoy this project and wish to continue working on it given the funds.

The problem is that you have not make a worthwhile fighting game after ordinary people paid you to

Well yeah, I worked for free a part of the way and then got a small chunk of money to continue working on it more and here we are, I'm hoping they get funded so I can focus full time on it. As far as asking for more money, yeah that's where we're at, but crying that people are mean? Who even said that? lol

they are taking the best course of action despite all evidence to the contrary

To me it's the ONLY course of action, otherwise the project is dead. Maybe you'll say it should be. But I don't think so, it's worth a shot imo.

 

[Skullmageddon]

Whoa hold on, Evil-Dog. Do you play SG at all? If not, you should totally play SG with us! It'd be hella fun, plus it might be helpful in the long run :D

 

[Evil-Dog]

Whoa hold on, Evil-Dog. Do you play SG at all? If not, you should totally play SG with us! It'd be hella fun, plus it might be helpful in the long run :D

I'll promise we'll play together if we're funded haha :P

 

[New World Pope]

It's nice and included in the animation costs.

Ok everyone, let me completely turn the table here, explain to me what you would have the BF team do NOW, I don't wanna hear about the past or the mistakes or how the project should have been dealt with 3 years ago, or how previous funds where allocated, I don't care, I wasn't there for most of it. I wanna know, what should they/we do now at this moment. Give me the one best option in your opinion and explain why that's what should be done.

OHH you are not going to like this.
1. Cancel the kickstarter. Its clear that year team does not know how much money it takes to make a fighting game and you are not at a stage of development where you should ask for money from anybody. You need a finished demo that is fun now not promises of fun later.
2. Halt development of BF. Let people play your demo and find more bugs but don't try to fix them now. Fumbling around trying to make a fighting game when your team does not really understand fighting game will lead to a lot of wasted resources on thing that don't matter and no development on the fun part of fighting games.
3. The BF team must play a shit load of fighting games. That includes everyone from sound guy to animator. Programmer and lead designer get to play even more of them. Your team needs a understanding of what a fighting game looks likes, sounds like and plays like before you can make one yourself. No one has to be great at them, but the animators should know why darkstalkers looks so good even with less frames of animation than your game right now and the sound guy should know what makes a hit sound strong. As a programmer you have the hardest job of figuring out mechanically what makes a fighting game good. Why was crouch tech removed in Skullgirls when its a big thing in SF4? What was bad about parries in SF3? Why are 6P moves in guilty gear slow and upper body invincible? Even if you are not planning to implement parries or crouch tech you need to understand how they change the game at a high level so when you change something in your game you can understand what you did.
4. After the fighting games come back to BF and do a complete analysis of your game. With your new-found knowledge you will see all the area that you need to improve on. Don't be afraid to trash idea or move that you already did. Jury-rigging moves that don't work will only hurt you games performance.
5. Complete the demo with just the two character you have now. If I am going to spend money on a game I need to be having fun now. Your team is ahead of the curve for kickstarters because you have a demo that is playable but it should be fun as soon as I pick up the controller. If its not go back to the drawing board and figure out why. After this is all done you will make a fighting game that is average. If you want to make a great fighting game you just need talent. Hopefully you have that.
One last thing before you go I have two questions for you, one: What fighting games do you understand at a high level? Which ones at a basic level? and two:A great move that I love to use in Skullgirls is Peacock's cr.Lk. What makes that move great and what does that say about me as a player? If you want me to play your game add peacock's cr. Lk to your game. Not the animation but the move mechanically.

I'll promise we'll play together if we're funded haha :P

See suggestion number 3. I would say 3 solid months of SG but I have been playing for a year and I still don't really know what makes SG good so 3 months might not be enough.

 

[Skullmageddon]

I'll promise we'll play together if we're funded haha :P

I'm going to hold you to those words. The second you get funding I'll be right behind you, controller in one hand and a system with SG in the other.

 

[Evil-Dog]

I'm going to hold you to those words. The second you get funding I'll be right behind you, controller in one hand and a system with SG in the other.

I'll hand you a beer and proceed to kick your ass.

One last thing before you go I have two questions for you, one: What fighting games do you understand at a high level? Which ones at a basic level? and two:A great move that I love to use in Skullgirls is Peacock's cr.Lk. What makes that move great and what does that say about me as a player? If you want me to play your game add peacock's cr. Lk to your game. Not the animation but the move mechanically.

Question one, I don't think know any fighting game to that high of a level, I played the shit out of SF2, SF4, MK2, MK9, Soul Calibur 1 2 4, Tekken (2 I think?) though. I know enough about fighting games to program one given the funds to work full time on one, also given the game designer by my side who do know the intricate mechanical details that I don't possess. The juicy meat that he wants in the game. He has some bragging rights, he placed 9th at evo 2013 with SFxTekken, isn't that something? hehe There's nothing anyone has mentionned here that he didn't already mentioned and there's plenty he mentioned to me that has never been discussed here. That's why I don't really accept the criticism that we're just dummies in the dark about this.

Second question, I don't know, what's the mechanic?

 

[Skullmageddon]

I will harshly judge every last aspect of your character based solely on the type of beer you hand me. You've been warned :)

Joking aside, I think the suggestion of opening up a BF forum is a great idea. Even if it ends up just being a bunch of ass holes from Skullheart posting over there instead of over here, I think it would be a good way for the dev team to all keep up with public relations and thoughts. You could also cater the forum to exactly your needs, which would be nice.

 

[Sotherius]

I will harshly judge every last aspect of your character based solely on the type of beer you hand me. You've been warned :)

Joking aside, I think the suggestion of opening up a BF forum is a great idea. Even if it ends up just being a bunch of ass holes from Skullheart posting over there instead of over here, I think it would be a good way for the dev team to all keep up with public relations and thoughts. You could also cater the forum to exactly your needs, which would be nice.

It would be good to keep suggestions organized, and having a better time with feedback. And if there is someone just trolling or being an asshole, you'll have control over that.