• As part of the relaunch of Skullheart, ALL previous threads have been archived. You can find them at the bottom of the forum in the Archives (2021) section. The archives are locked, so please use the new forum sections to create new discussion threads.

Double Tap, new build for April 9th, 2016

willpower

willpower

Active Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2014
Messages
264
Reaction score
154
Points
43
Age
37
XBL
sta willpower
Painwheel Peacock Fukua
Hey there! My name's Will and I've been building a fighting game engine for almost 2 years now. The plan is to make an actual game with it eventually, but until I get a solid art team cranking on design I've been focusing on everything that I can do myself.

You can check out my devblog at http://www.dt-engine.com/

I wanted to wait on posting in this forum until I had a playable build to give out, it's still pretty wonky as far as UX goes but I really want to get some people's hands on it since it's been so long.

Recent video:

Latest build (03/25/2016):
http://dt-engine.com/?p=304

– Bunch of bugs with versus mode still (KO, meter, health) so I recommend just hitting training mode.
– You can edit your key bindings in the input options. If your controller isn’t recognized at the beginning, navigate to the input options and please report the name of your controller in the device list (I need to add ones that aren’t recognized)

Movelist:

– 6 attack buttons (SF style)
– Lots of command normals
– Light Fireball, QCF LP
– Medium Fireball, QCF MP
– Hard Fireball, QCF HP
– Fake Fireball, QCF LK, can cancel into normals
– Somersault Kicks, QCF MK. Has three followups on collision:
* Double Low Kicks, QCF LK
* Double Drop Kicks, QCF MK
* Double Up Kicks, QCF HK
– Corkscrew Kicks, QCF HK
– Double Palm, QCB LP
– Spin Chop, QCB MP
– Double Upper, QCB HP. Has one followup on collision:
* Double Smash, QCF HP
– Light Dragon Punch, SRK LP
– Medium Dragon Punch, SRK MP
– Hard Dragon Punch, SRK HP
– Light Spin Kicks, QCB LK
– Medium Spin Kicks, QCB MK
– Hard Spin Kicks, QCB HK
– Jumping Light Fireball, QCF LP (in air)
– Jumping Medium Fireball, QCF MP (in air)
– Jumping Hard Fireball, QCF HP (in air)
– Light Divekick, Down + Forward + LK (in air)
– Medium Divekick, Down + Forward + MK (in air)
– Hard Divekick, Down + Forward + HK (in air)
- Double Tap Cancel, press the same button of the move you want to cancel (DoubleTap!) on collision
– Parry, MP + MK in neutral, almost exactly like Ryu’s in SFV (I had it first I swear!) but better frame advantage

Right now it looks a lot like SFIV (this will not be the case when I start cranking on actual design).

Please give me any feedback you've got, especially in regards to gameplay!

Thanks you guys.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Midiman and jam1220
Streamed some matches yesterday. Was the first time I've actually played anyone at the game in over a year. Realized a lot of jankyness but overall it went better than expected for me.

Here's the footage:
 
  • Like
Reactions: jam1220
Game looks interesting, but characters seem to have a ton of moves to them...of the one I've seen...
 
North888 said:
Game looks interesting, but characters seem to have a ton of moves to them...of the one I've seen...

Yeah his moveset right now is pretty large, I will probably cut down on the specials but keep the command normals. I'm going to revamp the meter system pretty soon here. The idea will be that when you land an attack, the meter you gain will be based on when the last time you landed that attack. For example, if you wait all match to use st.hk, when you land it you'll get a large chunk of meter, compared to if you hit someone with 4 st.hk in quick succession, you won't get much meter at all. Main purpose is to try and incentivize players to mix up their offense and combos if they want to take advantage of the power cancel mechanic. I hope it'll be intuitive enough, we'll see when I implement it.
 
Is this just the game right now or does it have modding and development capabilities too? I think I saw somewhere that you said that DT-Engine would support that, though if I'm wrong I'm sorry.
 
Yomabuddy said:
Is this just the game right now or does it have modding and development capabilities too? I think I saw somewhere that you said that DT-Engine would support that, though if I'm wrong I'm sorry.

It's just the game. I probably won't open it up to mods anytime soon, project is already ambitious enough as it is and trying to support other people's stuff is something I don't want to undertake right now. If I ever get it through steam greenlight and get access to the workshop I'll probably re-evaluate that decision, but at the moment no plans.
 
It looks pretty cool. One thing that messing with me is the amount of camera shake on the hits. It's kind of jarring for me, makes me feel slightly ill.
 
  • Like
Reactions: willpower
JalapenoBomber said:
It looks pretty cool. One thing that messing with me is the amount of camera shake on the hits. It's kind of jarring for me, makes me feel slightly ill.

Ah good catch, when I upped the amount of hit freeze it affects how far it zooms, does look pretty jarring now. Thanks for the feedback!
 
Another new build up:
http://dt-engine.com/?p=135

Did some work today on the power cancel mechanic. Basically changed the input from MP+MK to "Double Tapping" the same button of the move you want to cancel. Functionally it's the same but it feels quite a bit different in gameplay.

Footage:
 
  • Like
Reactions: North888
New build, made a lot of changes gameplay-wise in this one:
http://dt-engine.com/?p=144

Some of the big things are:
- Can no longer DTC any specials (just raw fireballs)
- Big animation overhaul with am emphasis on follow through with attacks.
- Lot of changes to the air game (reset distances, launch distances, standardized these a bit more)

Footage:
 
Last edited:
I think that one of your low hit animations that show up look a bit to much like he's readying to block and it gets a bit confusing watching. Maybe alter that animation so it looks less confusing? Other than this is looking pretty cool
 
  • Like
Reactions: willpower
Yeah hit animations in general need work
 
Also if I may ask, why did the characters switch to suddenly having cubes for heads? Is that to differentiate them better?
 
Nah I just felt like doing something silly. In the next build they'll have headphones and eyebrows. I might put some work in soon and give them 2D animated faces for shits.
 
New build up:
http://dt-engine.com/?p=154

Made some big changes to how hurt/move/grab collision boxes are defined for the character and referenced by moves. There's a decently long write up on it in the blog post.

Footage:
 
Streamed some matches last night, here's some of the videos:
 
In complete seriousness: guys with cube heads wearing headphones is awesome and I want to play that.
 
Wow the game looks good, like a mix of SF4, SF3/Mark of the Wolves(that parry) and KOF13. When you get started on actual design what direction do you plan on going with it?
 
New build up with changes after yesterdays matches:
http://dt-engine.com/?p=169

Footage:

MysteriousJ said:
In complete seriousness: guys with cube heads wearing headphones is awesome and I want to play that.

Haha word, I couldn't take looking at the dude's lifeless face anymore.

JalapenoBomber said:
Wow the game looks good, like a mix of SF4, SF3/Mark of the Wolves(that parry) and KOF13. When you get started on actual design what direction do you plan on going with it?

Thanks man! We decided the direction we're gonna take on design just the other day but I'm not ready yet to go into too much detail. It will be colorful and have attitude!
 
New build up, mostly just some tweaking after yesterday's improvements. Larger buffer window for specials, less animation during freeze, jumps are faster.
http://dt-engine.com/?p=186
 
Some "match" gameplay from yesterday
 
So this is a fighting game engine ppl will be able to use to make fighting games, yah? The system looks interesting, but will it be able to be altered as far as the UI or using 2D sprites instead of full 3D models?

The engine intrigues me and looks pretty fluid.
 
North888 said:
So this is a fighting game engine ppl will be able to use to make fighting games, yah?

Nah I'm mostly building it for my own game (which we've decided on design for!), don't really have any plans currently to license or allow others to use. I call it an engine right now just because it hasn't had any of the game design put in yet, but the gameplay itself is indicative of how I want it to play.

North888 said:
The system looks interesting, but will it be able to be altered as far as the UI or using 2D sprites instead of full 3D models?

The UI stuff is pretty trivial to change, would be easy for anyone familiar with Unity's UI stuff to make it their own. Using sprites isn't currently supported but it wouldn't be a huge problem to add, I just don't plan on making a sprite based game anytime soon so I haven't done it.

North888 said:
The engine intrigues me and looks pretty fluid.

Thanks man, it's starting to feel solid to me as a player.
 
You saw the almost universally negative reactions to KOF 14 right? People get really picky about models and you are going to need really beautiful animation work that can compete with the big name companies in order for a start up 3d fighter to succeed. At least matching Rising Thunder.
 
Okie Dokie said:
You saw the almost universally negative reactions to KOF 14 right? People get really picky about models and you are going to need really beautiful animation work that can compete with the big name companies in order for a start up 3d fighter to succeed. At least matching Rising Thunder.
Not really? Ppl go for the gameplay, and models aren't SUPER important. Yes it should look at least decent, but that doesn't mean they have to slave over the models till they're SFV-levels of detail. Honestly I'd think the models would be the last thing after the gameplay and design.
 
Okie Dokie said:
You saw the almost universally negative reactions to KOF 14 right? People get really picky about models and you are going to need really beautiful animation work that can compete with the big name companies in order for a start up 3d fighter to succeed. At least matching Rising Thunder.

I did! While I don't think the animations they showed were particularly good, I don't the problems if have visually are completely due to the quality of those animations. There's a lot of things you can do with lower quality animations that can still make a game look better. Things like the timing of the animation, how much pullback compared to throwing out the startup of a move has, how much follow through compared to pull back the recovery has, how much hit stun and hit freeze it causes, etc. There's a lot of things that can effect the visuals of the gameplay that go past just raw quality of the animation.

For instance, take a look at some footage from my engine only 6 months ago:

Most of the animations are the same as what I'm using now. I thought it looked sick back then but looking back on it now I think it looks pretty terrible. Most of the improvements have come from performance fixes and the things I posted above.

I'm not saying quality animations aren't important, but I think it's more important to execute on a gameplay level than it is to have better detail in animations. I think there's still hope for KOF14, I just think they were a little premature to show off what they have. People expect more from their games and they have to live up to those gameplay standards that they've gotten their fans from.
 
Well a good example of good animation on a fairly meh looking game would be LoL. A lot of the animations are made to be fluid. Take Leona for example, who's little battle skirt flows behind her and glistens. Just look at the dance animations! And LoL is supremely popular. As long as the game looks decent and plays great it doesn't mean toooo much. Disgaea 5 is a PS4 game and it still uses low-quality 3D models for the worlds and areas, even though the characters are all gorgeous sprites.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back