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

[earlfriend]

Spread the word people, every fighting game dev needs to see this.

I'm planning on translating it, subtitling it, and emailing the link to JP devs. :P

The overlong nature of the panel made it feel like I was being served a delicious steak, but only one bite at a time, and five minutes apart. It's cool that people were there to ask questions and what not, but this would've been about 1000000000% (give or take 10000%) better as a pre-recorded and edited youtube video. It would be, like, the end-all-be-all of FG discussion videos. People would love that shit. I would love that shit.

...Actually, I'll hold off on doing the above thing until we have this awesome version.

 

[Mike_Z]

Let's not talk about porn sites anymore, c'mon now.
Last statement on that: If you are going to do popunders/redirects that sell you "risk free" trials of male enhancement/etc, porn sites are where you're gonna do that stuff. And it pays to know which ones allow what types of ads or ask that users un-ad-block them.

MOVING ON.

 

[Cheesedragon]

I'd like a source on that Zangief/Sonson making characters upside down video, that trash talk at the beginning about "profit over programming" is absolutely delicious, especially considering how i thought i was the only one who played MvC2 and thought, "Who the fuck playtested this?!?!". The whole game's fairly garbage when it comes to overall polish, and i get the feeling half the characters were just tossed in without a second thought, but if there's one thing i won't complain about that others do, it's the soundtrack :D

 

[Cellsai]

MOVING ON.

I'm actually kind of confused on one point about the button configs - why would it have been a good idea from Capcom's point of view to switch from Tap to Select in the SNES games to Scroll Through a List in SF4?
Is it not pretty easy to set up a system for button bindings that is based off just tapping the buttons? I know that's how I set up all my button configs in college.

 

[Mike_Z]

I'd like a source on that Zangief/Sonson making characters upside down video

Oh, it's this:

And considering the sheer amount of STUFF that's in MvC2, the way each of the old characters was ported and entirely rethought for the new engine, the update to all the old mechanics like unfly and flying screen, adding assists and rethinkig the entire system, the HUGE number of just completely different hit types there are, animating and designing quite a few new characters, and fixing tons of old bugs, you really can't fault MvC2 at all. With that much in the game and less than 6 months of testing, plus the almost total lack of public beta testing, it's amazingly well made. I'd actually call it a masterpiece of engineering and design, just from the development side.

why would it have been a good idea from Capcom's point of view to switch from Tap to Select in the SNES games to Scroll Through a List in SF4?

I have absolutely no idea.

 

[Zazz]

Oh, it's this:

I haven't seen that video in years, but I will say my favorite glitch vid by you, Mike, is Potemkin the Benevolent (GGX) where damage scaling causes Potemkin's throw to restore a silly amount life the opponent OR instantly KO them.

For some reason i can't find it on youtube.

Also for some reason, I have it saved on my computer. (It's dated from May 2002)

 

[Mike_Z]

Potemkin the Benevolent

Oh geez, I don't even have that one anymore. Might as well upload it!

 

[Mr. X]

@Mike_Z , could you please describe the "not randomized hitsound" thing that you skipped over in the presentation?

EDIT: Also, I don't understand, why is it better to have normals vacuum instead of push back on crossup? Since that normal wouldn't have vacuumed on non-crossup, wouldn't it make more sense to not vacuum on crossup, instead of doubly rewarding the attacker with better positioning on the harder-to-block option?

My understanding is because of the way the character who is hitting is facing. P1 is facing right, anything that hits would push your opponent to the right corner. If it is a crossup, P1 would still be facing right, thus the attack should push them right.

Mike did a lot of good for the world in this panel. Too bad those who should hear it won't and others will call Mike bitter.

 

[Mike_Z]

EDIT: Also, I don't understand, why is it better to have normals vacuum instead of push back on crossup? Since that normal wouldn't have vacuumed on non-crossup, wouldn't it make more sense to not vacuum on crossup, instead of doubly rewarding the attacker with better positioning on the harder-to-block option?

Oh, for crossups:
They are the harder-to-block option, sure, but not really all that much harder...however they are also the much-harder-to-set-up option, in most cases, since they require specific positioning and timing, unlike a regular jump-in.
And it's not a question of rewarding you more, it's a question of not PUNISHING you for landing a more difficult setup:
- If I hit you with a jump-in, you go backward some but I also go forward some while still landing, so you end up relatively close to me.
- If I cross you up, and you come along with me, then I am moving away from you for the rest of my jump arc but you are coming toward me, so the positioning ends up relatively similar to a regular jump-in. You and I, relative to each other, move in a similar manner to a regular jump-in, so the resulting distance is similar. It's not a double reward.
- If I cross you up, and you go away from me, I am also moving AWAY from you during the rest of my jump, so I lose a lot of positioning compared to a regular jump-in. You and I, relative to each other, are moving the opposite of how we would on a regular jump-in. It's possible to have crossup in Arc Systems games basically double the distance between the two characters when you land, which is bad design since in most cases the defender can see the crossup coming and block accordingly.

It's possible for Potemkin to land a pretty-easy-to-see crossup j.H that results in him being too far away to touch them with standing Kick afterward, on block or hit; Tager can land a crossup j.C such that he can't reach a crouching B afterward. Landing the harder-to-set-up option shouldn't give me less reward. IMO. Plus, the defender can choose to do things like run underneath the person jumping and cause a crossup which makes them unable to do the combo they were prepared to do.

 

[Zazz]

Oh geez, I don't even have that one anymore. Might as well upload it!

I helped out Mike by digging up his video that I had that some how survived through multiple hard drive crashes over the past 12 years over multiple computers and sending it to him.

and its now on his youtube channel.

 

[tekkaxe]

This one's mostly to @Mike_Z but I welcome anyone else to chime in:

Hopefully this isn't too off topic. I hope a Mod puts it in its proper place if it is.

A friend and I were talking, and given your in-depth knowledge of and explanation re: fighting games, I'm curious about your thoughts. Monsieur Z:

Speaking of fighting games as a whole, you'll always have the basics: safe/unsafe moves, blocking/defense, attacks, yadda yadda yadda. But If we take an extremely general approach, the types of fighting games that have existed in history probably fit into very few categories, which i'll identify as best as I can:
-'Footsies Based Games' (SF et al, where footsies are the focus, and links are abundant.)
-'Airdashers' of various kinds (whether team based or solo... where, of the many things involved, blocking is paramount; and where aggression is encouraged and takes on a new dimension thanks to the airdash. Non-footsies 2d games lacking an airdash could probably fit here too, in many regards. They often have a shorthop or something that may as well be an airdash.)
-'Competitive Action Platformers', of which there aren't too many contenders (where you basically play the entire screen and go for the ring-out)
-'3D fighters' (where blocking, punishes and offense are the name of the game)

debatable category:
~'Mechanic Distillation' games, where a single element becomes the focus of the game, like divekick, or senior footsies...
("but uh, is it still a fighting game?" - some guy somewhere)


With the countless fighting games popping up here and there on kickstarters and whatnot, it seems that overwhelmingly, fighters are being developed within the "footsies" category; with an airdasher or two here and there, and melee-style/3d fighters being much less abundant.

That brings me to my point for discussion. Is it that way because that's all that's possible for fighting games as a genre? Do you feel that due to the nature of the genre, those 4 categories exhaust all of the possibilities for a fighting game foundation? Do you think that people are just playing it safe and not trying to find a new 'category'? Or is it that developers are reacting to a percieved consumer/community aversion to anything that is not a footsies game? Is it just a matter of what's popular within this super-niche market of fighting games? Are there any core experiences you can think of right now, whether or not you'd care to share them, around which a fighting game could be focused?

My thoughts on the matter: I believe that there are other 'categories' yet to be explored, but at present, I have difficulty thinking of a particular direction beyond the debatable 'mechanic distillation' category. With the many talented devs out there, I figure it's a numbers game: one of 'em has an approach to fighters that would create a new category or three. After all, someone somewhere at some point in history decided to give characters an airdash and the side effects took things in a very interesting direction.

 

[Cellsai]

Is it that way because that's all that's possible for fighting games as a genre? Do you feel that due to the nature of the genre, those 4 categories exhaust all of the possibilities for a fighting game foundation? Do you think that people are just playing it safe and not trying to find a new 'category'? Or is it that developers are reacting to a percieved consumer/community aversion to anything that is not a footsies game? Is it just a matter of what's popular within this super-niche market of fighting games? Are there any core experiences you can think of right now, whether or not you'd care to share them, around which a fighting game could be focused?

Lethal League is in its own little world for the most part here: http://shoryuken.com/2014/06/16/ins...ethal-league-yatagarasu-advent-saga-and-more/

The game is virtually entirely projectile based and 4 player, so it sort of falls into the 'mechanic distillation' area, but it definitely stands aside from things like Divekick.

 

[tekkaxe]

The game is virtually entirely projectile based and 4 player, so it sort of falls into the 'mechanic distillation' area, but it definitely stands aside from things like Divekick.

See, and I kinda wonder about games like those, even though just as you point out, they're extremely close to "mechanics distillation" games and quite distinct. Afterall, projectiles and dealing with them- it's a part of many fighters.

But then I think about all those old NES and SNES games that had a 2-player, 1v1 versus mode or whatever- Like Super Dodgeball on the NES. That's why I lean a bit more toward excluding games like Lethal League, Samurai Gunn and Nidhogg from being fighters, 'cuz if they are, then the floodgates open wide up. We got basewars (when two robots clash), double dragon (was it DDone or DDtwo that had the 1 on 1 mode?)... we can list 1v1 games/modes for ages.

So I'm simultaneously curious where we draw the line, while being curious what other directions the genre and go.

 

[Zidiane]

So I'm simultaneously curious where we draw the line, while being curious what other directions the genre and go.

I usually draw the line of fighting games at "you physically are hitting each other for the majority of the match", "the game is centered around 1v1(or 2v2/3v3/1v2/1v3/2v3/4-on-4)", and "you have a health meter/can get KO'd".

side note: I would like to see a cooking fighting game. The "health bar" could be how good your meal is going to be, and you can interrupt your opponents cooking and mess up their ingredients.

 

[Zidiane]

-'Footsies Based Games'
-'Airdashers'
-'Competitive Action Platformers'
-'3D fighters'
debatable category:
~'Mechanic Distillation' games, where a single element becomes the focus of the game, like divekick, or senior footsies...
("but uh, is it still a fighting game?" - some guy somewhere)

Is it that way because that's all that's possible for fighting games as a genre? Do you feel that due to the nature of the genre, those 4 categories exhaust all of the possibilities for a fighting game foundation?

Oh, I forgot some things.

Firstly, having a category that is "games that don't fit into conventions" largely limits how you perceive the variety of games.

Secondly, the rest of the list, each of those game categories can have vastly different titles, yet you lump them together. My dad was saying something like this the other day, he was saying that all fighting games are essentially the same two games, the 2d and the 3d, and that everything else was simply minor changes while the core of all the games remain the same. It's the nuances that make the difference. It's like if you boiled down Martial Arts into "the ones that punch a lot", "the ones that kick a lot", "the ones that grab a lot", and "the ones that do more than one thing".

 

[Mike_Z]

This one's mostly to @Mike_Z but I welcome anyone else to chime in:
-'Footsies Based Games' (SF et al, where footsies are the focus, and links are abundant.)
-'Airdashers' of various kinds (whether team based or solo... where, of the many things involved, blocking is paramount; and where aggression is encouraged and takes on a new dimension thanks to the airdash. Non-footsies 2d games lacking an airdash could probably fit here too, in many regards. They often have a shorthop or something that may as well be an airdash.)
-'Competitive Action Platformers', of which there aren't too many contenders (where you basically play the entire screen and go for the ring-out)
-'3D fighters' (where blocking, punishes and offense are the name of the game)

debatable category:
~'Mechanic Distillation' games, where a single element becomes the focus of the game, like divekick, or senior footsies...
("but uh, is it still a fighting game?" - some guy somewhere)

This is really not a topic I have any interest in. If the game is fun, great! If not, not great. This is reminiscent of discussions I've had with producers when we went to pitch games places, and it turned me off of those companies. :^P

I think your distinctions are largely meaningless, and that dividing fighting games into categories like that is mostly arbitrary. Mario Kart is not Street Fighter no matter who you ask, but when you talk to someone who doesn't play fighting games you can say, "I play Guilty Gear. It's a fighting game. You know, like Street Fighter," and it comes across fine.
I'd rather play Tetris Attack against another person than MvC3, for example, because I think the mental interactions are deeper and more interesting, but that doesn't make Tetris Attack a fighting game.
Like you somehow imply that an airdasher is not based on footsies, y'know without a clear definition of what footsies is.

Are Divekick and Senior Footsies fighting games? To me, not really - they are too simple, without enough choices and enough counters-to-counters. (Not that they are not valid competitively or anything, etc etc ass-covering here.) But I do include Smash as a fighting game, because it's not the win condition that matters, and I probably include Senko No Ronde because it fulfills my conditions. To me fighting games have at least some element of defense which does not involve avoiding the attack entirely, with an appropriate counter to this defense, and they have enough different methods of approach and defense to allow each character multiple methods of play. Those types of games come across to me like free throw or dunk contests - yeah, it might be fun and you can compete against others, and they're definitely useful practice for improvement at the general sport, but it's not basketball because a lot of the other elements of the basic strategy are not present. Beat-em-ups with Versus modes are not fighting games generally because defense is either unbalanced or not present at all.

I think a lot of the reason that most fighting games pitched and Kickstarted and conceived nowadays are generally of the low-combo-count, low-options-for-movement variety is the result of a few things:
- People make what they know, and most people who are fighting game fans nowadays know Street Fighter 4. I weep, but it's true. Most fighting game design documents that I've been asked to critique are just SF4/Guilty Gear/etc with some small changes, and even the unspoken assumptions in the design are the same as in one of the above.
- People who are bad at fighting games, or do not understand fighting games, hate getting hit by long combos. They would rather be hit by 3 hits and die, than be hit by 40 hits and lose 1/3 of their health. It's a visceral thing, the same as "zoning is spamming", and it also leads to the assumptions that you need to know those combos to win, and that those combos are the most important part, which in turn leads to an unwarranted emphasis on combo tools in the design materials. And, unfortunately, most groups Kickstarting or proposing fighting games are fighting game fans rather than fighting game players (or developers). They really enjoy fighting games, they have fun pulling off the cool moves, and they want to make one...but they do not possess a deep enough understanding to really know what goes into that. Most of the time the people in these groups have only played a handful of fighting games, and few if any are above the level of understanding the FGC would call "button mashers". Not to imply that skill is related to design chops, because it isn't, but skill is unfortunately the most-concrete tool we have of measuring understanding. Even if you can't execute an OS properly, at least knowing why crouch-teching exists is important. (The same lack of understanding of systems goes for most wannabe melee-combat related game developers, sad to say.)
- Games with only two characters and very little going on at once are easier to understand, and easier to imagine constructing. It's HARD to not imagine the hundreds of things that having an assist opens up and get scared. It's easier to know your "innovative, creative" design for this character's crouching medium kick is going to be good if there's only one other character and they can't block in the air.

<rant>
If you want to make a fighting game, you need to really UNDERSTAND what goes into one. And most people...really don't. Sorry, everyone who will label me egotistical from here on.
You can't just make a game that LOOKS like a fighting game, it has to WORK like one. I use things like not turning around while superjumping in MvC3, the continued existence of unblockables in SF4, or arbitrarily cutting off hitstun if you do a "non-approved" attack after a jump-in in Mortal Kombat as examples of developers that really don't understand what a fighting game IS, just enough to make one that functions. Sorry, all y'all. Contrasting that with the painstaking research and talent that went into making every aspect of SF2:WW work "just right" without even any previous game to look at...the comparison isn't even fair.

One of the most impressive things in all of fighting games, to me, is Joo's combo collection for MvC2, but not because of the combos.
Here is a link to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA76628763F944137
You can watch the combos if you want, but otherwise start with CT - Basic Air Mechanics and go from there.
This is an example of people who really UNDERSTAND how the game works. And they deconstructed it by playing it and testing things, not by having the source code.
They may not be the best players, and they may not be experts on balance, but if I wanted to make an MvC3 that feels like MARVEL they would've been the FIRST people I'd hire. (You know, just like the developers of Sonic 4 could have benefited greatly from the fact that the entirety of Sonic 2's physics engine has been disassembled and explained and is available for free online: http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Physics_Guide )
This is the bit that's missing from nearly all fighting game Kickstarters, and nearly all fighting games released since 2009.
</rant>

 

[fenster]

(The same lack of understanding of systems goes for most wannabe melee-combat related game developers, sad to say.)

You mean in other general action games? I'm actually curious about what kinds of things you could mean here, can you give an example? Like, obviously I get the examples and can see how it relates to fighting games and see some of the tells. And I know (or think?) that the original God of War development had taken some inspiration from fighting games, or I could figure everyone's favorite action game developers (Clover/Platinum, Ninja Theory, whoever) probably took cues from fighting games. But I can't think, or don't recognize, if there are any similar tells when crossing towards action games that shows the same mentality. I feel like this is right, since there are certainly combat in games that feel "right" and a a lot of examples where combat feels "wrong", but I've never been able to piece together myself an answer for why in these cases. It makes me wonder, are they the same tells, or are they of a different type altogether?

 

[Mr Peck]

You mean in other general action games? I'm actually curious about what kinds of things you could mean here, can you give an example?

I'm not Mike, but that sort of thing happens all the time, unfortunately. One of the main factors that drove me to quit a previous game development job was that a combat designer on a 3D melee combat related game had absolutely no understanding of how those sorts of games actually worked.

I can't elaborate on any specific examples, but just look at a game as complex and well balanced as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Then imagine what would happen if someone who just played it for the flashy moves and mashed their way through easy automatic mode was put in charge of trying to make a similar game.

 

[Kawalorn]

Every time I hear Mike Z talk about fighting game stuff, I more and more want to see him on a Fighting Game episode of Extra Credits. They even have a new "Design Club" where they specifically talk about this stuff.

Ironicly enough, look what jumped out today:

 

[erkicman]

I'm planning on translating it, subtitling it, and emailing the link to JP devs. :P



...Actually, I'll hold off on doing the above thing until we have this awesome version.

The thing I am MOST interested in, but is not likely to happen, is a rebuttal of MikeZ's points from someone at Arksys, NRS or Capcom. Mike's probably heard them already, but I'd like to know the reasoning behind something like scroll-to-set button configs and no hitbox viewers. I'd ESPECIALLY like to know why anyone would not use GGPO.

 

[Zidiane]

Ironicly enough, look what jumped out today:

I was just watching that, lol.

 

[mcpeanuts]

I'd ESPECIALLY like to know why anyone would not use GGPO.

I've heard this one before, actually. Can't remember what developer it was, but it was for a game with 3D graphics rather than 2D sprites (which doesn't really narrow it down much since most games have 3D graphics nowadays, but it wasn't, like, Blazblue). They basically said their graphics were just too awesome for GGPO to be able to handle so they literally couldn't use GGPO if they wanted to. Whether or not that's actually true, I'm not sure? But the explanation was something like that.

 

[Mr. X]

I've heard this one before, actually. Can't remember what developer it was, but it was for a game with 3D graphics rather than 2D sprites (which doesn't really narrow it down much since most games have 3D graphics nowadays, but it wasn't, like, Blazblue). They basically said their graphics were just too awesome for GGPO to be able to handle so they literally couldn't use GGPO if they wanted to. Whether or not that's actually true, I'm not sure? But the explanation was something like that.

It was Harada and it's bullshit. Namco was using GGPO in a DBZ arcade game (people playing in other arcades could play each other) that was big 3D arena fighting. Why would 3D models cause issues? As Mike Z addressed this question before, Skullgirls sprites aren't sprites, they are 2D drawings placed as 3D models hence real time lighting and stuffs or something. Backgrounds are 3D in SG as well.

 

[IsaVulpes]

GGPO never receives any graphics data. It receives an input (Player A pressed LP) and then lets your game do whatever happens if Player A presses LP. Whether it's 2d, 3d, the character has red hair, or LP is an overhead, none of that matters.
I remember that being the official reason for not implementing GGPO by Company X, but it's utter bullshit that doesn't even make sense. It's about as logical of a statement as if L0 had said "We can't implement the Art Gallery because this game is assist based".

The main sensible reason for companies not licensing GGPO is that they don't want 'outsiders' in their game.
If you make a netcode, and then something is screwed up, you can fix the netcode. If you take a netcode from someone else, and then something screws up, and said 'someone else' is now a buddhist monk / is hard to communicate with as they don't understand japanese / whatever, you got a problem.

 

[erkicman]

If you take netcode from someone else, and then something screws up, and said 'someone else' is now a buddhist monk / is hard to communicate with as they don't understand japanese / whatever, you got a problem.

It has been said that customer service from GGPO's creator is very prompt and effective. So I guess this is also a weird excuse?

 

[Beuzer0]

I can't elaborate on any specific examples, but just look at a game as complex and well balanced as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Then imagine what would happen if someone who just played it for the flashy moves and mashed their way through easy automatic mode was put in charge of trying to make a similar game.

This makes me think about all these crappy gory fighters based on Mortal Kombat: they were all made for the gore factor and not for the gameplay, forgetting that MK was definitely a fighting game before being a violence-for-free game, meaning that you could play it and enjoy it even without the gore and the fatalities.

 

[Beuzer0]

Btw, great conference, thank you very much Mike!

I personally think that video games in general suffer from all these kind of "small" points you pointed out.
For instance: one thing that hardcore FPS players hate nowadays is the lack of focal length option. Why do they put a FOV that small in many games? To look more appealing to casuals, I guess. But then why not having the ability to change the FOV? For many PC games, players have to change the log file for it. For console players, you are doomed.
For Borderlands 2, they made a patch allowing to change the FOV, but it has been really complicated to the programmer because of the FOV changing when you are in a vehicle. But this kind of settings could have been done way easier it would have been already put into the retail game and not added with a patch.

So we have many things that could be already put into games easily and make the player more happy, these kind of things that we sometimes had in previous games but then disappeared in the sequel or new releases (like the button mapping for Street Fighter)

My thoughts are that today publishers care more about how a game would look appealing to a casual player rather than what the hardcore fan of the genre would ask, resulting in a loss of (more or less) little details that make videogames fans frustrated. Because for one hardcore gamer, you have 100 or 1000 casual gamers as potential buyers.

Moral of the story is: if you see a game that makes you feel like being one made "for the fans, by a bunch of other fans".... then it's a must buy!

 

[FuLLBLeeD]

I've heard this one before, actually. Can't remember what developer it was, but it was for a game with 3D graphics rather than 2D sprites (which doesn't really narrow it down much since most games have 3D graphics nowadays, but it wasn't, like, Blazblue). They basically said their graphics were just too awesome for GGPO to be able to handle so they literally couldn't use GGPO if they wanted to. Whether or not that's actually true, I'm not sure? But the explanation was something like that.

This was NetherRealm talking about Mortal Kombat, if I recall, and its also complete bullshit. Modders have written netcode mods for Unreal Tournament 3, which runs on the same engine, that improve the netcode in that game, and they are incredibly easy to implement, especially in that engine.*

*This may be wrong, but as far as I know its not hard at all to implement a netcode into an engine, especially one that's designed for modding.

I don't think rollback based netcode is even that demanding on your CPU/GPU/RAM anyway. From my limited technical understanding of that stuff, its not like you're making your console/PC render MORE shit, you're just handling when it appears client side.

edit: Just read it was Tekken and not Mortal Kombat..but yeah, there really isn't any technical reason you can't implement it

 

[Mike_Z]

Ironicly enough, look what jumped out today:
[Extra Credits]

Well, I'd be happy to talk to them, but I'm not gonna go bug 'em about it. It's their business.
Though that episode makes me even sadder that we never got to Show Me Mode.

I'd also be interested to see a rebuttal to my points by another developer, but the likelihood of that happening is so close to zero that it can reach out and touch zero.

There's some already, like this kind of justification by Harada regarding hitboxes: http://www.avoidingthepuddle.com/news/2014/2/4/harada-on-revealing-frame-data-in-tekken-games.html
For me, that amounts to "Our game might be super broken but without hitboxes and frame data people will enjoy it for longer before they find out. (Which, coincidentally, means more sales.) Even though good players will do an immense amount of work and find that data out pretty fast anyway, MOST people won't know it. Plus casual players won't be distracted by the hitboxes and will just play it."

Re: other games
Lots of melee games, or 3rd person games with melee, don't think about it as a fighting game developer would. What's the advantage on various attacks, how easy is it to stun-lock (a phrase that's equivalent to "proactive" in stupidity levels for me) enemies and bosses by doing things that end in large advantage?
When are the cancel periods on things? Are there enough cancel options to make it FUN?
For example, go play God of War or The Red Star, games where you can cancel most attacks into other attacks or into jump or defense or dodge or what-have you. The God of War guys wrote articles on cancel periods, for cryin' out loud!
Then go play, say, Odin Sphere, a game where you can't do any of that AND where the designers forced you to stop attacking every 10 seconds to run away and let your stamina build back up. It might be beautiful and have a compelling story and good item crack, but it is as clunky and stale a beat-em-up as has ever been made.

 

[guitalex2007]

Well, I'd be happy to talk to them, but I'm not gonna go bug 'em about it. It's their business.
Though that episode makes me even sadder that we never got to Show Me Mode.

...intriguing. Is this something you're in the liberty of explaining? That, and do you care to?

Is this the training mode thing you teased that no one had done before perhaps?

 

[mcpeanuts]

I can confirm that Odin Sphere is a very bad not fun game that looks very pretty. I also bought it at full price when it first came out

 

[Mike_Z]

...intriguing. Is this something you're in the liberty of explaining? That, and do you care to?
Is this the training mode thing you teased that no one had done before perhaps?

Yep, and I've given it the name before. :^P
Not explaining until we are past the point of no return of not getting it in SG.

 

[PaperBag_Sniper]

I think Muramasa: The Demon Blade is the best game that Vanilla has put out to date in terms of good gameplay and good visuals/story (not having played Dragon Crown) but that game still doesn't have the most intuitive controls. Is it too much to ask that the game have a dedicated block button instead of "hold the attack button" to block? Because Vanilla has done that in every game and it makes no sense to me that they continue to do it.

I still unironically love Odin Sphere but yeah, it could have used more fine tuning in the gameplay department.

Edit: For crying out loud, the gamecube controller has the b button right there and unused the entire game except for menu navigation.

 

[Zidiane]

Well, I'd be happy to talk to them, but I'm not gonna go bug 'em about it. It's their business.

Well, if you were ever at like the same convention as they were or something, could you maybe think about dropping by to say hello and see what happens from there? If they don't want to that's fine, but I would just be living in fat city if they had you on an episode. They're pretty cool people, I saw them for a second at PAXEast (though I missed their panel T_T), and they seem like they aren't doing too many fighting game episodes (2 out of 200+ episodes) just because they don't know the genre well enough to put it into everyman consumable information. But you got that fancy tutorial mode, and this secret Show Me Mode, so I think you'd be able to explain everything just right.

Not explaining until we are past the point of no return of not getting it in SG.

I guess I'll either be very happy or very sad when I hear about this Show Me Mode.

 

[Jason]

Ironicly enough, look what jumped out today

Honestly I feel like most developers don't even understand their game enough to create a tutorial like this.

The other problem being that there is so much pressure on companies to create a big, varied roster of characters for their games that there's not much development time/money left to make a single player campaign that is both fun and informative.

 

[OldOnyxBones]

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but is their any particular reason that Skullgirls doesn’t require you to reverse inputs when crossing over or crossing under? I could say something about the attacker needing to know when they’ve changed sides or some other BS, but it’s just something I seem to be always conscious of since this works differently in every game I’ve played in the past sans Guilty Gear and has made me curious.

The main sensible reason for companies not licensing GGPO is that they don't want 'outsiders' in their game.
If you make a netcode, and then something is screwed up, you can fix the netcode. If you take anetcode from someone else, and then something screws up, and said 'someone else' is now a buddhist monk / is hard to communicate with as they don't understand japanese / whatever, you got a problem.

That and I’m betting that more than a few people see GGPO as tainted by its ties to arcade emulation and don’t want to do anything that could possibly support it even if most of the benefits would be on their end.

 

[guitalex2007]

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but is their any particular reason that Skullgirls doesn’t require you to reverse inputs when crossing over or crossing under? I could say something about the attacker needing to know when they’ve changed sides or some other BS, but it’s just something I seem to be always conscious of since this works differently in every game I’ve played in the past sans Guilty Gear and has made me curious.

The attacker shouldn't be the one getting mixed up. A crossunder or crossup is not supposed to confuse the attacker. That would be my reasoning.

 

[Zidiane]

I their any particular reason that Skullgirls doesn’t require you to reverse inputs when crossing over or crossing under?

I don't know about the reason, but it seems like if you do qcf while facing left and then hit the button while facing right, you'll initiate your qcf move facing right. Sometimes that's helpful, sometimes it's not. Like, when using Kanchou to feint under the opponent, I think she's counted as facing one direction up until the move ends, and if you input say qcb grab when you're behind them but before the move ends, you get a qcf grab even though after you were behind them you did qcb.

Spoiler: example

 

[Jason]

The special move inputs are always based on which direction your character is facing.

 

[Mike_Z]

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but is their any particular reason that Skullgirls doesn’t require you to reverse inputs when crossing over or crossing under?

MvC2 and all the Versus games work like that. If your character is currently facing to the right, you do the move facing right, even if they will turn around when they do it.

Example: MvC2 Doom cr.Fierce /\ j.Jab, airdash forward underneath them, air Photon Array (super) crossup. You must do the Photon Array the way Doom was originally facing since he does not turn around during his airdash, even though the super will face them again when you do it. -or- If you superjump over someone, when your character turns around you will need to input the motion the other way. But if you do an air attack and cross over them during the air attack so it keeps you facing what's now the "wrong way", you will still need to input the motion the original way until the end of the attack.

There's a subtle reason for this, which has to do with preserving charge and not requiring things like cross-cuts.

If previous inputs are stored relative to your character's facing direction, like "Down, Down-Forward, Forward+Punch", then you cannot correctly input a fireball if someone crosses you up in the middle of it, or you must input a DP as that weird cross-cut motion because when you're waking up F is one side (say left) and when you finish it F is the other side, so you'd input a DP as Left, Down, Down-Right.
This also means that if you want to do a charge move as you jump over someone, it requires frame-perfect timing or you can't. Let's say you jump over them from left to right and start charging Back" to the left. When you land, "Back" becomes right, so if you hadn't yet completed your charge it will be interrupted on that frame. And even if you had completed it, you'd now not be pressing Back so you only have a few frames to enter the button to do the move, rather than being able to continue charging.
People abuse this against Guile or Balrog to cost them their Back charge on wakeup lots.

If previous inputs are stored as "Down, Down-Right, Right+Punch" and evaluated based on your character's facing direction on the frame it is finished (when you press Punch), all these problems disappear.
As long as you did the motion properly for the direction you're facing when you press the button it will come out, regardless of what directions your character was facing in the middle of the motion.