NES Dev Collaborative Fighting Game

[Bregalad]

Looks quite like a good start ! The "camera" control looks perfect so far. My vote is to make the jump slightly less high (so that the head doesn't touch the background), and to allow the player to change direction while jumping.

[egfelixdcg]

Thanks! I did those changes you said. Yeah, I think that allowing to change direction while jumping is better, and anyway if the mayority prefers the other way it can be changed back. Now the player can also drag the enemy along if walking against him. Here is it:

http://snowmoons.com/downloads.php?cmd=get_file&id=732

I forgot to say that the game can be restarted pressing R, just in case of a bug or something.

[Bregalad]

This is a great start, really. But now it should be structurated arround a website or something serious about the project.

On the programming side... allow crouching and kicks would be great, but so far it's really good.

[egfelixdcg]

True. Sadly I don't know anything about making web pages. I'd suggest creating a new thread for the Game Maker version, and later another thread for the assembly port. So maybe those threads would be for updates and we could keep disscussing the posibilities on this one.

[Bregalad]

Sorry to dig this one, but.... is somebody still motivated to do a colaborative fighting game ?

I like programming so I'd probably do the programming part if there would be someone who tells me what to do. Once we agree with graphics standard, everyone could work on character's sprites and arenas, while I (and possibly someone else) would do the programming of the game engine with only one character.

Is it beacause so many people disagreed about the size of the sprites and amount of layers that the project didn't start ?

[egfelixdcg]

My specialty is the graphics side. About programming, I can only do Game Maker samples. I abandoned studying NES programming a while ago.
Maybe we should choose some people to establish ideas and someone to be the director.

I suppose the main problem is that this requires too much time and effort by everyone. Generally one wants to relax during spare time. Thinking how to make a game might be fun, but actually working on it after a day of study or work could be exhausting.

[Bregalad]

I suppose the main problem is that this requires too much time and effort by everyone.

Well I suppose not, because everyone here pretty much agree that it's worth the effort of making games. The point of making a collaborative project is that there is more people doing less effort rather than one guy doing all the effort. But if that's so I'm all inclined I don't want to force people making a collaborative fighting game.

Generally one wants to relax during spare time. Thinking how to make a game might be fun, but actually working on it after a day of study or work could be exhausting.

I find making games fun, altough it can be a little exhausting. Like tokumaru said earlier fighting games are some of the simplest that could be made since there is only 2 characters at once, and arenas are relatively simple (as opposed to levels or so).

So who'd want to be the director ? Roth seems to be the one who started it all, but I haven't seen him here for a while. I'd be it but only if there is people motivated to join ! I have enough other nesdev projects, but honnestly this one sounds cool for a relaxing project where you just draw characters doing cool attacks and don't have to worry about levels and bosses.

[Banshaku]

I like nes games but I always found this platform the worst for fighting one. 1 on 1 fighting as never been it's strongest point. But if you're talking about a beat-em-up a la double dragon, in that case it would be interesting.

The nes shine more for platformers and the like. For fighting, I don't think so. Maybe that's why the interest vanished so fast.

[tepples]

The size of characters in Street Fighter II-style fighting games would make them flicker-fests if implemented on the NES with its 25% overdraw limit, unless perhaps you would make the background behind the characters blank. That's what happened to TMNT Tournament Fighters and Kart Fighter. They'd also take more space in CHR for a given number of frames of animation. That's why I've long recommended the smaller fighters as seen in the platform-fighter hybrid Smash Bros. series (and in the forgettable Shaq-Fu).

[miau]

Big sprites sound like a headache to code while small sprites would allow for much smoother animation at the same cost of CHR space.

I'm thinking of exaggerated cartoonish animation and physics like in the Smash Bros. series or Battletoads. In my opinion that's much more impressive than an engine with big bulky sprites.
Not sure if I will be able to contribute to the code, but I might have a go at pixelling a few sprites once the format is decided and there's a template sprite sheet or something.

[tepples]

I'm thinking about 16x32 to 24x32 pixels, bursting up to 32x32 or 24x48 or so for special attack animations. (This size leaves room for two players and a couple projectiles with no flicker.) Try using sprite sheets from Contra or Super Mario Bros. 3 as your templates.

[Bregalad]

Well I'm pretty sure that if the few fighting games on the NES failed it's because the developpers didn't have the idea (or the guts) to make one of them BG and the other one sprites. As long as the BG color is proprely chosen, it's possible with CHR-ROM to make whathever fighter looks right to be BG, and whathever fighter that looks left sprites using the same BG tiles flipped horizontally, allowing them to use a decent amount of space.

The poll is a close call, and anyway that "Big vs small" things have no point when it's possible to do them any possible size, there isn't only 2 sizes allowed.

To allow enough detail it would be really nice to have them seriously larger than the big mario of SMB 3, slightly less than twice that size, making them 7x4 tiles wide "standard", different when doing attacks. That's smaller than SF2, and bigger than most platform games.

That way the biggest size fighter would be about 7x4 tiles of sprites (that's 16 8x16 sprites or 28 8x8 sprites, both are acceptable), plus up to 2 tile wide of a second layer to allow for more colors (as bananmos said) for the face which needs more detail/colors and is relatively small as opposed to the body which is large and needs typically less colors.

The other fighter is 7x4 tiles of BG, and it's second face layer would still be sprites (obviously), which makes a great total of 8 sprites (exactly !) on the head line, and 4 on the others lines, allowing for smashes without even too much flickering, and even if you see 2 hears layers, 1 body layer and one smash and there is like 10 sprites for a few frames, with correct cycling this won't look weird at all !

The worst case is probably if both players are grounded at once : There would be 7 sprites for the body of the grounded sprites, plus 4 for the head layers, which would flicker a bit, but it'd be rare that both are grounded at once anyway.

Of course, not all fighter should be the same size, nor should them all be square shaped sprietes ! My specs would be for the biggest 2m giant of the game (Zanghief, Abobo, ..., what fighting game doesn't have one ?), other people should be always smaller and thinier than him.
If anyone feels like doing their fighter smaller, by all means do it (as long as it's not 16x16 or something), but keep in mind that it will actually look like smaller.

[tepples]

whathever fighter that looks left

So in other words, you want to make a fighting game without anything like the "roll" mechanic of some games: the player on the left can roll around the other player and attack his back. At that point, both are facing left. And I forget: in SF2, if Chun Li jumps over Ryu, does Ryu automatically turn around with no keypresses?

If anyone feels like doing their fighter smaller, by all means do it (as long as it's not 16x16 or something), but keep in mind that it will actually look like smaller.

If a character's size doesn't fit in with the rest of the gang, you can always scale it up and then have the submitter retouch it.

[Bregalad]

I'm thinking of exaggerated cartoonish animation and physics like in the Smash Bros. series or Battletoads. In my opinion that's much more impressive than an engine with big bulky sprites.

Well, the animations for 2D sprites HAVE to be cartoonish and exagerrated anyways no matter the size, else it will look dumb. Even for a simple walking animation you have to exagerate the legs movement a lot so that it looks nice. Street Fighter animations are exaggerated as well.
And the engine doesn't specify how the sprites are, only how they are used.

If a character's size doesn't fit in with the rest of the gang, you can always scale it up and then have the submitter retouch it.

You get a point. When doing graphics for my game I often came up with graphics with the wrong size, and scaled them and retouched them by hand to add detail that was removed (when scaling down) or to round off the blocky pixels (when scaling up) and it always worked pretty fine.
It's even possible to change the aspect ratio and have a character looks more real-proportioned or more SD that way. I guess drawing characters with big legs and a small face can be easier since a leg is basically less complicated than a face, but I might be wrong.

So in other words, you want to make a fighting game without anything like the "roll" mechanic of some games: the player on the left can roll around the other player and attack his back. At that point, both are facing left. And I forget: in SF2, if Chun Li jumps over Ryu, does Ryu automatically turn around with no keypresses?

Yes. I've double checked that in SF2 characters never faces the same direction it seems even if the match is Chun Li vs Ryu (why would it change anything?), and even if it's possible, our game wouldn't be SF2 anyways, nor would it be Super Smash Bros. And I guess it's possible to have graphics less detailed than SF2 while still having fighters taking a decent proportion of the screen.

Would people be more motivated to contribute to the project if someone (I) would come with a functionnal engine with one example character of how to do a submission ?

[tepples]

It's even possible to change the aspect ratio and have a character looks more real-proportioned or more SD that way.

I used to be a fan of the super-deformed "Precious Moments" style, but now I'm getting to the point where I see an SD character in a breakfast pastry advert with CPD and think "gotta be C-section". But then my main Brawl character is still Lucas (tires don exits), so there's a bit of dissonance going on.

I guess drawing characters with big legs and a small face can be easier since a leg is basically less complicated than a face

"MANTIS or MAИTIƧ? How about MAXIMUM?" -- Dee Jay

Yes. I've double checked that in SF2 characters never faces the same direction it seems even if the match is Chun Li vs Ryu (why would it change anything?)

Chun Li and Vega (バルログ) can wall-jump off the sides of the arena. In SSF2, Vega also has a Flying Barcelona Attack (D, U+K, P) and a Sky High Claw (D, U+P) that involve wall-jumps. That makes it easier to jump higher and thus easier to see potential situations where characters could momentarily face the same way. Game rules would have to be written to avoid these situations.

That, and it might take a while to rewrite the pattern table for each frame of animation.

Would people be more motivated to contribute to the project if someone (I) would come with a functionnal engine with one example character of how to do a submission ?

That would be nice. Even just a video and a corresponding PNG sprite sheet could get things started.