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I've spent some time not wandering around doing random projects and just studying existing ones (mostly byuu's). And I feel like I've learned a lot, so much that I want to stop learning and start some doing again.

For now I have my sights set on a SNES fighting game. Mostly inspired by a quote from this post:

That quote made me wonder what a legitimate open-source fighting game would be like. It would be painfully ambitious on my part trying to code it, but as for graphics and all, I'll probably just rip some MK3 sprites and call it that for a while. Yes, I'm aware that that makes the assets non-free until original graphics are make, and they might make me unable to put demos on here because of copyright. We'll see. With how long my attention span is for one project, I wouldn't exactly make my money back paying an artist right now.

What I want to knock out first is what people would actually want to play. The big two SNES-era fighting games that I'm aware of (that are a series) are Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter (we'll say MK and SF). I grew up on old MK games, but don't know much about SF. The former seems to lean much more on violence while the latter is simply an arcade-style fun beat-'em-up.

With me being a big MK junkie who grew up looking up fatalities and having nobody as player two so I can perform them flawlessly, of course I'm gonna say I'd like to go with something more MK styled, with the more loose physics and all. So you could say "well, that's what you want so just make it!" but I know there are people around here who might be less into that and more into SF stuff, and since I do intend for this game to eventually be enjoyable by a legitimate audience and not just by people browsing old demos, I'd like for it to be appealing.

There's two big things I want peoples' preference on. Controls, and physics. Controls in MK seem more free than in SF which seems to just allow a bunch of different punches and kicks. Physics seem faster-paced in MK, but sometimes they don't seem to promote a lot of variety in the action (same with the controls, SF has more combos and stuff).

This post probably hasn't given a whole lot of food for thought (it's mostly here to say "I'm alive",) but regardless uh...thoughts?

Controlswise I'm all for MK approach.

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http://www.tmeeco.eu

I'm mostly the opposite. I didn't exactly grow up playing any fighting games, but I got a bit into Street Fighter games later on. I've never played Mortal Kombat at all.


Somewhat similarly, the impression I get is that Street Fighter is known more for its technical end, whereas Mortal Kombat depends more heavily on thematic appeal. Though you could argue that a differentiator was necessary to counter the first-mover advantage, after which the game would naturally become known for said differentiator...

If I had to vote, I'd vote Street Fighter, but it's an uninformed opinion so don't take it too seriously.

...

If all you know is MK, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with Street Fighter games before making this decision. I think the best-playing classic SF games are probably Alpha/Zero 3 and III 3rd Strike, though the more famous II games do have a distinct flavour and you should probably try one of those first. The original Street Fighter is, shall we say, of mainly historical interest...

SNK fighters tend to have significantly different gamefeel, but I think they mostly follow the Street Fighter style - King of Fighters has multiple Shotoclones, for instance. It might still be useful to play one for perspective... or if I've overestimated just how different MK really is...

On the other hand, if you're a Mortal Kombat fan, maybe you're better off doing a MK-style game, since it might be easier to put your heart into it (darn it, I know there's a joke around here somewhere)...

I recommend one thing from MK: its more lenient special move recognizer that uses only key down, not individual positions of the whole Control Pad. This way, instead of requiring that the Control Pad be pressed Down, Down+Forward, Forward then Punch to do a fireball, do Down pressed, Forward pressed, A. This makes things like a rising uppercut (Forward Down Forward A), large fireball (Back Down Forward A), and the like easier to hit.

Or simplify the controls even further and just have one button for normal attacks (B), one for special attacks (Y), and one for block (L or R). Then choose weak, strong, low, or high attacks based on the Control Pad being neutral, forward, down, or up. This frees up A for an alternate jump.

I made a post in a similar topic: viewtopic.php?p=181240#p181240

I actually really like the pace of Street Fighter, but don't like its lack of input leniency. (SFV tries hard to change this, but has other issues).

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https://kasumi.itch.io/indivisible

Sometime ago, a company made a fighting game engine called Mugen, wich is the basis of many fan-made fighting games.
Don't forget the Beats of Rage engine, wich is designed towards one vs a million instead of a one-on-one fighting as Mugen.
I think this is kind of a open source project would look like.

About what I expect from a fighting game, well... I mostly want to see nice graphics, a good combo system, fast pacing combats and a cool history.
Looks like both SF and MK have these aspects, as with the many SNK fighting games and others like Rushing Beat, Final Fight and Double Dragon series, just to say some of them...

From my very limited exposure to fighting games (which I suck at)...

- Please no more than three attack buttons. You have fighters where you have separate buttons for your left and right limbs. Don't do that. You also have fighters where you have five or six buttons of varying attack strengths, when three could probably do the job just fine, and make more complex attacks more discoverable.
- Dedicated button for guard/block (and maybe throw?). Defensive options in fighting games make things a lot more interesting, and it's easier to learn if you have a big button that says "press this to block" instead of some random seemingly unrelated button input.
- I suggest the following triangle: attack beats throw, throw beats block/counter, block/counter beats attack.
- No more than one special guage! Don't confuse the player with a myriad of HUD elements.
- Don't punish the player for playing badly (getting dizzy in SF2 because your opponent combo'd you... allowing them to combo you yet again)
- Help the player figure out where and how they're making mistakes. As far as I can tell this is still an unsolved problem in the fighting game genre... good luck!

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SNES NTSC 2/1/3 1CHIP | serial number UN318588627

Or, if you have to fit it on a 3-button system like the Genesis, do it like Smash Bros. where throw is block+normal attack.


Again, Smash Bros. does it well: dizzy is reserved for overusing block.

HihiDanni: Seems like you want him to make a Friending game and not a Fighting game.

Why can't it be both? Notice that after each bout in mixed martial arts or Olympic martial arts, the combatants do what amounts to a Friendship on each other.

Something that doesn't have black bars, and has large well animated characters.

In which of the following six environments do you want no black bars?

• 4:3 TV, 60 Hz (NTSC or PAL-M)
  Possible. Use 224 active lines per field. Importers in 50 Hz will see letterbox.
• 4:3 TV, 50 Hz (PAL or SCART)
  Not possible. The height of the action safe area is roughly 268 lines, and the S-PPU produces only 239 at most. Players will see letterbox.
• 16:9 TV, 60 Hz, zoomed out
  Not possible. Zoomed out produces pillarbox, or vertical black bars at both sides.
• 16:9 TV, 50 Hz, zoomed out
  Not possible. Zoomed out produces windowbox, or black bars on all four sides.
• 16:9 TV, 60 Hz, zoomed in
  Possible. Use 176 active lines per field.
• 16:9 TV, 50 Hz, zoomed in
  Possible. Use 208 active lines per field.

Lately, it's become common on modern platforms to optimize screen layout for 16:9 TVs. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for example, is letterboxed when the display settings are 4:3. I'm aware that this loses vertical resolution, but using interlace can compensate somewhat, especially for slowly moving sprites. It's possible to use interlace only for still or slow cels, such as idle, guard, and knocked down, by using separate sets of sprite tiles for the low and high fields of these cels.


How large? And are we allowed to trade off background complexity to present one player's character as background instead of sprites?

Not sure what this means. Is that a hardware issue?

I've been looking at everyone else's input too, by the way, just need to take the time to take everything into consideration.

Capcom's fighers on SNES all have mismatched letterboxing, and some people are of the opinion that this is an unnecessary artifact of the original Final Fight engine.

Double buffering sprite data is possible, and tepples has come up with a method of predictive loading that usually results in glitch-free animation on NES. Based on some preliminary calculations, it is suspected by some that even Street Fighter Alpha 2 could have been done at full size without letterboxing on SNES if the engine had been optimized properly.

One question that occurs to me is: is it better to accept the occasional animation frame delay, or to incorporate an across-the-board single-frame input delay?

There are three issues all under the banner of "black bars".

1. Some games set forced blanking on the top and bottom 8-24 scanlines to buy additional time for DMA to VRAM. Battletoads did this on NES, as do Capcom fighters for Super NES.
2. The Super NES was designed for 4:3 TVs. Third- and fourth-generation game consoles put 256x224 pixels in the center of a 280x240 (NTSC) pixel plane that corresponds to the 4:3 frame. Modern TVs are 16:9; a 4:3 picture will either have black bars on the sides or have a bunch chopped off the top and bottom.
3. Consoles for 50 Hz markets with (PAL or SCART output) have more scanlines per field than NTSC. Most consoles aren't capable of reaching all these pixels, resulting in substantial letterboxing that becomes windowboxing on 16:9 sets.