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[SuperMoose]

ARCHETYPE_GENESIS - initialize -



ABOUT THE GAME

Archetype Genesis is a fighting game I am developing that I hope will be "accessible" but still interesting enough to play. Mechanically I am aiming for something between SF/KOF and anime titles like Under-night or Guilty Gear.

The game controls with 4 buttons - Light, Medium, Heavy, Smash.  I want the combo routes to be intuitive, but will be trying to design things so that there is some room for creativity. The main combo route for most characters will be L->M->H and then some directional input of S. The idea is that ending combos with S will produce different states for combo extension. Or you could cancel into a special, a super, etc. Probably closer to Granblue Fantasy VS than GG in practice.

PROJECT GOALS

The original goal was simply to experiment and learn how to develop a fighting game, however the progress I have made has motivated me into pushing this into an actual product. Unfortunately I lack financial resources at the moment but I am trying my best to put a team together. I am capable of putting in my share of the work, I just need to find the right people to work with.

TOOLS USED

Unity/Visual Studio
Texture Packer

MOST RECENT UPDATES
Update #4 - https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=68988.msg1428103#msg1428103
Update #3 - https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=68988.msg1423658#msg1423658
Update #2 - https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=68988.msg1417135#msg1417135

SIDE NOTES
Side Note #1 - https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=68988.msg1425103#msg1425103

CURRENT PROGRESS (FROM ORIGINAL POST)

I have most of the "staple" FG mechanics implemented like normals, input buffering, special moves, etc. I've setup a barebones workflow within Unity for creating character specs that are paired with a generic behavior that produces character-specific behavior.

What I hope to have ready to show up in update 0.2 is:

• Crumple state
• Wall bounce/splat
• Standard Game rules with timers, health bars, etc

[SuperMoose]

UPDATE #2

The game is actually starting to shape up feature-wise! I'm having a lot of fun putting this together, implementing this type of game is really challenging. its interesting to see how I've solved certain problems, but I can't help but wonder if my solutions are ideal or if they're similar to those of other developers.

This update brings in life bar support, a round timer, KO detection/transition, wall bounce and crumple state!

Round transition/crumple state:




Wall bounce:




What's Next
- Adjust input interpreter to support held buttons (possibly negative edge?)
- Super meter management
- Cinematic zoom/pause effects

[SuperMoose]

UPDATE #3

After a bit of an unintended hiatus I have returned to this project. I spent most of the last week or so fixing bugs and implementing more internal features that are difficult to capture in video. Mainly refinements to input interpretation and permitting negative edge inputs.

The one thing I can show off is custom 'cinematic' effects. This functionality utilizes Unity's coroutine feature to run a script that basically takes over control of presenation. You can use it to animate the camera position, play a specific animation back, and then return the camera to its original position. etc.





I think after this I am going to start working on the next significantly difficult aspect of this project: state history management. This will allow me to implement rollback netcode, if I should ever get to that point

I keep forgetting how much I really enjoy working on this. I am getting more and more optimistic about making it a "real" game.

[SuperMoose]

SIDENOTE #1

No new footage to post. But I find that keeping this thread updated helps me to stay motivated to work on this game.

I've since reviewed the state of my core game system and realized that I had painted myself into a very nasty corner, that was going to make certain features that I really want difficult to implement. Specifically Rollback netcode support, and summoned minions/advanced projectiles.

I had to spend considerable time deciding if I wanted to continue with my existing Unity project, or if I should scrap it all and try doing a new engine from scratch with MonoGame. In the end I sided with Unity out of my intense laziness regarding tools development

The first task was ripping out the bad code, so much of the core system was so tightly coupled; I didn't even realize it was as bad as it was until I started removing chunks of my project and was left with basically 50% of my codebase left behind.

Thankfully the animation/action components I had written are cleanly separated from my original game actor code, so they should still be reusable.

The second main phase i started this afternoon, starting with game state tracking. Hopefully the solution I have is performant enough but I can't say until I have more of the core game re-implemented.

Next up is re-implementing my character actor system to be more generic. Hopefully this will go by quicker since most of the abstract logic I used in my old system should still work.

Phew.. Game dev is a blowup...

[SuperMoose]

No footage, so I decided to do a quick mockup of the in-game HUD

Development itself is progressing when I have time; I was able to spend the day fine-tuning my core game state system and state tracking; Next phase is getting GGPO netplay working. Once that is done I can start re-integrating the features I removed and testing on top of the netplay system as I go, so hopefully I don't find myself in another  situation where i need to throw a bunch of work out again.

here is a mockup of the in-game HUD

[SuperMoose]

UPDATE #4

Finally time for a real update. I have finally found made some visible progress with the rework.

I've re-implemented the attack/combo system and greatly refined the movement functionality.

GGPO functionality is in place and working most of the time.

The big change I made today was an global effect management system that uses object pooling so that it can be serialized properly. This also lets me create effect prefabs in unity using the animation system, however i can't figure out how to manually set an animator to a specific point in the animation, so I am going to investigate using playables as a workaround.

I also started adding in the health bars just to make sure my design could be setup in Unity with (little) frustration.

From here I am going to work on re-implementing throws, since i wasn't entirely satisfied without it worked in my original codebase anyway. Then its on to basic HUD functionality and setting up the basic game structure!


Enjoy a video!