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[fuedhq]

He might as well stick a hand on the energy bar and cheat a little in case the player is not watching! :D

The player has to fall forward so it does not mess with stages that have killer borders, say, the docks, where if falling backwards could result in a flying dead player. The enemy, if not the last in stage, has to fall off the player´s reach so I don´t have to deal alpha channels in case the player goes over. Best would be that the characters fall within their own frame.

While there may be creative ways to go around these, it is a neat example of how the technicalities impose on game design

[fuedhq]

Here is slightly different AIs fighting each other, 5 bouts.
Can you tell the winner? Or their personalities?

While that amuses, the current point of work is about gameplay and control.
Characters can move, push and punch.
Move is faster than punching.
Push when you touch each other, punching is canceled, both are set to move back but the pusher gains cycle priority.
Punch is comboable, but when you stop, you take a cycle penalty.
The game must be fun with these minimum elements or else I will fail.




edit: I tried adding a particle explosion when punch connects. While not bad, it didn´t add much but created a bit of a mess, so it is gone. I added 2 test sound fxs and they fit it neatly.

[fuedhq]

...a quick gif, news pretty soon!

[JobLeonard]

Uppercut! Woo!

[fuedhq]

And the 2 ducking prior frames allow him to escape punches before the cut. I think it can be seen on the GIF.
Collision detection is working neatly.

[Makhor]

This looks really cool! I'm always interested in modern games made for old, defunct computers (like the resurgence of Commodore 64 games!), so this instantly caught my eye. And the game looks pretty great so far! I have a question: is it possible to make the loser go flying out of the screen (much like Street Fighter 2), or is there a technical limitation that prevents that? I just think that the loser just... laying down is a bit anti-climactic, but it's also not bad in it's own way if you're aiming for a bit of realism. Good luck on the project!

[fuedhq]

Thanks. It is pretty much as you stated. It is possible for him to fly out sideways but that would change the game layout.
The tech limits are there, but could be circumvented. Yep, for this opera, certain level of realism is wanted.

The thing is, on this first scene, there will be a gang of 3 or 4 of the punks hanging on the wall on the right.
You get to fight one after the other. When an enemy dies, I could blink his corpse away, but that is too 90s :D

They can´t be laying about the path of players because I have no alpha and it would mean extra PRINTS, so they fall down the streets, but on future levels, like the ferry, they might fall down the water, etc.

Now I have the punk complete with its moves, each of the 3 or 4 you will face will have different AI plus a different combination of these moves. Note how he is a show off with that butterfly knife! :D

[fuedhq]

I got rid of the player´s high kick for now, might add it as a combo option to the low kick state in a similar fashion to Karateka. The missing bit on the player is the jump and flying kick.

While I´m adding it, a few issues popped up:
1. How to add this to the gameplay piramid? A normal jump is taking 10 cycles, I can make the player invulnerable while jumping and having priority when landing. That does not mean you are invulnerable to landing into an enemy´s move, so you are still in disadvantage but good/protected while in air and good chances you can land and escape back or duck the offense. Flying kick can have a reach similar to low kick, one block ahead of punch. There is hope here

2. If the last solution stands, then I have to change the collision detect system to possibly work with 2 hit areas instead of 3, this will do good to the game performance and memory. Since I don´t plan to have flying battles on this game, yeah, only ground to ground and air to ground fires, it is safe to assume this path. Good!

3. The stand state of both characters are complete and their unoptimized performance clocks at 5 where it was ~3.5 before, not bad as both characters standing reach 10, well at half the 20 warning score...buuut it is still quite some time. The current game structure dictates the stand state decides the character´s action to happen next cycle, yeah, it runs through the opponent´s state before actually happening. This causes a control response delay, while not bad, it may be reduced by having the stand state jump directly to the referent action state before doing the opponent, but only for the first cycle of the chosen action state. This theory should work, but it is bound to brake other stuff, might be worth keeping it in mind in case response time gets too low.

[JobLeonard]

Huh, I actually have no idea what the ins and outs are of of fighting game design - there's probably a ton of subtleties to it that I have no idea about.

Maybe someone else here can give you some good feedback on how to balance this kind of stuff

[fuedhq]

Thanks JL!this is natural to the style, I had to face these issues 30 years ago and they are still an issue!
All help is welcome! I "think" I have the general gameplay under control, but we really will have to see to it.

[fuedhq]

..aaaand why not add that usual disgraceful bug? Damn the erasing process has to be the hardest part to solve.

[JobLeonard]

Oh yeah, determining dirty pixels is a pain

[Devilkay]

an huge experiment. 

[fuedhq]

Oh yeah, determining dirty pixels is a pain

VERY yes! It was a problem back in the days too. Here I'm keeping a very good eye on this issue and it happens to be one of the reasons I recoded the game, so to optimize it. It won´t be much of a problem in this case as I don´t want air to air hits neither ground to air ones, not everyone will be able to jump and flying attacks will be air to ground hits, you will be invulnerable while jumping but you won´t escape falling into a hit.

[fuedhq]

Here the latest video:




I got both character done and a test gameplay going.
The code is filled with a total of 7 characters and 6 stages, all copies but within the code structure.
It takes about 29K, it is quite possible to get it to 27k, so all fine here.
Playing against the last enemy also does not affect the game's performance, the second enemy on the video is the last one.
I thought a few long GOTO jumps would slow stuff down but it didn´t.

I guess this wraps up what performance and game scope, according to memory, I can plan to have if done fully in BASIC.
You probably noticed it has been quite a while I don´t talk in depth about the states and moves, that is because I had to reach this point first, I will now go over the code again, optimizing stuff but I will mainly be working the gameplay, so moves might still change and now is sure a better time to describe each of them.

[JobLeonard]

It is so interesting to see the hoops you have to go through to optimize BASIC

[fuedhq]

Yep, it is the usual path for doing a game on the 8bit systems.
Before working an idea, one has to have a good scope on performance and memory use.
The idea can be modeled around those limits better than bending those limits to serve the idea.

[fuedhq]

Still working on the gameplay. After conquering a level of performance and memory abuse, I guess now this must be the hardest part. It has been a couple tough weeks, and I still don´t have a proper flow. Something has to come of the hat this week, I´m close, but I have been closer before:(

[JobLeonard]

Give it the time and space it needs, you'll come back to the project when it feels right

[fuedhq]

Sure shot, I think I got a solution, at least a path.
See, the way it is, works and the game flows, but in a very static rhythmic way, like whoever was doing the game wanted to try the best to keep to speed! :D

I think I will break the moves in a way to have 1 or 2 extra frames per pose. It will slow them down, and I think if done in a way to promote the motion, it will work better. I might need to redraw stuff and the game pace will be a bit slower, but I just might be able to add the "movement prediction" element I wanted to get from Karateka. I will keep the fast going punch though.

I have seen similar techniques on the modern King of Fighter´s series on the NEOGEO, it should be possible on this resolution.
Let's see.