So, what is my game about? How far have I come with developing it? What hardships did I learn from and experience through this game development? And what are my plans for the future of this game? These are things I will be discussing in this blog, so if you are interesting, read on.
Description of my Game
The game is called The Farthest Land (working title) and the type of game I have decided to make is a 2D fighting game. However, my goal is to stray away from the rather traditional aspects of the genre and create a trully unique fighting game. That means, no more button smashing, no count downs to a fight, no health bars, and absolutely no more BAD storytelling.
My focus is on creating a fighting game that focuses on interactive storytelling. I don't want the player to fight another character just for the sake of fighting, I want there to be a reason for the player to fight another character. For example, one aspect of the game has you playing this female fighter who has just given birth to her child. However, her child has been taken from her, and now she is searching the woods at the middle of the night for this person who took her child. She finds this person (another female) who is planning on killing her child. Point being, you have to fight this woman for the sake of the child. If you loose, the child dies, and game over. If you win, the story progresses and you fall into the responsibility of having to protect that child. So I leaning towards making the fights trully envolved and rather personal and emotional.
An amazing film that draw a lot of inspiration from.
Now as for the fighting system, how the hell do you develope a fighting game that doesn't have you button smash your way through the fight. Simple, remove the aspects of fighting with a bunch buttons COMPLETELY. Instead of there bieng a bunch of attack buttons, in my game there will only be ONE attack button. How will this work? Well, with the implementation of a targeting system. Basically, you will have to aim at the character to attack him/her. It my sound crazy, but works so well that I can't believe that no one ever thought this before (please relize that I am referring the fighting genre and not to games in general). Just imagine, if you want hit the character on the head, you just aim for the head and hit. If you hit the character on the legs, you aim for the legs and hit. Basically, the focus of fighting a character will be to actually hit the character, instead of just comming near the character and pressing a series of buttons. This type of fighting system makes so much sense to me and it works so well. On top of that, I am really focusing on animation. I believe that animation is the key to any fighitng game (God of War is a good example of an action adventure fighting game).
Ok, that is just a small description regarding my game. There is so much more to it that I do not want the discuss right now, like the implementation of interactive music (similar to musical design of SotC), unique level design to cater to given fights (imagine fighting within environments that are constantly changing around you), and much more. But these are rather ambitious ideas that I have not worked on yet, thus the reason I do not wish to discuss them.
The Progress of the Development of my Game
At the moment being, I am not ready to reveal any images or clips of the game. I am still in the progress of the developing the combat system and the AI, though most of it is done. It's been tough and extremely slow. The project is rather ambitous considering the level of complexity of the combat system. But hey, you want to make it big, you have to think big. Still, my focus is on quality over quanity. Which kind of brings to points where I have to make tough decisions. Like for example, just the other week when I was developing the block system, I was think if I should keep the block system regular like in other games (where you hold just one button to block) or implement the aspect of blocking through the targeting system. I finally decided, for the mean time, that I will keep it regular and if I have time in the future I will improve upon.
Yet another amazing film that I draw inspiration from.
I would say, the toughest part of developing this kind of game is the collision detection and animation. You have to develope the animation and program it in such ways that makes two characters fighting each other look natural. You don't want them passing through each other or some wierd things like that.
Other then that, I have really really enjoyed making this game. I can't believe that game development is this much fun. Don't get me wrong, there were times where I just wanted to pull my hair out of frustration. But overall, I am really enjoying making games, but I am in the minority here, for I extremely enjoy content creating. So if you are planning on getting into the industry, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into for it is definetly not for everyone.
Future Plans
My plan so far is to have some pictures and a trailer of the game ready by June. I am hoping I can show off the game to everyone before June, but we'll see. There is still a lot of artwork to be developed, a whole lot, so that may slow me down.
Now, one thing I am hoping is to have a small part of the game finished by July so I can submit it for the Microsoft's XNA Dream. Build. Play. Contest. I have been working hard to meet that goal because the first place winner will get their game published on Xbox Live, and 19 second/third place winners get an Xbox 360, a brand new Alienware computer, and some extremely expensive development software like Maya. Do I think I can win first place? I don't know, but I do believe in myself that I will deliver a quality based fighting game that is fun and innovative. If not first place, I would be happy enough to be one the 19 second/third place winners.
Well that's it for my blog post. If you have any feedback, comments, suggesting regarding my game, please feel free to post them here.
Comments
I find your targeting system a welcome change to fighting games and I look forward to see a trailer or something like that showing us this in action.
When you mentioned the example of the mom and having to protect the baby, Shogun Assassin came to my mind...
Love that film.
As for your second concern about the game being too repititive, too fast, and also encouraging button smashing. Well, too fast, maybe. Repititive, definetly. Any fighting, shooting game, has repititive gameplay, thus the reason they are skill oriented games. But whether it will be "too" repetitive really depends on the game design which has you use the gameplay. For example, God of War is too repetitive for the game design has little to no variety in its use of the gameplay. I plan to develope a game design and level design that will force the player to use the gameplay in number of different ways depending on the giving situation. Now the thing about button smashing, well you only have one button thus the focus is taken away from pressing a series of buttons. Instead the focus is entirely on targeting. You'll be too busy trying to aim accurately at the enemy to worry about which button to press, a lot like in FPS games. The focus is on entirely at aiming and trying to hit the character. It's true that the player may try to blindly hit the target by pressing everywhere, but like in FPS games, that newbie approach will only lead to failure.
Now the question you bring about combos. Yes, the game will have a hell of a lot of combos. The combos will be set up depending on where you hit the character. For example, lets say you hit attack the character three times in this order: hit waist, hit legs, hit head. This will cause an upper cut for the sword (did I mention this game entirely has you fight with swords?) in the last two hits goes from hitting the legs to hitting the head. Also, distance also plays a role in the targeting and combo systems. Depending how far away you are from the enemy or how close you are to the enemey can lead to an entirely different attack. So all this can lead to a lot of different combinations which result in combos.
To Chikinware: Sounds interesting man, hope you can develope some video footage of your game so I can see how you are implementing the targeting system into your game.
And BTW how much have you played fighting games? Because (based on my interpretations of what you said, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time l've misunderstood you) your assumptions that fighting games are just button bashing and remembering long button sequences make it sound like you haven't really had much experience with any fighting games.
How many playable characters do you plan on having BTW? (not including any crabon copy characters that control exactly the same) Because it will be very hard to tell a good story with a lot of characters unless you ditch the usual each character has their own story mode that's in fighting games. And mandatory use of any particular character will definetly take away from the game. For example l dislike Tekken's poster boy, Jin, in both personality and moveset. But it doesn't matter because if l don't want to play as him l never have to.
Nevertheless, it is true that I personally am not much of a fan of fighting games, at least not as much as I used to be. Still, I know as much about the genre as any other. And I know for a fact that 2D fighting games are all about button smashing your through the fights. Don't get me wrong. You can eventually, after a lot of practice, develope a skill level where you would not button smashing your way through a fight. But for most people (especially newbies), they pretty much buttons smash their way through any fight. And honestly, there really isn't much to fighting games but remembering a sequence of buttons to perform a set of combos and being able to block and counterattack at given situations. If there is more to fighting games then that, then please enlighten me.
As for how many playable characters I will have. Hmmm, good question, cause I don't know yet, for I have a number of different set of characters, some that can only be used as playable characters and some that can only fought up against as boss fights. And believe me, I will definetly not release characters that look the same and have the same kind of animation. All characters will be different and will have their own characteristics in terms of visuals and animation.
Also, please keep in mind that I am NOT trying to create another fighting game that similar to the rest. So wether I have played a lot of fighting games or not is an irrelevent point for I am attempting to make something different unique that strays away from the traditional components of the genre.
I appriciate your criticism and feedback on this. Indeed this whole project could go horrible wrong and the game could turn out to be pretty bad for I am stepping into unknown territory with this targeting system for something like this was never done in a fighting game before (if it has, please let me know). But I enjoy the challange, for I don't want to be the kind of developer who plays a bunch of fighting games and then makes another one just like the rest. I want to challange myself, do something unique and different despite any risks. Look at Shadow of the Colossus. Everyone said that a boss fight only game could never work, that it was destined to be a disaster yet they pulled it off and now SotC is considered one of the greatest games ever made.
btw, have you ever played Marvel vs. Capcom 2!?
In any case, I've been thinking about your design and the one-button attack scheme really seems like it will pose a problem. Maybe you can add a secondary button, one that really gives it some spice (like how Soul Calibur had the charge button). But that is all when you have finished programming the animation and etc. to your liking, I know
I think one of the things to consider when making a game is what is already out there (especially the most up to date games). Its hard for me to picture how your game works with only one button, but I am very intrigued to see whether you can bring your vision to reality. If anybody can do it I know its you Oblivion, you have the push and passion to do it so I wish you the best.
I very much look to getting into this scene of indie development as soon as I get a damned job and have money to invest in something XNA and my own PC. On a side note my blog post will relate to Maya!
Anyways wish you the best and look forward to seeing anything on the game (even if its wire frames or gray untextured models). One question though what are you programming with? And how do you deal with the models (sprites) and animation?
I have been playing around with the sprite and animation programming since Janaury and I feel that I finally got a good foundation on it to easily implement different kinds of animation into the game. The part that has been bugging the hell out of me though is the collision detection. So I am currently reconstucting the collision detection so it is easier to work with.
As for how I am programming the sprites and animation. Each sprite is given an unique integer value. For example, hitHigh = 1, hitMid = 2, etc. Then all I do is determine what the execution value is. If the execution value is 1 then hitHigh will be executed and so forth.
As for the one button thing. Indeed it is rather challanging. But I believe that limitations forces creativity. So when limited to one given aspect, you forced to come with creative solutions to counter the limitation. And I also believe in keeping it simple. Too many buttons makes the fighting system rather too complex thus resulting to button smashing.
And I'll take your advise on trying out some of the latest fighting games. Although, my PS2 died on me a month ago. So I'll see if I can find some for the Xbox.
good luck
Somegamer
To be frank, it reminds me slightly of the ESIV: Oblivion where you can use a crosshair to target where you want to attack on the body (although sadly, the enemies didn't really respond to where you hit them in the body - one of the bad points of the game). What I'm worried about is that the combat system will a) be too complicated to properly see where you are aiming for on your enemy due to the fact that it's a 2D fighting game (whereas ESIV was in full 3D - giving more clarity) and b) become too repetitive, too fast, what with the player having to constantly hit one button to attack which, in my opinion, could still well lead to button mashing. Plus, how can you make a number of different attacks or combos when just one button handles all the attacking - is there going to be a way for combo or special attacks?
I'm sure the game will come together very nicely and that you are still in mid-development but these are my concerns from reading your summary so far. Honestly though, kudos for getting this far with the game - a lot of people just don't have the determination to get as far as you have. I wish you all the best with the project as I know you have the expertise to make it a great game ^_~.