Fighting games not impressive anymore...

I am not talking about attacks animation or movement, but rather different hit animation for all the different type of attacks and special cases too. Try permuting it, to see how the number jump up rather quickly.

 

I tryed to understand what you said but it doesn't make any sense to me, i get the impression you'r contradicting yourself, can you be more precise/simple?

 

I'll put in another vote from the "uninitiated", "unprofessional" gamer camp. I'm really surprised at the superior and stubborn attitude some people have on this topic. Yeah it would be pretty difficult to model realistic fighting solely with today's physics/animation technology but that doesn't mean every fighting game in the future should follow the old canned approach we've been used to.

I'd imagine any heavily physics based fighter would be somewhat slower though - as Acert pointed out, current fighters have unrealistic capabilities when it comes to transitioning between positions/moves.

I know FIFA's formulaic gameplay used to piss me off but that's probably cause an uninitiated git like me could never learn the formula as well as my opponents

 

So, althought the discussion is now about looking for new fighting game mechanics, I'll address the other part of the first post, the part about the graphics, or the presentation.

It's extremly easy to understand why the first fighting games available on the X360/PS3 are not the impressive tech demos they used to be on previous generation of hardware.
The reasons are multiple, first, the dev houses that presented fighting games on these consoles are all from Japan, and it seems clear that most of their rendering system engineers are not mastering, yet, the actual programming graphics hardware present in the new consoles. Second, the artstyle choices made by the art and tech directors are not the best ones, if you ask me, if your plan is to display impressive graphics, that is.

There are other explanations, such as budget and development time considerations (There's so much a team can do on a next gen project if that team is not larger than when it was working on last gen games), but I think the two previously stated reasons are the most important ones. Just like the first 3D fighting games, from Japanese developers, on the PSone and Saturn were then surpased, in every way, by their sequels and the new games, I expect the future fighting game to be substantially better than the earlier games... If the genre doesn't keep on selling less and less, forcing the publishers to allocate smaller budgets to the projects, that is.

In any case, the western developers shouldn't have much trouble, on the graphic side, as shown by EA games like Fight Night and Def Jam.

 

Those angles, distances and timing won't affect things greatly in the scheme of animation of things. You won't be able to tell the different, they can use table to account for a few of different angles and distances, etc across the scale but they don't need everything. As long as the special cases animation looks roughly correct, it should be good enough. In VF the angles, distances, timing are all in some sort of table. Even if it looks unrealistic, in the gameplay mechanics, angles, distances and timing are taken into account. All they need is to animate them sensibly. They already have special cases hit animation for certain attacks, but if every attacks has its own special cases hit animations it should look good compare to what they have now.

Err, that's the point isn't. You don't want to trade a cheap systems eg juggle for another cheap system eg rag doll ?

That's because VF5 lacks a lot of animation for the special cases. VF3 as ancient as it is actually has better characters and stage interaction compare to VF4 and VF5.

Well in term of gameplay mechanics, it's pretty much perfect. In term of graphics, sound and animations mechanics it has a lot to go.

Fighters are no longer interesting, because its getting too complicated for people such as your self to even understand the gameplay mechanics, let alone find anything interesting in them. So all you see are just the graphics and animation mechanics and how they're lacking, which they are IMO. However introducing physics won't make VF5 suddenly interesting again.

They need to hit reboot and create a new franchise that have a really simple play mechanics, reduced the number of moves to a handful and tag in all the nifty physics and animations and pretty graphics to get people like you interested again.

What's your gameplay idea ? All you are talking about is implementing physics. How do you tie that to gameplay. How will the game plays ?

As disappointed as I am with that aspect of VF5, the game still plays well, and scenarios discuss by you and Shifty are in VF5, even if it doesn't have physics driven animation system.

 

You know each character in fighting game generally have set list of moves they can perform. Generally if this moves connect it will make the opponent goes into somekind of hit animations. Normally its somekind of knock down animation. These knockdown animations get reused over several moves. Wouldn't it be more interesting if each moves gets its own knockdown animations for each specific character.

And juggle animation, instead of floating through the air while getting hit over and over again can be changed with something closer to reality. It won't change gameplay that much, just change how juggle is represented graphically.

 

That is just your lack of imagination.

Nonsense. Two handed controllers can be just fine for this, depending on how far you take it of course. If you want to go very far with the whole thing (i.e. using your own hand movements), then you'd need two controllers. That could be cool too, and then two wii-motes may well be more comfortable to hold. But assuming that you're sticking to a more realistic gaming concept rather than just direct simulation, you can use the sixaxis very well.

One way I could see it work very well is by using the tilt functions to control the upper body movements, and the translational axis for jumping. I would then map the left arm and left leg to the L1 and L2 buttons, and the right arm and right leg to the R1 and R2 buttons. This still leaves the analog sticks for directional modification of the arms and legs if you are so inclined, though a lot of that is defined partly by how you place your upper body. You could make grabs or defending moves by holding x while making your move. There are some pretty cool things I could move my arm up and down freely while I extended it, but it could make the game too difficult as well. I could for instance try grabbing an arm and then combine turning my upper body to the left by turning the sixaxis that way, with pulling back on the analog stick to yank the arm in that direction.

How you translate these things to a game is open. You can easily see where this is going in a game like Fight Night, where I think implementing this fully could be very effective - you wouldn't need the grabs or kicks, so controlling the upper body and then using the triggers or analog sticks for hitting harder or softer alone would already be very efficient. Maybe the analog sticks would be better because you'd have better control of how far you punch, where you hold your defense, and how quick you pull your punch.

If you wanted to keep it in the style of a game like Tekken or Virtua Fighter, you would limit the amount of moves that a user could do to what fits a certain fighting style, and make the animations fit that fighting style better (certain ways in which the hands are held during your default pose, ways in which fists are made while hitting, limits to the official moves you can do, and so on). But you would still have the advantage of much greater control as well as have a very sensible connection between your character's moves and the way you control him with the sixaxis.

There are really quite a lot of possibilities, and of course the most exiting challenge in there is to make a fun game out of it.

 

have you ever played a competitive fighter? Holding a controller that still is virtually impossible. =/

Actually if you want to play a competitive, well-made fighter that does include things like being able to "shift your weight" to avoid attacks, try Smash Bros.: Melee. DI (directional influence, the ability to shift your character while taking hits and tumbling) is a HUGE aspect of tournament level play and a player who reacts well and uses DI options well can avoid all but the quickest combos (for example, Captain Falcon can only do one Knee combo against an opponent that knows how to DI - Uair->Knee - and the timing of it is very fast and moderately difficult, as well as only working at certain damage ranges).

As well, ground materials do matter. Different characters have different traction levels and different surfaces have different friction levels, which makes a tremendous difference for some things, especially wavedashes. And no, tournaments are no longer Final Destination (big flat uniform stage) only.

It's not perfect, but I imagine Brawl will likely expand upon the physics model present in SSBM.

 

So if someone doesn't like something you like it means they're too dumb to appreciate it? Maybe I missed it but nobody is calling for a dumbing down of the genre. It seems that those people who've spent countless hours "learning games" are opposed to new mechanics because it will render some of their honed skills useless.

 

I have given a number of examples of how the mechanics, while perfectly functional within their limited scope, are "broken" in the broader scope.

For a comparison since all the fighting ones are getting ignored, look at Doom. The mechanics are spot on for a single plane FPS. You could even play Doom fairly well with only using the keyboard.

But the limitation of a 2D plane FPS were obvious barriers to resolving the issues caused by the limitations -- even if the gameplay mechanics were fine. No amount of excellent gameplay was going to undo the fact you were in a 3D world but glued to a single plane. Looking around, aiming vertically, jumping, climbing, swimming, and so forth were mechanical failures of the design limitations.

Fighters, as argued above, have these same limitations. It isn't that their gameplay mechanics in regards to balance and working around/within these limitations is broken, it is that the mere concept is broken. That isn't a bad thing because ALL games are broken due to the limitations of human interaction in a virtual world. But plenty of genres have shown that many of the limitations fighters design around conceptually are exactly that: design choices, not limitations of the hardware or design in general.

It is resistance to change and evolution, much like what is found in this thread and the sheer hostility to such ideas. Of course their sales reflect this. I do find this interesting because I find the same attitude among fans of big franchises like Halo (which, ironically, made its place by improving the mechanics and formula of console FPS). Yet other games, like Madden, people can be fans of the franchise and genre and still point out the flaws and the desire to see it progress. Not that every game has to progress the same, and there is always room for retro designs.

Did I say they were too complicated for myself?

Did I say I didn't understand the gameplay mechanics?

Did I say the graphics and animation mechanics are the only things lacking?

It seems you didn't quite capture the concepts and ideas in my post. Maybe you can reread them.

Answers to these questions are in my above posts.

 

V3 has already explained this much better than I have, so allow me to touch on another issue which some may be getting caught on here. Following the massive marketing blitz Havok made with HL2 and Ageia's acquisition of Novodex to help sell their physics add-in boards, a lot of people have come to think that physics are something "new" to games and that they can somehow revolutionize gameplay. I think that's the gist of the discussion here, yes? That replacing motion-captured and hand-tuned animation with Havok ragdolls will somehow lead to a totally new game experience?

All games have "physics" or a set of rules that govern movement, collision, and other interactions. What a product like Havok or Novodex allows is for game developers to avoid having to write too much collision code and to add in some visual effects like ragdolls and so forth. It's not a revolution in gaming, you still play the game the way the developer intends (unless you exploit a bug in one of said libraries).

 

Imagining something and it being realistic/viable/worthwhile are two different things.

The underlined is way more realistic than the made for sixaxis fighting implementation. Six-axis use in fighting games is a solution looking for a problem. In and of itself it solves NONE of the issues with gameplay mechanics or realism that bog down current fighters. After moving to the third axis of interaction, the only definitive improvement in the gameplay experience has been force feedback which ironically and for very silly reasons the six-axis doesn't have.

You have got to be kidding me. Your setup is interesting in that it relies on the player to always have at least four fingers in contact with the PS shoulder buttons in order to attack. Im not sure how jumping works there. At the same time, simple and potentially unintended tilting will change the attitude of the characters upper body and that new weight transition/distribution will translate onto the screen... while you still leave open the modification of the height and level of multi-limb attacks with the analogue sticks? Uh... I think there is reason why eight way/analogue joysticks with six to eight buttons is the preferable way to ENJOY an arcade fighter.

I dont quite get it. Your setup is very advanced but not really functional due to the controller imo. Wimote or even better dual wiimotes replicate that control scheme with real space movement and recognition better than that "overmapping" of controls...

Six axis would make your movements actually more imprecise than simple analog stick movement because you are simulating 3d dpace movement on a 2d screen with a non-precise 2d input device. I'm not saying it cant work... just that it would take a radical change in how people interact with gaming systems, that for all intents and purposes is unnecessary imho.

 

Caned animations means you can only hit where/how the developer creates an animation for. Open physics allows forward and inverse kinematics, meaning you can choose different moves. You can also be more responsive to other factors, such as how the character reacts to receiving a hit. In the existing games, the player moves back a bit, and is perhaps stunned for a few frames. In an open physics fighter running Euphoria, every hit will see the opponent adjust their feet and balance to compensate, and you'll be able to react to that, see where they're vulnerable, and exploit that. Open physics like this should also be more intuitive. You won't need to know that the player is vulnerable for frames 4 to 6. Instead you'll see they're vulnerable from they way they carry themselves.

Open physics allows developers to create a different ruleset not possible on canned-animations. I think you feel that open physics won't allow for anything different to what exists, but it certainly will!

 

No I am not referring to the implementation of standard physics software. I am referring to new gameplay dynamics that simulate more aspects of fighting that are currently not simulated, or simulate them better when they are. This could very well be supported by better physics, but obviously that's not going to happen through just blindly hooking up VF6 to a Havok engine.

Is the gaming experience going to be totally new? No. Fighting games that base themselves more or less on reality already get some things right, and those things you are likely to see in future versions. But that doesn't mean that a next step is impossible. Just look at how Virtua Fighter has the option to more or less run around freely in 3D space. It's not perfect, but it's there, and it wasn't there in, say, Street Fighter 2, which didn't have any 3D space in the first place. It didn't make for totally new gameplay, but it did bring the genre forward significantly.

Right now, there is definitely phyics in the game, but it is all fixed stuff. Certain hits for instance may cause a stagger effect. That has nothing to do with any kind of physics impact. It just means that if I hit with move X, stagger animation Y will be triggered in my opponent if he happens to be defending. There is lots of more stuff possible. I would like more stamina, injuries, tripping, balancing, and so on. Also really nice could be if defense was linked to actual reach of the limbs of a character. Definitely a lot of improvement can be made in terms of realistic footing, and defense has a lot of area of improvement, as well as the whole attack range thing (get rid of that low, med or high hit stuff)

I wrote a beautiful long post that got killed because this one time I hadn't flagged the 'keep user logged in', my server session expired, and my posted ended up gone because I hadn't noticed it hadn't been submitted as a result. :S (So probably more to come. )

 

Of course. But one would hope that as technology and programming expertise continue to evolve, so would the realms of possibility expand.

For me it does. I want to have better control of my upper body. Moving my body along with or even against my hits or grabs, or moving it just out of reach, or using it to push someone, or trip someone, and so on. I have experience with several fighting styles (judo, kung fu), and studied a few others. One of the most important things in it is controlling my torso, which is central in many of the moves that you make, including kicks - you cannot kick very high, for instance, if you don't lean back.

I've always been charmed with Tekken's button layout, which assigns each of the four face buttons to a limb. I've always played with two fingers, so that you can do fast combos (haven't had an Arcade stick, but that you need one over a controller is telling enough, because you have to make all sorts of weird up-down-semi-circles and so on to be able to pull off some moves).

Putting those limbs onto the trigger buttons will allow me to spend more or less energy on my hits, allow fakes, and so on.

Being able to control your upper body with the tilt controls will allow me to controll my upper body in relation to the rest will greatly enhance the control I have over my fighter, and I promise you, it will make the game look very, very much more realistic as a result.

I never experienced that as an improvement for fighting games. In fact, in current fighting games it is less needed than in any other game I can think of, because there are so many audio-visual and gameplay cues indicating whether or not you hit someone that the vibration doesn't add anything at all, and I usually disable it. (Probably also the reason why most Arcades haven't built it in. )

Mind you, it could be great for other applications. I'd love something where you couldn't see a thing, and you could use the wii-mote to feel your way around, and it would vibrate if you touched anything. That kind of stuff is great, and I'm sure there are more uses for it too. Maybe in a first person view boxing game, it would help if the controller vibrated if you hit something.

Tssk. Try to stay polite please.

Accellerometer.

You're saying that a game like Mercury Wii inherently isn't possible.

Yes, and it will look great. Mind you, right now the games already simulate slight waving because no fighter stands still in the first place and the only perfectly still people are dead people.

That might be pushing it, I agree. I think we'll need them for movement more, and the combination of upper body tilting, the four buttons per limb (same as Tekken, but now permanently in reach of all four fingers), the analog sticks for movement (maybe one for walking, the other for turning?), and the accellerometer for should provide enough logical combinations for the movement that your character is 'allowed' to make (if we keep it in that mold). Maybe we can even keep the thumbs for certain grabs and defense stuff.

It may seem complicated, but if it feels natural enough it's going to beat remembering 100 different combinations of punch, kick, block and their corresponding move parameters (speed, hitrate, etc.).

Sure. But I've seen enough of the Arcade Fighter for now (well, almost - I still like them, but I also want something new ok?)

I don't know. Think about how many axis of input you have, and what you can do with them. Dual Wiimotes would be great at simulating the movement of your two arms, but anything beyond that (and we all know there's generally more to fighting than just moving your two arms) is going to be very difficult to cover.

I think it would allow very much more precise input in many cases than you have right now. Unless of course you keep thinking in terms of frames and 3-way hit-areas ...

Anyway, as I said in my previous post, different controls are just one way in which the genre can change. There are a lot of possibilities. Especially having the impact of your hit change dynamically and become truly 3D could be very interesting. And you don't have to master a fighter immediately to such an extent that you can control it as fast as you can control VF4 Evo now; as long as you feel in control and are having fun, and are impressed with what you can make your fighter do, it is very likely that you will enjoy yourself, especially in a two player game. Oh, and if it does slow down, then it has the advantage that at least you can play it online.

 

While the idea certainly sounds intriguing, I believe balancing such a game would be an absolute nightmare, if not impossible. If you put that much power into your physics calculations, there's basically no way to fine tune, because any minor change in one area could cause a major change in another area.
I believe John Carmack said the same thing once: Having too high a dependence on a physics engine can destroy a game, since there's no way to test all possible interactions, and you will screw up somewhere.

 

Those who are surprised by the intensity of the feelings in this thread haven't met any old-school RPG fans...

Anyway: This new article from Gamasutra is almost uncannily on topic in the context of this thread: Rock Paper Scissors - A Method for Competitive Game Play Design (thanks to Inane_Dork for the heads up).

 

I think physics could single handedly change fighting games and completely flip the genre's fanbase on its head. The inherent problem with every fighting game I have played is that everything seems static, it doesnt matter how close I was to the person when I hit them or if they were in the middle of an attack. The same animations were being played resulting in the same stagger or stunned animations that allow for the player to exploit the games "Pause, attack, pause, attack, attack, pause timing much like old school platform games.

If I do a sweeping kick and the player is in the middle of walking toward me and I hit his left leg the position of his body should be different then if his right leg was hit instead. That one change now affects how my next attack (possibly a punch), if I use my right hand or left. If the player is in the goofy foot stance (left foot forward) and I hit them with my left hand they have a good chance of falling over. If however they are not in the goofy foot stance when I hit them with my left hand they have a better chance of keeping their balance because they could swivel their hips to absorb the blow..

Granted they could just create more animations but I could see that being far more problematic then allowing the engine to determine the outcome itself. If weapons are introduced it becomes even more apparent how much physics could drastically change gameplay. Since the game would no longer be just timing based but "outcome" based even new players could succeed if they can visualize the position or outcome of an attack based on real life physics.

Then again maybe the genre just needs a new entry.

Dregun

 

Hi newbie here (What a presentation)

Most of the time I just read all the interesting threads of this forum, but today I changed my mind.

I do think that regarding 3D fighting games the most realistic game ever made was Tobal 2 (and still is the most realistic)
No flashy impact to makes you forget that your caracter foot just went through your opponent guard like it was gelly, no jetpack jump, very fun from the start but ask a lot of practice to have the right timing, a seems like reel colision system (when you kick and your kick is block, you do not finish your move but you kina lose your balance a bit and get your leg back).

For those who have never playedthis game, you missed something.

And last but not least... the best quest mode ever.

Next time I will talk about Bushido Blade, the most realistic weapon fighting game ever

 

Yeah VF3 was a huge jump. Sadly, the uneven backgrounds have been stripped altogether from versions afterwards. It seems that no one is really taking a risk anymore. Companies just want to please "hardcore" fans. VF3 and Tekken 4 were the most bold attempts to change their games, but both failed. The funny thing is there were "extremely" good looking games for the time. DOA did caryy over a lot of concepts (uneven and intercative backgrounds), but it's reputation as a "boob" fighter sadly mars the game series.

Actually, that leads into my next point. Have you noticed that female fighters have gotten skimpier and skimpier each version if the game. They are not even classy anymore. It's more like trashy. VF5 is a perfect example. They have a lot less clothes on. (I'm married by the way, just in case you were wondering).