It seems to me that the traditional fighting game (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc.) has gotten stuck in a rut. If you can play one game, you can basically play them all. The appeal of a fighting game in my opinion, is the ability to not only defeat the computer players, but to test your skills against a friend. It is more fun to play a friend because your opponent is much less predictable. I have had an idea for some new and re-done twists on a 3D fighting style game and would like some feedback. Please keep in mind that this is not a design doc, only an unorganized presentation of an idea. I will answer any questions or comments you may have, and if anything I mention seems vague, just let me know and I will go into more detail as soon as I have thought it through. So here goes... This fighting game will have several important differences from the traditional Street Fighter style. First, the characters will have attributes, similar to an RPG, such as strength, speed, stamina, magical/psychic ability, etc. that are increased as the player gains experience fighting opponents. The next major difference is that the terain will not necessarily be flat, but may contain mountains, rivers, lakes, and other geological features that offer places for ambush or hiding. The player(s) will also be able to gradually recover from damage(and their recovery rate will also be based on their experience) which makes hiding an advantage at times. Now for the big differences: Power level: Power level is the amount of magical/psychic power that the player uses to do things like shoot fireballs, teleport, increase speed, etc. The power meter also doubles as a health meter (similar to Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension). When the player''s power level hits zero, he is K.O.-ed. Various moves take up different amounts of power. To offset the inevitable decline in power level during a fight, the player can gradually recover over time, or he can "power up" which charges his power level by an experienced based rate but does not allow him to move while charging. Flight: If a players power level is sufficiently high, the player can fly. Flight costs a small amount of power per second, but can offer a significant tactical advantage. It also brings much more of the 3D aspect into the game. I do not have a clear idea of how to immplement fight effectively in a multiplayer situation, but I assure you that ease of control is high on my list. In other words, I will do every thing I can to make sure that it will not be difficult to fly or fight in the air. It is my hope to eventually integrate this fighting system into an RPG''s combat system, but that is way down the road. Please tell me what you think. Suggestions and constructive criticism are welcome.

Okay, having played a ton of Tekken 3, and a bit of Soul Blade, Mortal Combat, etc. I have to say *thumbs up* to someone who''s trying to improve the genre.

I like the idea of having usable terrain to work your manuevers from. Jumping up on a hill or piece of machinery or whatever to get a boost in your kick range could be pretty cool.

As far as hiding and flying and stuff, you''ve got a major problem with multiplayer. It seems to me the soul of fighting games is the 1 vs. 1 combat. It''s for the immediate *smack down* that people play it. I''m not sure you''d necessarily want to keep people away from each other.

Also, usually both characters have to be on the screen at the same time, so getting distance will be tricky. You could, however, scale the screen down as players got farther away from each other. You could then make the combat area more side scroller like. Or you could even split screens like in Sonic The Hedgehog. If you had seperate screens, you''d have more options, like hiding and ambushing, but you normally don''t.

But, like I said, most folks seem to play to beat each other down directly. You may want to focus effort there, or say, "screw it, I''m doing a hybrid."

As far as the health meter goes, does this mean that as you do special attacks you become more vulnerable? This is an interesting twist (heh, now that I think of it I can see why you''d want to hide...) I could see this being accepted or being thought of as annoying... I''d have to see it actually working to be more sure. Again, normally drops in opponent health are your *reward* for smacking them down skillfully.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Ok. Let me clarify something. By multiplayer, I''m not talking Massively Multiplayer, just small groups, (ie. 1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3, and maybe 4 on 4) more of a team effort than a huge free-for-all (although that remains an interesting possibility).
You are correct in your assumption that special attacks do weaken you, although if you successfully hit an opponent, he is hurt much more. If he dodges the attack, then you are a little bit worse for wear. I have seen this successfully implenented in a 2D Super Nintendo Game called Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Demension. The fact that powerful moves have a stronger influence on your health adds a bit of strategy to the game.
As far as the screen goes, I had though of doing just as you suggested and having a scalable screen that splits when small groups form that are far from each other. I also failed to mention another important aspect that ties into the idea of hiding/ambush. Players that are not visible (eg. shielded from view by hills or crevices) are detectable at close range if they have a high power level (perhaps with some kind of radar?). However, a player can intentionally hold down his power level to any desired level in order to fool opponents and give himself time to recover undetected. The cache is that if he is hit while holding his power down, he may not be able to absorb an attack he otherwise could have.
I have also thought of a few other possible twists. First, programmable sequences. By this I mean that in addition to the normal moves and special moves that come with each character, you could create new sequences of moves whose complexity are determined by the player''s experience level. For example, the player could create a move that performed a sequence of teleports followed by fireballs (teleport, fire, teleport, fire...) in quick succession. Such sequences have the advantage of being faster than regular individually implemented moves, there is no lag between when the player finishes firing and begins the next teleport, whereas normally the player would have to struggle to enter the teleport move sequence immediately after a fire ball move over and over. The trick is to create effective moves that are difficult to block or anticipate.
The second idea I have is to have terrain respond to attacks. If you hit the ground hard enough, the ground cracks, if your fireball/blast is powerful enough, hills are split in half or trees (did I mention the added challenge of trees?) set on fire.
Water sprays when your body goes skimming across it as the result of a particularly powerful punch. Let me know what you think.

i realy like the whole idea of this fighting system, it sounds alot like a sort of dragon ball z remix, and in my book that scores you 5 cool points

i too was working on a way to incorporte a fighting game type battle system into an rpg (hence no more side view turn based killing) and you seem to have a good grasp of what your looking to do. my question is would this be a computer game or console? if it were computer the problem of zooming for the players to be on the screen wouldn''t be a problem, everyone would be at thier on computer and you could have a third person view of your charactor, and it would be easier to have camra effects when they they do thier special moves (dragon ball gt like cammara rotaions)

anyway i''m behind your idea 100% and if you need any help with any part of it (excluding art) feel free to gove me an email Authustian@home.com.

ok, enough out of me, i sleep now.


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Don't take life too seriously, you''ll never get out of it alive. -Bugs Bunny

I don''t know if any of this will be of use, but a few key points that I remember from a late-night, beer-sodden brainstorm on something like what you''re talking about:

• You know how it always blows waiting for a game in those multiplayer lobbies? Why not make the lobby part of the game? A simple, attractive isometric map would do the trick. From there players could train, buy items, chat, whatever''s in your design. The trick is that any player can challenge any player of a similar or higher level, and, like in old Kung Fu movies, you must by honor take the challenge. If not. . .? Again, depends on your design. Possibly you lose reputation, which could have serious repercussions (loss of standing in your dojo, automatic loss on your record, etc.) or a more humorous angle, like if someone turns down enough challanges, their face is replaced by a cartoon pig. (???)

  
  

• Terrain that actually affects gameplay would be mad cool. Built-in weapons like tree-branches, PVC pipe, or the odd poultry projectile weapon would be cool too.

  
  

• If you let players advance in a game like this, it would be very cool if you let them choose somewhat how they advance. One DBZ game I played let you do this. If you used your energy balls more, they got stronger. If you punched more, that got stronger. Ditto for throws, comboes and I think blocking. It would be even cooler if it were represented graphically.

  
  

• The DBZ energy attacks were weak. If you have an ultra-hyper-super-saien-sized fireball, it should make a big boom.

  
  

• Definately make flashy, recognizable, larger than life characters, unless it really throws off your aesthetic. Alot of Western fighting games blow this one big time.

  
  

• The hardest part in a strategic fighter like this is keeping the pace of battle going. The above-mentioned DBZ game screwed this up royally. It was cool that you could fly and all, and the fact that you could plan out attacks was a nice change of pace, but when it comes down to it, games like this depend on a nice, healthy adrenaline rush, and that wears off after five minutes of fireball/block/hide/jump/block/fireball/fireball/etc.

  
  

• Borrow heavily from real-life martial arts, even if the moves are unrecognizable in the final version. This form of combat has been researched for millenia and you''re probably not going to out-do it in a month of brain-storming. As an amateur martial artist, nothing irks me more than a fighting game where the moves wouldn''t hurt a skilled flea. Also, check out the style of theatric martial arts practiced by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Those moves would get you killed in combat but they look damned nice.
  

Ok, that''s about it. Everything else we came up with was more specific to the game we were thinking of. Hope that was some help, and if not, I''ll give you a full $.02 refund. Guaranteed.

-later-


If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

To answer Authustian''s question about platform, yes I am developing for the computer, but unfortunately I don''t think your wonderful idea for third person multiplayer where everyone has there own view will work for what I have in mind. First of all, in a fighting game, the player needs to be more aware of the position of his opponents, which requires a screen zoom out so that any close-by opponents are visible. Otherwise you have something like an over the shoulder view that is way too much like a third person RPG (Zelda 64 for instance). This means that it is nearly imposible to keep track of the activities of more than one or two opponents and also makes controlling the character for complex moves more difficult. So I''m afraid the Zoom Out/Split screen approach is what I''ll have to go with (unless someone has a really inovative new technique they''d like to suggest?)

sorry my idea wasn''t what you were looking for, so i guess i have to put a vote in for the split screen type idea, otherwise you wouldn''t realy be able to ambush someone i mean the screen always zooms to show all players, so in a two player game you would always know where both players are by knowing the zoom region...unless there is something i''m missing....

anyway you might also consider useing something i saw in another game... can''t remember the name though, but the main charactor had a third person view of themselves and of the other players in windows at the bottom of the screen. that way they could always focus on where they where and if they could see themselves in the window then they would know they were being watched.

anyway just thought i''d toss another $0.02 out there just ibn case

Well, I like the idea of a third person view on everybody, but with a larger group of players, the screen could get pretty crowded. Perhaps I could try something like the camera system in Super Smash Bros., which uses a zoom in/zoom out for the main playing area, but gives a player a third person window if he is near the edge of the arena, along with an indicator of where the main arena is so the player doen''t become disoriented with the third person view. I don''t know if any camera system I know about is really perfect for something like this game. Maybe I could extend the idea that powerlevel affects your detectability to the point that a low enough power level makes you invisible if you are at a significant distance from the other player(s). Then the camera would only zoom out to show players that were able to detect each other, and small third person screens like you suggested would be used for situations where a player was off by himself (and therefore not detectable from long range) or when fighting was occuring in separate locations. This is just another idea, if anyone has any other suggestions, I''m all ears.

I''ve never played Soul Calibur. If someone would be kind enough to describe the control system in detail, I''m interested in the possibility of an alternative to the Tekken style, which is the only one I''m familiar with. As for network play, that is definitely in the offing. I hope to get started on this as soon as I have enough money to buy Visual Studio 6. As for needing help, I would greatly appreciate any offers to help with any phase of the game development (esp. artwork and 3D modeling, as I am not an artist). Anyone who can assist me with coding, sound development, or musical composition would also be greatly appreciated, though I doubt that this will really have a chance to get started until another month or so. But I digress. If anyone can fill me in on the Soul Calibur control system, please do.