Hey guys, I'm at a stage in my game design project where I can start sharing progress and getting opinions on what to do and not to do. I'm a new member here, but want to use this forum as a vice for creativity and critiques.

It's a fighting game. Keeping in mind that frankly everything is still in development (lol), is there anything anybody notices about the design or ideas talked about that is worrying or requires some attention? Thanks for any input. And if somebody has a question about how I did something, just ask. I'm using unity and coding in C#.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPtJzLY-4sY

On 9/12/2018 at 5:08 AM, SmobMaker said:

I love watching and practicing mixed martial arts so I might be too critical.  For me personally, as a player, the most important part of this type of game would be the animations, but only because it's a fight game.  I like the cloth animations and the hair animations but as far as the attack animations go, they're more than okay but I would love to see them feel more fluid.  I'm not an animator and its better than anything I could probably do myself but it just seems a little too "stiff" at the moment.  If it was a finished game, I'd probably still enjoy it, but a more fluidic feel to the animations would make it even better.

If you asked me how to make it more fluid, I'd have to say, "I don't know", but maybe look at your animations in slow motion and look for things like do the hips lead the attacks or do the arms and legs lead the attacks.  Most attacks should start at the waist.  If the body and limbs move together, in sync, it could cause an unnatural feel.  I think it's probably okay as it is, but if you're wanting to refine the animations even more, I'd recommend watching similar attacks by real people in slow motion, paying special attention to what parts of the body move first.

Other than that, I think what you've done so far is really nice.  Good job!

Thanks sir! Yes, the animations are refined in some actions, but almost all of them are stiff and will require more TLC, for sure. Since I haven't gotten everything down to the frame, I'm currently just knocking out a lot of animations, and will definitely have to go back in and refine them.

This is really cool.

An option that doesn't require redoing keyframes and timings could be to mix in animation aticipation at runtime. Not on every action but only on changed action. An added subtile layer that can clue the opposing player of the hurt that is about to happen and also double as a transition effect smoothing out or to emphasize. Something like this could take you to the next level of quality refinement. 

I like the 'create your own combo' concept, agreed the buffered behavior actually seems like a nice button mashing penalty. I'd say its okay to drop the older buffer objects after so many where the human memory starts bluring, say after four to six and still feel the penalty.