Gamer Fit

All Points Bulletin - First Impressions

2010-06-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

I've been looking forward to check this game out since it was announced, years ago. After a sleep-deprived weekend and a $49 bill on my credit card, I can say this is one of those true "gamer fit" games.

APB, for short, is a full PvP MMO, third-person shooter game. I don't like PvP in general, so why should I bother with this PvP-only game? Well, the thing is that there are plenty of things to do aside shooting each other.

This "hands-on impression" is quite long, if you don't want to read it all, scroll down to see the images and let them speak by themselves.

Character Customization

As an avid City of Heroes player, character customization is a really big thing for me. The readers of this blog already have an idea based on the Saints Row videos I made, featuring custom characters. Most of the time, I'll be stuck creating a character for hours, depending on the amount of options I'm faced with.

From the APB trailers, I was hoping to find a perfect customization feature in the game, but I was wrong. Well, it's at least almost perfect. First off, the Body Customization (where clothing is not involved -- and I know that sounded a little too weird...) isn't exactly "complete." Face customization is really great, and probably on par with most other games out there (Global Agenda and Mass Effect come to mind). There is just one slider for muscularity and one for fat, both are okay however. My nitpicky-ism is with character dimensions: there is just one, for character height. I usually like giving my characters adequate dimensions if the game doesn't do justice to them (Champions Online comes to mind... they're really bad at the default dimensions). Good thing though, is that the overall dimensions in APB are not bad at all. So it's not a big deal.

Extended Customization - Decals

There are quite a few things you can customize further in your character. Clothing, the most basic feature, is taken upon with a pretty innovative approach: develop basic clothing pieces, and let the player go to town with them: each piece has its own amount of customization. And it's vast.

First, you can define colors for most, if not all, assets of one costume piece. Like, say, sneakers' laces. The newer games out there have been doing that for a while already, so it was expected. Second, you can place "decals" all over the piece. APB's strength is in those decals. Decals vary from basic shapes to fully colored logos. You can place MANY of them on a single costume piece -- and I really mean it. Think about hundreds of decals in a single piece. Yes, it's possible. And each decal has its own color and opacity, which allow artists to create full-fledged images by "drawing" them using a combination of several decals. Some of the works already done during beta stage are just amazing.

On the clothing department, the customization possibilities are so immense that those pieces can be sold and traded in the game's Marketplace. That makes clothing customization alone is a whole new game, and I am positive that people will play the game and get by on just creating and selling custom costume pieces, without having to kill anyone, and still having fun. The best part? There is NO monthly fee for playing in the "Social District", which is a safe zone. Monthly fees are for the PvP zones -- "Action Districts" -- only.

That's about it for the "Fashionists" out there. Let's talk about what else can be done in this game.

Vehicles

Ever since playing Saints Row 2, I wanted to play a MMO with vehicles. APB is a dream come true in this regard. The graphics and gameplay are something between Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto. The physics are adequate, and the 3D models are quite awesome. Of course, a game focused on customization wouldn't just leave it at that. Vehicles can be customizable just as costume pieces: define colors for each area, and add decals all around.

The "Tuners" couldn't be happier.

Music

Integration with Last.fm is something quite interesting, but that's not even close to what you can do with music in this game. The "Social District" was created so players can gather and socialize without having to worry about getting shot or ran over. It's a safe zone where cops and criminals can take a break from fighting and maybe have some beer.

Or dance. Oh yes, there is a dance floor. And guess who's the DJ??

APB features a FULL music composer for players to play with. It's like a MIDI editor, with several audio channels, and each channel has an instrument, and selectable notes, where you can create your very own music. When I saw the editor (I am a former MIDI editor myself), if my jaw could drop to the ground, it would. There's a vast amount of instruments to choose from, several drum styles, and for those who don't know the basics of music edition, there are presets to help out.

Music composed by players can be made available to everyone in a fully searchable song bank. Each player has a private music player, too, which will play when they're driving vehicles. Playlists are there, too. Also, players can take over the DJ pick-ups in the social district and put their own songs to play for everyone inside the room. It's quite loud, which is not always good, because not everyone knows how to compose... but that's not to worry, because the game itself has a huge variety of songs already loaded into it.

And then, on top of all that, players can choose their own theme song. How cool is that?! There is also a "death theme," which is a quick tune played when the character dies. Funny stuff.

I don't know if there's a MMO out there that does have "Composer" gameplay, but I can say that APB is definitely right on for them.

PvP Gameplay

Not much to say here for a couple of reasons. My laptop can't run the game properly, as there is a LOT of lag in the "Action Districts" (where all the PvP happens). I played it a bit, though. Lag aside, it was not a frustrating experience. The missions are well thought, and aside pedestrians, there are no NPCs to fight in this game. Battles only go on between players. It's frightening, challenging, and sometimes rewarding, when you're a NEWB like me and manage to take down an advanced player. Yes, I did that. And I'm so proud of myself. :)

Now to buy a new PC... *sigh* In the meanwhile, I'll be hanging out in the Social District and having fun for free. :)

Gallery
(Click to enlarge)

I created a cop. Of course, I can't play villains. I'm not bad enough. The above uniform is what the character gets when starting the game. Except the gloves, which I added. I also tucked the T-shirt in. Because he's cool like that. He's also a cranky bastard; look at his "hmph" face.

On to the next costume, the first one he got.

Now what about having a cranky face while looking cool? Sunglasses are it, man.

Another costume. You can have up to 8 costumes, represented by the slots to the right. In the one above, I customized the pants. The star on his bu-- pocket was added by me. Y'know, cops are into stars, not sure why, but they love it. The star used was a single shape decal.

The logo in the back is another demonstration of decals in action. This time, a full colored one.

I created this one myself. Got a tank top, painted it black, and added the golden stripes by "drawing" with the decals, using square shapes. It was quite simple to do, and the result was quite impressive.

Because I like my characters sharply dressed. Or, In-Character, "a Detective starting his career shouldn't have money for a cool-looking jacket, yet."

Full body shot of the first costume.

Pistol leg holster in detail, because they are just that cool.

This one shows clearly how fabric looks in this game. It's hard to make it look real using 3D techniques, and I don't think many (if any) games succeeded at that. In my opinion, APB did. When I look at the picture above, I see "clothes", and not a 3D model representing a costume piece, which is what I see when I look at them in other games.

If he gets enough experience, he can be the next James Bond... (NOT)

The face detail. Because crankiness can't be convincing with a baby face. Scruffiness FTW!

Let's step into the game.

The graphic options change drastically during gameplay. That's the fault of my system, though, which can not handle it. It's nice that the graphic quality gets better when editing the costume.

On top of a party in one of the Social District buildings. See the outdoor thingies across the square? They were made by PLAYERS, using the "Symbol Designer." Symbols can be made combining decals the same way it can be done with costume customization.

Another angle.

The suggestive-posing dude across the table is actually the chief of the cops or something. His name is La Rocha. He sells you weapons and stuff.

The Social District has three huge buildings. One for Criminals, one for Cops, and the last (the one above) for both. That's pretty much all of it.

Now let's go back to the Wardrobe to play with decals a little...

I picked up a belt with a large buckle. Large enough to write something in it. So, shall we?

And there you go. :D

And to make it more complete, let's give the back some words of wisdom as well.

That's about it, folks. APB is officially, for me, the best game I've came across these days. Of course, Street Fighter 4 is awesome, too, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will probably be, but they just can not compare. Whole different worlds, and objectives, and ways to have fun.

"I'm coming, San Paro."
(as soon as I get a new PC...)

Looking for a name

2010-04-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

My time to work on game development has dropped to zero. I had some RL plans to get over with, first. Moving to another state and getting myself a home with Internet access has been done. Life is good now, specially that I'm among friends and playing games a lot.

Street Fighter 4 is my current addiction. I even bought the Official Tournament Edition Arcade Stick, which is just awesome. I have the PC version of the game (bought on Steam for $20) and play a lot of Live battles. I've also added my XBOX Live Gamer Card to the blog if you want to find me there.

I haven't dropped my game development plans. In fact, I'm looking for a name for a supposed new game development company. Preferably, with a .com domain available. So far, I have no ideas of good names with available domains. Finding a good name will be quite difficult in this case. I just think that, with the name set, I can worry about the games that will hold onto their company's name. I also want a website were I can gather all the projects I'll be working on, instead of a blog. And for a site like that, the name means a lot. Unfortunately, "gamerfit.com" is taken. But I'll eventually find something else, and most importantly, free. :)

Dash or Run

2009-06-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Many fighting games out there have movement techniques such as dashing or running. Some games have both (King of Fighters '98, Advanced or Extra modes) and some games have different behavior per character (in X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Ryu dashes, but Wolverine runs).

Yesterday I got back to working on Simon's animations, after a long hiatus (some games out there are making me very busy lately -_-). I finished his "walking" animation, which is pretty simple and not really interesting. Then I proceeded to work on a "running" animation.

I couldn't finish it. Poser makes it a little difficult to work on leg poses in general because their base point is the feet, not the waist. In most animation tools, the waist is the base of model posing. So if you want to raise the leg of your model by changing the bend of the corresponding tight/upper leg, the rest of the leg (including the foot) will follow suit. In Poser, if you do the same thing, the foot will be stuck, and the leg will just arc horribly. To achieve the same result in Poser, you have to drag the foot to the desired location in space, instead of changing the bend of the tight. Knee alignment is kinda tricky with this approach. I wonder is there's a way to change that, but I don't think there is.

Of course, there are good advantages in having the model feet stuck on the ground. If you drag down the waist, in Poser, the knees will automatically bend and the feet will stay in place. In other applications, the legs will sink into the ground. This makes Poser really easy to work with "standing still" animations, but not as easy when any legwork is involved.

Back to the running animation, I did a great running pose... but it was just one frame. Also, I couldn't work it on a full animation. It looked... pretty silly, actually. But I looked again, and the pose looked kinda cool... for a dashing animation. So it made me wonder if Simon wouldn't be a dasher instead of a runner.

Thinking again, I want to make both possible. Basically, running on ground, and dashing in air. It could make a fighting game more dynamic. On land, dashing is worse than running because it's slower. By running, one character can have more flexible ground movement. The option for dashing in air is just because one can't really "run in air," except in those Chinese kung-fu movies (where everyone runs in air, really). But it looks silly even in those movies. Dashing is much more of an elegant solution.

If I get a running animation to work, then I just have to work on crouching and jumping ones, and then the "movement" animations will be complete. After that, I can work on a simple application in Flash/ActionScript with a controllable Simon. Hopefully I can get bored enough of playing City of Heroes to do that.

Project Natal (XBOX360)

2009-06-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

I do want a XBOX360, but not for this.

(YMMV)

Grand Theft Auto IV - Hands-on Review

2009-04-20T12:30:00.001-07:00

I was so eager to try this game. Everyone praised it, and since it's a sandbox-style game, thought I'd try it eventually.

I'll also blatantly compare it with Saints Row 2. Because, you know, it begs for it.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

The lack of colors annoys me a little. Everything is so... gray-ish. But I like the 3D models (except characters). It's much easier to see the traffic lights, since they reflect on the ground. That was a very interesting effect, and it actually helps giving the game a bit more color. Even if that's mostly green and red.

The character models are bad. I don't know how to compare it to SR, because they're bad in both games. But in SR, the faces seem better. The body proportions as well. In GTA I get the impression that everyone has very short legs.

USER INTERFACE (GUI): 3/10

This is a really bad one. When I go to the control options, it shows a XBOX360 controller. Hello, I don't have a frickin' XBOX controller! Last I heard, this was a PC game. Also, I couldn't find anywhere in the options a place to change the controls. And lastly, the fade in/out to the options screen (when Esc is pressed) is quite slow.

GAMEPLAY: 2/10

Sorry, I hate it. I hate that I have to hold the right mouse button to lock on a target and use a kick. I hate to have to hold the damn right mouse button to lock on a target to use my gun. When I lock on a target and shoot, my camera moves around. If I don't lock on, when I shoot, the camera goes totally crazy. It's ridiculous.

In SR, I have a buzzeye-thingamabob on screen everytime I am wielding a shooting weapon. I can then shot anywhere I want, and the camera will behave. In SR I have a key to give me a "sniper" mode, which then, the camera will also behave. In SR I can crouch and activate the sniper mode at once, and the camera will fuckin' behave.

In SR, when the game wants to instruct something to the player, the game will pause, so the player can take their time to read it. In GTA, when I was on my first mission with a gun, the game was actually explaining to me how to do it... while the enemies were shooting my companion down. It was hard to 1) get what the hell was going on 2) read the instructions and 3) save my buddy. An of course, I did 1) NOT get what was going on, 2) the instructions faded out fast and 3) my buddy died.

I quit the game at that point.

Oh, I should mention driving, too. Since there's no Cruise Control (SR feature), it was not enjoyable to drive in GTA. I had to keep tapping my accelerator to keep at a constant speed, and it's annoying. Guess I am so used to Cruise Control now that I can't live without it.

CINEMATICS: 8/10

Story aside, the cinematics are quite good. I like most of the camera angles. The characters always have something to talk about when in a car, which is entertaining and distracting at the same time.

SOUND: 7/10

Nothing out of ordinary here.

PHYSICS: 9/10

Things are pretty damn good here, specially driving. Things seem much more realistic than in SR, but there are times that realism isn't a really fun factor. I like both sides, though.

STORY: 4/10

No matter what everyone says. I HATE ROMAN. Period. He's possibly the character I hate most among all games I played. And I was surprised he annoyed me that fast. Now that I think about it, I was thinking about giving him a hell of a time in game, as for not answering his calls, and letting him get his ass beat up as most as I can.

Niko is neutral, in other words, he's okay. My only gripe with him is that he likes Roman.

I like the girls. Marlene seems to be smart. The other one (which I forgot the name) is likeable as well.

I didn't like some of the story parts. So, Niko went to a nigthclub with Roman for some "tits." Then Niko gets a bitch and goes to a room to get a private dance session. When it's over, he leaves the room, and out of nowhere the security guards start beating him up for no reason.

Wait, what? Did I miss the memo or something?

Anyway, I didn't play it much after the fiasco with gunplay. I don't know if I'll play it again, I'm quite upset with the game, and was not having fun with it. So I guess it's no use trying to like it.

This week's games I've been playing... or trying

2009-04-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

Grand Theft Auto IV

Finally got my hands on it. I've been *trying* to play it a little, but... I got quite frustrated with it. I might write a first-impressions review about it, maybe. Not sure.

Some other new MMO (closed beta)

I might come with a full review once the closed beta stage is over. Again, frustrated to no end with it, but I was expecting that, in this one case.

Maybe my expectations were too high anyway (on both of the above).

Gaming a lot

2009-04-06T12:16:00.001-07:00

Since my last attempt at Flash, I haven't been messing much with game development lately. For some odd reason I got a lot busy playing City of Heroes, and the newest update hasn't even gone live yet.

But I've been thinking about my project and reading a bit about Flash development. Thinking about how I'm going to do things like collision detection, but something that I'm concerned about is the final size of the .swf file. You see, in the last examples I posted here, each one had about 1Mb in size. That's a lot. But again, I didn't use any compression (on purpose) because I wanted to push Flash to see how it handles things performance-wise. Most of the content size came from the PNG images of the sprites. There were about 20 sprites, if I recall properly, all of them with transparency data, which makes them bigger.

There's a lot of sprites I need to work on. In fact I recently fixed Simon's High Kick (adding a new frame), but there are several stuff missing. I am trying to get reasonable on the frame number, although I wanted to try some "exclusive" things which would require more frames. By that, I mean things you've never seen in other fighting games before. (Even that King of Fighters 12 already used the idea I was thinking of, which was when both characters use an attack of the same power and a critical effect appears on screen, no damage is taken either side but they can continue the "combo" until one of the characters delivers a stronger attack than the other and break out of it.)

As I progress further, I'll eventually have to study how to make my application smaller in size. Hopefully, there won't be much of a loss in picture quality.

Oh, and by the way, regarding latest posts, I've decided to use neither outline or blur effects in normal situations. I think I will use blur effects in more vicious combos though (I plan on having an "Ultra Combo" system that could use the blur effect), but other than that, no fancy effects. Thanks for the comments on that.

And lastly, recently I learned about Google SketchUp. It seems like a wonderful tool to create scenarios, and it's also free. I might possibly use it when I start doing original work -- so far, I'm using others' works as I test things out and learn more about game development without focusing much on specifics.

Saints Row 2 - Prologue (Female Character)

2009-03-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

I had this video sitting on my YouTube page for so long, but it was private. I wanted to get authorization first, since the character is another person's creation, mostly. And I just got it today.

Anyway, there you go. It's hard to find good female clothes in the game, and I made her make-up non-existant in the first scenes since she wouldn't wear any while lying on a hospital bed, right? Also, she was low on money until after she saved Gat, which was when she pimped herself out.

Enjoy the Asian chick. :)

Blur vs. Outline

2009-03-08T18:49:00.001-07:00

Just so I can stare at it and help myself deciding.

There are two extra kick animations. Some of them will need more frames, though.

My favorite at the moment is Outline, once I get the animations looking less choppy. Blur helps when the animation is low on frames.

Both this Flash file and the other are running at 12 fps.

Playing with Flash

2009-03-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

Back to work with Poser, I've redone Simon's stance animation. In fact, I redid all of his animations.

This is what I came up with, in Flash:

I've also found out a very easy way to work with spritebatches. I only have to get all the frames in a .PSD document (Adobe Photoshop) and then, inside Flash, I import it to the Library. Voila! I have a new Movie Clip, with all the frames I need.

For some odd reason, the frame order comes reversed. No biggie though, as I can edit the Movie Clip and re-reverse (so the reverse is no longer reverse... got it? Good!).

In above's test, you see new Simon's fighting stance in different effects and a flipped version, along with a series of quick blows, in different blending modes. The movements on the blur movie clip are:

- Stance
- LP
- LP, close
- HP
- HP, close

The blur effect comes from Poser, and I did it as a test. The result is great, but I must choose one or the other:

1) The "Outline Version." You can check it out in second and third's fighting stances. The first stance has no outlines or blur. The outlines make the character look cartoon-ish, and I can learn to like that.

2) The "Blur Version." The effect gives a very nice movement impression, and I'm really tempted to use it. Outlines don't match with it, at all.

One disadvantage of the Blur Version is that I can't repeat frames in most cases. Let's get an example, Low Punch (also known as LP, or Weak Punch, because the punch is not "low," you know, it's just a standardized way to say "weak"... confusing, I know, but we already went through that, remember?). This animation normally has 3 frames. First frame prepares for the punch, second frame is the punch itself, and the third frame pulls the fist back. It's common to use the same frames for the first and third frames because, most of the time, they look the same. Using a blur effect, though, I'd have to have each frame rendered differently, because the blur effect will be different on both of them. This means more frames, more assets, heavier downloads. Using the Outline Version I can use one image for the first and third frames and call it a day.

So, if you have a opinion, I'd like to hear it. "Outline" or "Blur" mode? :)

On languages

2009-03-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

Now that I have formatted my HDD, I don't have XNA installed in my system anymore. I'm afraid to download it back, because all my executables generated from it were accused of having a Win32.Ce.Virut virus on them or something like that.

That got me thinking again about what language I could use to make a game.

My first idea was to use Flash with ActionScript. The reason is pretty simple: worldwide availability. It also plays from a browser, which definitely is a plus. (People can be paranoid about installing stuff on their computers.) But developing a full-fledged game in Flash can be difficult, and limitations must be known. When you look at games like Dofus, though, it feels like a challenge to be taken.

I was, then, thinking about porting my current project (The Poserman Revenge) to Flash. That reminds me I need to get Adobe Photoshop back into my system. The project's idea remains the same, it just needs to be adapted. It means, for now, a much lower FPS rate. It's currently running at 30 (in XNA). I've heard that 12 is the most acceptable rate for Flash games.

Currently I don't have a clue how to program in Flash/AS. It was the same when I started with XNA and I got animated sprites running on it, so I might not have much trouble with AS. I have yet to acquire the tools, though.

Next update (if not a Saints Row 2 video...) will hopefully be a report of my first experience with AS.

Saints Row 2 - Prologue

2009-02-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

This is a collection of cutscenes of the game's "Prologue," which is, when you get out of jail and reform your gang. It contains spoilers, of course, so if you do ever plan to play the game, you might not want to watch it, but it's up to you.

This has also been captured with the Patch #1 applied. The performance really has improved.

About the character on the scenes, if you're not familiar with the game, I created him myself using the character customization feature of the game. I made him an Asian vampiric-eyed stylish young daddy with a cocky English voice. For a lack of a name in general, other people in the game just call him "Boss." I'm cool with that.

Favorite quotes:

--

Aisha: "This ain't no fuckin' gang clubhouse..."

--

Gat: "Yo, I'm not a fuckin' janitor..."
Boss: "No shit, you're a goddamn diva!"

--

Boss: "Shaundi, you got the Sons of Samedi."
Shaundi: "It's gotta be them?"
Boss: "Fuck you say?"
Shaundi: "It's cool, I... I got this."

And yeah, I'm now a fan of the F-bomb... :P

Enjoy the video. :)

Because I always wanted to...

2009-02-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

... drive a bus. Really.

"New" Video Card

2009-02-13T12:39:00.001-08:00

Well, it turned out that the glitches when turning certain options on (Fulscreen Antialiasing for example) in Saints Row 2 were related to the video card going bye-bye.

It fried for good yesterday. First, the glitch started happening when both of the aforementioned options were turned off, and then just opening the game gave me a BSOD and the system wouldn't start in Normal Mode anymore. (Safe and VGA modes still worked.)

So I had to buy a new card today, because, you know, I'm desperate, and can't spend yet another weekend without my computer. Because, really, I want to play, damnit. I was also planning on resuming activities on City of Heroes this week, but that was delayed a little now.

The new card is the same model of the old one, XFX GeForce 8600GT, but with 512RAM, the old one was 256. That will hopefully do a little better on CoH since it's texture-intensive, and probably SR2 will play slightly better, I hope.

For now, I'm eager to get home, install the new card, test the new Saints Row 2 patch with improved performance, and play and record videos until I'm blue in the face.

Best definition of "gamer fit"

2009-02-13T05:02:00.001-08:00

Old video, but still fun :)

Powered by Steam

2009-02-12T05:15:00.000-08:00

Today I set up a new Steam account and finally bought Saints Row 2 - it's a game that deserves to be owned, after all. The latest patch, only available through Steam, mentions an improved performance of about 20%. Yesterday I updated my NVIDIA drivers and was playing around with settings; I verified that my system crashes (purple screen of death) if I enable Fullscreen Antialiasing or Ambient Occlusion, but the quality is okay with these options disabled anyway. But I suspect there's a hardware problem with my card (GeForce 8600GT). I'll look into that eventually.

The new NVIDIA drivers seemed to have improved performance a bit. I expect that the new patch improves it even more, so certain cutscenes are not so sluggish.

Other than that, I've been having fun capturing and editing cutscenes. You can see them in my YouTube channel. The first three parts where captured in a low graphics setting and I want to redo them as soon as I get the game patched, which will be tonight, hopefully. I hope to have at least the first part re-edited and published on YouTube this weekend.

Saints Row 2 - Take on me... take two!

2009-02-04T17:28:00.000-08:00

Better video quality, longer, and there's now driving and a little, erm, hydraulics show-off.

Ah, uh, sorry guys, I'm not gonna lie, it's not the last movie I'm going to post about this game. In fact I have a nice video project coming. :P

Saints Row 2 - Take On Me (A-Ha)

2009-01-27T18:51:00.001-08:00

Someone needs to stop me.

No driving this time, so the sound is clear.

Saints Row 2 - Final Countdown

2009-01-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

Main character singing along to "Final Countdown" on the radio.

He manages to sing as bad as I drive.

Saints Row 2

2009-01-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

Saints Row 2 is yet another gangster game. They usually don't catch my interest, but if a game has character customization, you can bet I'll take a look at it.

After reading the wiki page for it, though, something else caught my eye: the sandbox-type games. You can derail from the main objectives of the game to do anything else. And by anything, it really means anything.

I've tried a Capcom game of that kind: Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance. It also has character customization and a bit of sandbox/freeform gaming. These games can be addicting quickly (and time consuming as well) once you set yourself to explore every corner in the city.

Saints Row is very extensive on the sandbox style. The main character (you) starts the game breaking from jail and can do anything right after reaching the city -- which is huge, and you can explore all of it right from the start, if you have the patience.

So I played the game yesterday night, the PC version. The first feature, and most important one to me, showed up after the first cutscene: character customization. I usually expect face customization to be very detailed, and body customization, not so much. That is true for this game. I didn't spend much time creating my character because clothing customization was not available at the moment; you start only with an orange jumpsuit and cannot change it.

One thing I found rather... strange in this feature was that gender was almost totally, uh, flexible. There are three properties that can change it, somehow: Sex (Male or Female), Body Type (negative values create female body types) and Voice. So, you can have a "Male character with breasts and female voice", or a "Female character without breasts and a male voice". There seems to be no constraints altogether. You can also set your walking animation and there are plenty of them, male and female types. So you can create a female character that walks like a thug, or a male character that walks wiggling his ass. Clothing and make-up are also not restricted, so you could even create a total drag character if you want.

So I created my character. No, not a drag. Just a kind-of Asian guy with the spiky hair. Hey, I like spiky hair. The first mission works like a tutorial: as you play, it tells you how to play the game, as usual. The controls felt strange at first, as the mouse movement is *always* locked as the camera view, so you play with the AWSD keys while moving the mouse around for camera adjustment. The mouse buttons (both of them) are attacks. They're very basic and simple. The combos are always limited to three hits, so you don't need to destroy your mouse to play. The third hit is a finishing move and most of them look pretty cool and violent.

Weapons are available, obviously. Guns are pretty much a given in this kind of game, but there are Japanese swords, too. As you fight several punks from different gangs, you can get their weapons. And there was this gang of techno-samurais who wield katanas. That was the only "different" gang I noticed so far, because all the other gangs were basically the expected ghetto-like guys.

After breaking out of jail, I decided to take a walk around the city. I was pretty amused that I could punch virtually *anyone* around. And nobody would be a match for me, even the police. I could also pick *anything* around and throw them anywhere. I could spend my whole career destroying the city. But I decided to play the good guy and explore the area peacefully.

Looking at the map, there were green spots marked with a "?" which are shops. Basically, anywhere you can spend your money at. Clothing shops, repair shops, hospitals, restaurants, etc. When you get close to them, the "?" icon changes to the type of store they are.

First stop: a clothing shop, of course. I needed to get rid of that ugly jumpsuit. The first clothing shop was nearby so I went there by walking. But it didn't sell many pieces, so I decided to find another. But I wouldn't know the green spots where clothing shops until I got nearby and many of them are far away, so the best idea now was to get a car.

You can get any car. Any. May it be moving or parked, even police cars. If someone is inside, you toss them away before stealing it (obviously). And driving is so much fun in this game. You can cause total chaos in the city, crashing into anything you want, or play the good driver, respecting the traffic lights (most cars around you do), driving at adequate speed and such.

While driving, you can listen to the radio. You can change stations, and there are so many of them. Some even play electronic music, which are unusual for this kind of game. Or you can just turn it off.

The car animations are awesome. The basic animations are there: spinning tires, at the very least, and turning. The car lights look excelent as well. When you crash into things, the damage is visible, and if it's too much, the car doors will not lock anymore and can even fall off; windshields will shatter, and all those things you see in real-life car crashes. It's all very realistic.

The car models are another awesome feature. All kinds you can imagine are available, although I didn't see many trucks around. Most of them look so real that you feel like watching a real car being driven (or feel like driving a real car, if you can "fall into character"). You can also clearly see your character inside, handling the steering wheel, looking back when the car is moving backwards, and all those minor but nifty details I love to see in games.

I barely began the game and found myself really amused and entertained, even that I was not following the main course of the story. I drove for so long, exploring many areas and stores in the city. Eventually I came back to the starting point to go where I was "supposed" to go.

First mission: find some new clothes. Duh. Should have figured that out. But I have done that already, so I just stopped by the store to get the next location in the mission. Go somewhere and cause a gang fight, then steal a car, and get to a court in four minutes to rescue someone who was going to be sent to jail. Pretty easy, except when you get the car a WHOLE gang is following you and shooting. I actually died once, but in the second time I managed to get them lost and got to the court without problems.

My supposed gang friend was being charged for all those gang-type crimes you see in movies. He looks like a big boss or something, so I thought it would be best to rescue him.

Kill the guards: check. Easy, too. They're so lame and dumb. Many fat and female cops, too. Weird. Anyway, after leaving the court, next thing I find out is the WHOLE police chasing my car. Funny thing is, when you have someone else with you in the car, they keep talking about... life in general. But hey, I can't drive away from police at high speed and talk at the same time! Or at least pay attention to whatever the guy is saying.

My goal was to get to a place called "Forgive and Forget". They look like one-car-sized tunnels, and when you go inside them, everyone forgets who you are, and the police/gangs will stop chasing you. Kinda handy, but also cheat-ish.

Next mission, take him to some girl's house. The girl was a famous singer who is thought to be dead (murdered), but not. They both know her and talk like old time friends.

Everyone talks about my hair, too. "Your hair is different." What, never saw a spiky hair before? Geez. I wonder if the conversation would change if I created a guy with a female voice, or even breasts. Would be fun if they said, "Your voice is different." :P

After the first missions, blue spots marked as "?" become available in the map. They're called "Diversions." Basically, mini-missions you need to do before getting to the main storyline ones. There's racing, bounty hunter, fight club (my favorite, of course), among many others. Doing many of them will give the character bonuses, like in fight clubs, you gain bonus melee damage if you fight a lot (in the fight clubs, not in the streets). The bonus apply to everything you do, though. I imagine that if you do many race-type diversions, you gain better car control or something like that. I'll find out eventually.

After the first missions, the guy you rescued gives you a place to live. Ooh, my own home! Nifty. When you get there, it's almost a rat's hole. The mattress where you will supposedly sleep on looks like it was pee'd by street dogs. But hey, there's a TV. There's also a place to store money (heck no, what if people break into my house and steal it all?), a wardrobe, and a place to store weapons.

If you have money, you can upgrade your home. You can upgrade things separatedly, like your TV (you start with a 10'' sized one but can upgrade to home-theaters and such), your "bed" (you can get a real bed instead of a wet mattress lying on the ground), or the whole theme of the place. Funny option is the "Pimp-paid theme", where everything is uber fancy.

Everytime you update things, like your clothes, your house, get tattoos, collect cars, perform car stunts, etc etc, you get "style points." I don't know what they exactly do, I guess they make you look cooler to other gangs, maybe. I have yet to find the real effect of it.

I'm seeing I'll keep playing this game for the next days. Which is bad, because I have scheduled events for my favorite MMO, City of Heroes. And there's a Double XP Weekend coming, which reminds me I need to stock up on food for the whole weekend and not even *think* about leaving the computer for the whole time, except for sleeping.

Maybe.

What's been keeping me busy

2009-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

Work

Pretty much what I do most of the time. The programming language I use (Ruby) is what keeps me interested in the area. I've tried bailing once from development, but failed due to family constraints. I can't keep doing something for long, though; I get tired quickly. This is mostly why I can't get home and code, because I already coded enough during the day.

So, what do I do when I get home?

City of Heroes

I play the game. The new update (Issue 13) had me playing the game much more than before and I don't like that much. The new features are alienating and kind of force you to play certain content.

Real Life

The current house rent contract expires in the end of this month, but I already found a new home. So I am in process of moving out, and movings can be stressful.

Plans?

There's a College I want to join next year (2010), either in São Paulo or Brasília. The course is "Digital Game Development" and lasts two years and a half. But to join, I have to move out first (and pay off some debts I have), so this is the last year I'm staying in my city (Campo Grande).

In the meanwhile, I'll keep looking for interesting game ideas and playing with XNA to get more of the basics. Also getting intrigued about 3D modelling, and will probably try it out sometime.

Machinima as inspiration

2008-12-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

I have found out recently that the current Machinima engine of City of Heroes has a Ragdoll system that allows a demo creator to define any pose in a model. Since then, I've been thinking about using it to start a new, real project with my characters and a whole story mode.

The current project (Poserman Revenge) is pretty much a test, a playing field. There are some wrong decisions I took while developing it, both in code and architecture. And certain fields that I'm not familiar with (sprite management, for one) set me away from coding more than I'd like to admit.

I'll have a lengthy holiday break in the end of this month, and I'll be checking into CoH's Ragdoll posing possibilities to put my characters into any pose I want. I will use this blog as a reference, and the author (also a CoH player) has developed a really nice posing tool which I'll be using.

If I get my CoH characters into any pose I want and am able to export it to 2D sprites... you can sure bet I'm starting a new project out of it. :)

First steps

2008-11-26T04:08:00.000-08:00

I've got Simon's walking animation into the game.

It took me a hell of a time. First because the former method of making spritebatches was painful, and I tried something different. Second because this new method required extra code to get it to work... and it's still not working properly.

His "stance" animation's spritebatch is like a table. All cells have fixed widths and heights. When a frame does not "fill" the whole cell, some blank space is wasted. With the new method, which I used in the "walk" animation, all sprites are almost glued together, and the final texture is smaller. However, since the cells are not of the same sizes, all frame locations within the texture must be specified manually.

Getting these locations is not difficult, but I had trouble figuring the Y's for them, so the animation keeps doing "small jumps." I was probably tired when I tried it (too much math does that) and I already have a new idea I'll try tonight.

Another problem that arose was that the animation frames had different widths and the scrolling background code was affected. It's a bug that I don't know how to fix yet, but I'll get to it eventually.

Sound and FX decisions

2008-11-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before, I don't have resources to go for original sounds in my game. I was also worried that I wouldn't find a good set from an existing game available to use. I was looking for Killer Instinct voice and FX sets, but couldn't find any.

Then I remembered the fine folks at SNK made the King of Fighters series of Original Sound Tracks with all character voices and sound effects. So, for this testing project, I'll be using them. Specifically, KOF 2000 version. The effects are quite nice.

With that, my game is going to be dubbed by the big stars. How cool is that? :P

Simon is going to be, probably, Kyo Kusanagi.

James is going to be Jhun Hoon.

Jessi is going to be... I dunno. Mai Shiranui?

I plan to use all of their non-command attack sounds. Things that are not words, for example, "Hey! Yaaah!" and the like. Maybe some exceptions, for the cool factor of the voice. Namely Jhun's special move, where he starts shouting "CHOU!" (which means something like SUPER in Japanese) and then shouts the movement name. I am sure Simon is not going to use any of Kyo's move names (because they're butt-ugly). I might even change his "actor" to someone like, maybe, Ralf Jones. Not sure about Jessi yet. Mai doesn't seem like a interesting voice for her, but it may grow on me.

Too much Killer Instinct...

2008-11-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

... but I love it. :D
Thanks Magus for the pic. :)

Yay, progress

2008-11-03T05:18:00.000-08:00

I finished the base of the movement code. It works like this: the stage doesn't move by itself. Its location is based on a middle point between the two fighters. So when one of the fighters move, the stage moves with them. It works quite nicely.

However, I've made it limited for the time being. It does not have vertical movement, just because I don't plan to have the characters jump past the upper edge of the screen. I also need to implement stage boundaries, so the characters won't walk out of the stage. It seems like an easy thing to do.

I also have finished the first version of Simon's walking animation. It's not that hot, but it's not too lousy either. I've decided to make it simple, having one animation work for walking forward and backward. A more complex system would have different animations for walking back and forth, plus animations for transitions between stances and walking animations. I'm not doing that just yet.

Next up is getting this animation to work in the game, and starting on the keyboard input code.

Been a while

2008-10-31T10:30:00.000-07:00

Nothing has been done since last post, mostly because I've been doing "slavery" at work. Aka, working overtime. So, no time to game-code. Yet.

That doesn't keep me from thinking about the project, though. I have a lot of plans. There are the big goals, or milestones, I need to achieve. Off the top of my head, they are:

Movement Code

It's when the characters move, and the stage moves with them. It looks like a simple equation will do the whole thing, the problem is exactly on the equation. I kind of have it ready in my head, ready to go to code. Let's see next time.

Collision System

The whole collision system evolved on a thing of its own. I think I made it quite complex, but I want to try it.

I was seeing some new The King of Fighters 12 movies, and they have something that's not exactly new (I know other games that have it), which is the impact of two attacks of the same power, which has everything to do with collision management.

I want that in my game. When I first thought about fighting games, I always thought that two attacks of the same power should not damage either attacker. I plan to do it similarly to KOF 12 and other games that adopted the concept. When such collision happens, I want a critical effect. Like, the screen freezing for a second and a different spark effect showing up.

A lot of the fighting engine will rely on collision polygons. It will pretty much tell how exactly each attack will behave.

Projectiles

I don't see much of a challenge here, since I already know how to animate 2D sprites on screen. I'll probably play with particle systems here to add some more flavor.

Input

Another essential step. Without it, the game doesn't really work. I haven't looked into it yet and don't know how challenging it'll be, I just know what I want, and have an idea on how to get it done.

Sound

I'll add it last because... I don't have sounds. I wanted a lot of voices, but I am not going to record them myself, really. Guess that's what voice artists are for. I'll pick some stuff on the web and throw in just so it doesn't become The Poserman Silence.

Other Screens

Maybe an intro sequence... after everything is done.
A start screen.
An options screen, maybe.
The fighter select screen.
The "I Win" screen with renders, like the KoF games.
Ranking screens.

Not much. ;)

Progress: not so much

2008-10-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

I tried to get the "global movement code" working this Sunday, but the weather was insanely hot and I couldn't concentrate. I'd spend more time under a cold shower rather than sitting at the computer.

The day before, I spent the whole afternoon at Playland. Since I had to go work in the morning, figured it would be nice to enjoy the air conditioning of the place instead of going home. Only played Pump It Up for about 4 hours. Not much, as you see. ;)

I even made some new friends. What's with me feeling social? This just feels wrong...

Windows or XBOX?

2008-10-22T10:31:00.001-07:00

As my previous screenshots denoted, I had no compassion for the so-called "Title Safe Area."

Basically it means that, when a game is played on a XBOX, depending on the TV model, it can eat up to about 15% of the screen edges. If there's stuff on those areas, they may be covered.

I've seen that happening with a lot of retail games. My TV is big, but it's also old. It means it does the above.

But for this small project, I'm not really worried. It's a test project. My first one, too. I want it to run on Windows with all the bells and whistles. I want the interface thingies to stick to the screen edges without worrying about them disappearing because of a whacky TV model.

I'll also stick to the 800x600 resolution for now, and if I have enough motivation (and more importantly, free time), I will work on a dynamic resolution version. I'm having an idea about how to do it already... and it does not seem easy.

Fun with interfaces

2008-10-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

I finished adding the character portraits. Still need to add all the fonts around, including timer, character names, score, stocks, etc etc.

Here are some screenshots for everyone's perusal.

Notice the red bar. I added a test script that damages both players over time. The red portion of the health bar decreases slowly; the true health amount is the one in green/yellow.

I've also used the concept of bubbles. They kind of "hold" the health bars, and they also have nifty transparencies. You can see them better on the image below:

As you can see, the character portrait also has a shadow. Nifty, huh?

Below is a shot of the player 2's HP bubble flashing in red, when the player's health is too low:

You can see the character portrait's shadow more clearly now.

Next up: SP bars and labels, hopefully.

Been a while

2008-10-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

So, what've I been doing?

GUI (Graphical User Interface)

I've been playing with this since Friday. Basically, I wanted something that's simple and not. How is that?

I've been studying other games' UI as inspiration. Street Fighter Zero 3 is very detailed. Others are more subtle. I knew I wanted the following on my UI:

Damage indicator (when a Health Bar takes damage, it shows the damaged amount in red and then decreases slowly);
Flashing bars when the values are too low;
Bars with different colors, according to values;
Transparency here and there.

With that in mind, I tried several layouts on Adobe Photoshop. Most of them didn't satisfy me enough. Last Saturday I finally made one I like, and partially applied it to the game.

Then, I coded the damage effect on the HP bars. Let me say it's just beautiful. Whenever damage is taken, the damaged part shows up in a screaming red color, and then decreases veeery slowly. It's nice to have an idea of how much damage the attacks and combos are doing.

I will post screenshots when I complete it. Missing things so far:

Character portraits
Character names
Timer
SP bars and labels

The SP bar is located at the lower part of the screen. I'll make it have three levels (also called "stock"). I'll also have it one bar, when it fills up, a number shows how many stocks you have, then the bar starts filling up again.

Particles

I finished watching the 2D tutorials on the XNA website. I really liked the particle system tutorials, and used it in my game to show the hit effects. Like, when an attack hits, it shows a spark-ish, flashing thing. This effect is kinda basic so far. Once attacks start working in the game, I'll see how that's going to work out.

Refactoring: SpriteBatch

The old version of the code had multiple copies of SpriteBatch objects. Reading the XNA forums, I've updated it to use one SpriteBatch object among all the instances. I didn't really see a difference in performance, probably because the code is still so small.

Plans for the week

This is going to be a stressful week. I don't know if I'll have free time (or patience) to look at more code when I get home, so things might be slow here for a while.

Fun with Classes

2008-10-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

I did more changes to the game yesterday night. These changes mostly involved new classes, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to explain here how I envision them.

Fighter Class

This class holds one fighting character in the game. It will probably be the biggest one, with lots of properties and lists.

The most important one to note is the MoveList property, which is a list of the character moves. All normal punches and kicks, signature and special moves. This is an array of Move objects. More about them in a bit.

Stage Class

Information about the background scene will be here, including all the "extras" like things moving. Yeah, I plan to have random people walking in a stage, for example.

FightScene Class

This class holds two fighters, a stage and the GUI objects.

Move Class

This is one move of the character. A punch, kick, signature/special move, and even movement. It holds a list of frames of the animation. Each frame is a MoveFrame object, and they're stored in a List.

It also holds a list of the input commands needed to execute the move. It's a list of MoveInput objects.

MoveFrame Class

This is one frame of a move animation. It basically tells the whole Move what the move actually does.

Frames can set the character to move. Like walking, jumping, and some attacks as well. Each frame has a X and Y modifier that tells the game where to move the character to. If these values are zero, the character does not move. If they're different than zero, the character moves. The values can also be negative (backwards moving, for example).

Then, each frame of a given animation can have several collision rectangles. Let's get Jessi as a example, and her Cartwheel Kick move. When she executes the move, her legs are spread out, but they both can hit the enemy. So a collision rectangle is set on each of her legs.

MoveFrameCollision Class

This is a collision rectangle that tells the move where to check if a collision happened.

There are two types of collision rectangles: active and passive.

Active rectangles are set around parts of the body (like fists, feet) that are used for attacks.

Passive rectangles are set around parts of the body that can be hit by the opponent, like torso, head, legs, etc. That can also include body parts that are used for attacking as well, but they don't need to be overlapped, since active rectangles are also considered passive. That way, an enemy can hit the attacker's fist (active rectangle) with a stronger attack, and counter it.

That said, when checking for collision, the game calculates if any active rectangle is colliding with any active or passive rectangle from the enemy:

If an active rectangle from player 1 collides with a passive rectangle from player 2, player 2 is hit.
If an active rectangle from player 1 collides with an active rectangle from player 2, whichever attack does more damage hits the other player. If they do both the same damage, both players are hit.

Since this object holds collision information for every frame in the animation, all attack properties are set here. They're basically:

Strength of attack ("weak" or "strong")
Damage (in points)

Passive rectangles play an important part on deciding where the fighter is hit. For the most part, there will be passive rectangles for the following groups:

Head
Arms, shoulders and chest
Abdomen and pelvis
Legs
Feet

Each passive rectangle also holds a resistance modifier against damage. For example, hitting the head deals more damage than hitting the feet. (However, hitting the feet can get the enemy knocked off.)

"Strength of attack" decides which hit (stun) animation the enemy will play (once hit). If the attack is "weak", the hit animation played by the enemy will be very quick (no matter how much damage it does) and he will recover fast. If the attack is "strong", enemy will be stunned for more frames, thus taking more time to recover. Enemy recovery is the key for performing combos.

I decided not to take damage numbers into calculation of this property because I want things to be scalar. So a high punch can do really tiny damage and still stuns the enemy for the same amount any high attack does. This allows for some damage scaling experiences I want to play with, and makes combos more uniform (if weak attacks stun the enemy like strong attacks, combos can be easily messed up and become overpowered).

Another interesting thing about "Strength of attack" is that the collision happens on certain body parts, different effects can be achieved. For example, if the fighter executes an attack which collides with the enemy's feet, there can be different possibilities here:

If the attack is "weak", the enemy will only be quickly stunned;
If the attack is "strong", the enemy will be knocked off.

Certain hit animations last longer than others. Getting hit in the head or abdomen are the longest ones. If the player is jumping and perform a kick, depending on the time the attack is executed during landing, it can hit the head, of chest of the enemy (or even lower areas), which decides how long the enemy will be stunned once hit (how many frames the "hit" animation will play), among other secondary effects.

MoveInput Class

This class holds one key which is a part of a sequential command to execute a move. I've already explained it before, and haven't changed the original idea so far.

Most of those classes are already coded. I did another refactor of the code yesterday, which mostly affected the Fighter Class.

Sprite updates

I spent a long time working on spritesheets.
Also... Simon's got a new wig.

*sigh*

New Simon vs. Old Simon

But click on the image above, and pay attention to the sprite quality. You'll notice New Simon is much smoother. This is also the first background I made as a test, before resorting to another sources for better stages.

I've also changed the code to read spritesheets based on a rows/columns system, so it can read spritesheets in any form of 2D matrices. That solves the issue about reading them.

Now I only need a better way to make them. I still make them by manually dragging all the sprites into a larger texture, and it's very tiresome.

I've tried some spritesheet makers made in XNA, but they kill the smooth effects on the sprites. Doing the spritesheet manually (using Photoshop) keeps the transparent anti-aliasing, as you see in the above picture. And I want to keep it that way.

No more blue.

2008-10-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

First try without anti-aliasing. It looks decent now.

I'm trying other export methods I just found out, and I may have good news tomorrow.

Simon too. He said he has something new for us all.
I wonder what it is...

Scrolling background

2008-10-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

This nifty scene of Cap Au Diable (kindly sponsored by your very best modern MMO of date, City of Heroes) is moving at 30fps, together with the fighter's stance animation.

(Don't mind the blue pixels still surrounding our friend Simon, please. I'll remove them once I have the patience to export all the sprites again, without anti-aliasing.)

Everything moves so smooth, so far. Eventually, I'll test this thing on a much slower computer, but not now.

I also refactored a big chunk of code. The Fighter Class still needs some work, though.

Here's the code so far.
Game1.cs is specially DRY now:

public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game {
 GraphicsDeviceManager _graphics;
 FightScene _scene;
 int _fps = 30;

 public Game1() {
     _graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this);
     Content.RootDirectory = "Content";
 }

 protected override void Initialize() {
     base.Initialize();
 }

 protected override void LoadContent() {
     _scene = new FightScene(_fps, Content, GraphicsDevice);
     _scene.setStage("cap");
     _scene.setPlayer1("Simon");
     _scene.setPlayer2("Simon");
 }

 protected override void UnloadContent() { }

 protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) {
     // Allows the game to exit
     if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed)
         this.Exit();
     _scene.Update(gameTime);
     base.Update(gameTime);
 }

 protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) {
     _graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);
     _scene.Draw(gameTime);
     base.Draw(gameTime);
 }
}

And that's all. The magic lies inside the new class, FightScene:

class FightScene
{
 protected ContentManager _content;
 protected GraphicsDevice _graphics;
 private int _fps;

 private Fighter _player1, _player2;
 private Stage _stage;

 public FightScene(int pFramesPerSecond, ContentManager pContent,
GraphicsDevice pGraphicsDevice)
 {
     _fps = pFramesPerSecond;
     _content = pContent;
     _graphics = pGraphicsDevice;
 }

 public void setPlayer1(string pFighterName) {
     _player1 = new Fighter(pFighterName, 1, _graphics, _content, _fps);
 }

 public void setPlayer2(string pFighterName) {
     _player2 = new Fighter(pFighterName, 2, _graphics, _content, _fps);
 }

 public void setStage(string pStage) {
     _stage = new Stage(pStage, _graphics, _content, _fps);
 }

 public void Update(GameTime pGameTime)
 {
     _player1.Update(pGameTime, _player2);
     _player2.Update(pGameTime, _player1);
     _stage.Update(pGameTime, _player1, _player2);
 }

 public void Draw(GameTime pGameTime)
 {
     _stage.Draw(pGameTime);
     _player1.Draw(pGameTime);
     _player2.Draw(pGameTime);
 }

}

Then we have another new class, Stage:

class Stage
{
 private GraphicsDevice _graphics;
 private ContentManager _content;
 private SpriteBatch _spriteBatch;
 private Texture2D _texture;
 private int _fps, _screenWidth, _screenHeight, _baseX, _baseY, _curX, _curY;
 private Rectangle _srcRec, _dstRec;
 private float _animationElapsedTime, _animationTimePerFrame;

 public Stage(string pStageName, GraphicsDevice pGraphicsDevice,
ContentManager pContent, int pFramesPerSecond) {
     // parameters
     _graphics = pGraphicsDevice;
     _content = pContent;
     _spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(_graphics);
     _fps = pFramesPerSecond;
     // properties
     _screenWidth = _graphics.Viewport.Width;
     _screenHeight = _graphics.Viewport.Height;
     _animationElapsedTime = 0f;
     _animationTimePerFrame = 1000f / (float)_fps;
     // texture loading
     if (pStageName == "test")
         _texture = _content.Load("Scenarios//test");
     else if (pStageName == "cap")
         _texture = _content.Load("Scenarios//cap");
     // positioning
     _baseX = (_texture.Width / 2) - (_screenWidth / 2);
     _baseY = _texture.Height - _screenHeight;
     _curX = _baseX;
     _curY = _baseY;
 }

 public void Update(GameTime pGameTime, Fighter pPlayer1, Fighter pPlayer2) {
     _animationElapsedTime += (float)pGameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds;
     if (_animationElapsedTime > _animationTimePerFrame) {
         _animationElapsedTime = 0f;
         // scrolling demo
         _curX++;
         if (_curX > (_texture.Width - _screenWidth)) _curX = 0;
         _srcRec = new Rectangle(_curX, _curY, _screenWidth, _screenHeight);
         _dstRec = new Rectangle(0, 0, _screenWidth, _screenHeight);
     }
 }

 public void Draw(GameTime pGameTime) {
     _spriteBatch.Begin();
     _spriteBatch.Draw(_texture, _dstRec, _srcRec, Color.White, 0f,
Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 0f);
     _spriteBatch.End();
 }
}

The Fighter class didn't change much from last post.

Our magic class, FightScene, will hold several things. Mostly, Fighters and GUI, which includes all the health bars, super bars, character portraits, timers, combo prompts, etc etc.

That's enough work for the night. A good amount of refactor and a new feature I was itching to see in action. I can sleep now.

Optimization; Object babbling

2008-10-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

After so much code fiesta this weekend, it's never late to start thinking about optimization.

Sprites and Textures

When working on Simon's first texture sheets, I got XNA alerts with the size of the texture. It was 2140 pixels wide. XNA issued a warning that many cards will only read about 2048 pixels at most.

Another funky behavior I got was when I tried to load a 32-bit BMP. Only the first frame would load (with automatic transparency, I wonder why) and all the others would be blank/transparent. When I saved the BMP in 24-bit format, it worked, but the transparency was gone, and I had to set it manually.

And finally, I've also read that textures work better when the resolution is in powers of two. Like, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512... so that most cards can read it without issues and as fast as possible.

In this demo, I worked solely with BMP images. Once I get Poser's rendering properties hands down, I'll only work with PNG files. They're smaller and handle transparency on their own. My only concern about this format is performance. BMP is a non-compressed format, while I don't know what PNG is about, but it looks as good as a BMP, but smaller in file size. It must have compression somewhere, and I wonder if that impacts on performance much to be considered a problem.

That said:

I'll try to have the next textures with matching resolutions (powers of two), and no longer an image that looks like a long stripe. All sprites of a given animation will have to fit into it. Then I'll store all the data in XNA objects that will tell me the frame number and the source rectangle to retrieve it. I may use this application as a guide.
Also going for PNG format, so I don't need to care about formats.

XNA and Objects

I have a general idea of how the Fighter Object will be, but when I think about the final product, it scares me. As the object stands now, there are so many properties already (I'm a fan of KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid) and when I see so many properties already this early in development, it gives me the shivers.

Main concern here is getting List Objects to work. Each fighter (Simon, James, Jessi) has a set of moves. At first, I was going to make them equal number, so each of them would have three "Signature" moves and one "Special" move, no more, no less. But in the future, fighters will surely have different number of moves among them. With Lists, I can also lessen the number of properties in the object, and nothing will be hardcoded.

So I plan to have a list of Moves for each Fighter. I'll call this property MoveList. For each move, I'll create a new CommandMove object. "Command" because the move needs a command to process. Like a Hadouken is done inputting 236+P. This CommandMove object will have the input command needed to process them. And this will be a list of small CommandMoveInput objects.

Let's get a Hadouken-type move for example, which input command is 236+P (down, down-forward, forward, punch). To make things simple, I'll strip all the diagonal directions from the commands, so the simplified command becomes 26+P.

A CommandMoveInput has three main properties:

The input key
The duration it needs to be held
The interval the command will be active once the key is pressed.

In our case, our Hadouken object has three CommandMoveInput objects. The first one will be for the "down" key. Duration is zero since I don't need to hold it, and interval is something like, 0.2 second (which will be more or less a default for all commands).

Second one is for the "forward" key (which can be "left" or "right" depending on the fighter's orientation). Same duration and interval as the "down" key.

And finally, our "punch" key, with the same values.

This will allow for a sequencial input of down -> forward -> punch to perform the special move.

Many games get the last directional command that comes before the attack button and make it so you have to press the direction and the attack at the same time. With the CommandMoveInput object, I can set the interval of the final directional key to be smaller, forcing the player to hit the attack button faster.

It means the interval property plays a crucial role about how fast the commands need to be inputted. If the player hits down, them takes more than 0.2 second to hit "forward", the command will fail. He needs to hit the next command in sequence in less than 0.2 second for the command to work.

Back to our CommandMove object, it will also hold all the frames and positions to play the move animation, along with sounds, collision checks, how much damage it does, effects on enemy, projectile generation, etc etc etc.

Something I want to do as soon as I can is to add a scrolling background stage. I've read the basics about it and I want to see how it's going to perform when my characters start moving around.

Can't forget about the GUI, too. I want to make a funky health bar! And a super bar, and the time counter, and the character portraits and names, and... there's so much I want to do.

That's enough babbling for the morning.

First Mission: Accomplished!

2008-10-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

I got my first XNA demo running.

It features two animated Sprites. One of them is horizontally flipped because it has an automatic orientation detection.

So, how did I do it?

(Warning: explicit XNA language from now on)

First I set two SpriteBatch objects and also created a class Fighter, and two instances of it:

SpriteBatch Player1_SpriteBatch;
SpriteBatch Player2_SpriteBatch;
Fighter Player1_Fighter;
Fighter Player2_Fighter;

In the LoadContent() method, I load the fighters:

Player1_Fighter = new Fighter("Simon", 1, Content, FramesPerSecond);
Player2_Fighter = new Fighter("Simon", 2, Content, FramesPerSecond);

I passed Content as a parameter because I didn't want to reload it inside the class. FramesPerSecond is a variable that currently equals to 30.

In the Update() method, I call my Fighters' each Update() method:

Player1_Fighter.Update(gameTime, /* Enemy */ Player2_Fighter);
Player2_Fighter.Update(gameTime, /* Enemy */ Player1_Fighter);

And finally, in the Draw() method, I call my Fighters' very own Draw() methods:

Player1_Fighter.Draw(gameTime, Player1_SpriteBatch);
Player2_Fighter.Draw(gameTime, Player2_SpriteBatch);

And that's it for Game1.cs. Now, the class Fighter.

Variables:

        // graphic parameters
       private Vector2 _position;
       private ContentManager _contentManager;

       private int _initialPos_X;
       private int _initialPos_Y;
       private int _curPos_X;
       private int _curPos_Y;
       private Rectangle _srcRec;
       private Rectangle _dstRec;
      

       // Sprite Sheets
       private float _animationElapsedTime;
       private float _animationTimePerFrame;
       private Texture2D _currentTexture;
       private int _currentFrames; // total
       // ---------------------------------
       private Texture2D _SS_Stance;
       private int _Frames_Stance;
       // .. add more SS's here later

       // game parameters
       private int _side; // 1 or 2
       private int _orientation; // Left side = 1, Right side = -1

       // character state
       private string _state_position;
       private int _state_frame;

_position is unused for now, but I'll use it for movimentation.
_contentManager is the content reference.
_initialPos_X/Y is where the character "spawns" when a fight begins.
_curPos_X/Y is where a character currently is.
_srcRec and _dstRec are rectangles I use to animate the sprites.

_animationElapsedTime and _animationTimePerFrame are used to calculate animations.
_currentTexture holds a Texture2D object which is currently the source of the ongoing animation. Currently, this is only "stance". But when more SpriteSheets are available (walking, jumping, attacks, etc), this variable will point to the current texture used.
_currentFrames is used to calculate how many frames a SpriteSheet holds.

Then I'll have a Texture2D object for *every* animation in the game (_SS_Stance, _SS_WalkForward, _SS_Jump, _SS_LightPunch, etc), along with their frame counters (_Frames_Stance, _Frames_WalkForward, _Frames_Jump, etc). This method is quite bad, because everything is hardcoded. When I learn to work with lists, I'll make a better code here.

_side is Player 1 or Player 2 side.
_orientation is where the fighter is facing. If he's facing right (located to the left of the enemy), the value is 1, otherwise -1. This is used to flip the sprite when the fighter is on the right side of his enemy.

_state_position and _state_frame are variables of state (no shit!). Initially I'll set it with strings like "stance", "walking", "jumping", "knocked" and so on, and let the system know what frame of the animation is currently playing.

This is the constructor:

public Fighter(string pPlayerName, int pSide, ContentManager pContent,
int pFramesPerSecond)
{
 _animationElapsedTime = 0f;
 _animationTimePerFrame = 1000f / (float)pFramesPerSecond;
 _side = pSide;
 _state_position = "stance";
 _state_frame = 0;
 if (pSide == 1) {
     _orientation = 1;
     _initialPos_X = 200;
     _initialPos_Y = 350;
 } else if (pSide == 2) {
     _orientation = -1;
     _initialPos_X = 500;
     _initialPos_Y = 350;
 }

 _curPos_X = _initialPos_X;
 _curPos_Y = _initialPos_Y;

 _contentManager = pContent;

 if (pPlayerName == "Simon") {
     _SS_Stance = _contentManager.Load("Sprites//simon_stance");
     _Frames_Stance = 20;
 }
}

The Update method:

public void Update(GameTime pGameTime, Fighter pEnemy) {
 if (_state_position == "stance") {
     _currentTexture = _SS_Stance;
     _currentFrames = _Frames_Stance;
 }
 _animationElapsedTime += (float)pGameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds;
 if (_animationElapsedTime > _animationTimePerFrame) {
     _animationElapsedTime = 0f;
     _state_frame++;
     if (_state_frame > _currentFrames - 1)
         _state_frame = 0;
     int frameWidth = (_currentTexture.Width / _currentFrames);
     _srcRec = new Rectangle(
         /* X1 */ _state_frame * frameWidth,
         /* Y1 */ 0,
         /* X2 */ frameWidth,
         /* Y2 */ _currentTexture.Height
     );
     _dstRec = new Rectangle( _curPos_X, _curPos_Y, frameWidth,
_currentTexture.Height );
 }

}

And finally, the Draw() method:

public void Draw(GameTime pGameTime, SpriteBatch pSpriteBatch)
{
 Color transparency = Color.White;
 pSpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);
 // sprite flipping
 if (_orientation > 0) {
     pSpriteBatch.Draw(
         _currentTexture,
         _dstRec, _srcRec,
         transparency, 0f,
         Vector2.Zero,
         SpriteEffects.None,
         0.5f
     );
 } else {
     pSpriteBatch.Draw(
         _currentTexture,
         _dstRec, _srcRec,
         transparency, 0f,
         Vector2.Zero,
         SpriteEffects.FlipHorizontally,
         0.5f
     );
 }
 pSpriteBatch.End();
}

This last IF block is just horrible, but I couldn't figure a way to pass the SpriteEffect as a parameter.

Now that I got the hang of it, I'll start the real code with the things I learned from this piece.

What I plan on focusing now:

Sprite exporting. This demo used sprites with anti-aliasing. Try clicking on the picture in the beginning of this post and you will see Simon surrounded by blue pixels. I need to export the sprites without any outer anti-aliasing. But I couldn't figure how to do it in Poser, without screwing the inner anti-aliasing, which I want to keep.
A SpriteSheet generator or something. I used Adobe Photoshop to create one image with all the sprites... all manually. It was very counter-productive. I need a tool that allow me to crop all the sprites first (because I export them in higher resolution with lots of blank space to keep everything proportional) and then, glue them together to make the final sprite sheet.

I'm so proud of this small application. I feel less scared of XNA now, and I can go back to finish all Simon's animations because I know the game can be done.

If kicks were difficult...

2008-10-12T11:28:00.001-07:00

... jumping seems to be trickier.

The animation above took more time than doing the two kicks together. I was worried about the "impulse" part of the animation. It seems okay now, but it had me spending a lot of time to get it right. The landing is kinda cool. He opens his arms to get better balance.

This is only the vertical jump. I don't know what expects me when I get to do the diagonal ones. But I may keep going on and not be distracted or intimidated by any obstacles that may arise.

Although these seem difficult to do, I can say I am having fun doing them. When I finish tweaking the animations around and they look good, I feel impressed with myself. Even in those moments I see the animations in the next day and think they suck. :P Thankfully, that's not happening very often.

Once this animation spree is over, I'll get the model to work in a sample XNA application. That's when the real difficult part begins.

(Rant) Playland sucks

2008-10-11T20:22:00.001-07:00

I spent a few hours there. Way too crowded. Children everywhere! I was in panic.

Well, I only have to say I'm utterly disappointed with the place.

Let's list the fighting games there:

Mortal Kombat 4
Virtua Fighter 3

Great. No Street Fighter, Marvel series, nothing from Capcom at all. It's the FIRST ARCADE I know that doesn't have a Capcom game. What's with that?!

And Mortal Kombat 4... is a piece of shit. I like the MK series somehow, but I'm not a hardcore fan, really. MK4, though... it's the WORST game released of the series. Anyway, I wouldn't play it even if it was MK2 or 3.

If you read my introduction, you already know what I think about VF series, so no comment here.

One good news is that they have a Pump It Up! machine, yeah. NX Premiere version. It's quite good, except that the right pad was failing. When I went to report that to the technician guy... he said the most ABSURD thing I've ever heard about dance machines: he praised SSAMBA (which is worse than a piece of shit, it's lighting junk) because he would install it and never care about it, maintenance-wise.

Of course, nobody would play it, so the controls would always be in shape. Moron.

Lastly, the giant Guitar Hero III booth. While the idea is quite cool and all... there's no arcade version of GH. It was a PS2 inside playing the game. You'd "insert the coin" (card, in this case) and the game would give you 5 minutes of credit.

Facts:

Most songs are longer than 5 minutes. Hello?
The player came across the Initial Menu. Where you select the game mode. Now, think about newbies playing this game. They are totally lost.
A giant booth... and ONE PLAYER MODE ONLY?! That's totally... a bad idea. Really.
After the credited time ran out, the game would flat out reset. You know, the screen going black, PS2 boot sequence showing up, and all that. I laughed the first time I saw that.

Not to mention it was way too expensive. One credit in the PIU machine would cost 2.40 in local currency. GH3 costed 5.00 for 5 minutes. Just ridiculous.

The only good thing, after all, is the new PIU game. I think I'll go there on a daily basis to play one credit everyday to dust off my skills. And lose some pounds.

A Teaser for You; Playing with Renders

2008-10-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

Talking with close friends about my first (unrevealed) idea about the characters of the first game (The Poserman Revenge), and after browsing some of the other Poser's models (from old versions), I've tossed the old idea aside. It was kinda silly anyway.

Poser 7 has two characters: Simon (male) and Sydney (female). Simon has a "casual" version with embedded clothes, which is the one I am currently using in my tests. Sydney, however, only has a nude model available. Of course I could attach clothing to nude models, but the problem with that is clipping everywhere, and it's not worth the trouble.

Poser 6 has two characters: James (male) and Jessi (female). They both have casual versions (with embedded clothing), and I decided to use them as characters.

Poser 5 and older have all bad models.

That said, I present everyone... the "tentative" character roster of the game:

Simon
former Poserman Red

Hey lookit, poor Simon is now using a wig. We (the crew) figured his plain hair cut could be unpopular among the public. Other than that, he likes a good fighting to stress things out. Hence he's quite cranky; as you can see, his face barely hides it.

His fighting style is mixed street fighting. His moves are not really polished but they do hit hard. He is also able to unleash his endless rage in the form of fire from his fists.

*coughsryuclonecoughs*

Signature Moves: Fire Ball, Hurricane Kick, Dragon Punch
Super Move: Final Rage

James
former Poserman Blue

A calm fella, his peaceful behavior all the frickin' time totally pisses Simon off. To make it worse, James does not really enjoy fighting, but he'll do it if he has to.

His fighting style is kung fu, with polished moves, although not quite strong. Using his "mind over body" meditation technique, he's also able to endure pain with ease.

Signature Moves: Iron Palm, Rising Kick, Flying Kick
Super Move: Mind Over Body

Jessi
former Poserman* Yellow

This cheerful girl dreams everyday about joining the Olympic games. However, her gymnastic abilities are not up to their standards and she keeps looking for ways to improve her skills.

She found in fighting a way to practice, and developed a fighting style of her own. Using the tumbling moves everyone sees on those gymnastic tournaments, she uses her speed to turn them into attacks. Even that those acrobatic moves are not really suitable for fighting, she is able to unleash nasty combos if she manages to get the first hit in.

Signature Moves: Cartwheel Kick, Double Fan Kick, Front Handspring
Super Move: Final Salto

* Poserman is an allusion to a Power Rangers kind of thing, hence no "Poserwoman" or "Posergirl".

Ehn.

2008-10-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the first video from Poser. It's all glitchy. Geez.

One of the fingers also gets a life of its own and goes crazy. Poser problem, but I know how to fix that already.

Okay, so, my own review about it...

Stance

Not bad. But too common. Need more sauce. Or something. But not really itching to change it.

Low Punch

Needs to be faster and swifter. The torso and head movement are... weird.

High Punch

Needs more frames, so it takes more time to execute than Low Punch (the frames are quite similar in number). The arm "rebound" needs to be considerably slower, too.

Low Kick

The best one, IMO. But because it's so simple. However, I still need to adjust minor details on its speed.

High Kick

Second place. The *kick* moment needs more impact. I'll play around with the keyframes so I can achieve this effect. I like how the torso and arms movement came out.

What's Left

Walking (forward, backward)
Jumping (up, diagonal forward, diagonal backward)
Aerial attacks (all punches and kicks)
Crouching
Crouching attacks (all punches and kicks)

Whew, that seems quite some work. But guess what weekends are for.

Just for kicks

2008-10-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

I had two hours of free time yesterday to work on Poserman Red's animations.

He had two punches, I added two kicks. A low, and a high one. And heck, they took a long time to get done.

At first, I was thinking about normal karate kicks (think of Ryu). But they ended up becoming too complex to do at this point. I found myself redoing the animation several times, until I got one I finally liked. So I did two normal front kicks. LK aims for the opponent's lower leg, and HK hits high, like, right in da face.

Both of them seem violent enough to be categorized as street-figthing as opposed to karate. When I see the HK animation, I imagine a dog being kicked high into the air. Am I violent or what...

I'm happy with the result, anyway. I hope to have a sample movie coming out in a few days so you guys can see the progress. I'll post it on YouTube.

After I finished these animations, I started thinking about the FPS rate of the game. I'm tempted to go 30fps, since Poser can smooth animations out according to a FPS rate I decide. With that, I'd have really smooth animations, like in the Street Fighter 3 series.

If I go the 15fps route, it's not going to be as smooth, but requires half the frames. Since I'm not really that crazy about performance with this project, might be a good idea to try higher quality animations.

Gaming Life

Tonight I'm attending to a new arcade (Playland) that's opening in the mall near my job. They were testing out games yesterday night. Right at the entrance, a frickin' HUGE booth featuring an arcade version of Guitar Hero III caught my attention. I'll be playing that for sure once they're open to the public.

I also hope to find new dance machines there, too. (I need some workout.) My guess is that they're going to have one Pump It Up! machine, but I didn't see any when peeking inside through the half-opened doors.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is a local holiday here. The mall will be open, and I shall go to Playland again depending on my experience there tonight.

Other than that, I'll be home, playing or animating, if not sleeping.

Animation Appreciation

2008-10-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Work has begun.

My guinea pig of choice is the default model in Poser 7, Simon. He's weird, temperamental and don't trim his fingernails very often. But I am positive we'll get along just fine.

For the latter 2D fighting game project, he's being called Poserman Red. A Ryu/Ken clone for the most part, a very basic fighter, with decent punches and kicks.

I spent a few hours yesterday night working on his first animations. So far, three are done: stance (animated), weak punch (*LP), strong punch (*HP). I didn't want to get into kicks just yet, because it's going to be HELL to make them look good.

* Fighting game jargon: Low Punch, High Punch.

The process of actually getting the animations done has to involve some kind of... imagination. You can watch a video or see someone else do it, or you can do it yourself. My choice was the latter, as I had no content to use as inspiration.

So yeah, in the loneliness of my bedroom, I posed like the picture above and paid attention to every detail of it that I could. Mostly how the bones bent and stuff like that.

There are some situations, however, that I must rely on external sources. If I were doing a kung-fu fighter, I couldn't use myself as the model. (Because, unlike Neo, I don't know kung fu.) So I'd have to get inspiration elsewhere. I am certain YouTube will promptly help me on that.

Then it goes to make it to the 3D model. When animation is concerned, you have to be very careful in what you decide to make move, as in, which parts of the body. Poserman Red in specific is concentrated, and when he's in his figthing stance, his torso doesn't bend much. But I had it bent just a little bit to give it a "breathing" effect.

The arms move a little. Martial artists are weavy and move most of the time. Frozen arms while the "bouncing" stance plays look robotic and unrealistic.

The model has some limitations that had me working around certain things. The legs and feet were changed from the original idea because the way they looked back then was kind of broken. When you move certain limbs around in an uncommon way, some 3D spikes may appear on the model. So I worked around the legs and feet positions to avoid those graphic spikes. That's why kicks are going to be difficult to do, and some 3D glitches will be unavoidable.

I hope inspiration strikes me this weekend so I can get more done.

One step at a time.

2008-10-08T05:47:00.000-07:00

So yesterday night I played a bit with XNA Game Studio 2.0. Nothing big. Read the help files, made a random sprite animate on screen. Also read a little about the 3D feature.

It seems friendly. I am more familiar with C# than I care to admit. Whenever I get more free time, I'll read more about the basics. Some terms were confusing, specially the 3D terminology. I need to wrap my mind around them.

For now, I have a small plan. I'll use Poser 7 to animate a simple 3D figure and capture the rendered frames, to use as 2D sprites. Once I figure how to animate sprites better in XNA, I'll render all the frames I want and make a simple application with a controllable character, like those beat-em-up games.

Features I expect to have in this small application:

Normal stance (animated)
Walking
Jumping
Crouching
Punching
Kicking

And desireable features:

Running
Different punches and kicks
Some special attacks for "oooh" effects

As a first project (more long-term) I will call it "The Poserman Revenge." It'll be a very simple 2D fighting game with a few selectable characters (all the same guy, in different colors and fighting styles). I don't expect to go into 3D just yet, so it's going to be 2D sprites for the most part.

When the project is finished, I expect to have learned the following concepts:

Collision detection
Projectiles
Scrolling backgrounds
Maybe some AI
Basic sound usage

Making a 2D game is not my main goal, but I figured I have to get myself ready for the chaos that is 3D development. First long-term goal will be having a 3D model animating on screen based on keyboard input. Then I'll have an idea of my development potential. For now, I'll mess with this little project, and post screenshots as soon as I have something done.

Thanks goes to Raphaela for letting me know about XNA. :)

Games and Me.

2008-10-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

Thought I could make an introduction of myself, as well as my gaming experience.

I am not very participative in gaming communities. Most of that is because I am not really talkative. I like reading, however, and have found out a couple years ago that I got a thing for writing (not only lines of code). So expect nice Walls o' Text on a common basis on this blog, whenever I feel like it, which is, most of the time.

I'm a 29yo guy that lives in Brazil and has a passion for games. My first contact with a video game was when I was, like, 8 or younger, I don't remember. Family went to the only mall in the city, and they had an arcade place there. I got to play Street Fighter 2 with my Irish-twin brother.

It was difficult. "Too many buttons" was something I thought when I saw the controls. I picked Ryu. He was SO BIG. (Because of my height, the characters were so giant to me. And no, I couldn't even see the HP bars on the top of the screen.) My brother got Ken. He won using a cheap tactic (holding down and spamming the Low Kick [LK] button). Heck, I didn't even know how to jump in the game.

But at least, I didn't play like a girl. You know, girls smash every button they can and spin the directional pad aimlessly as fast as possible like they're going crazy on a boys band live show. (Before I get any girls hate mail, I promise to have a post about it and explain this better.) I was aware that if I held the pad to the left, my character would move to the left (really?). And so I made Ryu move. But poor Ryu couldn't get past the crouching LKs, and so he lost after a while. It was frustrating.

I also played that Simpsons game, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one. They were much fun.

Long after, in my high-school years, I used to skip school to go to a nearby arcade. Almost every single gamer knows that feeling, so I am not feeling really guilty, because I was a good student. This arcade, called "Brinks" (an allusion to the Portuguese word for "toy" or "play" as in children's play), had a Farwest Bar-style doors. You know in those bad Western movies, when everyone is in the bar, drinking and smoking in a dusty atmosphere, and some Big Bag Guy arrives in the scene through these doors, causing havoc in the place. But this arcade didn't have drinks nor allowed smoking inside, so it was safe. It was also very clean and the ambient was nice, with air conditioning and all.

Then, I started on my fighting games career. Street Fighter, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat (of course), King of Fighters and pretty much everything that came after it became very common titles for me. I was a bad player, though, and would lost in the Versus matches most of the time. And I enjoyed versus battles more than story mode (single play).

I didn't really set myself to win a battle, though. I had my mind set on selecting characters that could have a higher gameplay difficulty. Mostly women and kids.

Well, yeah, Chun Li was the first female character I ever played. First thought: "she jumps too high." (No, not "nice legs," that was implicit.) But that career wasn't really successful. Also, I thought Chun Li was called Blanka when I first came across the SF games. Because Blanka does look like a female name, when local naming conventions are considered. When I met the "real" Blanka though, things fell in place. It took a while to get used to it.

During these arcade times, I was playing The King of Fighters '94 (aka KoF), successor of the Fatal Fury series (which were quite old games already back then). In this game, the character selection was country-based, on teams of three characters. I always picked the England team, which had three girls. Then I started learning more about the weaknessess and advantages of those complex characters in fighting games.

Truth to be told, the thing is that I hate controlling "overpowered" characters. Ryu, Ken & cia fall under the "diagonal fighters" category. Because they can travel upwards unleashing their invincible dragon punches (aka "shoryukens"). This kind of move grew so common with other games that it's sick. Most main characters have this kind of move, and their command is the same thing most of the time (623+punch*).

So I have my own pride on not choosing such types. I also stay away from wicked-looking ones (KoF series are full of them, like Iori Yagami). I also favor speed above power, which sets me away from big and fat characters. But too much speed is also bad, and very small characters don't look appealing to me. (Like Choi Bounge, from KoF.) I try, then, to find a balance.

Most female characters are balanced around speed, because of their own lack of muscular strength. It might take a while to win a battle, but I'm fine with that if I can move, dodge and attack faster.

Time went on, and combos became like a mantra to me. Killer Instinct was the game which introduced so many good-looking combos. The only female character was Orchid, and she had the easiest (and longest) combo outright available in the game (maximum was 80 hits, see it on YouTube). So I kept playing her. The full combos were really nice to watch, kind of a "ooooh" generator from the audience.

(Making a break here to mention the most cool-looking combo I've ever seen in Killer Instinct 2, from Orchid as well. It's just frickin' awesome. Watch it here.)

Other games followed, of course, but not as heavily centered on combos. Many games also had introduced super moves after a time. You fill some sort of endurance bar by doing normal moves. When it fills up, you can perform super moves. And they were always very damaging and nice-looking.

Then, we had the 3D game era.

Virtua Fighter was the first game I completely, absolutely HATE and still do. There's nothing that will make me like this game. Poor character designs, weird movement and physics, whacked gameplay. Even the current titles stink, IMO.

The first decent 3D fighting game I came across was Tekken. In this arcade I attended, we had both games. Virtua Fighter was barely played (the 5yo kids like it at best). But lines of people would form to play Tekken. For that reason, I never really got a chance to try the game myself until the next versions came out and people were too busy playing the new versions.

The first version was scary. The graphics were not as polished as Virtua Fighter, but I still thought they looked nicer. The two females in the game, Nina and Michelle, were tricky to play, but most characters on that game were tricky to play, anyway. It's the nature of 3D games (at least the real ones, not 2D games disguised as 3D). I was not very impressed back then, until Tekken 3 was released.

That was when I faced a piece of art. All graphics were so much better, the physics and animations. I was easily impressed.

During those times, this arcade I attended moved to another place, a bigger one, and had a store with all those things girls love, like keychains, small toys, dolls and lots of fluffy things. It actually made girls stop by and even go inside and play, which was the effect I liked. (I didn't care about the cute stuff.)

Along with Tekken 3, we got the crazy crossover comic-based, fighting games. X-Men: Children of Atom was the first one. That title was strong. Lots of exaggerated moves caught lots of attention. Marvel Super Heroes came afterwards and was the most addicting thing ever. Sending an enemy into the air and jumping up to hit him several times was, like, so awesome. Those games introduced the power of combos linked with super moves. They were absolutely big hits in the arcade industry.

Other games of that genre that followed (X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2, and etc) started to get way over the top. I didn't like them much. For example, in some of those games, Wolverine had an infinite combo. That actually set me away from the game. (I hate overpowered characters, as you may have already noticed.)

The newest crossover title that's currently in production is Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. The character concepts make me drool. And the gameplay... you can see by yourself in a trailer here, on YouTube. The most interesting thing on this game is that, although it has a 2D gameplay, it's all 3D.

It amazes me how the characters were rendered like they were 2D. Nobody else had done that so well. When a 3D game tries to play like a 2D one, I expect all sorts of crippled animations. See Street Fighter EX series for example. They are horrible. And sadly, Street Fighter 4 is going the same way.

Tekken 4, 5 and, finally, Soul Calibur, are the jewels of 3D fighting games. Specially the latter, which was an astonishing-looking game from version 1. Current version (4) just added Character Customization, and... more about that later.

Nowadays, it's been a while since I played fighting games or went to an arcade. Brinks moved to another state, and all arcade locations here are very dirty, so I don't attend anymore.

I stayed home and played MMOs.

My first serious MMO was Ragnarok Online. I only played it because one of the classes was Monk and it was fighting-based. Eventually I grew to like the other classes, and set myself in the odds of the mediavel RPG games. Today, I can't stand the medieval theme; it's so overused everywhere.

Looking for other MMOs to play, I saw City of Heroes, and that's what I play today. No medieval theme at all definitely caught my attention. The most innovative character customization feature awakened the "doll dresser" side I have inside me. (Everyone does, you know you do, too. Don't fight it. Accept it. There's no way out.) After that, I don't ever accept to play another game without character customization.

Good news is that most of the new games are coming with it. Soul Calibur 4 is one I am itching to try, but I have to buy a XBOX 360 first. I don't have the money to do so yet. Champions Online (in development) is going to feature a much improved customization, or so they say. APB (in development, from the same company as GTA) will also have it, but it's a 100% PvP game, so I'm out.

And then, I want to develop my own game. Of course I want it to have character customization. It's a tough path, but I don't see a reason on creating a game without it anymore.

* It's common thing in fighting game jargon to use numbers to mean directions. Just look at your numeric pad and see the arrows there.

Calling Names

2008-10-07T06:54:00.000-07:00

According to one of the WordNet defititions for fit:

4. burst, fit -- (a sudden flurry of activity (often for no obvious reason); "a burst of applause"; "a fit of housecleaning").

This definition seems to fit properly. Lately, I've been having fits for thrilling into game development. Studying game engines. Working on game concepts. Thinking of a whole universe.

By definition, I could call it "My Game." I could use my already existent characters on it. Or create brand new ones. People could play my stories.

But that would be pretty boring. Most of my characters are boring. My current universe of characters is centered on a family.

Besides, when playing games, I enjoy using its universe to make it my own, and I know other people who like to do the same. Such a universe needs to be "generic" enough to allow immersion, but it's always a good idea to have a main storyline going.

For the moment, I am more focused about how a game works from inside. Specifically, the lines of code that make it run on a computer.

Developing my own game has always been a professional goal in my life. This blog exists as a self-reminder that I want, and need, to get that done... eventually. I've been a programmer for so many years, and I have yet to possess an application that I am proud of. (In fact, I don't have any piece of code that I can call my own other than a very old and lousy PHP site.)

In this blog I want to share my thoughts about all aspects of game developing, and sometimes I'll derail into my own gaming life. (To make a game, you need to play games, right?) I am hoping I can use this blog as a way to communicate with other gamers and developers as well.