I was thinking about how most 1v1 fighting games get real boring after a while. Games like Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter.. essentially, theyre all pretty much the same games with different animation and a couple 'gimmiks'. That seems to be what fighting games are all about. So, I started toying with the idea of a more realistic fighter. Suppose you start out creating a customer character (Hair color and style, build, etc). In the beggining, you have a weak punch, a weak kick, maybe a couple grabs. Ill use the PS2 controller for the example. Square = left punch. Triangle = right punch. X = left kick. O = right kick. And maybe the shoulder buttons do special stuff like jumps and grabs. So, you start out with barely any moves. Now, you have some options of what to do next. You can enter a tournament where you fight 1 on 1 with NPC's or other players. As you fight, the more you use an attack, the more skill you have in that attack. So the more you use your right punch, the better it gets. You can start to unlock new attacks and abilities as you gain skill points. You may be able to unlock an right handed uppercut once you have enough points in right punch. Or, you can learn how to grab someone and knee them in the face if you get enough points in both grab and right kick. Also, the rate of your skill increasing depends on the skills of your enemy. You would learn at the maximum rate if you're fighting someone just slightly better than you. Howerver, the better they are above that, the less you learn because you're spending more time getting your ass beat than you are learning how to maintain yourself in a battle. Also, if you're fighting lesser developed fighters, you build your skill slower. When you gain a new skill or ability, you're given an option to assign it to a series of moves. I could assign that uppercut to be Forward to Up + Right Punch, whereas someone else could assign it to be Up, Up, Punch. Depending on the complexity of the skill, there would be a minimum number of buttons the player would have to press to pull it off. A charge (When you hold block and a direction) would count for, say, 3 points. A button press would count for 1 point, and a joypad rotation would count for one point for each of the 8 directions it cycles through. So, an Uppercut would have a minimum of 4 points that you'd have use up to assign it. Make sense? I hope it does. When you go to choose new skills, theyre divided between schools of martial arts. There could be Boxer, Tae Kwan Do, Karate, Drunken Monkey, Wrestler, etc. Some skills would fit under multiple schools of martial arts, and when you learn those skills, you learn them for all schools. So, Uppercut would probably be under the Boxer set and the Wrestler set. As you use skills under specific schools, your ability in those schools goes up. If you're using alot of Karate moves, you're going to obviously get better at Karate. Aside from 1 on 1 fighting, the player can go to a trainer. Each school of arts has a different trainer that you can learn from. The more time you spend training, the more your skill in that school goes up. It would go up slightly faster than if you just go out and fight. Also, by training, you could learn special moves that you cannot learn from just fighting. Finially, the player can choose an adventure to embark on. I dont have many ideas just yet, but the player could choose a level where they're in a city and they're fighting crime batman-style (without the cool gadgets. No superhero stuff..). You could have missions and objectives, and as you complete those, you get rewards, like skill points, costume pieces, etc.. Idealy, Id like the adventure levels to have some moral choices. Maybe one where you're fighting crime, or one where you're fighting cops. That sort of thing. Any comments or input? [Edited by - Garmichael on May 4, 2005 2:02:59 AM]

Sounds like the hand-to-hand fighting in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, only this could probably be developed into something much better. I like the idea of learning new moves under various schools, but I've always liked that sort of stuff.

Sounds nice...

Now I thinks you have to decide on the background, the story and the way to play, cause I think it's what made your game interesting.

How does the player evolve in the world? Is the story linear, with one way to complete it? What choice can he made? Why would you fight…

With your description, I thought of a Morrowind-like game: the more you use your skills, the more powerful it gets. To receive one school’s training, you have to become friends, which mean you have to make jobs for them (fighting another school…). And of course, you’ll become less popular with theses schools (or factions) and there allies who will attack you in the case you killed too much of them.

I think it’s a good start and hope you’ll get something nice

They should occassionally get to fight someone weaker then themselves to refine a skill. You don't think about how to improve a 'technique' when your fighting someone better then you, but you do improve your speed, conditioning, and reflexes because you are pushing yourself. Well, you would notice a flaw in your system when you get your ass handed to you, but your going to fix that flaw with someone weaker then you first.

As far as schools, you could just have a hodge podge of strike fighting versus grappling versus controling versus 'dirty fighting'. If you implemented specific martial arts styles, when someone has mastered a style, you could have them learn another similar style (take the categories I used above) faster, but in the end they can't master it due to the old information conflicting with the new. Psychologists have a term for this but I can't remember it.

Another thing is that if you get really good at the game, then what reward is tehre for fighting people that are a lot harder then your current level? Perhaps if you evaluated the persons skills through the fight?

Also, a list of martial arts that you might consider thinking of also:
ninjitsu, judo/jujitsu, aikido, wing chung kung fu, muy thai kick boxing, krav maga.

In regards to a controller layout, Ninja Gaiden seemed to work beautifully for different techniques based of your environment, but you might want to try playing some of Jade Empire (I love that game) to mix in a few of those controls. I liked how I could switch styles in Jade Empire, but it would have been nice if I could have done a bit more to control the techniques in the fights. Everyones strategy in that game ends up: Jump behind them and kick ass.

Just my two cents on it.

If you think that fighting games get boring, play Super Smash Bros. Melee :D Given that it's obvious that you are a Playstation 1/2 player only/mostly, the game is for GameCube, what makes why you haven't played it yet XD

In this game, even tought there are no special tricks or button sequences that make special techniques to aid you in the fight(except Samus' grappling hook enlargement, but I don't think it's very useful in most situations), each player's techniques that are done simply by pressing 1 button and pressing in a direction.

Besides having a decent amount of moves, the items give some randomness. But if you don't like to play with items because that randomness can make a less skilled player beat you if they find an item to heal their characters completely >.<, there are many other factors, like:

The more you use the same move, the less damage it does. If you use a move too much you start using moves that usually aren't so strong, but since you have used the strong moves a lot, they would do more damage.

Gameplay changes based on the damage done to the characters. You might be able to do a combo to a character when he is at 25%, but when he is at 75% you will only hit once if you try that.

Most moves are more complex than just using them to damage the enemy. For example:

*With Link, your foward slash while in mid-air is actually two hits, one not slow and strong forward, and one slow, however last little time, and does almost no damage(just like 3%), but it helps to paralize enemies who come from behind.

*If you hit in certain frame of the attacks of Mr. Game and Watch, it will do more damage and make the opositor fly a longer distance.

*The forward attack of Browser, just when you release, makes him move backward and then hit forward. Through this makes the move slower, if you time it correctly, you can use it to dodge an enemy attack with the first part of the move, and counter his attack with the second part of the move.

Levels are variated. There are very few levels who don't have hazards or changing conditions that force the player to take different decisions based on the state of the world.

Characters most very different from each other. The characters who resemble the most are the so called clones; for example, Link's clone is Young Link, Mario's clone is Dr.Mario, Capt. Falcon clone is Ganondorf.. however even tought they are clones, it's obvious for advanced players that you have to play them differently, even tought their moves are somewhat similar. But it's not just the moves; different characters have different weights, and different sizes. There is even a character who is actually two characters.

Quote:

Original post by Alcnedlor Now I thinks you have to decide on the background, the story and the way to play, cause I think it's what made your game interesting. How does the player evolve in the world? Is the story linear, with one way to complete it? What choice can he made? Why would you fight… With your description, I thought of a Morrowind-like game: the more you use your skills, the more powerful it gets. To receive one school’s training, you have to become friends, which mean you have to make jobs for them (fighting another school…). And of course, you’ll become less popular with theses schools (or factions) and there allies who will attack you in the case you killed too much of them.

Quote:

Original post by Logain As far as schools, you could just have a hodge podge of strike fighting versus grappling versus controling versus 'dirty fighting'. If you implemented specific martial arts styles, when someone has mastered a style, you could have them learn another similar style (take the categories I used above) faster, but in the end they can't master it due to the old information conflicting with the new. Psychologists have a term for this but I can't remember it.

In my mind, I saw more of a system where the player chooses via menus what level or area to go to, but i really like the concept of choosing one school of fighting and fighting against other schools. I like the rivallry. Also, mixed with Logain's idea about grouping similiar schools, A player could learn one school especially well, and start to develop other ones. I already mentioned that some skills and abilities could fall under multiple schools and so by using those skills, you're slowly inproving your ability in multiple schools. Idealy, Id like the player to sort of invent a new form of fighting by mixing a few schools of training and customizing their attack list. I could easily see a boxer/wrestler combination.

Also, since it could be story driven like Morrowind, Id deffinitly want the player playting through it multiple times. To do that, Id want to make it so that a player has to restart to learn polar opposites of training. Sort of like how MMORPGs do it.
Alot of people dont like the idea of skill atrophy, but I like it's concept. I just dont think its been executed properly in a game yet. When you mix any two schools of training, you'll probably use them both alot. When you throw in a third one, you'll probably use the two main schools the most, and some selective skills from the third one. But any more than that, and you're not going to be able to do it. Theres going to be skills that you dont use. Perhaps, if you dont use a certain school of training for 10 minutes, or 10 fights or whatever, you start loosing skill in it. Basically, youre not as affective. This would stop players from trying to master every school and choose only the strongest abilities from every school and become a total badass. I want the player to have to purposefully choose what style of fighting and get good at fighting that style, not choose the uber moves and button mash.

Quote:

Original post by Logain They should occassionally get to fight someone weaker then themselves to refine a skill. You don't think about how to improve a 'technique' when your fighting someone better then you, but you do improve your speed, conditioning, and reflexes because you are pushing yourself. Well, you would notice a flaw in your system when you get your ass handed to you, but your going to fix that flaw with someone weaker then you first.

When i wrote out my idea first, I sort of didnt like it. I see your point. I'll try to think of some way so that players can advance skills naturally without exploiting the system (like in FF2j)



And Coz, Yes, Ive played alot of SSMB. I played the original and Melee. I dont count them as Fighting games as much as I think of them as Arcade+Party games. theres not really alot of fighter's technique in them. I cant really explain it, but I dont concider it a true fighting game. Yeah, its fun as all hell, but Ive played enough of it that its now boring.