Hi mates,

I'm thinking seriousely about making a 2D fighting game. I've already put my hands on some engine and dev tools. I've done some minor projects but this time I want to put my hands on something serious. The biggest fear I have is bugs. I don't want to work for hour and then realise that the tools I use are not powerful enough to support my game.

We all know that 2D fighting games are pretty complex to do since you have to take an account many things like counter hit, recover, start up, block stun ect... I want a tool that can support all those things and make my game run fine.

Any advice for me ? Other than mugen =P ?

Any particular programming language you wanted to use?

Game Maker Studio is probably powerful enough. However, whether making a fighting game with it is a chore or not, might be another thing... and depends how you do with the scripting and interface, etc.

Nope, I'm not regarding to the language. I'm pretty versatile, i just need something solid enough to make my game run fine. I'm even ready to drop dollars in the engine if I need too.

My game is not that complex, it's pretty similar to Street fighter 3 third strike, with more animation. I think that should help you to answer my question ^^

Well, I'm pretty sure that you can do it with Game Maker Studio.

Positives:

Easy to use, can probably be used to complete your game.

Negatives:

Learning it won't teach you a real programming language.

Maxim #1: All non-trivial software has bugs.

Maxim #2: You're far more likely to find bugs in your own work (especially if you're just starting out) than in some third-party tool or library.

Corollary to Maxim #2: if something you do doesn't work, you should examine your own work for errors rather than assuming that you've got a bug in your tools.

What I'm saying here is that your biggest fear should really be relatively down on your list of priorities. So long as you choose something that's well-regarded, ease of use, ease of development, flexibility to achieve the result you want, etc are far more important.

Nope, I'm not regarding to the language. I'm pretty versatile, i just need something solid enough to make my game run fine. I'm even ready to drop dollars in the engine if I need too.

My game is not that complex, it's pretty similar to Street fighter 3 third strike, with more animation. I think that should help you to answer my question ^^

Any good 2D engine should be appropriate for a fighting game; genre-specific features are something you can develop gradually and iteratively on your own. Therefore, to select a particularly suitable engine and ensure the project is feasible, experiment with the general-purpose features you are going to rely on, for example:

• How do you import, organize and edit sprites? You'll need an awful lot of them. (While you are at it, include your graphics editors and file organization in the evaluation.)
• How do you define and use collision silhouettes? You'll need to tweak them a lot, and every pixel counts.
• How do you author and preview animations? They are going to be at the top of the complexity scale, with state management, branching, timeouts, etc.
• How are collisions handled? You are going to process and prioritize a lot of different event types.

Maxim #1: All non-trivial software has bugs.

Maxim #2: You're far more likely to find bugs in your own work (especially if you're just starting out) than in some third-party tool or library.

Corollary to Maxim #2: if something you do doesn't work, you should examine your own work for errors rather than assuming that you've got a bug in your tools.

What I'm saying here is that your biggest fear should really be relatively down on your list of priorities. So long as you choose something that's well-regarded, ease of use, ease of development, flexibility to achieve the result you want, etc are far more important.

I'm not starting out. I've already made a bunch of small to medium complex games. But as you know, fighting game are very specific and complex to code.

I really fear the engine won't be powerful enough to take every data in accoumpt and still make the game run smooth...

So far, if I listen to you, I should use game maker studio or Unity.

Oh and the engine doesn't have to be free, I accept to pay for it if it can help me in my project.

Since it is 2d, I'd say you should use GameMaker Studio. But, there may be a better alternative. You say you have created many smaller games. What did you use to create them? And do you not think maybe one of those would work for this game? The reason I say it is because no matter what you use, if you haven't used it before, it will require a learning curve, and you appear to have already used something else for games in the past and so you may be able to avoid this learning curve.