Perhaps this is a terribly naive idea, but I''ll never know if I don''t ask: Why don''t we have more environment in fighting games? DOA3 is taking big steps (in my opinion) by adding trees that you can collide with and multi-level arenas, but why isn''t there more of this. I want to be able to jump onto a box and then dive off of that onto my opponent. I want to fight on a flight of stairs. I want to be able to pick up a stick and beat you with it. I''ve never made any kind of hand-to-hand combat game, so maybe there is some fundamental reason why this would be so difficult. Is it all of the added collision detection? Or is it the movement of the characters? If so, could we calculate the movement in real-time instead of pre-defining it (i.e. "karate chop" moves a hand down 2 ft. from wherever that hand happened to be)? FragLegs

a.) Graphics: fighting games are all about flashy effects (if you really think about it), so the processing that could have gone into more dynamism goes into graphics algorithms instead.

b.) The complexity of "dynamic animation" (ie, non-motionset animation). No one - and I mean no one has released a game that used pure dynamic motion (relative movements, independent bodyparts, etc - plus the physics is still a pain)

Given those two factors, I think it''ll be a (relatively) long time before we see the features you describe in fighting games.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!