Fighting Game Development

If its 3D, it will require a ton of animation work. If its 2D, it will require a ton of sprites (art). I don''t know of any engines for this genre however.

It will be 3D, by animation work, you mean using a tool like 3D studio max to model the characters at different positions. Whats a good modeler for animating characters?

thanks again for the help

While a fighting game may seem technically simple because it only involves two characters and a background, it''s pretty difficult to make a good one. Looking at a fighting game from purely from a rendering perspective makes it seem simple in 2D (easy sprite animation), but in 3D it''s not as easy (skeletal animation, perhaps with some IK or ragdoll.) The AI isn''t that bad, just a state machine, but it can be hard to get right.

The two most difficult things by far are animating the characters and creating a well balanced, fun game. Most 3D fighters use motion captured characters. You could hand animate 3D characters, but I''m not sure how good this will look, it will also be a lot of work. If you''re making a 2D game you have to animate your own sprites and draw 100s of frames of animation, not too easy. You could always use sprite rips if you just want to focus on technical and gameplay aspects of the game, but this isn''t necessarily a great idea (look at all the crappy Mugen fighters out there as an example.) There are amateurs and indies that succeed and create pretty good fighters (Melty Blood), although you can argue that most of these guys are technically pro. There are also a ton of examples of bad fighters out there (any Mugen game, most fighter maker 2D games, etc.) I''ve ran into a few interesting indie and Opensource fighters (OpenMortal, Fetish Fighter) and then there is stuff like Beats of Rage, which isn''t a fighting game but is well done.

All I can say is goodluck... If you''re doing this for purely educational purposes I suggest you get some sprite rips from your favorite fighter and work on creating a good fighting engine. If this is something you want to release or sell you''ll probably have to create your own graphics and that will be a lot of work. For a 3D fighter you''re pretty much out of luck with getting per existing data although you may be able to get DOA models off ninja hacker.

Wow, thanks for the great input. Forgive me but I''m not an artist, so what are DOA models. What exactly is motioned captured characters also. When modeling characters and animating them, is 3D studio max or Maya a better solution for characters. Also, does opengl or directx factor into any of this?

thanks again for the great help

a long time ago when my website was still wiz3domain.com, i made a tutorial titled ''creating a 3d fighting game in 7 days''. Unfortunately, when I moved svrs->www.i-gear.net, the entire website was deleted ^_^''''.

I''ve been contemplating writing another one with updated graphics, animation, moves etc.. but ... why? I wouldn''t be getting any money out of it and it would waste a lot of time to make '':/. It''s not that I don''t like helping people, but I got to feed myself before giving donations.



// another unemployed indebted college student

Dead Or Alive

search google for "3d fighting game engine"

I have never done this but I started to think on basic requirements. I planned to make a 2d fighting game usin SDL but they are still plans inside my brain. Here are some basic components.

a smart stack for using as input cue.
ofcourse a FSM which works with states of char animation locally & globally.
Different sequences of animations will be stored, along with them are SOLID colored seperate animations describing hand,foot,bodyparts.
the FSM is initialized with relation b/w different states & how their transitions rules/conditions.

Ofcouse it isnt difficult to make something like old StreetFigther. hagoogin.hagoogin.hagoogin.

quote:

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Original post by saisoft
Wow, thanks for the great input. Forgive me but I''m not an artist, so what are DOA models. What exactly is motioned captured characters also. When modeling characters and animating them, is 3D studio max or Maya a better solution for characters. Also, does opengl or directx factor into any of this?

thanks again for the great help

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DOA is Dead or Alive... One of the most popular 3D fighters (and girly volleyball games) famous (infamous?) for it''s "breast jiggle." Ninja Hacker is a site where people skin and modify DOAX and DOA3 models, largely so they can make nude skins for the girls. They have hacked the model format and they have different variations on the models in the game available for download, so you may be able to leverage some of those resources if you are making a 3D fighter.

Motion capture is used in many games, especially ones with complex physical actions (fighting games, sports games.) Real actors perform actions and the position of their limbs is recorded through some method. This data is used in the game for animating 3D characters.

Whether you use 3DS Max or Maya is up to you. You probably can''t afford either of these so if you''d like to go the legal route I suggest you look into Blender, Milkshape, Wing3D or anim8tor. I personally love Wings3D, although it doesn''t to animation.

OpenGL or DirectX will factor into this if you are writing your own engine. What API you use is up to you. If you''re using an opensource 3D engine chances are you''ll be working above D3D or OpenGL and won''t have to touch the rendering APIs.

You seem to be a little bit too much of a newbie to be taking on this project. Something like tetris, pong, asteroids, breakout, etc. may be more up your alley.

WHOA! why didnt i know about this site b4 honestly though, how did they rip them? er, i guess i might find out when i go there... PS. cant find it... linky linky? :-D
edit: i think i found it... :-D


anyways i thought i might make a little bit of use out of this post, Impossible meant no offense saying what he did, its a realization that we all come to when were n00bs, youll get past it, learn (from pong clones and such) and then finnaly do what you set out to do, but dont expect it to be easy, i started about 6 months ago, i still havent accomplished my goal (creating an fps) but i have found a little half-way mark that im enjoying working on (look up crimsonland, its an online clone of that) if youre really cut out for this industry, youll stick with it through the snorefest that is coding a pong clone...

edit: someone ACTUALL did have a bit of fun with it, with donkey pong, Donkey Pong!
-Dan


[edited by - Ademan555 on March 1, 2004 11:46:03 PM]

[edited by - Ademan555 on March 1, 2004 12:16:18 AM]

What I meant about where does openGL or DirectX factor into the game was this: If all the animation is done with 3D studio Max for example, do you still need openGL or DirectX to animate the characters or can that be done using just c or c++ or whatever language. Basically, is openGL used only for graphics, no logic?

Also, a scenario with openGL would be lets say you have a character that you made in 3d studio max and you have animated the character to throw a punch. So lets say you have 50 animations of the same character, each with its arm extended a little further than the previous animation. Would it be openGL or DirectX responsibility to animate the sequence of drawings.

thanks alot

Also, when it comes to AI in a fighting game, is scripting a beneficial aspect.

Ok, basically, OpenGL and DirectX (really only direct 3d) are ways to access the features of the 3d cards in the person''s computer, and it would be YOUR responsibility to swap out the vertices for the new vertices to advance frames, also, im only speaking about keyframe animation, its very possible that direct3d and opengl can aid in rendering skeletal models, but dont quote me on that, (also, skeletal animation is considerably harder than keyframe animation) back to the topic of direct3d and opengl: to simplify things, you hand one of the two, a bunch of vertices and a texture (and a transformation matrix) and it will render the set of vertices with the texture applide, rinse, repeat
hope that helped a bit
-Dan

Ademan555, impossible:
could you tell me the Ninja Hacker web site? I cannot find it
thanks

Uhm, it''s just like I have in the link... http://www.ninjahacker.net. If that doesn''t work for you I don''t know what to say. It could have just been down when you checked it. If you want to get models or tools your best bet is the forum.

got it! thanks!!

quote:

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DOA is Dead or Alive... One of the most popular 3D fighters (and girly volleyball games) famous (infamous?) for it''s "breast jiggle." Ninja Hacker is a site where people skin and modify DOAX and DOA3 models, largely so they can make nude skins for the girls. They have hacked the model format and they have different variations on the models in the game available for download,

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acctually im a doa3 skinner and can say for a fact its not mostly so they can be made naked.. well in the case of doa3... in the case of doax... well then yes your right.. theres almost no clothed skins available to my knowledge
right now were trying to hack soul calibur.. its going very slowly... and of course the first skin for that is
http://forums.ninjahacker.net/uploads/post-24-1077678975.jpg
we most likely will have ninja gaiden skinnable b4 that tho as its raher similar to other tecmo games formats.
btw heres a link to my most recent skins
http://forums.ninjahacker.net/index.php?showtopic=1372&st=0&#entry14179
oh and if youve got the knowhow to help hack these games pls come by... your help would be greatly appreciated
http://forums.ninjahacker.net


ninjahacker.net for doa3 skins
and more