My Second Game

First of all, I feel a little guilty for taking up space here, as there are so many fantastic projects being posted.
But I thought I'd make some sort of a mini blog about this project, which I'm never going to finish (but that's okay because I'm learning a bunch with this), to maybe get some help with problems I'm stuck on, or feedback on ideas.

Anyway, enough with the header,
I'm trying to prototype a 3D fighter, mostly to just see if I can do it and how much work it is,
and secondarily to test out some new ideas.

I want to make the gameplay slightly slower than other type fighters, and lot less over the top.
The idea is that include energy in addition to health, while low on energy you move slower, but it can be regained with resting. The fighting should also focus a lot on parries and counters and positioning, so more like a tactical fighter than a comobpusher.



A few other random ideas,
each move(action) has one of three stages, "startup", "active", "recover", before going back to neutral (or "open").
Each move should have one or more location tags, i.e. high, low, mid.

Currently working on getting camera to work, sort of got it to work, it centers on halfway between the characters, but I have no clue how to restrict it so the characters can flip sides.

 

Every little thing I want to implement is all new territory for me, and a small adventure in itself.
A lot of this is probably pretty basic, but bear with me, I'm sharing some random thoughts what new exiting things I've learned so far.
Spent so many hours today trying to get collision to work, and such an easy fix once I figured it out.

I figured that I need to have all these small hitboxes on characters to register where your getting hit,
but I also needed a large collider that stops the characters from walking out of the environment ..or too close to each other.
Which led this problem where the colliders were triggering on each other.
Anyway, I found the physics matrix (eventually) which solved all my physics problems for now.


As a bonus, I can start testing levels with different heights.. not sure if that's been attempted on a fighter before.


I've been going back and fourth on whether to include root motion or not on general movement (back, forward, sidestepping). Looking at some ref, like Tekken / Dead or Alive / Soul Calibur, it doesn't look like they use any kind of root motion, there is a lot of small sliding on the characters feet.

Speaking of Dead or Alive .. I could not not test out spring joint...

Not sure if I'm gonna bother with this later on, but cool to test and see if it works.

I've also added three phases for each action, a startup, active, and recover phase, before going back to neutral,
the startup phase is triggering an animation fade for that action, and the recover phase is triggering and animation fade back to idle.
The idea is to start triggering combos out of these basic actions.


One more thing, I have to keep in mind to put everything calculated at frames and not time.
I'm aiming for this to play at 60fps and sync all frame data (move list) up to that.
Could possibly try for 90fps and implement a multiplier on the frames list...

I finally got the camera to work sort of how I would like it, zooms inn and out based on character distance to each other. Only need to add some restrictions so the characters don't move too far away from each other.



Also... I suck at animation, but .. don't care...for now.

 

Looks real cool @Kemonono
Will follow your progress because this has always been a game type I'd like to build, and as an indie I think could be setup nicely for iterative development.

Not to discourage your own creation because I'm interested in seeing this build from the ground up but are you aware of UFE for reference information?
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-universal-fighting-engine.218123/

May be able to gather useful information from those who have gone before.

 

@theANMATOR2b
I was initially looking at UFE but eventually disregarded it because, contrary to its description, I couldn't find any examples of 3D fighting. I belive what they mean by 3D fighting is just a 2D fighter with 3D elments (aka 2.5D), though I could be wrong.
Also, I was a bit afraid to try it because it could be more restrictive than what I would like it be.

I think 3D fighters are kind of a strange thing...
It's got a really dedicated niche audience, especially in the states, that practices these things for years.
Yet nobody seem to want to create these kind of games.
From the east you have Tekken, Soul Calibur, Dead of Alive, Virtua Fighter... Rumble Roses...
and from the west you have ~~nada, unless you count the MMA and boxing games.

I have been looking at Animfollow by Kavorka though, would be very interesting to attach actual physics hit collisions.

Oh, and I do have a random question I'd like to attach to this thread.
Is it possible to capture a 32bit (per channel) screenshot, potentially with G-buffers in unity?

 

hello Kemonono,
it is a good progress. Collision matrix is an absolute must for this kinda thing, but your animator controller will need more entries like for 'gettingup' etc also no punching when walking ahead(?).
you using straight animations for this (I mean, no ik?), for hitting and being hit too?

for the camera you can check this
MultitrackCamera https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/10554
and for the physical hit collisions this
MecanimRagdollAnimationBlender https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17007

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I've brain stormed for years about this peculiarity to expand the niche audience. May still be a couple years before my concept becomes the next project I must work on, but it's still a novel concept that will either be an utter failure or a grand success marrying multiple genre's together to create an awesome 3D fighter.