Elysian Shadows

I have been pretty busy lately putting together a fighting game. Or more specifically, the tools for creating a fighting game. I only just finished off the main time saving content creator; the character frame editor.

The frame editor is an easy to use GUI that allows for the to loading, saving and editing of all character data. It also includes a simple simulation mode for testing the characters as you build them so that you can make sure you haven't made any mistakes before having to compile the actual game engine. As I am working with a number of friends, and we will all be balancing out and designing character movements frame by frame the editor will undoubtedly greatly increase production time and the success of the project. Here's a screen cap to give you some idea of what I'm talking about:

I will probably post some videos of the frame editor at a later date when I have time. As I am working on the fighting game with friends and they haven't all used it yet I will likely be posting up some tutorial videos for them that I will share on here as well.

Now just as I was putting the finishing touches on the frame editor one of my friends proposed we make a game as a personal challenge. So we grabbed some words from a random game name generator and each are making a game whilst having to use several of the words as themes in our game. I figured seeing as the frame editor is done, I could use this little side-project as a way of testing it out. Hence I am putting together a simple beat 'em up as a test project that hopefully will be done in at most a month.

Here is the WIP sprites for the first character in the game that I started today:

That's awesome man
What did you use to make this ? I am pretty sure this will help you to bring succes to your team !

What platforms are you targeting? I'm hoping there's an iPhone version, and at least a Mac version. Looks great so far though! I wish I was that good at making GUIs haha.

Damn Zeid, nice work. What is the saying, BDP?

Wow man, the frame editor is sick. Love the art, as always.

Amazing sprite and impressive frame editor. Being an avid fighting game player, I can understand how valuable this tool will be for you, especially if a lot of the attacks in game as extremely frame dependent.

Also, I love the fact that you used Dudley in your screenshot. He's quite possibly one of my favorite SF characters, ever. :D

Looks great! I'm guessing that you are using C# and XNA? I recognize that placeholder icon in the left hand corner of the window. I'm looking forward to seeing more .

God damn dude ... are you going to release it ?

What did you use to make this ?

What platforms are you targeting?

Looks great! I'm guessing that you are using C# and XNA? I recognize that placeholder icon in the left hand corner of the window. I'm looking forward to seeing more .

The main game is being coded in C# using XNA, but the frame editor was actually made using Game Maker :O. Which in retrospect was a bad idea... I have used game maker before to make simple editors for larger projects and was using it to prototype the game systems, as such making the frame editor in Game Maker didn't seem like a problem. Initially it was great as I scripted all the core stuff up in no time. However after working on it for a while the project become untidy meaning it might become an issue if I need to add anything large to it in the future. Also game maker doesn't provide any functionality for input boxes, or other GUI specific options so I scratch built them all which was a little silly.

Also, I love the fact that you used Dudley in your screenshot. He's quite possibly one of my favorite SF characters, ever. :D

Yeah Dudley is a damn handsome man. :P I've been making frame data for some of the Street Fighter 3 characters for testing purposes. The game has a lot of animation in it, including things like tween frames between standing and crouching that most 2d fighting games simply don't have.

God damn dude ... are you going to release it ?

Possibly in the not to distant future, I may release it with the Beat 'em Up I'm putting together so that people can make their own characters for it.

And a big thank you to all those who said 'good work'

Here are a couple more draft animations for the Beat 'em Up I just did today, I'm going to try and get another one or two done after dinner.

(Note the missing arm in the chopping animation and run animation was done so that I could animate it easier, they will be added... Or I will remove one of his arms :P)

zeid wrote: Here are a couple more draft animations for the Beat 'em Up I just did today, I'm going to try and get another one or two done after dinner.

Kick ass animations bro.

Thanks. :D

So I did a fair bit of procrastinating tonight, but I managed to knock together the start of the turtle character's frame data. I figured I would post up a link to the current build seeing as it shows off the animation better than firefox would.

Version 0.1a
http://www.gamefront.com/files/20735167/a0.1.zip

As it is using XNA you will need the XNA redistributable to run it if you don't have it already:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/de ... x?id=15163

The controls for the current build are Z, X, C and the arrow keys. These are very likely to change and Xbox control support will be added without question.

Hum.. I'm kinda perplex... why would you do it in XNA 3.1 ?

koolgraph wrote:Hum.. I'm kinda perplex... why would you do it in XNA 3.1 ?

What's wrong with 3.1?

Well nothing's wrong, i'm just wondering why he's doing it in 3.1 when there's 4.0

I know there's some changes, but it's not a big deal, otherwise i don't know why he would prefer the 3.1.

koolgraph wrote:Well nothing's wrong, i'm just wondering why he's doing it in 3.1 when there's 4.0

I know there's some changes, but it's not a big deal, otherwise i don't know why he would prefer the 3.1.

Maybe the project was started before 4.0 was released, or maybe the changes aren't enough for the whole group to want to install a new version of the SDK. There are a lot of reasons in software development to not use the "latest and greatest" version of something. Sometimes what you have works and that's all that matters.