Backyard Fighter

<img src="http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww251/bodziostawski/BackyardFighterwhite.png" border="0">

<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Dfq9ZEtZo4k/UHHSl9AoiJI/AAAAAAAAAMU/ZkCivqe3gOk/s320/Screen.jpg" border="0">

Backyard Fighter is an upcoming fighting game, and my second project after Cubes'n Cubes'n Blocks.

A few words about it's history - This game was started in 2011, In view of the game making battle organized by Fabrykagier.pl. Time to complete the game was 24 hours, and in this time I could make only character animations that have been abandoned after a failed part in the battle. I tried to finish this project several times, but I couldn't cope with this challenge. It is in fact a game of the "fighting" genre and therefore it requires a lot of work. But starting your adventure with Scirra's Construct, I found a couple of solutions for the problems with the game, which led to the intensification of work on Backyard Fighter.

Actually it's an early demo of the game (version 0.1). I decided to inform you about some features of my project:

• two lcharacters drawed (a red fighter is a clone of the first; already in low quality)
• temporary animated background
• fighting engine with enemy's AI
• some SFX included (the only someone else's creation; mightycoach.com)
• animated title screen
• menu with drawed fighter on the left
• others visible in the game

This game has some bugs to fix, I'm still wondering how to do it well. I hope all of them, and new many features will be visible in a new release (0.2).

DOWNLOAD | 13,8 MB

So I just tried this out. Some good things to say and some things that could use improvement.

First of all, I actually find the sprites kind of charming. They are well animated and fun to play with.

I thought the AI was actually quite good. It will jump around, and it beats the true test of a fighting game, which is if I can beat the game by standing in one spot and continuously punching, I'm not interested. You'd be surprised to know that there was a certain guilty gear game and street fighter alpha 2 which I did this on (on hard setting as well!)

I noticed that the "About" and "End" buttons don't work. While it's not too hard to close the program manually it's also pretty easy to add in a "close application" event. Also you should let people know what the controls are or they might not have patience to play your game.

Arrow keys to move - ASD to attack, and shift to jump.

There is no way to leave a fight once you've started. I would change that, and add a pause.

The biggest thing to sort out at this point is that after a fight is finished, it cant be restarted. It starts the last fight again with a little bit of HP left. So you get about 2 punches in and it's done again.

Also I noticed while jamming down the spacebar that it extended the other guys healthbar all the way across the screen.

All in all I think this is a cool little project, and I hope you keep on with it I'd love to try the next version.

First - great sorry that I don't put any information about controls. And unfortunately I can't do this in my first post (not enough reputation points on the forum), so thanks that you did it. I'll try to remind it in the next posts on the forum and add information about it in the new game version.

I am also aware of other unacceptable errors, like not fully interactive menu or "quirks" at the end of the fight. I tried to put the emphasis on the fighting system, but now it also has a few shortcomings.

I am very obliged to rapidly eliminate these shortcomings, in order to then go to the right way of development.

Thank you sincerely, crowtongue, for your support. I am convinced that it will help me stay motivated to creating.

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CONTROLS:

A - head attack

S - kick

D - punch

Shift - jump

Shift + A or S or D - flying kick

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Backyard Fighter v. 2.0

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Hi! I put a new version of Backyard Fighter. A link to video of this release was posted last week, but it's still available below:

youtube.com/watch

If until now you didn't know this game, you have an opportunity to see it right now, and if you want, you can watch the movie first to make sure you'll not "buying a pig in a poke" :-]

What's new in this release?

-Now we have a full interactive menu, so not only "start" option will work

-I think I removed all the errors that appear in the game (and certainly those that made it impossible to continue the game), like: punching when he's flying, unusual red's speed, red can't knock to the ground after punch when he's walking etc.

-I've changed background, (It's also too simple, but I think it looks better than the first one)

-Unactive Space bar ;]

And unfortunately that's all. I spent too much time for trouble shooting, so I have an impression that this project didn't move forward. Although I began preliminary sketches of new (additional) characters, but the way to finishing and implementing of them is still long. Neverthless, this is what I would like to announce for next version of this game - 0.3

DOWNLOAD Backyard Fighter v. 0.2

mediafire.com

So I played this one too. You managed to fix everything that I posted about last time which was great! I like the new controls screen and that you can pause the game now and exit properly.

I'm glad to see you stuck with it. Hope to see another version of it. To help out and be constructive I have some other suggestions for you.

• AI. Contrary to what I posted last time if you press any of the attack buttons fast enough you can just keep doing this and win the fight. Might be good to work out a way for the computer to work around this.

• You are going to need more ways to keep the game interesting once you start adding new characters. My suggestions would be destructible background objects and/or things on the ground to use as weapons. This would be a good way to build on the theme of the game... It doesn't seem to be a backyard at all.

• Track stats! You could make a screen for tracking things like wins/losses, preferred attack, punches landed/times punched. As you expand the game maybe add some achievements.

• Add some sort of evasion tactic or add a way to block. I kind of prefer a way to time and dodge punches instead of just having a standard boring old block button, but this is one way to add a bit of depth to your game.

Looking forward to the next release!

Hi, crowtongue, thanks for reply! It's a nice feeling that you can feel someone's support :]

I must admit that I had a thought yesterday before going to sleep, but to secretly leave for a while idea to making new characters, and try again to improve fighting mechanism. Some of your suggestions I had already, and your another ideas are new for me, but I think there are issues which I should consider.

1) AI: It's nice to see that there is a red rival who will walking in direction of you, trying to knock down you using blows and sometimes using fly kick. Maybe it has a charm, but it's easy to outwit him (too easy). As you saw in the game, red fighter, after knocking down a white character using series of his blows, begans to retreat until our white fighter doesn't stand up. Now I think that red should retreating also in another situation:

-sometimes after making or receiving blows, so when in close contact with white warrior. This implies that rival will not only walking in our direction, and then stay and attack us as long as we will knock him down to the ground. So rival could become more mobile, which would force us to chase after him.

2) Background with active objects - yes, this background has little to do with the backyard climate. I drew it beacause I couldn't stand the previous background, and the new picture was made at hoc. I planned to make backgrounds showing such dirty street alleys, backyards of dangerous housing estates, maybe downtowns, etc. But this requires an appropriate approach and a sizeable amount of work, so I decided to leave this issue for later.

Weapons are for sure a great idea, but I'm not sure if I'm able to meet this challenge. Personally, I haven't seen weapons in the classic brawlers, excepting Little Fighter 2, but in that game this solution has worked fine. But look: it often needs additional graphic sprites of characters (for example: picking up wapons, throw, using for blow (if it's f.ex. baseball bat), lifting over head (if it's wooden box or heavy stone etc.), making action events for it, so it costs much more of work and time. I would like to do it for making BF more attractive, but I'm not sure whether it will succeed.

3) Track stats is a feature which was necessary for a long time. Actually we can beat our rival, and that's all. It will be good if the player could play with a view to stats. I thought about the stats system, which for example could reward for using a variety of fighting techniques unlike to standing in one place and use only fists... because it's the most convenient method... For now I'm still thinking about it, let's see what will come of it :]

4) I think blocking is the most important thing which is missing in the game. And you're right - standard block button isn't a best idea. Remember when you said about "true test of a fighting game, which is if I can beat the game by standing in one spot and continuously punching"? I think standard block would cause something like that problem will be appearing. If we will be able to use one key for blocking, the game could look like that:

1-I'm blocking when rival is punching

2-I'm waiting until he stops

3-I'm attacking now

4-I'm blocking when rival is punching

5-I'm waiting until he stops

6-I'm attacking now

etc...

I think your idea about timing and dodging punches can be a good way, but I want you to write something more about it, because I can't get it at all :)

Once again, thanks for posting, and many ideas, I'm glad to read your opinions ;-]

I understand about weapons being hard to animate. Most fighting games have weapons or combos or special abilities I think having some way to add a difference to different characters would be nice, but not sure what to suggest.

As for dodging, I didn't entirely have a system in mind, but here's a couple suggestions.

• Make one button a "hold to dodge" button. Have some sort of meter that the more attacks are dodged the faster it empties, then it takes a while to recharge. Also maybe make flying kicks something you can't dodge.

• I had a simple action game I made with 3 different sword attacks. Fast medium and slow. I made a part of the animation the character winding up for the attack so you could anticipate what they would do. If you held the block button and pressed up side or down it would block the appropriate attack. Slower and medium attacks were easier to block but drained your stamina. Fast attacks were hard to block but did much less damage.

I don't play lots of fighting games so I'm not entirely sure what would be best for your game, I would probably go with something similar to my second suggestion. New characters would be great but I think I would work on making the mechanics a bit more complex first, then having some sort of stats or achievements, then I would work on adding new characters.

Anyways! Hope to see a new version soon.

It looks good.

— - Thanks!

crowtongue - you're right about weapons. I think that weapons were available f/ ex. in Little Fighter series, but they were more popular in beat'em up genre than in the classical fighting games. This was the only known for me example of the genre, because weapons were usually available in the beat'em up. In fact, LF2 is classificated as the beat em up, but it has no any kind of plot/story, as in Double Dragon, where we have to rescue someone. However, I planned to make (maybe the easiest in the world) a combat system to be able to rely on it in making games in the future in the beat'em up genre, cause I must admit that Tt's my favourite genre :]. So sooner or later I'll have to handle this.

About dodging, I think it's the biggest thing to solve. Defending using dodging is required, but rival must also be able to defend. He can't still standing in front of our player as a pillar of salt. For this I have a contingency plan, we'll see how this thing, plus dodging, to will be solved.

I apologize for my late reply - a little lull in creating...

I look forward to seeing how you implement it. Keep with it!