This thread is where I will be logging all my community interviews until I learn how to HTML code correctly and get them onto my MFG space.
Table of Contents:
1. Daniel999999 (MugenFreeForAll)
I can't double post so:
Daniel999999 (MugenFreeForAll)
My major focus was to pick Dan's brains on feedback, him having come from rather humble beginnings character-wise himself. Hope you all enjoy!
To start, can you introduce yourself to the community and give a short overview of your work and contributions?
Daniel: Uuuuh, uuuh, I'm, Daniel I guess, I make characters... And character accessories, leaving that aside, yes, I do make MUGEN characters of diverse origins, namely doujin games, and sometimes original content, I also make stages, namely based on games, but not as often
What sort of doujin characters do you work on? What do you mean by original characters, do they have a set style or does it vary?
Daniel: My previous characters ranged from an Azumanga Daioh fighting game <which no longer does work unfortunately, so I have no refference for them anymore>, 2D Fighter Maker 2002 characters <specifically Crimson Alive characters> and those characters from the Touhou series, by original characters I mean characters that are not from a particular source, often originally sprited with a moveset most likely inspired by a certain source or completely new, style of the character varies, usually goes to preserving some of the original's feel and gameplay style <if the doujin game is good and fun enough>, or preserving the feel but transporting them to a different style, often reminiscent of The_None's work, where juggling is often pronounced, at other times I tend to look at Clayfighter 63 1/3 and work characters from that system, but mainly there's an emphasis on jumpins and juggling.
If I remember correctly, you were somewhat well known for your older characters. Any insight into that?
Daniel: Where do I even begin, as I mentioned, there was a moment in time I used to make original characters, this began as soon <or at least a few weeks after> as I started MUGEN on the start of 2009, I decided to make my original character, which I have had for a while <probably dates from 2005> he used to look like this: http://i.imgur.com/xqM2HZV.png He looked pretty basic in paper as well, and his mugen incarnation did as well. So I got working on MUGEN for a few weeks and I knew nothing about code at the time, which ended up resulting on a disgusting poorly coded MSPaint OC. he was released mid april 2009, and suddenly he wins a bit of infamy once it's featured by one of my old MUGEN friends, since he was a target by the, by then, "Elitist community" <not saying the elitism was the reason the character was hated by the way, the character really sucked>, people found out about the character and started to make videos voicing adverse opinion about the character, I was younger at the time, 14 years old, and it was the first time I had been exposed to harsh criticism, so I eventually took it personally and did a number of embarrassing moves, subsequential characters weren't any better, upon then a fellow coder named Stickman14 decided to help me on him, and the character went through a slow improval, spriting got better and more expressive, by 2011 looking like this, which at least looks sorta better, but still very amateurish: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/mugen/images/7/78/DanielStance2.gif/revision/latest?cb=20111008173734 It was a ton of hassle mostly due to this character, which usually had moves yanked in only because they looked cool and didn't help on his gameplay at all
Tons of people still seem to emulate and use this character. Some even seem to love it. How do you feel about it? Do you believe that despite its flaws, it has some substantive value to it?
Daniel: I generally feel ashamed on their behalf, it's mostly cause of two things, It makes me think my efforts to renew this character on his last form, which looks like this: http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130209181041/mugen/images/d/de/Cheapest_Comeback_Ever.gif were generally worthless, as I did a whole lot more with the character and learned and put more coding into practice than with my older version, in which I only really learnt basics <and screwed them up easily too :P>, the other thing that generates that proxy shame is the fact that they ALL tend to repeat the EXACT SAME MISTAKES as I did, such as bad reactions to criticism, adding moves for the sake of having them, copying everything, adding CVS2 effects and thinking it's in that system, etc. which are mostly no no, They also tend to bug me a bit when they ask for the character, though it's not common now, as I've clearly moved on and I ended up destroying the character in an <imo> hilarious way, turning it into a joke character anyway, sadly, things stay in the internet and won't be forgotten. If any substantive value it has is the fact that at least it was a stepping stone for me to get out of the abyss, that and some of the graphics and things I did on the character became staples for me later on.
What kind of advice would you give to these people making the same mistakes, if they would listen?
Daniel: I'd pretty much say play more fighters so you sort of have a comparison and familiarize yourself with the flow of one, there's always a fighter you'll have a ton of familiarization with and is simple enough to play, if you're interested enough you could always study the fighter in detail although not everybody has time for that, it also helps to playtest your thing very often, there's usually always something awry left behind which will not be found if you just test the attack or feature once against kfm or training, play an arcade run with your character, I usually find most issues that way, I say this cause their characters often have glitches they do not bother to fix. Also don't try to be gimmicky with your characters unless you know what you're doing, keeping it simple could make a better character than trying too hard to be cool and resulting in a mess.
Speaking as someone who has been down this road himself, what is the biggest problem area on a character newbies always seem to miss?
Daniel: It's often general fighting game consensus, such as power management <typical examples are thou shalt not give back power on a super, whiffed, blocked or hit, as it defeats the purpose of its cost>, the way hitboxing is done <people are too detailed or don't have the sense of movement priority, which elecbyte wrongly adviced to never give any character any sort of priority, "death to them and their descendents!" :P>, there's also moves that have too much or too little hitstun and infinites due to them <frame advantage is introduced in such case>, also typically they forget how to make a CMD read complex commands properly <you're supposed to put the command detection changestate of more complex commands over simpler commands, QCFx2 first, QCF second, and then single button at the bottom>, there's also not setting types correctly <standing type for airbone move> and forgetting juggling in general.
That seems like it would take some time to learn. Do you think people should definitely know all this if they want to create a character?
Daniel: Not really, that's why feedback exists, with it people can and will improve since most of these issues are one time only, once they learn a few simple guidelines updates generally become smoother and problemfree.
But some feedbackers seem to automatically expect people to know this stuff, and harshly criticize work that leaves it out. Do you think this bluntness and high expectation is necessary?
Daniel: I think those are usually the ones that have been working on the engine for a long while, They probably have seen these mistakes so commonly that they probably do it, my biggest guess is that there's this conception that it is a fighting game engine, therefore, there's a ton of interest in fighting games behind it, sadly this is commonly not true since some of us <here i include myself> are not native to fighting games and only entered MUGEN because it looked cool or we saw our favorite TV show character brawling another on youtube <people these days would be too embarrassed to let that know publically :P> and eventually thought, why not make something myself too? That's my own biggest guess, feel free to disagree. I personally think it's only necessary to be blunt if the person is stubborn and clearly does not listen, although this has caused several shitstorms in the past so nowadays I really dont know which side to take, high expectations are a bad idea in MUGEN, since not everybody will know your favorite fighting game you spent 5 years messing with at the same level.
That's reasonable. Do you think this is an excuse for people who have been in the game somewhat long and still make the same mistakes? At some point, should we expect people to start finding/learning proper resources to make good characters?
Daniel: When people don't usually improve it's probably lack of will to improve or motivation, lack of feedback <it does happen at times, some creators repeat the same mistakes due to absence of interest in their creations>, and sometimes it's due to other people influencing their decisions, such as comments of "they are just trolling", "it's awesome this way don't change it!", "they're jealous", "not meant to be accurate" which make them think they're not doing it badly, it's not an excuse though, since harsh criticism would stop once these mistakes are fixed. I think there is already resources to make good characters, there's tutorials everywhere, the basics are outlined in them usually, there's also frame and system data documented in various forum and websites, it's all a matter of looking and sometimes wanting to learn
What do you think of people who seem to only come into repeat offender threads to point out their work is flawed to others. Is this valid given these people are so obstinate and don't want to improve?
Daniel: Some people <myself included> sometimes just feel it's like a "trainwreck", it's hard to look away, but it's not good to begin talking about how their other characters are bad and the person did this and did that, the threads are about the character AND THE CHARACTER only, and it's also funny cause these stubborn feedbackers are just as stubborn as the creator himself, there's got to be a line where one has to stop and think "this guy is lost" and just simply go away.
Let's change the subject a bit. What would you like to see in MUGEN 1.2?
Daniel: I'd rather wait to see 1.1 being finished.
…..I’ll just ask a better question :P
Daniel: Yeah, that's my answer.
Okay let's change it up then, what are your thoughts on the current capabilities of the engine, and where would you like to see them go?
Daniel: 1.1? Because I have avoided 1.1 pretty much, though I read its changelist and it's very useful, no need to resize via code, that often just for a special effect, rotation included as well, and there's also the fact that there's interpolation, which means we don't have to change parameters frame by frame. 3D effect bending sounds good too, what I’m not too comfortable about anymore is explod placement, which is a bit different than before and might take a bit to get used to, but it might not take time to get used to, I'm just wondering about what will happen with older characters, I pretty much think they're gonna HAVE to be updated to fit the engine
When do you think you’ll eventually make the switch to 1.1? Do you feel that not many have at the moment is an issue?
Daniel: When 1.1 is fully complete I will make the switch, otherwise I've been reclutanct about moving on. On the contrary, I feel it might be a little issue to support it too much, since betas can change due to their state, "beta". Not fond of 1.1 exclusive content either, since we'd like to try such nice creations without having to deconvert them. Namely the HD characters, also 1.1 can be very unstable.
So now that your new collaboration (Sanae Kochiya) with Ricepigeon is released, where would you like to go next in terms of creation?
Daniel: Sadly, for now on us collaborating on anything Touhou is impossible, I don't want to go on about it cause I am not entitled to say further, as of now I'm thinking of probably making something originally sprited again, since it's been a while, time will tell, and as usual, on my tradition.
Oh yes, can you tell me a little about your current artistic/spriting process? I loved the work you did on Clone Koakuma.
Daniel: I can, well it depends, I often dislike spriting in low res because of the difficult pixel positioning at times, sprite work has precision on pixels, etc. I often like spriting in high res though! I like using Flash drawn sprites, cause they often look colorful and drawn. I often do lineart of body parts and use different layers for every single one, making animation of movement very easily. Sadly I don't have much motivation to keep doing it, but perhaps one of the characters, Flavens might change that.
What creators have had the most influence on you as an author/contributor?
Daniel: The forementioned The_None <including him as Most_Mysterious> with his groundbreaking use of the MUGEN engine and PotS mostly for his tutorialesque advice and characters that still thrive. Upon joining MFG, Ricepigeon has been a massive influence, due to his knowledge in fighting games and general influence really, other than that, not many people tend to inspire me.
I'd like to close out with this; Why MFFA, what about it keeps you posting/visiting?
Daniel: The chatroom, I find it better and more comfortable than posting, and I can see my friends often.
Well thanks a lot man. It was a good interview. Any final words?
Daniel: Be strong to the finish with cause you eats yer spinach. It's been fun to do this and hope people also like to read them "if you do not liek den likc my dikc" :P
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