RobotMonkeyHead

Well, i's an honor to hear, and it's been a great hobby to pick up! 1. Favorite video games... trying to put them in order: NES: Metal Storm, hands down. Soooo good. Battletoads Double Dragon not far behind. Mega Man 4 (the whole original series really), all the Ninja Gaidens (esp 3), Stret Fighter 2010, River City Ransom, Metroid. Snes / Genesis: Mortal Kombat 2 (that game was practically my 3rd parent for a couple years), Street Fighter 2, Killer Instinct, Samurai Shodown 1 & 2, Might and Magic, Mario Paint, Original Mario Kart, Super Metroid. Playstation / N64: Symphony of the Night (one of my all time / system favs), Golden Eye / Perfect Dark, Mario 64... Last system I owned was an N64, I'm actually not a huge gamer. Classics, really. Never played an MMO, never played an online game, or X-box live or anything like that. Been coding since I was about 13 (self taught in basic) so I've made plenty of games, just usually preferred that to playing them growing up. Played newer systems at my friends houses and shit tho, Loved Tekken Tag (Lei, Howrang & Brian), Soul Calibur (Kilik & Astroth), Mortal Kombat 9, Street Fighter 4, Bio Shock... Night Trap :) 2. Favorite Topics besides video games: Language, art technique, music technique, philosophy, logic, ethics, religions / non-religion, psychology, sociology, political / economic theory, anatomy / nutrition (studied in Manhattan), ancient Greece, I like dabbling in physics and chemistry, and a little bit of sacred geometry... non-video game design (working on a few at the moment). I don't know, I just love learning and creating really. Sam Harris has been a pretty big inspiration lately, along with Harvards Justice course on You-Tube. The first thing was trying to get OMEGAPSYCHO's Phalanx to work in 1.0. Watching the You-Tube demo's of it I was like "Holy shit! There's no way I can pass that up, I have to get that thing working in my mugen somehow." I already had quite a bit of coding experience in basic, and a little in C at that point, so Mugen code didn't look like Chinese to me or anything. I just looked up the differences between 1.0 and winmugen, and the studied the docs, and started in on some trial and error. Once I got that working I tackled the rest of his boss characters. It was mostly a matter of redoing the stages in that case, so I kinda got lucky. :)

Oh god, so many. :P Lobo. Venom, to combine T.O.P.S and Eli Kings versions with a change to the commands, stance, and some of the added sprites. Rasetsumaru, just for fun. Space Godzilla, to make him fair. That crystal sht? Constant life regen? uh... Apocalypse, to make a good playable version. All the Terror Drome characters... oooh how I wish I had time for that. Most of Chuchoryu's Tekken / Soul Calibur characters. A lot of Sergeus AVP stuff. Nothing major, just tweaks to make them feel a little less stiff. This one NES Ninja Gaiden that apparently had a lot of plans but wasn't finished. NES Mega-Man to add in a pause menu that lets him scroll through all the weapons from MM1-6. All the Mega Man 4 bosses (personal fav of the series) into a single character mini-game, using zoom to scale them up. That Dungeons and Dragons level 1 that someone did as a stand alone game, into a mini game. So many characters to edit, so little time...

1) I absolutely loved the original Killer Instinct. Some of my best arcade memories as a kid were standing around that machine with a group of like 6-8 people in a packed arcade. The game play, the characters, the dark sort of monster like feel were all unique and beautifully executed. Top notch in my book, I think they fucking nailed it. The second one was very decent. Especially in terms of it's mechanics, but the art style / the feel of it changed in a direction I wasn't quite as fond of. It seemed to get a bit more neon, a little less edgy, and a little more "sunny". But I liked it still, not nearly as much as the first. The new one I haven't played, tho I want to. All I can really comment on is how it looks, and I think they did pretty good with it. They kept it darker, sort of like the first, but the one thing I think they just barely missed (again only visually) that made the first one was the simplicity of the characters designs. If you look at Cinder, Glacius, Sabrewulf, Riptor, Chief Thunder and Spinal to some extent, there isn't a whole lot of detail in their look. Cinder is just made completely out of ember, Glacius out of ice, Chief thunder didn't have a ton of beads or crazy deco. It was a bit more archetypal, which left a lot of the attention to their move sets, their stages, and the awesome music / announcer. There was a very thin thread of underlying humor / satire that I think has been lost. But nuance aside, the new one does look fucking awesome. 2) Wario's hypers, I'd have to say either the Max Fastosity Dasherator, just because it's so fun to play, or the Mad Bob-omber. The Dasherator's sweet because it's almost like a little mini-game. He runs (controlled) back and forth until he either hits the edge of the screen or stops from sliding for too long, and all the while he's knocking the opponent into the air, trying to get in as many hits as possible while his power meter drains. The pacing of its fun and the tension's amplified by trying to keep on eye on the constant trade off between power meter and damage dealt. The Mad Bob-omber one I like because he throws a bob-omb up and eats it, and you get a second or two to try to get near the opponent while he's glowing before he explodes into a ball of fire. Once that happens, he fires about 15 bob-ombs out in random directions, all lit, and if the opponent was knocked down by the original blast, the other explosions aren't blockable because they're down. However if the original explosion misses, it doesn't knock them back so if they're closer to Wario they're more likely to be hit by more bob-ombs. But they have a chance to block it. It's an interesting trade off with massive damage potential, that's why I like it. Awesome :) 1. I was introduced to mugen by you-tube and started building a mugen game about 6 years ago. It was a couple years before I actually joined a forum, which I did just to share some edits I made. Actually the first edits I did were of your Phalanx, Contra Skeleton, Crocomire and Somulo! Those characters were soooo fucking good, but they were only for win-mugen and I just Had to find out how to get them into 1.0. So I learned how to code just to make that happen :) It took me quite a while, but I did it! After that, once I knew how, I patched a couple other bugs in some of the other characters I wanted to use and thought "you know, some other people might enjoy having these as well". So I signed up over at MFG to share them. 2. I don't know a lot of retired creators really. I know I'd like to see Pots, just because a lot of people idolize his style, and he had a post over at MFG that was incredibly helpful covering common mistakes people make creating characters. From him, I'd like to see him tackle the entire Darkstalkers series, like you did with Mortal Kombat. That would be fantastic. ...I just really think each of the classic fighting games needs one bad ass coder to go through and make a source accurate, or at least very high quality version of each character in a single style. There was a while were you would have been on that list, but you're back in action and doing exactly that with Mortal Kombat, which is honestly one of my original mugen dreams come true. Another one was actually Legion. 3. Well I've been scheming on creating a 2D platform level template, with an actual character as a boss. TMNT 2 The Arcade Game was going to be my choice. There's a chance I might do that once I'm done with Wario. I already have a lot of ideas for how to make it work, and I think as a template it could lead to a lot of interesting / awesome shit in mugen in the future. Sergeus alien levels for example, X-Men arcade game levels with existing characters as bosses... Aside from that, I plan to make Wario's in game moves list as a template and release it separately with instructions for how to add it into any other character. I also made a spread sheet for comparing, contrasting, categorizing and averaging frame data over a massive number of characters that I might release at some point. It was originally intended as a part of a intro / beginner / intermediate coding tutorial I was working on a year or 2 ago. Along with that I have a screen pack I've been working on for about 3 years now that I'll release at some point. I have also considered making some Killer Instinct characters, but with all that other stuff it's probably too much at this point. Maybe years down the road or something, who knows :) I started drawing when I was very young, and never really stopped. Over the years I've taken a bit of influence from other artists I've know / grew up with, a little bit from H.R. Geiger, a little from Alex Grey, and a decent amount from various comic artists, including Todd McFarlane. I used to copy panels out of Venom comics in elementary school, and little after that point took some inspiration from Darkstalkers, Samurai Shodown, and a lot of the background art in various games. Also GWAR had a pretty big impact on my visual taste. Mostly tho in high school I tried to just take on as many different styles as I possibly could and become as versatile as a I could. My recent drawings come from studying anatomy for health and nutrition sake. I'd draw skeletons until I memorized every bone in the body, then build the meat and skin on top of that. That turned into basic figure studies, where I'd try to do that without drawing the bones and meat, just the skin, from imagination. A lot of the drawings I have up now are from that time frame. tl;dr hmmm... I'll try to keep future answers a bit shorter :P

@OMEGAPSYCHO Thanks amigo! Sounds like a good time! It was very interesting to hear you're thoughts, and I particularly enjoy your affinity for the darker themes :) Do you mind if I ask you one more quick question on the way out? <- Not counting that one ;) Did you ever get into the original Killer Instinct? What did you think of it? The hardest aspect is pushing through the repetitive parts, batch processing sprites, loading them etc. Once that stuffs done, the creative coding part is actually fun. I've actually never made a character from the ground up tho. The Wario I'm doing now began as an edit that was just so damn fun to work on that he pretty much just 'became' a completely new character over the course of about 5 months. He's just about entirely fresh code at this point (90% + or so), so I'm trying to answer from a stance of "knowing how to make a character.".

More than anything, characters from GWAR. Close second, source accurate Killer Instinct 1 characters. Any of them would be nice, but particularly Fulgor, Orchid and Sabrewulf. If there was a full source accurate KI1 roster, say the way OMEGAPSYCHO did Mortal Kombat 1 and 2, pretty much all of my mugen dreams will have come true.

Or make that 2 hit defs. [State 0, P1 Land On or Fall Off Box] type = HitDef trigger1 = root, vel y > 0 && root, pos y < -80 && root, pos y + root, vel y > -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - root, pos x) < 50 && anim != 6403 trigger2 = root, vel y = 0 && root, pos y = -80 trigger2 = abs(pos x - root, pos x) >= 50 || anim = 6403 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = F priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2415 + (root, vel y = 0) p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1 [State 0, P2 Land On or Fall Off Box] type = HitDef trigger1 = enemynear, vel y > 0 && enemynear, pos y < -80 && enemynear, pos y + enemynear, vel y > -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - enemynear, pos x) < 50 && anim != 6403 trigger2 = enemynear, vel y = 0 && enemynear, pos y = -80 trigger2 = abs(pos x - enemynear, pos x) >= 50 || anim = 6403 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = E priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2415 + (enemynear, vel y = 0) p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1

Thanks TopKirby :) @Laharl: As much as this means a crazy amount more work, I just realized something about the sprites I think you'll get a kick out of. The big sprite sheet I was using at first had 256+ colors. The aligned Wario sprites that I found later on, have about 189... so I'm going to redo the sprites again using the original palette. Once I get color separate him I'll remake the high contrast default palette. But if I don't post for another week or so, it's because I'm refurbishing over 1000 sprites for the 4th time.

Another thing you might find useful is that I was able to get the players to land on and fall off the box with a single clsn and 4 hitdefs. Hope this helps: (These hitdefs are in the block helper, obviously, and the clsn is just around its top surface) [State 0, P1 Land On Box] type = HitDef trigger1 = root, vel y > 0 && root, pos y < -80 && root, pos y + root, vel y > -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - root, pos x) < 50 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = F priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2415 p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1 [State 0, P1 Fall Off Box] type = HitDef triggerall = root, vel y = 0 && root, pos y = -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - root, pos x) >= 50 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = F priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2416 p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1 [State 0, P2 Land On Box] type = HitDef trigger1 = enemynear, vel y > 0 && enemynear, pos y < -80 && enemynear, pos y + enemynear, vel y > -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - enemynear, pos x) < 50 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = E priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2415 p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1 [State 0, P2 Fall Off Box] type = HitDef triggerall = enemynear, vel y = 0 && enemynear, pos y = -80 trigger1 = abs(pos x - enemynear, pos x) >= 50 attr = SCA, NA hitflag = MAFD affectteam = E priority = 7, Hit ground.type = none p2stateno = 2416 p1sprpriority = -1 guard.dist = 0 sparkno = -1 guard.sparkno = -1 ;--------------------------------------------- [Statedef 2415, Box - Land on it] physics = S [State 0, PosSet] type = PosSet trigger1 = vel y > 0 y = -80 [State 0, VelSet] type = VelSet trigger1 = vel y > 0 y = 0 [State 0, SelfState] type = SelfState trigger1 = 1 value = -1 ctrl = 1 ;--------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Statedef 2416, Box - Fall off it] physics = A [State 0, VelSet] type = VelSet trigger1 = pos y = -80 y = 1 [State 0, SelfState] type = SelfState trigger1 = 1 value = 50 ctrl = 1

All the interpolate commands work like so: They take the number of ticks from the frame directly before they're called, and over the course of those ticks they smoothly space out whatever changes come between that frame (the frame before), and the frame after. So say you wanted to use "interpolate blend" to make a sprite go from invisible to opaque over the course of 20 ticks, and then remain opaque for 10 ticks. In text form, that would look like this: 1, 1, 0, 0, 20, , AS0D255 interpolate blend 1, 1, 0, 0, 10, , AS255D0 ; It's possible to make this last frame 0 ticks if you want. You can add it using either the animation text, or through the regular FF interface. Either way, open FF3 go to the animation tab and open the animation you want. ___/ Using the Animation Text In the left panel, click the "open animation as a text file" button, just to the left of that cactus lookin the "save animation as .gif" button. Find the frame you want the interpolation to begin on, and directly under it on a new line, write "interpolate offset" (or blend or whatever you want). Make sure the line above has the number of frames you want the interpolation to take and all the values you want it to start at. Then on the line after "interpolate whatever", make sure the data has all the values you want the interpolation to end on. When that frame begins, normal animation resumes. (see the above example) ___/ Using the Regular Interface In the top panel, click the "Show / Hide the Organizer (right panel)" button, so the right panel is a series of thumbnails, rather than a list of the characters animations. Then go to the frame in the animation you want the interpolation to start at. In the right panel, underneath X scale Y scale Angle you'll see "Interpolate:" Check the box underneath it that corresponds to the type of interpolation you want. Then go to the next frame, and make sure everything is set where you want the interpolation to end. The beginning of that frame will be where the interpolation gradates to, and normal animation resumes. Hope this helps :) EDIT: There's a bit of a bug I forgot to mention. Sometimes if you mess with just the angel, FF will erase it. To get by it, you'll need to add in the x and y scale as 1. Assuming that's what you want them to be anyway. e.g. group, element, x offset, y offset, ticks, flip, alpha, x scale, y scale, angle g, e, x, y, t ,f , a, X, Y, A 1, 1, 0, 0, 20, , , , , 13.25 ; <- might break FF 1, 1, 0, 0, 20, , , 1 ,1 , 13.25 ; <- should be ok

@Trin: Yea good point Trin, I didn't even think of using the indicator anims. I certainly will, but I'm not sure how often they're generally added to characters so I think a list of names will be needed none the less. Also, the reason I was saying the bob-ombs took a long time wasn't just to complain (trust me, I know 20+ hours isn't shit in mugen time) but because a lot of the intuitive ways I thought I could do that were impossible due to limitations in the engine I didn't know existed. I thought they were interesting, and instead of segueing into 'why' in that already tl;dr post, I made a separate post on the mugen help board. I'll just touch on it quickly here in case it turns out to be helpful for someone sometime. If a hitdef is set so affectteam = F (friendly) or B (both) rathern then E (enemy), none of the target triggers or movecontact triggers seem to work. So there's no real way to identify the target of a hit if it's your own helper (other than having the helper use a hitoverride). In other words, a target must be an opponent. Maybe there's some way to get it working that I don't know about but I tried everything I could think of, including displaying the triggers directly to the clipboard. Just thought that was an interesting "feature" of the engine that knowing in advance might save some other coders some trouble at some point. anyway Progress Update: The bob-ombs are almost done, still. Their mechanics have been updated some. Fireballs now light the bob-ombs fuse putting them directly into pre-explode squinty glowing state. Flaming Wario hyper also lights them.

Ok, I know I promised a video preview of the bob-omb soon, but adding an extra hitdef into every one of his attacks has lead me on a couple of side tangents. I'm kicking around this idea, and I'm wondering what people think. In the code have (easily updatable) lists of characters who aren't affected by certain moves. E.g. Characters who are too heavy to be lifted by the Ground Pound / Butt Drop move, or characters who are too big to be thrown, or who are not affected by fire based attacks, or are not affected by the snowball attack or are not affected by the belch / fart moves, are too broke to have their lunch money stolen, or any other custom interaction you can think of. These lists could be as long as they need to, there's no limit, and it's very easy to code. So that's the idea...

Na, wasn't planning on it anyway.

That's an interesting idea for the shake it sprite. I might actually do something like that, replacing the 100-Hand Wimp Slap with it. As for the bob-omb, I checked out those sprites, and they are decent. Laharl also sent me a couple suggestions, but in the end I decided to go with the one posted above. I really liked the shading on it, and I thought and the style / feel really fit with Wario. I did wind up using that second explosion tho and it looks fucking great in action. Can't wait to post a video preview of the bob-omb in action so you guys can see it. I just got a little more to do on it first. Yea that's pretty much how I work amigo. I just get as many resources and ideas as I can together, and the just let the inspiration flow and do the best I can with what I got. It's really great to have all you guys suggestions to work with to. It just makes the spectrum of options and ideas so much greater. It's been a blast working on him, I have to say, and most of it comes you guys comments on this thread. :) Progress Update: Finally, after 2 straight days of work (easily 20+ hours of coding) I got the bob-omb mechanics working. Wario sets down a bob-omb and it blinks > turns to face the opponent > winds up 3 cranks > hops > lands > and does it again. After 3 hops, its fuse lights, it squints, begins to glow red and after exactly 2 seconds it explodes. 1, 2, boom. While it's hopping around it can be hit by either Wario or the opponent, and essentially knocked around the screen. It takes the actual hit velocity from the hitdef that hits it too, so a lifter will lift it, juggernaut will send it flying etc. All that's for the QCF quick punch. QCF medium or strong punch will throw a bob-omb in an arc. Medium bob-omb will not have a lit fuse, and after it lands it will carry out it's normal 3 hop cycle before exploding. Strong will be thrown with a lit fuse. It will explode on impact with the opponent, or if it misses and lands on the ground it will carry out it it's 2 second count down, starting from the time it was thrown. Video preview soon to come.

After an arduous day of picking away at this, I've pretty much gotten it working. There were some interesting issues that prevented easier ways of doing things that I'm going to list for reference sake. They've all been double / triple / quadruple checked with the in game clipboard: trigger = target(hit_id), id = helper(helper_id) does not work. trigger = target(hit_id) = "whatever it was set to in the hit def" does not work. trigger = numtarget(helper id) does not work. trigger = numtarget(target id from hitdef) does not work. movecontact returns 0 after the hit connects with the bob-omb helper. Any of these would have allowed the original hitdef (meant for the opponent) to retrigger after the bob-omb one connected. The apparent issue here is that mugen will not recognize a helper as a target, or even a legitimate point of "contact" for a hit. I considered adding an extra hitdef to each of Wario's basics which triggers 1 tick before the normal hitdef. Of course that meant adding a new clsn to every basic attack as well, right before the normal one. In the end I had the bob-omb use ParentVarSet to let Wario know if it was in hit range. There's an additional hitdef added to each one of his basics that triggers only on the first tick of the hit if that var is non-zero. The original hitdef then retriggers immediately.

o.o ...it's beautiful...

I'm not sure how both at once would look, or how you would even do that... You could try it? Here's an example of suggestion 2 in action, from :15 to :20 (if it lags, lower the vid quality to get a better look at the timing). Sorry for increasing the load time of the page as well, for some reason it won't let me spoiler the video.

Glad to see you're enjoying it here. It's refreshing to see nice people joining the community. Hope you have fun, and thanks for all the suggestions on the Wario thread already!

If you do, you've already got a pretty good start with just this post. Afik there aren't too many of them out there. I have to say it would be nice to see em centralized. Either way, hell yes to the Manji Vally and Warzone stages!

Wario drop's a bob-omb on the ground, which sits, blinks, winds up, hops and repeats a couple times before exploding. I've gotten it so the opponent can knock it around the screen using hitoverride and gethitvar(xvel and yvel). Now I'd like Wario to be able to hit it, without adding an additional hitdef with "affectteam = F" to every single attack he has. As of now, I've got an extra hitdef in each of the basic attack states with affectteam = f, strictly for the bob-omb....maybe the coal too? __/ Considerable approaches so far

Very nice! Is there a Tekken stages collection these can (or already have been) added to?

Just found this thread, I gotta say this is looking pretty good amigo! About the transformation, I agree it's a bit to "instant". I'd go either one of two ways. 1) Either open the before and after transformation as separate layers in photoshop / gimp whatever and try to create a medium frame. Or a couple even. 2) alternate between the before and after transformation frames sort of like this. Imagine the before and after are both group 0, and before is index 0 and after is index 1. 0,0 ,0,0, 16 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 12 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 8 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 4 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 2 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 4 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 8 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 12 0,0 ,0,0, 2 0,1 ,0,0, 16 The amount of work you put in and the fact that you're taking feedback at every step of the process is really showing through. I have to say to, I completely agree with Cayne's post about people bullying Ax.

Nice! Snagging...

haha that's true. I take it you mean that crazy shake it sprite. I'll come at it from the other side then, if I end up needing it I'll use it, otherwise fuck it.

hahahaa, chill Trin, it's all good, I think we're gonna make it :) Ok, yea I have to agree. The second one does fit the animation style more closely. Well, 2nd one it is then. The first one... maybe I could use that for the motorcycle exploding? I don't know, it is a gorgeous animation. I'll see if I can find something for it.

Dude, an Attack on Titan boss by OMEGAPSYCHO!? Symphony of the Night bosses (including fucking Legion AND Beelzebub), Mortal Kombat 1 & 2, Ninja Gaiden boss rush, Indiana Jones, and now this? Impeccable taste, once again. You, sir, are among the gods of mugen!