Alpha Rising Spirit: Traditionally Animated Fighting Game

kupo15

Member




About
Rising Spirit
is a 2D traditional fighting game with the feel of a platform brawler smoothly blended together to create its own experience and game type. This fusion grants us the ability to create a unique fighting game in which each player has freedom and flexibility within the playstyle of one character instead of feeling confined to the "Developer's Intent." Rising Spirit is designed in such a way that you will be learning, figuring out and discovering new strategies and ways to play the more you play the game. It is a game where both Brawler and Traditional fighter communities can find common ground as well as being a fun accessible game for the casual audience. - easy to pick up but hard to master!
 

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kupo15

Member
HD PROGRESS
Here are some assets to show off our planned direction for the game

STAGES


ANIMATIONS


This is a representation of our animation quality, rest assured functionality of the move will still be retained to keep things fast paced.

MUSIC
The music is going to have a fully orchestrated, very epic feel to it. Check out the mockups I've composed to get a better sense of the world we are trying to create on my SoundCloud

https://soundcloud.com/matthewlemmel%2Fsets%2Frising-spirit-soundtrack-1
 
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kupo15

Member
Welcome back, we are back to repost our game's work in progress in the new forums and am looking forward to continue to connect with everyone here again! Most of our time is spent building the HD version but there is some updates to the public alpha version

For some reason I noticed that the replays all of a sudden stopped working, I'm trying to figure out why but I wanted to create this thread first then tackle that for the next update.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay connected and up to date
** LIKE us on Facebook!** Follow us on Twitter!

Looking forward to hearing from everyone again! :)

I purposely triple posted so that way I could neatly organize the thread to the prototype and HD versions, hopefully that is ok mods!
 
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SuperSlim

Guest
It looks very nice! Nothing better in a fighting game than the idle animations and the taunts so I hope you add those in!
 

kupo15

Member
Thanks, glad you like it!
Yes we have idle animations, the prototype is very basic of course because they were done by me but they are going to be great in HD. Taunts will also come as well as several other character animation details! :)
 
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BrendanES

Guest
I love fighting games and this one looks beautiful. Keep up the good work.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
The new opening post looks a TON more engaging and cool than the old one! I'd almost recommend putting the GIFs of the demo/alpha version in a spoiler to not ruin the good impression (and lead with an explanation that the current version uses prototype assets because the 'real' ones are currently in development).


EDIT: And also, mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe put the game's name in the topic title as well? :p
 

kupo15

Member
Looks really nice..Again xD I'm following this.
I love fighting games and this one looks beautiful. Keep up the good work.
Thank you both! :)

The new opening post looks a TON more engaging and cool than the old one! I'd almost recommend putting the GIFs of the demo/alpha version in a spoiler to not ruin the good impression (and lead with an explanation that the current version uses prototype assets because the 'real' ones are currently in development).


EDIT: And also, mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe put the game's name in the topic title as well? :p
Thanks, yea it does look much cleaner! Good suggestions there, Yal! I made those changes! Do you know how to embed soundcloud stuff in here?

Nice to see you again :)
 

kupo15

Member
Welcome back, kupo! It's been like three months, though! Where are the new screenshots?! :p
(I said to myself...)
haha I'm not sure, I seem to have misplaced them :p (though I thought I saw something on the fb page a while back) we want to wait a bit more until the stage we are working on is more polished, right now its just speed stuff to have something there that isn't ready for showing off quite yet
 

hippyman

Member
Super happy to see this game again and I have to say... I can't wait to see the game with those buttery smooth animations
 
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Blakkid489

Guest
Hey Kupo. . . .glad to see you're alive as well as the rest of the community :D. Not sure if you remember me. I made the first "Movelist" picture awhile back. (eg. SuperBlackMan) Still supporting you guys in this project.
Cant wait for more updates.

I do have a question. Is the title art the final build? There's nothing wrong with it,It's very nice and goes with the overall concept style.
I would just like to show you my rendition if thats okay.
 

kupo15

Member
Thanks Hippyman, nice to see you again!

Hey Superblackman, haha! Of course I remember you, that movelist was awesome! Yea I would love to see some fan art, always nice to see! The Title art isn't exactly the final build, it was a mock up paintover of a paintover to conceptually show a final art style. It will be very similar to it however because the inital mock up was done by the art lead, just a different lighting work was painted over from a different artists as we were exploring. The final art style is more representative of that character lineup that was in the legacy forums as well as that one post where we showed a gif of that stage with two lighting versions. The non lighted version is more representative
 

kupo15

Member
can't wait to play it in HD :D good luck. how much time will it take to finish the HD versions?
Tomorrow actually...I mean, no, my partner would kill me if I said that....
Rule of thumb: never ask someone how long time it will take to finish a software project, and do your best to not answer that question yourself if you can avoid it. :p
This haha

yea...going to be a while...can't accurately say at the moment sorry but will let everyone know as soon as we both know for sure :p
 
Well, at least the situation is fair, then. We can both wait till "just a bit longer, " I guess, haha! X'D

I am looking forward to seeing this progress, though. We had a very long pm conversation about this game back on the old gmc, so you already know this is one of the projects I'm most looking forward too here. Can't wait to see you post this on KS and rake in the money. ^ ^
 

FredFredrickson

Artist, designer, & developer
GMC Elder
Is the animation of Gaston in the first post a combination of punching and kicking, or is that just the wind-up motion for a kick?

Because, awesome as the quality of the animation is, I would hate to have wait for 10-20 frames of animation to play in between button press and action.
 

kupo15

Member
Well, at least the situation is fair, then. We can both wait till "just a bit longer, " I guess, haha! X'D

I am looking forward to seeing this progress, though. We had a very long pm conversation about this game back on the old gmc, so you already know this is one of the projects I'm most looking forward too here. Can't wait to see you post this on KS and rake in the money. ^ ^
Haha, fair enough! :)

Thanks, we can't wait to show it off either, and I too am looking forward to playing and disecting a new RPG game which I haven't bothered to play the genre in quite some time

Is the animation of Gaston in the first post a combination of punching and kicking, or is that just the wind-up motion for a kick?

Because, awesome as the quality of the animation is, I would hate to have wait for 10-20 frames of animation to play in between button press and action.
Its just the kick, but its a representation of the animation quality we are going for. While I don't believe we will have as much extra motion as shown (though we could though) I have systems in place to allow you to cancel after a certain point which allows us the freedom to be more artsy while still retaining the required functionality that you addressed. I should probably make a note in that post
 

FredFredrickson

Artist, designer, & developer
GMC Elder
That sounds like a decent solution. I really liked the animation, and the quality of it - but it reminded me a lot of this video (link starts it up at a relevant point) about character responsiveness in games. Especially in a competitive fighting game, you're going to want as few wind-up animations as possible, except where the goal is to project an attack that the other player might want to avoid, etc.

Anyway, not trying to critique too hard. Looking forward to seeing what other the other animations look like! :)
 

kupo15

Member
That sounds like a decent solution. I really liked the animation, and the quality of it - but it reminded me a lot of this video (link starts it up at a relevant point) about character responsiveness in games. Especially in a competitive fighting game, you're going to want as few wind-up animations as possible, except where the goal is to project an attack that the other player might want to avoid, etc.

Anyway, not trying to critique too hard. Looking forward to seeing what other the other animations look like! :)
I remember that video. Yea I have all of this taken into careful consideration. That character is also a heavier character than most do some moves will have a slower start up. Responsiveness also has to do with the character immediately reacting to buttons, the falcon punch is responsive even though it takes forever to come out. The result of the move also plays an important role in if a windup is to fast or slow

Tons of factors but yea, appreciate your concern nonetheless :)
E3 footage:

Actual gameplay:

sorry, I had to make that joke
Hahaha amazing!
 

kupo15

Member
Wow moved to the second page? Man people must have their games just waiting to post during the forum delay!

Have a new small yet decent update to the prototype game for you guys

7/12/16:
-Simple Shadows
-Head Tracking (Ninja Only)
-"Context Sensitive" Running Mechanic

Characters now have simple circle shadows under them, really adds a ton actually!

I started working on head tracking with the Ninja only and probably will only be limited to the Ninja for the prototype unfortunately. He is only missing head tracking on his walk cycles, highblock and pivot animation

*I tweaked this mechanic on 7/13/16 and updated the description below
Lastly I added a new movement mechanic that I've played around with a while back but decided not to implement. Recently I thought more about it and decided to try it out and added it in which the "Context Sensitive" Running. I've always wanted to add a running movement to the game but I didn't want it to overtake all the other movement options by being the best thing to use all the time. There are two times the running mechanic will work:

1) If you are outside the camera boundary that normally limits you it will kick in automatically and will automatically go away if you return inside the camera boundary IF your opponent is not stunned. Otherwise you can still run inside the camera boundary until they recover from stun

2) You can manually start a run if you keep holding forward after a dash. Once you let go of forward or do any action after initiating a dash it goes away

All characters have a new idle animation to reflect this state and only the Ninja has an actual run animation for the prototype. Though, this really won't be happening too often which in intentional so it won't change the core gameplay unless you are a super long distance spammer haha :)

I'm really curious to what you think of this new mechanic and will be closely evaluating it overall as I play more with friends to fine tune it.
 
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kupo15

Member
Ok back with a new update! I know all eyes are eager for new art and the HD updates...they will come later on but for now I wanted to provide a mid size update to the playable prototype!

10/7/16:
-Moveable Shields
-Changed Full Shield Input (Shield+back)
-Tons of general mechanic inconsistencies fixed
-Fixed Timeout bugs
-Added warning beeps below 10 seconds



I noticed the TImeouts didn't function properly and didn't add to the win count at all so that is fixed now! Let us know if you experience any crashes. I brought this over a friend's place and tested it on a new CPU and got an error when entering the Options Menu that I never experienced on my computer. Strange!
 
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kupo15

Member
I'm very excited to share one of the game's level soundtracks, the composer and mockup all done by myself! This is Kira's Stage - "Abandoned Village" (current temporary title) which depicts her abandoned village deep in the Amazon forest that has turned desolate by an evil force. Her journey is to try and restore it back to its vibrant self and break the curse before all of her people die off.

We plan on doing dynamic soundtracks that change orchestrations on triggers as hinted at the end of this. Its still a WIP in that regard
Hope you enjoy it! :D

https://soundcloud.com/matthew-lemmel/rising-spirit-ost-abandoned-village-kiras-stage

(anyway to embed these?)
 
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Blakkid489

Guest
Kira. . . . . . . . . .She's bae btw.

The soundtrack feel mellow yet serious. In fact at first it sounded like something that belong to samurai showdown. Very beautiful
 

kupo15

Member
She totally is haha That is a good description of it, glad you really liked it! I had to lookup Samurai to see what that was! There will be more tracks with her that is more uplifting and joyous, serene qualities to contrast this :)

In the meantime I'm working on one of Reiko's tracks right now which is much different than this and its really, really good so far. Much better than Kira's but at the same time not implying I don't like Kira's because its one of my favorites
 

kupo15

Member
Thanks guys! Appreciate the support throughout this and glad you liked it! :D

Adventure music at its best. I feel a Story mode being implemented :rolleyes:
Such a compliment! Yes we definitely plan on having a Story Mode and I have Story mode elements and designs in my head as I come up with this music... going to be great!
 

kupo15

Member
Another update, happy to be able to show some progress in the graphics department with the menu system. Here is a video comparing the old vs new pause menu UI. Its starting to really come together and looking like a real game haha!

 
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cloud9

Guest
Wow! This is so cool! Can't wait to try it :)
Btw, how can you make sure that 1 attack hit only once?
 

kupo15

Member
Thanks!

Several ways, either destroy the hitbox object when it hits something or create a variable called active and set that to false when it hits something. Make a check when hitboxes hit and only work if their active state is true :)
 
Quality looks good, but I'm not sure about that walk cycle. Something feels a little off with how it's animated...I think it's how her torso seems to move at a perfectly even pace across the screen, instead of kind of dropping/rising and speeding up/slowing down based on when she steps. I tried to find some references for you from other fighting games, but people don't walk often in gameplay videos, mostly jumping, dashing, or attacking, hahah.

Also, maybe not as important, but realistically, it's a very bad idea to cross your legs during a fight if you're anywhere near your opponent - it creates a very unstable base to stand on, making it impossible to throw a good punch or kick, and making it very very easy to get pushed over (and then beat up). Most (all?) martial arts will teach you to bring your back foot toward your front, and then to step forward with your front leg, and then repeat the process. You try to "walk" in a fight as little as possible. People still walk anyway, obviously, especially when further away, but almost never sideways like this, hahah! Not that any of this matters too much. As long as it looks good, it's probably fine. Just trying to come up with reasons the animation feels a bit off to me, heheh. X'D

Edit: Ah, yeah. Critiques aside, looking good as always. Always glad to see progress on this! =)
 
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kupo15

Member
Not bad, man! Has come a hell of a long way.
It certainly has, you and Rich below were a huge part of that. Thank you!!

Quality looks good, but I'm not sure about that walk cycle. Something feels a little off with how it's animated...I think it's how her torso seems to move at a perfectly even pace across the screen, instead of kind of dropped and speeding up/slowing down based on when she steps. I tried to find some references for you from other fighting games, but people don't walk often in gameplay videos, mostly jumping, dashing, or attacking, hahah.

Also, maybe not as important, but realistically, it's a very bad idea to cross your legs during a fight if you're anywhere near your opponent - it creates a very unstable base to stand on, making it impossible to throw a good punch or kick, and making it very very easy to get pushed over (and then beat up). Most (all?) martial arts will teach you to bring your back foot toward your front, and then to step forward with your front leg, and then repeat the process. You try to "walk" in a fight as little as possible. People still walk anyway, obviously, especially when further away, but almost never sideways like this, hahah!
Isn't this pretty standard? Look at the SG characters for example, I forgot which one of them really crosses her legs even more than this haha :)

In any case, this walk cycle isn't going to be used in the final...in fact all of the animations you see in there aren't. Its just quick HD prototype work done with the help of other animators to get rid of my pixel art animations so we can do better things with the game. Cardin didn't do those except for the idle which is still going to be changed and when he gets around to creating his versions everything is going to be extremely good! Not saying anything bad about the current animations of course...I like everything so far!
 
Isn't this pretty standard? Look at the SG characters for example, I forgot which one of them really crosses her legs even more than this haha :)
Yeah, I edited my post after you quoted. I was trying to think of why the animation looked wrong to me, and the unrealisticness of it was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind for why it might be bothering me. After thinking about other games, though, I realized that most of them have pretty crazy walk cycles, and that they still work really well in the genre. So the problems I have with the animation are with the implementation itself, I guess, not the idea, hahah!

Not that it's going to be easy to fix (I couldn't do it). It just feels like the weight/form of the character are subtly off. I'm glad I'm not your artist, heheheh - I wouldn't want to try fixing it! X'D
Anyway, looking forward to the final character. ^ ^

Anyway, my unsolicited advice to your animator would be something he already knows, which is to act it out and try to get a better handle on what sells the motion. Good luck to him! ^ ^;;

Edit:
Makoto's walk from SFIII is a very strong example of this type of walk cycle working:
Dunno if that'll help or not. It's a very different feeling from what you guys have right now/might be going for, but the animation is very good, and really plays up the leg crossing. She even mixes up her steps like she's trying to confuse/prod her opponent. Pretty cool!
 
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kupo15

Member
Yeah, I edited my post after you quoted. I was trying to think of why the animation looked wrong to me, and the unrealisticness of it was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind for why it might be bothering me. After thinking about other games, though, I realized that most of them have pretty crazy walk cycles, and that they still work really well in the genre. So the problems I have with the animation are with the implementation itself, I guess, not the idea, hahah!

Not that it's going to be easy to fix (I couldn't do it). It just feels like the weight/form of the character are subtly off. I'm glad I'm not your artist, heheheh - I wouldn't want to try fixing it! X'D
Anyway, looking forward to the final character. ^ ^

Anyway, my unsolicited advice to your animator would be something he already knows, which is to act it out and try to get a better handle on what sells the motion. Good luck to him! ^ ^;;
That is a pretty walk cycle!

Yea the current walk animation done by someone else gives the appearance of gliding and such, I agree no real weight distribution is felt. I've seen some walk cycles from Cardin for Reiko and they look really great! He definitely knows his stuff with animation and lifelike qualities so expect much more detail in the animations from him. I wish I could show you what I've seen but he's not ready to show it off yet ^_^
 

sylvain_l

Member
Edit:
Makoto's walk from SFIII is a very strong example of this type of walk cycle working:
Dunno if that'll help or not. It's a very different feeling from what you guys have right now/might be going for, but the animation is very good, and really plays up the leg crossing. She even mixes up her steps like she's trying to confuse/prod her opponent. Pretty cool!
feels strange for me, but not in a wrong way.
It feels more like a kata movement then something I would see in a fighting competition (Sincerely, it immediately triggered memories of training at the dojo; funny so many years later :p).
But I suppose the main reason for that is how the positions of the hands and foots are inflated. In competition, you try to not repeat your movement/attacks and mask them so your opponenent can't read you/cant anticipate your attack.
In a game well it's fair to design it so, to give the player that litle hint with those extra inflated frames that help him anticipate and press the block or attack button :)
 
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