Buyog's Lair

Just an Idea I Had Today

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

So we're mostly moved in here in beautiful northern California, and my new job is going well, thanks for asking. Today, on the drive into the office, I was listening to J.B. Blake's awesome soundtrack he made for DC vs Marvel, and I thought (as I often do when I listen to his awesome album) about how I wish we could actually, y'know, finish the game.

(Trolls, start your engines...)

Yeah, I know. I wish we'd gotten it done a long time ago too, back when the fire and the enthusiasm (and the spare time!) were flowing freely. I can't help that now; what's past is water under the bridge. What I can do, though, is try and find a way forward, and another old idea came back to me:

DC Super Heroes

I'm not sure if I've ever publicly talked about this, or if it was always just a topic of private conversation among my fellow Scruffy Dragons. The idea was this: "Marvel Versus Capcom 3" didn't just spring, fully formed, from Capcom's skunkworks. In fact, even the first MvC was the culmination of many years' effort, and many games: X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, and Marvel vs Street Fighter. Not to mention the Capcom fighters! Yes, there were a few new characters and new mechanics introduced in MvC, but a lot of the content was carried over from previous games. So my thought went, why not do the same with our project? DC vs Marvel was always an audacious plan, and history has proven it to be more elusive than Duke Nukem Forever (a game that I never thought I'd mention on this blog, but there you go) -- why not start smaller? Especially given all of the DC-focused work that myself, my fellow Dragons, and others in the MUGEN community have produced over the years, it's actually pretty surprising that nobody's done this yet.

The original Marvel Super Heroes (hereafter MSH) had 10 playable characters (6 heroes and 4 villains), a sub-boss (Dr. Doom), and a main boss (Thanos). If anyone wanted to do this (I'm not sure anyone ever did), you could re-create that game by:

1. creating a screenpack
2. creating (or getting permission to use other creators' versions) the 12 characters
3. creating 12 stages (one per character)
4. making 10 simple game ending animations (one per playable character)
5. modifying the 12 characters to add support for the Infinity Gems mechanic that's unique to the game

Okay, not exactly the work of a lazy Saturday afternoon, but for some reason, that feels a little more doable to me. A DC analogue might look something like this:

Premise:

storyline loosely based on JLA: Rock of Ages

Playable characters (heroes):

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, & Plastic Man

Playable characters (villains):

Parasite, Etrigan, Lobo, Mongul

Bosses:

Lex Luthor and Darkseid

What's interesting about this roster is that it's almost all done already. The Flash and Plastic Man betas need to be finished, and Parasite needs to be cleaned up (the version for a closed-roster game like this would naturally only include power sets for the other 11 characters on the roster). That just leaves coming up with a good unifying game mechanic to bring these 12 characters together, making a screenpack, then making sure the characters all have stages & logical endings that fit in with the overarching storyline of the game (Grant Morrison's JLA comic had some good world-shattering story arcs that could work. I like Rock of Ages, and it has the benefit of having the bad guys that already exist for MUGEN: Luthor and Darkseid.

Also -- I remember now -- we actually did talk about this as a team a while ago, and DNGR made a screenpack for us and everything. We even had a video showing it off as part of Scruffyversary that year, and had grand plans. Unfortunately, the team was already kind of semi-retiring at the time, so that never went anywhere.

So am I actually going to do this now? What's different this time?

I don't know. I'd need to get buy-in from the creators of the characters that I didn't make (Magus, Alucard, Loganir, Mambojambo, and Wucash), not all of whom are still around anymore, and not all of whom even seem to like each other much anymore. -_- Plus, I'd need to either make my own screenpack, or use DNGR's. Still seems like a lot of work...

But maybe it's a small enough project that it could be done by one person with a vision.

We'll see.

Labels: DC vs Marvel, Meta

Sporadic Updates, Tragedies, and Other News

Friday, October 01, 2010

I missed posting anything here last weekend. I've been pretty focused on updating my programming site over the past few weeks, and I'm still not satisfied with it. I also virtually attended (and reported on) a big web development conference that stole a lot of the attention I would have otherwise given to MUGEN, but the good news is that it inspired me to make some long-needed updates to the coding and design of my blogs. (My recent redesign here was a first stab in that direction, but I'm not yet where I want to be)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is a bit of forewarning: I'm in the process of moving my coding blog off of Blogger and onto a lightweight blog engine I'm writing myself; if that effort goes well, I'll be migrating this blog pretty soon too. The change should be mostly transparent to those of you that follow my blog via my buyog.com domain, or if you subscribe to my updates via RSS. The big changes will be that you won't be able to follow the blog anymore via Google Friend Connect, which honestly I don't think many of you were doing anyway, and the comment system is going to be quite a bit different (hopefully easier for everyone to use, especially for that portion of my readers that don't have Google accounts -- no more need to comment as "anonymous"). Expect that to happen in the near future.

On another subject entirely: DC vs Marvel. SethZankuten and I have been talking this week about what's left to be done for Phase 1, and I found out why things this year haven't gone as quickly as he hoped: unbeknownst to any of us ScruffyDragons, he had a pretty severe accident a few months ago that has led to abbreviated work days and no small amount of physical therapy. So, yeah, MUGEN's going to take a back seat to that. That said, he's coming out the worst of it now, and together, he & I are going to drive DCvM Phase 1 through to completion. I'm not going to quote you a release date, because these things can change in a heartbeat (see above discussion about the accident), but I think the train is now back on the tracks and moving forward.

Which is good news, indeed.

Labels: DC vs Marvel, news

Tutorial: How to Build Your Own DC vs Marvel Game

Sunday, September 12, 2010

From time to time we get questions over at the ScruffyDragon forums and in our email about how to download a "one click" installation of the DC versus Marvel game we're making. It occurs to me that this is a common enough problem that I should post some easy-to-follow steps to building your own custom DCvM game, while you wait for the official release.

It's really not all that tough, if a bit involved. All the pieces are there, you just need to put them together in the right order:

1. Download "No limit WinMUGEN" and the "DC vs Marvel screenpack" from my Add-ons page.
2. Use WinRAR to extract No_limit_Winmugen_patch.rar into a folder on your PC (I use D:\MUGEN, on my hard drive's data partition)
3. Extract DCvM.zip into that same folder.
4. Download the characters you want from my characters section, from the ScruffyDragon download section (note that you'll need to be signed in to see the files), or any other site, really — bearing in mind that not all characters will fit into our custom screenpack without a little customization (more on that in a minute).
5. Unzip/unrar each character's files into their own folder in MUGEN\chars (e.g. MUGEN\chars\Lobo, MUGEN\chars\Ice, and so on). Note that characters sometimes come with extra folder information in the archive, so you'll want to check that you don't end up with a subfolder inside the folder, like MUGEN\chars\kon-el\kon-el. If that happens, just move the files into the main character folder.
6. Make sure that folder name is in the text file MUGEN\data\select.def

I know, it seems like a lot, but it's really not that bad. When you're done, you can run Winmugen.exe to play your own, personalized version of the game! From there, you may want to download Fighter Factory or another MUGEN editing tool and start to tweak and customize things for your personal use, which can be really fun and rewarding*. In fact, I know of at least a few people that started out as MUGEN players, and by doing personal tweaks like that, have evolved into MUGEN creators.

* Please remember that most MUGEN creators will have a problem with you posting your tweaked versions of their characters for other people to download. Best to ask permission first before doing that.

Be warned, though: once you've caught the MUGEN creation bug, and begin crafting stuff perfectly tuned to your own tastes, you may never look at pre-packaged fighting games the same way again. ;)

Have fun, and let me know in the comments what your personal DCvsMarvel roster looks like!

Labels: DC vs Marvel, tutorials

Vlog #1: New Stuff is on the Way!

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

I just realized it's been over a year since I've posted any new videos to YouTube, so I just did this one as kind of a status update / signal of things to come. Don't know how regular these will be, but at least it's something. Bottom line: the time-hole that is grad school is done for me now, except the thesis defense in 2 weeks. Woo! So MUGEN stuff is back on my plate, and coming down the pipe soon.

Labels: Blackest Night Hal, DC vs Marvel, Elektra, Mandarin, news, Parasite, Sinestro, video, vlog

Seeing Red

Thursday, May 13, 2010

So even though I'm not retiring from MUGEN after all, school has still been keeping me pretty swamped lately. In my spare time, I've been adapting some of the changes SethZankuten made to the DCvsMarvel version of Hal Jordan, adding a few of them to my next public release version (yes, they're now two separate code bases. I'll have to deal with that at some point, but not yet). There are still going to be some moves unique to the full-game release (which, contrary to some people's snide remarks, is still being worked on — Seth just has a busy life too), but where it makes sense, I'm using Seth's savvy upgrades to make my version that much shinier. Case in point: current-release Hal has no grapple or throw. Seth's has this nifty Anvil Slam, which I've now adapted to my version of the character:

I've also been hard at work on the Blackest Night modes, starting with Red Lantern. Here are a couple of the specials that will be custom to this mode:

So, yeah. Still moving, albeit more slowly than I'd like. That said, Jet the Phoenix and I have been talking about something this week that could be very, very cool, so hopefully I'll have more to share here soon.

Labels: Blackest Night Hal, DC vs Marvel

Stuff in the pipeline

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Whew! Just like last year, the "12 days" event kinda burned me out for wanting to work on MUGEN stuff for a few weeks. But I AM doing some stuff, and a lot of things are starting to take shape in the "release pipeline", so to speak. Here are a few notes on what's in there.

Hulk

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm working on a Hulk update for all y'all:

• It'll have AI, thanks to the very talented assistance of Tunglashor.
• It'll have the alternate select screen portraits I posted about recently.
• It'll have some minor bug fixes.
• It'll have custom "frozen" animation for when he's fighting Ice/Bizarro/etc.
• It'll most likely have another finished hyper (the "Hulk Crush" that's about half finished and disabled in the current release).
• It'll have an arcade intro.
• There's a good chance it'll have ground and air throws.
• And, the superarmor code will likely be a little tweaked to make him slightly tougher.

Overall lots of smallish tweaks, but I think they'll come together to make what was a bit of a rush release, that much more "finished"-looking.

Possible Betas

I'm also considering kicking out another beta of Sinestro and/or Elektra, if I can get more of their get-hit sprites finished soon. Truth be told I hate doing those kinds of sprites, so they're both kind of slow going. -_-

Bone girl

And... following up on something I mentioned over a year ago, I'm feeling the need to give Marrow some attention. Her code needs an overhaul, and she could use a few new/tweaked moves, plus of course I want to add the DCvM-style to her so she plays similarly to my other characters. This one will take more work, but it really really needs to be done.

The purple elephant in the room

I know that probably my most-anticipated WIP right now is Parasite, and don't worry, I haven't forgotten about him. But he needs more spit and polish before I feel comfortable releasing him, he's my baby right now and I'd hate for another unfinished version of him (like the craptastic leaked/stolen one floating around on eSnips) to get out in the wild. But he IS still being worked on, fear not.

DCvM

Plus of course my teammates and I are still working on pulling everything together for the official DCvsMarvel "Phase 1" release. Seth Zankuten is currently working on play-balancing the other characters, particularly the ones like Dr. Doom and Wonder Woman that are otherwise essentially finished. For my part, I've got Amalgam hypers to finish for Lobo, GL, Luthor and Hulk. Still quite a bit of work to do on that front, but progress is being made:


Watch this space...

Labels: DC vs Marvel, Elektra, Marrow, Parasite, Savage Hulk, Sinestro

"12 days" wrap-up

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Forgot to post days 11 & 12 here on my blog, but for anyone not following the ScruffyDragon news page, here they are:

Day 11: Electro beta 0.4, by Verz & Magus

Day 12: Superboy (Kon-El) v 0.95, Titan Goku & Seth Zankuten, and

Titans Tower stage, by Wucash

And here's my follow-up post from over at ScruffyDragon.com:

To round out this year's "12 days of MUGEN" event, we as a team really wanted to knock everybody's socks off. As many of you suspected, we wanted the 12th gift to be... DCvsMarvel Phase 1.

Alas, although we've made tremendous progress toward this goal over the past 6 weeks, it's just not quite finished yet. So last night we had a team meeting to discuss the situation, and the unanimous decision was to wait until it's done, instead of slapping something together that wasn't truly a GAME experience, but merely a collection of unbalanced characters and mismatched effects & stages. We figure there are plenty of places within the MUGEN community where you can go for that sort of thing, and if the ScruffyDragon brand stands for anything at all, it stands for quality over quantity. As the old saying goes, "good things come to those who wait." ;)

So, where does that leave us? Well, it leaves you as fans 9 characters and 3 stages richer. It leaves the ScruffyDragon team revitalized and excited about building a truly awesome Phase 1 experience. And it leaves us all quite a bit closer to Phase 1 than we were 12 days ago. As for a new release date, I'm going to have to hold off on that for the moment because I don't have the latest status reports from Wucash and Seth to know what's still left on their respective plates. But I can say this: I see no reason at present why it can't be done before the Scruffyversary. How soon before, depends on each team member's real life situations, and will be different for each of us. Best advice I can give you is to keep watching the news section here; there are sure to be some other releases coming up in the near future, and Phase 1 within the next few months.

As always, thank you all for your continued support. We don't do this for money, or really even for glory or attention. We do it for fun, and for the love of these two great superhero universes. You all help keep that magic alive for us.

Labels: 12 Days of Christmas, 12Days2008, DC vs Marvel

The 12th Day of Christmas

Sunday, January 06, 2008

I give you... the first public release of the DC vs Marvel screenpack!

- Select screen layout devised by TA-Chan (PauTo)
- Inspired by ideas from Magus in the previous private versions of the screenpack
- Hitsparks by Loganir & SethZankuten
- Lifebars by McCready & Buyog
- Title logo by Sei
- Programmed by Magus & Buyog

Go get it in the Add-ons section, here.

On a final note: thanks for all the feedback and support over the past two weeks. This turned out to be a much bigger commitment than I expected it to be, and you've all been very understanding when delays have occurred. Now, go have some fun! :)

Feedback is welcome over at the ScruffyDragon forum; here's the release thread: http://www.scruffydragon.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4391

Labels: 12 Days of Christmas, 12Days2007, DC vs Marvel

The 10th Day of Christmas

Friday, January 04, 2008

Okay, first, apologies for the lateness. Life is busy 'round these parts. Also an apology that this video doesn't show off as much as I'd hoped it would... that's just the way it ended up falling; a follow-up is forthcoming.

All of that aside, here's gift 10 in my blitz: a short video showcasing some of the Amalgam hypers that will be in the game (note that none of them are 100% finalized, though):

Labels: 12 Days of Christmas, 12Days2007, DC vs Marvel, video

Friday, November 28, 2003

Lots of stuff going on... holidays (Thanksgiving here in the US) always afford me extra work time.
Mostly involving Lobo... I've ripped and am editing crouching & jumping anims, as well as crouching & air attacks. Keep checking the Lobo WIP page over the next week or so,and you'll see some of what I've been doing.

Also, I'm working with Viktor Fries and ss5ace on the official DCvsMarvel game screenpack. We've been kicking around some ideas for a new select screen, as well as the lifebars I told you about in my last post. I've gotten some feedback on the ones I posted here, and (someone who had better remain nameless) has graciously volunteered to apply some tweaks of their own.

Labels: DC vs Marvel, Lobo

Monday, November 03, 2003

Here's a tease of something I'm working on for the DCvM project...

Labels: DC vs Marvel

Thursday, May 22, 2003

Been working lately on intro screens for the characters currently in progress on the DC vs Marvel project. See 'em all here.

I heard recently that Capcom is actually talking about making their own official "Marvel vs DC" game. Sounds cool, but really, I'll believe it when I see it. :-/ Meanwhile, there's us. Besides, even if they DO eventually make it, it won't be emulated for a good long while (take MvC2 for proof of that), so we're STILL having
to make our own MUGEN chars for at least the next several years. ;)

Labels: DC vs Marvel