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Re: Karate Champ: Olympic Rematch (temp title)

 December 16, 2014, 05:22:33 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Karate Champ: Olympic Rematch (temp title) (Started by Balthazar November 08, 2014, 06:35:32 pm
 Board: Projects
Holy hell, that was five years ago?  Man, I am old.

I redid Karate Champ in Mugen, half a decade ago I guess.  I redid all the stages, and I was able to code the two-joystick controls.  You are free to use anything if it's any use to you, but I think that making this for a mobile platform is a much better idea, if you can.  I also used remixed Street Fighter II music, and you'd need permission for that.  I got it, though; Those OCRemix.org cats are very nice.

I can put up another link to the project if they're all down and there's any interest...
    

Re: On Progress - Updated 9/21/14

 September 21, 2014, 11:24:02 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Progress - Updated 9/21/14 (Started by Liquid Jake April 01, 2011, 04:54:49 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
Quadruple post, because I'm that cool.

I'm still here, still working on it, and I updated the first post!
    

Re: On Progress - Updated 7/15/14

 July 15, 2014, 08:47:21 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Progress - Updated 9/21/14 (Started by Liquid Jake April 01, 2011, 04:54:49 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
I really am working on this.  Please don't send me down to the Inactive Pit.  I'm pretty sure Iced yells "This is Mugen!" and then kicks me in a hole.  That's how it works, right?

I live in fear that, somewhere in the shadows nearby, Warner Bros is just waiting to jump out and get mad at me.  I have an obscene amount of time invested in this, now, and I'd hate to have to go back and change all the names to something, you know, not totally stolen.  But I am still plugging away, and we're really close now, too.

Because I want you to feel sorry for me, I guess, here's a screen-cap of my working conditions.  You can count the open programs in the task bar (or I can tell you that there's four) and you can see how devastating it is to this machine.  It's crawling with toolbars and adware and crap that comes with every free download my kids go after, and although the kids seem pretty receptive to the whole "just say no" campaign, I'm having a hell of a time getting "just click no" to sink in.



I'm thinking about formatting everything and installing Win95 with Internet Explorer 3.  Then not updating anything, ever.  I bet if they couldn't play flash games or watch Youtube videos, they'd probably leave this computer alone.

It's just a thought...
    

On Diamonds...

 July 15, 2014, 08:15:48 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Diamonds... (Started by Liquid Jake July 15, 2014, 08:15:48 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
Six years ago my wife and I bought the house we're in now.  When we moved in the lady we bought it from and several of our new neighbors told us to be wary of the old man next door.  He's a cranky, mean old guy, they told us.  And by the way; he's famous.

My kids met him first.  They were picking apples from a tree that grows out of his yard but reaches over ours.  He hobbled over to them and asked what they were doing, and who they were.  He told me later that he could tell that they wanted to run, but they didn't.  They introduced themselves.  He was impressed that my daughter knew what her name meant, and that my son, only three at the time, was so willing to protect his older sister.  He never appeared to any of us as the crotchety miser we were warned about; He was friendly and chatty and probably just lonely.  His name was Dave Diamond, and he was a retired professor from our local university.  But before that, a long time ago, he was a DJ in Los Angeles in the sixties.

Walking into Dave's house was like walking into some sort of personal museum.  He has gold records he's produced or written songs for on the wall, on plaques.  Evidently those things are real.  There's a little thank you card in a frame, and it's signed by Elvis.  There's another frame with a note saying "Too bad you couldn't make it, parties aren't the same without you.  Next time!"  It's signed by Frank Sinatra.  There's a black and white photo of five goofy young guys with shaggy hair cuts and one with thick glasses.  It takes a second to recognize four of them as The Beatles, and the one in glasses as Dave.

Holy shit, this guy is famous.

Dave Diamond was one of the first American DJs to play the Beatles, and they would later thank him for it by inviting him to tour with them.  He found The Doors playing clubs in LA and got them signed to a recording contract.  He wrote songs with Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson and Janis Joplin before any of them were famous.  He was in the thick of the hippy era, right there on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and he was spinning the records that would spin the world.  Then he retired, and got into teaching. 

And when he retired from that, he was the old guy in the house next door.

He'd wave me over while I was outside and we'd sit on his front porch with whiskey and cigars and he'd tell me stories about people and events that I had read about, from the perspective of someone who was there.  He told me several times how cool he thought my kids were.  I told him once about the video game I was making, and I asked him if he'd be willing to voice a character.  I knew he wouldn't be shy staring down a microphone, and he said he'd be thrilled.

What silly character does one give to a rock-radio icon?  I'd feel like an idiot asking him to fake a British accent, or correcting his pronunciation of made-up magic spells.  Maybe the Sorting Hat, I thought; The ring announcer.  Whatever, I told myself.  One day soon, when I've got a few minutes, I'll dig out my digital recorder and run next door and have a few drinks with Dave and we'll record his voice.  I'll get to put his name in the credits of my ridiculous Mugen project, and my world will be a better place for it.

The other day, we went to Dave Diamond's funeral.  I never did record him.

I tell this downer story because there's a lesson here that I've learned and applied to this project that is probably equally applicable to other parts of my life, too, and maybe to yours; Don't wait.  If you have a plan for something that excites you, or makes you smile, don't wait for some mythical right moment.  Do it, act on it, say it, write it, paint it, record it; Whatever.  A good idea is a good idea, and there are worse things than being impetuous.  And you might not get another chance.

Not even Diamonds are forever.

    

On catastrophic computer failure...

 July 10, 2014, 09:00:58 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On catastrophic computer failure... (Started by Liquid Jake July 10, 2014, 09:00:58 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
I didn't lose anything, don't get nervous.

I found the Mugen community and this forum seven years ago, because I'm a conceited jerk and I wanted to put myself in a Mortal Kombat game, and this seemed like a good way to do it.  I lurked around the Guild and watched and read and learned and quickly came to an unarguable conclusion;

The Computer Gods hate Mugen.

It seemed like every few weeks someone would show up here with great ideas and grand visions and they'd beg for help and they'd raise support and generate hype and put up a few awesome screenshots or a couple fascinating Youtube videos, and then they'd come back and say that their computer crashed and they'd lost everything.  Once or twice would have been understandable, but again, every few weeks for seven years.  That sounded like a lot of computers failing for no reason, and I kind of wanted to raise my bullshit flag and call these people lazy quitters.  But I didn't.  Until just now, anyway.

Three years ago I got a shiny new HP laptop for Father's Day.  It was my first real honest-to-goodness new computer.  I've had several computers, but they're always machines that I've built myself, out of parts and pieces that were often bought used or just lying around.  That was also just about the time I started this silly project.  It took me awhile to get used to Mugen on a high-def widescreen monitor, but I managed to suffer through and persevere, and I banged away on that thing for the last three years.

My first new computer is also my first computer to fail for no reason.  Just a black screen on boot one day, and a Google search from a different machine says that's not all that uncommon with HP laptops.  Crap.

As the reigning nerd king I already own enough cords and cables and adapters to plug anything in my house into just about anything else in my house, so I now type this on the old desktop that my kids play on, with the laptop's hard drive hanging off the front of it.  Again, I've lost nothing, but this machine is now about as disease-laden as Miley Cyrus' hot-tub, and it's awfully damn slow.  However, there is a certain sense of unity in finishing my Hogwarts project on the machine I started it on and, for the record, it's glorious to see my Mugen creation in its native resolution;  It's so much prettier when it's full-screen.

I bring this up just so I can take back all the bad things I didn't say;  I'm sorry I doubted you, sufferers of failed machines, but your devices failed for no reason and you lost all your hard work and one thing, at the end, is crystal clear:

The Computer Gods hate Mugen.
    

The rest of the stages

 July 10, 2014, 08:06:50 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Stages (Started by Liquid Jake December 09, 2010, 08:51:37 pm
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
I participated in the 2013 stage contest and got great feedback on not only my own work, but everyone else's entry, too.  Flush with new knowledge of what makes a stage cool, I was inspired to redo most of them.

Plus, I was really bored.

They've all been tweaked and played with some, and they're now all really and truly finished.  Here are the places you haven't seen:


The Room of Requirement.  This was a lot of fun to make.  There's a ton of crap in there, and it's moving at different delta values so there's a good sense of depth.


The Potions Classroom.  Slughorn runs back and forth, tinkering and sniffing his potions.


The Grounds.  Completely redone, totally different.


The Kitchen.  There's house elves goddamn everywhere.  It's a busy place, but I hope it doesn't lag on a slow machine.  Can stages do that?


The Forbidden Forest.  Lots of fluttering leaves and stuff, and a centaur marching around in the background.  He's behind the bushes, but from the right spots you can see him.
    

Re: On Progress - Updated 3/15/14

 March 15, 2014, 07:43:28 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Progress - Updated 9/21/14 (Started by Liquid Jake April 01, 2011, 04:54:49 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942


So now there's a combo font.  I can't get beyond 2-hits, but it'll count up to six, and it's no longer the Mugen default.  Hooray!

Beyond that, sill sorting spells and their sparkly effects.  We're close, real close, and then I can brag about it.
    

Re: On Progress - Updated 12/29/13

 January 01, 2014, 09:06:43 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Progress - Updated 9/21/14 (Started by Liquid Jake April 01, 2011, 04:54:49 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
Another example of finishing one thing only opening more things up:  Inspired by that picture I posted back in post 1, I went back to the Avis spell, which conjures birds.  Now, if you're on fire and you conjure the birds that buzz around your head until you get hit, the birds catch on fire.



That means when casting Oppugno in such a condition, you shoot flaming birds.  Flaming birds hit you opponent, and then they catch on fire.  This never happened in any book or movie, but it sure looks cool.

That counts for something, right?
    

Re: Gameplay

 December 30, 2013, 05:44:42 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Gameplay (Started by Liquid Jake December 08, 2010, 08:53:58 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
No, it has not been abandoned.  I still plug an unreasonable amount of time into this, but this part of the process is horribly boring.  Everything I do, every step towards completion, just makes clear a whole bunch of other crap that now has to be dealt with. 



You see that?  That's what I did today.  Initially, Peeves would show up above Player2.  He'd just fade in from the background, in a puff of smoke.  Then he'd bob up and down for a second, then he'd laugh, then he'd throw tomatoes at the players.  4 tomatoes, helpers, tossed in 4 random diagonally-down directions.  Then he'd vanish.  Whoo hoo, right? 

A round is 88 seconds by the hourglass, and in it's default form the Random Encounter code may or may not toss someone else on the screen every 25 seconds or so.  No more than three in a round.  Maybe one of the four house ghosts, maybe Zonko and her joke box, maybe Peeves and his tomatoes.  That's well and good, but I've been playing in what's been noted in the .CNS as "Chaos Mode;"  The Random Encounter generator trips every fifteen or twenty game ticks.  Twice a second.  I really like this, and I have a hard time turning it back to "normal."  It's ridiculous, really; Way too frenzied for a fighting game and a really long round is still over in thirty seconds, because inevitably Zonko's box will kill someone.  Or, once he was coded, Peeves and his goddamn tomatoes would show up and mow everyone down.  It was too much, too hard.  I didn't like Peeves, and my kids didn't like him, and what was supposed to be a cute little addition, practically nothing, was ruining the game.

So, today, with some time to spend on this silly game, I had to once again go back and recode something that I thought was done:  Peeves.  Which brings us back to that picture up above.  Peeves now comes from behind Player 2, laughing and giggling as he floats across the top of the screen and drops his stupid tomatoes straight down.  The coding to get him to do that is way simpler than what it was before, the animations are smaller, the sprites used are much less.  So, in the end, it's all been good and I'm glad I re-did Peeves, because...

...wait a minute...

That picture above shows Player 1 on fire.  Spells can do that, as can Zonko's box sometimes.  An on-fire character has to either get hit with an ice or water spell, or jump to the top of the screen.  Y < -300, or something like that.  But, at just the right moment, Peeves is strolling across the top of the screen, tossing his damn salad.  And he's hittable, because I hate him so much now.  Player 1 smashes into Peeves and is rocketed back down towards the floor where he smashes into one of those stupid floating boxes that Zonko leaves behind as she runs across the bottom of the screen.

You see those nonsensical symbols over on the left?  Those pinkish-grey letters?  Yeah, that's the Elecbyte default Combo Counter sliding out.  You can't actually do combos, at least not with spells, and there are no melee moves.  So I've never even looked at the Combo Counter.  I've never even thought about it.  Until today, when I was bouncing my happy ass all over the screen thanks to Random Encounters that I frankly thought I was done with a long time ago.  I fixed Peeves, and now I have to fix combos.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

I know now why there are so few fullgames in the Mugen world.  I know now why professional developers are not one guy with an idea, but a whole team.  And I know now why playtesters actually make money playing video games yet complain about their job.  It's because this is brutally, mind-numbingly tedious and small tweaks at one point become huge and unforeseen issues later on.  The best we can do is to trudge along, dealing with what comes up.

So that's what I'm doing.

Still.
    

Re: Gameplay

 September 16, 2013, 02:34:22 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Gameplay (Started by Liquid Jake December 08, 2010, 08:53:58 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942


Peeves is hittable.

Little bastard...
    

Re: Characters

 September 16, 2013, 02:25:52 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Characters (Started by Liquid Jake December 08, 2010, 08:25:14 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942


Me again.

This is already a fairly old image, but I'm not sure if I've shown it off here before.  It's a win screen.  The portrait fades in from a blank background, and astute viewers might catch my shout to Cyanide. 

"For special service to the school."
    

Re: Is this FightFX file too big?

 August 25, 2013, 10:06:35 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Is this FightFX file too big? (Started by Liquid Jake August 25, 2013, 08:40:29 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Development Help
Awesome, thanks so much.
    

Is this FightFX file too big?

 August 25, 2013, 08:40:29 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in Is this FightFX file too big? (Started by Liquid Jake August 25, 2013, 08:40:29 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Development Help
My fullgame fightfx.sff file is now around 1200 sprites.  I have yet to go through my cns files to recode everything to the new anim numbers, but this is a fairly new computer anyway.  Is this too big?  Will it cause problems on older machines?
    

Re: Stage Creation Competition 2013

 July 29, 2013, 08:03:17 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in  Stage Creation Competition 2013 - Results Revealed (Started by ExShadow June 06, 2013, 04:29:30 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Discussion
I can't believe how often I'm checking this thread...
    

Re: On Progress - Updated 7/19/13

 July 19, 2013, 07:45:22 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in On Progress - Updated 9/21/14 (Started by Liquid Jake April 01, 2011, 04:54:49 am
 Board: Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942
Since I'm here, I thought I'd share what I'm up to:  I HATE THIS.

Okay, not really, but where I am now is really really boring, and there seems to be no end to it.  One hundred and five spells, counting every level and the unique-to-character specials, and most of them were done as projectiles when I decided that they should be helpers instead.  So one hundred and five spells were redone with basic yellow sparks in the fightfx file, assuming I'd go back later and make them pretty and unique.  So one hundred and five spells were redone with pretty yellow sparks in the fightfx file, assuming I'd go back later and use palfx to change the pretty yellow sparks to pretty colorful sparks.  Then I learn that you can't palfx the fightfx.  Oh, super.  So, in the interest of overall size, I've decided it's better to put all the sparks in the fightfx, in four different colors, then it would be to put all the yellow sparks in the sff files of thirteen characters, and palfx them from there.  I went to public school, but that seems like good math to me.

Which means going back through one hundred and five spells and hammering out code.  Again.  For sparks.  Which, by now, is redundant and boring.

This is not an inactive project, by any means.   But at the moment, it's not a very exciting project, either.  I understand why games are developed by huge teams of minions, working full days:  BECAUSE MOST OF IT IS MIND-NUMBING CRAP.  But I have huge respect for everyone who's actually completed a project.  Hell, for anyone who's completed anything.  And my kids still like to play around with this game, Tom versus Tom, even though most of the sparks are still just yellow.

So the magic continues...
    

Re: Stage Creation Competition 2013

 July 19, 2013, 07:24:29 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in  Stage Creation Competition 2013 - Results Revealed (Started by ExShadow June 06, 2013, 04:29:30 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Discussion
I just read this whole thread and it's almost... sad.  There seemed to be a lot of heartfelt trash-talk early on, for roughly half the players seeing it through.

I've never really had feedback on anything.  To the Judges; Please be brutal, it's how I learn.  Plus, I'm shallow and you're not really going to hurt my feelings.

Congrats and respect to everyone who actually turned something in!
    

River City Ransom's Waterfront Mall

 July 16, 2013, 11:15:25 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in River City Ransom's Waterfront Mall (Started by Liquid Jake July 16, 2013, 11:15:25 am
 Board: Your Releases, Mugen 1.0 +
This is my entry for the 2013 contest.   It's the Waterfront Mall, from River City Ransom.










The daytime, the first picture, is my entry.  I made In The Rain and At Night versions too, because it was fun.

This was all an elaborate ploy to use Mazedude's River City Rammstein somewhere in Mugen, because the tune is that damn good.  Check his stuff out at www.mazedudemusic.com.

I had a lot of fun making this, and I think I may have accidentally learned a thing or two.  Thanks for checking it out, and best of luck to everyone who enters this year.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ucsfdhuhpien1ow
    

Re: Stage Creation Competition 2013

 July 16, 2013, 11:06:50 am View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in  Stage Creation Competition 2013 - Results Revealed (Started by ExShadow June 06, 2013, 04:29:30 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Discussion
And I'm done...

http://www.mediafire.com/?ucsfdhuhpien1ow

Waterfront.def being my official entry, but it also includes At Night and In The Rain versions that were sort of fun to make, but have no bearing on this contest.

I'm also bragging it up in the Releases section.

Thanks, and best of luck to all!

    

Re: Stage Creation Competition 2013

 June 27, 2013, 08:42:23 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in  Stage Creation Competition 2013 - Results Revealed (Started by ExShadow June 06, 2013, 04:29:30 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Discussion
I volunteer!

I'm star-struck and intimidated by the list of contenders, but I wish to be a part of it.
    

Re: Stage Creation Competition 2013

 June 18, 2013, 07:35:53 pm View in topic context
 Posted by Liquid Jake  in  Stage Creation Competition 2013 - Results Revealed (Started by ExShadow June 06, 2013, 04:29:30 pm
 Board: M.U.G.E.N Discussion
Can I enter?  Are there participation criteria?
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