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The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter (Read 16548 times)

Started by Bluekuma, August 07, 2021, 01:10:02 pm
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Bluekuma

The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#1  August 07, 2021, 01:10:02 pm
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I’ve been in the mugen/ikemen community for a very long time and had many great moments with a lot of the community. I saw a lot of great projects and tons of improvements to the character sprites, stages, and overall quality. But there has been one thing that most creators still slightly struggle to this date. Hitboxes and hurtboxes. It seems like, unless you datamine the hitboxes or know how they are supposed to work, most creators make hitboxes and hurtboxes that make no sense, and it can hurt the quality overall. I’ve want to know how you guys truly feel about creators hitboxes/hurtboxes and how they match with the source materials. There will be videos of hitboxes from games like Sf4, ssf2t, KOF98UM, and SFV as an example.









YouTube playlist displaying a bunch of other games/styles
 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAEDAFB9068FB7E58

And I will also provide the link of the cheatengine by JZ and Vans if anyone is interested into datamining.
https://github.com/Jesuszilla/cheatengine-scripts/tree/master
Last Edit: August 10, 2021, 03:04:28 pm by Bluekuma

Kolossoni

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#2  August 07, 2021, 04:16:03 pm
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Great for reference. Thanks a ton.

I always get confused if I should limit myself to 3 hurtboxes or just stick with 1.
I read somewhere that having too many hurtboxes during mid-air hitstate actually causes more problems so I tried fixing that...

Hitboxes are always a hassle nonetheless :P

Bluekuma

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#3  August 07, 2021, 07:31:23 pm
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Kolossoni said, August 07, 2021, 04:16:03 pm
Great for reference. Thanks a ton.

I always get confused if I should limit myself to 3 hurtboxes or just stick with 1.
I read somewhere that having too many hurtboxes during mid-air hitstate actually causes more problems so I tried fixing that...

Hitboxes are always a hassle nonetheless :P

No problem bro, glad this helps you out a lot!

KarmaCharmeleon

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#4  August 07, 2021, 08:07:23 pm
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Bluekuma said, August 07, 2021, 01:10:02 pm
I’ve want to know how you guys truly feel about creators hitboxes/hurtboxes and how they match with the source materials.
I either datamined my hitboxes and hurtboxes or redesigned them by referencing source and following CvS2. Same with movement.

I think this topic heart is in the right place but there's a major flaw that many people have when not only designing boxes, but even discussing them, and that is context. You can't design a box by just looking at the sprite alone. You have to design the boxes by thinking of them on the context of the move they're attached to. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if it comes at frame 4 rather than coming at frame 12, or frame 18, or frame 32. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if the attack in question is +6 rather than being -1, -6, -12, -18. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if input is 2C rather than being DP, RDP, HCB, or 360.

Hitboxes, frame data, motions, meter needed, all of those things are part of a move. And a move it's a part of a character. Context matters. You wouldn't give a charge character the same normals as you would give a motion characters. You wouldn't give a mixup character the same normals as you would give a zoner character, or a balance character, or a grappler.

Another aspect that I think it's worth bringing up is that different games follow different rules when designing hurtboxes/hitboxes. Weapon based fighters are prone to have more disjointed hitboxes, for example. Anime games that empathize rushdown and gimmicks a lot more tend to be more liberal with how they design hitboxes and hurtboxes. You don't need to extend the hurtboxes for long periods of time if your goal is not to make a gameplay that doesn't intend to have a heavy emphasis on whiff punishing.

Amidweiz

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#5  August 07, 2021, 08:38:00 pm
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There is also the ancient tutorial made by K.O.D. back in the day though the main legacy issue that is brought up in said tutorial is that of autoCLSN (a fighter factory classic feature) and how it generates a mess of hitboxes as well as "infinite priority" lack or absence of blue hitboxes for the red hitboxes, causing ones normal to be unpunishable to a degree. People mainly did that either if they didn't know any better or on a weapon since mugen doesn't really have a clash hitbox (which one could probably make a state like that with ikemen GO plus and it's redirectID's) so it was assumed that hitboxes on them shouldn't have them, since if your bring IRL context into it, said user does not metaphysically get hurt if a sword gets hit.

There was also a hitbox discussion like this four years ago.
Last Edit: August 07, 2021, 08:44:33 pm by Amidweiz

extravagant

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#6  August 07, 2021, 08:38:42 pm
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I totally agree with KC.

If anybody out there wants to design their own hitboxes, before they even learn the art of drawing their own CLSNs, they have to at least learn the foundation of datamining first before drifting away from the nucleus. This is to 1) educate oneself and 2) get experience in this art. And simply looking at the SRK wiki isn't enough, SRK wiki only provides active hitting boxes, but they don't provide ANY data for frames when you dash, run, gethits, punishing/recovery frames, etc

And it's true; some attacks where you may think the CLSNs should be aligned to what visually appears on the sprite, is not always as it may seem. Sometimes, the CLSNs are not even aligned to that character's punch or kick. Take Rock's j.MK in CvS2 for example. It was designed for functionality over visuals. And this is only basically scraping the surface. There's a lot more stuff you find along the way.

Just my opinion of course.
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Bluekuma

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#7  August 07, 2021, 08:41:20 pm
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KarmaCharmeleon said, August 07, 2021, 08:07:23 pm
Bluekuma said, August 07, 2021, 01:10:02 pm
I’ve want to know how you guys truly feel about creators hitboxes/hurtboxes and how they match with the source materials.
I either datamined my hitboxes and hurtboxes or redesigned them by referencing source and following CvS2. Same with movement.

I think this topic heart is in the right place but there's a major flaw that many people have when not only designing boxes, but even discussing them, and that is context. You can't design a box by just looking at the sprite alone. You have to design the boxes by thinking of them on the context of the move they're attached to. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if it comes at frame 4 rather than coming at frame 12, or frame 18, or frame 32. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if the attack in question is +6 rather than being -1, -6, -12, -18. A hitbox won't be the same size nor will have the same priority if input is 2C rather than being DP, RDP, HCB, or 360.

Hitboxes, frame data, motions, meter needed, all of those things are part of a move. And a move it's a part of a character. Context matters. You wouldn't give a charge character the same normals as you would give a motion characters. You wouldn't give a mixup character the same normals as you would give a zoner character, or a balance character, or a grappler.

Another aspect that I think it's worth bringing up is that different games follow different rules when designing hurtboxes/hitboxes. Weapon based fighters are prone to have more disjointed hitboxes, for example. Anime games that empathize rushdown and gimmicks a lot more tend to be more liberal with how they design hitboxes and hurtboxes. You don't need to extend the hurtboxes for long periods of time if your goal is not to make a gameplay that doesn't intend to have a heavy emphasis on whiff punishing.

Lots of very solid points and I agree with all of this.

Bluekuma

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#8  August 07, 2021, 08:43:00 pm
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Amidweiz said, August 07, 2021, 08:38:00 pm
There is also the ancient tutorial made by K.O.D. back in the day though the main legacy issue that is brought up in said tutorial is that of autoCLSN (a fighter factory classic feature) and how it generates a mess of hitboxes as well as "infinite priority" lack or absence of blue hitboxes for the red hitboxes, causing ones normal to be unpunishable to a degree.

There was also a hitbox discussion like this four years ago.

I remember this thread years ago, but I had to repost this topic because people still make the same mistakes.

D. HoChoy

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#9  August 07, 2021, 09:34:39 pm
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SFV has weird hurtboxes.

Bluekuma

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#10  August 10, 2021, 02:41:25 pm
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Bannana

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#11  August 14, 2021, 11:40:41 pm
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Just use common sense, every rule you can think of SNK probably broke

Bluekuma

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#12  August 16, 2021, 06:10:13 am
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Bannana said, August 14, 2021, 11:40:41 pm
Just use common sense, every rule you can think of SNK probably broke

I looked at KOF hitboxes recently and a lot of them are not too bad other than Chris’s air CD in 98 og. But that’s why I shown examples of games other than SF.

Bannana

Re: The Importance of Hitboxes/Hurtboxes and Why They Matter
#13  August 18, 2021, 09:20:44 pm
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Well they're not necessarily egregious, but when put up against the standards that Karma lays out, they tend to break a few of the general rules

By kof 98 SNK started diversifying their hitboxes because the characters had unique animations but in a mainline series like Fatal Fury they used standardized hitbox patterns for idle, movement, move startup and recovery, and for active frames the same general strategy for how limbs are covered is used: the end of a limb, a hand or a foot, is given no hurtbox.

In general the quality of the move is not as important. In some games DP is given properties based on the fact that it is a DP, but in some SNK games the DP properties are not inherently equal, Hon Fu's DP is better than everyone else's because the standardized hurtboxes on startup frames give him an advantage due to how his hitboxes for the active frames comes out


This is easily one of my favorite examples of SNK bullshit because they nerfed this move from FF3 to RB2 and it was still a god move purely based on the fact that they didn't balance it through changing the hitboxes, but through animation timings and removing the hard invulnerability it had on FF3 and RB.

Rules according to frames, being plus or not, these are not determined in these games. A move comes out to be plus after the fact, it isn't planned (if it were, Kevin's normals wouldn't be broken), so the hitboxes cannot be planned around these situations.
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