I'm buying TGF2 at the begining of April, so I'm playing with the demo right now.
I want to make my own beat-em-up engine, but I don't wanna just copy someone elses work from an open source engine file, that kinda defeats the purpose. Any ideas?
The best way in my opinion, to start out... would be to completely skip trying to get used to the default movements, and get a head start on custom movement.
http://www.create-games.com/article.asp?id=1641 There are plenty of great custom movement articles out there, this just happens to be one that I wrote a while back.
Custom movement, when stripped down to it's pure basics, is nothing but moving an object around by adding to it's current position. My article goes over this very well, and once you learn how to do that... you will quickly learn, how to do the rest.
Now that was pretty helpful as far as getting my character to way right, and not look like some kinda clumbsy robot when he moves, but is there further reading on the subject of beat em ups?
"What kind of fighting game are you making? I've made all kinds in the past - 1 on 1's, scrolling, "Double Dragon" style types etc."
Yeah the basic Double Dragon style.
There was a game on Genesis "Last Battle" it was the kid friendly version of "Hokuto no Ken 2" the game was a good idea, but horridly executed, while the concept of the game was appealing, the gameplay is like being violated by a circus clown.
I want to make a game based on the source material but done with a DD style engine(and my own rendered graphics of course), where you go punch>punch>punch>knock down blow, I played a Double Dragon remake done by that guy who made those "Haunted Castle" remakes, and it was fantastic! I especially loved the blood effect when you threw a bladed weapon and it hits someone.
though since it's gonna be based on HNK or Fist of the North Star as the anime is known in the states, when the badguy runs out of energry, instead of just falling over and greying out, he goes flying back a few feet then explodes into a gory mess.
Sounds good! I've been playing some of the old scrolling fighters on Arcade MAME lately - Captain Commando, Final Fight, Crime Fighters etc. Double Dragon Advanced on GBA is pretty good too (shame it doesnt save high scores though)
Anyway, how many people are working on your game or are you attempting to do everything yourself? The combo system you mentioned "where you go punch>punch>punch>knock down blow" can be done in several ways and certain games have very different systems. In double Dragon or Crime Fighters for example, certain moves only work depending on what the enemy is doing in front of you. So you would need a collision marker overlapping them (invisible) in front of your character and only if your character was facing towards them +enemy "injured" or "crouching down" was playing THEN your attack would be "Uppercut/Finishing move"
There are some games that just cycle through moves of course (which is easy enough to do) or moves that can be varied depending on joypad direction pressed too. I expect you will want grabs and throws in there too, right? And ability to throw enemy into each other is always fun
Maybe I can show you some of my work sometime, lemme know if you are interested I can send something on MSN or whatever.
it's just lil old me doing the work, but yeah getting some examples would be of some help! I got high speed internet so you can email stuff to me if ya want, I don't use MSN.