CYBERDAGGER'S PROFILE

author=LouisCyphre
That's in English. In moonspeak, Red is Red and Blue is Green.

And if you think that's confusing, don't even ask about Street Fighter.

Well, this is described as an anime special, so whatever it is, it's likely to be short. Still, great tales can be told quickly.

All in all, my reaction to this is pretty much this:

Well, the hat is within arm's reach. I guess it's close enough for its magical life support powers to work.

Ah, yes, Mugen. Japanese for infinity.

My gam mak endgame is pretty much making a fighting game (main reason for me to want to study animation, even), so of course I'd know about Mugen. I even made a stage for it once. It was pretty basic though, so I didn't bother releasing it.

It's a nice engine, though a bit archaic. Elecbyte's triumphant return was already a few years ago and Mugen 2.0 is still nowhere to be seen. Though I hear that the current build already supports zooming. Can anyone confirm this? EDIT: Saw vids of it in action. No confirmation needed.

As weird as this might seem, Mugen's greatest problem to me is how open it is. Adding characters being only a copy and paste job killed it as a serious engine. You see almost no games developed with it, but everyone and their cousins has a compilation of hundreds of characters from tens of sources that are in no way balanced against each other, making for a ridiculous mess. A Guilty Gear character will always beat a Street Fighter character because of its enormous agility advantage, and a Touhou character can throw projectiles in patterns impossible to dodge without their dash through projectiles mechanic. My point being, fighitng game characters are made to operate in a specific context, and taking them outside that context simply does not work.

Oh, and there is no AI problem to be fixed. It shouldn't be too hard to see why making an universal AI algorythm for fighting games is impossible. So of course the character's creator has to script it.

Then there's Enterbrain's alternative, Fighter Maker, from the time when they didn't know what a script was. Everything is done through menus and sliders and stuff, and I feel it limits its potential. Though, with Vanguard Princess being made in it by an ex-Capcom dude and actually being a good game, people went on to make Lunaport to be able to play it online. And Fighter Maker's greatest trump card was born, as Lunaport allows you to play not only Vanguard Princess online, but any game made with Fighter Maker. I've actually played some decent Fighter Maker made games, including Smogon's CAP fighter.

Mugen may be technically better by now, but Fighter Maker's online capabilities will always make it the better choice. A fighting game without multiplayer may as well not even exist. And with Mugen's current architecture, it's going to be a nightmare to implement any sort of online capabilities. How do you even make sure that both players are using the same build, with the same characters and stages. One more strike against Mugen's copy and paste architecture.

Lately, I've been paying attention to Fighter Creator. It looks like it has the potential to replace them both. Unfortunately, its development is slow as hell. It's all being made by just one guy, who will disappear without a trace for months, then pop up with some update that always feels like it's not enough. I'm having serious doubts as to whether it will actually be completed. Seems like it'll take developing my own engine to make a decent fighter...

And now, even though half of this post was me verbally trashing Mugen, I feel like trying to make a character for it. It'd probably be something like a boss remix of an already existing character if I went through with it. I really don't feel like spriting an entire character from scratch right now.

P.S. - Rare Akuma is hilarious.

What kind of demon possessed Photoshop do you have that merges layers without you specifically telling it to do so?

Why is it okay to call something a song if it's 100% instrumental?