Parasite says, "What's new on the menu?"
Friday, May 17, 2013
Someone mentioned last week in the comments to my previous post that they're excited to see if I add support for any new DC/Marvel characters to Parasite. At first, I kind of mentally resisted the idea, thinking that I had a huge list of buggy & incomplete moves to finish before I think about anything new.
And that's true. BUT...
This isn't a promise that I'm going to actually implement any new power sets, but I'm asking you all to comment below: what's new and cool in the past few years in the DC/Marvel MUGEN world? Also, what characters have you downloaded that you think Parasite should already support, and doesn't? (for example, I'm pretty sure if I tried to power drain Verz & Loganir's new Astonishing Cyclops that I wouldn't actually get a Cyclops power set in return)
As a reminder, here's his current 60 power sets (30 DC, 30 Marvel):
Parasite's power sets
| DC | MARVEL |
|---|---|
| Superman | Captain America |
| Batman | Savage Hulk |
| Wonder Woman | Thor |
| Flash | Spider-Man |
| GL | Iron Man |
| Ice | Crystal |
| Lobo | Sandman |
| Plastic Man | Wolverine |
| Etrigan | Carnage |
| Lex Luthor | Dr. Doom |
| Darkseid | Ghost Rider |
| Superboy | Strong Guy |
| Sinestro | Thanos |
| Bizarro | Deadpool |
| Aquaman | Juggernaut |
| Doomsday | Mr. Fantastic |
| Poison Ivy | Invisible Woman |
| The Atom | The Thing |
| Martian Manhunter | Human Torch |
| Shazam/Captain Marvel | Silver Surfer |
| Starfire | Venom |
| Bane | Cyclops |
| Eradicator | Elektra |
| Vixen | Nightcrawler |
| Mongul | Marrow |
| Red Lantern (Atrocitus) | Songbird |
| Agent Orange (Larfleeze) | Omega Red |
| Indigo Lantern | Rhino |
| Star Sapphire | Iceman |
| Black Lantern | Storm |
I've got room for 20 more from each side (not that I'm going to tackle 40 more, sheesh), so let the suggestions fly!
Labels: Parasite
Refocus (Maybe?)
Friday, May 10, 2013
It's no secret to anyone that I'm fighting a bad case of MUGEN burnout. I thought when I quit my job back in February to follow my passion and join an exciting new startup in Silicon Valley, I'd have way more free time for MUGEN and freelance game development than I did before. Turns out I've been so excited about the stuff we're building (hopefully more on that soon), that I haven't done much else, code-wise.
Plus, getting a house ready to sell is a HUGE time-sink.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I'm going to try something that I haven't attempted for a few years: making myself a blogging schedule.
Like here, my writing over on my other blog has crawled to a standstill, but like here, I want to keep blogging, and keep doing interesting work worth blogging about. Here's what I've started trying to do this week, after my sweetheart & kids are in bed (so far so good):
- Monday & Wednesday: MUGEN character work
- Tuesday & Thursday: Web work (mostly JavaScript game development lately)
- Friday: new post here on my MUGEN blog
- Saturday: new post on my Palagpat Coding
- Sunday: rest
So, with that bit of site news out of the way, what did I work on this week? Two words: Parasite bugs. Namely, play testing the most current version of his code, identifying issues, and starting to fix them. He's slowly but surely getting better, which makes me happy.
I've also got an idea for a new Spoiler Alert (if you remember that old feature of the blog, you've been around here a while), inspired by my going to see the awesome Iron Man 3 with my comic-loving kids last weekend. I think it'll be fun. :)
Doucheness
Friday, February 22, 2013
So I got a message from a friend the other day, talking about how mistreated he felt he'd been on a prominent MUGEN forum he helped to promote and popularize.
I can't say I was surprised, knowing what I do about the guys that call the shots over there, but it still gives me a headache.
I think part of the reason I haven't been active in the MUGEN community for a while now is because of exactly this sort of drama. Why is it that the Internet amplifies people's bad characteristics? I mean, have you ever met a person in real life that behaves half as badly as a YouTube comment troll?
Anyway, I won't name names, but the forum formerly linked in my sidebar, which was only there for the sake of my friend, has been removed. It's the least I could do.
On a happier note -- it looks like I'll be having more free time to work on Parasite and Mandarin soon. So there's that to look forward to. :)
New Year, New Focus
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
So...
2012 wasn't much of a year for me, MUGEN-wise.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm proud of what McCready and I accomplished with the Strong Guy revamp, but that was about it, wasn't it?
We didn't even give you the traditional 12 Days of Christmas, which I know probably disappointed some of you. I'm really sorry about that one.
There are plenty of reasons why, but the most important can all be boiled down to one simple truism: there is paid work, and there is unpaid work, and if I have to choose between them, I prefer to get paid.
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying I want people to pay me to release characters from my "secret hoard." Understand me clearly: no such hoard exists. Even long-in-development Scruffy characters like War Machine aren't sitting in a folder somewhere, waiting for some arbitrary brown-nosing quota from our fans. They're just unfinished and unpolished, and if there's one thing Scruffy has tried to stand for over the years, it's quality.
I'm also not saying that I won't do fan / for-fun projects anymore. That's clearly not the case, because last year saw the release of Infinite Dungeon, my love letter to the original Legend of Zelda game.
The truth is that I've spent most of the past year trying to improve my skills in my core area of interest: the creation of JavaScript-powered web games. For years, Flash and other browser plugins have been the platform of choice for that sort of thing, but the technologies collectively known as HTML5 are starting to change that. So I've been tinkering a lot in that space, and even though I have 15 years of experience in normal development, professional game dev is something I've wanted to do since I was a kid with the family ColecoVision, so it feels fresh and new to me in a way that a lot of modern web development doesn't.
So, what's a MUGEN creator with HTML5 gaming aspirations to do? My current answer looks like it's going to be a little side project I'm calling Fenjin.
Stay tuned for details; I'll try to blog more about this soon. Meanwhile, if you're on Github, you may want to watch this repository.
Labels: 12 Days of Christmas, Meta, news
What's Next? (Part 2 of 2)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
I got some good response to Part 1 of my "what's left to do with my MUGEN characters" update. Here's the rest.
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- need to incorporate SethZ's balance/changes
- New/improved moves:
- Gamma Tornado (spin-around-the-head throw)
- Counter
- Gamma Charge
- Push-block
- Tank Smash hyper -- Hulk reaches offscreen, grabs the barrel of a nearby tank, and starts beating the snot out of P2
- Hulk Crush -- Hulk superjumps off screen, grabs a passing jet, and drops it on his opponent (MASSIVE damage, MONSTROUS lag)
- Skulk Smash! (Amalgam hyper)
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- I've got a bunch of stuff finished that I haven't released yet:
- added taunt
- added fwd/back jumps
- tweaked FX for strong standing punch
- tweaked strong standing kick damage (does more with construct)
- added weak & medium crouching punches
- tweaked crouching strong punch (adjusted hitspark, added construct effect)
- tweaked weak air punch (more damage with construct, less vertical bounce)
- added construct effects to air punches
- added superjump follow to launcher (press up immediately after hitting)
- added collision boxes to Deadly Stare ending
- lose/draw game anims
- one or two more intros:
- re-create his first oath scene from Sinestro Corps War #1
- vs Hal, Guy, John, Kyle, etc
- a couple of outros
- stand & laugh
- custom gethits
- shocked
- burned
- stoned
- frozen
- fix SFF issues with linked images
- basic attacks:
- some attacks still need powered-up alternate versions with constructs
- weak & medium crouching punches
- crouching kicks
- air kicks
- add missing weak & medium crouching kicks
- at least one throw
- special attacks to be done
- Morningstar
- Armored Assault (low-damage Psycho Crusher style move)
- hyper attacks
- Sinestro Corps Attack!
- Parallax Unleashed
- Master of Fear (yellow core hyper assist)
- bugs to fix
- hair gray streak in most palettes should be toned down
- teeth in most sprites should be white, not yellow/green/gray
- falling axes in Fall Before Me don't have hitsparks
- some moves need collision boxes (so he's less cheap):
- standing medium & strong kicks
- strong air kick
- some construct sprites need to be folded into the core palette so they can be recolored
- medium & strong crouching kick are too similar
- Hmm. Me am totally sure about this guy!
- Seriously. I have no solid plans yet, only that I know he's not done yet. Any suggestions?
- Like Bizarro, Wally needs more specials & hypers, but I honestly haven't thought much about the movelist yet. Thoughts?
I hope to have some new screenshots to show off soon.
Labels: Bizarro, Flash, Savage Hulk, Sinestro
What's Next? (Part 1 of 2)
Friday, October 12, 2012
So this took me a while to get back to. Sorry, I'm kinda preoccupied with things I'm not prepared to talk about here (yet).
Anyway.
As Acey predicted in the comments on my last post, my enthusiasm for MUGEN creation has returned this week, at least in part because I had to go and test all of my unfinished characters so I could write this post about what they still need. So without further ado, here's the first part of the list (more coming soon; I have a few characters still to evaluate):
- I'm pretty happy with him as he is. I just went back and added a Black Lantern power set to Parasite (see that below), and the test fights I staged between those two were a ton of fun. This is probably the creation I'm proudest of (well, Luthor is probably a close second :) ).
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- intros
- "Skrullektra" (a la Secret Invasion)
- vs Daredevil
- vs Wolverine
- vs Catwoman
- winposes
- add transition frames to current turn-and-pose
- take a cue from Marrow's "perfect" winpose (sai throw at screen)
- basics
- swap medium & strong standing punches
- animate / tweak vertical jump
- strong standing kick
- crouching medium punch / medium kick
- weak air punch / air kick
- special attacks
- air sai throw
- spin kick (like chun-li's)
- hyper attacks
- finish Death's Touch (hyper sai throw): better FX, knock-back, recovery time, etc
- finish Ninjitsu (Parasite's version is better right now)
- Focused Chi - temporarily boost damage, speed, and reduce damage taken
- Inner Calm - temporarily raise attack damage
- Catsai & Dare (Amalgam hyper)
- Blackest Night Hal basically has all the Green Lantern stuff — with SethZankuten's balance tweaks to boot — so I'm not going to do anything else to this old version.
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- finish Iceberg (Amalgam) hyper
- Pillar of Ice hyper
- Fire & Ice team hyper
(I'm taking my cue for her movelist from Avengers Alliance; there are a ton of great ideas in that game, and if you're not playing it, you should be)
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Basics
- her stance and jump anims should be redone
- standing medium/hard punch & kick
- all crouching attacks
- air medium/hard punch & kick
- One or more throw(s)
- Specials
- Change Bubble to be more like Force Spheres (Avengers Alliance move)
- Force Field
- Hypers
- Rename Bubble Storm to Force Volley (and tweak it for better FX)
- Force Cage (Avengers Alliance move)
- Fantasticar charge? (meh, maybe not...)
- Required sprites
- her get-hits / being thrown sprites need quite a bit of polish. -_-
- Custom intros
- vs Dr. Doom
- vs Namor
- vs Reed
- vs Johnny
- vs Ben
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- I'd like to add a few more helper characters to the Personal Superhero hyper, for non-Orange Lantern palettes (e.g. Bizarro, Mercy Graves, maybe Luthor-Superboy or Everyman)
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Lobo the Duck (Amalgam) hyper
- more intros & winposes, maybe...
- Basics still missing
- fwd/back jumps
- standing medium punch
- weak & medium standing kick
- all air & crouching basics =P
- finish the rest of the get-hits
- Specials
- freezing ray -- stand = freezes
- electro blast -- stand = shocks
- flare burst -- crouch = burns
- holographic illusions = creates 2 doppelgangers...the 3 attack (the real one that hits is determined by button)
- light blast -- stand = knocks P2 back to the wall
- sonic wave -- air = makes P2 dizzy
- teleport
- solidify gas = rocks appear on air and fall (different distances)
- force field generator = superblock, repels P2
- Hypers
- Mental Paralysis.... hyper level 1, stand, = paralyzes P2 and hits him on walls and floor
- black light.... hyper level 1 = screen goes dark(palfx) and mandarin gets in custom combo mode
- desintegration beam.... hyper level 3 = big beam
- vortex ring (flight).... flight mode
- force blast.... hyper level 1, stand, air = hit w/ knockback
- magnetic waves.... hyper level 1 = like Magneto's
- poison gas.... hyper level 1 = P2 loses energy by degrees
(Most of this movelist was actually planned out by McCready a looooong time ago)
- I still want to replace her sprites and recode her moves, but realistically, I think this may not happen. -_-
- MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
- Then, it's all about the power sets!
- Flash: finish Speed Force hyper
- Lobo: Rotgut special
- Plastic Man: Stone Fists special
- Etrigan: Dancing Blazes hyper
- Darkseid: Omega Sanction hyper
- Aquaman: whale/shark summon hyper
- Doomsday: adaptive evolution special / asteroid smash hyper
- The Atom: Subatomic Adventure hyper
- Shazam: Electric charge special / lightning strike hyper
- Starfire: Koriand'r Special
- Bane: charging fist special / bat-breaker hyper
- Vixen: Elephant Charge hyper
- Mongul: Earthquake special / Mongul's Insanity hyper
- Orange Lantern: Orange Corps hyper
- Star Sapphire: Love Conquers All hyper
- Black Lantern: Corrupting Touch special / Lifeforce Boost hyper (DONE THIS WEEK, WOOHOO!)
- Hulk: Super Armor
- Thor: Mystic Rainfall hyper
- Spider-Man: finish/fix Maximum Spider hyper
- Iron Man: finish/fix Nano Assault hyper
- Crystal: Element Storm hyper
- Wolverine: Weapon X hyper
- Dr. Doom: finish/fix Photon Array hyper
- Thanos: Stone Walls hyper
- Juggernaut: Power Up hyper / Super Armor
- Mr. Fantastic: finish Elastic Slam special / Pliable Pounder hyper
- Venom: Venom Fang special / Death Bite hyper
- Nightcrawler: Triple Threat Teleport hyper
- Songbird: finish Decibel Barrage special / Shatter Scream hyper
- Rhino: Rampage hyper
- Storm: Lightning Storm hyper
- Daredevil: finish Radar Sense special / ??? hyper
- Nothing; I'm satisfied. :)
Stay tuned for part 2; I promise it won't take me 3 months to write it!
Labels: Blackest Night Hal, Elektra, Green Lantern, Ice, Invisible Woman, Lex Luthor, Lobo, Mandarin, Marrow, Parasite, Strong Guy
Standing Still, but Still Standing
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
So this post will come as no surprise to anyone who's still paying attention (is anyone still paying attention? I have no idea...). I've done virtually nothing MUGEN-related since releasing Strong Guy back in February. The reasons for this are too complicated (and, frankly, personal, so none of your business, dear readers) for me to go into here. Suffice it to say that I haven't felt inspired for a long while now.
I just popped in to the ScruffyDragon forum yesterday for the first time in a while (I drop in every week or two to check my private messages, but that's really been about it), and found what amounted to a flamewar between Magus and somebody that was asking, basically, where all the cool stuff was that we were supposedly working on. July has come and nearly gone with nary a sign of ScruffyVersary, and I'll admit that makes me sad. But not sad enough to kill myself to release stuff that gets very little attention, feedback, or gratitude, mind you.
That was the gist of Magus and this guy's dispute. Magus's argument boiled down to this, basically: why should we (the Scruffy Dragon team) kill ourselves to release stuff when only the smallest handful of people give us any kind of feedback at all, other than to say "meh, okay, what's next?" Of course the other guy misinterpreted him (Magus gets misinterpreted more than anyone else I know) as saying that people should be kissing our butts and paying us money to keep working on stuff. Um, no, that's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying, and I agree with it, is that quality MUGEN creation takes a TON of effort when done right, and most of us senior Dragons have lost sight of the fun. It's become a freaking JOB to maintain a quality pipeline of output, and when the job takes us away from our families, doesn't pay, and isn't fun anymore, why on earth should we keep doing it? No one in their right minds would. That's why Loganir, Wucash, McCready, Seth Zankuten, and now Magus and I have all pretty much come to a standstill.
Oh, sure, occasionally we'll all still crank out something for the sheer fun of it (witness Loganir's recent reappearance), but the days of us sacrificing our lives, health, and time with those we love for the resounding "MEH" of the Internet are probably done.
I have a post in draft that I'll try to finish in the near future, detailing all of my not-yet-finished MUGEN projects, and what my plans are for each. See you then.
Labels: Meta, Scruffyversary