Buyog's Lair

The Outer Limits

Sunday, February 19, 2012

It's been an... interesting couple of weeks. Work at my day job has been busy (and mildly stressful), I've had to drive to work several times recently (eliminating that carpooling time I use to work on stuff like MUGEN), our family vehicle was at the mechanic for a few days, and to top it all off, my (rather expensive) smartphone got stolen right out of my rental car last Friday! AARRRGGGHHHH!

So, yeah, MUGEN has taken a bit more of a back seat this month than I had hoped. Sinestro 1.0 is still coming — relatively soon, but I'm not going to give a target date. Instead, I'll get back to posting a Release Watch for him as he progresses. Look for that later this week.

Labels: Meta, Sinestro

Strong Guy 2.1

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Yesterday Snakebyte and Oldboy alerted me to a couple of playability issues with our recent Strong Guy release. I've updated the download to address these problems, so you'll probably want to grab the new version from his page.

Change list

* 2 Feb 2012: v2.1
  - minor patch release to address bugs reported in 2.0
  - Megaton Fury and X-Factor Attacks both prevent premature KOs now (which can cause weird end-of-round timing issues) (thanks, Snakebyte!)
  - Megaton Fury now works properly when triggered in a corner (thanks again, Snakebyte!)
  - fixed victory portrait & added win quotes (thanks, oldboy!)

Labels: Strong Guy

On Groundhog Day...

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Yeah, not so much for Christmas... this may as well be a Groundhog Day release! =P I know that I said a few weeks ago that any additional releases I made in January as belated parts of our 12 Days of Christmas event would get sarcastic titles like "on the 36th day of Christmas," but I managed to drag the polishing and beta cycle into February, so here we are. :-\ (note: I do still have two more holiday gifts, which I'll blog about soon)

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of beta testing with McCready and a few of my other ScruffyDragon teammates (thanks, guys), I'm proud to present Strong Guy 2.0! He's been almost completely restructured from bottom to top, with new sounds, effects, intros & outros, attack chains, and special & hyper moves:

"Up You Go!" anti-air special

Spinning Piledriver hyper

X-Factor Attacks hyper

Megaton Fury hyper

Here's the (abridged) change set from his readme file:

* 1 Feb 2012: v2.0
  - revamped all basic attacks (changed the chain order, timings, etc)
  - MUGEN 1.0 compatibility
  - new voice samples
  - new intro w/ Lila Cheney
  - new KO animation (heart attack if KO'ed by health loss due to kinetic overload)
  - new "nearly heart attacked" winpose
  - new lose / draw game animations
  - new round-end effects (especially if winning by hyper)
  - heavily tweaked combo code
  - tweaked Touchdown hyper damage, movement, timing and kineticE effects
  - new special: Up You Go (anti-air) (F,D,DF + P)
  - new hyper: Spinning Piledriver (F,DF,D + PP)
  - new hyper: X-Factor Attacks (QCB + P and K of equal strength)
  - new hyper: Megaton Fury (F,DF,D + KK)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy him, and as always, feel free to let us know (here or over at Scruffy) if you find any bugs or unexpected behavior.

You can get Strong Guy v2.0 here, on his page.

Labels: 12Days2011, Release Watch, Strong Guy

[Release Watch] Sinestro, Day 1

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Now that I'm all but done with Strong Guy 2.0 (expect a release very soon), it's time to turn my attention back to Sinestro 1.0, so welcome to my next Release Watch!

Late last year I posted a Dev Plan for Sinestro. That, plus a few other things I've since added to the plan, will form the outline I'll be tracking here:

Sinestro 1.0 progress

Dev Plan

• forward jump
• backward jump
• taunt
• new intro: oath scene from Sinestro Corps War #1
• new intro: ???
• new win pose: stand & laugh over P2
• lose / draw game animations
• add missing basic attacks:
  • crouching weak punch
  • crouching medium punch
  • crouching weak kick
  • crouching medium kick
  • at least one throw
• add "powered" versions (with constructs) for basic attacks that don't have them yet:
  • crouching light punch
  • crouching medium punch
  • crouching hard punch
  • crouching light kick
  • crouching medium kick
  • crouching hard kick
  • air light punch
  • air medium punch
  • air hard punch
  • air light kick
  • air medium kick
  • air hard kick
• special attacks to be done:
  • Morningstar
  • Armored Assault (low-damage Psycho Crusher style move)
• hyper attacks:
  • Sinestro Corps (helper gang attack)
  • Parallax Unleashed
  • Master of Fear (yellow core hyper assist)

Bugs

• sound for standing hard punch sometimes doesn't play
• Tweak basic attack damage to be stronger with the constructs
• Launcher needs superjump follow
• no landing sound on jump
• 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
• cpunch3 and taunt constructs need to be folded into the core palette so they can be recolored
• Some animations need collision boxes:
  • 240 (skick2)
  • 260 (skick3)
  • 660 (akick3)
  • 1120 (deadly stare end)

Completed tasks: 9 of 29
Fixed bugs: 3 of 9
Total tasks remaining: 26

Still a lot to do, but my ScruffyDragon teammate Bizarro Toro is helping a lot. I'll show off some of his contributions soon.

Labels: Release Watch, Sinestro

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 12

Guido's officially in private beta! I've gotten feedback from McCready, Magus, and BizarroToro, all of which I will be using tonight to make a final beta. Then when I have the Big Mac's sign off, maybe by tomorrow, he'll go up for download here and on Scruffy! :)

Stay tuned later for the first Release Watch for Sinestro.

Labels: Release Watch, Strong Guy

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 11

Saturday, January 28, 2012

I finished the camera trickery for Strong Guy's hypers today. He's in McCready's hands now for final review, beta testing, and approval; I expect this to break loose in a day or two.

Labels: Release Watch, Strong Guy

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 10

Thursday, January 26, 2012

So, this is likely going to be the last installment of Strong Guy Release Watch! I've got the perfect sound effects for Havok and Polaris now, and have revamped how the Quicksilver part works as well. Then this morning I did an audit through all of his hypers to add the KineticE damage multiplier apply to all of his physical force-based hypers: Touchdown, Cannonball (Hyper Blanka Envy), and Pinhead. Finally, I've revamped Touchdown (again) to make it more visually appealing and to distinguish it a bit more from Hyper Pinhead in terms of how it affects player 2.

That just leaves the tweaks to camera behavior for Megaton Fury and Piledriver.

Remix tasks

• code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)
• add lose on time over anim
• add draw game anim
• fix hypers to not give back power meter
• Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)
• Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)
• De-cheapify basic combo chains
• Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples
• new special: Up You Go
• tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special
• new intro: Lila Cheney teleport
• tweak Touchdown hyper
• add recovery roll
• new audio for jacket-ripping intro
• new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high
• add dizzy state & effects
• improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)
• new hyper: Spinning Piledriver
• "Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper
• new hyper: Megaton Fury
• new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
  • Quicksilver entrance/attack/get-hit/exit/sound
  • Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special/sound
  • Madrox drop-kick/exit
  • Polaris entrance/attack/exit/sound
  • Havok entrance/attack/exit/sound

Bugs reported in beta testing

• Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
• Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
• Better camera control for Piledriver
• Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro
• Tweak Touchdown hyper to a 2-hit attack: grapple, carry, smash into the wall

Completed tasks: 24 of 26
Tasks remaining: 2

I'll be giving it over to McCready tonight for final review. And then... :)

Labels: Release Watch, Strong Guy

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 9

Welcome back to our ongoing Release Watch for Strong Guy! I had to drive to work Monday, effectively eliminating my MUGEN time for that day. Yesterday, I spent some time tweaking things here and there, adding missing "lost by timeout" anims, aligning messed-up custom hit animations for the Piledriver hyper, that sort of thing. As for the final remaining hyper, X-Factor Attacks, I've been hunting down appropriate sound effects; developing during my commute means I've been testing him with the sound off, and didn't even notice how quiet the attack seemed until last night! :-P I've got Polaris's and Havok's part done, so the sound effects are all that's left there. So close now I can almost taste it!

This puts my remaining task count at 0.2 subparts of the hyper (sounds for Quicksilver and Wolfsbane), and 2 camera bug fixes (which really are both the same issue in two different places, so when I fix one the other will be trivial):

Remix tasks

• code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)
• add lose on time over anim
• add draw game anim
• fix hypers to not give back power meter
• Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)
• Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)
• De-cheapify basic combo chains
• Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples
• new special: Up You Go
• tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special
• new intro: Lila Cheney teleport
• tweak Touchdown hyper
• add recovery roll
• new audio for jacket-ripping intro
• new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high
• add dizzy state & effects
• improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)
• new hyper: Spinning Piledriver
• "Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper
• new hyper: Megaton Fury
• new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
  • Quicksilver entrance/attack/get-hit/exit/sound
  • Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special/sound
  • Madrox drop-kick/exit
  • Polaris entrance/attack>/exit/sound
  • Havok entrance/attack/exit/sound

Bugs reported in beta testing

• Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
• Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
• Better camera control for Piledriver
• Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro

Completed tasks: 22.8 of 25
Tasks remaining: 2.2

I may have good news for y'all tomorrow or Friday. :)

Labels: Release Watch, Strong Guy

[Release Watch] Strong Guy, Day 8

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Welcome to today's Release Watch update for Strong Guy. I've finished the segment of the X-Factor Attacks hyper involving the Madrox clones, tweaked Quicksilver's (again, I think for the last time now), and started building out the stubs for the final segment of the hyper, with Havok and Polaris, which should be pretty straightforward, because they're both just beam attacks, and I've done plenty of those. Oh, and as I promised yesterday, I have screenshots of the finished portions of the hyper:

This puts my remaining task count at 1.6 of 5 sub-parts to the hyper, and the 2 camera bug fixes (which really are both the same issue in two different places, so when I fix one the other will be trivial):

Remix tasks

• code cleanup (move basics/specials/hypers to their own .st files)
• add lose on time over anim
• add draw game anim
• fix hypers to not give back power meter
• Revamp Kinetic Energy Bar (new sprites & code tweaks)
• Revamp basic attacks (strong kicks replaced with punches, reordered progression of attacks)
• De-cheapify basic combo chains
• Fix kinetic energy effects of grapples
• new special: Up You Go
• tweak damage/effects of Run Deep special
• new intro: Lila Cheney teleport
• tweak Touchdown hyper
• add recovery roll
• new audio for jacket-ripping intro
• new winpose: fatigued when kinetic energy level too high
• add dizzy state & effects
• improve heart attack (KO via heart damage from too much kinetic energy)
• new hyper: Spinning Piledriver
• "Hyper Combo Finish" hyper names displayed when win by hyper
• new hyper: Megaton Fury
• new hyper: X-Factor Attacks
  • Quicksilver entrance/attack/get-hit/exit
  • Wolfsbane entrance/fastball special
  • Madrox drop-kick/exit
  • Polaris entrance/attack/exit
  • Havok entrance/attack/exit

Bugs reported in beta testing

• Change Touchdown hyper's custom hit states
• Add better camera control for Megaton Fury startup
• Better camera control for Piledriver
• Bug: Lila isn't casting a shadow in the intro

Completed tasks: 22.7 of 25
Tasks remaining: 2.3

Nearly there, folks. :)

Labels: Release Watch, Strong Guy