Shattered: A 2d fighting game (in development)

[Wyz]

A small team of fighting game specialists and I have been working on a 2d fighting game named Shattered the past few years. Though this started out as a hobby things have gotten pretty serious and things are at a point where I'm comfortable showing you guys our work.

So the game is inspired on games like King of Fighters and Street Fighter II and is low-res so has kind of a retro vibe. We have one playable character so far we but our goal is to have about a dozen. We still have a long way to go for that since one character already has about 800 sprites.
Our main character - Julia - is almost completely sprited and already fully functional which is pretty awesome!

Here is a video of our game in progress:
[embed=480,360]<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jWA4ghhLXX8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

Interesting fact: this is actually running in AGS!


But this is not to stay: I'm working on a stand-alone engine. This is a lot of work and we needed something to play and showcase with so I've made a mockup-engine in AGS. It's stitched together with plugins and javascript. Pretty impressive to see it runs at 60 fps since AGS was not at all designed for this.

Anyway, our team consists of four members (coincidentally all Dutch ):
Bob Sagat - Our amazing animator, (also makes amazing combo videos).
Coal - Game Design, Art Direction and Story (spiritual father of the game).
Phoenix - Gameplay, framedata (has a doctorate in fightinggamology ).
Wyz - Well I'm responsible for making it all work.

We are active on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Team18K (@Team18k)
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShatteredFighter
And we have a blog: http://blog.team18k.com/

So by now you must be thinking: ok where is that kickstarter link? Nope, that's not why I'm posting this.
We have entered a pretty big fighting game tourney with our game and I'm pretty psyched about it so I thought it would be a good occasion to share the game with you guys

For those of you who are interested in fighting games, our competition will be live streamed tomorrow at (around ) noon (forum time) on twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/fight_club_nrw (Saturday 12:00 BST, 13:00 CEST) Update: Scroll a bit down for the recordings!

Well if you have comments or questions feel free to post them!

[Cassiebsg]

Looking great!

Good luck with the tournament!

[Fitz]

Wow, it does look awesome. I'm not a manic fan of brawlers, but I do have fond memories of good ol' 90's classics. The MK and SF franchises, of course -- but even more so the more obscure titles like Warriors or Brutal: Paws of Fury. Samurai Shodown was my favorite, though, hands down. Are you going to have such a varied cast like those games, where some characters were of average build, some were really tiny and fast, and some were huge and slow? Or is it going to be more in the vein of, say, Skullgirls?

[Mandle]

The video looks amazing! I guess if all else fails you could use the sprites/animation to make an unexpected adventure game where the character suddenly has to fight Street-Fighter style every now and then...

[Wyz]

Thanks all!

Well the tourney went pretty well and we had lots of people play the game afterwards which was pretty cool. I've heard lots of positive feedback and useful remarks I can only say it was a success.
There were some problems with the stream so in case any of you tried watching it: sorry about it. I'll post recordings of the stream as soon as they're up.

@Fitz: Although we have quite the diverse cast they will all stay more or less human sized. There are differences in walk speed and character height but nothing really drastic. As for personality, look and feel they play very differently.

We want to make a fighting game where the story actually matters; have charming characters with interesting back stories. The game might be a bit more serious both in style and in story. To compare to adventure games I'd say about as serious as Indiana Jones. But that does not mean there isn't room for powerful over the top attacks; no you can have both. 

@Mandle: I can't really say anything at this point but there might be adventure game elements in the future; especially since at least half our team are also avid adventure game players. 

[Wyz]

So as promised I've got some recordings of the tournament! 

Here is one of the semi finals:
[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zgeejCjccRA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

And the grand final  :
[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fRdUHNNhD_8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

[EchosofNezhyt]

Hot damn that animation. Crazy. I think I watched the video 10 times. Then another 3 in slow motion. I wish I was a good animator hehe. Looks cool can't wait to see more.

[Fitz]

Hell yeah! That's one hot bunch of pixels!

[Wyz]

Thanks for the kind words guys! I'll make sure to relay them to our animator.

[Fitz]

Seriously! You have to release a making-of video of these. It isn't just top-notch pixel art, I love the choreography, too. You can see the effort and the mastery of every move, and the physics (gravity, etc) look very realistic. They're two athletic chicks, not feathers -- so it'd be unnatural for them to make these twelve yard jumps like they do in some games. Definitely looking forward to seeing more!

[Wyz]

I've got a few people asking questions about this so I'm going to write an update.

This project is still pretty much in motion; we've all been busy with our day job or study but albeit slow there is still progress. Especially with the summer neigh we'll have a bit more time to work on it soon.

Our animator is working out the final bits for our first character; she is nearly there which is exciting! In the meanwhile our gameplay designer is working on the second character and putting it in the game with crude mockup sprites; this allows us to give the moveset a thorough test before we finalise it.
I've been working on a new (still temporary) engine; the old one uses AGS which is already touching the sprite memory limit and we need at least twice as many sprites unfortunately. AGS was not designed for fighting games obviously and I've been surprised how well it held op but it is time for something that is.
Our game designer is working on the back-story and with other artists on concept art; but that's still under the covers...

What I can give you is some art for our second character: Ushah.



Oh, and some of our new animations in action:

[embed=420,315]<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0X6uaaALUh4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

There is more where that came from: our blog.

Seriously! You have to release a making-of video of these. It isn't just top-notch pixel art, I love the choreography, too. You can see the effort and the mastery of every move, and the physics (gravity, etc) look very realistic. They're two athletic chicks, not feathers -- so it'd be unnatural for them to make these twelve yard jumps like they do in some games. Definitely looking forward to seeing more!

A bit of a late response but thanks for the kind words! We appreciate it, really. We aim for a more realistic look over what 'anime' fighters bring--not that we dislike them but they have been done and in abundance.
We have made some recordings of us working on the game in the past but it turns out that making a making-of is a something best left to professionals; maybe in the future.

[Mandle]

LOVE the look of the cyborg-arm dude. What's his name? "ARMY"?

I think you guys are making what is to become a classic standard fighting game for the fans of such.

Years from now people will talk about "Street Fighter 2"..."Mortal Kombat"....AND "Shattered" as their fondest memories of fighting games!

EDIT: Ah I see the character's name now: "Ushah"....I still like the name "Army" though...Makes me laugh...