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alisa_tana · Fri 17/07/2009 07:15:38

Whoohoo. First official Beta was released today. I've still got a long way to go.

http://www.alisachristopher.us/avatarsd

When Nick released the Avatar animated short Bending Battle, I thought that it would be fun to have a fighting game based on that graphic style. Well, Nick did release a game, Bobble Battles, but it was a 3d strategy game that played like Warcraft. booooo.
Legends of the Hidden Arena had the fighting aspect, but it was a limited MMO in 3d. Double Boooo.
So I've decided to make my own game.

It's a fighting platformer game, think old school Street Fighter, with a tiny bit of Super Smash Brothers, and then shrink it all down to size.

At first players will be able to select Aang, Katara, Toph, Sokka, Zuko and Azula. I will have other unlockable characters. Players can choose match style, at 30, 60 and 90 seconds, as well as single or team battles.

Each character option has 6 special moves (Zuko technically has 10), that can be viewed by hitting the ESC key during a match to pause the game.

> >The latest version available for download is V0.15< <

Bugs
Please note that there are a few bugs, such as placement of secondary characters in a teams battle after doing a standard battle, and Toph's rock punch doesn't seem to work.
I'm still working on these, thanks!

Please note this game is still in the Early Beta stages.

Nickelodeon also has nothing to do with this game, and this game is Freeware.
I'd prefer if you didn't redistribute this, but please feel free to link back to my site!
http://www.alisachristopher.us/avatarsd

Oh, and if you're a midi composer who would like to help, lemme know. thnx!

miguel · Fri 17/07/2009 12:28:56

Hi, Just played a bit of AvatarSD and it looks pretty cool so far.
There are some glitches but it's only a beta and I used to play Saboteur on the ZX, so glitches are fine to me

I'm joking, the interface works pretty well and smooth.
Why do opponents have cool and devastating powers and all I got was some weird short thing?
Ahhh, forget what I said, I have to combine keys, okay!
Anyway with the kicking and yelling and "Arghhh!" sound FX added I think you've got something really cool here.
I'd love to see this kind of action mixed with a conventional adventure, why not?
Well, great job.
Can't wait to see it completed.

Swordofkings128 · Sat 18/07/2009 03:58:28

This game looks hella fun, plus I love Avatar! Plus it's free!

Gonna' download now. 8)

abstauber · Fri 24/07/2009 10:34:30

Nice game, that must have been a hell lot of scripting.

By the way, I'm pretty curious how you've added the AI. Any hints or resources?

alisa_tana · Mon 27/07/2009 22:47:18

Quote from: abstauber on Fri 24/07/2009 10:34:30
Nice game, that must have been a hell lot of scripting.

By the way, I'm pretty curious how you've added the AI. Any hints or resources?

The basics of it are that for each character they all reference the same function,
so there's a function Punch(Character*) that's called with a cEgo.Punch(), or cEne.Punch() line. That way I could reduce the redundancy of actions that all the characters share in common.

As for the AI deciding which possible action to do, I considered the player actions and what the AI reaction could be. In most cases, there were 4 possible choices for the AI to do... then I used a random and the com setting(0, 1 or 2) variable to have it choose between those four actions...

if player is close by,
action = ran(5)+comsetting
if action = 0 or 1, do nothing
if action = 2 or 3, step back
if action = 4 or 5, attack
if action = 6 or 7, special attack

that way the easy com will never special attack, and the hard com will never stand around doing nothing. (I was proud of myself for coming up with such a simple method that seams to work)

I've still got to tweak a few things here and there... like which character the AI targets in teams mode.

sorry, I'm still not much of a programmer, so I'm not good at coherently explaining things yet... I originally used two different templates for the controls, but have all but completely rewritten those since... when I get the AI to a point where I'm completely happy with it, I might post a template game.

Ghost · Mon 27/07/2009 22:55:42

I always like to see AGS totally abused for non-adventure stuff. And especially when the result looks that whacky and plays that well- congratulations! If you really make that a template, it could father a sub-genre of little puzzle fighters

Jared · Tue 28/07/2009 06:19:55

Wow, great looking game, I'll be sure to download soon and try it out. One of my many prospective game ideas is for a fighter and it's good to see it is fairly practicable in AGS.

(incidentally, while I'm here, is anyone interested in the idea of a game where sci-fi characters of varying obscurity duke it out - eg. Ender Wiggin v River Tam? Or is even putting together a roster and thinking about what Street Fighter graphics to paint over, as I have done, a waste of time?)

abstauber · Tue 28/07/2009 12:10:34

Hey, thanks for your answer.

Actually a simple and effictive solution

Btw. this is a nice arcticle too, in case you want to work some more on the AI.

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd4000-d09/lectures/B-AI.pdf

Good luck with your project

GreenBoy · Sat 01/08/2009 08:48:53

Just had a little play. Really enjoyed it, I just love the style of it all. Couldn't really seem to do any special moves except the double jump, probably just my crappy laptop keyboard though.

So much fun. Please continue on, I'm a bit of a sucker for Aang.

alisa_tana · Sat 01/08/2009 18:08:38

It seems to be pretty common feedback about the difficulty of doing the special moves... Since that was a part I had somebody help me with, It might take awhile before I can tweak it.

One of the things is that you have to actually release the key before hitting the second key in the combo, and slow down a bit...

I'll be posting all the gifs on my webpage at somepoint soon.

But I'll see what I can do. If all else fails, I'll make them only two button combos (more like smash brothers)

Matti · Sat 01/08/2009 18:13:06

Well, like Green Boy I have a crappy laptop keyboard too, so that I can't even do all the moves in my own fight game :

.

But that shouldn't bother you and the key combinations in your game.

alisa_tana · Sat 01/08/2009 19:22:53

If it were only one or two people, then it wouldn't bother me. But I'm getting that as a general feedback fairly consistently.

I MIGHT have an idea of how to make it a little easier without changing which keys are pressed.

But I'm probably going to take a break for a bit, give myself to catch up on some other things I need to do.

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Ghost