Messages

1

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: we need this game on xbox 360/ps3

« on: June 16, 2012, 03:47:17 AM »

http://shoryuken.com/2011/12/12/guest-editorial-momentum-matters-a-historical-perspective-on-the-fgc-and-esports-communities-2/
It sounds a bit corny but it's pretty accurate. The overlap between those who can actually develop and those who actually play FGs is relatively narrow.

Yeah, I've read that article before too.  The thing is, most game developers are gamers.  And being gamers, a lot of us played SF2 when we were growing up just like everyone else.  I'm not in the industry anymore, but one thing I missed was the lunchtime games of 3S, SF4, Melty and BB against everyone in the office.

I guess it might make sense if you assume the majority of people doing mods are -hobbyist- programmers, and professional developers are too busy crunching to meet deadlines to mod their favorite games.  And then, from that, to say that there are fewer hobbyist programmers in the FGC relative to PC games.

Another aspect might be Japan.  Japan seems to have a far smaller modding culture than "the west", although their indy culture was larger thanks to things like comiket. (although now with mobile and downloadable games the west has pretty much caught up.)  Since most FGs are japanese and have a majority of fans there, it means a big chunk of the playerbase isnt interested in modding.

Whatever the reason, its kinda sad.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: we need this game on xbox 360/ps3

« on: June 15, 2012, 09:26:47 AM »

As a fan of RTS and other genres, it's always puzzled and dissappointed me how un-moddy the FG genre is.

Another game I'm a fan of, the RTS Supreme Commander, isn't being treated very well by its publishers.  And the official servers recently shut down.  So the community took matters into their own hands, and developed an entire backend - online chatroom, lobbies, replay and map hosting, ladder and matchmaking - that was actually superior to the official servers.  And they're also continuing to work on refining the balance and fixing bugs.

Now, you might say that a game like MB is too niche to attract that sort of attention, but imo even more niche games have attracted similar treatment:  the RPG Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines, the flight sim Falcon 4, both have been extensively fixed and upgraded by modding communities.


So I'm always a little sad that there isn't much of this sort of thing going on for FGs.  Maybe the FGC isnt nerdy enough?  (in the supreme commander forums, it seems like every third member is either a programmer or game developer.  Heck, I'm a programmer and game developer ) 
We lament the poor treatment and poor netcode of many FGs, but we can't rely on companies (especially japanese companies!) to address these problems - they're best solved by community developers.

For Melty we basically have mauve and that's it?  And he's not really doing MBAACC anyways.  It would be nice if more people stepped up to the plate.

(oh, and no, I don't want to put my money where my mouth is.  I wrote some mods for SupCom but that's because it has convenient and good mod support.  Manually hacking unmoddable games is beyond my skill level mfraid.  If someone gets started with the tools and framework, then maybe I would join for easy stuff.)

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: v.1.2 out!

« on: May 17, 2012, 07:20:09 PM »

http://www.meltybread.com/forums/melty-blood-auditorium/the-mbaaft-thread-final-tuned/700/

Ah.  I withdraw my sadness

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: v.1.2 out!

« on: May 17, 2012, 07:44:53 AM »

How sad, the 1.3 Update is out, but I hear about it first on SRK and noone here seems to have mentioned it.  I thought this was supposed to be the home of melty?!?

http://meltyblood.info/?p=735

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Buying Melty.

« on: March 27, 2012, 08:05:38 AM »

It's like they are allergic to money or something.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Melty Bux: How insane would a crowdsourced release be?

« on: February 23, 2012, 06:43:20 AM »

Whilst I am excited about crowdsourcing in general, the US/non-jp world fanbase for melty is too small and probably too poor.

As for japan, I have no idea if crowdsourcing has caught on over there.  On the one hand, they have a much bigger tradition of indy games, (after all, melty started as an indy game).  On the other hand, it could mean that they are used to their traditional way of buying games, and wont be interested in crowdsourcing.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: v.1.2 out!

« on: January 15, 2012, 03:37:04 AM »

Do the patches need to be applied one after the other, or do you only need to apply the latest one?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: Trial out! Get that key rebind tool!

« on: January 02, 2012, 07:01:47 AM »

Hello, I'm just getting started with linux and wine, any tips on getting MBAACC working on linux?  Does it work?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: December 10, 2011, 09:03:28 PM »

hmm, I thought of a good analogy.

Imagine that the competitive landscape is a mountain.  The best players are at the top, beginners have to work their way up from the bottom.   People compete by throwing rocks at each other, so you can only win against people that are within rock-throwing distance, or if they are lower than you.


The depth of a game is how tall the mountain is.  If a mountain is only 5 meters tall, then the distance seperating the top players and the bottom players are still within a stone's throw.  Anyone can beat anyone.  The game has little competitive depth.   Whereas a mountain that's 10km tall, then there are nuances that seperate even players in the top 50% from the top 49%.


The accessibility of a game is how steep/shallow the mountain is.  (theoretically you can have a very shallow mountain that is nevertheless very tall - it just means the mountain covers a huge horizontal area.  but that's not relevant to this analogy )   As an example, BBCS1 Taokaka had an impassable cliff for me in the form of taunt loop - it was a requirement of her game, but even doing 1 taunt loop was impossible for me with the amount of practise I was willing to put in or my reflexes.  There were no "baby version" taunt loops for Tao, there were no "still viable but easier non-tauntloop combos" for Tao.  It was a cliff that made me give up that character.

If instead BBCS1 Tao had a gentle slope instead of a cliff (like the simpler alternatives I mentioned) then I might have made it further up the mountain and possibly even mastered the tauntloop gradually.  But the giant cliff in the way made it unfun and I gave up.


But I digress.  So yeah, depth = height, accessibility = slope

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: December 09, 2011, 03:45:46 AM »

Outside of the ease of basic hitconfirms and comparatively simple special move inputs I  really don't see how melty is an easy game to get into, most people I've met who play the game for the first time are usually confused by the sets of three different, equally non-intuitive meter mechanics, reverse beats, "neverending pressure," and lack of clearly-defined character archetypes (this one is more important than a lot of people realize, not only does it make choosing a character difficult but characters' optimal play styles aren't immediately apparent). I think the initial hump to entry is probably higher than most games, though after that's surpassed I think the game is not exceptionally difficult or simple in comparison to others

Yes, well, when I wrote the post I was mostly thinking of MBAC, which has less complicated systems/features/UI than MBAA.
Also I'm thinking for people who are new to FGs, and thus similiarity to other FGs is not a factor.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: December 08, 2011, 06:37:15 AM »

I consider "accessibility" and "depth" to be seperate concepts.

If you could pick up a game and start playing it at the highest level in days, I wouldnt call that an example of accessibility, but rather a lack of depth.

I think accessibility is mostly about how simple/uncomplicated/easy/low-practice it is to acquire the building blocks / basic skills of the game.

At the very first level, GUI.  Melty is relatively less accessible due to many meters that work in special ways. And in MBAA, the moon styles.
At the 2nd level, control UI.  Melty is more accessible due to standardised and simplified move motions, 3 attack buttons, generous canceling.
At the 3rd level, BnB combos.  Melty can be pretty accessible, depending on character.
At the 4th level, competitive mechanics.  Melty is probably less accessible due to air footsies being a bit tricky to get the feel of.

So yeah, I guess accessibility will vary as you move along the learning curve.  But its better to be more accessible in the early stages than it is to be tough early and easier later on.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: November 19, 2011, 05:25:32 PM »

Well, relatively speaking.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: November 17, 2011, 11:29:10 PM »

Heheh.... so are people here trying to convince me that melty is -not- accessible?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: November 14, 2011, 02:48:07 AM »

Thanks for the replies guys.

My ideal is that doing an easy combo will get you like 80% of the damage of an optimal one, for several characters.  The last 20% is for those experts, and they have to work progressively harder to reach optimal damage.  So people who are bad at execution will be at least hitting in the same ballpark as the experts.  (similarly, we have games like KOF where some characters dont have much more than strong hit > super).

From what people are saying, this seems to be the case in melty. (at least mbac, maybe less so in mbaa).

Contrast to BBCS2 Tao, where, without the j8D loop (or in BBCS:EX, drive cancels all over the place), you're looking at 1500 damage versus like over 5000 or something.  Maybe for certain people drive cancels are pretty simple, but I've always found that kind of technique to be really hard, despite being others ok at games generally.  I shudder to think what a FG newcomer would make of it.

 I like BBCT Tao's drive loop.  It was easy and mashable, and you only needed good timing on the last rep or two.  If you skipped them, due to proration you're only missing out on 500-1000 damage or so.  And you have the taunt combos for experts and showoffs, but for most players they werent quite damaging enough to risk the difficulty.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Is Melty both accessible and deep?

« on: November 12, 2011, 04:40:45 PM »

Hi, over at SRK I was involved in a discussion about execution barriers in FG.  Some people argued that arbitrarily tricky execution added not much to games and instead just made it less welcoming for new or casual players.  Examples given were things like 360/720 motions, 1 frame links, pretzel motions.  Some were refuted, like 360/720 motions have actual gameplay/strategy impacts.  Of course, the usual elitist counterarguments were trotted out, regarding the dumbing down / casualisation of games, loss of depth and strategy, etc.

As for me, personally (i am a casual FG player since SF2/KOF94/VF1) I have been a bit angry at BB, where my main in BBCT (Tao) became so execution heavy in later games that combos became literally impossible for me with the amount of practice I am willing to put into that game.  And where other characters have BnBs that are very character specific, very long, and/or contain difficult components that have no alternatives.  And simplified versions of those combos are quite inferior in terms of damage, without those tricky components.

So anyways, in that thread I used Melty as an ultimate counterexample.  Its a game with simplified and standardised move motions, and a generous buffer system that lets you cancel pretty much anything into anything.  You can pick a character like WArc and be doing optimal damage just with basic ABC j ABC j ABC airthrow style combos (well, warc is j B C but you get what I mean), and that combo pattern works on any target.  Also, most characters in the game can do that type of combo, and still do reasonable damage.  It's pretty easy to get into and doesnt need a lot of practice or memorisation to start playing at a beginner competitive level.

Despite all this, Melty is still a totally legit competitive FG, and has depth and rewards for those who are hardcore enough to explore the gameplay fully.


Since out of all the FGs I've played, Im least familiar with Melty due to lack of a scene and decent netplay, I thought I would confirm here.


Can Melty be considered a good example that you dont need high execution barriers to have a deep and competitive FG?
(note that lacking "barriers" doesnt mean that there arent any high execution "opportunities".)

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: PC Current Code Tournament Standard

« on: September 26, 2011, 06:14:31 AM »

-Disable all power features to save power.

This line reads really ambiguously, it kinda sounds like you are asking people to activate those features, so that they can save power.

You should maybe edit it to:
"Disable all power-saving features so PC will run at maximum performance."

--------------------------------------------------

I wonder if there are any All-In-One PCs (eg. http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/img/products/e/2/e2d4866ea6828d3806235a88e5cd0a46-0.jpg?mark ) that fulfill FG requirements of having a low latency LCD screen and a CPU+GPU fast enough to run games on?

Seems like it would be the most convenient of all the options, basically just an LCD screen that happens to be able to run the game.  Even better than a laptop or a console

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 30, 2011, 08:04:07 AM »

Cool, I understand a lot better now.  Thanks for answering my questions.  Looking forward to your excellent work on MBAACCPC

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 30, 2011, 03:40:10 AM »

(1)

• In the event that both players are sending data for N+0, they will still synchronize at N+5, causing both players to run the game 'ahead' by 5 frames. You can't erase latency.

(2)

• If GracePeriod is non-zero and not all data for frames up to the synchronization frame are received, block and wait.

Ah ok.  I didn't know about the synchronisation part.

1. So both players have set 0 input delay.  I know I said that there are 5 frames of latency between the players, but how does rollcaster know that it needs to sync at N+5?  Does rollcaster measure the ping and decide on a value internally, outside of the control of the players?

2. Does rollcaster send an update every frame?  Or just when events occur / inputs are received?  How does it know when "all" data for a frame has been received?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 29, 2011, 04:41:05 AM »

Oh. I should clarify, though, that if you push the base input delay up, you're essentially stating that you don't need input until that frame, so it's likely that the game will synchronize on _that_ frame, which means you will get less rollback from the opponent since they'll still be syncing to the original frame value.

Sorry, I'm not really sure I understand what you are saying here.  Are you saying, if I set an input delay of 5, and press a button, the game wont actually try to send the packet until 5 frames later??  That seems kinda bad?


If the scenario I posted above was correct (apart from some minor maths fail ), then doesnt it mean that a person who sets his input delay to 0, will get instant response on his own screen, and cause maximum skipping and rollbacks on his opponent's screen?   Doesnt it mean that setting zero delay gives you an advantage over your more considerate opponent?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 06:09:50 PM »

(should I take this to PM's?  or maybe its interesting to others?)

I'm confused.  Here's what I thought the input delay was for:

- My ping to you is about 5 frames worth.
- I set my input delay to 2 frames.
- I press a button at frame 500, it generates a "At frame 502, do a jab" packet to send to you.
- 5 frames later (frame 505), you receive the packet, process the jab from the past (frame 502), and skip the first 3 frames of the jab's animation.

Whereas if my input delay was 5 frames, then you would see the entire animation of the jab properly.
In "real life", our screens would match up. (if we were testing in the same room with a latency simulator, for example.)

So my input delay setting doesnt matter to the rollbacks of my moves that I see on my screen at all, (except when my moves interact with yours).

eg.  You have your input delay set to zero.  Every attack you do has an instantaneous start time.
Since I receive packets 5 frames later, every one of your attacks instantly skips forward to the 5th animation frame.

Is this incorrect?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 05:36:44 PM »

Cool, thanks.


Oh, just one more question.  So, in GGPO (and presumably 3rd Strike OE), you'll get most people blindly setting 0, 1 or 2 for their input delay, even if their ping is above 33ms.  Does that mean, in a match, almost every attack/input from the other player skips the first few frames?

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 05:24:54 PM »

Ah k, thanks a lot!  Thinking about it more, I was confused whose "state" the system reverts to in the event of a desync.  But that's irrelevant because the system takes into account all inputs anyways, I guess.

I suppose if one was writing a game from scratch, it might be smarter for the netcode to be aware of animations, so rather than, "He activated his 10 frame jab 5 frames ago, so instantly jump to frame 5 now", it would instead play all/some of the frames of that jab in the remaining 5 frames, at a higher speed to fit it in.  Gameplay stuff like hitboxes will remain at the original speed, so its purely a visual hack.

For a 3D game, that would result in smoother visuals than a raw teleport.
Although expert players may not like the loss of precision when visuals no longer exactly match underlying mechanics.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 06:11:22 AM »

Apologies for the slight off topic.

Mauve, as a games programmer myself (although mostly a peon gameplay/scripter rather than wizard/tech guy), I've always been interested in how rollback netcode actually works.  I have a rough idea of it, but I'm unclear on the precise details.

Could you please point me to any links, articles, or code that explains the principle behind rollback netcode?  My understanding breaks down at the level of a frame-by-frame step through... I'm like, ok, PC1 at frame 2503 recieves a packet and detects a desync... what now?!?

If there are any resources on the net that you could show me, I'd much appreciate it.  Google has failed me so far, I'm sorry.
(alternatively I'm happy to pester you with specific questions but I imagine that would be more annoying for you.)

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: Melty Blood 3D

« on: October 01, 2010, 09:21:47 AM »

Ugly 3d, even on psp.  Looks like the old 3d h games

They need to get cyberconnect in on a 3d celshaded TM game

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Akiha's Tea Room / Re: Naruto UNS2 for MB fantasy

« on: June 29, 2010, 02:58:10 AM »

Ok, I know that fandom for games like MB tend to collect diehard 2D pixel art fans, so maybe few people here will share my dream

I predicted it all along


I dont see how you can claim that MB is timeless.  MB looks almost as dated as a PS1 game.  Its got great animation, but so would a 3D game.  For a fullscreen 2d game like Tsukihime or Sakura Wars, yes, maybe timeless.  But MB looks pretty dated especially since the backgrounds are a different res to the sprites.

I can see there might be some hesitation over making BB into 3D, maybe, but MB has so few pixels that I dont think theres much expression to lose really.  At least 3D would be able to do facial expressions and so forth (like SF4s retarded ones).  


(oh, the comparison was irrelevant both gameplay wise, because FUC doesnt play like a 2D fighter unlike SF4, and also art wise, because FUC's 3d models are pretty horrible, compared to Naruto's ones which are approaching the style of the anime.)