Last minute work, the trade show, and awesomeness!

So we finally finished, fully prepared for the trade show. The past week was spent mostly on eliminating bugs, making sure all the features are in and working properly, and making everything pretty. There was also some balance changes, but no major features were added in. Some minor features include a cheat menu, better looking post-match statistics, tweaking movement/animation speeds, fiddling with hitboxes, and handling input more efficiently. The character physics were also changed to be less buggy and more responsive overall. I think this was the point where everyone did bits of everything, with less focus on their own areas, and it worked out really well.

Then came the trade show! I don't think we could be happier with the way that turned out :) Winning the project prize was an incredible accomplishment, and shows off the hard work we've been toiling over for the past year.

Thanks again to Jordan/Vince/Adam for being awesome team members, and to Luke for keeping up with us throughout the project's timeline. This was definitely the best subject of our degree, and we had the most fun doing it!

Sooo many bugfixes!

Today we all finalised everything in preparation for the submission of the documentation, code, and other deliverables. The manuals were checked for grammatical and spelling errors, then printed out to be ready for tomorrow. I've also had a lot of fun with bug fixes...and fixing the bugs caused from other bug fixes :)

Also added in a few last minute additions, such as a jumping delay and movement/knockback tweaks. For the most part though, it's down to ironing out anymore of those pesky bugs which everyone but me seems to be able to find!

So much work done!

Over the past 9 days (since the last blog :p) we have all put in a large amount of work into the project. The list of changes is near endless, with heavy focus on bug fixing, neatening the work, and making sure that everything looks good while functioning properly. My focus has been the fighting engine and event manager.
I have also added in a few new features, such as:

• Making training mode independent and infinite
• Storing all of the post match statistics throughout the match
• Adding in "pushing" with attacks (where if a player is closer than the reach of an attack, they are pushed to the hitbox before damage/move inertia is dealt)
• Implemented all the animations that Vince has created
• Added knockback, stuns, and knockdowns to moves
• Failed counters (where the user is in a stunned state until they can recover)
• Setting the range of a move to it's actionpoint (a set point defined by Vince in the modeller) rather than manually entering it as needed
• Separating the physics of the game, so that they can continue to function between matches (specifically gravity, inertia, and friction)

The list of bugfixes and minor tweaks is massive, but the key focus has been making sure the game cannot be abused and player immersion does not get ruined by game breaking bugs.

At the moment, I am finalizing the user manual with appropriate screenshots and updated information, which is near completion and will be ready for tomorrow.

Counter-attacks, bug fixing

Over the weekend I added in a few features to the project, the biggest change being the addition of counter attack. Now, if a fighter successfully blocks an opponent's attack, they have a (changeable) window of .5 of a second to retaliate, causing an instant and powerful attack to occur. All of the values included in this are fully tweakable, so balance changes can easily occur.

Another addition to the moves are separate movesets for each fighter. There is now a base moveset, containing things like blocking and crouching, which is inherited by all the fighter's separate movesets. These contain the rest of their attacks, allowing them to have completely individual moves per fighter. This means that Ivanov, a slow character, can have slow, powerful moves compared to Catalina, who is a fast character, while both executing the same move sequence.

I also did a few minor bug fixes and tweaks, such as resetting the fighters to their start position at the end of a round, and preventing attacks or movement events to be queued up while blocking.