As I haven't felt confident enough to do a proper followup to my previous article on dialogue mechanics in games, I have instead opted to work on a more personal project. This series of articles will follow the creation of gameplay and character concepts for a traditional 2D Fighting Game. This series will be long, with each individual character receiving their own article, but to start, I will be focusing on developing system mechanics and overall roster.
Forming the Basis
Many fighting games are built upon exemplifying a single concept, be it movement, accessibility, combo structure, character uniqueness, etc. Melty Blood, for instance, was made to be both very accessible as well as have freeform movement. In addition, fighting games often come with business and inspiration influences to their design. BlazBlue and Fantasy Strike are two such examples, with BlazBlue being made because ArcSystemWorks didn't have the full rights to Guilty Gear at the time and Fantasy Strike being heavily influenced by Street Fighter II. Finally, many fighting games are created from licensed IPs, with those IPs influencing the mechanics of the fighting game adaptations either directly (such as including system mechanics reminiscent of the original property) or indirectly (simplifying controls, homogenizing characters, and other ways to reduce consumer buy-in).
For this game, I am choosing a particular intersectionality of the FGC and the broader video game sphere as a whole: Final Fantasy XIV. It's often joked that FFXIV is the retirement home for FGC veterans, and FFXIV also designs its class system in a way reminiscent of fighting game characters. Each job has a large toolkit of pre-defined skills with little to no customization, so player expression comes in the form of skill expression and job choice rather than gameplay customization. The unique mechanics of each job, the popular characters who represent those jobs, and the fantasies of each job should serve to create a strong foundation to develop character movesets.
The other design goals of the game are to create a game that is accessible, but not homogenized. However, I would not remove motion inputs for the sake of accessibility, as they are important for a variety of reasons I have covered in a previous article. However, there should be options for those who would wish to not use motion inputs. Other ways to serve the accessibility goal are the inclusion of a strong single-player that serves as an extended tutorial, a buffer system similar to BlazBlue's Advanced Input, clear communication of mechanics to players, and including extensive control and accessibility options such as macros, colorblind modes, and input leniency tweaking.
Crafting Controls
In aiming with the goal of accessibility, I want basic combo and pressure sequences to be both simple and easy to use. As such, I am opting for normal-normal cancels as seen in games like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Under Night, and other anime fighters. I will also be adopting the ABC D structure of BlazBlue in particular, with each character having A (light), B (medium), and C (heavy) normals that cancel "up the chain" alongside command normals which can break the normal cancel rule. The D button will be used for character-specific mechanics like in BlazBlue as well.
Additional attacks and techniques can be executed by pressing multiple buttons together, but each of these will also allow players to create macro buttons for button combinations. I also want to include a dash macro, as it will make the basic movement more accessible and allow for easy access to techniques like microdashes and instant air dashes. Actions that can be performed through macros or button combinations include Throws, Enhanced Guard, Echo, Guard Cancel, and Movement Cancel. While the others are unique system mechanics, Throws are in nearly every traditional fighter and often work quite differently from game to game. Here, I would make them similar to how they function in BlazBlue, being highly rewarding, two-button mixup options that lead to combos, but they can be safely OS'd on defense. I would make two important changes from BlazBlue's throw system. One is that throws mid-combo and mid-blockstring that don't trigger a Throw Reject Miss state would be automatically teched, and the other is that a unique hitstun state where characters are throwable mid-combo without the option to tech would exist.
A typical 8-button setup would look like this:
A B C D
Movement Button (used for a dash macro, command hops, and Movement Cancel)
Throw
Enhanced Guard/Guard Cancel
Echo Activation
Movement Mechanics
To give players a large degree of freedom, I will be opting for a somewhat traditional anime fighter movement system. Default movement mechanics available to everyone (or almost everyone) includes a jump, a double jump, a run/stepdash, a backdash, and an airdash/command hop. The command hop will be available both on the ground and in the air and will function similarly to Under Night's Assault mechanic.
To ensure movement feels responsive, I want movement options to have short acceleration and deceleration times, but there is room to experiment with individual characters. Unique movement options for characters could include teleports, step-dashes that carry significant momentum, floats, triple jumps, backwards air dashes, dodge rolls, armored dashes, and more.
Universal Resources
Like the majority of fighting games, character health will function in a straightforward manner. Getting hit reduces a character's life total, and when that total hits zero, that character loses the round. I do not plan on experimenting much in this regard. I also plan to implement two additional resources that are often found in other fighting games, general meter (Limit Break Gauge) and defensive meter (Echo Gauge).
Limit Break Gauge consists of three segments and is filled through most game actions including movement, attacking, blocking, and getting hit. LBG can be spent on the universal Guard Cancel and Movement Cancel mechanics or on character-specific Limit Breaks. Guard Cancel works like in many games, where a character who is blocking can immediately end blockstun and counterattack, but if the counterattack itself is blocked, the user can be hit with a hefty counterhit punish. Movement Cancel, on the other hand, allows a character to cancel almost any attack into a movement option such as jumping, dashing, or command hopping even if said attack would not normally allow it.
The Echo Gauge, on the other hand, builds in only three ways: slowly over time, taking damage, and successfully utilizing Enhanced Guard. Enhanced Guard works similarly to shield in Under Night, locking the player in a specific guarding position for a short time, but reducing frame advantage and building Echo Gauge when used successfully. However, incorrectly blocking or getting thrown while using Enhanced Guard will result in a guaranteed counterhit and a reduction in the Echo Gauge. When the Echo Gauge is full, it can be spent either on a combo breaker akin to Guilty Gear's Burst or be used to enter an enhanced state where Limit Break and Health gradually recharge and damage dealt is increased.
Offensive Structure
Where I want to diverge from the two primary sources of gameplay inspiration (BlazBlue and Under Night) is how offense is structured. Rather than utilizing the long, looping pressure structures employed in both games, I want to keep pressure sequences in this game rather short. Any looping sequences should be identifiable and have a clear RPS to them. Otherwise, the average pressure sequence should be kept short, but with a high level of variability. Most cancels will be delayable to allow for frame traps as needed and mixup potential from both system and character mechanics should be high to make up for the short pressure sequences.
Combo structure should be similarly kept short. The longest of combos should be no more than 10 seconds long, and Limit Break animations should be kept short and snappy as well. While a combo should give players some room to breath, it needs to be kept short enough to still be engaging for both players. However, rather than limiting combos through hitstun decay, I believe harsh gravity scaling may communicate combo limits more effectively to new players.
Defensive Tools
In addition to mechanics present in most traditional fighters such as back-to-block, throw escapes, and backdashes, I want to include several unique mechanics to give the defender a fighting chance. While Enhanced Guard and Guard Cancel have been previously mentioned, I also want to include a robust ground tech system to reduce the oppressiveness of okizeme. Most knockdowns in the game will allow the defending player to ukemi in multiple directions as well as multiple timings. Importantly, most ukemi options grant the player full invincibility to strikes until the defender is actionable, but there may be options that the attacker can throw and a high risk, high reward option for the defender that has no strike invulnerability but has other benefits. While this is purely conjecture in the conceptual stage, the intent is to allow the aggressor to safely cover most if not all tech options, but not allow the aggressor to apply a mixup to every tech option outside of specific character tools.
Underneath the Hood
While I've covered most of the options available to players, it is important to mention how the game logic handles specific move interactions. To align with the goal of accessibility, the game will opt for digital, property-based move interactions rather than analog, hitbox-based move interactions. Moves intended to be used as anti-airs will be invulnerable to jumping attacks instead of being disjointed, for instance.
Wrapping Up
While I am no means able to confidently talk about design choices without personal experimentation and a game to test, I believe I have set a somewhat sizeable, if shaky, foundation to work with. Next time, I'll be establishing a roster overview and what I think is important in creating a fighting game roster.
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