Current Events > Are fighting games the easiest to develop?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Excluding indie games.

Just character animations, damage calculations and attack priorities. Then its just designing the level background. Some sound recording, voice recording. A bit of motion capture for cutscenes and theres a game. No story needed. Any crap will do. And they can be text files you unlock.

Then i think first person shooters are the next easiest. Especially the single player ones where you never see yourself. So thats less character animation. You just need to do the gun animations and the hands for reloading.

Then its just the matter of using game engines to edit some levels. And if the game isnt open world then even better, they dont even have to design whole maps, they just need to design parts that the players can see. Like the back of buildings can be all invisible.

So its really just gun animations and enemy animations. Hit detection and level designing. Then some sound recording and voice dubbing.


I think the hardest would be RPGs with tons and tons of quest lines and branching quest lines. And the world changing based on your choices. Just look at all those bugs in Skyrim. And how many patches it needed. Witcher 3 was a very polished game when it came out and even that had a ton of patches.
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Platformers are easier, if only because there are far more "kits" available to cover the groundwork.
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They seem pretty complex to me. The easiest game to make is a visual novel
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I kind of feel like fighting games would be the hardest, because you have to balance X amount of characters, perfect hitboxes that the community has very exacting specifications on and do all this while allowing a wide variety of playstyles.
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So uncharted 4 is easier to develop than say, tekkn 7?
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Cobra1010 posted...

Just character animations, damage calculations and attack priorities.

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the fact that the absolute majority of game devs out there can't balance games for shit just shows how hard it is to develop a good fighting game.
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Depends whether you count balancing the game as part of difficulty in development.

If you don't, they're pretty easy but probably still aren't the easiest. I'd say the easiest that are at a level most people would consider games (so not visual novels) are text adventures, point and click puzzle games, action puzzle games and very barebones mobile games
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I imagine balance is very tough and frustrating, especially since no one seems to get it right the first time these days and they have to patch most of the times.
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unbalanced characters arent bugs though. And the figures could be changed easily. Like League of legends, they change the powerfulness of the champions around each season for fun.
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Nah. I actually tried once and it's really fucking hard. I made one character and a shitty punching animation with even shittier hitbox detection and gave up.

Easiest is visual novel. For something a little more engaging, platformers, simple RPGs, and shmups are much easier than other things.
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Indie is not a platform

Game's that depend on AI and not human interaction are the hardest imo. So a well-thought out platformer would be more difficult then a human vs human fighting game, but a human vs cpu fighting game is probably harder.

Cobra1010 posted...

attack priorities

What even is this

TheMarthKoopa posted...

Cobra1010 posted...

attack priorities

What even is this

If 2 attacks happen at the same time, in most fighting games there's a priority which determines which one "hits" and which one doesn't. Some games will have a "clash" system (Guilty Gear) to resolve this issue, but many prioritize attacks. Which projectile goes through which other projectiles? Can a grab connect at the same time as a punch? etc.
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s0nicfan posted...

TheMarthKoopa posted...

Cobra1010 posted...

attack priorities

What even is this

If 2 attacks happen at the same time, in most fighting games there's a priority which determines which one "hits" and which one doesn't. Some games will have a "clash" system (Guilty Gear) to resolve this issue, but many prioritize attacks. Which projectile goes through which other projectiles? Can a grab connect at the same time as a punch? etc.

In most cases, what you're talking about is just in the frame data. Fighting games have had double kos since SF2.
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s0nicfan posted...

If 2 attacks happen at the same time, in most fighting games there's a priority which determines which one "hits" and which one doesn't.

Is this a Smash Bros thing?

I don't know of any fighting game with "priorities". Either both players take the hit or a clash happens to cancel both out

ChromaticAngel posted...

s0nicfan posted...

TheMarthKoopa posted...

Cobra1010 posted...

attack priorities

What even is this

If 2 attacks happen at the same time, in most fighting games there's a priority which determines which one "hits" and which one doesn't. Some games will have a "clash" system (Guilty Gear) to resolve this issue, but many prioritize attacks. Which projectile goes through which other projectiles? Can a grab connect at the same time as a punch? etc.

In most cases, what you're talking about is just in the frame data. Fighting games have had double kos since SF2.

You're mostly correct in that priority is more of a misnomer as a term to explain the frames and hitboxes, It's a bit more than that. Here's a guide I found:
https://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/sep/18/guide-understanding-hit-boxes-street-fighter/

There's also I-frames and super armor to consider, and like I said there's also the issue of how you handle projectile collision. Some games give projectiles "HP" that determine when they cancel each other out or when a move (like a super) cuts through enemy projectiles.
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s0nicfan posted...

There's also I-frames and super armor to consider,

... Which is part of frame data.

If "two attacks hit at the same time and one had priority" it's because one attack has a higher startup frame, or the other attack has a hit box which connects while avoiding the incoming attack.

Ryu's Dragon punch "takes priority" over a jump kick because his "to hit" from the top is much larger than his "get hit"
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ChromaticAngel posted...

... Which is part of frame data.

I think we're just arguing semantics. The general point I was trying to get across is that there's a lot that goes into a fighter behind the scenes. "Priority" may be a byproduct ultimately of just frame data, but that manipulation manifests in a number of different concepts depending on how the frames are played with.
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Video game development is a lot more than just making some assets and tossing them in with a few rules attached.
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s0nicfan posted...

ChromaticAngel posted...

... Which is part of frame data.

I think we're just arguing semantics. The general point I was trying to get across is that there's a lot that goes into a fighter behind the scenes. "Priority" may be a byproduct ultimately of just frame data, but that manipulation manifests in a number of different concepts depending on how the frames are played with.

Save it for the semantics dome, E.B. White