Hello and happy 2012! We’re here with a small update on our project, to give you some idea why it’s taking so long.
Character customization is an important feature in Superfighters Deluxe. But since we also want many different animations, we had to find a solution that would make it easy to add new clothing items and weapons to the game. The trouble with adding new skins in the original Superfighters was that every single frame of animation had to be changed manually, which was just a ton of work. For SFD, we’ve made an animation editor where we can import and piece together all the character’s body parts from a single sprite sheet.
There are several different arms, legs, torsos, heads and so on, depending on the kind of pose needed for a certain frame, and we try to keep the number down by recycling body parts as much as possible. For example, to add a new jacket to the game we just make a new copy of the spritesheet containing the body parts, edit the arms and torso, and add the new item to the game. As a result, we can have lots of animations of the characters running, jumping, hitting, kicking, shooting, diving, falling, flying around on rockets, etc., and yet allow individual body parts to be switched based on what your fighter is wearing, meaning lots and lots of character variety in the game. Which is cool.
Rest assured we’re busy at work behind the scenes, and Superfighters Deluxe is moving in the right direction. Official release date: some time next year.
We’ve just finished our multiplayer test demo. Run around, jump and shoot. One player hosts, others join. Up to 8 players. This is only a multiplayer test to see how networking works in XNA using Lidgren library. You can download this multiplayer test from the download section.
You can now download Superfighters as an .exe file – no more having to play in a browser! This means you can play offline, enter fullscreen without hassle and use Fraps to capture those awesome/funny moments. Enjoy!
Just for laughs, we bring you MythoLogic Pong, a multiplayer version of Pong where you connect to an opponent’s IP. Gurt made this to test the network technology which will power Superfighters Deluxe, so you can help by letting us know if you experience any problems!
We’ve made progress in Superfighters Deluxe. There is still work to be done before we have some sort of prototype. But we have completed some essential parts of the code already, we have made a custom mouse- and keyboard-listener and a graphical user interface we can use in menus and the editor suited for the SFD-style. Hjärpe has also done a lot of sprites ready to be used.
However, the next four weeks coming we will focus more on our studies because we will start a project that will take time. This project is an RPG-game and we will be five persons in total working on it, trying to make a playable prototype in four weeks. But don’t worry, we will still work on SFD, maybe not just as much.
The warm response you guys gave Superfighters has been very encouraging, not to say ego-boosting. We are now starting work on two games which fortunately are similar enough that they require almost identical engines. We’ll be working on the Box2D engine in XNA, which means that we won’t be using Flash and will have to look at different distribution options when that time comes. It also means that we’ll be able to make the games for Xbox as well as PC.
The first of these sister-games we have named Superfighters Deluxe. God willing, it will have online multiplayer, a level editor, character customization and a ton of other features that you have requested and that we feel will make for a better, richer, more complete Superfighters.
The other game we are planning will be a sequel to Barbarian Onslaught: The Secret of Steel. It will have more glorious hack-n’-slash, but also a proper story, greatly improved platforming, and infinitely more variation and richness than its predecessor. It’s going. To be. Awesome.
Don’t worry, it won’t be all sequels from now on! We just felt that much more could be done with these games and want to use our new knowledge and experience to perfect them.
