[HN Gopher] m.u.g.e.n. 2D Fighting Game Engine
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m.u.g.e.n. 2D Fighting Game Engine
Author : tomsonj
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-04-09 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elecbyte.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elecbyte.com)
| JonathanMerklin wrote:
| Used to play a fair bit of MUGEN growing up. I remember waiting
| years and years to see "the next part" of Kung Fu Man's story...
|
| Also, I want to use this comment to shout out a creator I looked
| up to in those days: the late, great Reuben Kee. That guy had
| creative output that I still don't think anything I've done
| possibly ever holds a candle to. Not sure what the average
| character looks like these days but words can't describe
| how...different - polished - just plain old _awesome_ Dragon Claw
| was. Even his Evil Ken /Evil Ryu made almost every other
| character you could download feel like an unfinished rough draft
| in comparison (save for those made by a few other people who
| really knew their stuff - Phantom.of.the.Server/PotS comes to
| front of mind as the premier example).
|
| Someone else in this thread mentioned that 99% of web developers
| probably wanted to be game developers. Messing with MUGEN files
| to make the game "what I wanted" was one of the earlier
| experiences I had that taught me that software was not an
| impenetrable wall and I didn't have to be afraid to "touch
| anything" - just cautious where relevant.
|
| Haven't thought about this game in years (probably since the
| height of SaltyBet's popularity). Thanks for the trip down memory
| lane.
| Valodim wrote:
| Hah. Went through hell and back with the MUGEN community back in
| the day :)
|
| It's actually an interesting history in terms of copyright ethics
| and open source. Story time:
|
| Around 2000, the general convention in the US and European MUGEN
| community was that you could very strictly only use another
| creator's stuff with their permission. If you were caught using
| someone else's code (i.e. statemachine descriptions), hitboxes,
| or anything else, you would most likely be banned from the
| community forever. This happened to a lot of people, some decided
| to just leave, around others it caused a huge amount of drama.
|
| Now, the weird part is that MUGEN was a community built entirely
| around ripping sprites from proprietary fighting games, and using
| them to build characters. Sure there were original works, but
| that was a small amount by comparison. But the part about asking
| for permission _also_ included not using sprites that other
| people ripped. Ripping sprites in different ways would sometimes
| cause recognizable patterns, e.g. the way that palettes of PNGs
| were ordered.
|
| There was a lot of culture built around this "respecting
| creator's wishes" idea. In particular, if you couldn't get a hold
| of a creator to ask for permission, you just couldn't use their
| stuff. Which meant all the work of creators who had moved on from
| the community, and couldn't be reached, was impossible to built
| upon. If you wanted to create a character, you were expected to
| start by ripping the sprites from the game yourself, or get
| permission to use the sprites from someone who had done so. There
| were several stories of well-known creators who created amazing
| characters, but were shunned from the community when someone
| found out they had reused sprites that someone else had ripped
| without permission.
|
| At the same time, the original creators of MUGEN - Elecbyte as
| featured here - had vanished for many years. The latest official
| version of MUGEN they had left was Linux only, and a version
| before that for Windows 98. Noone used the Linux version, and it
| had some slight incompatibilities due to new features, so the
| community was stuck on the Windows 98 version. When Windows XP
| became popular, this caused a lot of problems because the Windows
| 98 version just wouldn't reliably run and DOSBOX hadn't yet been
| around.
|
| However - Elecbyte had sent a Windows-Build of the newer MUGEN
| version (that was officially only released on Linux) to a few
| folks who had donated to them, before they vanished. This version
| not only worked under Windows XP, but also brought improvements
| with it, particularly a capability to use higher resolution
| sprites. But the whole culture of respecting creator's wishes
| obviously and especially also applied to Elecbyte, and they had
| specifically asked not to pass the Windows version around.
|
| So obviously, this led to a situation where slowly but surely
| everyone used the Windows MUGEN and it became the de facto
| version, but noone could admit to it or talk about it. The
| Windows version was passed around hush-hush, everyone holding up
| appearances that they certainly would never disrespect Elecbyte
| by using it against their wishes.
|
| Crazy times :)
|
| In 2007, things came to a head. Me and a couple other folks
| decided to completely turn mugenguild.com, then the largest MUGEN
| community (I don't know if it still is), on its head. We changed
| our policy to fully accept reusing other people's work, that we
| wouldn't police creator rights, saying that this was the only way
| the community could prosper. We also said that WinMugen was now
| accepted to use, because sticking to the DOS version was stupid
| and would be the death of the community sooner rather than later.
|
| Some people _flipped out_ over this. There were comics drawn of
| the involved people (including me) pissing on creators, a new
| community was created (RandomSelect) as the declared new bastion
| of creator rights. There were pages and pages and pages of a
| whole spectrum of reactions, some gloating about their new
| freedom, others lamenting the downfall of society as we know it.
|
| It was the worst of times, it was the best of times :)
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| Great story. It's always so weird to hear about how honor
| develops among thieves.
| jordemort wrote:
| My favorite MUGEN-related thing is Salty Bet:
| https://www.twitch.tv/saltybet
|
| This is a continuous stream of CPU vs CPU matches from a massive
| collection of fan-made MUGEN characters, some of which are deeply
| weird (Col. Sanders, anyone?) You can pay them for some fake
| internet points to gamble on the outcome of the matches, but I've
| found that watching all the strangeness that folks came up with
| is entertaining enough on its own.
| richdougherty wrote:
| One of my friends worked on My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic,
| based on this engine. I seem to remember I had a go at reverse
| engineering the file format so we could script builds, rather
| than going through the UI? My memory might be wrong though. I
| didn't make much progress, if I remember correctly, and there
| seems to be more documentation now.
|
| https://mugen.fandom.com/wiki/Fighting_is_Magic
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Later released as Them's Fighting Herds.
|
| (Stripped of has to ip and largely rebuilt from scratch)
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Man, me and my younger sister used to play MUGEN all the time on
| gramps ancient computer (which he barely ever touched, as he
| still preferred his typewriter).
|
| As another HN user has aptly put it: "Thanks for the trip down
| memory lane", indeed.
| dham wrote:
| Mugen along with Don Miguel translations of RPG Maker and 2d
| fighter maker 95 is how I got into programming. I'm guessing 99%
| of web developers today probably wanted to be game developers.
|
| All I wanted to do was make Dragon Ball Z games. At the time
| 1998/1999 there were only Japanese versions of DBZ games as
| illegal roms. I created a few DBZ characters for Mugen, 2d
| Fighter maker 2nd and made an RPG maker game.
|
| I used to collaborate with other creators over AIM making
| characters and other things. Some people would rip sprites and
| edit them and I would code them. The thought of remote work being
| a thing now is funny as I was doing remote work when I was 12 -
| 17 years old
|
| I remember liking Mugen over Fighter Maker at the time because a
| character could be backed up to a floppy disk where as I had to
| use my dads zip drive to back up a Fighter Maker character.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Do you by any chance remember a 2D bootleg dragonball game
| called "Vegetas Wrath"? It was a one player side scrolling beat
| 'em up, and I think it used sprites pulled from SNES games like
| Hyper Dimension and Butoden.
|
| I remember playing it some time in the early 2000s when DBZ was
| big here in NZ (a few years behind the states, as normal).
| flobosg wrote:
| > Don Miguel translations of RPG Maker (...) is how I got into
| programming.
|
| Same here, but I never finished any game. I spent most of my
| time dissecting other people's projects and engines. With some
| creativity you could do impressive stuff despite the
| limitations.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| For me it was DarkBasic that got me into coding.
|
| I discovered it in a game magazine and immediately downloaded
| it and it was a whole new world. It had its own weird GUI that
| was rendered in full screen, and there are almost NO youtube
| videos of some of the impressive demos like the 3D FPS Yeti
| game and others.
|
| My early teen years were filled daydreaming of games I could
| make on it and thinking it was easy because well, Basic, I
| ended up spending most summers just running other peoples code,
| creating levels that never saw any use.
|
| edit: nope I was wrong! found this old footage, brings me back
| memories
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiKLEtSg9io
| dham wrote:
| Oh yea DarkBasic. Good times. Do you remember the jetski game
| it came with. I never really made anything with it. Just got
| bits and pieces of stuff. I bought a license for Blitz Max
| and Blitz Basic also.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I went whole hog down the Blitz route: basic, plus, 3D,
| max, and finally monkey. I'm actually back to using
| BlitzMax for a project right now! Weird nostalgia plus re-
| learning.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > The thought of remote work being a thing now is funny as I
| was doing remote work when I was 12 - 17 years old
|
| +1. Companies were surprised that remote work "works". But many
| of us were basically doing remote work as hobbies during the
| 90s (or earlier). Not to mention the countless amazing open
| source projects done entirely remotely.
|
| I feel like the same logic could apply to doing work without
| meetings. Somehow open source and hobby projects produce
| amazing work without constant pointless meetings, and yet
| managers think work would grind to a halt without them.
| selfhifive wrote:
| I'll have to thank you for contributing to my childhood
| memories I guess. Used to play DBZ Mugen edition with my
| brother for hours.
| valyagolev wrote:
| there's a good book on game design by David Sirlin that touches
| on fightings a lot and tells interesting stories about them
|
| https://www.sirlin.net/ptw
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(page generated 2022-04-09 23:00 UTC)