Preliminary Consolidated Genre Research & Annotated Bibliography Part 1

Introduction

Due to the nature of my thesis covering 3D art and animation from within the specialized genre of fighting games, I have opted to research successful industry examples, as well as a variety of informed sources both on a community and professional level, writing or speaking on the genre in terms of a quality fighting game’s use of, and self-imposed limitations of animating characters in context of mechanical systems. These systems, heavily grounded within visual feedback, responsive controls, and balanced frame data, (i.e. advantages, disadvantages, safe/unsafe on block) are essentially aspects which rely on both art assets and deeper understanding of what makes fighting games satisfying to play.

In my own research for my thesis project, the most important aspect once I have functional, rigged models to animate will be to understand the universal rules of heavily frame-based animations. I will need to consider the speed of attacks, their duration and recovery times in terms of strictly kept frame data, their range and effective hit/hurtboxes, though those would not come into play until a prototyping stage, which I am not intended to approach until next semester at best.

I would like to make very limited use of tweening for more impactful, snappy animations (a personal aesthetic choice based on existing 3D games in the genre such as Guilty Gear Xrd). With that in mind, here is my consolidated list of influential genre examples and articles/videos to aid me in researching effective methods to animate for a fighting game.

Influences (Visual Approach/Aesthetic)

Guilty Gear Xrd: Use of keyframing on 3D animation to replicate the look and feel of sprite-based 2D animation of previous entries. Sacrifices smoothness for impactful gameplay feedback and makes hitbox/hurtbox data simpler to create and follow.

Punch Planet: A Sci-Fi fighter developed in Unity, this project most closely resembles my end goal for this project in the long-term. As an inspiration template to model my own mock-up out of it’s a great influence to set a general bar for myself.

Late 20^th Century Pop Art: A boldly colored, sometimes filtered and comic book influenced art style, pop art is loud and eye-catching, which is important for designing visuals for fighting game characters, they should stand apart from the background and be easily recognizable, not just by their silhouette, but by their color palette, texture and subtle detailing.

Neon Lighting/Dystopic Future Cities: The contrast of bright neon coloring washing damp, nighttime streets is a physical identity I’m especially fond of from the classic film Blade Runner, and has influenced many settings thereafter. My own world setting takes place in the Martian colony of Neornot City, and I wish to create a similar atmosphere, should I have time to work on backdrops for my mockup scene. This may end up being a stretch goal however, as it implies a lot of rendering techniques and environmental art that I haven’t yet considered for my project.

Sea Shell Aesthetic: The depths of the ocean hold some of the most hauntingly beautiful examples of life, much of which remains alien to us. Creating a sci-fi world, I feel the descriptor of hauntingly beautiful fits in very well with the dystopic, neo-noir style of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. Given my story exists offworld, and far in the future, I would like to give it a fantastical flair with architecture and technology developed and inspired by the natural and complex spiraling designs of shells: conches, spires, nautilus, venus combs and other mollusks. Even hovercars adapt the sleek designs of these shells. I believe this aesethetic will provide Temp Work Mercenary’s world its own distinct look apart from its peers in the genre, both in terms of fighting games and sci-fi media.

References

Text:

Animation of a High-Definition 2D Fighting Game Character:

¹ Rantala, Tuula. “Animation of a High-Definition 2D Fighting Game Character.” Theseus.fi, Spring 2013, www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/59254/Rantala_Tuula.pdf.

Tuula Rantala (http://tuularantala.com/) is a Finnish Game Artist who coincidentally created his own in-depth thesis researching fighting game animation a few years ago, and ultimately created his own sample character to demonstrate the process using open-source fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. and within his thesis he lays out many of the same discussions I have been considering in conceptualizing my own project. While perhaps redundant to source another thesis for my own thesis, I’d argue there’s no better resource than someone who has written extensively on the topic and gone on to do their own projects in the medium. Rantala’s conclusion ultimately states that 3D animation is the ‘most versatile and practical approach’ which gives me hope that my own project is built on a solid foundation to succeed on. This is a vital and exhaustive resource for me to reference as I move forward. Additionally, a select few of his listed references are quite applicable in my own.

² Keits. “Seth Killian Explains Why 3d Graphics Give Fighting Game Developers Flexibility.” Shoryuken, 28 Sept. 2011, http://shoryuken.com/2011/09/27/seth-killian-explains-why-3d-graphics-give-fighting-game-developers-flexibility/.

Seth Killian has been a competitive fighting game player, esports commentator, and developer both working at Capcom and independently, and has been a part of the community and the industry for years. In this short interview excerpt, he expresses that the fundamental differences between 2D and 3D are ultimately less significant than the process of creating them, ‘cheating’ to achieve effects or save time where necessary to keep on track, and the subtle care put into adding personality into animations to communicate character in a genre that doesn’t take much time for exposition or plot. In the end, Killian identifies that 3D provides more flexibility for what designers can do with their characters, iterating designs quickly and reworking animations if necessary, which with sprite-based characters can be an exhaustive, painstaking and time-wasting process.

³How to read frame data: Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition

EventHubs Community, “How to Read Frame Data: Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition.” EventHubs, 10 May 2010, www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/feb/17/how-read-frame-data-street-fighter-4/.

User Ashn0d lays out some general terminology to aid in reading fighting game terms and understanding the concept of frame data, that is, the duration of animations, their properties and how they effect or are affected by other mechanical aspects in the game.

⁴What is a Hit Box

EventHubs. “Guide to Understanding Hit Boxes in Street Fighter.” EventHubs, 21 Sept. 2009, www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/sep/18/guide-understanding-hit-boxes-street-fighter/.

An anonymous EventHubs user does a nice job laying out how hitboxes function, interact with one another, and unique properties such as move invincibility. Just a good personal reference for my own purposes.

⁵Designing a 2D Fighting Game

Ketonen, Miikka. “Designing a 2D Fighting Game.” Theseus.fi, 2016, www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/118514/Thesis_Miikka_Ketonen_KAT13PT.pdf?sequence=1.

Another thesis, this one is more focused in contextualizing the history of fighting games, and goes a little more into the mechanical depth of control layouts, attack strengths and so on rather than the artistic considerations, a good alternative angle to read up on, as each aspect informs the other.

⁶“I Wanna Make a Fighting Game!”

Demetrio, Andrea "Jens". “I Wanna Make a Fighting Game! - A Practical Guide for Beginners (Part I).” IndieWatch, 14 Apr. 2018, https://indiewatch.net/2017/04/11/wanna-make-fighting-game-practical-guide-beginners-part/.

Andrea provides a 4-part introduction and tutorial to beginner game developers who wish to create their own fighting games, going not only into the fundamentals discussed several times prior in this document, but providing excerpts of programming in order to actually implement these things in a development environment such as Unity. Andrea also uses a personal project for many of these examples, showing qualification and past experience working with the genre.

Video:

⁷Why Animation Matters – The Fighting Game

Poonian, Sandeep. Why Animation Matters - The Fighting Game. YouTube, Zenvizi Games, 19 Apr. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnASbvheF4A.

In this video, narrator Sandeep takes a quick but detailed look at the importance of animation for feedback, hitboxes, and the consequences of sloppy alignment of animations to hitbox data. Of particular interest he does bring up the 12 principles of animation, a universally accepted resource for creating quality animation, and a good stepping stone to follow on any animation-centric project.

⁸A.B.I.torial 14: Injustice 2’s Animation

SugarPunchDW. “A.B.I.torial 14: Injustice 2's Animation ALSO SUCKS.” YouTube, SugarPunchDW, 14 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbNWb-vmlB4.

While I’m not a huge fan of the uploader’s cadence and asides, this video contains some great indication and call-out of cut corners in the animation department on a AAA title that one might otherwise not readily notice. He makes his points well, uses other recent and relevant examples of the genre that do animation right, and does concede where Injustice 2 succeeds, so ultimately just a good resource to reference the do’s and don’ts of fighting game animation.

⁹How to Animate a 2D Fighting Game

Root, Dan. How to Animate a 2D Fighting Game. YouTube, Rootay, 18 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfPWyVpIjM.

I’ve been a fan of Dan Root for a while, as he explores a mix of mechanical, thematic and artistic aspects in the games he covers in great depth. In this particular video, he’s covering a lot of familiar ground to us by this point, but very efficiently does break downs with visual aids for fighting game animation that follows concepts quite a bit differently than the typical 12 fundamentals of animation coverage. Instead, Root opts to list out more specialized techniques in animating fighters, that is: keyframing, anticipation, follow-through, smears, overshooting and exaggeration/breaking as the main aspects of fighting game animation. Keyframing references the most important parts of the animation, the beginning, middle, end and general key points of movement in a given animation, follow-through is what one would think of as the recovery, where the player returns to their idle state after an attack, block, knockdown or any non-neutral pose. Overshooting is the idea of ‘stretching’ joints beyond their normal range before returning to the expected position, creating a smoother, snappier attack. Paired with overshooting are smears and breaking, where the illusion of motion is implied through a character’s movement being blurred or replicated several times at different positions in a single frame, as through photographed with a high shutter speed. Breaking as the name implies will bend or even break a character’s limb position in impossible ways to create a flexible, dynamic motion. Root references The Animator’s Survival Kit and its consideration for walk cycles, that you may 'break the leg’ to exaggerate and accentuate walking motions with character and life. Root ends with an interesting viewpoint of 2D vs. 3D, and how many of these techniques can become lost in the transition from traditional 2D art to 3D, but that in considering these techniques, a 3D game can mimic and ‘cheat’ out these techniques with a little extra care to bring them out.

¹⁰Making Animation Rock While on the Indie Clock

Dawson, Tim, director. GCAP 2017: First Pass Final Pass: Making Animation Rock While on the Indie Clock. YouTube, GCAP, 3 Dec. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DsKgUfpYJo.

Tim Dawson, one part of the three-man team at indie game company Witch Beam, has worked in the industry since the early 2000s, and in this talk expresses fantastic insight into the concepts of gravity and energy, and how it is distributed by motion. His decade plus of experience shows in his published work, and the several examples he uses during this talk further solidify him as someone worth taking as many tips as possible from. In fact… Here’s a text resource from him to supplement this video!

¹¹Assault Android Cactus Dev Blog – Birth of a New Queen

Dawson, Tim. “Assault Android Cactus Dev Blog - Birth of a New Queen, Part 2.” Assault Android Cactus, Witch Beam, 28 June 2013, www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2013/06/birth-of-new-queen-part-2.html.

Graciously, Tim did a lot of documentation while Witch Beam’s first title, Assault Android Cactus, was under development. This includes the full design process from concept sketches through modeling, UVs, rigging and animation, plus plenty of other tricks along the way. This guy really did it all, and his work here helps inform me as I work on my own documentation. I especially enjoy his witty captions! Jokes aside, this is some really valuable stuff, and more than just the one link above, every blog entry provides a different part of the process with some really cool samples along the way. http://www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2013/07/birth-of-new-queen-part-3.html

http://www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2014/05/there-will-be-justice-part-2.html

Something I particularly enjoy from that dev blog is this boss's running animation done by Tim, shown in multiple iterations improving detail with each pass:

^{Cool stuff.} 

¹²Low Poly Modeling: Style Through Economy

Redd, Ethan, director. Low Poly Modeling: Style Through Economy. YouTube, GDC, 3 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1oNuKChsdU.

Ethan’s body of work exemplifies the quality and merit of stylized graphics succeeding to get across visual clarity without the need for high fidelity, intensive processes common at the AAA level today. By making economic use of geometry, effective workarounds for shading, texturing and rendering scenes, as well as faking it to make it, as he shows with the idea of scrolling UVs, he provides some very cool, and very uplifting alternatives to stuff that often times is restricted only to the big, well-established businesses of the industry. A great reference to keep my goals attainable while still striving to create something of quality.