The Dogface Show Ep 1, Part 1

I promise I won't keep doing this. But I just wanted to update now that we have the first segment of the first episode up. Hopefully everyone finds it as fun as we had making it.

The Dogface Show

This is what I have been working on for a while now. So if you are wondering why I never update my blog anymore, it's because I have been hella busy with The Dogface Show.

So what is the Dogface Show? Dogface aka Victor Ratliff has been a friend of mine for a long time now. We met playing Street Fighter and we did a podcast not too long for another friend of ours, Ryan Gutierrez aka gootecks.

I believe Maj was the one who had the original idea - but the idea is that Vic has such a great onscreen personality that we should put together a show of some kind. I came on board as executive producer - recruiting James Chen to edit and even Yanbing to do the logo.







Here is the first trailer that we put together to highlight what the show is about:



Our first guests are Ryan Gutierrez and Mike Ross and focuses not just on Street Fighter but the culture of Street Fighter - hanging out, having a good time while also talking strategies and stuff.

It's our first attempt and we'll continue to iron out the bugs. If all goes well we should have our first segment live next week. Hope everyone enjoys it!

First You Runa, Then you Stopa!

I don't know what it is - but I loves me some Street Fighter songs. Last year Turbo2k5 made me smile nonstop with Gigaton Punch and now Lil Shoto has been bringing the heat with this sick El Fuerto song:

El Fuerto

He also did a great Chun Li one also.



He even did a great Blanka one.

I really hope this guy does the whole cast.

Evo2k dates and lineup for this year

Evo this year will be July 17th - 19th, 2009 this year. Will still be held in Vegas, but will be at The Rio.

The Games:

* Street Fighter 4
* Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix
* Soul Calibur 4
* Marvel vs. Capcom 2
* Guilty Gear XX, Accent Core
* SF3, Third Strike, 2v2 team tournament

As usual, we will hold exhibition events on Friday and Saturday night.

* Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Invitational Finals
* Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix 5 on 5 Regional Team Tournament

The TvC event will actually be the final 8 players of a 64 man invitational tournament that we will run before hand. The TvC finals will run just like any other Evo finals.

If you have any questions feel free to head over to evo2k.com or shoryuken.com

Combat Systems

A little over 5 years ago, me and Eric Williams were bored at Border's and discussing the various systems found in fighting games. Specifically Capcom 2D games. We generated a long list of what each game brought to the table for the first time. I was having a problem at work trying to remember how certain games handled things when I stumbled across this. I figured I would post it up, in case anyone else finds it helpful. This is by no means all inclusive or perhaps even accurate. More or less a brain dump we had one evening.

Unfortunately I don't have time to screen cap or vid cap what all of these things are and if you don't follow the Capcom fighting game scene I'm not sure how helpful this will be since there is a lot of jargon but if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer.

Street Fighter 2: World Warrior
2in1's
Links
Special Moves
Kara Cancel
Negative Edge
Meaties
Dizzies
Mashing
Projectiles
Short+Fierce
Breakable Objects
Bonus Stages
Cross ups
Air Throw
Block Damage

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition
Button Charging for special moves
Vega's Wall Climb
Evade
Get up Animations
Same Player vs. Same Player

Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting
Joystick Controllable Movement Specials
Air Special Moves
True Reversals with Specials
Teleport
Air 2in1's

Super Street Fighter 2
Dizzy particle right away
Text Messages (Combo Meter)
Rekka Ken
DJ's Uppercut Punch
Projectile Absorption

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Throw Techs
Overheads
Supers
Juggling
1st game with playable hidden character(?)
Character Variants (old vs. new)
Controllable Limbs
Weapon Loss and Pickups
New Joystick Motions - Fei Long, Cammy
Throw Whiffs

Street Fighter Alpha 1
Chain Combos
Alpha Counter
3 Part Super Meter
2 on 1 (Ryu/Ken vs. Bison)
Command Roll
Friends Super
Hit Throw
Rekka Ken Options (Guy)
Taunts
Character Intros
Rival Fights
Mini Launchers (Rose's Scarf)
Fireball Reflect
Air Block
Block When Landing (Trip Guard)
Auto Block

Street Fighter Alpha 2
Tech Rolls
Custom Combos
Combo-able Alpha Counter (Rose)
Stance Changes
Poison Super
Timed Button Input Specials (Gen's Kick)
2 Hit Air Jumping move (Gen)
Super Jump
Fake Special Moves

Street Fighter Alpha 3
Counter Hits
Air Techs
Every Move Has Potential To Juggle
2 Button Throws
Can Combo After Throw
Guard Crush Meter
Blue Blocking
Damage Reduction
Command Counters (Karin)
Pushblock
Dodge
Crouch Cancelling
Can Be Thrown While In Block/Hit Stun
OTG Command Grabs
System Variants (X vs. A vs. V)
Command Dash

Capcom Vs. SNK
Rolls
Ratios/Teams
Running
Prolonging getting up Animation
Command Charging of Meter (S Groove)
Immobilizing Supers (Iori)
Healing
Infinite Low Life Supers
Mash Inputs to change animation (Yamazaki)
Bird Interaction (Nakoruru)

Capcom Vs. SNK2
Level 2 Cancels
Low Jump
Parry
Just Defend
Raged
Command Activate Meter (N Groove)
Counter Roll
Roll Cancelling
Helper (Chang)
Auto Guard

Street Fighter 3 (all of them)
Special Into Super
Parry / Red Parry
Universal Overhead
Variable Supers / Meters
Dizzy Meter
Unblockable supers (Denjin)
EX Specials
Kara Throw

Marvel Series (all of them)
Super Jump
Double Jump / Triple Jump
OTG
Flying
Flying Screen
Air Combos
Gems
Air Dashing
Back/Forward Dashing
Combo Into Throw (Air and Ground)
Super Armor
Vertical Scrolling Stages
Healing
Tagging
Assists
Team Supers
Snapback
Shuma - Super/Eyeballs/Time Gem
Normal Move Projectiles
No Continue If Hit
Block Damage
Status Upgrades
Stealing Of Moves

Darkstalkers (All of them)
Pouncing
9 Supers
Dark Force
No Update On Rounds
Cursing

2D Misc
Lying Down
Command Dodge
Weapon Clash
Disarm
Unthrowable
Slow Down
Suicides
Destroys
Anti Chip Damage
Jump Cancelling
Roman Cancel

facelift

So I got sick of how everything was looking and decided to update tonight. Not 100% sure this is the final look either, but I like it better than how it was. So we'll see. In the interim, I'll be re-arranging some stuff and re-organizing some stuff. Let me know if you like it!

Was in Madison all of last week working on Wolverine. You may have seen the last issue of EGM ever with it on the cover. The Raven guys have been a blast to work with. Gustavo, who I worked with on God of War 1 is on the game and has been doing a fantastic job. I can't wait for everyone to see some more footage, let alone get their hands on it. I'm sure there will be some exciting things in the months to come.

Have you guys had a chance to play Prince Of Persia yet? I hope so because my next post will probably be about that game; as I think it very well is my personal Game Of The Year. I'll spoil the hell out of it next time I update.

Talking with your animators

Eric Williams wrote up a great blog post about animations, talking with animators, etc. You should definitely go check it out.

Click here to read what I'm babbling about.

Kitchen Sink Brush (Gold Tooth)

I don't know why - but I kind of like this. Definitely not worth $100 though.

Found via BetterLivingThroughDesign

Double Damage is not your friend

So I meet a lot of designers these days – from seasoned designers who have shipped more games than me to designers whose first game is the one I’m working on them with. One thing that they all have in common, they all suggest giving Double Damage as a mode, attribute, attack, etc for the player or an enemy, boss, etc.

Double Damage – the concept of an attack doing twice the damage compared to normal. For Example – if an attack does 5 points, then with this ‘AWESOME!’ attribute – the attack does 10 points!! Note: Double Damage always comes with 2 exclamation points, that’s how double it is.

So why bother writing up something about this? Well I for one think that it’s a terrible idea 90% of the time. I’ll go into details about that here in a minute, but the main reason why I hate it is because it’s very ‘designery’ solution. It deals with knowing how the details work and playing around with the numbers. It’s not something that is easily understood nor appreciated by the player.

Double Damage is almost always the first thing thought of when a power up is activated, a mode is turned on, etc. Let’s break down a little bit as to why I hate it so much.

Why Double Damage Is Bad
In most games these days – enemies don’t have health bars. Because enemies don’t have health bars, the player really doesn’t know how much damage they are doing with their base attacks. Because they don’t know how much damage their base attacks are doing, how in the world are they ever going to know they are doing Double Damage?

Let’s break it down by math a little. Let’s say an enemy has 35 points of health. Each attack from the player does 5 points, so it takes 7 attacks to kill one enemy. We now double that to 10 – so now it’s 4 hits to kill the enemy. Is that really all that noticeable to the player?

Using the same math example from above – what usually happens is that the player gets surrounded by a group of guys. No one is remembering how many hits they have dished out so far. Let’s be honest – most people are just mashing on buttons and don’t notice that 1 guy died faster than normal out of a big group.

The other down side to Double Damage is when meeting new enemies for the first time. The player has no idea how much health they have or how much damage the attack’s from this new enemy does.

When Double Damage Is Good
Like I said before, I hate it 90% of the time. So what is the 10% of the time I like it?

I think it makes a shitty power-up on its own. I do like it when it gets coupled with something else. Such as adding effects to the weapon and now the enemies explode when killed. Something that is more obvious to the player that something ‘cool’ is happening.

Obviously in situations where the player does know information – such as how much damage their attacks do or how much health the enemy has. This usually works out well in RPG’s since this information gets conveyed more often than in modern day action / adventure games.

Double Damage can be a good thing but it needs to be used properly. Don’t treat it as something ‘cool’ that the player can have and that’s it. If you are going to use it – then really use it. We used it a lot in God of War – but never as a sole attribute. We bundled it along with 900 other things that the player could appreciate: Fire Particles, Super Armor, whole new set of animations, blah blah.

self pimpage

A few projects that I've been involved with here recently have been released so I figured why not spread the Derek love today.

I did a podcast with Victor 'Dogface' Radliff the other night with Gootecks - a famous Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike player and now an up and comer in the world of SF4. You can find the podcast here. It was a lot of fun and hopefully you guys will find it fun as well. Note for those that visit my blog about videogame design and stuff - this is purely Street Fighter.

For those of you who do visit here for videogame design - then you may be interested in this:



This book written by Steven Swink can be found here at Amazon.


Steve came into LA a while back to interview me for the book - which talks about 'feel' in videogames, something that definitely piqued my interest. If you pick up the book and look at the book - I have this lovely quote:

"Steve has demystified what separates good games from great games, in a way that everyone can understand. Steve has written the very first book that deconstructs and examines the concept of why certain games feel better than others. Have you ever wondered why a simple action such as jump feels different in all video games? So has Steve, who has explored this and other actions to help everyone create better video games."

So go out there and support Ryan 'Gootecks' Gutierrez and Steve Swink since they are awesome people.