Gaming [NDS] - ToonFighterZ - Beat'Em with Fun!

[LSD]

Hey guys,

my name is Raffaele Lattanzio, co-funder of the independent developer Mental Drink Games.
We are actually working on a Nintendo DS / DSi game named ToonFighterZ,
and we are putting as much effort as we can to develop an entertaining and funny game for this small console.
We do not aim for commercial products but we are passion driven so we are doing our best to create a product that will stick the player to the DS for a long time.

So ToonFighterZ is our first product and we have just produced a video for the GDC 2010 as it was requested.
You can find it on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoAdbgbMp8s



Have a look and please feel free to write or send any comment.
critics are more than welcome!

Just to let u know... if you would like to receive updates about our development or new media releases, you can add us on:
Twitter > http://www.twitter.com/mentaldrink
Facebook > http://www.facebook.com/mentaldrink

Regards,
Raffaele Lattanzio.

 

[Danny600kill]

Looks nice, can't wait, love fighters

Thanks a lot for posting here, makes us feel closer to the developers, other devs should take some lessons from you, speaking to players is a good way to develop ideas and fix problems

Good Luck

 

[Terenigma]

From that video it looks good graphic wise and could be fun altho alot of the character models looked rather large and screen filling doesnt look theres much room for movement but overall it looks good

 

[saxamo]

A sensible with smooth controls on the DS!? Say it ain't so! I'll be looking forward to this one, and hopefully posting on forums like these will help it spread virally! you might want to try DS-scene to post this there too. Thanks for sharing and best of luck on your work!

 

[LSD]

Thanks guys for your replies!

@danny: We are more than happy to know what real players think as we are players as well, and we need to know how to make our games as much fun and ertertaining as possible. Thanks to you for your comment!

@terenigma: You are totally right, that's why the camera is very smart and the player can move anywhere without restrictions (there's just the stage limit that blocks the player)
You cannot see it from this capture but it's possible to scale the scene by keeping all the players inside up to 60% smaller, just like 'Art of Fighting' was doing on NeoGeo.
This is very important to keep the gameplay very technical and smooth. So we will post soon other videos to show you how far the character can scale. Ah did I mention that it's possible to play up to 4 players together at 60fps?

@saxamo: That's a good idea. we will post there too! We also would like to know about wich specific DSi feature are you talking about. The development is on 80% but it doesn't mean that we cannot add specific features for the DSi.

 

[Zane]

You say 60fps? yet the video made it look abit sluggish. Maybe it was the animations but it really looked like the game slowed down abit during the fighting. Looks great though, and i love anything that has stat increase in it!

 

[DarkMario616]

This looks really nice, although it looks a bit slow, maybe it's just me but that's what it seems like.

And it's even nicer with the "stats", can't wait.

 

[DarkWay]

this does indeed look rather interesting

 

[LSD]

Thanks guys for your comments!

Just to let you guys know, the reason why the video looks slow is because the video itself runs around 25fps. The reason for that is because of the capture and the youtube encoding.
We'll try to provide another video soon with stats.

 

[KingVamp]

can you make custom characters or do you have to use characters already made? Is there a story/arcade mode?

kinda mind me of street fighters lol

Looks good

 

[LSD]

can you make custom characters or do you have to use characters already made? Is there a story/arcade mode?

kinda mind me of street fighters lol

Looks good

You can choose one of the 14 characters and then you can train him to increase his skills and learn new fighting techniques.
We would be happy to let the user creating his own character but this would make things too much generic and there would be no personality in each character.
Also you're right, it looks similar to street fighter but it's surely not the same as we have introduced some strategic elements where the player needs to balance and switch skills during the gameplay, using the touchpad, making the game very technical and frenetic.
We actually have planned to put Story, Arcade, VS, Training, Torunament modes.

 

[KingVamp]

Do each character have one then one color/clothing ? On a side note, what did you have to learn to make games like this? I want a job with games someday

 

[LSD]

Do each character have one then one color/clothing ? On a side note, what did you have to learn to make games like this? I want a job with games someday

There are 4 palette sets for each character. Some of them have an additional one for special challenges.
Well, working in the game industry is a job like others. If you really want to work in this industry someday, all you have to do is to believe in it by keeping exchanging ideas with others on internet, joining communities and focus on a specific role. Just remember that this industry needs skilled people, so if you grow in knowledge and experience you'll get a job anywhere in the world. Just keep doing what you really like and never give up mate. Good luck

 

[Pliskron]

Reminds me of a classic neo geo fighter like waku waku. Great addition for the ds.

 

[LSD]

Reminds me of a classic neo geo fighter like waku waku. Great addition for the ds.

I've found the video on internet of Waku Waku, and it looks very cool!
The difference is that the backgrounds in TFZ are not 2d but 3d mixed with 2d.

Btw, graphics are very similar indeed.. thanks

 

[kosheh]

nice ryu clone, lol

This game actually looks kinda fun...except, the game looks a bit...slow. Probably because of the very few hand-drawn frames. But hey - Guilty Gear got along just fine like that.

Just curious - how does this game play? Will there be input commands for specials similar to Street Fighter (QCF+whatever) or will they be triggered by buttons on the bottom screen?

Furthermore, does this game have any sort of combo system? I see like one combo being done, but most other attacks from the video just look like poking contests between the players.

The other thing I'm not huge on is the lack of...original-looking characters. :/
Just by looking at 3 of the characters I already can figure out who their influence is and how they play. I do like the Darth Vader parody, his super was a complete surprise lol

Spoiler

You've gotta include a rushdown character like Cammy or Sakura from SF4 - who just wails on you with weak-hit combos that easily flow into special moves
and a luchador, lol [but I think Darth Vader has that covered]

Will this game be coming out in English, too?

 

[Pliskron]

When can I buy it? It can take an awfully long time for a good game to find a publisher. It took intellivision lives three years. Crazy, considering that there's at least ten super lame DS games that come out every month.

 

[xamorok]

First off, I really like the fact that you are posting it here and asking us for our comments

. I wish more devs would do so. I think it would really go a long way to help curb piracy if the players felt more involved in the game itself. It looks promising, definitely pretty. I just hope that each character has their own movesets and such. One thing I would like to just recommend is some kind of avatar of the character right beside the health bar. Or something else, it kind of looks barren as it as right now.
I know that this might be a bit out there, and you dont have to answer this if you dont want to but how far along would you say this is into its development cycle?

Once again, I commend you on posting here and hope you keep it up

.

 

[LSD]

@Kosheh:

thanks for your critics. I really appreciate what u wrote, so I have to reply

Speed: The game runs at 60fps with 4 players without slowdowns. We have really stretched to the limits the DS hardware to archive this. Also the video frame rate is reduced by youtube as there's a limit of fps (30 i think) We will put stats on the next video!

Characters: It could be that some characters look like a parody of other games. I am not talking just about Street Fighter. But we did it on purpose, so the game it's full of these elements where each experienced player will enjoy by watching and finding these around. You should check all the 300-400 funny frames for each character before thinking about originality. Please be patient

Controls: The controls are similar to Street Fighter for super moves, and the touchpad is used to customize your skills in realtime.

Language: The game is actually in English, and it could be ported to other languages soon.

Combos: We have chain combos and air combos and combo breakers as well.


@Pliskron:
We really want to polish this game and make it fun to play and least for a long time. So it would take possibly few months before publishing it. Finding a publisher is hard (we are still dealing with this) especially on DS, but we believe that with high quality games it should be a little bit easier to find a good publisher.


@xamorok:
Thanks Xamorok for your comment! Each character has his own movesets and you can increase your movements by learning them from your opponents. Yes! There are some stages where beating an opponent will give access to your player to another special move, leant from the last fight. That's the experience. About the icons on top, we recorder the video in a rush for the GDC so the UI is not complete. That's the truth lol So the final UI has icons, names, and more

Thanks to everyone for your comments / critics

Cheers,
LSD

 

[KingVamp]

yea stupid idea , but you could have a character that is more then one toon. like ice climbers from super smash bro

hereyou can stop watching around 22 sec

not saying to copy them or their moves, but have twins character working as one.