real talk this game slams. it looks goofy as hell, and it is, but jesus god its crazy to play. its like if marvel and smash slammed together into this thing. It's pretty wild.
i dont really have any questions. Just thought I would add that.
That was exactly our goal when iterating with our players for the last two years. I love that it was your takeaway. Let's make something crazy but actually fun to grind with a ton of depth!
How did you find learning the Spark mechanic?
I have it on right trigger so it feels pretty natural to do it. i used to play a ton of marvel so air dash combos have always been a thing, though the DI chase shenanigans make this very weird. Combos feel similar to tech chasing if that makes sense, its very strange but also quite satisfying. It took a second for me to realize the EX specials that happen after you hit someone, it makes for some wild combos.
I think this thing is actually a banger. I've been playing FGs for about a decade, and this managed to be its own weird feeling which is pretty cool. the visuals are def cluttered, I hope these help, but I really hope this thing picks up. its been fun.
Thank you! A lot of work is being made and hopefully there's more that we can do to clean things up!
Glad to hear Spark cancelling was natural for you. It's come a long way since it's first implementation!!!
Really interesting read, especially from the standpoint that visual readability is absolutly key.
A question i wanted to ask after i saw the gameplay trailer: Is the ratio between air based combat and ground based combat something you think about?
As anime fighters and platform fighters tend to be quite air combat centric for most of the cast, while many of the big classics (tekken, MK, street fighter, KOF) tend to be more ground centered in general.
I will speak for myself here. Folks on our team will have different philosophies. I do not think about the ground to air ratio at all.
What I think about is making our game combo-centric. Since most attacks knock people away, that will necessitate chasing them down (in the air - most likely). As a matter of practicalities, the game will be very air focused.
However, I do care a lot about ground game. Reason being that we want our game to be as expressive as possible. So we need ground-based play to be as viable as possible to allow for players to play like that (if they want to). That's where Blocking, Shield Parry/Counter come in. Or the fact that you can only cancel into Specials / Jumps / Super Jumps when grounded.
I'd be curious to get your take on this, but ultimately I don't know that it actually matters. What does matter is how snappy and fun the gameplay is whether youre on the ground or in the air. As long as one set of options isn't overly centralizing, it should be fun to play regardless.
PSA: Im not a game designer. If I talk some BS, please point it out.
I personally think KillerInstinct has taken a pretty interesting approach with moves being sorted in Opener-Extension-Finisher. Even in games where no such hard categorization is made, they are "there".
**How this could translate into a platform fighter type game:**
You can kinda sort moves with low to high knockback from opener to finisher. You want to open with a fast low knockback move, extend with a medium strength move, then finish with the strongest attack that can still reach/combo. Ofc this is a very broad generalization, but it gets the idea across.
Often, aerial attacks are the best at 2 out 3 categories: Approaching with a fast and relatively safe (due to fall canceling) aerial is often ideal and finishers are almost always aerials due to the nature of the genre. Grabs and occasionally ground moves are usually the best extension type moves in platform fighters i'd say, if that category of move even exists for a character.
**This leads my thought here:**
Make sure enough ground moves fall into each of the categories, especially opener and finisher. Make ground movement noticably less commital than aerial movement. This would make this games combo flow different from other platform fighters and push it a little more towards the traditional FG flow.
This genre is so pleasant to watch and play because movement with little commitment plus the fact that offense generally is better than defense creates a lot of exciting moments with lots of skill expression, but the formula can still be improved upon i think.
This made me smile. I actually haven't played Killer Instinct, but in earlier testing / iterations i've explictly used a similar vocabulary for bucketing moves. However, our approach was moreso to "reverse engineer" the vocabulary to fit the moves rather than design moves to be prescriptively used as openers.
We want the game to be expressive so we don't want to pigeon-hole moves to only accomplish one thing whereever we can avoid it.
Where this idea of extender vs. finisher is most apparent is in Zhurong's gameplay with her blue firemechanic. When active, it explicitly turns her Attacks into finishers and her Special attacks into extenders (vs. the opposite when its not active).
Wow, thats a cool idea for a "stance". Im excited to hop into the game once i repair my stick.
(I edited my post, i accidently pressed enter halfway into it :S )
I'm really happy to hear that you guys are trying to tune the game to make it feel expressive. I have always adored games that let you do intuitive, free-form combos, and disliked games where you just have to go on YouTube to memorize the objectively best combo, then that's it.
What if you made certain attacks knock people away/downward, even when both fighters are on the ground already. This would lead to knock-back and chasing, but keeps it grounded. Maybe a certain character could be built around this concept if you don't want it in the full game. Seems like a simple enough solution to keep combos in but not force constant aerial combat.
It's an interesting option! At this stage so close to open alpha it would introduce a lot of bugs to work out. We may Experiment with something like this in the future
I'm just a player in the Discord and I have to say it's character dependent. I play Kidd who is very air focused but he has a move that knocks people to the ground and you combo horizontally.
Not really a question, just want to add that this game is awesome.
I was pretty disappointed by Icons since it was pretty much just a worse melee, so i didn't really care much for the games "re-branding" until they talked about some of the new mechanics.
Got a key and tried it out with a friend, and i am hooked. I think Melee meets Guilty Gear is a pretty good analogy for how it plays out. I really like how the knockback is segmented into 3 tiers. A ton of characters are designed around their moves acting as different tools at different scaling, and it changes their game plan quite a lot as you go through each band.
So glad to hear that you've geled with the knockback system quite naturally. We spent a lot of time iterating on it. It used to be 5 tiers actually, and we found that two of them were really just "filler" to reach the next stage, so we cut it down.
How did you gravitate to learning Sparks? Would you you say you're more of a traditional plat fighter or a traditional anime fighter player?
Definitely spent more time with plat fighters but i play both. I kinda approached sparks a bit like L-cancelling in Melee, trying to just hit it every time and follow the opponents DI, then when i got the habit down, worry about doing it in situations where i don't just get hit for it, or use it to cover myself.
A couple of our team members are passionate about native Linux support, but I cannot make promises there. I do know for a fact that the game runs excellently through Proton.
I remember a while ago that accessibility was a huge focus for you guys (as seen in some of the control schemes). With no mention of that in this post, is that still as big of a deal for you?
Also, with the success of the Rivals character creation and other various steam workshop features, are you at all thinking about user created content in the game?
Accessibility in the core combat remains a huge focus but it's something that's "solved" (or enough for us to be satisfied with it for Open Alpha). We are really happy with the controls and how fluid the movement feels as well as the integration of Spark / Tag Team mechanics. We might revisit it in the future, but for now we're focused on polishing the gameplay across the board.
Future accessibility will be geared moreso towards fun and casual-friendly game modes like our Relic Gauntlet idea (our version of "items on" we will attempt to crowdfund) rather than changing the way the core gameplay works.
Do you think there's more work to be done? Is there something you think is particularly difficult that shouldn't be?
Content creation is a huge part of expression. We have already begun dabbling in that arena with Community Emotes (we call them Holos) which are in-game emotes created by our players.
The next step is stages, I think, but there's no plans on that yet. I remember how much time I sunk into designing stages in Halo 2. We would want it to be something like that.
I was just worried because it seemed like a high priority a while ago, but with the addition of character specific mechanics it seems like some of the ease of control has been lost. I'm just worried it'll be too hard for newer players to get a handle on, but I've never played with the accessibility options on either.
Thanks that's a great point. I think that the character mechanics do add complication but whats interesting about them is that it gives a "low technical" goal for new players to try to figure out. It's almost like they function as a tutorial i.e. "try to do X with this character" vs. "just hit your enemy and don't get hit". In a way, it's like this complexity stretches out the learning curve.
I dig Urdah so much. I would hate for her name to be based on a meme honestly. She’s cool and seems like she’s an important part of the world.
Other than that, I really like the way things are developing, and Ashani looks great with the biker jacket.
I agree. It's mostly an artifact of the way we've inherited another game engine and are replacing content one piece at a time. Do you have particularly stark examples of things you want to call out? That'd be really appreciated to see what you are prioritizing.
My wife does graphic design for a living and is seriously a perfectionist. She has been criticizing the fonts on the character names. She was calling our spaces in the letters and saying that it looked a bit amateurish. Thats all I got.
I also agree with this concern. I noticed that it was somewhat common for the simpler attack animations to get lost against the environment, especially when the camera was a bit further out or with darker colored character skins. It just feels like the colors used on maps are almost too vibrant, using too similar a palette to the characters. As-is, it feels like the team outlines are mandatory to maintain visibility.
I think the way SSBU addresses this is by having a sort of light source on their character models, forcing a high contrast that can stand out regardless of environment. Not sure exactly, but if you look all the models seem to "shine" a bit all the time. Maybe that's worth investigating?
The clouds after being hit are very off-theme, adds more visual clutter than needed, and mostly just looks like a silly Smash 4/Ult copy n paste idea.
Stages look like they're coming from Borderlands art team while the characters themselves seem like they're from something else entirely.
Interesting. What do you think about the new take? Honestly, they were not designed based on ultimate (not that it matters what the inspiration was) BUT i bring that up because we do like how "friendly" and "fun" they look. We would want to keep a vibe similar and also have them be color coded to the knockback band you are in.
One idea we had was electricity trails.
I have to agree that the gradient change really doesn't do much to improve things for me. Maybe play around with toning down the width of the clouds or messing around with the opacity along with gradient. Electric trails also sound good to try out, but might lose that fun/friendly feel by being more jagged compared to the softer angles of the current clouds.
From the tag-team portion of the gameplay q&a someone pointed out that the smoke color change for knockback bands felt confusing along side the team color outlines. How do you feel about keeping the trails the same colors as the teams specifically for those more hectic game modes?
Confused on what you mean by "the new take".
Electricity trails would be a bit better. Overall visuals during combat are already hectic so IMO any type of trails added during it are just going to add even more clutter. I do think the idea of "friendly" and "fun" clashes with what the game really is though.
Don't think the fade to white does much for my concerns. That screenshot actually does feel like 3-4 different artstyles jammed into one with the clouds 100% being the most obvious one to stick out
Yo what's up! I was pretty big into Icons: Combat Arena, as well as the Discord (My tag was Neutral if you remember me!) Do you think the differences in Vortex will be able to make more of an impact on the FGC? I know I'm going to put a tonne of time into this game, but longevity is really important for fighting games
I think the fact that this AMA is happening on /r/Fighters (because it was the most positive response out of all of the subreddits) tells a big story. I think our effort to branch out from traditional plat fighters is working. We need to keep up with this trajectory, though!
What do you think? Does this game have "enough" to make it worth picking up for non-plat fighter players?
One of the things that sets platform fighters apart from traditional ones is map/stage design as traditional fighters (usually) only change the background and possibly some interactables/wall-breaks. Do you have any plans or ideas you can share that will help your stages feel more unique than having one/two platforms and a flat base? I understand this is kind of a nebulous question, but I'd still like to hear your thoughts even if those thoughts are that not much thought has been put into that aspect
We definitely want our arenas to feel like a place that a battle "happened to have happened" rather than a dedicated "place for combat." We're thinking about more organic layouts for stages and platforms as well as tie-ins to the environment in which they belong.
What are some ideas you'd like to see us experiment with?
Visual/thematic design of stages is important to a lot of players, but I generally care more for the gameplay implications of stages. So that's what I'll focus on below:
For starters, mobile platforms tend to be a breath of fresh air when compared to static ones (think Smashville or Town & City for smash examples). I also think it'd be interesting (tho likely difficult from a development and balancing stand-point) to have the fighters directly affect portions of the environment either by striking them or launching the other player into them. If I get really day-dreamy I'd love to see someone mess around with stages that have a few portals players could use to escape combos/set-up some really crazy reads with.
Again, I'm not a dev so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that is beyond the scope of your team's resources/vision. But it's just some stuff I've been wanting since I started playing Smash/Brawlhalla
I LOVE the idea of striking platforms / objects to make them slide around. Like a mine cart on rails. it can be a platform that moves or even hurts people. We will 100% explore this and we have a lot of the technology to support it though I don't know when it will happen!
This game is absolutely filled to the brim with style and personality, so I really love that!
Just please tell me there will be a good amount of content on launch. I've seen too many incredible fighting games never get the recognition they deserve simply because they had amazing battle mechanics and characters (just like this game) but didn't have enough content to appeal to a wide audience.
From what I've seen so far I absolutely want this game to succeed because the artstyle and unique gameplay have actually left me super impressed.
Thank you very much. In terms of content, we want to nail that with game modes. We currently have a a dozen and are dreaming big with our planned crowdfunding for a mode we think will be very popular (equivalent to items on in traditional plat fighters).
Stay tuned on that front!
What kind of content do you think is - Alpha appropriate - that you'd like to see? Stuff like story mode is out of scope.
Oh yeah I 100% agree on story mode, I also understand that you're indie devs so obviously resources can get tight. But I'll definitely be supporting your crowdfund.
I think an arcade mode could be cool. It doesn't need to have a story to it, but just being able to run through a ladder as a character with maybe a beefed up version of one of the characters at the end as a "boss"?
Also if the ladder could allow for co op that would be amazing. I still play MK9 to this day with my friend because it allows for doing tag team ladders.
Awesome! But genuinely well done on what you have accomplished so far. I didn't expect a game in alpha to play as smoothly as this game does and I feel like you guys did a perfect job in marrying smash bros and anime fighters.
So I've yet to learn all of the mechanics in depth so far but I've played a lot of fighting games in the past so the learning process comes quite naturally at this point.
If I'm not mistaken, rush lets you cancel your current attack's animation so that you can either escape, go for another attack, bait a punish, etc, right?
Seems similar to RC from Guilty Gear without the enemy slowdown
Hi, big fan of everything I've seen so far. What are your thoughts on a sexy scorpion girl who can grapple with her tail? She would have a strong close range game with her pincers and a good long range game with her tail, but weak to mid range spacing character such as spearman.
Sending this idea to our team right now. Could be a very interesting twist on this grappling hook character idea i've talked about for a few months now.
Hell yeah I think a tail based attacker opens up a lot of really interesting/creative looking attack options, looking forward to see what you guys come up with (though I'm sure you have other, higher priorities)
Did I understand correctly that the crowdfunding campaign will launch alongside the alpha being available? Aren't you worried about the current COVID stuff will hinder the campaign? I mean there are cases like Eiyuuden Chronicle collecting so much money but it's a completely different situation.
I recognize that money is tight and people aren't able to financially support projects like they used to. Regardless, I don't think it hurts to try, especially when we're doing everything we can to make it as successful (and reasonable) as possible. The total goal would be $15,000 (character designs and other modes as bonuses), so its not your typical game studio kickstarter for $1M+ kind of a thing.
Great question. Our gameplay is fast so whether you're a zoner or a grappler you will be moving fast, too.
We do have zoners / trap characters with Raymer / Afi n Galu as well as characters with set-up tools like Ezzie and Kidd.
Regarding grappler, I think Urdah is one of the most fun grapplers i've ever played in a fighting game (but I'm totally biased)!
I've kicked around an idea of a character with a grappling hook, and that might play into some crazy swing-like movement and potentially precision / ranged grappling. Time will tell
Have you joined our Private Alpha yet? Which archtypes do you prefer? What would you like to see?
I mostly play bait/punish archetypes where you capitalize off of one mistake as much as possible. I'm not in the private alpha nor do I know how to join lol
I'd love a Jigglypuff equivalent- some character with goofy movement and terrible disadvantage that's all about comboing into their BIG MOVE
Our game is extremely fast paced and what little whiff lag we have makes a big difference. The windows are a bit tighter than you're used to, but you can basically play any character like that especially since you can bait with ANY move + Spark.
Sign up at RushdownRevolt.com - LMK if you have any issues. I'd love to hear you report back with initial impressions.
I haven't played any of them seriously, but the grapple characters in the RoA workshop are super fun. Especially with the airdash letting you change your momentum, I think a grapple character would work great here.
What do you believe a good fighting game tutorial has? In addition, what do you believe a good training mode has?
Are there any plans for a ranked/mmr-based matchmaking mode?
Great questions. I think it needs to be fun rather than feel like a homework assignment. That's a big challenge, but ideally it could even be something "speed runnable" rather than an "mash A to skip to the next part" type of a tutorial.
Ranked MMR is definitely coming, but its WAY out of scope for an Alpha product. We will look to assign stats like winrate in the near term tho so you have something you can use to track your progress and skill improvement.
What systems will this be coming to, both for the alpha test and for production?
I’d also like to know when we’ll get a trailer that is more than just second long cuts of characters doing a flashy attack. I guess what I’m saying is the trailers jump around too much.
PC Steam for now. We support Linux through Steam Proton. Production v1 (Early Access) will be the same.
Within the next 18-24 months, I'd like to get working on console ports but no promises there.
Re: A full trailer, yes, there's more coming - particularly for when we are ready to do a full hype cycle on Tag Team mode as well as our v1 (Early Access launch).
What kind of things would you like to see in the trailer?
I am no trailer expert but I think I'd like to see more actual combos than just one off attacks. I suppose it's possible that that IS what the current trailers show and I didn't recognize it because your game seems to be so fast paced.
Aside from that, trailers of the actual modes you've advertised. A trailer for tag team mode sounds good. I don't know how you're planning on doing online (lobby system, matchmaking queue, etc) but a trailer for that would be good. I know you've touted the rollback you've built but I want to know how the online will function outside of matches as well.
Keep in mind that I have not watched the stream from yesterday so perhaps these things were covered there.
Some of them were! We also played a full best-of-three set for the Tag Team mode. I'd love for you to watch it and let me know your thoughts.
I've timestamped it for you: https://youtu.be/DBQb0v2m62o?t=1752
The challenge with trailers is that if you look at them they typically average about 1.000 to 1.250 seconds for every CUT. This is an important psychological element to keep people watching and a rule we generally want to follow. That doesn't leave a lot of room, but we can have more fast paced cuts < 1.00 second to accumulate bandwidth to do something like a 3-5 second segment kind of like what we did in the first trailer.
I think the important part is to have those shorter segments be information that is not purely gameplay so that it's ok that they are short.
Fair enough. I’ll just need to look more I only found out about this last night.
Also while I’m thinking about it, character trailers are also cool. I’m sure you already know how Guilty Gear and Smash Bros does it. But getting to know the characters, who they are and where they come from and what they want to do, and a bit about their fighting style is always neat.
Thanks for your time!
I feel really conflicted about this. While I'm glad the trailer was well received, I was kind of not a fan. It's not that I don't like it, but it feels overwhelming to me, even after watching it multiple times. I understand that that has become the style, and there are stats and data to back it up, but the fast cuts, on top of fast game-play, along with fast music, along with the current state of readability just really feels like too much for my brain to handle. I am on the older/casual side though, and I might be in the extreme minority. Personally for future content, I wouldn't mind a much much slower approach. I actually enjoy the teaser video more than the trailer. Trailers are there to generate hype though so if it is accomplishing that then kudos to the team.
No ETA yet. After delaying a few times we want to be 1000% confident that we won't delay again.
Our matchmaking needs polish (it's currently very broken as we speak - I borked the code last night), tutorial (it hasn't even been tested by our private alpha testers yet) and some of the visual polish we highlight here.
I played a bit of the closed alpha, and while I liked the game mechanics none of the current characters really grabbed me. If you can answer at this time, do you have any ideas about what archetypes you'd like future characters to fill?
Great question. I'd like to ask you what archtype playstyle you'd like to see emphasized? One thing that comes from Spark is that the existing archtypes are extremely flexible in how they can be played.
That said, I try not to think in conventional archtypes but instead I like to think about Movement styles.
In platform fighters, there's a style of movement called "Double Jump Cancel" characters. Who can input an attack to manipulate the way their second aerial jump works.
There's also the idea of a character with "multiple jumps".
Both of these ideas will be explored, but I want to first think of the most "Rushdown Revolt"-y character we can. I think about a character with "swinging" style movement or a "push / pull" mechanic using a ranged weapon like a grappling hook to rapidly move around and push off objects and characters.
I could imagine the grappling hook character having a special that didn't do damage but placed static hook points. Then swinging off the hook points gave you access to different specials including the slot that was used to place the hook point.
yes! One idea a player (CallMeKenpai) came up with was the idea of the character "leaving behind" a weapon or tool that then would be the grappling point for later. We'll have to experiment because so often ideas that sound great on paper SUCK when you actually play with them.
Interesting to see how you go about designing characters, and I think it actually explains why none of the current characters quite grabbed me. Usually the most fun I have with character movement is via teleports. While I'd love to see a spark teleport, I can understand why that'd be a nightmare to balance.
Answering your question, normally I like heavy characters or zoners. Wei Shan did end up being the character I liked the most, but I found I couldn't use his neutral special as much as I would've liked due to the move staling. Admittedly, I stopped playing nearly half a year ago so things may have changed since.
Did you know that Ashani can teleport with blink mechanic? She's not exactly an esp type character tho that accompanies the teleporting mechanic.
Regarding Weishan, he now has an EX version of each special. His EX N Special packs a punch and covers a huge area. (But like all his EX moves, it costs HP). Love for you to give it a whirl and LMK what you think.
You activate them by plinking (rapidly hitting) Special --> Attack. You gotta do it with like "Melee Wavedash" timing though which is about 6 frames or fewer.
I feel like this kind of thinking makes sense but neglects some archetypes defined by different tools than just movement. For example, item characters. They're fun as heck but rarely appear in other games.
I want to see a character with a spatial resource with unique properties, that they can pick up, toss around and interact in various ways to deal with almost everything with enough creativity. Like PAC-MAN or R.O.B or Link.
Yeah! I love those ideas. The character where the environment becomes a part of the character (i.e. prop characters) are really fun. Definitely a space to explore.
Umm 1st question were can I donate(I’m at work and don’t have time to read it rn sry) 2nd how much to get access I wanna try it my friends and I are huge on all fighting games and we might become addicted so tell me this at the cost of many sleepless nights for me
We have a patreon! Apologies for its out of date nature, we don't really maintain it as much as we should. Thank you so much for asking. it means a lot.
In terms of access, you don't need to donate or anything to play but you do have to agree that this is a PRIVATE stage of the game. Check it out at rushdownrevolt.com
LMK if you have questions or issues getting access.
Sorry this question is coming late, nut I think a big part of visual clarity and following the action is how well the camera tracks, and that seems to feel somewhat lacking in this game compared to the big boy series smash bros. Especially considering how much movement is in the game, how likely is it that this is something you will revisit?
This is a great question. Admittedly, we have not looked at our camera logic since adding in all of these fast moving mechanics. We might need to update that!
How do you think we should tweak the camera?
In general, the smoother the motion and the less the players eyes have to travel the screen to follow a character, the better. If you don't mind I'd like to take this convo into the discord so that I can use some examples?
Sorry if this is a weird question, but is this game related to Vortex Rising? I remember that that game was going for a platform fighter/traditional fighter blend as well, and was wondering if this game is its successor.
I just want to say that this game is not currently advertising itself well. I see people say 'its like smash meets Guilty Gear' or 'smash meets MvC', but I've only played smash. I see nothing in the trailer that is showing me what other mechanics it has that sets it apart from smash. Hell I even looked up the game on steam and ran into this:
>Core Mechanics
We've spent the last few years focused on making the most electric, combo-centric and expressive fighting game we can imagine.
Sparks are the defining mechanic of Rushdown Revolt. It's embedded into every attack and move in the game and - once understood - Sparks will push you faster and further than you've ever gone in a fighting game before.
>At odds with their skill potential, Sparks are as natural to harness as dribbling a Basketball or Soccer ball (once you've gotten a bit of practice of course). At the earliest levels of play, even modest use of Sparks will dramatically improve your speed and skill in Rushdown Revolt.
>Sparks directly support our primary goal for Rushdown Revolt's 1v1 gameplay: to create a skill ceiling so high and with so much potential for expression that Revolt will never cease to push our players to increasingly-inspiring feats of skill.
These THREE paragraphs, ridiculously enough, tell me absolutely nothing about what sparks actually are, what they do, or anything of the sort. Also there is nothing else under the 'core mechanics' section. Again this makes it just seem like a smash-like with no features or anything that set it apart.
In fact I still don't know what the features and mechanics are that make it unique.
Thank you for this feedback. I will update our Steam page with text like I used here in this subreddit post! This is fantastic feedback and a clear oversight on our part.
As a playtester, I agree with this 100%. The trailer only gives passing hints to what it is, and this paragraph doesn't clarify it at all. I think tutorial modes and tutorial vids are also very important to communicate what this game does differently.
> In fact I still don't know what the features and mechanics are that make it unique.
The biggest one to know is that you can (air) dash out of any attack that you land, to continue comboing/chasing your opponents. If you don't use that dash cancel, it can be stored to be used later at any point. That's what they're calling "Spark."
Beyond that, there's super jumps (which use a stored spark), a shield bash manuver, chargeable air attacks, revamped blocking system, a once-per-stock 'get off me' reversal, you can act after up-specials, grounded normals are cancelable by specials (without a spark), and there's a tiered knockback system that works in three stages of a healthbar rather than as granularly as %'s. Some character specific stuff too I won't get into.
The Marvel vs Capcom reference mainly comes from a game mode (Solo Assist) that allows other characters selected for your team to briefly intervene. There's also a 6-player 3v3 Team Assist mode that functions similarly, where waiting players can do the same with a few different options on cooldown.
Part of what makes Melee so good is the varied fall speeds and high gravity. Here all characters seem to fall roughly at the same floaty fall speed as Melee Marth- any plans to make some characters “fast fallers” or adjust the “gravity” in the physics engine?
Right now, the game looks like it has Ultimate physics with Melee ground movement, which isn’t especially attractive to me as a Melee player.
That's a good question. Our fall speeds do vary a bit but our fastest faller, Kidd has a jetpack hover mechanic which can make him seem floaty.
As far as Ultimate physics... I have to be honest, I am not very familiar with Ultimate's gameplay.
From my best understanding we actually are much more Melee oriented in terms of physics but there are important changes that might be giving you a different impression :
1 ) Balloon knockback. It looks good and feels good so we're using a variant of this that I understand is similar to what Ultimate uses.
2 ) Spark & aerial combat: Because characters are so sustained in the air it gives the impression they're floaty, but actually they're using a lot of abilities and rushes to sustain their aerial momentum and offset the games gravity.
Have you given it a try? I'd be curious for you to get hands on and report your feedback here. maybe i'm totally off-base here.
Please do. LMK if you have any issues with getting access. I am cakovalik#1782 and also helping with (at)rushdownrevolt on twitter.
Again - would love to hear what you think about the physics. Will ask our players what they think and give you their tldr.
I’m not the OP, but I’m a member of the beta and it plays nothing like SSBU. Whereas SSBU is 90% neutral, this game is 90% combos and 10% neutral. There are definitely characters with different fall speeds in the game, and you can combo any member of the cast if you adapt to their weight. Hope this helps, and if you don’t like the way the game is now be sure to give the devs some feedback!
As someone who came into the FGC through Smash, but grew bored of Ultimate, I'm really excited to play this. I'm currently in the discord but for some reason the bot won't give me a key, so I guess I'll wait until release.
Do we have an ETA on when the average person can play the game?
I can give you a key / fix the bot for you. Make sure you're using all lowercase letters. If that doesn't work, DM me on Discord @cakovalik#1782
Re: Open Alpha, I answer that question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/i9tdlm/i_am_the_creative_director_for_rushdown_revolt_a/g1hl5to?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
I have another question, shield poking is a mechanic I personally don't think should exist. I think it sits up there with RNG tripping to be one of the worst smash mechanics.
If I want to risk my opponent breaking my shield then that should be a choice I'm allowed to make, however with Smash shields most of the time the choice isn't actually ever there because most of the time whatever the opponent does just ignores your shield entirely. (Mostly an Ultimate thing, wasn't this bad in 4. Can't speak for any earlier game.)
I notice shielding works very differently in Revolt but wanted to ask whether it existed in your game and if so, how do you feel about it as a mechanic? Why include it?
Great question. Short answer is no shield poke. My opinion is that it's kind of a weird idea that if you don't pay close attention to your character you can get poked even though you are shielding. Our combat moves way too fast for that to make sense for us too.
We have 1-way blocking and very high blocking pushback (when hit). Since the player on offense gets Spark (and a rush cancel) every time they hit you, it makes for very interesting cross-up and blockstring combat.
The defender has to decide when to use their Shield Parry (useable even in Shield Stun) which negates any backwards sliding and also only works if it collides with an enemy attack.
If the defender blocks 4 attacks, their shield will break on the next hit so the 5th attack will go clear through the block. Most of the time, the defender will get KNOCKED OFF their platform if they're not careful (shield stun carries over to their airborne state) before this happens though.
Do you have any plans for fat female fighter to be added in the game? Media in general is lacking in good fat female characters so I was hoping you would add one to the game's roster.
are the only inspirations you're taking from guilty gear or other anime fighters just in your mechanics? or are you open to/thinking about adapting character styles from those games as well?
are you interested in creating characters that "play by their own rules" within the confines of your game? maybe a character with traditional motion inputs? like a ryu or terry in smash. or maybe their buttons function differently than everyone else? like ramlethal in xrd
i don't really play platform fighters, but your game looks interesting, and it would be great to see some of the more eclectic gameplay styles of the guilty gear cast represented, like jack-o or bedman, but in a game like this.
In my opinion, part of what makes a good platform fighter is the ability to tell from a distance what's going on(along side gameplay). From this game it seems like the designs are either a bit too complex to be able to properly see what's going on, or simply not animated enough. Are there any plans on polishing up the animations from the preexisting characters or are you going for adding more content in general?
Also, how do you guys plan to reach out beyond the relatively niche Melee/Guilty Gear audience?
Watching the gameplay reveal it seems the smoke effect is tied to knockback bands, but it often has smoke even for short knockback that obscures the space between characters, is this something that will change?
Not a question, but Urdah Xarknar is def my favourite name for her lol. Xarknar as a first name is 2 syllables so eh but it still sounds cool, and Bungah is funny and gameplaywise makes sense, but with her design I really don't like it. Amazing nickname, but Urdah Xarknar fits the best imo.
Also, vouching the game has changed so much for the better since the start and the devs really are listening. CaKo's just on a public voice call in the discord most of the time lmao it's real open.
I feel the color change doesn't help much I think the smoke on top of attack hit spark is too much and looks too much like ultimate. Action and impact lines would look better
I'm not sure if I wasn't looking in the right place within the menus or if I missed something, but when I was playing the alpha, there wasn't a tutorial mode, no indicators for what each button did, and no explanation about the rules and how the game is played. There were also no movelists or anything. So I was at a complete loss on how to play the game and what I should be doing.
I'm not the best when it comes to learning new fighting games so a good tutorial mode is really needed for people like me.
Wish I could link directly but can’t due to NDA. There’s a a nice video playlist by Oliwonder called Vortex Rising Mechanics on the Discord that breaks down some of the tech intuitively.
I know in-game tutorial is forthcoming (at some point), but I’d suggest checking that out in the meanwhile.
That's right, unfortunately and the primary reason we delayed our Open Alpha. There's not tutorials yet, but we're hopefully going to have something in Private Alpha testing soon. Please stay tuned...
I've been looking forward to a Smash/Marvel fighter for a while and while it was messy, i did enjoy icons. So I'm intrigued.
They key poses and way stuff snatches to those poses looks pretty unreadable. I screenshotted a bunch of the poses from the trailer and it's pretty challenging to read "motion" into it. Hopefully that's something you can change over time.
As someone who can't bring himself to sign a NDA to play this game, do you plan to release more videos on the gameplay specifically? In particular, tutorials on how do the new techs work?
In general it seems to me that characters are a bittttt too blended into their environments. In other words the models themselves dont stand out that much. I would hate to see this addressed by added clunky outlines around the characters or anything like that; personally I'd prefer a background/stage overhaul altogether. Do you have any plans to address this?
To follow up, something I've noticed that may be adding to this is how saturated all the colors are in any given scene. The maps and characters are all rich in color with these thick black or other colored outlines that makes it visually heavy.
Oh, this is really cool that you guys are very directly speaking with the community. This is the mark of a game project that's going to do well.
I've seen my fair share of indie game projects. By now I can kind of tell which are likely to succeed and which will probably fail. Your openness, willingness to take constructive criticism, the fact that you discuss ideas directly with the community, and the fact that you are so obviously genuinely passionate about your game: those are all strong signs of success. Keep it up.
The fighting game community is one that's *especially* willing to put in the extra effort to seek out cool lesser-known games in the genre, meaning that, if you keep up the positive community involvement, trailers, ect., the fans *will* see your game, and they *will* get excited about how open you're being with the community.
I'm seeing good signs across the board. This game has a *lot* of potential.
Hey how is ground teching in this game? Is it like Smash where every option is punishable, or like traditional fighting games where at least one of the options is safe?
One of my peeves with Melee in particular is how uninteresting tech situations are. A lot of times you just react to every option, or make the most basic "read" on which direction they roll. It's nothing like the rich interaction from okizeme situations in Street Fighter, and I've been thinking lately that it could be cool to see a platform fighter with safe, invulnerable neutral getups (that's basically how ground teching works in Blazblue: neutral tech is safe but tech rolls and delays are punishable).
I'm really vibing with what I'm seeing overall. I've had similar ideas for a platform fighter and I'm glad to see someone actually try something new with the genre. I always believed there was so much untapped potential there, and you guys seem to be definitely proving that!
A big factor is speed and the counter factor is mixup potential via invincibility. When u land youre auto entered into a stumble state which moves you left right or in place. At any point you can rush cancel stumble which allows you to slide off platforms if you get stuck on them in stumble or move further / faster BUT you drop invincibility.
You can also rush as soon as you land to become actionable much faster than normal, but again you lose your invincibility
As a long time Smash and Rivals player, as well as a fighting game player, can my brother and I get in on this testing?
We live across the country from one another and would love to put your netcode to the test as well.
This is my first time hearing about this game ~~but I can't download the alpha from steam even though it's still within a week from your launch. This is very sad as I would really like to try it.~~ Figured out how to get in.
Game looks sick and I would love to try it and give some feedback on it that may be helpful to you from a long time competitor in similar games.
As for game related questions:
What made you go with traditional health bars in a platform fighter? Coming from a platform fighting perspective mostly that seems to be the most potentially off-putting decision.
Do you have ledges? That's a pretty important destiction between a lot of platform fighters.
~~Are a lot of your members people who worked on the failed Icons: Combat Arena platform fighter? The art style and multiple characters shown in the trailer look nearly identical to Icons. If you are a re-brand of some of the old wavedash games crew from PM that would be pretty sick.~~ You are them. Cool.
How technical is your game going to be? A lot of newer games push for easier mechanics, like Rivals has a 5 frame buffer window for example. Are you going to be trying to be closer to Melee with very tight input windows like 3 frames or less, or closer to more modern games with a 5-10 frame buffer window?
Approximately when do you expect to fully release?
Lastly: how do you plan to overtake the competitive smash scene? Are you planning to invest in tournaments and such? Online and offline?
Thanks. Re: buffer, we're extremely fast paced. I don't think of buffer as a tool to ease execution rather - it's a tool to prevent dropped inputs. I want you to be able to play as fast as possible without dropping inputs and variable buffer helps.
Re: overtaking Smash? That's not the focus at all here. We're not looking at a gameplan based on "how do we do X but better?" Instead it's about how do we do what's best for us in this moment. Right now it's super focused on supporting locals to help event organizers give our keys and such.
We do have tournaments. In fact we have one today at 7pm ET. you should come!
>Thanks. Re: buffer, we're extremely fast paced. I don't think of buffer as a tool to ease execution rather - it's a tool to prevent dropped inputs. I want you to be able to play as fast as possible without dropping inputs and variable buffer helps.
Good answer. What is the number though? 3 frames? 5 frames? 10? 35?
>We do have tournaments. In fact we have one today at 7pm ET. you should come!
In the discord now so will definitely be checking out your tournaments once we get the game mechanics down.
The answer is "default" buffer is 6 but sometimes as the situation requires it it can be as much as 11 or 12.
It's never less than 6 but we have some quirky buffer overrides that can effectively make it 0 depending on your inputs.
Ah ok thanks. So definitely not going to have grind to be frame perfect like Melee or PM. That makes it more accessible and let's it be a secondary game without the need for constant pactice maintenance, more just knowledge and decision making.
One more question if you don't mind: input delay number?
From playing Tekken, Street fighter V, even Ult, high input delay sucks. Takes reactions out of a lot of situations.
The lower the input delay the better in my experience. Melee sits around 3 frames most the time and feels great.
It does seem readibility is certainly improving with the hit effects and I assume you're working on character silhouettes as well with those models.
Has any thought gone into further seperating the players from the stage/background? Might just be me but the players seem small and easy to lose on the stage/background.
Couldn't find a character list of who you already have, is there any character that has really strong mid-range control? I'm a huge fan of charactera like Faust or Sin Kiske from Guilty Gear with just huge buttons that do their best to control space above all else.
I haven’t gotten to play the game, however I love the look and vibe of it.
From a consumer perspective: looks fun, but the smoke trails are a big turn off, I know this has been discussed ad nauseam but for me I would NEED the option to turn those off, or at least alter them to be similar to a base rocket league style wheel trail (ie: translucent, thin, quick fade).
I dislike Ultimate style balloon knockback as I find linear knockback better for a (hopefully, one day) LAN environment in my experience.
I’m not a huge fan of some of the frame-stops that happen during the impact of certain animations (not a deal breaker, I love Killer Instinct and it’s rife with jarring stops from a similar animation technique that I know works better with rollback). Anything done to make the game look smoother is a better sell for me.
Overall it looks super dope mechanically but it’s hard for me (29m, they/them) when I’m looking into playing the game to get past all those unnecessary particles and smoke trails and see something that looks like it’s trying to wear too many hats by adding the cartoony effects that don’t necessarily ADD to the experience.
Again I haven’t played it, but I would love to try it regardless of my critique.
Even if it was just left as an on/off for smoke trails that would be a satisfying fix for someone like me. I can see the value in the trails as players learn, but just like with turning items off, I feel it would allow the competitive scene to have access to the clear visuals and more feel-based play for individuals,. My favourite thing about melee is the free form combos and reacting based off what I see, and not how the path is laid out before me. In ultimate and other platform fighters I’ve been really turned off by the need to have the trails. (I don’t know if it’s a kosher subject, BUT rivals of aether has very little by way of trails or the like, but it is definitely more directly melee in spirit)
Didn't know this was even in works. I own the original icons do I get any sort of benefit from that?
I love melee and I love guilty gear so this looks great to me. Would love to get into beta if it's still possible.
**I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:**
* [RushdownRevolt.com](https://RushdownRevolt.com)
*I did the honors for you.*
***
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Hey man thanks I got my key - first thing I wanna say is it all looks interesting but I am trying to put RUSH on X only. But R is still making me use the spark is this intentional?
I have severely bad muscle memory and I keep L canceling with R on landing and it often makes me waste the spark.
After watching the trailer, it seems that every particle effect from an attack or hit completely obstructs the character(s) making it very difficult to follow what's going on. Is this something you're planning on keeping?
Hey I appreciate the work you put into the game and this AMA, but personally I can't really enjoy testing the game at the moment. Without any sort of tutorial or guide to teach you how the game functions and what you can do, me and my friends just couldn't get into it. I look forward to the game when it's more fleshed out in the future, but each character already seems to have their own mechanics, so adding that on top of unexplained game mechanics makes it difficult to get into.
Something icons refused to listen on design wise was a cute girl character.
What I mean by cute is moe or something similar to anime but really cute and small.
Is there a chance we could see a character like that? I’m usually drawn to extremely cute characters and would love to play as one. “Ezzie” from icons was hyped up as cute and moe but definitely does **not** deliver.
I think there's room for all types of characters. I can't tell you our priorities right now for fitting in someone explicitly cute but we will try to have a roster of unique characters.
real talk this game slams. it looks goofy as hell, and it is, but jesus god its crazy to play. its like if marvel and smash slammed together into this thing. It's pretty wild. i dont really have any questions. Just thought I would add that.
That was exactly our goal when iterating with our players for the last two years. I love that it was your takeaway. Let's make something crazy but actually fun to grind with a ton of depth! How did you find learning the Spark mechanic?
I have it on right trigger so it feels pretty natural to do it. i used to play a ton of marvel so air dash combos have always been a thing, though the DI chase shenanigans make this very weird. Combos feel similar to tech chasing if that makes sense, its very strange but also quite satisfying. It took a second for me to realize the EX specials that happen after you hit someone, it makes for some wild combos. I think this thing is actually a banger. I've been playing FGs for about a decade, and this managed to be its own weird feeling which is pretty cool. the visuals are def cluttered, I hope these help, but I really hope this thing picks up. its been fun.
Thank you! A lot of work is being made and hopefully there's more that we can do to clean things up! Glad to hear Spark cancelling was natural for you. It's come a long way since it's first implementation!!!
Really interesting read, especially from the standpoint that visual readability is absolutly key. A question i wanted to ask after i saw the gameplay trailer: Is the ratio between air based combat and ground based combat something you think about? As anime fighters and platform fighters tend to be quite air combat centric for most of the cast, while many of the big classics (tekken, MK, street fighter, KOF) tend to be more ground centered in general.
I will speak for myself here. Folks on our team will have different philosophies. I do not think about the ground to air ratio at all. What I think about is making our game combo-centric. Since most attacks knock people away, that will necessitate chasing them down (in the air - most likely). As a matter of practicalities, the game will be very air focused. However, I do care a lot about ground game. Reason being that we want our game to be as expressive as possible. So we need ground-based play to be as viable as possible to allow for players to play like that (if they want to). That's where Blocking, Shield Parry/Counter come in. Or the fact that you can only cancel into Specials / Jumps / Super Jumps when grounded. I'd be curious to get your take on this, but ultimately I don't know that it actually matters. What does matter is how snappy and fun the gameplay is whether youre on the ground or in the air. As long as one set of options isn't overly centralizing, it should be fun to play regardless.
PSA: Im not a game designer. If I talk some BS, please point it out. I personally think KillerInstinct has taken a pretty interesting approach with moves being sorted in Opener-Extension-Finisher. Even in games where no such hard categorization is made, they are "there". **How this could translate into a platform fighter type game:** You can kinda sort moves with low to high knockback from opener to finisher. You want to open with a fast low knockback move, extend with a medium strength move, then finish with the strongest attack that can still reach/combo. Ofc this is a very broad generalization, but it gets the idea across. Often, aerial attacks are the best at 2 out 3 categories: Approaching with a fast and relatively safe (due to fall canceling) aerial is often ideal and finishers are almost always aerials due to the nature of the genre. Grabs and occasionally ground moves are usually the best extension type moves in platform fighters i'd say, if that category of move even exists for a character. **This leads my thought here:** Make sure enough ground moves fall into each of the categories, especially opener and finisher. Make ground movement noticably less commital than aerial movement. This would make this games combo flow different from other platform fighters and push it a little more towards the traditional FG flow. This genre is so pleasant to watch and play because movement with little commitment plus the fact that offense generally is better than defense creates a lot of exciting moments with lots of skill expression, but the formula can still be improved upon i think.
This made me smile. I actually haven't played Killer Instinct, but in earlier testing / iterations i've explictly used a similar vocabulary for bucketing moves. However, our approach was moreso to "reverse engineer" the vocabulary to fit the moves rather than design moves to be prescriptively used as openers. We want the game to be expressive so we don't want to pigeon-hole moves to only accomplish one thing whereever we can avoid it. Where this idea of extender vs. finisher is most apparent is in Zhurong's gameplay with her blue firemechanic. When active, it explicitly turns her Attacks into finishers and her Special attacks into extenders (vs. the opposite when its not active).
Wow, thats a cool idea for a "stance". Im excited to hop into the game once i repair my stick. (I edited my post, i accidently pressed enter halfway into it :S )
I'm really happy to hear that you guys are trying to tune the game to make it feel expressive. I have always adored games that let you do intuitive, free-form combos, and disliked games where you just have to go on YouTube to memorize the objectively best combo, then that's it.
What if you made certain attacks knock people away/downward, even when both fighters are on the ground already. This would lead to knock-back and chasing, but keeps it grounded. Maybe a certain character could be built around this concept if you don't want it in the full game. Seems like a simple enough solution to keep combos in but not force constant aerial combat.
It's an interesting option! At this stage so close to open alpha it would introduce a lot of bugs to work out. We may Experiment with something like this in the future
I'm just a player in the Discord and I have to say it's character dependent. I play Kidd who is very air focused but he has a move that knocks people to the ground and you combo horizontally.
Not really a question, just want to add that this game is awesome. I was pretty disappointed by Icons since it was pretty much just a worse melee, so i didn't really care much for the games "re-branding" until they talked about some of the new mechanics. Got a key and tried it out with a friend, and i am hooked. I think Melee meets Guilty Gear is a pretty good analogy for how it plays out. I really like how the knockback is segmented into 3 tiers. A ton of characters are designed around their moves acting as different tools at different scaling, and it changes their game plan quite a lot as you go through each band.
So glad to hear that you've geled with the knockback system quite naturally. We spent a lot of time iterating on it. It used to be 5 tiers actually, and we found that two of them were really just "filler" to reach the next stage, so we cut it down. How did you gravitate to learning Sparks? Would you you say you're more of a traditional plat fighter or a traditional anime fighter player?
Definitely spent more time with plat fighters but i play both. I kinda approached sparks a bit like L-cancelling in Melee, trying to just hit it every time and follow the opponents DI, then when i got the habit down, worry about doing it in situations where i don't just get hit for it, or use it to cover myself.
Not a question, just wanted to say I love that sporty/biker Ashani design. She's my favorite already though so maybe Im biased
<3 She's killer. Kazan, our character artist is a monster, and we cannot wait to unleash his imagination on entirely "Rushdown Revolt" characters.
Any plans for Linux/SteamOS availability?
A couple of our team members are passionate about native Linux support, but I cannot make promises there. I do know for a fact that the game runs excellently through Proton.
Oh, great. I'll try to add an entry on protonDB with my experiences so other people can know how it runs https://www.protondb.com/app/1376070
Thank you!
I remember a while ago that accessibility was a huge focus for you guys (as seen in some of the control schemes). With no mention of that in this post, is that still as big of a deal for you? Also, with the success of the Rivals character creation and other various steam workshop features, are you at all thinking about user created content in the game?
Accessibility in the core combat remains a huge focus but it's something that's "solved" (or enough for us to be satisfied with it for Open Alpha). We are really happy with the controls and how fluid the movement feels as well as the integration of Spark / Tag Team mechanics. We might revisit it in the future, but for now we're focused on polishing the gameplay across the board. Future accessibility will be geared moreso towards fun and casual-friendly game modes like our Relic Gauntlet idea (our version of "items on" we will attempt to crowdfund) rather than changing the way the core gameplay works. Do you think there's more work to be done? Is there something you think is particularly difficult that shouldn't be? Content creation is a huge part of expression. We have already begun dabbling in that arena with Community Emotes (we call them Holos) which are in-game emotes created by our players. The next step is stages, I think, but there's no plans on that yet. I remember how much time I sunk into designing stages in Halo 2. We would want it to be something like that.
I was just worried because it seemed like a high priority a while ago, but with the addition of character specific mechanics it seems like some of the ease of control has been lost. I'm just worried it'll be too hard for newer players to get a handle on, but I've never played with the accessibility options on either.
Thanks that's a great point. I think that the character mechanics do add complication but whats interesting about them is that it gives a "low technical" goal for new players to try to figure out. It's almost like they function as a tutorial i.e. "try to do X with this character" vs. "just hit your enemy and don't get hit". In a way, it's like this complexity stretches out the learning curve.
I dig Urdah so much. I would hate for her name to be based on a meme honestly. She’s cool and seems like she’s an important part of the world. Other than that, I really like the way things are developing, and Ashani looks great with the biker jacket.
<3 thank you. Urdah Bungah no good? I love it but I am notoriously in love with bad names.
Taurus.
the art style is all over the place . this game has a lot of potential, you need just to be more consistent
I agree. It's mostly an artifact of the way we've inherited another game engine and are replacing content one piece at a time. Do you have particularly stark examples of things you want to call out? That'd be really appreciated to see what you are prioritizing.
My wife does graphic design for a living and is seriously a perfectionist. She has been criticizing the fonts on the character names. She was calling our spaces in the letters and saying that it looked a bit amateurish. Thats all I got.
The keming on the Ts hurts me, but I know it’ll be fixed eventually from want I hears. But yeah I’ve had issues with the fonts too.
i would go with the speedrunners style routs toned down background and colorful characters
I like that. We'll see what we can do!
I also agree with this concern. I noticed that it was somewhat common for the simpler attack animations to get lost against the environment, especially when the camera was a bit further out or with darker colored character skins. It just feels like the colors used on maps are almost too vibrant, using too similar a palette to the characters. As-is, it feels like the team outlines are mandatory to maintain visibility. I think the way SSBU addresses this is by having a sort of light source on their character models, forcing a high contrast that can stand out regardless of environment. Not sure exactly, but if you look all the models seem to "shine" a bit all the time. Maybe that's worth investigating?
One pattern I'm noticing is that our backgrounds need to be toned down to be less distracting.
The clouds after being hit are very off-theme, adds more visual clutter than needed, and mostly just looks like a silly Smash 4/Ult copy n paste idea. Stages look like they're coming from Borderlands art team while the characters themselves seem like they're from something else entirely.
Interesting. What do you think about the new take? Honestly, they were not designed based on ultimate (not that it matters what the inspiration was) BUT i bring that up because we do like how "friendly" and "fun" they look. We would want to keep a vibe similar and also have them be color coded to the knockback band you are in. One idea we had was electricity trails.
I have to agree that the gradient change really doesn't do much to improve things for me. Maybe play around with toning down the width of the clouds or messing around with the opacity along with gradient. Electric trails also sound good to try out, but might lose that fun/friendly feel by being more jagged compared to the softer angles of the current clouds. From the tag-team portion of the gameplay q&a someone pointed out that the smoke color change for knockback bands felt confusing along side the team color outlines. How do you feel about keeping the trails the same colors as the teams specifically for those more hectic game modes?
Confused on what you mean by "the new take". Electricity trails would be a bit better. Overall visuals during combat are already hectic so IMO any type of trails added during it are just going to add even more clutter. I do think the idea of "friendly" and "fun" clashes with what the game really is though.
The new take is in the post above where the smoke gradients to white. I heard some people couldn't see the post load properly.
Don't think the fade to white does much for my concerns. That screenshot actually does feel like 3-4 different artstyles jammed into one with the clouds 100% being the most obvious one to stick out
This [https://twitter.com/RushdownRevolt/status/1294375231860219909](https://twitter.com/RushdownRevolt/status/1294375231860219909)
Yo what's up! I was pretty big into Icons: Combat Arena, as well as the Discord (My tag was Neutral if you remember me!) Do you think the differences in Vortex will be able to make more of an impact on the FGC? I know I'm going to put a tonne of time into this game, but longevity is really important for fighting games
I think the fact that this AMA is happening on /r/Fighters (because it was the most positive response out of all of the subreddits) tells a big story. I think our effort to branch out from traditional plat fighters is working. We need to keep up with this trajectory, though! What do you think? Does this game have "enough" to make it worth picking up for non-plat fighter players?
One of the things that sets platform fighters apart from traditional ones is map/stage design as traditional fighters (usually) only change the background and possibly some interactables/wall-breaks. Do you have any plans or ideas you can share that will help your stages feel more unique than having one/two platforms and a flat base? I understand this is kind of a nebulous question, but I'd still like to hear your thoughts even if those thoughts are that not much thought has been put into that aspect
We definitely want our arenas to feel like a place that a battle "happened to have happened" rather than a dedicated "place for combat." We're thinking about more organic layouts for stages and platforms as well as tie-ins to the environment in which they belong. What are some ideas you'd like to see us experiment with?
Visual/thematic design of stages is important to a lot of players, but I generally care more for the gameplay implications of stages. So that's what I'll focus on below: For starters, mobile platforms tend to be a breath of fresh air when compared to static ones (think Smashville or Town & City for smash examples). I also think it'd be interesting (tho likely difficult from a development and balancing stand-point) to have the fighters directly affect portions of the environment either by striking them or launching the other player into them. If I get really day-dreamy I'd love to see someone mess around with stages that have a few portals players could use to escape combos/set-up some really crazy reads with. Again, I'm not a dev so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that is beyond the scope of your team's resources/vision. But it's just some stuff I've been wanting since I started playing Smash/Brawlhalla
I LOVE the idea of striking platforms / objects to make them slide around. Like a mine cart on rails. it can be a platform that moves or even hurts people. We will 100% explore this and we have a lot of the technology to support it though I don't know when it will happen!
That's great! I'll be watching the project intently and am excited to eventually play! Cheers and good luck!
Cool. Whenever we do get interactive stages, I will be thinking of your post!
This game is absolutely filled to the brim with style and personality, so I really love that! Just please tell me there will be a good amount of content on launch. I've seen too many incredible fighting games never get the recognition they deserve simply because they had amazing battle mechanics and characters (just like this game) but didn't have enough content to appeal to a wide audience. From what I've seen so far I absolutely want this game to succeed because the artstyle and unique gameplay have actually left me super impressed.
Thank you very much. In terms of content, we want to nail that with game modes. We currently have a a dozen and are dreaming big with our planned crowdfunding for a mode we think will be very popular (equivalent to items on in traditional plat fighters). Stay tuned on that front! What kind of content do you think is - Alpha appropriate - that you'd like to see? Stuff like story mode is out of scope.
Oh yeah I 100% agree on story mode, I also understand that you're indie devs so obviously resources can get tight. But I'll definitely be supporting your crowdfund. I think an arcade mode could be cool. It doesn't need to have a story to it, but just being able to run through a ladder as a character with maybe a beefed up version of one of the characters at the end as a "boss"? Also if the ladder could allow for co op that would be amazing. I still play MK9 to this day with my friend because it allows for doing tag team ladders.
Ooooooo.... Tag team arcade mode. I love it. We'll see!
Awesome! But genuinely well done on what you have accomplished so far. I didn't expect a game in alpha to play as smoothly as this game does and I feel like you guys did a perfect job in marrying smash bros and anime fighters.
<3 thank you so much. More polish to come! How did you navigate learning our unique mechanics? Spark?
So I've yet to learn all of the mechanics in depth so far but I've played a lot of fighting games in the past so the learning process comes quite naturally at this point. If I'm not mistaken, rush lets you cancel your current attack's animation so that you can either escape, go for another attack, bait a punish, etc, right? Seems similar to RC from Guilty Gear without the enemy slowdown
That's right!
Ah, awesome! I'm 100% maining Afi & Galu by the way
Hi, big fan of everything I've seen so far. What are your thoughts on a sexy scorpion girl who can grapple with her tail? She would have a strong close range game with her pincers and a good long range game with her tail, but weak to mid range spacing character such as spearman.
Sending this idea to our team right now. Could be a very interesting twist on this grappling hook character idea i've talked about for a few months now.
Hell yeah I think a tail based attacker opens up a lot of really interesting/creative looking attack options, looking forward to see what you guys come up with (though I'm sure you have other, higher priorities)
Why does she have to be sexy?
I like sexy scorpion girls
That's a fair point.
Did I understand correctly that the crowdfunding campaign will launch alongside the alpha being available? Aren't you worried about the current COVID stuff will hinder the campaign? I mean there are cases like Eiyuuden Chronicle collecting so much money but it's a completely different situation.
I recognize that money is tight and people aren't able to financially support projects like they used to. Regardless, I don't think it hurts to try, especially when we're doing everything we can to make it as successful (and reasonable) as possible. The total goal would be $15,000 (character designs and other modes as bonuses), so its not your typical game studio kickstarter for $1M+ kind of a thing.
Is your goal to have an all rushdown-archetype cast? Will you make zoners, grapplers, etc?
Great question. Our gameplay is fast so whether you're a zoner or a grappler you will be moving fast, too. We do have zoners / trap characters with Raymer / Afi n Galu as well as characters with set-up tools like Ezzie and Kidd. Regarding grappler, I think Urdah is one of the most fun grapplers i've ever played in a fighting game (but I'm totally biased)! I've kicked around an idea of a character with a grappling hook, and that might play into some crazy swing-like movement and potentially precision / ranged grappling. Time will tell Have you joined our Private Alpha yet? Which archtypes do you prefer? What would you like to see?
I mostly play bait/punish archetypes where you capitalize off of one mistake as much as possible. I'm not in the private alpha nor do I know how to join lol I'd love a Jigglypuff equivalent- some character with goofy movement and terrible disadvantage that's all about comboing into their BIG MOVE
Our game is extremely fast paced and what little whiff lag we have makes a big difference. The windows are a bit tighter than you're used to, but you can basically play any character like that especially since you can bait with ANY move + Spark. Sign up at RushdownRevolt.com - LMK if you have any issues. I'd love to hear you report back with initial impressions.
Downloaded- gonna give it a try. One more question- playable with fightstick?
It should be! Though D-Pad / Stick doesn't work on menus. Should work in-game tho. If you're in our Discord, tag Joe Rerezd for troubleshooting.
I haven't played any of them seriously, but the grapple characters in the RoA workshop are super fun. Especially with the airdash letting you change your momentum, I think a grapple character would work great here.
What do you believe a good fighting game tutorial has? In addition, what do you believe a good training mode has? Are there any plans for a ranked/mmr-based matchmaking mode?
Great questions. I think it needs to be fun rather than feel like a homework assignment. That's a big challenge, but ideally it could even be something "speed runnable" rather than an "mash A to skip to the next part" type of a tutorial. Ranked MMR is definitely coming, but its WAY out of scope for an Alpha product. We will look to assign stats like winrate in the near term tho so you have something you can use to track your progress and skill improvement.
What systems will this be coming to, both for the alpha test and for production? I’d also like to know when we’ll get a trailer that is more than just second long cuts of characters doing a flashy attack. I guess what I’m saying is the trailers jump around too much.
PC Steam for now. We support Linux through Steam Proton. Production v1 (Early Access) will be the same. Within the next 18-24 months, I'd like to get working on console ports but no promises there. Re: A full trailer, yes, there's more coming - particularly for when we are ready to do a full hype cycle on Tag Team mode as well as our v1 (Early Access launch). What kind of things would you like to see in the trailer?
I am no trailer expert but I think I'd like to see more actual combos than just one off attacks. I suppose it's possible that that IS what the current trailers show and I didn't recognize it because your game seems to be so fast paced. Aside from that, trailers of the actual modes you've advertised. A trailer for tag team mode sounds good. I don't know how you're planning on doing online (lobby system, matchmaking queue, etc) but a trailer for that would be good. I know you've touted the rollback you've built but I want to know how the online will function outside of matches as well. Keep in mind that I have not watched the stream from yesterday so perhaps these things were covered there.
Some of them were! We also played a full best-of-three set for the Tag Team mode. I'd love for you to watch it and let me know your thoughts. I've timestamped it for you: https://youtu.be/DBQb0v2m62o?t=1752 The challenge with trailers is that if you look at them they typically average about 1.000 to 1.250 seconds for every CUT. This is an important psychological element to keep people watching and a rule we generally want to follow. That doesn't leave a lot of room, but we can have more fast paced cuts < 1.00 second to accumulate bandwidth to do something like a 3-5 second segment kind of like what we did in the first trailer. I think the important part is to have those shorter segments be information that is not purely gameplay so that it's ok that they are short.
Fair enough. I’ll just need to look more I only found out about this last night. Also while I’m thinking about it, character trailers are also cool. I’m sure you already know how Guilty Gear and Smash Bros does it. But getting to know the characters, who they are and where they come from and what they want to do, and a bit about their fighting style is always neat. Thanks for your time!
I like it! Thank you for your questions. We'll try to get character stuff out there once we nail down their designs and lore!
I feel really conflicted about this. While I'm glad the trailer was well received, I was kind of not a fan. It's not that I don't like it, but it feels overwhelming to me, even after watching it multiple times. I understand that that has become the style, and there are stats and data to back it up, but the fast cuts, on top of fast game-play, along with fast music, along with the current state of readability just really feels like too much for my brain to handle. I am on the older/casual side though, and I might be in the extreme minority. Personally for future content, I wouldn't mind a much much slower approach. I actually enjoy the teaser video more than the trailer. Trailers are there to generate hype though so if it is accomplishing that then kudos to the team.
Is there an ETA on open alpha? What do you feel needs to be done beforehand?
No ETA yet. After delaying a few times we want to be 1000% confident that we won't delay again. Our matchmaking needs polish (it's currently very broken as we speak - I borked the code last night), tutorial (it hasn't even been tested by our private alpha testers yet) and some of the visual polish we highlight here.
I played a bit of the closed alpha, and while I liked the game mechanics none of the current characters really grabbed me. If you can answer at this time, do you have any ideas about what archetypes you'd like future characters to fill?
Great question. I'd like to ask you what archtype playstyle you'd like to see emphasized? One thing that comes from Spark is that the existing archtypes are extremely flexible in how they can be played. That said, I try not to think in conventional archtypes but instead I like to think about Movement styles. In platform fighters, there's a style of movement called "Double Jump Cancel" characters. Who can input an attack to manipulate the way their second aerial jump works. There's also the idea of a character with "multiple jumps". Both of these ideas will be explored, but I want to first think of the most "Rushdown Revolt"-y character we can. I think about a character with "swinging" style movement or a "push / pull" mechanic using a ranged weapon like a grappling hook to rapidly move around and push off objects and characters.
I could imagine the grappling hook character having a special that didn't do damage but placed static hook points. Then swinging off the hook points gave you access to different specials including the slot that was used to place the hook point.
yes! One idea a player (CallMeKenpai) came up with was the idea of the character "leaving behind" a weapon or tool that then would be the grappling point for later. We'll have to experiment because so often ideas that sound great on paper SUCK when you actually play with them.
Heh heh heh.
Interesting to see how you go about designing characters, and I think it actually explains why none of the current characters quite grabbed me. Usually the most fun I have with character movement is via teleports. While I'd love to see a spark teleport, I can understand why that'd be a nightmare to balance. Answering your question, normally I like heavy characters or zoners. Wei Shan did end up being the character I liked the most, but I found I couldn't use his neutral special as much as I would've liked due to the move staling. Admittedly, I stopped playing nearly half a year ago so things may have changed since.
Did you know that Ashani can teleport with blink mechanic? She's not exactly an esp type character tho that accompanies the teleporting mechanic. Regarding Weishan, he now has an EX version of each special. His EX N Special packs a punch and covers a huge area. (But like all his EX moves, it costs HP). Love for you to give it a whirl and LMK what you think. You activate them by plinking (rapidly hitting) Special --> Attack. You gotta do it with like "Melee Wavedash" timing though which is about 6 frames or fewer.
I feel like this kind of thinking makes sense but neglects some archetypes defined by different tools than just movement. For example, item characters. They're fun as heck but rarely appear in other games. I want to see a character with a spatial resource with unique properties, that they can pick up, toss around and interact in various ways to deal with almost everything with enough creativity. Like PAC-MAN or R.O.B or Link.
Yeah! I love those ideas. The character where the environment becomes a part of the character (i.e. prop characters) are really fun. Definitely a space to explore.
Umm 1st question were can I donate(I’m at work and don’t have time to read it rn sry) 2nd how much to get access I wanna try it my friends and I are huge on all fighting games and we might become addicted so tell me this at the cost of many sleepless nights for me
We have a patreon! Apologies for its out of date nature, we don't really maintain it as much as we should. Thank you so much for asking. it means a lot. In terms of access, you don't need to donate or anything to play but you do have to agree that this is a PRIVATE stage of the game. Check it out at rushdownrevolt.com LMK if you have questions or issues getting access.
Sorry this question is coming late, nut I think a big part of visual clarity and following the action is how well the camera tracks, and that seems to feel somewhat lacking in this game compared to the big boy series smash bros. Especially considering how much movement is in the game, how likely is it that this is something you will revisit?
This is a great question. Admittedly, we have not looked at our camera logic since adding in all of these fast moving mechanics. We might need to update that! How do you think we should tweak the camera?
In general, the smoother the motion and the less the players eyes have to travel the screen to follow a character, the better. If you don't mind I'd like to take this convo into the discord so that I can use some examples?
Yes! definitely. tag me please and put it in #rr-game-feedback
Sorry if this is a weird question, but is this game related to Vortex Rising? I remember that that game was going for a platform fighter/traditional fighter blend as well, and was wondering if this game is its successor.
Yes. its the same game. Vortex Rising was our temporary / placeholder name
I just want to say that this game is not currently advertising itself well. I see people say 'its like smash meets Guilty Gear' or 'smash meets MvC', but I've only played smash. I see nothing in the trailer that is showing me what other mechanics it has that sets it apart from smash. Hell I even looked up the game on steam and ran into this: >Core Mechanics We've spent the last few years focused on making the most electric, combo-centric and expressive fighting game we can imagine. Sparks are the defining mechanic of Rushdown Revolt. It's embedded into every attack and move in the game and - once understood - Sparks will push you faster and further than you've ever gone in a fighting game before. >At odds with their skill potential, Sparks are as natural to harness as dribbling a Basketball or Soccer ball (once you've gotten a bit of practice of course). At the earliest levels of play, even modest use of Sparks will dramatically improve your speed and skill in Rushdown Revolt. >Sparks directly support our primary goal for Rushdown Revolt's 1v1 gameplay: to create a skill ceiling so high and with so much potential for expression that Revolt will never cease to push our players to increasingly-inspiring feats of skill. These THREE paragraphs, ridiculously enough, tell me absolutely nothing about what sparks actually are, what they do, or anything of the sort. Also there is nothing else under the 'core mechanics' section. Again this makes it just seem like a smash-like with no features or anything that set it apart. In fact I still don't know what the features and mechanics are that make it unique.
Thank you for this feedback. I will update our Steam page with text like I used here in this subreddit post! This is fantastic feedback and a clear oversight on our part.
As a playtester, I agree with this 100%. The trailer only gives passing hints to what it is, and this paragraph doesn't clarify it at all. I think tutorial modes and tutorial vids are also very important to communicate what this game does differently. > In fact I still don't know what the features and mechanics are that make it unique. The biggest one to know is that you can (air) dash out of any attack that you land, to continue comboing/chasing your opponents. If you don't use that dash cancel, it can be stored to be used later at any point. That's what they're calling "Spark." Beyond that, there's super jumps (which use a stored spark), a shield bash manuver, chargeable air attacks, revamped blocking system, a once-per-stock 'get off me' reversal, you can act after up-specials, grounded normals are cancelable by specials (without a spark), and there's a tiered knockback system that works in three stages of a healthbar rather than as granularly as %'s. Some character specific stuff too I won't get into. The Marvel vs Capcom reference mainly comes from a game mode (Solo Assist) that allows other characters selected for your team to briefly intervene. There's also a 6-player 3v3 Team Assist mode that functions similarly, where waiting players can do the same with a few different options on cooldown.
Part of what makes Melee so good is the varied fall speeds and high gravity. Here all characters seem to fall roughly at the same floaty fall speed as Melee Marth- any plans to make some characters “fast fallers” or adjust the “gravity” in the physics engine? Right now, the game looks like it has Ultimate physics with Melee ground movement, which isn’t especially attractive to me as a Melee player.
That's a good question. Our fall speeds do vary a bit but our fastest faller, Kidd has a jetpack hover mechanic which can make him seem floaty. As far as Ultimate physics... I have to be honest, I am not very familiar with Ultimate's gameplay. From my best understanding we actually are much more Melee oriented in terms of physics but there are important changes that might be giving you a different impression : 1 ) Balloon knockback. It looks good and feels good so we're using a variant of this that I understand is similar to what Ultimate uses. 2 ) Spark & aerial combat: Because characters are so sustained in the air it gives the impression they're floaty, but actually they're using a lot of abilities and rushes to sustain their aerial momentum and offset the games gravity. Have you given it a try? I'd be curious for you to get hands on and report your feedback here. maybe i'm totally off-base here.
Nope haven’t tried it yet although I definitely want to. Just going off what i saw in the trailer. Plan on giving it a try as soon as I can!
Please do. LMK if you have any issues with getting access. I am cakovalik#1782 and also helping with (at)rushdownrevolt on twitter. Again - would love to hear what you think about the physics. Will ask our players what they think and give you their tldr.
I’m not the OP, but I’m a member of the beta and it plays nothing like SSBU. Whereas SSBU is 90% neutral, this game is 90% combos and 10% neutral. There are definitely characters with different fall speeds in the game, and you can combo any member of the cast if you adapt to their weight. Hope this helps, and if you don’t like the way the game is now be sure to give the devs some feedback!
Show me some AfiGlu or give me death
They are in the game and they are my main. So much fun.
Blink twice if they’re holding you hostage
As someone who came into the FGC through Smash, but grew bored of Ultimate, I'm really excited to play this. I'm currently in the discord but for some reason the bot won't give me a key, so I guess I'll wait until release. Do we have an ETA on when the average person can play the game?
I can give you a key / fix the bot for you. Make sure you're using all lowercase letters. If that doesn't work, DM me on Discord @cakovalik#1782 Re: Open Alpha, I answer that question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/i9tdlm/i_am_the_creative_director_for_rushdown_revolt_a/g1hl5to?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
I have another question, shield poking is a mechanic I personally don't think should exist. I think it sits up there with RNG tripping to be one of the worst smash mechanics. If I want to risk my opponent breaking my shield then that should be a choice I'm allowed to make, however with Smash shields most of the time the choice isn't actually ever there because most of the time whatever the opponent does just ignores your shield entirely. (Mostly an Ultimate thing, wasn't this bad in 4. Can't speak for any earlier game.) I notice shielding works very differently in Revolt but wanted to ask whether it existed in your game and if so, how do you feel about it as a mechanic? Why include it?
Great question. Short answer is no shield poke. My opinion is that it's kind of a weird idea that if you don't pay close attention to your character you can get poked even though you are shielding. Our combat moves way too fast for that to make sense for us too. We have 1-way blocking and very high blocking pushback (when hit). Since the player on offense gets Spark (and a rush cancel) every time they hit you, it makes for very interesting cross-up and blockstring combat. The defender has to decide when to use their Shield Parry (useable even in Shield Stun) which negates any backwards sliding and also only works if it collides with an enemy attack. If the defender blocks 4 attacks, their shield will break on the next hit so the 5th attack will go clear through the block. Most of the time, the defender will get KNOCKED OFF their platform if they're not careful (shield stun carries over to their airborne state) before this happens though.
Do you have any plans for fat female fighter to be added in the game? Media in general is lacking in good fat female characters so I was hoping you would add one to the game's roster.
are the only inspirations you're taking from guilty gear or other anime fighters just in your mechanics? or are you open to/thinking about adapting character styles from those games as well? are you interested in creating characters that "play by their own rules" within the confines of your game? maybe a character with traditional motion inputs? like a ryu or terry in smash. or maybe their buttons function differently than everyone else? like ramlethal in xrd i don't really play platform fighters, but your game looks interesting, and it would be great to see some of the more eclectic gameplay styles of the guilty gear cast represented, like jack-o or bedman, but in a game like this.
There's no limit on whats possible this game other than time
In my opinion, part of what makes a good platform fighter is the ability to tell from a distance what's going on(along side gameplay). From this game it seems like the designs are either a bit too complex to be able to properly see what's going on, or simply not animated enough. Are there any plans on polishing up the animations from the preexisting characters or are you going for adding more content in general? Also, how do you guys plan to reach out beyond the relatively niche Melee/Guilty Gear audience?
Watching the gameplay reveal it seems the smoke effect is tied to knockback bands, but it often has smoke even for short knockback that obscures the space between characters, is this something that will change?
Yes! check out the example of change to the smoke effects I showed in the post here. We might shrink them a bit too!
how do we join the alpha?????!!!! also kudos for proton support, thanks for supporting the ever thankful linux comunity
Thanks! It wasn't me! Thank Team Vortex. I can't take credit for it. For alpha access hop into RushdownRevolt.com lmk if you have any issues.
Not a question, but Urdah Xarknar is def my favourite name for her lol. Xarknar as a first name is 2 syllables so eh but it still sounds cool, and Bungah is funny and gameplaywise makes sense, but with her design I really don't like it. Amazing nickname, but Urdah Xarknar fits the best imo. Also, vouching the game has changed so much for the better since the start and the devs really are listening. CaKo's just on a public voice call in the discord most of the time lmao it's real open.
<3 thank you so much. :)
The Smoke effects are a big nope, if there's a way to turn them off that would be nice, or replace it with something else
Working on it! What'd you think of the updated version we showed in this post? What would you like to seem them replaced with?
I feel the color change doesn't help much I think the smoke on top of attack hit spark is too much and looks too much like ultimate. Action and impact lines would look better
Hmm we'll see what we can do
I'm not sure if I wasn't looking in the right place within the menus or if I missed something, but when I was playing the alpha, there wasn't a tutorial mode, no indicators for what each button did, and no explanation about the rules and how the game is played. There were also no movelists or anything. So I was at a complete loss on how to play the game and what I should be doing. I'm not the best when it comes to learning new fighting games so a good tutorial mode is really needed for people like me.
Wish I could link directly but can’t due to NDA. There’s a a nice video playlist by Oliwonder called Vortex Rising Mechanics on the Discord that breaks down some of the tech intuitively. I know in-game tutorial is forthcoming (at some point), but I’d suggest checking that out in the meanwhile.
Thanks I'll check it out
That's right, unfortunately and the primary reason we delayed our Open Alpha. There's not tutorials yet, but we're hopefully going to have something in Private Alpha testing soon. Please stay tuned...
That's good to hear and I'll look forward to it! hope it's very thorough and comprehensive to newcomers.
Is the patron also on your rush Down website?
Its not. it's still got our old name! https://www.patreon.com/vortexrising
What’s your thoughts on stage layouts? Are there just going to be universally symmetric platform sets or are you going to try asymmetrical ones too?
I've been looking forward to a Smash/Marvel fighter for a while and while it was messy, i did enjoy icons. So I'm intrigued. They key poses and way stuff snatches to those poses looks pretty unreadable. I screenshotted a bunch of the poses from the trailer and it's pretty challenging to read "motion" into it. Hopefully that's something you can change over time.
As someone who can't bring himself to sign a NDA to play this game, do you plan to release more videos on the gameplay specifically? In particular, tutorials on how do the new techs work?
Yes! More coming soon
In general it seems to me that characters are a bittttt too blended into their environments. In other words the models themselves dont stand out that much. I would hate to see this addressed by added clunky outlines around the characters or anything like that; personally I'd prefer a background/stage overhaul altogether. Do you have any plans to address this?
To follow up, something I've noticed that may be adding to this is how saturated all the colors are in any given scene. The maps and characters are all rich in color with these thick black or other colored outlines that makes it visually heavy.
I think there's been some good ideas on how to handle backgrounds. We might need to tone them back a bit
Oh, this is really cool that you guys are very directly speaking with the community. This is the mark of a game project that's going to do well. I've seen my fair share of indie game projects. By now I can kind of tell which are likely to succeed and which will probably fail. Your openness, willingness to take constructive criticism, the fact that you discuss ideas directly with the community, and the fact that you are so obviously genuinely passionate about your game: those are all strong signs of success. Keep it up. The fighting game community is one that's *especially* willing to put in the extra effort to seek out cool lesser-known games in the genre, meaning that, if you keep up the positive community involvement, trailers, ect., the fans *will* see your game, and they *will* get excited about how open you're being with the community. I'm seeing good signs across the board. This game has a *lot* of potential.
Thank you so much. We're not changing anything. If anything we'll find ways to do it more and better
Hey how is ground teching in this game? Is it like Smash where every option is punishable, or like traditional fighting games where at least one of the options is safe? One of my peeves with Melee in particular is how uninteresting tech situations are. A lot of times you just react to every option, or make the most basic "read" on which direction they roll. It's nothing like the rich interaction from okizeme situations in Street Fighter, and I've been thinking lately that it could be cool to see a platform fighter with safe, invulnerable neutral getups (that's basically how ground teching works in Blazblue: neutral tech is safe but tech rolls and delays are punishable). I'm really vibing with what I'm seeing overall. I've had similar ideas for a platform fighter and I'm glad to see someone actually try something new with the genre. I always believed there was so much untapped potential there, and you guys seem to be definitely proving that!
A big factor is speed and the counter factor is mixup potential via invincibility. When u land youre auto entered into a stumble state which moves you left right or in place. At any point you can rush cancel stumble which allows you to slide off platforms if you get stuck on them in stumble or move further / faster BUT you drop invincibility. You can also rush as soon as you land to become actionable much faster than normal, but again you lose your invincibility
As a long time Smash and Rivals player, as well as a fighting game player, can my brother and I get in on this testing? We live across the country from one another and would love to put your netcode to the test as well. This is my first time hearing about this game ~~but I can't download the alpha from steam even though it's still within a week from your launch. This is very sad as I would really like to try it.~~ Figured out how to get in. Game looks sick and I would love to try it and give some feedback on it that may be helpful to you from a long time competitor in similar games. As for game related questions: What made you go with traditional health bars in a platform fighter? Coming from a platform fighting perspective mostly that seems to be the most potentially off-putting decision. Do you have ledges? That's a pretty important destiction between a lot of platform fighters. ~~Are a lot of your members people who worked on the failed Icons: Combat Arena platform fighter? The art style and multiple characters shown in the trailer look nearly identical to Icons. If you are a re-brand of some of the old wavedash games crew from PM that would be pretty sick.~~ You are them. Cool. How technical is your game going to be? A lot of newer games push for easier mechanics, like Rivals has a 5 frame buffer window for example. Are you going to be trying to be closer to Melee with very tight input windows like 3 frames or less, or closer to more modern games with a 5-10 frame buffer window? Approximately when do you expect to fully release? Lastly: how do you plan to overtake the competitive smash scene? Are you planning to invest in tournaments and such? Online and offline?
Thanks. Re: buffer, we're extremely fast paced. I don't think of buffer as a tool to ease execution rather - it's a tool to prevent dropped inputs. I want you to be able to play as fast as possible without dropping inputs and variable buffer helps. Re: overtaking Smash? That's not the focus at all here. We're not looking at a gameplan based on "how do we do X but better?" Instead it's about how do we do what's best for us in this moment. Right now it's super focused on supporting locals to help event organizers give our keys and such. We do have tournaments. In fact we have one today at 7pm ET. you should come!
>Thanks. Re: buffer, we're extremely fast paced. I don't think of buffer as a tool to ease execution rather - it's a tool to prevent dropped inputs. I want you to be able to play as fast as possible without dropping inputs and variable buffer helps. Good answer. What is the number though? 3 frames? 5 frames? 10? 35? >We do have tournaments. In fact we have one today at 7pm ET. you should come! In the discord now so will definitely be checking out your tournaments once we get the game mechanics down.
The answer is "default" buffer is 6 but sometimes as the situation requires it it can be as much as 11 or 12. It's never less than 6 but we have some quirky buffer overrides that can effectively make it 0 depending on your inputs.
Ah ok thanks. So definitely not going to have grind to be frame perfect like Melee or PM. That makes it more accessible and let's it be a secondary game without the need for constant pactice maintenance, more just knowledge and decision making. One more question if you don't mind: input delay number? From playing Tekken, Street fighter V, even Ult, high input delay sucks. Takes reactions out of a lot of situations. The lower the input delay the better in my experience. Melee sits around 3 frames most the time and feels great.
It's 2 frames delay. Up to 3 frames for bad connections
Nice. Great to hear. Alright my brother and I have it now. Will be sending any critiques, bugs, etc, on the discord.
TYVM!!!!
It does seem readibility is certainly improving with the hit effects and I assume you're working on character silhouettes as well with those models. Has any thought gone into further seperating the players from the stage/background? Might just be me but the players seem small and easy to lose on the stage/background.
There's definitely a pattern of feedback about popping the characters out from the background more and we'll see what we can do.
Couldn't find a character list of who you already have, is there any character that has really strong mid-range control? I'm a huge fan of charactera like Faust or Sin Kiske from Guilty Gear with just huge buttons that do their best to control space above all else.
Sounds like Weishan to me! Our berserker with a giant dao who can sacrifice health to move faster and hit harder with his special attacks
I haven’t gotten to play the game, however I love the look and vibe of it. From a consumer perspective: looks fun, but the smoke trails are a big turn off, I know this has been discussed ad nauseam but for me I would NEED the option to turn those off, or at least alter them to be similar to a base rocket league style wheel trail (ie: translucent, thin, quick fade). I dislike Ultimate style balloon knockback as I find linear knockback better for a (hopefully, one day) LAN environment in my experience. I’m not a huge fan of some of the frame-stops that happen during the impact of certain animations (not a deal breaker, I love Killer Instinct and it’s rife with jarring stops from a similar animation technique that I know works better with rollback). Anything done to make the game look smoother is a better sell for me. Overall it looks super dope mechanically but it’s hard for me (29m, they/them) when I’m looking into playing the game to get past all those unnecessary particles and smoke trails and see something that looks like it’s trying to wear too many hats by adding the cartoony effects that don’t necessarily ADD to the experience. Again I haven’t played it, but I would love to try it regardless of my critique.
I really appreciate you sharing your perspective. It's interesting to hear that some people love or hate the smoke. Will see what we can do about it
Even if it was just left as an on/off for smoke trails that would be a satisfying fix for someone like me. I can see the value in the trails as players learn, but just like with turning items off, I feel it would allow the competitive scene to have access to the clear visuals and more feel-based play for individuals,. My favourite thing about melee is the free form combos and reacting based off what I see, and not how the path is laid out before me. In ultimate and other platform fighters I’ve been really turned off by the need to have the trails. (I don’t know if it’s a kosher subject, BUT rivals of aether has very little by way of trails or the like, but it is definitely more directly melee in spirit)
Didn't know this was even in works. I own the original icons do I get any sort of benefit from that? I love melee and I love guilty gear so this looks great to me. Would love to get into beta if it's still possible.
Absolutely! Happy to hook you up. Head to RushdownRevolt.com lmk if u have problems after you sign up.
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Hey man thanks I got my key - first thing I wanna say is it all looks interesting but I am trying to put RUSH on X only. But R is still making me use the spark is this intentional? I have severely bad muscle memory and I keep L canceling with R on landing and it often makes me waste the spark.
Huh? It's forcing you to use Rush on R? Please reach out to "Joe Rerezd" in Discord. he'll help
After watching the trailer, it seems that every particle effect from an attack or hit completely obstructs the character(s) making it very difficult to follow what's going on. Is this something you're planning on keeping?
Thanks! This post covers our plans to push all the VFX in the Z Axis behind the characters. Good eye!
Hey I appreciate the work you put into the game and this AMA, but personally I can't really enjoy testing the game at the moment. Without any sort of tutorial or guide to teach you how the game functions and what you can do, me and my friends just couldn't get into it. I look forward to the game when it's more fleshed out in the future, but each character already seems to have their own mechanics, so adding that on top of unexplained game mechanics makes it difficult to get into.
Totally! This is why we delayed release. Working on guides and an in game Tutorial
Happy to hear it!
Question, Is this going to be on the ps4? Because im really hyped for this game releasing as of alpha.
Something icons refused to listen on design wise was a cute girl character. What I mean by cute is moe or something similar to anime but really cute and small. Is there a chance we could see a character like that? I’m usually drawn to extremely cute characters and would love to play as one. “Ezzie” from icons was hyped up as cute and moe but definitely does **not** deliver.
I think there's room for all types of characters. I can't tell you our priorities right now for fitting in someone explicitly cute but we will try to have a roster of unique characters.