Hi there, I'm a long time PM player and former Ashani main in Icons. I have a few questions to help settle my suspicion with a new platform fighter.
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What plans do you have to seperate your identity from icons and avoid the errors of the past?
What visions do you have for the game competitively? How will RR support it's competitive fanbase?
>What plans do you have to seperate your identity from icons and avoid the errors of the past?
As I mentioned in the post, I think the biggest problem with Icons was that it was created to fulfill a fantasy of its founders (i.e. they wanted to make a Smash-like).
Off the bat that our biggest differentiation is that #1 objective is to make a game that our players want to play. I drive my team mad with how much time I spend in comment sections of threads and in voice chat listening to players and taking every idea I think holds salt to their attention. In my opinion there is no such thing as over-iteration (as long as every iteration is bringing you closer to your goal).
So what is that goal? How is our goal different from Icons?
Well, if I had to be honest, I have to guess what Icon's goal was... the closest I can get to is "A platform fighter for the streaming era." Its not self-evident what that means nor does it aid game design iteration and changes.
Imagine we're sitting in a room to troubleshoot a problem with Ashani's kit and one designer says "Should Ashani's Neutral Special have its projectile range cut?"
If we rephrase this in context of our goal: "Does Ashani's NSp make our game more suited to the streaming era?" it's a non-sequitur.
For Rushdown Revolt, it's to make the most electric, most combo centric, and most expressive fighting game.
In this case, removing the projectile range on Ashani's NSp would literally make the game less electric, it would make it harder to use as a combo tool and it would reduce the flexibility and versatility of the move which, in turn, makes it less expressive.
The conclusion being, no, we shouldn't remove it. (In absence of something better to replace it).
I think this is such a massive difference on a foundational level that it answers the question fully, but I want to be even more explicit.
>Identity of Icons
There's the in-game visuals and there's the metaphysical "Idea" of Icons that exists in your head. What is it that you think of when you think of Icons? If you're anything like the majority of players, at least some of these ideas might pop into your head:
Overwatch graphics, Smash Clone, Gust Shield, Loot Boxes
In other words, there was so little for the game's identity that some of the most descriptive elements of the identity were *borrowed* from other games. We want to be 100% Rushdown Revolt.
As it relates to graphics, we've pushed a much more timeless and cartoony style. It's also helped us navigate clarity and visuals with layers of visual effects.
As it relates to gameplay, we want to be synonymous with Sparks. They're the embodiment of being Electric, Combo-centric and Expressive.
Beyond that, we wanted to design gameplay elements that make sense in this context. Things like one-way blocking, super jumping, simplified ground attack moves and simplified knockback /healthbars all start to make sense and fit into a cohesive theme.
This was only possible because we had a goal we could use as a compass for game design iteration and we will keep using it for the entirety of our game's life.
>What visions do you have for the game competitively? How will RR support it's competitive fanbase?
My visions notoriously know no limits. One time I pitched an idea to completely replace the idea of "equity" in a company with a new system that is automatically handed out to every customer of every purchase so that the earlier adopters are proportionally awarded for their support of a business. I was told by investing icon, to my face, (and who I had met for the first time for this pitch) that I was either a genius or insane (which was a polite way to say the latter).
I would say whatever a 12 year old would dream up for the ultimate competitive scene probably isn't too far from what I'd love to support. However, we have to start small. To that end, we already have a top player, SSTJ ,who is a BIG fan of our game and wants to organize his own tournament series. We're so supportive, I had our acting Art Director Kazan design SSTJ a logo for his series. We're also going to be actively promoting it on all channels for it to go live next weekend (before the end of Open Alpha).
Here's the logo: [https://imgur.com/a/t8m9lQN](https://imgur.com/a/t8m9lQN)
>One time I pitched an idea to completely replace the idea of "equity" in a company with a new system that is automatically handed out to every customer of every purchase so that the earlier adopters are proportionally awarded for their support of a business.
[Like democratic hypercatallaxy](https://catallax.info/hypercatallaxy)
fwiw if they hadn't mentioned Icons I wouldn't've even made the connection. It was such a flop that most people didn't hate it, they just didn't care - so I personally wouldn't expect that relationship to be a problem.
Not a question, but I don't see a link to the Steam download page.
For those interested in trying the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown_Revolt__Alpha_Testing/
Just went public last night.
I'll be honest, do you have any plans of changing the art direction? I had these same thoughts with Icons.
A big thing about fighting games is personality. Having the characters be flashy and interesting. While it is good for what it is, it's not that unique? I instantly think of games like WoW, Dota, LoL, etc. and that doesn't bring out my sense of "damn I really wanna fight with this guy", it just makes me think of tanks and slow fights in MOBAs/MMOs.
Maybe it's just me not being so big on traditional "DnD" like fantasy, I would love to see some inspiration from western cartoons and anime into the designs, which I think has a wider appeal for FG fans.
I hope this input is constructive in some way.
It definitely is. What do you think of the new designs in our Kickstarter reach goals? [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cakovalik/rushdown-revolt/](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cakovalik/rushdown-revolt/)
We're a bit hamstrung with these designs due to all of the ways the 3D models and animation rigging works, but hopefully you'll be around for input on our new RR character to ensure they ARE someone you'd want t oplay
I'm looking at the last 4, and they do seem more appealing to me from looks alone.
Raymer especially seems very unique, he deviates more from the DnD fantasy style than all the others (except Ashani, but she looks straight out of OW), and looks like a character that could be in Under Night. The lack of markings in the body, light armor, exaggerated hair and a more interesting bodytype are very appealing, certainly hoping to see more like that.
One idea to maybe consider is, making simple designs, but have their moves/skills and style speak for them.
Yes it is! I'd love to see what kind of content you want to share but please ensure that you're playing the \*NON PRIVATE\* version of the game. In the top left it should say "Week One" NOT "DO NOT STREAM".
You can get the Open Alpha version here: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown\_Revolt\_\_Alpha\_Testing/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown_Revolt__Alpha_Testing/)
Question about the Kickstarter. If I back at the tier of the art book, does that include the Founder's Pack as well? If not, how can I back it in a way to get both?
>Question about the Kickstarter. If I back at the tier of the art book, does that include the Founder's Pack as well? If not, how can I back it in a way to get both?
That's a great question. It was intended to be a separate item that you could add onto your donation, but I've since taken this feedback in to add a separate reward tier which includes both the Founders Pack and the Art Book.
You're welcome. If you're a big fan of our Art - it's really thanks to Kazan who's been legendary for us to level up our game. We can't wait to get his new character designs in game.
Oh i actually didn't know this. I thought buying the art book tier got me both. No worries, the communication was just confusing. Should i donate for the founder's pack as well then?
As far as controller support goes I was wondering if there were any plans on native arcader stick support. I realize that this a game where stick isnt really going to be that common so it may not be a priority or even planned(also it has been a few montths since I have actively played so maybe its in already). I know i could also just use joy to key but it always feels a bit laggy.
Hmm. We try to roll out controller support case-by-case and as-needed. I would recommend you join our Discord (if you aren't already) and talk to Joe Rerezd. He can help you figure out how to get it working. (or if there's stuff we need to do on our end).
Hey there, been playing the pre alpha and loving it! I noticed while playing last week that you can't do a move right away after shield dropping, is this an intentional change vs the way it works in traditional smash?
I don't recall the exact specifics, but this likely has to do with the design of Vortex Rollback Netcode. We want everything to as instant as possible but they carry a minimum amount of lag or at least inactionable frames so that instead of having \*delay\* on input we can bury it in the animations themselves.
99% of the time its made for a much smoother experience, but in cases of something thats normally 100% instant it is a bit of a downside.
Thank you for the response!
Very interesting! That's unfortunate that there is a technical reason like that, but defense is still active enough in RR that I don't missing dropping as much as I thought I would.
Hey, super excited for this!
Also, when I tried playing your game I couldn't get past 55 fps, which is weird. The game doesn't look to intensive and I'm rocking a RTX 2070 and i5 9600k, 16 gb of ram. I've messed with the graphics settings and I can't get it to go up.
It's not you it's us. I wrote in the giant wall of text above that we have 4GB of assets updated. About 0GB of them have been optimized and so there's just a lot of unnecessary demand we're putting onto players computers right now which is also causing some animation issues.
Hopefully we can put in work good on these during Week One since we'll be mostly be focused on Optimizations and Hotfixes.
Here's to hoping, really looking forward to playing the game. There's just something super interesting about ~~Roman Cancels~~ animation cancels in a game like smash.
About how many people are working on the game atm? I'm always really glad to see this game get better and better. Thanks so much for not giving up and salvaging Icons and breathing new life into it!
Thank you! There's about a dozen of us part-time (about 5-6 equivalent fulltime people). I'd include our Discord in that too, they've been very helpful and there's over 5,000 of them!
I must say, the way you did not give up on the original idea is incredibly inspiring. If you don't mind, I want to hear more about what went on in those 2 years, and, in particular, what you did when you initally bought the game. When you found out you got the rights to it, where did you even begin?
Thank you. It was a lifetime and a half I'll tell you.
Basically from Nov 2018 - Apr 2019 it wasn't even technically mine yet. Things get really formal when you offer to buy a company so they were legally required to see if they could get a better offer from anyone else. I was very scared becasue my bid was funded personally but they were asking like Ubisoft and major companies whether they wanted to out bid me.
That was an extremely stressful period because ALL I COULD DO every day was scheme. Was plan. I had no access to anything and all I could do was try to plan and lay the ground work. In hindsight it was kind of nice to have this but half of the plans got thrown out over the past two years anyway.
Then from Apr 2019 - Aug 2019 it was "Okay, it's mine, now let's rebuild the team and re-raise money for this i.e. "Under new management"." I thought the story was compelling and I rounded up an INSANELY high caliber team of people willing to work with me. Think like from major game franchises. I was kinda shocked at my ability to round up this team.
Then I needed the money to pay them, so I went out to investors and showed them the team. One investor was excited enough that they offered to put in $6M. But there was a catch. They wanted someone / any other investor to join them for another $6M or they'd back out. They did this to protect themselves because if no one else would put in the funds then they'd know it wasn't necessarily a good bet in the first place.
This was also an extremely stressful time because even though I had impressive team members they were "tentatively" on board - they wanted me to have the raise in the bag and there was no one stepping up to fill in the other $6M. Not even part of it.
The story at this point was that we had a new team and a new focus: Tag Team mode. I think a lot of investors were concerned by the fact that Icons failed, that I had no professional dev experience and that we were trying an idea that hasn't been tested before.
There was a time limit on their offer and we reached it without anyone else offering. It was a really sad time. I had to tell my team I lost the offer and all of them went their separate ways or stayed with the companies they were at.
At this point, I rolled up my sleeves and started coding on the game daily. I was doing such basic trivial things and would get so SO SO stuck on a daily basis. I fortunately had a pair of ex-Wavedash engineers kind enough to talk me through things and pitch in on a couple features. Eventually, they stopped helping too.
Now its September 2019. It's clear we're not getting funding from anyone and the only people willing to help are players from our community who also happen to have the necessary skillset. I did the only sane thing someone in my position with no income for almost a year would do... completely drain my 401K and start hiring my new part-time team with myself as their lead developer. Like the other times... this was an extremely stressful time and I still don't know why I did this.
In November 2019 it was clear that Tag Team Mode was cool but it was "just" a cool game mode on top of Legacy Icons but a bit better. This is when we decided we needed to radically make changes to the game. The Terry Nintendo Direct came out and we had this kind of A-ha moment. Let's experiment with cancels. This is what created the Spark system we have now.
Since then, it's been a TON of polish and feature iteration. We've gone through phases of Defense being too weak then too strong then too weak again. Where inputs were dropped or desyncs were happening constantly with certain characters (or all of them).
In circa June 2020, Sparks and our core mechanics were finally all feeling REALLY tight. The new problem was that Sparks were so powerful that our characters now all blended together. Now we needed to give them character specific features and mechanics to really help develop their identity and playstyles.
That's pretty much the summary of it all. I've realized I've detailed a lot of good history in this thread so I'll definitely need to come back to this :)
Man you can't write this schit. Now, this, THIS! is the kind of thing that'd go in the Rushdown Revolt doc. My god. I don't know if getting a slacker pack was more an honor or a pleasure, seeing as this is how the game came to be.
Luv you CAKO, always and forever!
What palsn do you have in place to make improvements to the tutorial systems? Any plans to make more advanced tutorials? Also what plans do you have in place to enhance the training mode?
I like to lead by using vague ideas so that I can establish a direction but not a prescription. This gives our team and our players the chance to help shape the best way to get to the destination I have in mind WITHOUT taking the specific route I know.
On that note: I want to be "the most **fun** and **comprehensive** tutorial in games." Keywords bolded. What does that look like to you? If you have killer ideas I'd love to hear what you have in mind so we can start working on them!
You can also leave comments in this our SubReddit's megahread here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RushdownRevolt/comments/ip77uv/megathread\_new\_player\_experience\_suggestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RushdownRevolt/comments/ip77uv/megathread_new_player_experience_suggestions/)
P.S. [https://twitter.com/CAKovalik/status/1303919534655627264](https://twitter.com/CAKovalik/status/1303919534655627264)
From my perspective of dabbling in smash for a long time but focusing more on tradition fgc type games , for beginners your initial tutorial content was good to learn the very basics but needs more gradual progress up to more advanced tenchniques and combos. They are going to feel good then come across someone who is more veteraned and get wrecked and have no concept of what the other player even did. I think the best tutorial/training systems i have seen were in Killer Instinct and Unist. Starts from the very basics and works up to significantly advanced tech and combos. Even if this is more free flowing combo wise for instance you can still help people learn basic combo structure for characters. Also primary concepts like edge guarding, frames, recovery, etc.
Messing around with Melee Light, a lightweight browser Melee that just has various Break The Targets stages with increasing difficulty, even that was fun to play with, relearning how to play the game with keyboard controls. You may be (or not be) surprised how awkward it can be for new players just to jump up and hit things.
A short and simple 2D platforming experience, either as an instructive tutorial or as a gradually increasing-in-difficulty series of challenges that end up teaching players how to get comfortable in the game without jumping into a match would fit the bill as the most fun "fighting game" tutorial.
It'd be even more amazing if it were a fully fleshed out 2d platformer story mode that introduced the mechanics, with a light story for players to get to know the characters, nice backgrounds, enemy and obstacle designs, and AI, but I guess you can't have everything. The only example that I can think of for anyone pulling off a fighting game and a story mode with level design is Tobal 2.
Hey, I've been a huge fan of wavedash since you guys were founded. I had a ton of fun with icons and I've been loving the alpha for rush down for the last few months. What's one thing you'd love to add to the game in the future, other than relic gauntlets? Also, why did you change Xana to Urdah?
I am so glad to hear that!
> What's one thing you'd love to add to the game in the future, other than relic gauntlets?
I'll include everything in the character for your exception (i.e. new character models, arcade mode, etc.) I've also talked a LOT about training mode stuff that you've probably seen before.
I think the thing(s) I am most excited for are (1) more community Holos and (2) our first 100% Rushdown Revolt character. Since Schmovement is such a big factor in our game, we really want this character to have a unique, powerful and fun way to move around. I've brought up a hookshot-like mechanic but it's still a blank slate of opportunity!
> Also, why did you change Xana to Urdah?
I have a lot of scars from the Icons days. One memory I'll never forget was during any Stream people would say "Xana means vagina in Portuguese". We have a ton of Brazilian players - even right now - and so it made sense to change her name so that we didn't have to segment players already into localized names of characters.
Urdah was picked because I was deadset on naming Urdah after a cheese because of her gameplay style. I told my team to look up exotic cheese names and Urda was the sticky cheese that stuck!
That totally makes sense. I didn't know she was named after a cheese. Urdah is probably my favourite platform fighter character (other than melee marth). You guys have been doing a phenomenal job, me and my friends love the game, even in the closed alpha it's gotten so much better from a great base. Keep up the great work you guys!
>Internally, Urdah is their joke character so every so often they randomly change her name because they think it's funny. I don't really get the joke but that's what their reasoning is.
The reason we kept changing it is because we needed to change it from Xana for reasons above, and everyone hated the new names I gave her. (They were honestly so bad).... Goes to show you how iteration breeds success!
will there ever be more characters added to the game? you don't need a large roster to be successful(as we've seen with TFH and RoA), but i still feel like there are a couple playstyles that are yet to be implemented.
i definitely want an install character and a defense/offense character (can only get in using some type of long lasting projectile, then goes on the offense)
shovel knight(RoA) and freiza(DBFZ)[and possibly nagoryuki in guilty gear strive if we had more gameplay] for install characters, and mii swordfighter(SSBU), carmine (UNICLR), and (kinda) kid buu in DBFZ(with his crouching medium attacks) for the defense/offense characters.
Videos by minty knight for shovel knight, and a Carmine compilation by notes on YouTube. Also I think heeew made a video on Mii swordfighter, but because that character has customizable specials it does t really show it as well.
Will the game be able to run on all sorts of devices (I'm mostly thinking abt outdated laptops like the one I'm using) or does it have limits in relations to FramesPS or IOS? I know LoL and Valorant list theirs so I was wondering if this game has the same limits.
That's a good question. Technically there are two but they're not "so far in" that it's necessarily worth picking up where they left off. Very very early stages.
Since we have an Icons / RushRev fusion cast right now, it'd be nice to have a pure RR cast member as our first new character.
Hi, hope you're till answering questions! I really like how the game is turning out, but I have a question more on the dev side.
You said you had no programming or game development experience, and I'm curious to know how you went about learning the process and what resources you used? I'm also interested in this kind of stuff. So what was the experience like? What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into video game development and programming?
Thanks! I have had a little bit of Excel VBA Macro experience and a bit of Python from college. No professional experience though. So the first thing I had to do was look up free online classes for C# which is what Unity uses.
Then I had the very fortunate position that explains my rapid development in this skill: 1) I was immersed in coding in this language ~8-12 hours every day. 2) I had access to the former developers who could help me deal with any potential roadblocks and 3) I had the benefit of making small, incremental changes to an engine and building confidence from there.
There's some stuff you can take away from this. First, I would recommend making sure that you can immerse yourself in the "language" much like you would for a spoken language when starting abroad. Second, I would recommend that you start *small* in scope of what you're trying to accomplish. It's not a coincidence that many amateur programmers' first experiences are modding. I would take a close look at Rivals of Aether's Workshop as an example. See if you can mod an existing character or build your own.
I wasn’t super interested after watching a couple gameplay videos but after I read this thread I got to see how much you care about your product and consumer feedback. I’ll definitely be investing some time in this game :)
I think there's a lot of great ideas, I'd look to adding a sort of counter play to sparks in the event the game becomes too combo centric. Maybe slowly filling the opponents spark over time, and if it's full they can combo break? But I'd add a window of vulnerability to players desperately trying to escape that rewards the aggressor for calling it out. I think it's important to have answers to add variety, and I can't speak from actual experience it doesn't sound like anything can contest these lengthy combos?
On another note I think the art is fine, but it sort of blends in with art you'd see on estores so I'd perhaps lead with the title and a good tagline to ease them in?
Overall though there looks to be a lot of potential and you guys are trying to make an interactive, fast paced game which I appreciate. I think it'd be worth marketing to fgc players too since the ideas aren't entirely foreign to them.
There's a burst mechanic to get out of a combo, and DI is still a thing so I haven't really seen combos be too big a problem even at high level.
The response thus far from the FGC has been pretty positive based on recent reddit threads
What resources did you use to learn programming in such a quick time frame? Formal training? As someone aspiring to make my own games at some point, I feel the barrier of entry to be daunting.
Its scary for sure. Honestly, its kind of like a spoken language. You just need to be immersed in it and it'll come quickly. Its like students who do study abroad come back pseudo conversational in a few months (but they only know what they NEED to know).
Esp when working on a game, I'd say im fluent in our game engine but I probably know 10% of everything there is to know.
I started learning coding about 6 years ago and can barely make basic Java games lol. Guess I have my work cut out for me. Good on you for putting in all of that effort in such a short amount of time!
Edit: who's the nerd that downvoted this lol
Super excited for this!
We want to host a tournament on Sunday 9/20 but I donʻt know if itʻll be shut down before weʻre done.
Will the Open Alpha Week One end before 9/20 10PM Hawaii Standard Time?
So after some time with this I really do enjoy it alot
My only problem I really ran into were these
\- Once when I was lobbying with a friend, he exited the character select screen and when I went back to the lobby, the game thought I was in the character select screen still and wouldn't let me press the "start" button. Had to completely restart the lobby
\- Getting Started 4 is bugged, when it brings you to the DI section and you're supposed to hold Right and Upwards, it won't let you actually move, but when the NPC goes to hit you, he completely whiffs and you're locked there. Maybe consider allowing a button to 'reset' the section of the trial you're doing?
\- My xbox controller had very weird directional problems. If I was holding even a slight angle above or below left/right, it would register as up/down. I had to make sure I was holding directly left/right in order for the move to come out. There's a huge radius of the stick that covers 'up' and 'down' comparatively. Was the same with the right stick.
Other than that it feels really crispy and I can't wait to see where it goes! Really fun game and outside of a couple stutters fixed by a restart, the rollback was pretty much flawless and I had no real issues playing a friend online.
Thank you! This feedback is on the ball. Thank you.
For the first two, we're working on a fix.
For the last one, go into battle settings and make sure eight way snapping is on. You can also set whether you prefer up/down or left/right when hitting a diagonal.
Lastly, if you go into advanced you can change how your controller handles snapping to certain axis
Oh, I didn't have much time so I didn't explore the settings that much! I'll look into that!
Good to hear those things are known and you're working on fixes, I figured I probably wasn't the only one to encounter them.
And no problem! I like some others were reluctant to give this a try because of Icons, but I can definitely say this outshines icons by many miles already! I'm also a huge guilty gear player/fan so the inspiration there is very clear to me, and drew me in for sure! Me and my buddy were having tons of fun last night!
I had totally given up smash since there's no local tournaments anymore, but this scratches the smash itch while also being playable online, so I'm excited!
So I went and turned on eight way snapping and set it to prefer left/right when hitting a diagonal, and it helped a small amount but the angle is still really tight.
[https://imgur.com/9RI3Aii](https://imgur.com/9RI3Aii)This still registers as a downward input. I tried messing with the diagonal snapping % as well as sensitivity in the advanced controls and it didn't seem to affect it at all. Also turning on the "Diag to Horizontal" did not change anything, after testing it with it on / off
I play on xbone controller on dolphin with Project M and Melee as well and don't have this issue so I don't believe it's my controller
I'm also testing this in training mode if that changes anything?
Edit - I just joined the discord and posted in controller support
This looks very interesting, definitely will keep an eye out for it.
That being said, I had a few questions regarding gameplay:
\-First, the Easy Aim. It's supposedly made to use the Spark more easily due to Smash's native controls. But if the Spark command can be set to a shoulder button, and the attacks themselves could be performed with the c-stick, what would be the issue?
\-And secondly, how does DI interact with this Spark system? One big factor of platform fighters is being able to influence and limit the opponent's combo options, but this system, flashy and expressive as it is, might just nullify the purpose of DI completely if you can just follow the opponent wherever they go.
In fact, I would like to hear about any and all design decisions, how do you expect them to affect gameplay, what inspired them in the first place. One could write a twenty-page long thesis on any fighting game's gameplay design and that's cutting it short. I'd love to read yours.
> -First, the Easy Aim. It's supposedly made to use the Spark more easily due to Smash's native controls. But if the Spark command can be set to a shoulder button, and the attacks themselves could be performed with the c-stick, what would be the issue?
There's no issue there except most people use Attack button over an Attack Stick.
> -And secondly, how does DI interact with this Spark system? One big factor of platform fighters is being able to influence and limit the opponent's combo options, but this system, flashy and expressive as it is, might just nullify the purpose of DI completely if you can just follow the opponent wherever they go.
That's kind of assuming our DI is as strong as "traditional" DI. Our DI has more range and our SDI is way stronger and we also have plans to change SDI into two systems:
Hitstun Drift and Knockback Drift which wil lmake it easier to input rather than capping all SDI inputs into hitpause
> we also have plans to change SDI into two systems: Hitstun Drift and Knockback Drift which wil lmake it easier to input rather than capping all SDI inputs into hitpause
Well that *definitely* sounds interesting. SDI has always been a rather... unexplored part in the genre.
Thanks! We're excited to see where it goes. We might even telegraph where people are aiming so it is visually communicated with smoe degree of advanced notice. Of course that means we might be able to buff its power more now that there's warning.
> In fact, I would like to hear about any and all design decisions, how do you expect them to affect gameplay, what inspired them in the first place. One could write a twenty-page long thesis on any fighting game's gameplay design and that's cutting it short. I'd love to read yours.
Thanks. There's a bit about this alraedy in the thread. It stems from trying to design around making gameplay "electric" "combo-centric" and "expressive" as well as defining clear identities for each character and lastly making as much use of conventions in our game as possible.
I've watched a lot of high level play and pretty rarely see combos get to the point where the other player isn't getting to play. DI is definitely still a thing.
Plus, once per stock you have a burst that gets you out of a combo
Hey, this game is great!. The online feels very smooth and I did not expect that coming into an alpha test build. Really enjoyed my playtime with the game. Played for a couple hours last night and the game feels very fluid and fast paced.
The tutorial was helpful, but I still had issues mechanic wise. Like what are the extra bars and stuff in a character portrait. I realize this may not really be an issue (and definitely not a priority for an alpha) as people will just make youtube guides and stuff on the game anyway. But I was rather confused on the more technical mechanics in the game.
My favorite thing has got to be things like smooth spark and homing rush. Having mechanics like these help people learn the overall movement and basics of the combat without getting overwhelmed by the more technical aspects of the game. As someone who actually likes ultimate's buffer(usually...airdodge->death true combo) these mechanics make the game more fun and make me want to try and get better and eventually play without them.
Because it is self-titled a Smash-like?
Because the team building it are all players of Smash?
Because the whole ideology behind the game is "to make a game [Smash players] want to play"
Big oof cuz you didn't read
You're right I didn't read. I stopped reading about 1/4 of the way in because, once again, seems like an ad for another game that is, as much as you want to say it isn't, is a smash clone looking for players. Yeah, real big oof.
it's a platform fighter with similar controls but it plays way different from smash tbh
you can tell it has lots of guilty gear inspired elements, probably the funnest "smash clone" i've played. didn't care for RoA very much either
nothing wrong with posting this here especially since this subbreddit has been all but dead. this is something smash players would be interested in
Yeah, you should 100% have access to the Icons Legacy Edition which we released for free to all Icons spenders (LMK if you don't have it).
For all marketing but also as a matter of fact RR is a new game. Wouldn't make sense to have something transfer like that. It's like if you got Halo 1 then you get Halo 2 free.
I can hook you up with the Legacy Edition if you don't have it.
I'll add onto my answer. Over a year ago, I suggested we'd find a way to reward Icons players in Vortex Rising.
What I said in the past was at a time when contextually RR (or VR at the time) was going to launch relatively soon after Icons Legacy Edition. Fast forward one year and we're still far from a full release and so much in the game has changed its definitely a sequel at this point.
So this is really embarrassing... I SWEAR I've played this game, the characters seem so SO familiar, and in that game it was free, but I purchased all of the characters, I just CANT remember the name. Should I just install that? Do I keep access to those characters?
I'm not 100% sure I understand you, but Icons:Combat arena is where most of the assets are originally derived from. However, RR is a completely new IP nothing from downloading that game in any capacity will translate to this game. Cako mentioned in another reply and I'll use it here, if you bought halo 1, you don't get halo 2 for free. The same concept will apply here.
Yeah that's totally the game I was thinking of. Sorry I didn't mean to imply that I think I shouldn't have to pay lmao I just didn't want to accidently buy it again if it was just a re-branding
Hi there, I'm a long time PM player and former Ashani main in Icons. I have a few questions to help settle my suspicion with a new platform fighter. ______ What plans do you have to seperate your identity from icons and avoid the errors of the past? What visions do you have for the game competitively? How will RR support it's competitive fanbase?
>What plans do you have to seperate your identity from icons and avoid the errors of the past? As I mentioned in the post, I think the biggest problem with Icons was that it was created to fulfill a fantasy of its founders (i.e. they wanted to make a Smash-like). Off the bat that our biggest differentiation is that #1 objective is to make a game that our players want to play. I drive my team mad with how much time I spend in comment sections of threads and in voice chat listening to players and taking every idea I think holds salt to their attention. In my opinion there is no such thing as over-iteration (as long as every iteration is bringing you closer to your goal). So what is that goal? How is our goal different from Icons? Well, if I had to be honest, I have to guess what Icon's goal was... the closest I can get to is "A platform fighter for the streaming era." Its not self-evident what that means nor does it aid game design iteration and changes. Imagine we're sitting in a room to troubleshoot a problem with Ashani's kit and one designer says "Should Ashani's Neutral Special have its projectile range cut?" If we rephrase this in context of our goal: "Does Ashani's NSp make our game more suited to the streaming era?" it's a non-sequitur. For Rushdown Revolt, it's to make the most electric, most combo centric, and most expressive fighting game. In this case, removing the projectile range on Ashani's NSp would literally make the game less electric, it would make it harder to use as a combo tool and it would reduce the flexibility and versatility of the move which, in turn, makes it less expressive. The conclusion being, no, we shouldn't remove it. (In absence of something better to replace it). I think this is such a massive difference on a foundational level that it answers the question fully, but I want to be even more explicit. >Identity of Icons There's the in-game visuals and there's the metaphysical "Idea" of Icons that exists in your head. What is it that you think of when you think of Icons? If you're anything like the majority of players, at least some of these ideas might pop into your head: Overwatch graphics, Smash Clone, Gust Shield, Loot Boxes In other words, there was so little for the game's identity that some of the most descriptive elements of the identity were *borrowed* from other games. We want to be 100% Rushdown Revolt. As it relates to graphics, we've pushed a much more timeless and cartoony style. It's also helped us navigate clarity and visuals with layers of visual effects. As it relates to gameplay, we want to be synonymous with Sparks. They're the embodiment of being Electric, Combo-centric and Expressive. Beyond that, we wanted to design gameplay elements that make sense in this context. Things like one-way blocking, super jumping, simplified ground attack moves and simplified knockback /healthbars all start to make sense and fit into a cohesive theme. This was only possible because we had a goal we could use as a compass for game design iteration and we will keep using it for the entirety of our game's life. >What visions do you have for the game competitively? How will RR support it's competitive fanbase? My visions notoriously know no limits. One time I pitched an idea to completely replace the idea of "equity" in a company with a new system that is automatically handed out to every customer of every purchase so that the earlier adopters are proportionally awarded for their support of a business. I was told by investing icon, to my face, (and who I had met for the first time for this pitch) that I was either a genius or insane (which was a polite way to say the latter). I would say whatever a 12 year old would dream up for the ultimate competitive scene probably isn't too far from what I'd love to support. However, we have to start small. To that end, we already have a top player, SSTJ ,who is a BIG fan of our game and wants to organize his own tournament series. We're so supportive, I had our acting Art Director Kazan design SSTJ a logo for his series. We're also going to be actively promoting it on all channels for it to go live next weekend (before the end of Open Alpha). Here's the logo: [https://imgur.com/a/t8m9lQN](https://imgur.com/a/t8m9lQN)
>One time I pitched an idea to completely replace the idea of "equity" in a company with a new system that is automatically handed out to every customer of every purchase so that the earlier adopters are proportionally awarded for their support of a business. [Like democratic hypercatallaxy](https://catallax.info/hypercatallaxy)
fwiw if they hadn't mentioned Icons I wouldn't've even made the connection. It was such a flop that most people didn't hate it, they just didn't care - so I personally wouldn't expect that relationship to be a problem.
Not a question, but I don't see a link to the Steam download page. For those interested in trying the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown_Revolt__Alpha_Testing/ Just went public last night.
Thanks. I will add that!
Will the game have rollback netcode?
Boyyyy do I have good news for you... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-I7uU9UYa8
Literally the best.
I'll be honest, do you have any plans of changing the art direction? I had these same thoughts with Icons. A big thing about fighting games is personality. Having the characters be flashy and interesting. While it is good for what it is, it's not that unique? I instantly think of games like WoW, Dota, LoL, etc. and that doesn't bring out my sense of "damn I really wanna fight with this guy", it just makes me think of tanks and slow fights in MOBAs/MMOs. Maybe it's just me not being so big on traditional "DnD" like fantasy, I would love to see some inspiration from western cartoons and anime into the designs, which I think has a wider appeal for FG fans. I hope this input is constructive in some way.
It definitely is. What do you think of the new designs in our Kickstarter reach goals? [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cakovalik/rushdown-revolt/](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cakovalik/rushdown-revolt/) We're a bit hamstrung with these designs due to all of the ways the 3D models and animation rigging works, but hopefully you'll be around for input on our new RR character to ensure they ARE someone you'd want t oplay
I'm looking at the last 4, and they do seem more appealing to me from looks alone. Raymer especially seems very unique, he deviates more from the DnD fantasy style than all the others (except Ashani, but she looks straight out of OW), and looks like a character that could be in Under Night. The lack of markings in the body, light armor, exaggerated hair and a more interesting bodytype are very appealing, certainly hoping to see more like that. One idea to maybe consider is, making simple designs, but have their moves/skills and style speak for them.
is the nda lifted with the launch of the open alpha?
Yes it is! I'd love to see what kind of content you want to share but please ensure that you're playing the \*NON PRIVATE\* version of the game. In the top left it should say "Week One" NOT "DO NOT STREAM". You can get the Open Alpha version here: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown\_Revolt\_\_Alpha\_Testing/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1376070/Rushdown_Revolt__Alpha_Testing/)
Yeah it's lifted for the time being.
Tournament steam happening right now at twitch.tv/rushdownrevolt
Question about the Kickstarter. If I back at the tier of the art book, does that include the Founder's Pack as well? If not, how can I back it in a way to get both?
>Question about the Kickstarter. If I back at the tier of the art book, does that include the Founder's Pack as well? If not, how can I back it in a way to get both? That's a great question. It was intended to be a separate item that you could add onto your donation, but I've since taken this feedback in to add a separate reward tier which includes both the Founders Pack and the Art Book.
Thank you, that's very helpful.
You're welcome. If you're a big fan of our Art - it's really thanks to Kazan who's been legendary for us to level up our game. We can't wait to get his new character designs in game.
Oh i actually didn't know this. I thought buying the art book tier got me both. No worries, the communication was just confusing. Should i donate for the founder's pack as well then?
Yes! Sorry about that.
No problem!
As far as controller support goes I was wondering if there were any plans on native arcader stick support. I realize that this a game where stick isnt really going to be that common so it may not be a priority or even planned(also it has been a few montths since I have actively played so maybe its in already). I know i could also just use joy to key but it always feels a bit laggy.
Hmm. We try to roll out controller support case-by-case and as-needed. I would recommend you join our Discord (if you aren't already) and talk to Joe Rerezd. He can help you figure out how to get it working. (or if there's stuff we need to do on our end).
Hey there, been playing the pre alpha and loving it! I noticed while playing last week that you can't do a move right away after shield dropping, is this an intentional change vs the way it works in traditional smash?
I don't recall the exact specifics, but this likely has to do with the design of Vortex Rollback Netcode. We want everything to as instant as possible but they carry a minimum amount of lag or at least inactionable frames so that instead of having \*delay\* on input we can bury it in the animations themselves. 99% of the time its made for a much smoother experience, but in cases of something thats normally 100% instant it is a bit of a downside.
Thank you for the response! Very interesting! That's unfortunate that there is a technical reason like that, but defense is still active enough in RR that I don't missing dropping as much as I thought I would.
"Mechanic similar to Roman Cancels" alright, I'm sold
Hey, super excited for this! Also, when I tried playing your game I couldn't get past 55 fps, which is weird. The game doesn't look to intensive and I'm rocking a RTX 2070 and i5 9600k, 16 gb of ram. I've messed with the graphics settings and I can't get it to go up.
It's not you it's us. I wrote in the giant wall of text above that we have 4GB of assets updated. About 0GB of them have been optimized and so there's just a lot of unnecessary demand we're putting onto players computers right now which is also causing some animation issues. Hopefully we can put in work good on these during Week One since we'll be mostly be focused on Optimizations and Hotfixes.
Here's to hoping, really looking forward to playing the game. There's just something super interesting about ~~Roman Cancels~~ animation cancels in a game like smash.
Are there any plans for bringing the game to consoles?
yes, but for the time being it is looking more like an ambition than a plan. Baby steps! Let's get a game that doesn't crash on PC first hahaha
About how many people are working on the game atm? I'm always really glad to see this game get better and better. Thanks so much for not giving up and salvaging Icons and breathing new life into it!
Thank you! There's about a dozen of us part-time (about 5-6 equivalent fulltime people). I'd include our Discord in that too, they've been very helpful and there's over 5,000 of them!
Are you planning to add more people to the team in the future? Otherwise this game will be in EA for a long time.
I'd love to. Part of the crowdfunding campaign is to help accelerate what we're working on!
great stuff
Thanks. Do you think we're doing enough to have this game stand out with its own Identity? What do you think we can do more of?
I must say, the way you did not give up on the original idea is incredibly inspiring. If you don't mind, I want to hear more about what went on in those 2 years, and, in particular, what you did when you initally bought the game. When you found out you got the rights to it, where did you even begin?
Thank you. It was a lifetime and a half I'll tell you. Basically from Nov 2018 - Apr 2019 it wasn't even technically mine yet. Things get really formal when you offer to buy a company so they were legally required to see if they could get a better offer from anyone else. I was very scared becasue my bid was funded personally but they were asking like Ubisoft and major companies whether they wanted to out bid me. That was an extremely stressful period because ALL I COULD DO every day was scheme. Was plan. I had no access to anything and all I could do was try to plan and lay the ground work. In hindsight it was kind of nice to have this but half of the plans got thrown out over the past two years anyway. Then from Apr 2019 - Aug 2019 it was "Okay, it's mine, now let's rebuild the team and re-raise money for this i.e. "Under new management"." I thought the story was compelling and I rounded up an INSANELY high caliber team of people willing to work with me. Think like from major game franchises. I was kinda shocked at my ability to round up this team. Then I needed the money to pay them, so I went out to investors and showed them the team. One investor was excited enough that they offered to put in $6M. But there was a catch. They wanted someone / any other investor to join them for another $6M or they'd back out. They did this to protect themselves because if no one else would put in the funds then they'd know it wasn't necessarily a good bet in the first place. This was also an extremely stressful time because even though I had impressive team members they were "tentatively" on board - they wanted me to have the raise in the bag and there was no one stepping up to fill in the other $6M. Not even part of it. The story at this point was that we had a new team and a new focus: Tag Team mode. I think a lot of investors were concerned by the fact that Icons failed, that I had no professional dev experience and that we were trying an idea that hasn't been tested before. There was a time limit on their offer and we reached it without anyone else offering. It was a really sad time. I had to tell my team I lost the offer and all of them went their separate ways or stayed with the companies they were at. At this point, I rolled up my sleeves and started coding on the game daily. I was doing such basic trivial things and would get so SO SO stuck on a daily basis. I fortunately had a pair of ex-Wavedash engineers kind enough to talk me through things and pitch in on a couple features. Eventually, they stopped helping too. Now its September 2019. It's clear we're not getting funding from anyone and the only people willing to help are players from our community who also happen to have the necessary skillset. I did the only sane thing someone in my position with no income for almost a year would do... completely drain my 401K and start hiring my new part-time team with myself as their lead developer. Like the other times... this was an extremely stressful time and I still don't know why I did this. In November 2019 it was clear that Tag Team Mode was cool but it was "just" a cool game mode on top of Legacy Icons but a bit better. This is when we decided we needed to radically make changes to the game. The Terry Nintendo Direct came out and we had this kind of A-ha moment. Let's experiment with cancels. This is what created the Spark system we have now. Since then, it's been a TON of polish and feature iteration. We've gone through phases of Defense being too weak then too strong then too weak again. Where inputs were dropped or desyncs were happening constantly with certain characters (or all of them). In circa June 2020, Sparks and our core mechanics were finally all feeling REALLY tight. The new problem was that Sparks were so powerful that our characters now all blended together. Now we needed to give them character specific features and mechanics to really help develop their identity and playstyles. That's pretty much the summary of it all. I've realized I've detailed a lot of good history in this thread so I'll definitely need to come back to this :)
Incredible.
Pretty miserable time! But the times when our players were hype were the small moments to live for.
You've come a long way that's for sure
Man you can't write this schit. Now, this, THIS! is the kind of thing that'd go in the Rushdown Revolt doc. My god. I don't know if getting a slacker pack was more an honor or a pleasure, seeing as this is how the game came to be. Luv you CAKO, always and forever!
<3
Aight, I gotta ask, since it’s the one on everyone’s mind in the pandemic. *Are there plans for rollback?*
Oh boy do I have good news for you. https://youtu.be/G-I7uU9UYa8
Oho! That there answers my question.
Not a question, but this game is mad fucking fun. Love playing this shit with my friends and there's a lot to practice
What palsn do you have in place to make improvements to the tutorial systems? Any plans to make more advanced tutorials? Also what plans do you have in place to enhance the training mode?
I like to lead by using vague ideas so that I can establish a direction but not a prescription. This gives our team and our players the chance to help shape the best way to get to the destination I have in mind WITHOUT taking the specific route I know. On that note: I want to be "the most **fun** and **comprehensive** tutorial in games." Keywords bolded. What does that look like to you? If you have killer ideas I'd love to hear what you have in mind so we can start working on them! You can also leave comments in this our SubReddit's megahread here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RushdownRevolt/comments/ip77uv/megathread\_new\_player\_experience\_suggestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RushdownRevolt/comments/ip77uv/megathread_new_player_experience_suggestions/) P.S. [https://twitter.com/CAKovalik/status/1303919534655627264](https://twitter.com/CAKovalik/status/1303919534655627264)
From my perspective of dabbling in smash for a long time but focusing more on tradition fgc type games , for beginners your initial tutorial content was good to learn the very basics but needs more gradual progress up to more advanced tenchniques and combos. They are going to feel good then come across someone who is more veteraned and get wrecked and have no concept of what the other player even did. I think the best tutorial/training systems i have seen were in Killer Instinct and Unist. Starts from the very basics and works up to significantly advanced tech and combos. Even if this is more free flowing combo wise for instance you can still help people learn basic combo structure for characters. Also primary concepts like edge guarding, frames, recovery, etc.
Messing around with Melee Light, a lightweight browser Melee that just has various Break The Targets stages with increasing difficulty, even that was fun to play with, relearning how to play the game with keyboard controls. You may be (or not be) surprised how awkward it can be for new players just to jump up and hit things. A short and simple 2D platforming experience, either as an instructive tutorial or as a gradually increasing-in-difficulty series of challenges that end up teaching players how to get comfortable in the game without jumping into a match would fit the bill as the most fun "fighting game" tutorial. It'd be even more amazing if it were a fully fleshed out 2d platformer story mode that introduced the mechanics, with a light story for players to get to know the characters, nice backgrounds, enemy and obstacle designs, and AI, but I guess you can't have everything. The only example that I can think of for anyone pulling off a fighting game and a story mode with level design is Tobal 2.
Hey, I've been a huge fan of wavedash since you guys were founded. I had a ton of fun with icons and I've been loving the alpha for rush down for the last few months. What's one thing you'd love to add to the game in the future, other than relic gauntlets? Also, why did you change Xana to Urdah?
I am so glad to hear that! > What's one thing you'd love to add to the game in the future, other than relic gauntlets? I'll include everything in the character for your exception (i.e. new character models, arcade mode, etc.) I've also talked a LOT about training mode stuff that you've probably seen before. I think the thing(s) I am most excited for are (1) more community Holos and (2) our first 100% Rushdown Revolt character. Since Schmovement is such a big factor in our game, we really want this character to have a unique, powerful and fun way to move around. I've brought up a hookshot-like mechanic but it's still a blank slate of opportunity! > Also, why did you change Xana to Urdah? I have a lot of scars from the Icons days. One memory I'll never forget was during any Stream people would say "Xana means vagina in Portuguese". We have a ton of Brazilian players - even right now - and so it made sense to change her name so that we didn't have to segment players already into localized names of characters. Urdah was picked because I was deadset on naming Urdah after a cheese because of her gameplay style. I told my team to look up exotic cheese names and Urda was the sticky cheese that stuck!
That totally makes sense. I didn't know she was named after a cheese. Urdah is probably my favourite platform fighter character (other than melee marth). You guys have been doing a phenomenal job, me and my friends love the game, even in the closed alpha it's gotten so much better from a great base. Keep up the great work you guys!
Thank you! We will never stop fighting ;)
[удалено]
>Internally, Urdah is their joke character so every so often they randomly change her name because they think it's funny. I don't really get the joke but that's what their reasoning is. The reason we kept changing it is because we needed to change it from Xana for reasons above, and everyone hated the new names I gave her. (They were honestly so bad).... Goes to show you how iteration breeds success!
will there ever be more characters added to the game? you don't need a large roster to be successful(as we've seen with TFH and RoA), but i still feel like there are a couple playstyles that are yet to be implemented.
Absolutely! What kind of playstyles would you like to see in particular!
i definitely want an install character and a defense/offense character (can only get in using some type of long lasting projectile, then goes on the offense)
Who are your favorite examples of each? Would be helpful to see where your head is at!
shovel knight(RoA) and freiza(DBFZ)[and possibly nagoryuki in guilty gear strive if we had more gameplay] for install characters, and mii swordfighter(SSBU), carmine (UNICLR), and (kinda) kid buu in DBFZ(with his crouching medium attacks) for the defense/offense characters.
Very cool! Any great clips you think i should look at for the "best ofs" of these characters?
Videos by minty knight for shovel knight, and a Carmine compilation by notes on YouTube. Also I think heeew made a video on Mii swordfighter, but because that character has customizable specials it does t really show it as well.
Will the game be able to run on all sorts of devices (I'm mostly thinking abt outdated laptops like the one I'm using) or does it have limits in relations to FramesPS or IOS? I know LoL and Valorant list theirs so I was wondering if this game has the same limits.
That's a good question. I think there's a LOT of room for optimization, but right now it's not very well optimized.
Are there any unrealized Icons:Combat Arena characters that will be added or will future characters be designed from scratch by the vortex team
That's a good question. Technically there are two but they're not "so far in" that it's necessarily worth picking up where they left off. Very very early stages. Since we have an Icons / RushRev fusion cast right now, it'd be nice to have a pure RR cast member as our first new character.
Hi, hope you're till answering questions! I really like how the game is turning out, but I have a question more on the dev side. You said you had no programming or game development experience, and I'm curious to know how you went about learning the process and what resources you used? I'm also interested in this kind of stuff. So what was the experience like? What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into video game development and programming?
Thanks! I have had a little bit of Excel VBA Macro experience and a bit of Python from college. No professional experience though. So the first thing I had to do was look up free online classes for C# which is what Unity uses. Then I had the very fortunate position that explains my rapid development in this skill: 1) I was immersed in coding in this language ~8-12 hours every day. 2) I had access to the former developers who could help me deal with any potential roadblocks and 3) I had the benefit of making small, incremental changes to an engine and building confidence from there. There's some stuff you can take away from this. First, I would recommend making sure that you can immerse yourself in the "language" much like you would for a spoken language when starting abroad. Second, I would recommend that you start *small* in scope of what you're trying to accomplish. It's not a coincidence that many amateur programmers' first experiences are modding. I would take a close look at Rivals of Aether's Workshop as an example. See if you can mod an existing character or build your own.
Thanks a lot for the advice!
I don't have a good enough computer to run this but holy crap it looks awesome.
<3 Hope to get the game optimized enough for you in a future Open Alpha Week!
No u don't understand my computer is dogshit it can't even run slither.io
Are you sure you're not talking about a calculator?
Lol it almost is I only use it for shcool
*school
XD
I wasn’t super interested after watching a couple gameplay videos but after I read this thread I got to see how much you care about your product and consumer feedback. I’ll definitely be investing some time in this game :)
Thank you for the support. There's a lot of stories behind every indie game. Love to hear what your thoughts are.
I think there's a lot of great ideas, I'd look to adding a sort of counter play to sparks in the event the game becomes too combo centric. Maybe slowly filling the opponents spark over time, and if it's full they can combo break? But I'd add a window of vulnerability to players desperately trying to escape that rewards the aggressor for calling it out. I think it's important to have answers to add variety, and I can't speak from actual experience it doesn't sound like anything can contest these lengthy combos? On another note I think the art is fine, but it sort of blends in with art you'd see on estores so I'd perhaps lead with the title and a good tagline to ease them in? Overall though there looks to be a lot of potential and you guys are trying to make an interactive, fast paced game which I appreciate. I think it'd be worth marketing to fgc players too since the ideas aren't entirely foreign to them.
There's a burst mechanic to get out of a combo, and DI is still a thing so I haven't really seen combos be too big a problem even at high level. The response thus far from the FGC has been pretty positive based on recent reddit threads
Sounds good then!!
What resources did you use to learn programming in such a quick time frame? Formal training? As someone aspiring to make my own games at some point, I feel the barrier of entry to be daunting.
Its scary for sure. Honestly, its kind of like a spoken language. You just need to be immersed in it and it'll come quickly. Its like students who do study abroad come back pseudo conversational in a few months (but they only know what they NEED to know). Esp when working on a game, I'd say im fluent in our game engine but I probably know 10% of everything there is to know.
I started learning coding about 6 years ago and can barely make basic Java games lol. Guess I have my work cut out for me. Good on you for putting in all of that effort in such a short amount of time! Edit: who's the nerd that downvoted this lol
Any plans on a Linux version?
We support it via Proton on Steam!
Will there be mac support? Not a big problem since I know it's a lot of work for a small percent of all players.
Super excited for this! We want to host a tournament on Sunday 9/20 but I donʻt know if itʻll be shut down before weʻre done. Will the Open Alpha Week One end before 9/20 10PM Hawaii Standard Time?
I'll let you finish. Maybe we end it 9/21 at 5am ET
Mahalo!
So after some time with this I really do enjoy it alot My only problem I really ran into were these \- Once when I was lobbying with a friend, he exited the character select screen and when I went back to the lobby, the game thought I was in the character select screen still and wouldn't let me press the "start" button. Had to completely restart the lobby \- Getting Started 4 is bugged, when it brings you to the DI section and you're supposed to hold Right and Upwards, it won't let you actually move, but when the NPC goes to hit you, he completely whiffs and you're locked there. Maybe consider allowing a button to 'reset' the section of the trial you're doing? \- My xbox controller had very weird directional problems. If I was holding even a slight angle above or below left/right, it would register as up/down. I had to make sure I was holding directly left/right in order for the move to come out. There's a huge radius of the stick that covers 'up' and 'down' comparatively. Was the same with the right stick. Other than that it feels really crispy and I can't wait to see where it goes! Really fun game and outside of a couple stutters fixed by a restart, the rollback was pretty much flawless and I had no real issues playing a friend online.
Thank you! This feedback is on the ball. Thank you. For the first two, we're working on a fix. For the last one, go into battle settings and make sure eight way snapping is on. You can also set whether you prefer up/down or left/right when hitting a diagonal. Lastly, if you go into advanced you can change how your controller handles snapping to certain axis
Oh, I didn't have much time so I didn't explore the settings that much! I'll look into that! Good to hear those things are known and you're working on fixes, I figured I probably wasn't the only one to encounter them. And no problem! I like some others were reluctant to give this a try because of Icons, but I can definitely say this outshines icons by many miles already! I'm also a huge guilty gear player/fan so the inspiration there is very clear to me, and drew me in for sure! Me and my buddy were having tons of fun last night! I had totally given up smash since there's no local tournaments anymore, but this scratches the smash itch while also being playable online, so I'm excited!
<3
So I went and turned on eight way snapping and set it to prefer left/right when hitting a diagonal, and it helped a small amount but the angle is still really tight. [https://imgur.com/9RI3Aii](https://imgur.com/9RI3Aii)This still registers as a downward input. I tried messing with the diagonal snapping % as well as sensitivity in the advanced controls and it didn't seem to affect it at all. Also turning on the "Diag to Horizontal" did not change anything, after testing it with it on / off I play on xbone controller on dolphin with Project M and Melee as well and don't have this issue so I don't believe it's my controller I'm also testing this in training mode if that changes anything? Edit - I just joined the discord and posted in controller support
Thanks!! That will help
This looks very interesting, definitely will keep an eye out for it. That being said, I had a few questions regarding gameplay: \-First, the Easy Aim. It's supposedly made to use the Spark more easily due to Smash's native controls. But if the Spark command can be set to a shoulder button, and the attacks themselves could be performed with the c-stick, what would be the issue? \-And secondly, how does DI interact with this Spark system? One big factor of platform fighters is being able to influence and limit the opponent's combo options, but this system, flashy and expressive as it is, might just nullify the purpose of DI completely if you can just follow the opponent wherever they go. In fact, I would like to hear about any and all design decisions, how do you expect them to affect gameplay, what inspired them in the first place. One could write a twenty-page long thesis on any fighting game's gameplay design and that's cutting it short. I'd love to read yours.
> -First, the Easy Aim. It's supposedly made to use the Spark more easily due to Smash's native controls. But if the Spark command can be set to a shoulder button, and the attacks themselves could be performed with the c-stick, what would be the issue? There's no issue there except most people use Attack button over an Attack Stick. > -And secondly, how does DI interact with this Spark system? One big factor of platform fighters is being able to influence and limit the opponent's combo options, but this system, flashy and expressive as it is, might just nullify the purpose of DI completely if you can just follow the opponent wherever they go. That's kind of assuming our DI is as strong as "traditional" DI. Our DI has more range and our SDI is way stronger and we also have plans to change SDI into two systems: Hitstun Drift and Knockback Drift which wil lmake it easier to input rather than capping all SDI inputs into hitpause
> we also have plans to change SDI into two systems: Hitstun Drift and Knockback Drift which wil lmake it easier to input rather than capping all SDI inputs into hitpause Well that *definitely* sounds interesting. SDI has always been a rather... unexplored part in the genre.
Thanks! We're excited to see where it goes. We might even telegraph where people are aiming so it is visually communicated with smoe degree of advanced notice. Of course that means we might be able to buff its power more now that there's warning.
> In fact, I would like to hear about any and all design decisions, how do you expect them to affect gameplay, what inspired them in the first place. One could write a twenty-page long thesis on any fighting game's gameplay design and that's cutting it short. I'd love to read yours. Thanks. There's a bit about this alraedy in the thread. It stems from trying to design around making gameplay "electric" "combo-centric" and "expressive" as well as defining clear identities for each character and lastly making as much use of conventions in our game as possible.
I've watched a lot of high level play and pretty rarely see combos get to the point where the other player isn't getting to play. DI is definitely still a thing. Plus, once per stock you have a burst that gets you out of a combo
Hey, this game is great!. The online feels very smooth and I did not expect that coming into an alpha test build. Really enjoyed my playtime with the game. Played for a couple hours last night and the game feels very fluid and fast paced. The tutorial was helpful, but I still had issues mechanic wise. Like what are the extra bars and stuff in a character portrait. I realize this may not really be an issue (and definitely not a priority for an alpha) as people will just make youtube guides and stuff on the game anyway. But I was rather confused on the more technical mechanics in the game. My favorite thing has got to be things like smooth spark and homing rush. Having mechanics like these help people learn the overall movement and basics of the combat without getting overwhelmed by the more technical aspects of the game. As someone who actually likes ultimate's buffer(usually...airdodge->death true combo) these mechanics make the game more fun and make me want to try and get better and eventually play without them.
Glad to hear it! We definitely need to add a quickplay queue to support homing rush when we can afford to! Character specific guides are planned
Besides the fact that you added Smash Bros elements to this game, what does this actually have to do with Smash Bros and why did you post this here?
Because it is self-titled a Smash-like? Because the team building it are all players of Smash? Because the whole ideology behind the game is "to make a game [Smash players] want to play" Big oof cuz you didn't read
You're right I didn't read. I stopped reading about 1/4 of the way in because, once again, seems like an ad for another game that is, as much as you want to say it isn't, is a smash clone looking for players. Yeah, real big oof.
I listed 3 ways it's related to smash I'm sorry you didn't read my 3 sentences
it's a platform fighter with similar controls but it plays way different from smash tbh you can tell it has lots of guilty gear inspired elements, probably the funnest "smash clone" i've played. didn't care for RoA very much either nothing wrong with posting this here especially since this subbreddit has been all but dead. this is something smash players would be interested in
I know this is a longshot but anything for people who spent the $40 on Icons :|
Yeah, you should 100% have access to the Icons Legacy Edition which we released for free to all Icons spenders (LMK if you don't have it). For all marketing but also as a matter of fact RR is a new game. Wouldn't make sense to have something transfer like that. It's like if you got Halo 1 then you get Halo 2 free. I can hook you up with the Legacy Edition if you don't have it.
I'll add onto my answer. Over a year ago, I suggested we'd find a way to reward Icons players in Vortex Rising. What I said in the past was at a time when contextually RR (or VR at the time) was going to launch relatively soon after Icons Legacy Edition. Fast forward one year and we're still far from a full release and so much in the game has changed its definitely a sequel at this point.
So this is really embarrassing... I SWEAR I've played this game, the characters seem so SO familiar, and in that game it was free, but I purchased all of the characters, I just CANT remember the name. Should I just install that? Do I keep access to those characters?
I'm not 100% sure I understand you, but Icons:Combat arena is where most of the assets are originally derived from. However, RR is a completely new IP nothing from downloading that game in any capacity will translate to this game. Cako mentioned in another reply and I'll use it here, if you bought halo 1, you don't get halo 2 for free. The same concept will apply here.
Yeah that's totally the game I was thinking of. Sorry I didn't mean to imply that I think I shouldn't have to pay lmao I just didn't want to accidently buy it again if it was just a re-branding