New kaiju game from Matt Frank + Simon Strange [Archive]

[Supergeon]

A card game could be cool, and it could be very successful. But the main draw to the license in my opinion is the action as opposed to the strategy.

[Mr. Strange]

I don't quite understand the "multiple releases" thing. Clearly this is going to be one game, not several. Are we talking about expansion packs?

This "game" is the framework, upon which several games will be built. However, each game is modular, so you can mix and match content from any of the games together.

For example: game 1 will (hopefully) be a TOHO-based game with a single-player story mode and online battles. Game 2 might be an original monster game with a new single-player story mode. If you own both, you will be able to run either set of monsters through either story, and use either set of monsters in online battles.

Multiple games, one framework. The other advantage of that is that, once the framework & technology is done for the first game, each successive game will cost just a fraction of the original game pricetag. So the first game might run $300,000 - but then the next game will cost just $70,000 or so. Win-win-win.

[zilla103192]

Which is why I like the Trading Battle Idea. Once 2 monsters meet in that game, it enters a fighting mode. But in that game it's more along the lines of Pokemon, with turn based attacks. But if everyone would prefer realtime fighting, that could be possible to.

I just think that this "different franchise packs" idea fits more with a card game style video-game.

[Destroyer]

I personally hate turn-based battles.

[Mr. Strange]

Argh! Had another huge response get eaten by my failing mouse...

In brief: I'm not fond of parrying, or blocking - because that makes people think of fast-paced fighters like Street Fighter. I want to push this as much as possible into the cinematic Kaiju-esque realm.

Cinematic Moments: This is a great direction, because it really distinguishes the game from boxing / wrestling games. I especially like the idea that roaring "counters" another monster's roar...

Round Starts: Playing a "loser" anim at the end of the fight would be triival - we've always had victory anims, so this is just an extension of that. I don't like the idea of starting subsequent rounds in the positions occupied at the end of the first round - inevitably some players would find a way to turn that to their advantage. Resetting positions is an important part of balancing out the start of the battles.

[skuzzy-punk-kid]

As far as how taxing something like that would be on the game engine or what else I meant that to encompass?

I will answer both I guess. I would assume that having determined outcomes from certain actions would have to have a more limited criteria. Example..
-MG75's head coming off after taking a certain amount of damage (Godzilla Battle Legends for TurboGrafx)
-Gigan clipping Mothra's wing off, which would occur if your final melee attack, in the final round would result in a KO
-Godzilla punching Hedorah and randomly doing a hurt hand animation from Hedorah's acidic body
If you dissect each example and find each of the "if and when's" each one would be a variable that the engine would have to account for.

More examples for round transitions
-King Cesar flaring his ears and doing his "angry thing" after losing
-A Mech repositioning itself, clearing exhaust vents
-Godzilla glowing blue as shown when he heals his wounds
-Winged monsters kicking up dust, doing aerial acrobatics
- Ghidorah's heads fighting with one another
- Any monster doing "roar talking" and provoking one another
Please feel free to add your own

I think it would be cool to also add these:
-Gigan doing his little victory dance; adding the [Gigan laughter sound FX], the 3 hammer-claw clap followed by the double stomp as his round 1 victory animation (this was seen in Godzilla vs. Gigan, when Anguirus gets hit by King Ghidorah's gravity beam and gets levelled.
-Gigan having his buzzsaw activating and his eyepiece flashing on and off, indicating his frustration
-Megalon doing his shake and drill-arm clap [insert Megalon laughter sound FX here] as his round 1 victory animation
-SpaceGodzilla should levitate back to his feet (after losing round 1), shattering any crystals that still remain, regaining his health
-If a suitable Kong knock-off can be managed (provided that the name of King Kong cannot be used), a quick chest-beating and 2 Showa Kong grunts as his round 1 victory animation

I'm sure a few more will come to mind later...

[Supergeon]

@Simon
Addressing parrying/blocking
That is true what you bring up about Street Fighter. In Blazblue you can use a sort of "aura burst" to push an enemy back when you are feeling too pressured, this is allowed once per fight and it leaves you vulnerable (more susceptible to damage). What are your thoughts on a "Power Roar" a one time use roar that was more pronounced for use in a "get off my nuts" situation.

Cinematic Moments: Thanks for your comments. Do you have any ideas to develop on this point?

Round Starts: I can see your point on strategic placement and abuse of a feature like this. Do you have any ideas to keep the flow of a matches intensity going?

[Mr. Strange]

Which is why I like the Trading Battle Idea. Once 2 monsters meet in that game, it enters a fighting mode. But in that game it's more along the lines of Pokemon, with turn based attacks. But if everyone would prefer realtime fighting, that could be possible to.

I just think that this "different franchise packs" idea fits more with a card game style video-game.

I seriously considered a Trading Battle Style for the game, but votes were heavy in the "just like the Pipeworks games, but better!" direction. Based upon that initial feedback I negotiated a contract with Pipeworks to license their technology, so the 3D-online-combat technology is in place. That pretty much means our course is set for the moment. I wouldn't be adverse to making a like-branded Kaiju Trading Battle game on mobile phones at some point in the future.

@Supergeon: I don't like the one-time roar in general. It works for some monsters, maybe. But in general forcing someone to "get off me" isn't really a problem in my Kaiju games. Traditional fighters are all about preventing your opponent from taking actions, and I've always hated that. If people don't have ways to prevent you from playing, those "get off me" situations don't really come up.

I had a lot more to say on the cinematic-direction, but my PC ate my post. We'll get to all those things later on, I promise. I do like the idea of eliminating or reducing the importance of health bars - making the fights more of a "how many times can you get back up" affair, instead of "first monster to inflict 500 damage wins"

Is there any chance at all that this entire thing is a scam by someone pretending to be Simon Strange or Kaijusamurai, and that they are planning to take our money? Call me paranoid, but I think it is important to ask this question before we start donating anything. Mr. Strange, my accusation may be wrong, and for that I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I'm donating to the right person first.

I don't mind some health skepticism. Honestly, if you think you can find someone who can impersonate me well enough to have all of these conversations, we should probably hire them!

There isn't an iron-clad way you can convince yourself that this isn't a scam - even if everyone is who we say we are, we could try to just abscond with the money! But I founded my own studio about a year back - Sunstone Games, LLC. And this project would be part of that studio's body of work. The Kickstarter campaign will be tied to that corporate entity (I've already set that up, and verified contact information, bank account info, etc) so if something nefarious does happen, there will be a legal paper trail to a corporation you can follow.

[MechaJahgeezilla]

Monster Unlock System:

I say do it like Forza, get to a certain level, then you get a choice of one monster you can unlock from that level and can purchase the rest of the cars from that level and below, but eventually if you progress enough above a certain level (Say you didn't buy any other monsters, but made it to Level 11) then you would get all the monsters from Level 1

Card Game:

What we could do is that if you get a monster to battle with, then you get that card and can load it to an online computer game that is linked to an account for your game. And, these online computer card game stats are tracked and if you do special tasks, you can unlock a high level monster of your choice.

Title:
Kaiju Onslaught

Menu Screen:
Maybe have footage of Godzilla & any other packs you have installed monsters fighting with just a simple text for each selection spot

[Supergeon]

I can see your point, and that makes me recall what you said in the podcasts (years ago) That you designed G:U's fighting system to allow actions to occur even though you were being attacked (example being the two kids playtesting)

Elaborating on the elimination of health bars, certain attacks or events would have to result in the match ending in this instance? A building collapsing on top of a monster, full-power weapon attack while in a vulnerable state.

Sorry to drag the conversation out, but I feel since there aren't any non disclosure agreements I would seize the opportunity to pick your brain because I have always wanted to!

[Mr. Strange]

I can see your point, and that makes me recall what you said in the podcasts (years ago) That you designed G:U's fighting system to allow actions to occur even though you were being attacked (example being the two kids playtesting)

Elaborating on the elimination of health bars, certain attacks or events would have to result in the match ending in this instance? A building collapsing on top of a monster, full-power weapon attack while in a vulnerable state.

Sorry to drag the conversation out, but I feel since there aren't any non disclosure agreements I would seize the opportunity to pick your brain because I have always wanted to!

Eliminating the health bars would be extreme - but I might very seriously consider going to a big number - like Smash Bros does. That leaves plenty of space for 4 HUDs on the screen, which is nice. Putting player 3 and 4 HUDs at the bottem (like STE and G:DAMM) really caused some problems trying to do things like dialog, or in-game events. Eliminating the energy bar would be simpler - just quantize it and let monsters gain/lose discrete quanta of energy. It was always a problem that if, for example, Godzilla's Fireball took 600 energy (out of 1000) a continous bar doesn't really look different with 590 or 610 energy.

Similarly, a health bar with 500 HP means that hitting for 8 damage looks pretty much the same as hitting for 5. Using numbers to show damage eliminates all that ambiguity.

Here's a way to use numbers, but put some back-and-forth into the game. As you lose health, you get closer and closer to a "Rage-like" mode. If you land a blow, the rage meter flips between you and your opponent, but does extra damage. This means if player A hits player B 5-6 times in a row, then when B finally hits back - it will be an extra heavy hit, and B has an opportunity to land extra-heavy hits for a few seconds. That encourages B to go on the offensive when losing.

Here's an idea about "cinematic roars." We've floated the idea that, instead of recharging slowly all the time, energy comes back when you roar. This would give fast monsters a reason to move out of melee range if we cut powerups - because getting far enough away to roar safely would be good strategy.
But then we could include a counter roar - if two monsters roar at just the same time, they go berzerk and charge one another. This means a slow monster (like Biollante) could force fast monsters back into melee range and/or stop them from regaining energy.

[Supergeon]

Both of those ideas are awesome, I especially like the use of roars as a strategic element in order to eliminate health and energy pickups and force a ranged weapon abuser into melee range. I would definitely be an advocate for both of these gameplay elements.

[godzilla898]

I'm not a fan of purely roaring to regain your energy. Unless their is some way to stop someone from spamming roars at any time, I feel that it could easily be abused and matches would quickly turn in to roar spam fests. The counter roar could work if done right.

[Mr. Strange]

I'm not a fan of purely roaring to regain your energy. Unless their is some way to stop someone from spamming roars at any time, I feel that it could easily be abused and matches would quickly turn in to roar spam fests. The counter roar could work if done right.

Well, the roar has to complete (3-4 seconds) before you get your energy back, so if your opponent can hit you in that time you lose out. Specifically, opponents can always burn one of their own energy cells to interrupt your attempt to get energy back.

The best times to roar are right after you knock down an opponent (which means you are roaring instead of doing a follow-up hit) or when you are far away from your opponent (which means they have no energy of their own, or you have put a building in-between.)

The counter-roar would also be a cool mechanic. So as of right now, there are more counters than ways to do the thing successfully. Clearly more design is needed!

[matrix]

A bit random, but how much money would you have to raise for it to be on consoles? I would still get it for PC, but I much rather prefer consoles.

[Hellspawn28]

Well, Grand King Ghidorah isn't too much of a stretch, since the character of King Ghidorah originally debuted in the Godzilla series. I don't recall Toho ever saying anything about not allowing certain Toho monsters in Godzilla products.

From what I remember that Toho didn't allow Rainbow Mothra for Save the Earth since Toho views the ROM movies as it's own series. Not to mention that Rodan, Varan, Baragon, Mothra, and Gorosaurus all appear in Godzilla films while none of the ROM villains have not.

[Mr. Strange]

A bit random, but how much money would you have to raise for it to be on consoles? I would still get it for PC, but I much rather prefer consoles.

Rough estimate - $300,000 to get the thing done, and another $300,000 to make a console release. I would strongly suggest, however, that we hold off on the console release initially. If we get this thing rolling, and high-quality on the PC side, then we open the door for a publisher to step in and foot the bill for console publishing costs in exchange for a share of sales.

Also, remember that the PC game will require gamepads (Xbox 360 gamepads are great, but PS3 gamepads are also USB, so either can just be plugged into your PC) so the PC experience will probably be pretty much exactly the same as the console experience.

The larger issue, as we've said a few times in this thread, is that while PC games can be patched and expanded as frequently as we like, console patches are VERY EXPENSIVE. So the longer (and larger) we get things before we make the move to console, the better in my opinion.

[MechaJahgeezilla]

So if I donate 50 dollars, everything released for this is free to me?

[Mr. Strange]

So if I donate 50 dollars, everything released for this is free to me?

Exactly. Every game, every expansion made on this framework is yours to download free of charge.

[MechaJahgeezilla]

So if I donate 50 dollars, everything released for this is free to me?

Exactly. Every game, every expansion made on this framework is yours to download free of charge.

OK, so even if the game goes to consoles, I can get a console version and all the expansion backs on a console of my choice?