What’s the game about, you ask? Well, as FrightShow Fighter’s Kickstarter page explains:
Today we caught up with one of the members of 3 Fright, programmer Doug Kavendek, to ask him a few questions about the game and how the development process is going.
Zanne Nilsson: So you and 3D specialist/animator Jeff Brown have worked together for years, but how did you two first team up with Gus Fink, the game’s creator and artist?
ZN: What interested you most about this project?
But I was working with Jeff for a while and he floated the idea to me, and I originally turned it down because I was in the middle of working on a 2D engine and this game was firmly rooted in 3D. I don’t know if it was Jeff’s persistence or me getting better at programming, but I eventually realized I could adapt my engine to do the dance they’d need for this game and started officially helping out. It was good to have a dedicated purpose where other people were relying on me, because left to my own timelines I could see myself polishing a perfect 2D platformer engine and never actually finishing a game with it.
Plus, the idea seemed simple enough. A fighting game with only two dimensions of movement, how hard could it be? Just get some models animating and get some punches going and you’re done! There literally couldn’t be anything tough about that! And then I’ve been working on it in my spare time for at least a couple years now, dang.
ZN: On the game’s Kickstarter page you talk about “a revolutionary input system to control movement and special moves on iPhone & iPad touch screens” in the iOS version that will help differentiate it from other fighting games. Can you tell us more about that?
ZN: What’s been your favorite thing about working on FrightShow Fighter?
So we’ve been brainstorming ways to have fighting controls that try to work with touchscreens rather than try to duplicate a gamepad. What we’ve got so far is a “pose” indicator you use for orienting your character, you can plant your thumb on the middle of it, and you can know which direction you’ve moved your finger based on the character’s own body language. To the right and up and the character stands tall ready to throw harder punches but is more vulnerable, to the left and down and you crouch into a faster, more defensive posture. So you should be able to get a sense of where your finger is without having to take your eyes off your character.
Then the idea is that you react to how your opponent is behaving, to switch between poses to try to counter them or risk a more vulnerable pose to get a stronger punch off. Meanwhile you use your other hand to choose attacks, through different kinds of gestures (and fallback punch/kick buttons if you don’t like swiping). I anticipate that the touch-screen version will remain slightly less fast-paced than using a gamepad for the Steam version, but possibly more strategic. I can’t really say much more about it right now though, since I’ve been focusing on the gamepad controls lately ever since we got Greenlit on Steam, so things might still change a lot.
ZN: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced while working on this game?
Another aspect of creative control is the engine itself; it’s something I’ve been working on for years, re-re-recreating and starting over on parts of it as I’ve learned better ways to architect things. It’s my little baby and I can make that little baby do a lot of interesting gymnastics. And when it’s done, we don’t have to worry about engine royalties or some of the other schemes out there. Not that those are actually bad, I think it’s amazing how many options people have nowadays for making things, and they don’t cost $400,000 anymore.
But I think the simplest answer to this is that my favorite thing is playing the dumb thing! Jumping all over the place and shooting lasers out and blowing up robots.
ZN: It sounds like you all have been hard at work putting everything together. Do you know yet when the game will be ready for release?
But let’s just say the engine’s a sunk cost, you can’t turn this paddleboat around, full speed ahead. The second biggest challenge is not doing this full time. Without a single big block of time every day, it was hard to always put time in, and any time a bunch of days would go by without working on it, your whole context stack would get flushed out of memory. You forget which features you even had finished or not. And then I actually moved to another state and got a new job a couple months ago, that really screwed up a lot of timing! Developing things like this can sometimes just feel really fragile, and it’s easy to get disrupted.
Luckily, and because nothing in this world makes any sense, while I have a lot less free time in my new location, I’ve actually been making way more progress because I’ve been forced to work on the train every day. Even if it’s just adjusting UI or fixing a weird bug, it keeps everything fresh and I’m constantly mulling over problems and planning next steps. I definitely recommend being trapped in a metal box for a couple hours a day without internet if you want to become more productive.
ZN: Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about FrightShow Fighter?
For more info and updates on FrightShow Fighter, you can check out the game’s Twitter and Instagram.
The core game modes will be a single-player story mode, local multiplayer, and we’re hoping to have the time for networked multiplayer in some form. There will also be a mechanism for leveling your character with some basic stat building and experience.
If you want to get the demo and get news of the actual release, find us on Facebook or sign up for our mailing list at frightshowfighter.com. You can also go on there and yell at us about how long this dang demo is taking!
Disclosure: Doug Kavendek is a friend of the author.
