No one is insulting you, we are simply explaining to you, as a group of serious MK fans, that what you are presenting to everyone (not what you sent me) is really not up the alley of most 2D MK players. An improved engine is not necessarily a different engine. There's no reason to totally revamp something that can work and be fun as is, but we all welcome modifications to moves that make sense. I think it stems down to the fact that you're using the 2D graphics, and we're all use to a certain flow and style of animation.
Once you start trying to reproduce moves from the other games as is, including things like how they bounce, it creates red flags. Maybe after all the essentials are fleshed out, people would be more receptive to fancier looking attacks and moves. Like I've said, I'm a big fan of making some of the comboed hits into command normals. Example I have used, Liu Kang's last hit of the kick combo as D, F HK, but having a property similar to Nightwolf's axe where it's got different recovery and start up as an individual move than it does in the combo.
Another example, I said that I would like to recreate Kabal's move where he slams face first into the person from the 3D games. I think that's a hilarious move and might serve a purpose if Kabal was toned down in other ways.
If I programmed it, I would also make it function and operate like existing moves in 2D MKs do, coming as close as possible to the way it works in the 3D games as well. I would try my hardest not to create new properties for moves, as this is very difficult to do, even for someone who knows two entire fighting game franchise engines (MK and SF) like the back of my hand. I understand how everything works and why (aside from glitches of course) and when I see stuff that I know adds to the work load, it kind of confuses me.
We can see from over the years how things in MK have changed. For example we'll start with MK1 briefly.
In MK, when you juggled a character, sometimes push back happens on the first hit, sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on the character and the move, and where you are on the screen. Juggle falls are fairly slow with different falling rates for different moves, allowing many jump attacks near the corner. There weren't many moves, but the flail back animation was there, the Scorpion pull in off the spear, being frozen, some pretty simple stuff. RHs worked very differently in MK, as they would just make you flail back, LKs had short recovery when getting hit allowing easy counters. There were no cross up jump attacks in MK either.
MKII was similar in the sense that there was built in push back on juggle hits, fairly universal at a 4 hit limit but like in MK, you could cancel the push back with a special move, and the air bounce with air specials as well, and also different falling rates on moves, like JPs and JKs. Special moves are limited in MKII similarly to MK, since it doesn't keep track of hits or have terminal hit limits, the built in limits were mostly based on the juggle velocity, or just not being able to do a move one after another. RHs became a knock down, cross overs were added, some more basic attacks, more properties for the many more types of moves added. Examples like a pop up with Johnny Cage's kick and Kung's spin, and then the flip with Reptile's forceball and Mileena's roll, the air holding with Kitana's moves. All of these things were not limited very well if not for the rigidness of the system itself. There would be tons more infinites if the collision detection in MKII was better.
In MK3, they kept basically all the concepts that were in MK and MKII, and tweaked and tightened them. Falling rates became essentially univeral. Flail back was still there, yada yada, lots of stuff returns but just works better. RHs knock away further but still no corner push back. Reactions off other hits are changed as well, making it a bit harder to counter when being hit. Jabs still work virtually the same as they did in MK and MKII. Uppercut recovery time is increased, I think it was slightly increase from MK to MKII. Overall damage is reduced.
UMK3 added more move properties, changed a few more basic move properties, and not a whole lot else except a very minuscule property for jabs. MKT also added basically only more move properties but reverted jab properties.
So basically, by UMK3/MKT you have reactions for:
LP/HP (similar but different)
LK/HK (similar but different)
Sweep
Uppercut
RH
ducking LP/LK
ducking HK
JK
JP, SUJP, SUJK
HP/HK body blows
All the various throw properties
And then all these moves may or may not have different blocked reactions.
There are so many special move properties to choose from that creating entirely new ones, or trying to reproduce the ways they react in the 3D games seems absurd.
Some examples:
Spear (virtually the same in all 2D games)
Teleport Punch, Teleport Kick, (extremely similar in all games)
Freeze (same in all games)
Slide (basically the same in all games)
Leg Grab (somewhat unique property but cleaned up in MK3)
Standard Projectiles (many have slightly different reactions when they hit you)
Cannonball/Shadow Kick (knock down and many other moves share their properties, some far, some close)
Roll, Force Ball (flip reaction)
And there are tons of other moves that recycle properties from other moves, or have some basis. A lot of times in these mugen projects I see programmers sort of create their own reactions because either they don't understand how they work, don't care how they work, or just don't have the skill to reproduce it.
Jabs seem to be hard to program. I think it can be done and in the package you sent to me, it seems like a very good job has been done. Something I would love to see people get working properly is Run, to the exact math, and also Ermac's telekinetic slam, and even Reptile's force ball. These moves work a certain way, have certain limits, and I've yet to see that happen. Making the freeze work is child's play compared to the TKS.
Frozenworm, basically a lot of what I would like to see are the animations for special moves, coverted into combo hits, basing them on the durations and recovery of existing combos, not exceeding or going below the limits of anything that already is in UMK3 or MKT for example. So for say, Raiden, instead of him doing his upper-like close range attack, and his actual uppercut 4 times in a row, perhaps give him the close range attack, the electricity shot (no actual electricity in it) and the electrocute grab (again no electricity) then the uppercut. Something similar like this would add variety to his combo, and if timed properly, wouldn't look out of place.
One other thing I'd like to point out that programmers might not be fully aware of, is the amount of time you have to input moves, which ones can be slowly tapped, and which have to be done quickly, which you can wait to press the last hit for, and which ones you can't. All of these things affect gameplay flow and cannot be changed arbitrarily without consequences. This also gets into move limitations in general, hit limits, time limits, etc.
