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I understand your opinion, but I plan something different; the reason why I have different kicks, like in Jax's case is because that's going to be used for my mode, in which Jax will play sort of like in MK2 (with MK2 Earthquake, Gotcha, Air Throw and so on) by default, and sort of like in MK3 in Enhanced Abilities Mode, that's why you see Jax is using something close to the MK2 stand animation while doing the MK2 kick. All those moves are already edited.
MK2 Earthquake:
MK2 Energy Wave:
Cage will be a fusion of all of Cage versions, with an special tribute to MK1, MK2 and MKT incarnations, I'm remaking almost all of MKT and MK1 animations for Cage because I want him to move and play exactly like MKT Cage by default, and MK2 Cage in EAM. He will have a Karate Stance with a lot of karate moves, kicks and stuffs which will be available in both modes, but in Enhanced Abilities Mode he will have more options. That karate stance is MK1 stand and will feature animations like MK1 uppercut, block, air punch, throw and stuffs like that.
The goal is to make those sprites compatible, you know... MK1 sprites and MKT sprites have a very different resolution, MK1 sprites also have a lot of shine, while MKT sprites almost have no sweat, not to mention both of them have an extremely low quality.
MK1 and MK2 sprites have a bigger head than MK3/UMK3 sprites, so I'm resizing Cage's head in all the sprites to match better the rest of UMK3 characters, so... if you want to play UMK3 Mode, you'll be able to play with MK2 Cage, with the enhanced outfist, but moving almost exactly like MKT Cage, and I mean crouch, roundhouse and everything.
MKT Low Kick:
Once we have UMK3 engine working perfectly, and if everything goes well we might be able to venturing in the emulation of MK1 or MK2 gameplay, using the same sprites just the way we're doing (thanks to Bleed's awesome programming) we could emulate a different gameplay, not just run and combos disabled, but different gravity, damage, commands and everything.
The reasons I don't want to have MK1, MK2 and MK3 versions for all characters are:
- It would be a heavier game.
- It would bring MK1 and MK2 Clone ninjas, which is something we're trying to fight by editing for example a different outfist for Scorpion.
- It would be something cheap like what we saw in MKT... with a lot of extra work (fatalities, run, combo moves and so on).
- It would cause a visual negative impact because we're trying to have an optimum visul quality, so having MK1 characters goes against that, and MK2 characters have bigger heads; they would have a huge contrast with UMK3 characters.
Working this way gives me the chance to do a lot more progress in terms of new possibilities for the characters, otherwise I would be stuck with old versions like forever doing basic moves and the game would merely be a crappy copy of MKT over 15 years later; so... we're only having one version of each character, but a good one, with pretty much all the moves they have had in all of the MK games; here are some examples:
MKA Spear Throw:
Air Counter:
Basic Being Hit 1:
Basic Being Hit 2:
Basic Block Transition:
Spear Stance Block Transition:
Notice that UMK3 mode won't have Counter, Spear stance or new crazy moves; the idea is to have a very close UMK3 engine emulation with UMK3 / MKT moves only, new elements in the gameplay will be in Mode 2 and Mode 3 mostly, but as you can see all modes earn something, for instance Scorpion now has original animations to get hit, in UMK3 all ninjas had the same animation, also there is a transition from high block to low block, and once we are done with Scorpion, he will have his own look too.
This way, if we emulate MK1 for example, Scorpion will have the new outfist, same sprites for all modes, but when he does his teleport punch (not possible while in the air), he will have MK1 effect, and MK1 gravity and all.
Finally, I want to mention there are differences between our project and almost every other mugen project:
- The programming is a lot better, and we are listening to the hardcore players to make it very competitive.
- We are not aiming for quantity, we want quality (check this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbVAz19jmyo&feature=related a good example of what we don't want).
- We have different gameplay modes.
- We actually do new moves that look like they were captured from actors, something almost unexistent in most mugen projects.