[Fighting Game] Kinetic Damage

haha

That's a very good question
Well, I may be flamed by hardcore SF3/4 gamers, but ... I intentionally created a mechanic that prevents vortex. If you strike right on wake up, you're invincible during that time.

Even if my 2nd char on SF4 was Ibuki, with some overly vortex times, I don't want players to be trapped into a mechanic, basically. With Kinetic Damage, I wanted every strike to count, at every second, just like in a real fight.
I really wanted to create a constant, tense alchemy between reading your opponent and timing your next attack.
If I allowed vortex, that would mean creating counter-vortexes, like invincible startups on specials, which itself would mean creating counter-counter-vortexes, etc .....

Ninjutsu's blazing speed will still be good, for poking, confusing, avoiding, executing a pattern and running away, etc ... which are precisely what real life Ninjutsu is based around
I wanted one of the main Ninjutsu metagames to feel like dropping a bomb onto your opponent, and running into a secured zone. Dropping that bomb would feel very risky, but oh man how destructive it would be once it explodes. (hence the high critical rate, and the "Assassinate" special).

I designed every specials around each Martial Art philosophy, so you got tools to express their proper strategies.
For example in Ninjutsu case, confusion is helped with the "Cloak" special, which you can see at 2:32 in the trailer. It costs you a full energy bar, and makes you invisible for 6 seconds, so you can hit your opponent like a shadow.
The downside is that every new move you make uncovers you for 0.2 sec. So you have to think before any decision, chosing between uncovering you while striking, or hiding cautiously, at the risk of being hit by random opponent strikes.

Another metagame for Ninjutsu is combos. They put out incredibly well, are quite easy to remember, and are extensive (up to 5 hits, which is a lot in term of damage). For example, you can poke, dash back, poke, dash back, and then chain a 5 hit combo on hit confirm. The dashing superior speed of Ninjutsu will confuse your opponent for sure.

 

It went through many design iterations actually, but as you fairly mentionned, it had not to be too strong either.
The actual mechanic is : once you wake up, your character flashes for 0.3sec. If you launch any strike during those 0.3sec, you're invincible during 0.2sec.

But if you don't strike you're not, so it means several things :
- you have to time your strike well if you want to benefit the invic
- 0.2sec is flat, giving to quick-but-fragile Arts a way not to be pressured like hell, all while giving slower-but-hard-as-a-rock ones just enough time to launch a proper counter.
- slower, more powerful strikes are therefore still open to counter, during inertia time

So you can still pressure your opponent on wakeup Actually you can even pressure him more, by baiting for a wakeup strike, guarding it, and then counterstriking during inertia time. Quick arts like Ninjutsu, Jeet Kun Do, Shao Kung Fu would be great at poking, confusing, and then baiting for such wakeup strikes.

You totally nailed it
I took care of such reward indeed. I really wanted every single move to have some meaning, sweeps included

So like every other strike design, I wanted to think "in real life, what advantage such a strike does ?", here read : "Why would I want to sweep an opponent in a real life competition match ?"

Answer was quite obvious :
to let me recover, prepare another attack, or build a strategy.

Traduced in Kinetic Damage gamedesign :
Whenever a fighter is hit, he doesn't recover energy. When he's down, he only recovers at 50% speed.

That means sweeping is highly recommended if you want to fill your energy bar for a bigger special, all while putting your opponent in a big disadvantage by having less energy than you (for specials, grabs, combos, dash, etc).

Concrete case :
Let's say you have Ninjutsu, not a lot of health left, opponent is Taekwondo.
You're trying to bait for a mistake since a few seconds, by blocking, but each block costs you more and more health. You want to stop the pressure madness right now.

1) you have 20% energy, opponent have 100%. He's still pressuring you like crazy.
2) Taekwondo unloads Machine Gun (5 quick hits, each costing 20 energy) -> he's now at 0% NRG.
3) you blocked them all, but because you were blocking, you energy is still at 20%. -> during the Machine Gun last strike inertia, you sweep him. you securize a fair distance while he's down. He's about to wake up, and your energy is now 100%. His at 0%.

then you now have all these choices :

4a) charge the Assassinate special long enough so you make it guard break (costs around 100 nrg if you want guard break). In order to be able to time the release 0.3 sec after his wake up, without exposing to a wakeup counterhit, you created a 4-5m distance. Then you release the charge, timing it so you collide just before he can jump, and just after the 0.3s wakeup window, sparking like a bolt in his direction..... Guard break, he's juggled, and you have 1.5 seconds to unload a maximum of 15 hit combo, up to 500 damage (if not critical). Situation has now been reverted. His only escape would have been to jump in time, but you would have collided him anyway. For a minor damage, but still.

4b) Now that you have far more energy than him, you are secure to launch a grab fight. In Kinetic Damage, before grabbing, you have to battle in a balance close quarter fight. A gauge appears, each time you press the grab button again during the fight, your gauge grows. Each time opponent press his, it shrinks. Each press costs 1 NRG, and launching a grab by itself costs 50 NRG.
Now let's get back to our situation : enemy's down, 0% NRG, you're stand up, waiting for him to wake up, 100% NRG. --> you're 100% sure that your next grab fight will be successful, without even having to spend NRG in the grab fight.

4c) play oldschool, normal strike pressure on wakeup. Because opponent has no energy, he won't be able to intercept your strike with a dash forward, only able to guard. Because you're pressuring, his energy will replenish at a slower rate (during your strikes inertias), giving you enough time to think about the next round of strategies.

Once again you nailed it
I tried to hit the right spot between "easy to load out", and "tricky to dose right".

But the 2 basic design rules were :
1- the more energy you spend, the more powerful it is.
2- every special has to be unique, useful (aka not just a glorified normal strike), and has to not interfere with others




edit : OMG dat wall of text ! LOL sorry guys. I'll try to keep it shorter next times.

 

Following that long technical post above, I'd like to add :

This is the kind of game mechanic layers you unlock once you want to master the game. But if you want to keep it simple, you can still not care about them. You will of course lose some neat advantages, especially deeper mindgames, but that won't prevent you from being able to win a fight.

Basically, the overall design rule was the good old "Easy to handle, tricky to master".

 

Next wednesday, 5th June

 

It is avoidable, if you jump over it And if you're hit during jump, you only take a small amount of damage (the bump), as you won't be juggled to full Assassinate sequence.

It is only guard breaking if you charge for more than 1 second, which is very long, and sucks all your energy. Put it simply, if you want to avoid being "vortexed" by Ninjutsu's assassinate on wakeup, you can simply jump. Which would put Ninjutsu at a disadvantage anyway, even if you're hit during jump, because it would have sucked all his energy bar.

You can also counter the guard break by striking on wakeup. As you got a 0.3 sec window to wakeup strike invic, this would be very, very difficult for Ninjutsu to calculate the precise time where he has to launch Assassinate so the invic wakeup strike is bypassed. The only way would be great anticipation, which should be rewarded anyway.

Basically, the wakeup invic strike mechanic gives you 0.3s to jump over the Assassinate rush, making it safe for me to say that you can't be vortexed by Assassinate
(Assassinate's rush is linear, straight forward, and still open to jump strikes)

 

I like this conversation actually Talking mechanics have always fascinated me.

You can jump over forward, or in place, so Assassinate won't touch you. Plus, the rush is aiming at your last known position before launching, so you can perfectly jump backwards The guard breaking part is the shoulder hit, then even if there's no hit, it's followed by a backhand strike, but you can guard it.
Also, another safer way to intercept a guard breaking Assassinate is simply jump -> light kick/punch on wakeup, so Assassinate hitbox won't have the time to collide with yours.

D'oh, I'm saying too much now

Remember he will have invic only if he launch a strike, so securizing an escape with a random strike would completely open him to a counter during the strike inertia time. With half your energy ratio, it's not safe at all to strike erratically just to trigger an invic.

To be more general, it's not safe to strike erratically at all in KD I intentionally didn't include very quick strikes, even light strikes do have a significant startup / inertia time. So it's not possible to create a hitbox wall in front of one's char by mashing light punches.
In KD light strikes do have a faster startup time, but you can still counterstrike them during inertia on block.

Jumping doesn't end the 0.3sec invic trigger window
Plus, you can air guard in KD, so if you avoid the shoulder hit, you're safe against the backhand strike
That's where the mindgame is created : a panicking player will obviously jump back with a jump strike to trigger invic, so you only have to wait for 0.5 sec after his wakeup to release the Assassinate charge.
A good player will simply look at your energy bar, and time his wakeup stand strike with the moment where your energy will come to zero (Assassinate charge consumes energy over time, and is automatically released when energy comes to zero).

And the panic will then go on the assassin, because the longer you charge, the longer distance you rush
So if the Ninjutsu player feels his opponent is deadly calm, he will be tempted to abort his Assassinate charge midway Which could place him in a spot where the opponent would want to dash to close range
And then Ninjutsu could wait for that dash before doing anything so he could counterstrike the dash, and ....... etc, etc, etc

Mindgames, mindgames everywhere !