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Streets of Rage clone for the Jag?


marcio_napoli

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Hi,

 

This thread is mostly for Sporadic to chime in, but any other developer, feel free to join.

 

I'll start by saying I have little credentials in the gaming world, so you're free to take my thread with a grain of salt.

 

I'm no programmer, but I've been creating visual content (in the form of photography, filmmaking, 2d and 3d visual effects, post production, art direction, 3d modeling, 2d artwork, etc) for more than 20 years now, both at commercial level or for myself.  These are mentioned as the closest thing I have as credentials.

 

I came accross this video, showing Sporadic was working on a beat 'em up Jag game. (the project is no more, I guess)

 

 

 

If there's one game I'd dream to see on the Jag, it would be a Streets of Rage close.

 

Sporadic, you already have a beat 'em up engine running on real hardware, it seems.

 

 

If I volunteered to produce the art work for sprites and background levels, would you consider finishing this game?

 

Before anyone gets curious, I was planning this for a while now, to create the art work for such game and suggest it here.  Since I came accross Sporadic's work, I got twice as motivated.

 

If it matters, I was planning on creating character sprites from digitized actors (aiming for minimal chesse, minimal corny, honestly trying to be a worthy, serious effort), and background art work would be made from a mix of techniques: photography and pre-rendered realistic 3d environments (subway, bar, metal bridge, bus, etc).

 

The goal:

 

A gritty, realistic looking (not cartoonish in any way) take on a Streets of Rage clone, with serious effort being made to have a nice, realistic tone. No cheese whatsoever, at least not like many games with digitized actors from the 90s.

 

I have nothing yet produced at this point, so take my proposition with a grain of salt, but reason I have nothing yet is because I believe a developer must chime in saying there's more than 1% of chance of that happening (coding the engine) before any effort is invested in creating such art.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts guys.

 

Best regards,

Marcio

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Hi!

 

All I can say is I definitely still want to make a decent beat em up, always have done. 

 

But I must commit to finishing Nitrous and Crumbs first, before taking on anything else.

My time is already limited so I dont want to spread myself too thin with too many projects.

 

I was thinking something like Streets or Rage/Double dragon/final fight when I started this. 

 

The engine I created in the video is quite old now and I'd want to rewrite it, applying all the knowledge I've learnt since it's creation. This should yield better results in the long run.

 

I can't picture how it would look with digitised sprites as you suggested but feel free to post an example here or in PM.

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This is one genre that is sorely missing from the Jaguar and, in fact, missing from the gaming world as a whole these days.

 

I was / am a big fan of Final Fight, Burning Fight, Sengoku, Mutation Nation, Shadow Warriors (Ninja Gaiden) in the arcades.  I'm sure they'd be a demand for such a game on the Jag.

 

I'd love to see this taken further.

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Hi Sporadic,

 

Thanks a ton for chimming in!

 

All I can say is AWESOME!!!

 

So great to hear you still have plans for it, and for the short demo we see on that video, it looks an extremely solid engine already, even if you plan to refine it further.

 

 

IMO, a beat 'em up game is always great fun, and the Jag needs as many of those as possible.

 

I completely understand your take on it, time is always too short when we already have tons of project going on.

 

 

I'm also very limited on spare time, to a point I'll be honest with you guys, it would take quite some time to provide a decent amount of art work.

 

But I'd love soooo much to see a Streets of Rage clone on the Jag, that I wouldn't mind going into the long hours of the night to help it happen.

 

Either way, this is expected to be a long, long project for anyone involved, due to everyone's limited time, but with joint efforts, it surely can happen at some point :D

 

 

I'll suggest an idea:

 

If I provide you guys a short demonstration of background art, that could be used for some level, would that help creating interest?  

 

 

As for characters, I believe I can provide digitized actors shots (again, as little cheese as possible :D ), because working as a fashion photographer, I have some network that could be used. We could have believably looking characters, assembled from a casting of models.

 

It would be easy to make them look like the typical Blaze, Axel, Cody, Guy, etc -esque stereotypes.

 

That part is not a concern, I have already a bunch of models (some of them muscular, bad@ss looking) that would love to be part of this.

 

What concerns me a bit more is time, level design, etc.

 

But creating the levels in a 2.5 D fashion in Cinema 4d, it's easy to reassemble 2d and 3d assets in a horizontal level progression until we have something that appears to be fun.

 

 

Not sure if this is the best method, but I was thinking this way:

 

Once the level is arranged inside the 3d software in a 2.5 D manner, pre-rendered images could be exported, to later serve as sprites, BG tiles, etc (Donkey Kong style), inside the actual game's engine.

 

 

What you guys think

 

May I offer a little art work test:D

 

 

Sorry for my bad English, out of coffee and got some nice cold tonight... ughh :(    :D 

 

 

EDIT:

 

If you guys are interested, I'd love to try a bit of level BG art first, because that's easy to do in the free time.

 

I just need to grab some textures, and model some quick stuff in the Cinema 4d.

 

 

That would be easiest for a first step, just so we can chat if this is indeed a possible project. 

 

To have some actors digitized is not too hard either, but since it requires a shooting day to be scheduled, costume, fighting moves must be planned, etc, that would be better left for a later stage, in case we're really sure we wanna do this. :D  

Edited by marcio_napoli
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I'd be interested to see an example background.

 

I'm not convinced the digitised actors will look good in a game. Quite often, digitised characters just don't look very good in older games. But examples here might help too.

 

Digitised characters would be useful for someone to rotoscope (draw over) to help animate at the very least though.

 

I personally don't want you to put lots of time into this right now for my benefit. Purely because I can't say when or how long until I will spend time on this. If you are doing it for fun anyway then that's up to you of course :)

 

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Hi everyone,

 

As soon as I have some free time, I'll try my best to prepare an example of BG art.

 

One detail I didn't mention before is that I am from Brazil, and particularly here in Sao Paulo there're places that are straight out of a Streets of Rage game, visually speaking (to be honest once we ground that to reality, it's not really a compliment unfortunately, it's actually very sad).

 

Lots of walls with grafitti (is that how it's spelled?), quite poor industrial neighborhoods, etc.

 

It's easy to grab lots of assets, textures, matte paintings, references, etc.

 

Most probably I'll prepare an example using those assets.

 

Regarding digitized actors, I'd love to be able to offer alternatives, like hand drawn sprites, or pre-rendered sprites from 3d characters, but unfortunately modeling 3d characters is really far from my forte :D :( haha  (neither hand drawn stuff).

 

After doing one BG example, I can shoot a model or actor and see what we get.

 

If you guys like it, then it's a real option that can be considered.

 

If it looks way too corny or it doesn't fit your vision of the game, then hand drawn characters will have to be made by someone else :D :D

 

Sporadic, don't worry about time, really no hurry :D

 

I'm too busy as well, and quite a bit worried to get too excited because free time is really, really lacking.  Not really sure how long it would take for me as well, to deliver workable material.

 

But as excited as I am (and I know a Jag Streets of Rage game would make a lot of people super excited), I will do my best to at least prepare this first example in a decent time frame.

 

It's just an example so we can see possibilities. :D

 

I'm aware even if this takes off, it will take 1 year+ to see some results. :)

 

Anyway, it's all very fun to have hope for such a game.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi,

 

Sorry everyone for the lack of updates... by now, I have a mile long list of ideas for background art that I can realistically create in Cinema 4d. By "realistically" I mean something that I can actually do in my spare time, and within the constraints of a hobby project, so it's something actually grounded in reality and not some far away dream.

 

And considering how it would be done (as pre-rendered 3d graphics - with photo-realistic 3d being the goal), it can have quality enough to look like something that would have been done back in the day, in an actual commercial release.

 

I know my credentials are lacking regarding game developing or anything like that, but so you guys can see, this is a short film I've done all by myself, with about 1.5k USD in my free time.

 

It's reaching half a million views by now, quite a feat considering this is not an English spoken short film.  If it was English spoken, it would have broken the 1 million views barrier ages ago.

 

 

 

Doing crazy stuff in my free time is something I've been doing for a long time. Love that sort of challenge.

 

The only problem is that right now I'm overloaded with stuff to do, can't find a single free weekend to start modeling a 3d BG (even though there're a lot of easy options - like a parking lot, for example - that would be quick to do and fit quite nicely in a SOR styled game).

 

Lack of time is always the main problem.  Ugh.

 

Really could use a free month :D

 

I hope I can show you guys something as soon as I find some free time.

 

Also hope this would catch Sporadic's interest to continue the project, and then artists would join to offer character art.

 

To see such a game running on the Jag from an actual cart, would be quite a dream, dare I say.

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  • 1 month later...

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