Sprite Characters - Preview

Some people are not interested in making their own original characters as we've already seen with other engines such as MUGEN. Some people just want to see epic battles between characters from other fighting games or even from other genre of games!

Rumblah! will not let this people down and will allow you to include characters from other games. All I can say for now is that all you need is their sprite sheet.

Check Ryu in it's chibi version from the famous game saga

Street Fighter practicing in the TestRoom floor!

Promotional Images

The first couple of promotional images for the engine, highlighting the fact that anybody can join the brawl in Rumblah! Click on them to see them in full size.

External Image use

The character development mechanism will include the use of external images. This is files with the PNG or GIF extension (since they allow transparencies) will represent each animated part and will be stored in a directory that corresponds to the character. This permits complex designs that can be done on external programs and don't depend on directly drawing in Flash, but most importantly, it allows the characters to have a change of skin.

Let's suppose that we have Betaman, but we don't lke his greenish color, we can then create a versión of his parts with another range of colors such as those seen in this video.

This color changes help players that select the same character to differentiate themselves, something commonly seen on fighting games.

But most importantly is that one can change the entire appearance of the character!! A third skin for the character could be something totally different!! The character will have the same moveset but could have any image that fits with the dimensions of its parts, for example your own face!!

Beta Video 01

Beta Video with some basic moves of the 'Betaman' character

The character may look a bit blury but trust me, it doesn't look like that in the engine.

Betaman

Shown before as merely a sketch, I give you the first character of Rumblah!

Character Skins

Betaman is nothing more than a guinea-pig for animations and other stuff of the engine, but that doesn't mean that he's not and elaborate character. This is part of his moveset so far.

Punch (A)


Kick (Foward + A)

Headbutt (Back + A)

Uppercut (Down+A)

Aerial Clap (Mid-Air Back+A)

These are basic movements to get started. If you have a good idea for the other button combinations then comment them here. The new added moves will be displayed in this entry.

Movement Mechanics - Buttons

Rumblah! will have a button mechanics very much like the game saga Super Smash Bros., this means that all the characters will have the same button combinations to achieve their different moves, there will be no such thing as a "down, foward + punch"

When playing you have two types of attack: 'standard' or 'special'. Combining with either of the four directions of movement plus either attack you obtain the different attacks, grabs or moves of the character.

The next diagram shows how the system works
Naming the standard attack button asA and the special attack button as B, character movement can be now described as, for example:

• A: Punch
  
• Adelante + A: Headbutt
• Atras + A: Kick
  
• etc
  

• B: Fireball
  
• Arriba+B: Grab
  
• Abajo+B: Firepunch
  
• etc

This makes that every character created for the engine will have the same ammount of movements and none will have more moves than others, besides it allows that anybody can perform the moves of a character without the need of complex button combinations, making the game mechanics much easier for newbies.

Character Design Style

In the beginning, the style in which the characters will be designed for the engine will be very much like a cross between Worms and Rayman this style is easier to handle when it comes to animate and it's not necessary to get into complex designs that will bore their creators half way through.

If you are interested in thinking in posible original character designs then here's the skeleton of how they would look like.

Don't think this a limited design. You can achieve some great original characters with this style and also some tribute to other character from the fighting genre.


This doesn't mean that you won't be able to make characters designs with their limbs attached for their eventual use in the engine, you can even make characters a lot more elaborated if you put your mind into it and also rip the sprites from other fighting games to adapt them to the engine. However, this style is something easy for everyone and it is what Rumblah! is all about.

¿What is Rumblah?

Welcome to the Rumblah! scrapbook

Rumblah! aspires to be a fighting game engine made in Adobe Flash that allows the creation of characters by anyone who handles animation in this platform as well as backgrounds and hopefuly interfaces among other things. It will also have the possibility of adding original content to the game in a simple manner and without any knowledge of programming involved. In other words, a skeleton of a fighting game that can be customized to ones taste with the available content online, a MUGEN made in Flash but with a more original content aproach.

This blog will present the ups and downs of the creation of this engine and under the name of scrapbook since I literally bought myself a little bloc where I am writting everything that pops into my mind that can work for the engine and will eventually show here.

Since the proyect can be considered as still in 'pre-production' I will not ask for anyones help on the programming or designing area. However, don't hesistate to send me your suggestions or ideas that you would like to share with me to this mail: rumblah.mail@gmail.com which will also be available on the footer for future reference