Downloadable Content

There's downloadable content down at the Rumblah! forums

Here's some of the things you'll be able to find:

Characters

• Betaman: The default character. With its editable files too so you can start experimenting and create your own characters.
  
  
• Ryu: Although a Work in Progress (W.I.P.) it is available for those interested. Besides, it's the first SpriteSheet based character so people can understand how these type of character works and start making their own.
  
  
• Scorpion: Work in progress by Quake, who already tried some things on the earlier Beta, this time it's a skin for Betaman.
  
  
• ShortFuse Characters: Users can also share their creations done with the ShortFuse tool. We have characters like Obama, Zeke (Zombies Ate My Neighbours), Chuck Norris and the members of the band Tenacious D!

Backgrounds

• A lot of the backgrounds that have been displayed on the Beta images are available. Dand, Factory, ToyShop and the editable version of Sunset so people can learn the basics of the lightin
  

What are you waiting for? Download Rumblah! and start making your own content!
Head to the forums, register and download it now!

The candidates are on ShortFuse!

The new version of ShortFuse has gone through some serious upgrading and who's better to check the new details than the candidates for tomorrow elections! Check McCain and Obama getting the ShortFuse treatment!

Beta-tester's custom skins

Queake/Neutro registered at rumblah.com to be a Beta-tester. Once he got his Rumblah! version he started fiddling around with Betaman's skins and also with Ryu's sprite-sheet and he came up with some interesting things. Check them out!

Inspired to do some of your own? Join the Beta-testing team at rumblah.com then!

The Rumblah ShortFuse! Experience

So the entry about ShortFuse! wasn't clear enough? Well then check it out in action!

Rumblah ShortFuse!

What if I just want to release some tension fast without all the work involved in making a character? What if I have no idea how to work myself around Flash but I still want to have a quick fight? Rumblah ShortFuse! is the answer!

A sweet little add-on for the engine where you can load any image from your computer into the engine, crop the face you want to include, select a given moveset, such as Betaman's, and then pit yourself againts anybody. And I do mean ANYBODY.

If there's something we've all learned from Wii Sports's Boxing is that there's a guilty-pleasure hidden on punching out the Mii of someone you just feel like doing so. Well then, Rumblah's ShortFuse! will let McCain smack Obama down without consecuences, or Hugo Chavez againts George Bush and while we are at it: YOU against that wicked algebra teacher of yours!

Now users with Flash experience will not only have the possibility of creating complex characters or use sprite sheets for old-school characters. Now they'll also be able to make movesets that people can choose from when they just want to have a quick brawl.

Dan in Rumblah!

It's the first user-created character! One of Rumblah's beta-testers gave it a try and created Dan from Street Fighter with some humorous animations instead of attacking. Watch happymeat's(a.k.a. madminifig) creation go!

This video has been up for a while and used an early Beta which explains why it hasn't got a lot of animations.

Collision Boxes

Meet the Red and Green Collision Boxes

These boxes, which are nothing more than just rectangles, mark the contact zones of the characters. In this case, this particular frame of Betaman that's being editted in Flash represents the momment in which the character's headbutt would hit the enemy. Intuitively we can say that the red rectangle or Red Collision Box represents the action zone of the attack. On the other hand, the red rectangle or Green Collision Box represents the zone where the character is vulnerable to enemy attacks. We can conclude then that if Red Collision Box of a character A has contact with the Green Collision Box of character B then character B must change its animation to one that depicts its pain and also loose some health.

These contact zones are vital when it comes to define action zones of attacks and also to define the vulnerable zones of a character. You might notice that they are not neccesarily precise in relation to the characters perimeter, they are just aproximations of where contact should be delimited. For example, if I want to give the illusion that a character has an arm outside the plane of an attack then it should be outside of the green zone. Same thing with attacks. The idea is that collision looks real and not that character B is hit when the characters just scrape each other.

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!

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!!

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.