Perhaps the idea most people desire when I talk about developing a game, and perfectly undertsandable. It is the COMBAT Academy, after all. We want to fight our friend's characters with our own and beat them to a bloody pulp for shits and giggles. Unfortunately, considering short-term developing this is really the most unlikely scenario out of all the things I'm doing. Still, let's move on to the pros and cons of this:

Round 1: Pros

This is a fighting school. If there is going to be a game, the first and best candidate is a fighting game.

That is logical. Now, why else would it work?

Because we have fifty-up minds in this collective project we call the PCA, each one has four or more characters actively involved, and save one exception or another they're ALL fighters. That gives us a lot of characters to work with. Assuming we can only pick one character each the chances are we are going to have a crapload of interesting characters with their own background information as well as a different fighting style. Even members of a same species can have entirely different battle strategies and tactics, and that is the wet dream of any fighting enthusiast.

I'll take Team Entity as an example. Shade Lancer is an Umbreon. Unfortunately for him he hasn't trained his entire life for fighting, and as such he lacks impact in his attacks. He attempts to fix that by using an unusual fighting style - Capoeira - and by using disorienting moves on his opponent to defeat him by fatigue instead (and the occasional Toxic, of course). Another case: Ember Hawkeye. Blaziken. She grew up watching the feats of Isaac Flintlock, Hitmonlee, and as such wants to become a taek-won-do fighter that is up to par with him. All of her attacks utilize kicking manouvres, even attacks such as Sky Uppercut (imagine a somersault in the style of Law from Tekken) and Thunderpunch. Because of her training her attacks are lightning-fast and have great reach, but both things come at the price of lack of attack power. Her goal is to attack opponents with a flurry of kicks to cause then to panic and lose the edge of the fight. One last example: Heist Irving. Lucario. He lacks attack power, speed and toughness. His way or working around his deficiencies is to learn Special Attacks and use them in combination of his kung-fu Choy-li-fut style. He lacks everything a fighter should have but makes it all up with his defensive-oriented fighting style by using "defend and punish" tactics. He blocks, grabs, and launches the attack against the defenseless opponent, making him a powerful mano-a-mano fighter.

If you didn't stop to think how your own characters would work out in a fighting game mid-way through reading all that up above then you do not deserve to be here.

Finally, considering that the PCA is a community project one of the best things anyone could get it a multiplaye game. After all, we're here, and we make a lot of friends. If we share a game in common we would love to go for it with them. Also, sharing the game with a friend and indulging him to join the PCA would do wonders for our community. A fighting game would be a fantastic avenue for this.

Round Two: Cons

...The problem lies in the fact that while I am a skilled programmer, I still lack a LOT in regards to game development. I have finally learned how to make a screen scroll in a platform game with no platforms and is now stumped as to how to make the character move his legs. A fighting game is decimatingly complicated to develop, and is way, way beyond my league right now.

Let's picture it: in order to start a fight we need a screen, two characters and two lifebars, at the very least. Actually do-able with what I have learned so far. Now fighter A (Let's grab PTC's Erin) is going to rush at fighter B (borrowing wiitenuant's Near) and do a Force Palm. Problems start to arise there. Getting past animating the fighter to walk and execute the attack we have the problem with hitboxes. Simplifying, the character's body has hitboxes and any attack has hitboxes too. In order for an attack to hit the hitboxes must collide. Complicated, yes, but do-able. Now let's stop and think about grabbing moves and defending from attacks. Move on to damage calculating and the actual sounds and character stances and defenses and...

Has your head started to spin already?

Assuming you can get past all of that. Yay, Erin and Near can now fight! Oh, wait. We got forty-eight other characters to create body hitboxes, attack hitboxes, idle animations, health, movement...

Oh, good! We're finally past that... Oh, wait. Lots of folks are going to want to play single-player first, just to grab the basic idea of it. You need an AI who can walk around, defend from attacks, use moves just in the right moment and make sure it isn't too overpowered so it doesn't murder players on easy difficulty. Oh, and we got fifty fighters with different abilities and strategies. Start working while I make myself some coffee, okay?

Whew, you're done! Now you gotta focus on bugtesting... Oh, hey, wait. Did you guys hear that fighting games have the most bugs out of all possible genres? Yeah, that is how Wavedashing showed up in Melee and Meta Knight became the game-breaking beast that he is in Brawl right now. And that game was beta-tested like crazy by a team of a bajillion willing players...

We're done, now, right? I mean we just done bug testing... Woops, one last thing. Now look at all of the characters and make sure they're all balanced. After all, this is a multiplayer game. You can't have three characters that can beat the shit out of everyone else, twenty with so-so abilities and twenty-seven others who are worthless crap...

Stop.

Look at the little game you're doing right now. Yeah, the platform game with no platforms and enemies and pits. You see how you still can't get the character to move his legs when he walks?

Final Round: Wrapping it up

I know how you guys feel. Believe it, I feel the same way. The one thing I would love more than anything was to make a fighting PCA game. It would be awesome, especially considering the abilities of my characters. The problem is I have already scouted for other developers who could help me or at least learn together, but frankly there isn't anyone else to do it with me.

Don't let your hopes down, however. This is the close future here. Sure, I might not know how to get characters to move around just yet, but eventually my developing skills will grow. Hopefully, it can mean that at one point I'm going to be skilled enough to work on something like this. Hell, maybe in a few years some other crazy enters the PCA who has insane game developing skills to help me out?

Let's consider this my ultimate goal. Right now I'm going to stick to something simpler and learn the basics, but, eventually, my objective is to create a PCA fighting game with one character for each member of this group.

But in the meantime, how to get that stupid character to move his legs...

Tallen M.F.~