Rivals of Aether - Official Thread

[Death By Hugs]

Decided to test the limits of the game a little bit, nothing too major, just some findings. (sorry about the double post, I just felt like this needed to be it's own post because editing it on made it look weird)
So the maximum damage is not 999%, but rather, you can get up to a whopping 1e308 before the game makes it become infinite and crashes the game by the next hit, saying it can't apply a square root which you can see in the image below. So basically, gamemaker hits its limit and starts going into the negatives, but it can't calculate it because, well, as the error states: You can't square root a negative number.

Spoiler

So, you may be thinking how long you'd have to play to get that high of a percent right? Well, I took the average kill time and kill percent by looking at over 20 different types of matches from skilled players and "okay" players, so the averages are about 32.7 seconds per stock and about 140% kill percent.
So, 1e308 divided by 140 is roughly 7.142857e305. Now we take that 7.142857e305 and times it by 32.7 seconds and... we get about 2.335714e307 seconds. When converting the seconds into years, we have about 7.40158911549242784e299 years

Spoiler

740,158,911,549,242,784,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

to reach that amount without killing the opponent, non stop playing, and considering you're somewhat good at the game. The game will start to act a little funny once you start getting past the 500's, and once you get into the thousands, Zetterburns special 2x knock back starts to shake the screen rapidly and the game becomes stuck until the move is "complete". But yeah, those are my findings.

The fastest way to rack up damage is use Maypul's jab combo repetatively against the wall in Fire Captiol. It is really hard to get out of and gets opponenst to high percents fast.

 

[thecramp_8]

Signed up for playtester but about 2 days have past and no e-mail, so I don't think I've got in. Still really excited for this game to come out, tho!

 

[CaptainCrisb]

The fastest way to rack up damage is use Maypul's jab combo repetatively against the wall in Fire Captiol. It is really hard to get out of and gets opponenst to high percents fast.

Yeah, I would've tested Maypul if I had the build but in all seriousness though, even then it'd still take an insane amount of time haha

 

[Death By Hugs]

Yeah, I would've tested Maypul if I had the build but in all seriousness though, even then it'd still take an insane amount of time haha

Actually, it only took me like a minute or two to get it to 1000%. When I did acorn into charged up smash, the screen shook so much that my eyes hurt.

 

[PoolShark]

This game looks absolutely amazing. Not just because it resembles smash but it has that originality to it. The characters are diverse just enough to get a good feel off of each. The graphics looks great for it being pixelated. I wouldn't mind spending any amount of money to play this work of art. (Keep it reasonable though)

 

[RoA_Zam]

 

[AbsoluteBlack]

Just had a long discussion on this with bones/puppyluvv on discord but my thoughts are more well suited for long, uninterrupted posts instead of back and forth live chat. Things get muddy quickly like that.

Right now when you hit someone, if they are going to hit the ground and mash parry, they suffer no repercussions. If your followup is true they get hit as normal, if it isn't they get a parry. Of course you can read this parry, but that reduces the punish game in such situations to a really gross 50/50 mixup of

if they parry -> charge strong move/wait
if they don't -> continue combo

where doing one in the wrong situation reverses the situation and ends your punish with you getting punished. So people who mash parry while in stun are at a 0 risk/possible reward situation, which is gross, and even on hard read you get a degenerate punish game of 50/50s, or one where you hit someone then reset to neutral immediately. Parries are fast enough to be unreactable (which is fine), so the player interaction is reduced to reading (into the above 50/50) or complete certainty of how true the combo is.

This isn't something that comes up incredibly often in practice, because most punishes happen in the air and air dodges are a separate thing, but it happens enough (shoutouts to ARC) from platforms and low angled moves, and the theory is sound enough, that it's worth thinking about.

I think parries in neutral are perfect as they are, so slowing down the entire parry action or anything similarly global could have nasty unintended consequences. Suggestions for changes include making parries have a failure window like techs in ssbm, to discourage mashing and reward timing and thereby increasing player interaction, and making mashing parry in general harm the character in some way (max # of parry inputs in a window, weaker parries for a time, etc).

This is far from the biggest deal right now, but it's a little thing that at extremes gets pretty degenerate and goes against the design goals for the game. Parries are wonderful in neutral and for punishing major overextensions, but there should be a truer opportunity cost for trying to throw one out then relying on the other player to read and punish it.

 

[Chuck Tatum]

Parries also have 3-4 start up frames IIRC, which means that if a player is mashing parry and he's wrong about the timing he can eat a hit that he could have air dodged away from if he had been mashing air dodge instead, right? Or am I misunderstanding your point here?

 

[CaptainCrisb]

haha, WHAM! Most of the time when I'd do it it wouldn't finish after 5 minutes! But then again, those were high numbers

 

[Steel Banana]

Just had a long discussion on this with bones/puppyluvv on discord but my thoughts are more well suited for long, uninterrupted posts instead of back and forth live chat. Things get muddy quickly like that.

Right now when you hit someone, if they are going to hit the ground and mash parry, they suffer no repercussions. If your followup is true they get hit as normal, if it isn't they get a parry. Of course you can read this parry, but that reduces the punish game in such situations to a really gross 50/50 mixup of

if they parry -> charge strong move/wait
if they don't -> continue combo

where doing one in the wrong situation reverses the situation and ends your punish with you getting punished. So people who mash parry while in stun are at a 0 risk/possible reward situation, which is gross, and even on hard read you get a degenerate punish game of 50/50s, or one where you hit someone then reset to neutral immediately. Parries are fast enough to be unreactable (which is fine), so the player interaction is reduced to reading (into the above 50/50) or complete certainty of how true the combo is.

This isn't something that comes up incredibly often in practice, because most punishes happen in the air and air dodges are a separate thing, but it happens enough (shoutouts to ARC) from platforms and low angled moves, and the theory is sound enough, that it's worth thinking about.

I think parries in neutral are perfect as they are, so slowing down the entire parry action or anything similarly global could have nasty unintended consequences. Suggestions for changes include making parries have a failure window like techs in ssbm, to discourage mashing and reward timing and thereby increasing player interaction, and making mashing parry in general harm the character in some way (max # of parry inputs in a window, weaker parries for a time, etc).

This is far from the biggest deal right now, but it's a little thing that at extremes gets pretty degenerate and goes against the design goals for the game. Parries are wonderful in neutral and for punishing major overextensions, but there should be a truer opportunity cost for trying to throw one out then relying on the other player to read and punish it.

Isn't this the essentially same as buffering a spot dodge in smash?

 

[Big Papi]

Just had a long discussion on this with bones/puppyluvv on discord but my thoughts are more well suited for long, uninterrupted posts instead of back and forth live chat. Things get muddy quickly like that.

Right now when you hit someone, if they are going to hit the ground and mash parry, they suffer no repercussions. If your followup is true they get hit as normal, if it isn't they get a parry. Of course you can read this parry, but that reduces the punish game in such situations to a really gross 50/50 mixup of

if they parry -> charge strong move/wait
if they don't -> continue combo

where doing one in the wrong situation reverses the situation and ends your punish with you getting punished. So people who mash parry while in stun are at a 0 risk/possible reward situation, which is gross, and even on hard read you get a degenerate punish game of 50/50s, or one where you hit someone then reset to neutral immediately. Parries are fast enough to be unreactable (which is fine), so the player interaction is reduced to reading (into the above 50/50) or complete certainty of how true the combo is.

This isn't something that comes up incredibly often in practice, because most punishes happen in the air and air dodges are a separate thing, but it happens enough (shoutouts to ARC) from platforms and low angled moves, and the theory is sound enough, that it's worth thinking about.

I think parries in neutral are perfect as they are, so slowing down the entire parry action or anything similarly global could have nasty unintended consequences. Suggestions for changes include making parries have a failure window like techs in ssbm, to discourage mashing and reward timing and thereby increasing player interaction, and making mashing parry in general harm the character in some way (max # of parry inputs in a window, weaker parries for a time, etc).

This is far from the biggest deal right now, but it's a little thing that at extremes gets pretty degenerate and goes against the design goals for the game. Parries are wonderful in neutral and for punishing major overextensions, but there should be a truer opportunity cost for trying to throw one out then relying on the other player to read and punish it.

I'm quite satisfied with how it currently is. You talk about mashing parries as combo breakers correct? Don't they have to tech first then parry? Meaning, won't that play a part in how (non)beneficial mashing parrying would be.

 

[someonetookjacob]

I'm quite satisfied with how it currently is. You talk about mashing parries as combo breakers correct? Don't they have to tech first then parry? Meaning, won't that play a part in how (non)beneficial mashing parrying would be.

There is no knockdown state in RoA, so if you dont tech you just get up in place. I think its basically identical to teching in place. There is teching to either direction which could maybe get you out of the combo.

I do understand what he is talking about. I have a friend who does this and pretty consistently is able to reverse combos i try to push too far. I think with smarter play when people get more used to the game this will be less of a problem though. People will be more aware of their counter baiting options, and their escape options. (I am not sure I agree that the 50-50 it creates is 'gross'. Like he said it only comes up when you seek to keep pushing your combo after the other person hits the ground, and they likely had an opportunity to DI or air dodge out before that anyway.)

It does bring up the way getting up works right now though. I think not teching and teching in place should be different somehow? Maybe if not teching took a little longer? I think that could be good. It would also likely address what was bothering AbsoluteBlack. (Its possible I'm wrong about this, but I think I remember this is how it works. Can someone confirm it for me? or I can test it tonight after work.)

Also, I just wanted to say I think everyone is doing a really good job intelligently sharing their opinions on here. So good job... for that.

 

[Big Papi]

Yeah, I never noticed the auto get up. I'm pretty sure it's slower than teching in place though. If not, then it should be.

 

[RoA_Zam]

@ AbsoluteBlack @ C Chuck Tatum @ Puppyfaic
Parry window is actually frames 1-8 and has a 16 frame cooldown.

 

[Big Papi]

@ AbsoluteBlack @ C Chuck Tatum @ Puppyfaic
Parry window is actually frames 1-8 and has a 16 frame cooldown.

1-8 frames? Does it vary per character? If so, who has the frame 1 parry lol

 

[someonetookjacob]

1-8 frames? Does it vary per character? If so, who has the frame 1 parry lol

I believe Bones meant it is frames 1 through 8. as in the perry starts one frame after the input and ends after 8 frames after the input.

 

[AbsoluteBlack]

Yeah, parries start on frame 1 and parry for 7 more frames.

 

[Chuck Tatum]

Dang that's brutal. Yeah, that seems like a bit of an undesirable option select (option selects are bad.) but I don't think any of the suggestions so far address it in an elegant enough way.

 

[ChimaeraUltimo]

I think that there should be an indicator next to the character portrait (like the one that tells you if you have your airdodge) to tell you if you have your wall jump or not. Just an idea.

 

[Puppyfaic]

I think that there should be an indicator next to the character portrait (like the one that tells you if you have your airdodge) to tell you if you have your wall jump or not. Just an idea.

Not possible to do considering on stages like Rock Wall A, there are multiple walls so you can wall-jump multiple times.

 

[RoA_Zam]

Not possible to do considering on stages like Rock Wall A, there are multiple walls so you can wall-jump multiple times.

You only have a single wall jump. It doesnt work between multiple walls.

 

[Puppyfaic]

You only have a single wall jump. It doesnt work between multiple walls.

I swear I remember Dan saying you could jump multiple times if there was more than one wall.

 

[Sol_Vent]

Hey, everybody! I've been away for awhile sorting out life stuff, but this game has never been too far from my thoughts. I'm happy to have had the chance to support RoA on Steam Greenlight!

Also, Maypul looks like too much fun. I can't believe there actually ended up being a wood/plant-based raccoon character like the fan character I posted awhile back. (Well, not that much like him. )

Speaking of which, it occurred to me recently that I haven't updated that character at all since having actually played the game. I've been thinking about it for awhile, so I'll probably make some edits pretty soon. Aside from gameplay stuff, I don't really like his name, and I'd like to make him a more relatable and empathetic character while still being silly.

I actually have another character idea, as well. A sort of opposing or "rival" character opposite the above one. A sniper-type character, since Rivals doesn't have one yet and I was imagining how it would play out. I'll inevitably post this stuff somewhere at some point.

Rough idea for a DLC character for Rivals of Aether:

Vesla [The Storm's Essence]

Color details: Yellow body | Darker yellow armor (head/back) | Red eyes | Black lightning-striped stinger | Translucent wings | Tail color changes as electricity is absorbed.

Vesla is a lone Hornet who travels high above the clouds. Her home has been destroyed in the midst of war, and she seeks revenge. She can easily migrate to a new nest whenever she pleases, but she wants to give the other Rivals a hard time for destroying her home. She is able to channel her anger into electric energy to use against the other Rivals in combat.

Vesla's name comes from a combination of the words Tesla (unit of magnetic flux density) and Vespa (Japanese word for hornet). The idea of an electric hornet is based on a real breed known as the Oriental Hornet which has the ability to store electrical body. Vesla has taken it a bit further and learned how to control her newly found energy.

Neutral Special "Electrotoxin"
- A projectile move that hits an opponent, and releases a toxin that slowly damages an opponent and racks up damage.
- Releases from the stinger.
- Moves forward at an arcing angle like Orcane
- B-reversible.

Down Special: Beacon
- You place a beacon below you that allows you to charge your power over time.
- Breaks from one hit of any other character.
- Breaks if you place another beacon.
- Breaks after 10 seconds of being out on the field.
- Vesla's stinger stripes change color to depict different charges that add knockback and % to your moves
- cooldown times between when you can place more of them so that they aren't abuseable.

Beacon Charge:

Spoiler

No charge
- KB = 1.0
- Lasts until you start a charge.

Charge 1
- Takes 2 seconds to charge.
- KB = 1.15
- Lasts for 5 seconds outside of beacon then goes to no charge.

Charge 2
- Takes 3 seconds to charge after reaching charge 1.
- KB = 1.25
- Lasts for 5 seconds outside of beacon then goes to charge 1.

Charge 3
- Takes 5 seconds to charge after reaching charge 2.
- KB = 1.35
- Lasts for 5 seconds outside of beacon then goes to charge 2.

Charge 4
- Takes 10 seconds to charge after reaching charge 3.
- KB = 1.5
- Lasts for 10 seconds outside of beacon then goes to charge 3.

Side Special: Drill
- You propel forward headfirst, spinning rapidly.
- Do a barrel roll.
- Hitbox on every frame of the head sending a straight forward angle.
- Hitbox around the sides rotating like Wrastor Neutral B, always sends upwards slightly to combo into eachother.
- Longer distance if you're near a beacon or not grounded.

Up Secial: Wings
- Smash Bros Pit/Dark Pit
- Hold down the button to gain height
- Can be directionally influenced right or left after the initial input

Geez, you're definitely better at naming these guys than I am.

And this seems like a pretty solid concept to start with, but I'd like to see more about her movement. The beacon seems cool, but I think it should probably interact with her other specials in some specific ways. Like, maybe neutral special can blow it up for a strong kill option, or something simpler like just making the projectile larger and more of a KO move at higher charges, stuff like that.

 

[Streetwize]

I swear I remember Dan saying you could jump multiple times if there was more than one wall.

Nope. I can confirm that characters have only ONE wall jump that resets if you get hit.

 

[Raytacular]

Update to Coyle, the Storms Peak!
Images to Concept and current standing animation:
Concept: http://i.imgur.com/fca3dio.jpg
Animation: http://i.imgur.com/geOWxEw.gif
Specials:
N-Special - Throws a quill out in front of him. Will deal damage and paralyze a fighter shortly if it lands, but if not, it will continue until it goes over the side of the stage. Once it does, a criteria will be met that it can dig itself into a wall on the side of a stage and will do so accordingly. This is essential for his U-Special to work. Once on the side of a wall though, it can poke an recovering enemy fighter for a possible kill.
S-Special - A standing spin that stays on the spot for as long as the button is used (max time 3 seconds) and finishes with a lunging kick. The D-Special changes this.
D-Special - Throws down two quills diagonally into the stage. The quills will go farther apart if Coyle is in the air and activates the attack. If the Side Special is activated, rather than stay on the spot, it will charge forward until it hits the edge of the stage and stop before falling off.
U-Special - Needs N-Special on the side of the stage in order for this to work. Once activated, Coyle will stick to the wall that the N-Special quill is on and can stay for a very short time before jumping or running off it. This will bring back all his jumps, air dodges and wall jumps.
So yeah. More of Coyle coming soon.

 

[RoA_Zam]

Since I uploaded a video about getting hit at 3000%, are you all ready for 10000% + fire knockback?

 

[Polymetric]

Hey! Just popping in here to provide some feedback on the Coyle concept that's getting posted.

It's ****.
Well, the art is ****, can't comment on the moveset.

But that's okay! Being **** is the first step to being good. Here are some good pixel/sprite art tutorials, starting with color, and moving to complex stuff like animation and antialiasing.

Color:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013011...t.com/art/Pixel-Art-Tutorial-Colors-184802567

Loads of Things:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

Subpixel Animation (make that echidna look like a sprite from Metal Slug):
http://2dwillneverdie.com/tutorial/give-your-sprites-depth-with-sub-pixel-animation/

Glad to see you're going for it, take a look at those pages and make another pass!

Oh and general design stuff, notice how the Wrastor animation takes up a decent rectangle of space? It's pleasing to the eye to lay the character out like that. The current animation you have is a bit tall and gangly. Try making more of a rounded shape.

 

[RoA_Zam]

10000% + fire + fully charged strong attack =

 

[Death By Hugs]

For those of you who don't know this, Maypul can stick to the wall for a short period of time. You have to hold the jump button. At the end of the hold, she will do a wall jump. This wall jump is special because it goes more vertical than horizontal.

 

[RoA_Zam]

The AMAZING invisible Zetterburn! [Glitch]

 

[N00ne]

I decided it was finally time to do a character analysis. Since I have been playing as Maypul, that's who I will start with. Keep in mind this has been against computer opponents, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Without further ado, here it is:

Maypul isn't like the other characters. Most characters have this flowchart: Attack opponent with quick moves -- get them to high percent -- strong attack them. Maypul has this flowchart: Look for opening -- knock opponent out of edge. This is mostly due to the fact that Maypul's strong attacks aren't strong. This makes them essentially worthless in comparison to his other options. If your opponent isn't near the stage but is near a pit, slam dunk with fair. Is your opponent on the highest platform in the stage? Spam uair until you star KO him. Maypul is designed to gimp you into oblivion, and in my opinion he might be able to do that a little too well. Maypul can KO opponents with uair at 40%. That might be a little too quick, even for Rivals of Aether. I would talk about his other moves, but at the moment there isn't any reason why I should use those over the ones I just mentioned. Maybe if I fought some human opponents, it would be a different story, but at the moment those are his best options. I'm not saying that the opponents can't beat him, I'm saying that these moves eliminate the need for the other ones. I'm not sure if he needs a buff or a nerf to fix that.

 

[Big Papi]

I decided it was finally time to do a character analysis. Since I have been playing as Maypul, that's who I will start with. Keep in mind this has been against computer opponents, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Without further ado, here it is:

Maypul isn't like the other characters. Most characters have this flowchart: Attack opponent with quick moves -- get them to high percent -- strong attack them. Maypul has this flowchart: Look for opening -- knock opponent out of edge. This is mostly due to the fact that Maypul's strong attacks aren't strong. This makes them essentially worthless in comparison to his other options. If your opponent isn't near the stage but is near a pit, slam dunk with fair. Is your opponent on the highest platform in the stage? Spam uair until you star KO him. Maypul is designed to gimp you into oblivion, and in my opinion he might be able to do that a little too well. Maypul can KO opponents with uair at 40%. That might be a little too quick, even for Rivals of Aether. I would talk about his other moves, but at the moment there isn't any reason why I should use those over the ones I just mentioned. Maybe if I fought some human opponents, it would be a different story, but at the moment those are his best options. I'm not saying that the opponents can't beat him, I'm saying that these moves eliminate the need for the other ones. I'm not sure if he needs a buff or a nerf to fix that.

In regards to up air, my brothers can DI/SDI out of Maypul's up air fairly easy

 

[Mightyno.M]

I decided it was finally time to do a character analysis. Since I have been playing as Maypul, that's who I will start with. Keep in mind this has been against computer opponents, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Without further ado, here it is:

Maypul isn't like the other characters. Most characters have this flowchart: Attack opponent with quick moves -- get them to high percent -- strong attack them. Maypul has this flowchart: Look for opening -- knock opponent out of edge. This is mostly due to the fact that Maypul's strong attacks aren't strong. This makes them essentially worthless in comparison to his other options. If your opponent isn't near the stage but is near a pit, slam dunk with fair. Is your opponent on the highest platform in the stage? Spam uair until you star KO him. Maypul is designed to gimp you into oblivion, and in my opinion he might be able to do that a little too well. Maypul can KO opponents with uair at 40%. That might be a little too quick, even for Rivals of Aether. I would talk about his other moves, but at the moment there isn't any reason why I should use those over the ones I just mentioned. Maybe if I fought some human opponents, it would be a different story, but at the moment those are his best options. I'm not saying that the opponents can't beat him, I'm saying that these moves eliminate the need for the other ones. I'm not sure if he needs a buff or a nerf to fix that.

Maypul is female btw

 

[Chuck Tatum]

Maypul's up air can definitely NOT kill at 40% against an opponent with proper DI any more. Unless of course you are right next to the top and that's fine.

Play experience against CPU's is VASTLY different than against experienced HUM's.

Also, Maypul strong attacks are definitely still plenty strong and great for grabbing kills.

Maypul right now feels very right to me beyond the glitch on her seeds where they stun jumping opponents/wavedashers. She has a tough time killing but deserves to with all of her advantages and her speed and combo ability + gimping is more than enough to make up the difference.

 

[theopenlink22]

I have been on vacation for a couple weeks, sorry for inactivity. Thank you RoA team so much for allowing me to be a tester. I am truly honored.

 

[theopenlink22]

My personal opinion on Maypul as a character. Maypul has lots of potential which puts her high on my tier list. Her best thing is her speed and range. She is the fastest character, and that means lots of potential. Faster characters are just plain better. Range is just fantastic and her specials are pretty great. Gimping and such is very easy and her recovery is great. Good disjointed hitboxes means extra priority and range.

Found a glitch. Sometimes when a character is at kill percentage and they are hit with a strong attack and hit a wall, momentum completely stops. Happens when opponent is right next to the wall.

 

[RoA_Zam]

My personal opinion on Maypul as a character. Maypul has lots of potential which puts her high on my tier list. Her best thing is her speed and range. She is the fastest character, and that means lots of potential. Faster characters are just plain better. Range is just fantastic and her specials are pretty great. Gimping and such is very easy and her recovery is great. Good disjointed hitboxes means extra priority and range.

Found a glitch. Sometimes when a character is at kill percentage and they are hit with a strong attack and hit a wall, momentum completely stops. Happens when opponent is right next to the wall.

If you're playing against CPU's, could that possibly be them teching on the wall? if they look as if they did a wall jump when knocked against a wall, that's a tech.

 

[theopenlink22]

I was playing against a non-attack training cpu. Hes not teching against the wall. Also. You can wall jump out when in free fall which puts you into non freefall which means free recovery.
BTW How many FPS is this game?
Also, it does not save controls when you reset with Q or when you exit out of the game, same with player tags...

 

[4nace]

Maypul's up air can definitely NOT kill at 40% against an opponent with proper DI any more. Unless of course you are right next to the top and that's fine.

Play experience against CPU's is VASTLY different than against experienced HUM's.

Also, Maypul strong attacks are definitely still plenty strong and great for grabbing kills.

Maypul right now feels very right to me beyond the glitch on her seeds where they stun jumping opponents/wavedashers. She has a tough time killing but deserves to with all of her advantages and her speed and combo ability + gimping is more than enough to make up the difference.

So I havent touched the June playtester branch because I have been adding new features to the main game recently. Making a ton of progress, just nothing to show quite yet!

However, I am pretty sure I fixed the momentum glitch in my build so I added that fix to the playtester build and re-uploaded. Download the build from the same link and let me know if the momentum bug on seeds persists.

Thanks!
Dan

 

[AbsoluteBlack]

Seems fine now on my end!