SpaceTime Mashers - Testers Wanted

[Fanttum]

Hey smash community, how we been doing?
I'm helping out build a new original platform fighter and I want to share it with y'all.

We are calling it "SpaceTime Mashers" and are a fast paced 1v1 platform fighter that brings in mechanics from all different types of fighters and mashes them together in our wonderful hand drawn art style. We hope anyone can pick up and play, while being deep enough so gameplay can stay competitive.

I just made a little intro video and we want yall's help!

If your interested in helping us out fill out this form,
https://spacetimemashers.typeform.com/to/irsD8H
or give us some feedback here.

We are still early in development, but want real player input as soon as possible. I've already made many changes just from friends and my local smash scene, but we want an even bigger pool of people to help out now. You'll get to test early builds of the game, help us balance the gameplay, and interact with developers.

If you have any questions feel free to hit me up, hope you enjoy what you see, and keep on mashing!

- F

 

[GothicSlenderman]

This seems quite fun! I've actually been trying to start development of my own hand drawn platform fighter as well. But my project is stuck in pre-development due to my lack of income, tablet & a decade old laptop.

But anyway, I like the art you have so far. Seems like a mix between Skullgirls & Steven Universe. What kind of characters do you plan on implementing? Sense it's call Spacetime Mashers, would they happen to be inspired by other points/eras of time?

 

[Fanttum]

But anyway, I like the art you have so far. Seems like a mix between Skullgirls & Steven Universe. What kind of characters do you plan on implementing? Sense it's call Spacetime Mashers, would they happen to be inspired by other points/eras of time?

Thanks for the input, and yes we are influenced by Skullgirls.
Also good eye, while I don't want to give away too much of the "story", all are fighters will be a combination of different things from different eras. Ruth is a great example of this and easy to recognize, which is one of the reasons we are showing her off first. We have already nailed down the core cast, which I will be showing off as we further development, and some of the combinations are really fun.
You'll have to stay tuned to learn more (;

 

[GothicSlenderman]

Thanks for the input, and yes we are influenced by Skullgirls.
Also good eye, while I don't want to give away too much of the "story", all are fighters will be a combination of different things from different eras. Ruth is a great example of this and easy to recognize, which is one of the reasons we are showing her off first. We have already nailed down the core cast, which I will be showing off as we further development, and some of the combinations are really fun.
You'll have to stay tuned to learn more (;

I figured it was something like that. Your first fighters (from her attire) seems to be from either the 1950's or 1960's

Also I have another question. Sense I'm also developing a hand drawn platform fighter I was wondering if you use a tablet and is so what kind? My dream is to get into animation and my platform fighter will utilize my artstyle.

 

[Russell_SSB]

This looks very interesting. If possible, do you also need concept artists? It'll be cool if I help you out by testing out your game, but I may have a few ideas for characters I might have in my mind.

 

[RagnorokX]

Sounds quite interesting. I can't really do testing due to being restricted to keyboard, but I'd love to do concept work.

 

[Fanttum]

Also I have another question. Sense I'm also developing a hand drawn platform fighter I was wondering if you use a tablet and is so what kind? My dream is to get into animation and my platform fighter will utilize my artstyle.

I don't work on the art myself, sorry.

This looks very interesting. If possible, do you also need concept artists? It'll be cool if I help you out by testing out your game, but I may have a few ideas for characters I might have in my mind.

Thanks, and no need for concept artists sorry. We already nailed down out concepts a while ago, but glad your excited enough that you have your own ideas.

Sounds quite interesting. I can't really do testing due to being restricted to keyboard, but I'd love to do concept work.

All our concepts are done, but you can still play the game on keyboard btw.

 

[RagnorokX]

All our concepts are done, but you can still play the game on keyboard btw.

Really? Huh. I didn't realize you had a whole team behind this, but I wish you the best.

 

[AlRex]

I did the survey. It seems like a cool game with nice aesthetics and a generally good gameplay flow. I think I said as much on the survey. I wish you guys good luck.

 

[i8pie]

I sent in a form under the handle "Evilisk". I just want to say that the fact that you're showing an actual slice of footage, and that you seem to have already engaged with your local scene for feedback, makes your project sound really promising compared to most other Smash clone/Platform Fighter projects I've seen (and as someone that's wanted more of these types of games, I've seen quite a lot of projects fall through). So props to you guys

Also, I mentioned this in my submission, but is the timer thing just a unique visual for percentage system? And is the timer going above 60 intentional?

 

[Fanttum]

I sent in a form under the handle "Evilisk". I just want to say that the fact that you're showing an actual slice of footage, and that you seem to have already engaged with your local scene for feedback, makes your project sound really promising compared to most other Smash clone/Platform Fighter projects I've seen (and as someone that's wanted more of these types of games, I've seen quite a lot of projects fall through). So props to you guys

Also, I mentioned this in my submission, but is the timer thing just a unique visual for percentage system? And is the timer going above 60 intentional?

Thanks for the feedback. I've seen many project fail, and been a part of a few, so we can see those breaking points and know how to avoid them. Our goal is to make a game that people truly want to play. We don't want to be seen as a smash clone, or something to do just because we can. Going out and actually talking to our player base is something that separates us from the rest. It is something really simple that a lot of fan projects or inexperienced devs don't understand as well as they should. I've been surprised at how many platform fighters have been announced within the past year, but we think we hold some strategic advantages that can separate ourselves. In the end it comes down to execution, and while we have a long way to go, I'm excited.

And that's right. The timer is our version of percent, and it does go above 60. The team has been a little split on that however so feedback on that in particular would be great. I like it because it is uniquely our own and fits well into our time theme, but also understand it can be a bit unclear what it means. This is an example of something we want play testers for. We have a small team, so we might build something cool, but if the players can't understand it, we have to scrap it.

 

[Fanttum]

Will be contacting the potential testers soon, but in the mean time I've been working on Hitbox visualization.

What other tools would y'all as players want to help lab?

 

[i8pie]

Will be contacting the potential testers soon, but in the mean time I've been working on Hitbox visualization.

What other tools would y'all as players want to help lab?

Hmm

I can't really think of anything specific right now, since I don't really know what game systems are in (other than the air dashing + percentage system). I guess I can think of one thing.

From my experience in the PlayStation All-Stars Community, I remember we had a lot of trouble trying to get frame data for the game (actually I don't remember if we ever got around to it). I don't know if it's necessary at this point, or how it would work. But maybe you could put in a frame-data viewer of some sort (or possibly just a secondary aide to help figure out frame data if that's not possible)

 

[RagnorokX]

yeah or just something that allows you to go frame by frame. and savestates so we can tas in game but thats just me and you shouldn't feel obligated to do that at all

 

[schmooblidon]

Frame by frame and action state display (name and frame number) and some kind of input display would be enough for most players. For developing and bug searching/fixing, I think it's incredibly useful to display the most important player variables, mainly the physics floating points like position and velocity.

It comes down to two different types of labbing. Real life application and mechanics research. Real life application is more popular so it's better to focus on that, 20XX is the GOAT at this, so just copy as many traits of it as you can. There are also other officiail training modes or fan made mods for other fighting games that you can look at for ideas.

Mechanics research is a lot more niche, but the information the researcher can gain is interesting for all players. Support for this isn't too difficult either. Magus physics and input display mod is pretty much everything the player would need. Achilles added this into 20XX 4.0+ and cleaned it up.

Lastly, environmental collision display is a must, but if you are using the hurtbox for environmental collisions then I guess that's already done.

Good luck on your game, it looks great!

 

[RagnorokX]

One thing that kinda bothers me with the air dash, is that its really hard to tell at a moments glass that they're air dashing. Most of the smash games have a kinda white effect to their characters while rolling or air dodging, and I think it would be helpful to add something like that to add ability to detect it easily.

 

[Fanttum]

One thing that kinda bothers me with the air dash, is that its really hard to tell at a moments glass that they're air dashing. Most of the smash games have a kinda white effect to their characters while rolling or air dodging, and I think it would be helpful to add something like that to add ability to detect it easily.

Yea we noticed this too. The animation in the video was only a placeholder and we are reworking on it now.
Also working on some differnt effects, but keeping things basic for now. (white flash, etc.)

 

[Fanttum]

Been a while, so here are some of Ruth's palettes

Got any ideas for how you would do her palette? We'd love to hear em!

 

[RagnorokX]

I really like the metallic one. However, all of them seem to be done really well.

 

[i8pie]

All of the palettes look pretty good

I was only really going to say, make sure she has a palette for each primary color (so a blue, red, yellow and green palette at least) but you guys have already covered that. (I mention this because I have noticed so platform fighters that forget to do this)

I do notice her hair color never changes, is it not possible to change her hair color? Or was that just a design choice?

 

[RagnorokX]

Actually the hair thing extends to her lower arms and boots.

 

[Fanttum]

Been working on a lot of the biz dev side of things, and our next character isn't quite yet ready to be fully revealed, so nothing crazy new to show off. But here is a close up gif of our ledge snap!

I always wondered why not many indie platform fighters use this mechanic, and I think its because its freaking hard! I just ironed out the last known bug (I hope...) related to ledge stuff, but it has been by far the hardest mechanic to nail and test.

I haven't decided how I want to do ledge invincibility, if at all, so what do y'all think?
Would things be faster paced if the ledge was less of a safe space? Or do players need that spot to retreat too while also giving up neutral?