Is there anything left of this unfinished game? Like, graphics concepts, something to show? I remember seeing some mockup animations of this, but I don't think there ever was even a concept demo...
Niklas Malmqvist shares some memories on it: "No design document was made. They just came to me to see how much time it would take to make a street fighter Beat'em'Up. For one graphics artist, it would've taken way too long. I think the idea of doing a Beat'em'Up was okay... but they would've had to hire a buttload more artists. In my eyes, there was no real point of making a game that wasn't better than Street Fighter, so I was quite thorough with the anatomy of the character.
But considering that quite a few people were involved in the development of Street Fighter, which took quite a while to develop, the time it would've taken me and Stefan to put that game together... well... it just wasn't possible. It was probably my fault, since I wanted the fighters to have a decent anatomy. The development would probably have been faster if I did it the Luke way - have cuddly cute rabbits battle it out. But that was not the instructions I got, and I still believe that the development time would've been too long.
Consider that every character should have around 9 different 'basic' kicks and punches. 1 soft jab, 1 harder straight punch, 1 uppercut, 1 punch in stomach height, 1 kick in stomach, 1 high kick, 1 low kick, 1 crouched low kick, 1 round kick. Also add 3 or 4 special moves per character, adds up to around 13 fight anims per character. Also add idle anim and walk, jump and crouch anims. And other special anims like 'getting hit''getting hit a lot''getting knocked out''getting hit high''getting hit low' etc etc. I would assume a total of about 25 anims per character isn't an exaggeration. Let's assume you would need about 8 characters to make up a decent fighting game... That gives around 200 different animations on characters that were supposed to be between 48-80 pixels in height. It takes a lot of time. a LOT of time... even if you would do it with 32x32 pixel cuddly rabbits.
I have actually made a character for a fighting game for Cartoon Network a couple of years ago... I remember it took quite a while, even though it based on one of their characters, so I didn't even have to come up with a character design. I'll see if I can find some animated gifs of those somewhere..."
At a later moment in time Niklas had a little trip back memory lane together with Roland Zwaga, who got credited for doing the level design for Accelerator. He mentioned things I had forgotten and some things I remember. I'll try and recap it here.
"Roland did the level design for Steel Machine also, which earned him about 250 guilders. Hehe... slave salary. :) He also did some graphics for Steel Machine that never was used since we were too late into production. He did however remember the level that some 'intern' did. I think it was the last level. We tried desperately to remember his name, but we just couldn't figure it out. We both agreed, however, that he was an utter bastard. I don't know HOW he got to do graphics for SPC, since everyone thought his work was awful. He wasn't a particularly nice person either - he was constatly complaining about graphics done and claimed he was the best artist in the world, and when he had finished the level for Steel Machine, everyone could agree that that wasn't really true.
Needless to say, he never got another break at doing graphics for SPC.
Now I can't even remember what his graphics looked like... I just remember what an awful awful awful person he was. Talking to Roland made me feel a little better now, since he also remembered how awful he was. It's always comforting to know that you're not alone, some times. :) I would like to punch Roland in the face though, for making me remember a guy I so very much wish I had forgotten. ;)
Needless to say, he never got another break at doing graphics for SPC.
Now I can't even remember what his graphics looked like... I just remember what an awful awful awful person he was. Talking to Roland made me feel a little better now, since he also remembered how awful he was. It's always comforting to know that you're not alone, some times. :) I would like to punch Roland in the face though, for making me remember a guy I so very much wish I had forgotten. ;)
the only thing that took quite a while to draw, was that character for the Street Fighter II looking game... but that was a big guy... and if it should compete with Street fighter II... it has to be detailed... at least, so i thought. Tth Street Fighter guy was extremely detailed, SPC drew just about every muscle.Stefan really loved the character, but he had his doubts whether it would be a realistic feat to let you draw all the frames for the entire game, it would have been a mammoth job which would take several months. He wasn't sure he could justify it budget-wise to his superiors. But it was a weird idea... to make a street fighter game... with just one artist... There were quite a lot of artists working on Street Fighter II. But all those games at SPC should have been done with more than one artist. All the games were quite limited in the amount of levels, they probably each had maybe 10 or 20 hours worth of playing. SPC games were the cream of the crop, considering that crappy controller that came with a CD-I. Even Steel Machine was a decent shooter and the soundtrack was awesome :)
Roland also remembered Dimo's Quest, and the hassle I had trying to get the main character's shoes to look like Converse. He had checked out Blackmoon Project and was puzzled by two things, really. The first one was that I'm not credited on the Dimo page... and second, that Arjen wasn't credited in The Apprentice. Apparently, all the real difficult bits in The Apprentice were all coded by Arjen.
Another semi-interesting thing he said was that they had plans to brand Dimo's quest... You know - label it with various company names so they could give it to customers and stuff... RaboBank was interested at some point... but it never got pulled through.
Well... I guess that's just about all Roland could remember for now.
I'll hassle him for more SPC memories later. Arjen and he was in the same demo group, so apart from doing work for SPC every now and then, he hung around in the office at times just to talk to Arjen and the rest of us. Good fun, it was. :) "
[Thanks, Niklas Malmqvist, Roland Zwaga]