Wednesday, December 18, 2013

5 things to expect now that M.U.G.E.N. 3D exists (headsplode)









First of all, I apologize for calling EF 12 Mugen 3D. I realize the makers of EF 12  might or might not enjoy comparison of their project to Elecbyte's popular fighting game making engine. However, for people like me, who know about M.U.G.E.N since before Spider-Man 2,  that's the shortest, fastest way to describe what EF 12 is. What it MEANS to us.

If you don't know what I'm talking  about, EF 12 is a new, free program to make 3D fighting games(But 3d as in polygonal, not 3d as in "costly movie tickets and a raging headache). Fighting games, you may have heard, are kind of my jam. And frankly, a 3D fighter maker is something I google for every once in a while.

So, unable to test it out, I will tell you what to expect, based on my 10 years experience as a MUGEN forum lurker with big dreams of Frankenspriting Sakura into Mary Marvel.  I'll clarify: MUGEN is a 2D fighting game making engine that's over a decade old, and has carved for itself a sizable community, despite the engine's lack of official support.

5) More Ryu's that need to exist will.

See? We couldn"t do this without the Airforce, just like Josh Duhamel said.
If you wanted to say "fighting games" to someone who can't hear you, drawing Ryu, Street Fighter's mascot, would probably be the most effective way. The character is basically fighting games personified.

Naturally ,  withing months of MUGEN's existence Ryu's started to pop up. Ryu from Street Fighter 2, Ryu from Street Fighter Alpha, Ryu from the vs series, Ryu from Street Fighter 3, Evil Ryu. Soon every kind of Ryu one existed in some form or another.  And all was well.
But let's be fair here...it's kind of a thing.

Then more kept coming. CyberRyu, God Ryu, Devil Ryu. Ryu Hoshi(who had the ability to call his shoto buds). Even today it's not odd to find some newer, differenter Ryu's come to life. Admittedly, I'm nobody to tell creators what characters to make in their own games. But what about the other characters?

4)Every Character will be on it.
This is fairly normal actually, because it doesn't have  those crazy Hotel Mario chars.


Creating a character in MUGEN was way over my head. However, I was often amazed at the characters people would make, when they weren't making Fiscally Responsible Ryu and Tax Evasor Akuma. Characters from non fighting games, characters edited into other characters, and even some original ones every odd moon made browsing for characters a hoot.

Trust me when I say that that is nothing compared to what EF 12 will be like. Did you know that there is a program out there that can rip the models righto out of a game? That's the way they get Cammy along with  the Spy from Team Fortress in Source film editor.
I don't even want to know what's going on here.

Basically what I'm saying is that getting Liara from Mass Effect into EF 12 will be way easier than getting Every detailed sprite of Magneto to look like Superman. Hell, if I can rip my custom characters from Champions Online into it, then believe me that we're gonna get  all the superheroes in there.

3)Every Character will be naked
I CAN'T EVEN SHOW YOU THE REAL THINGS!
Not...uh...not every character that is IN EF 12 will be naked. But every character that can be naked in it probably will be.

Even in the earlier years of MUGEN, enterprising character makers saw the potential for naked Chun Li's and Naked Psylockes. By turning tight pants and  shirts beige they would make seemingly naked  characters(something I will admit to doing in Create a Wrestler modes before whole hands could be poligonated). Certain characters, like Raiya from Toki Densho and  R. Mika from Street Fighter Alpha only had real estate in the community as Naked edits of the real things.

So, we already talked about Sourceforge, and how people are ripping characters, huh? Well it's already "gone there" and I have full confidence that it EF 12 will be going there, for good or for ill.

2) There will be fights
I mean, obviously, right?
Now in the MUGEN community there are different types of temperaments, but basically a lot of people have a lot of invested emotions in their creations, even if said creations are putting a Fez on Ryu and calling him Morocco Ryu. The idea of other people forwarding, "warehousing", altering without credit and even sharing before release their characters and stages outside of their permission has cause large swaths of flamewars to cover the community. Sometimes, despite releasing characters publicly, some creators tend to have a dim view of those who finally enjoy their work.

How will this affect EF 12? Well, I bet a lot of EF's content creators will come from the MUGEN community. I know I would. EF 12 apparently has the same character sharing capacities.

Why I could imagine someone, say, creating a  3D model of Cyclops, and making it available on a community site. Naturally, if it starts showing up elsewhere as a playable character, how will that person react?

All I'm saying is, there's a war coming. But it doesn't matter because...

1) It's probably way over my head
Could not even get it to run in my first computer.

I don't mean to poo-poo EF 12. It's probably great. I don't have a computer to test it on, though. I'm just recalling the feeling I had when I first heard of MUGEN. A chance to finally put all my crazy Ideas for a fighting game to work. Sadly it wasn't to be. Mugen's requirements were, at the time, a little to high for me. It took a bit of technical knowhow, and even the sprites couldn't work if you didn't put the right pallette's on them. Soon I went back to the sidelines, watching people edit Spider-Man into Batman Beyond.

Will it be the same, now? hard to say. I'll give it a try as soon  as possible. I'm a little wiser now, and I'm even working on  a little thing on Yoyo Gamemaker which...we'll see. Still, if there's a spot for a lurker in the EF12 community, I want it.

Fighting for your attention


Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Fighting for your attention


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Fighting for your attention


Monday, December 2, 2013

Scolding Review: The Jetsons Movie

But is there rap? BECAUSE THERE HAS TO BE!


Who doesn't like the Jetsons? Lots of people. Let's face it, the Jetsons will always play second fiddle to the Flinstones. Where the Stone age family gets a duration record that wouldn't be broken in decades, two live action movies, and recent talk of a new, Seth MacFarleyized reboot, The Jetsons has merely a string of TV movies, a  development-hell movie that would star Will Ferrel, if it existed, and the odd videogame here or there.  There will never be a time where they won't be the  Rival Schools to the Flinstones' Street fighter, the Antz to their  A Bug's Life, the Neo Geo Pocket to their Gameboy.




Haha, stupid! In the future nobody's gonna do sports!

So, I don't know what's not appealing enough for these characters that they can't even shill cereal and vitamins(even though the first is done fairly effective by a dazed looking bear and anemia, respectively.). I was fairly young when this was on reruns, and I don't remember much of it, except for it stubbornly not being about neither Robocop nor Ninja Turtles. With those 2 strikes against it, let's look at the Jetsons movie, and rediscover what the future looked like in the 50's when remembered by the early 90s.

 As our story begins, as in the series we get a good look, and sung fanfare at, most members of the family. There's George Jetson, who dislikes going to work in the morning but does so. His wife Jane who is  a woman. It doesn't bring in any other traits for her than that. His son Elroy, who is  a kid prodigy of sorts, and also has A GAME that he would be SAD if his FATHER didn't get to it(not to skip ahead, but every time a movie presents a kid who has a game and wants his father to watch, it is for the purposes of him not showing up and getting the lesson that he needs to be more involved in his children''s life). And finally Judy, who is  a teenager girl, in the most broad, stereotypical form. There's Astro, the dog, combining the least endearing traits of Dino and Scooby Doo. There's also the Robot maid, Rosie. Sigh. I have never met someone who has a maid, so I'm going to assume everyone in America Circa 1950's had one. Rosie raises the building itself to get the family out of the smog, a quick set up for the themes of the movie and a reminder that everything needs to be postmodernist.


Middle Name Chopped. Last name Liver.



So George leaves this cardboard cutouts and heads for work in his Float-Car. But a traffic jam occurs, in complete defiance to the concepts that would make a flying car practical. In order to resolve this common man trouble with some ingenue he inflates a cop-shaped baloon, and makes siren sounds to convince everyone to make way. However a real cop comes along, and reprimands him.

While he's at work, his boss, MR Spacely, is holding a chairholder's meeting. Basically, the board pressures Spacely to reduce costs, Spacely points out his offplanet factory/mine  could do it, and all it needs is someone to run it,  and that the last 2  people to apply for the job ran away. Meanwhile, Elroy, who never evar convinces me his voice is a child's, is schooling some chumps in Spaceketball(okay, it's called Spaceball, but my version is more accurate.) and Judy and her friend, Bizarro Space Daria, are a at a teen kids music place(I assume she's skipping school.) when the coolest most handsome space singer there, Cosmic Cosmo, invites her for a date, set for a few days in the future.

But then they get some mood whiplash when George saunters into the home announcing he's now the vice president and they're moving. Elroy is now no longer sad his dad missed his game, and Judy is throwing a fit all over the place. This is played for laughs, but later we're gonna get a horrible song out of it.
Get over it. I moved like 7 times as a kid, and I turned out fine, for a man that argues with cartoons.
So the family moves and we get a few weak gags out of it. There's a zany family of green Wookies that they have as neighbors, and there's also also a family of robots.  I get a feeling both of these were meant to be black and we all know in the future-50's-90's there's no blacks. Seriously, I didn't see any.



The female of the robot family invites the women to a mall, which brings Judy out of her marasm. Meanwhile, George goes to work, because this is what men do. Men can't be bothered to go to their kid's games or loiter in malls all day, like women.

However, soon George learns that the plant is not all fun and games. There's also some ill(advised) early 90s rap about how the factory works. It's painful but quick, like being stabbed in the eye by a Kenyan.

Judy separates and heads off to the "nature zone" of the mall, so we can get her super sad ballad about being heartbroken. Look, I don't remember The Jetsons having any songs, and if it did, they probably weren't this terrible. Eventually she stumbles upon a new boy to love, who looks like the bastard son of Captain Planet and Two-Face.
So...dreamy?
 And Elroy is now getting schooled by his kid neighbor robot AT Spaceball. See, I told you. Black. Eventually all this set up leads to George Jetson ceremonially starting the factory, which immediately starts going bonkers and shooting sprockets around. Elroy who has been building animosity towards his neightbot, saves him, even though, well he's a robot. How much can he be hurt by a piece of metal?



With the pressure on him to somehow make the factory work,  George is ever more determined to get results. but somehow the plant keeps failing. Eventually George's coworker fesses up and reveals that the plant is probably being sabotaged. George decides that the best course of action would be letting the higher ups know so they can  launch a full assessment and investigation. Or wait at work while it's dark with a flashlight, like a jackass.

His kid, the Sasquatch kid, and the Robot Kid also launch their own investigation, worrying the parents of 2 of those kids because Space Sasquatches are terrible at parenting. Eventually George goes missing, and the kids stumble into the darkest truth, that the saboteurs are...CUTE LIL'  SPACE MONCHICHEES!
If it's smart enough to accessorize, it's smart enough to be tried for sabotage.

Indeed, under the factory, right next to the ore mining drill, live this happy go lucky, highly marketable  space babies, who are having their home destroyed by the BIG BAD CORPORATION! As intelligent beings capable of speech their only hope of survival has been to ecoterrorize  the factory! And to make sure we get the point that the monchichees are in the right, the hairy sasquatch baby hug-shields the monchichi from Astro. I think that moment gave me diabetes.
I have since learned that you don't get Diabetes strictly from eating too much sugar. I hope that makes the fact I got it from this funnier.
Then George Jetson comes out of the woods, tied and gagged. It's clear the furballs, much like their direct inspiration the Ewoks, meant to kill and eat George, as they probably did to the people he's substituting. But he's still the asshole who's supposed to understanding, and he's still the one who has to compromise with the Space Monchichees according to everyone, including Captain Planet looking dude.

To even further drive who the assholes here are, Mr Spacely arrives, and tries to start the machine. The robot worker insists that he don't  without ever pointing out specifically that he's probably killing  a few people. Spacely kills the robot, and  goes on with the drilling, sending deadly rock debris flying at the Jetsons and putting them all in perilous risk.

Eventually  Jetson and his family get out, and try to stop  the machine, which his boss does not allow. Now, I think the roughly 5 people involved could take on Spacely, since he's like 3'5, has  like 50+ years, and wields no weapons. But because that would be too direct, George jumps  into a hole where a series of gags occur, and busts the machine.

Forced  by this space mutiny, Spaceley is strong armed into a deal were the Monchichi's do all of the work for nothing(because destroying the environment bad, sweatshops good?), the factory is exclusively are recycling plant, and  I guess all the Sprockets go on be part of Bono's hype machine. However, the family must return to Earth, and leave behind all their new friends. With tears in their eyes, they travel on. Awful 90's rap aaaaand scene!

So uh, that sure was some movie, huh? Never even nearly as clever and funny as it thinks, The Jetsons movie is abrasively progressive with it's politics while having some pretty retrograde characterization. The characters are a little too dull, and don't have consistent motivations, or in the case of Jane Jetson just plain have no motivation at all. The animations is mostly so-so, and the songs...are fucking terrible.  So what can I say? It's kind of subaverage at best. So perfect for the Jetsons, I guess.