MK 12 character building system suggestion

SO since I have been playing a lot of MK11 and really fell in love with the Krypt's Traverler character and how he is collecting those items that are the Krypt's key items and carries it with him a thought came to mind, memories of MKD and MKA how Deception helped us built through the Journey of Konquest this new character that was the back bone of the store and how MKA helped us create our own ultimate fighter ( Broken mechanically ) but ours!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! so I instantly thought why they did not make the traverler as our own created character, and whatever he finds in the krypt apart he can actually wear and we can make him MKA style

but another thought popped in saying " nah it might be fun but pointless as playings won't allow him in compatitive play " so is he going to be just limited to local play? another thought popped in maybe he learns the art of other fighters and can fix to a certain style of a character fighting art while special moves and can be customized based on what that specific style has, the MK11

so the player can completely controls the way the character looks but still the character is mechanically intact and can be used in compatitive play, Imagine the next MK tournament is all complete custome characters players built with their own names but play as they should without being broken. to make it simple : 1- you create your character MKA style with all the stuff you find in the Krypt or Konquest journey and he learns styles of characters on the way (Scorpion, Subzero, JK, Jax, etc) 2- when it comes to choosing the fighting style ( you choose a character from they original Roaster ) so let's say he will choose Scorpion, he will have that exact same set of moves, same everything like copy the exact thing but can customize the special moves like MK11 allows us to do to create our own flavor of combo linkers. I think this will be Sick! just something I wanted to get our of my system, I hope people might find it useful!!!

Happy New 2021 and UMK11 made the end of the year Cool!

Hello everyone! I hope you all survived the shitty 2020 and let's prepare our self for 2021 we are still on the grind until this whole covid thing goes away!!! a small update about my self, we have been burning the midnight oil for 2 years and 3 months now working on Good Knight! and been working on a table top called loot and glory for 2 years as well on the side and those projects will be a wrap for this year so YAY!!! I can not wait to start making the new ideas am having into games. This is also not just to talk about UMK11 but a message to Ed Boon man! cause the broskie is chill, loves us all and we love him back! I know my last message was heard before for MKXL PC, thank you Boon man! So the first time I got MK11 on release thanks to my buddy Corey pre-ordering the game for me at the spot it dropped on steam, freaking floored me! played the game on release day, went through story mode, did some matching and played a bit of the krypt, got a local tournament happening which total hours MK run on my PC was around 20 hours, sadly after all of that got really caught up with work and needed disk space and had to remove the game,but something that did not make me go through the effort of re-installing the game, the fact knowing that to go through the krypt that I had to grind in the towers of time, and I know this are important to the game mechanics but never wanted to touch it cause I was even dare I say afraid of it even knowing that it was patched and all good. fast forward 2 years passed, 2020 christmas and new year are here, installed it man that huftty fat 100GB OOOOOUUF! the game is big!

bought the UMK11 edition as I never got any of the DLCs, I wanted it for -The Aftermath- story line and I am doing this whole streaming thing now with RavenSkullGaming, nothing series just for fun and be with friends online while I experience my games, so started the aftermath story and man....ouuuuhhhHHHHHH!!! MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! the story, the acting, the sequences, the reaction, the interaction! I was not playing a game!!! I was watching a movie!!! the micro expression IN A GAME!!! on Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa preformance it would bring you to tears to actually spot that in a game!!! I WANT MORE! I am not going to complain about the length cause to be honest, if you ask me? I wouldn't know how to make it longer, I love the open possibilities and I wanna see where it goes! this is interesting, got my coins, hearts and souls all collected from the aftermath and went back into the krypt, this time on a mission to get it done, so I played and played until I quickly ran out of everything, I thought hi! am going to stream I never went through the classic towers so I started going through characters one by one going through like half of em on a stream and I realized this is not gaining much coins, souls or hearts, my eyes are looking at the Towers of time, "should I?" I wondered... so I went it, completely un-educated and started playing got few towers in, not that bad but the rewards were Good! but... not enough until I came across a tower key and it was test your luck! and am hi! wow! old school stuff?! so I went in and was mildly disappointed I thought it was the mini games but hi! we can't have everything,the game is really massive so am not complaining, I started fighting, am maining Kung Lao and man... I got my ass kicked real bad, like I was getting through the fight but being butchered got passed him and now nightwolf and I found out lots of my moves are not connecting because of the modifiers that I had to adjust to kick combos to actual be able to pass that fight, I tried for hours and barely reached the Kollector's fight! ONLY ONCE! after 2 hours! that is no joke! so I decided to shift characters and move to a character that has better leg combos and Jhonny Cage was the best pick! I played, got used to the combos and feel of him and still not having much of an upper hand but having better reach rate to The Kollector, I thought there has to be a better way man! so I went online and got educated about the augments and I was like OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH that is what those are for!!! I still did not have enough of the augs to get me through through all towers but I did get through the first one and man it was brutal but I got through and it was a F YEAH! moment! Baraka....and he had no chill bro! got my as on a silver platter like nobody's business. so I said hi! I need to find the other Augs that the walk through talked about which is here so I started grinding in towers until I got some serious issue of the Bor-idous, it got boring after a couple of hours, but I was happy that I have enough now to go through the krypt more and I advance, unlock and find secrets and do stuff until I got the Ermac power and now I can get that bring! what is in there?! another area?! what?! and I go there and it asks for 2000k souls and am like yeah I got that!!! and I unlock it and it felt great and I spend that skeleton key and see a heart box and...I do not have enough hearts so I go back to the towers grind hearts through fatalities, unlock the box....and it was just a bunch of gears for Kabal... I was disappointed cause I spent so many souls and a skeleton keys and 250 hearts to get to that and to me the reward was close to nothing. now I need all the sweets souls to unlock the souls monks things and the containers and am like where the hell do you grind for souls like that!? we need so much!!! my first thought was the towers of time but still I do not want to do that! it it Boring man! I still bit the bullet and went back played until I discovered A.I. battle and with the augs I had...LMAO! the A.I. was kicking ass everywhere, challenge tower pffff! character tower? no problem! like I only helped in task specific towers and was grinding hard but realized what am I doing? is this how the game is? the COM is playing for me cause the game got boring and am wasting my holiday time grinding to play the fun part of the game? why? those feelings and ideas started to build up. got enough stuff to go through the krypt again and the more I unlock areas and see all the easter eggs and fun in there I was almost in tears man but those feelings and ideas where in the back of my head and I know for a fact that I might not be able to bring my self up to do the towers of time again cause I see no point in them. I missed MKDA,MKD,MKA,MK9 AND MKX Flow, you play the story and the klassic tower and you are almost through the krypts just with a bit more grind you get there, for MK9 and MKX you got through those CREATIVE challenge towers that every level has a story tid bits that made it feel satisfying to play and finish, felt like pretend with friend that you can not do that and now fight! it was so much fun!!! and you earn well to unlock... that was not MK11, I think apart from having challenge towers like MK9, it could have been the Krypt it self, to earn in there and play and have fun to unlock, it could have been lots of mini games of test your might, test your sight, test your luck, and hunting for clues, but who am I kidding deving these cost money and LOTS of money! and the boys probably deved the towers and found out it had an issue and got the A.I. going to solve that cause they spent time and money and just can not scrap that whole thing, I know this has to be what happened, the system was already in place and they discovered the fatal issue and came up with the A.I. mechanic cause they can not scrap the whole system and flush it down the drain ( this is me spekulating by the way!!! do not take what I said as something written in stone ). MK11 and UMK11 is a fantastic package of a game, the fighting mechanic that EVERYONE CAN ENJOY!!! which is very hard to do in a fighting game and MK always does it right! and do justice, but what makes MK a full package was the secrets and the sense of discovery, feeling like and explorer, I hope this will be for the next project, I still need to get my self to finish that krypt, but I got to grind those towers :( I don't want to waste my time cause I gotta work and family. maybe for the next project you guys at NRS will do it better, even add a photo mode to the krypt so the player feels like he is going on a Disney ride in the MK univese, the player IS the traveler and by the end of the krypt just like MKD but with a twist, you are the traveler that you spent time to costumize, you get to play him as a fighter and use a chunk of the unlocks to make him your own fighter like MKA, maybe not move set but like the MK11 system and you chose a character let's say scropion and this traverler will take scorpion's move set and adjust the style like what you guys did in MK11 customization so he won't be a broken character and even playes will use him in tournaments!!! no towes of time, no A.I. just game play, actual game play and fun!

I love you guys, I love MK and I wouldn't be where I am standing in my life without MK cause it really changed my life and helped me make LIFE ALTERING CHOICES! and no regrets! I might sound seriously dumb but I do not care, hire me for ideas! LMAO! no... am dumb LOL! anyway, this is my impression of UMK11, it is on sale until the 5th on steam GET IT NOW! NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! the game is eyecandy and fun! apart from those towers! love you all I hope you guys will have a better 2021 and Ed Boon man... I love you man, keep up the fantastic work! ps: I was not hired to do this, am just a fan who wanted to share his feelings about the game, might not align with other fans, might express others, but this is just my personal view.

Texturing Method for stylized texture

 

Disclaimer : am not a tutorial creator, I do not have professional sound equipment or proper editing softwares I just used what I have to create this video.

This is not a beginner tutorial this is totally methodical for advanced users as it explains the method and that method can be applied in different 3D and graphic software combination of the user's choice. This video was a request from some people to showcase how I textured a previous character I did for a class.

I will try to make a write up when I get some time for further details

and yes I know, the UV map is a nightmare fuel but that is not the focus of the video

 

PS: watch the video first to have an idea of what am talking about. 

 

 Process Break Down : 

1- Creating the model and putting as much details as possible ( even using multi res modifier for sculpting details will help a lot if needed )

2 - unwrap the model ( Clean unwrapping is very important.

3 - Bake an AO Map and this will be the most important map that we will generate almost everything out of it

4 - Sketching the rest of the details with a brush inside blender right into the model on the AO map we made before (Note : keep a clean version of it separately in case it is needed) , simple sketch (note the tighter the sketch the cleaner the details will be ) details like stitches, lines, designs, whatever is in the concept that you see your model needs to have

5- take that AO to any editing software, I used CSP

6- use image editing Level tool to increase the contrast value
7- using image editing Binarized ( basically creating hard black and white image )  (Note: if it looks grainy use blur to soften those grains before applying binarized. here you will have your "lineart" later that will be on top with Multiple mode

8- that same AO sketch layer we take a fresh one and use the same process but this time instead of Binarized we use Posterized in CSP or Cutout in Photoshop, adjust the values to the desired result.

9- selecting each area of a different color, basically just breaking down the texture to different layers (head, hands, legs, hair, etc...)

10- select what you want to color and apply image editing gradient map tool to it and adjust the colors to the desired result 

11-Back to Blender Duplicate the model , unwrap it based on view ( select front view )

u will have a messy UV for the duplicated model now but it will serve its purpose, apply a gradinate color texture to that model ( Dark values at the bottom, light values at the top ) select the duplicate model and select the original model, go to Bake window in the render section and choose texture and hit bake, take that bake and lay it on top of your texture with multiple mode with 29% opacity. 

 

and you are done!

PS : ( you can take that lineart layer and add as much details lines, cross hatching shadows to your hearts content )

if you are interested on how I came up with the character design there is a video of a stream on facebook in the following link : https://www.facebook.com/ZaidSkeletalRaven/videos/3156005564431430

the character design sheet : https://www.facebook.com/ZaidSkeletalRaven/posts/3156271217738198

for more stuff you can follow me on twitter : https://twitter.com/DarkZedo

Shameless plug : am currently working on a game called Good Knight it is a Filipino indie bullet hell game Set in a Gothic steampunk Philippines, a Spanish Knight sets his foot in this unique hell.

Good Knight FB : https://www.facebook.com/gaming/GoodKnightGame/

Good Knight Steam :https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281400/Good_Knight/

https://youtu.be/dur8G81S9D8

Good Knight Bullet Hell Buttclenching Action is out as Early Access demo on Itch io!

Good Knight Bullet Hell!

#ButtClenching Action

"Philippines' Best Desktop and Console Game" - GDAP GameOn 2019 Awards

"Philippines' Most Innovative Game" - GDAP GameOn 2019 Awards

"Best Indie Game of ESGS" - GG Network, 2019

"Most Popular Indie Game of ESGS" - GMA Network, 2018

"A game for the community, by the community" - Gosh Darn Geeky, 2019

Download the early access here: https://tinyurl.com/GoodKnightGame
Its free don't worry no need to pirate! Heck even if you did we would still help you out, all fans are welcome.

COME JOIN US AT DISCORD XD
discord.gg/k8JXm3Z

But we appreciate donations if you guys enjoyed it. As filipino devs we're really having a hard time even paying our rent.

We'll reward everyone who has donated ala crowdfunding (see page).
You don't have money but you want to support? Share it with your friends!, spreading the word is enough.

What is Good Knight Bullet Hell?

A small team of developers, residing in Baguio City in the Philippines, an Iraqi Videogame Artist and Game Designer (Zaid Al-Shaheed), Filipino Game Developer/ Designer (Alex Valdez), Filipina Artist (Jeff Molina), as well as Music Composer (Ramon Nario).

A small team of developers, residing in Baguio City in the Philippines, an Iraqi Videogame Artist and Game Designer (Zaid Al-Shaheed), Filipino Game Developer/ Designer (Alex Valdez), Filipina Artist (Jeff Molina), as well as Music Composer (Ramon Nario).

Zaid is a Bachelor in 3D Animation, and has resided in the Philippines for 6 years, after relocating to the country as a refugee from Iraq. He has been working on game development since 2011; doing concept art, 2D art, 3D art, animation, and more. Zaid has worked on titles such as Loot & Glory, Yurei Ninja, and What Bread!? for Tabletop, IOS, and Android.

Late 2018, Zaid and his friend Alex decided to strike out and work on a game of their own Called Good Knight. It was a humble, small budgeted project, that grew bigger and bigger as it went. We started on trying to get a demo ready for the ESGS event in 2018. The ESGS is one of the biggest gaming conventions in Southeast Asia!

The Electronic Sports and Gaming Summit, otherwise known as the ESGS, combined the elements of competition in gaming with a chance to showcase what set us apart from other games.

Several companies as well as different gaming organizations that organizing e-Sports Tournaments, both local and international, have shown interest in Good Knight, while wanting to sell their latest and upcoming games and or products to the general public.

Recently at the Indie Fiesta at ESGS, Good Knight was featured as one of the highlights of the show. The game attracted a huge audience and was featured on such local news outlets such as SiriusGaming, DaGeeks.com, Whatsageeks.com, and even the Main-stream Media site Gmanetwork.com. The team behind Good Knight have continued their work on the game all the way through Global Game Jam 2019.

Global Game Jam, also referred to as GGJ, is an annual gaming conference, where new and established Gaming Developers get together to show off their new and exciting projects! Inspired by the Nordic Game Jam, and founded by the talented Susan Gold, Ian Schreiber, Gorm Lai, and Foaad Khosmood, it was originally created under the International Game Developers Association, to bring together the elements of Creativity, Collaboration, and Experimentation! At each booth, participants gather and form ideas, small groups, and build new innovative games, with the hopes of presenting them to their peers and the global community at large... Not only doing so collectively, but in a VERY limited time span!

As of 2013, the GGJ has been managed by the Global Game Jam Incorporated. The Current and past Board Directors, which include the founders Elonka Hunin, Lindsay Grace, and Zuraid Buter. During January 2019, the GGJ managed to generate teams in over 860 sites, with over 113 countries participating! These groups, IN ONLY ONE WEEKEND, managed to create 9,010 games! That's crazy!!! During this event, Good Knight won the Site Award, for being the most innovative game at the VR Philippines Global Game Jam "VR Edition". and were able to showcase the game "Mama Mo" at the SM CyberZone, which is an event hosted by the Biggest Megamall in the Philippines!

Good Knight’s Zaid and Alex, have continued working on the project while interested investors backed it originally. A while later, Jeff Molina joined the team as an Assistant Artist, to help flesh out Good Knight. They have been working together, to turn this project into a professionally polished product, that will meet the standards of a Triple A game, using software like Blender Open Source and the Unity Engine. Recently, Ramon Nario, the Fresh Music Talent, joined the team which gave Good Knight a much-needed audio flare! The music he was able to create, has brought Good Knight to a new level of entertainment and quality!

Unfortunately, at this point in development, Team Good Knight and their financial investors had to part ways due to differences in opinion regarding the quality of the game and the development cycle required to bring such a high-quality product to market. Team Good Knight is now back to being a completely Indie product, with no reservations or compromises to our core values!

With ESGS 2019 quickly approaching, Team Good Knight, was worried about how people might receive the game. Thankfully the reception to Good Knight was phenomenal! Over 150 player during our three days at ESGS, played the demo. With high praises of our High Score tracking, many elite gamers tried to break each-other’s scores. This felt like the old arcade days again! The highest quality competitors returned to our booth, time and time again, to surpass each other’s records! Even more exciting than this, was the amount of spectators who peered over each-other’s shoulders, to watch the games in progress, while waiting for their turn!

Gaming Media outlets, as well as Streamers and Pro Players were praising this game for its simplicity to start, yet deep gameplay curve. Bregz Gaming, GG Network, as well as returning independent gamers returned to our booth to attempt one another. All were impressed with the demo. The Taipei Game Show organizers were amazed with Good Knight's re-playability and the fluidity of the combat mechanics. Good Knight was a hit with the Indie arena at ESGS 2019!

To NO surprise, Good Knight - Bullet Hell is now a GameOn 2019 Nominee!

Good Knight is a One-Button Bullet Hell! It is set in a Gothic Steampunk Philippines! A Spanish Knight set his foot into this unique hell, and the only thing keeping him from death is a unique gameplay mechanic which sets a completely new twist on the Bullet Hell genre of games. With a simple, yet unique control scheme, you evade "bullets" by tapping a single button. This button changes the directions of the Knight while simultaneously slashing any and all enemies that get to close. You can even hold the button down and aim Projectiles at the enemy with the analog stick. Good Knight is a mix between Skill based games that rely on focus and muscle memory, combined with Puzzle elements that really brought the Bullet Hell genre to the next level!

The Good Knight Team is preparing for Crowd-funded backing via IndieGogo and Itch.io campaigns, which will be able to allow us to continue development of Good Kngiht. We are currently planning on bringing this wonderfully fun game to Steam, the Nintendo Switch, the PS4, and Android phones and tablets.

For more information on the Good Knight Team or the Good Knight Game, please visit the following pages:

FaceBook : https://www.facebook.com/GoodKnightGame
Twitter : https://twitter.com/GoodKnightHell

Written by Zaid Al-Shaheed
Edit by Corey Krattli

Good Knight Character Development Process.

GOOD KNIGHT KNIGHT Creation Process!!!

Hello there! 

After like Ages of no posting and just can't keep up to update the blog! here is some good post showcasing the whole process of Developing the Knight Protagonist of GoodKnight Game.

Early Prototype :

In the Beginning we were not sure which direction we are going with when it comes to art style or design, it was a bit more of experimental stage, so I took a direction which I was more comfortable with, Designing a simple character that will show nice flat shaded style to give a 2D illusion for a 3D model.

Started the model with a simple blocking of the character silhouette to get as close as possible to the concept, from there I just Painted it inside Blender with High Opacity Straight Curve Brush.

After that moved to rigging using Rigify tools in blender in Legacy mode as it did not need a complex rig for the model, removed the fingers from the rig as well and Rigging was done, nothing too complex. 

Animation was very simple fun looking run cycle with lots of energy to give the character that feel of urgency as he is after all Running away from a storm of bullets coming to his direction, and with a couple of few other animations for having the option to do something else and the model was ready for Unity.


After we got a positive reception for the Prototype and we had more time to think of where the game over all look and feel is going, we decided to redesign the knight from the ground out but still few elements of the old design are still intact. 

Concept Art :

The head was the iconic look of the Knight, the Horns, the Visor and hidden face were the major elements that we wanted to keep.

We started with Many rough sketches exploring different designs while we still kept in mind those elements ( the Horns, The visor and the face ) 

After finding out our design, we did a quick coloring for the concept to make sure everything looks and feels right, and we kept polishing and tweaking the design until we found what we wanted.

Modeling :

I used Blender 2.79 for the process

Started the modeling process using a rough model sheet to give the estimate over all proportions as a guide. 

Blocked the model and kept it as lowpoly as possible as one of the main target platform is Mobile as much as we want it for PC and for performance, as the game needs more processing power for the bullets and collision detection so we kept it as low as it can be while it still looks clean and polished.

For my workflow to sculpting is I give the lowpoly as much major details as possible, from topology flow for deformation to silhouette and where the light will cast shadow for the major areas.

Applying Multi-Tris Modifier and sculpting the character's details while not affecting the silhouette much as that was finalized in the Modeling process.

I use the Multi-Res Modifier for the sculpt to help me speed things up as I usually end up skipping retopology all together if we are 100% sure that this is the concept and no major changes are needed.

To Fine out more about Multi-Res modifier aka ( Multi Resolution ) visit this link : Multiresolution Blender Doc

Texturing :

After Sculpting all the details, Unwrapped the character using UV maps for different parts ( Body, Helm, cloth ) to give it more details in the baking process and as he is the main character he needs a bit more Juice power to bring out his flashy look.

Applied baking the maps from Blender internal engine using Bake From MultiTris option, Baking Ambient Occlusion, Normal and Displacement map to get as much details as possible from the Sculpt.

Taking those Maps to Clip Studio Paint and Applying Gradient Map to different to get as close as possible to the concept's feel and look, followed by Paint over, shifting between Blender and Clip Studio Paint to the Texture. 

The model was starting to look good and polished and we called the model done.

Rigging :

Again Rigging was simple, I used Blender Rigify in Legacy Mode and removed the fingers, applied the rig to the model in Separate parts ( Belt, Helmet, Visor, cloth, etc ) with Automatic weights, doing that will help the algorithm have a more accurate weight and saves the pain of doing paintweights but might have some minor cleaning, some times if there are over lapping parts the algorithm will get confused when Automatic Paint weight is applied.

Animation : 

Followed the Similar idea for the Run as I did for the previous Prototype Knight "simple fun looking run cycle with lots of energy to give the character that feel of urgency".

Added few other animations such as a jump animation to filp the character's direction and Death animation and few more for variation, and the Knight was Good to GO!, you saw what I did there? Knight? Good? XD sorry for that.

So this is the Pipeline that is followed for all of our assets in general, I hope that was helpful or at least interesting read to help you with your next project. 

Follow us for more GoodKnight updates on Twitter and Facebook 

Twitter :  https://twitter.com/GoodKnightTTI

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/GoodKnightGame

And you can check out our teaser trailer here : GoodKnight Game Teaser Trailer

Here is the Knight with a Glorious Stache when I was testing Blender 2.8 :D

and Have a Fantastic Day Ahead!

  

Loot and Glory a Family Friendly Tabletop Fantasy game!

Hi Guys!

One of the biggest projects that we have done this year that kept us busy was Loot and glory a tabletop fantasy game that is family friendly.

55 characters with varied races and the cover art and few random illustrations check out their page, where you can find lots of wonderful character art, character lore and more info about the game, give em a like and share to help making the game into reality, they are in the final stages now and has a physical beta copy of their instruction manual.

Going to Kickstarter very soon!

FB :https://www.facebook.com/Lootandglory-1634361566662288/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/LootAndGlory

instagram :https://www.instagram.com/lootandglory/

Scrolled down for more info

and here are few artworks to give you a taste.

Design details

Our client requested a child friendly illustration that is lighthearted but still has the fantasy edge to it so we started out with Simple sketches (traditional and digital) following the client's description and ideas, we did our best to bring it to a solid concept.

after that followed by a digital clean up  High res ready to print art.

Thank you so much for reading through this and again visit their page and accounts give them a like, follow and share, pass em some love! they sure deserve it!

FB :https://www.facebook.com/Lootandglory-1634361566662288/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/LootAndGlory

instagram :https://www.instagram.com/lootandglory/

and Have a fantastic Weekend ahead!