I made a Fighting Game Frame Data System for my Indie Game!

Follow Isadora's Edge on Kickstarter: www.kickstarte...
Wishlist Isadora's Edge on Steam: store.steampow...
Check out JD on Twitter: / jd_benefield
What's up, Gamers?
This video is a breakdown of my slick new Frame Data system for making cool attacks in my indie game! Hope you like it!
The game that I'm developing as an indie game dev is called Isadora's Edge! A 2D Pixel Art platformer game, that I'm developing in the Godot Game Engine! If you're new to Godot or have any questions about Godot or game dev in general, feel free to ask me!
=== THE LOVELY AND TALENTED INSANDIO ===
KZbin: / @insandio
=== HASHTAGS ===
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[@InboundShovel]

If you're interested, here's where you can wishlist Isadora's Edge on Steam! store.steampowered.com/app/3125320/Isadoras_Edge/ And you can follow the Kickstarter here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/inboundshovel/isadoras-edge Thank you!

[@Tomascky]

can't wait for it! 😁

[@Drejzer]

Have you considered releasing the game on GOG? I'd love to buy it there.

[@jayegamer8172]

as far as stretch goals, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES do any physical rewards for your stretch goals. Alex Preston from Heart Machine in an interview mentioned that he regretted doing physical rewards for his stretch goals

[@Kio_Kurashi]

I mean... Could you specify why so I don't have to see if I can find that interview and then watch the whole thing to get context? I can think of a few reasons, shipping costs for one, but if it's something like stickers you could probably mail it really easily and cheaply. But even something like keychains or enamel pins start having a pretty high cost after all of the manufacturing and shipping so I do understand there's a limit.

[@charlot6590]

"A guy said he regretted it" isn't advice... Why did he regret it? What specific physical rewards caused problems and why?

[@Deadlock-art]

Internal demon: You should be sexier. Isadora: Fuck that, I'm slaying mushroom infected monsters!

[@miwiarts]

As someone who's in the works of fighting games, this was really fun to learn and see!

[@InboundShovel]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@yamjianthewolf8031]

Where can i see your work if you dont mind ?

[@Kai_Vega]

Great video! But I just wanted to point out a few things that you should be careful with this type of hitbox system. One problem that may arise is "going through attacks without getting hit". Is similar to the problem of movement collisions going through walls. This is usually fixed by either automatically interpolating hitboxes (Smash bros does this) or simply covering the space of the frame that came before with the hitbox. Another problem that is similar is how the attack looks v.s. how it feels. Using your example of the frog kick, think that the legs didn't just teleport from the ground to that elevated position, they moved there, so in theory if I stand next to the legs before they kick, I should be kicked by the strong part. However, with the example you showed, if there is a sweetspot on the tip but not on the legs and the animation is so fast it only happens in 1 or 2 frames, the chartacter may only be hit by the weak part even though it feels like it should have been hit by the strong one, which feels wrong. Basically what I'm trying to say is, look at how hitboxes are placed in games and you will notice they don't "look right" frame by frame, but when you are playing, they "feel right", because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (the attack is more than each individual frame). Some attack hitboxes are very simple and work great. Also, smash hitboxes have a priority system so that if you happen to be hit by more than one hitbox of the same attack in the same frame, only one of them will be the one that deals the hit, useful for when you have sweet and sour spots so it is easier/harder to be hit by those (and the obvious one of not dealing more damage than intended). Also also, maybe consider giving the hitboxes their unique player invincibility value so, for example, you can make weak attacks grant less invincibility and stronger attacks more, allowing you to make attacks that can hit you multiple times in quick succession without the invincibility messing it up or, like you mentioned, balancing the fact that players could take the weak hit to gain long invincibility frames. Sorry if my message was too long and overwhelming or it feels as if I'm badly criticizing or the comment simply sounds rude, I hope your game is a great success! (Final) also, a question, since you are handling this frame by frame (and sorry if you have already answered this in a video I haven't watched), is your game always going to run at the same frame rate? if not, how are you going to handle frame data if the game runs at 15 fps in my PC? or at 144? Fighting games are designed to always run at a fixed frame rate exactly because everything is measured in frames. I may be wrong but I think Smash is an exception, however as I mentioned before they interpolate the hitboxes so it doesn't really become a problem (and only runs in a console so they know 99% of the time it will run at its intended frame rate).

[@InboundShovel]

Thank you for this write-up, it's super helpful! You're right - I don't have much experience placing my hitboxes, so this is really useful advice! I've seen plenty of "disjointed" hitboxes in Smash, and I never really critically thought about those are useful to cover the "implied motion" of the frame, so that's really important for me to keep in mind when I'm actually placing the hitboxes! I've really only hooked up hitboxes for like, 3 or 4 attacks since I made the system (I have a biiiig to-do list of attacks to build), and boy I'm happy I read this comment before I did all those attacks, you probably single-handedly just /massively/ improved the framedata in my indie game with your comment LOL I might also try interpolating the hitbox, but I think just having the hitboxes built out to incorporate the movement feels nicer to me, I'll play with it and figure out what works best, feeling wise! For the priority, that's something I had already been thinking about, and will definitely add as a field for each piece of frame data, but I hadn't considered the implications of having unique player invincibility values - I'll definitely play with that too! For the frame by frame, right now the animation player runs on idle time (rather than on physics ticks), but I could change that so that the animation players run on physics ticks to avoid any issues with hitbox activation due to low FPS - although the callback style is all deferred, so it /shouldn't/ be an issue. And might even be better because running the AnimationPlayer on physics ticks could theoretically result in the player getting hit by an attack that exclusively happened during frames that didn't even happen on screen, so that's probably something I'll just have to solve if it comes up in playtesting, heh But seriously, thank you so much for your comment - it was really, really helpful!

[@FlashEF]

I love in-depth gamedev content, even though I only play games, never made anything serious. It's just so cool to know the thinking and engenering that goes into it. Makes me appreciate the game more.

[@trayhl]

On the bit about running tool scripts on the animation player, why not do the opposite. Create a tool script that reads the animation data, list it down and play it on the inspector scene. Kind of like an "animation inspection" tool. I already saw a bunch of games that do this, including games i've worked on. This was based in unity, but we got the animator and read the animation state machine state by state, layer by layer, and created an array of all the animations of that animator, listing it on scene view. We could then click on the animation name to play it on the model in the inspection view. I think it's possible to fuse a system like that to your frame data system.

[@InboundShovel]

Oh wow, this is a fantastic suggestion - thank you!

[@NathanSmithSkits]

Im working in my indie game and I always watched your vids for fun. Its now in a new light because its fun and informative for my game dev. Thanks for the great videos 👍

[@MrMoczan]

Worth noting that fighting games apply hitstop on a per-entity basis, not for the whole game e.g if you block a projectile, only character blocking and the projectile itself are affected not the opponent who threw the projectile, some games change the amount of hitstop based on special properties e.g. in Guilty Gear hitting a Counter Hit will apply more hitstop to the enemy than to the player.

[@InboundShovel]

Oh, that's a great point - I hadn't even thought about varying hitstop across entities! Thank you! :D

[@Ashurion-Neonix]

Regarding proration and risc gain, Someone's probably mentioned this already but I haven't seen a comment. Proration is a system that drops the amount of damage the next attack in a combo does so that you can deal decent damage with stray hits without the combos nuking people's health bars. The lower the proration the less damage. (Idk the exact math of how it works) Risc is a system in guilty gear that builds up when you block an attack. Different attacks and characters build different amounts of risc. Once the guage is full the next hit immediately breaks you out of blocking, basically a system to stop people from standing there and blocking for too long.

[@sakuyarules]

LMAO I loved the apology to the sprite.

[@eikhylleberg6504]

i have a friend that is making a fighting platformer to, different style and stuff but ive send him almost every single one of your videos because they are so informative on the subject

[@vigigy484]

Hope mango gets well soon 🔜

[@Strudlll]

Woah 15 seconds ago thats crazy! Looking forward to this game!

[@eagleeyeedit]

Dang G you're doing so much in so little time, great job staying focused on your game's development!

[@Gabreil-o9e]

Amazing video. Your shorts was one of the reasons I started to get into game development... So thanks and I wish you the best.

[@ricardopitta8272]

Nice work! Consider to open source the frame data system as a Godot addon!

[@peptstar]

one day I'll learn how to do this fancy frame data stuff, untill there now I have a video to use as inspiration! good work!

[@RainRecoded]

I love your channel and thanks for your videos! They're a great source of motivation and I can't wait to play your game one day

[@NoahGoodman-xb9zf]

23:32 The variation in damage on parts of attacks has interesting speedrunning applications. Routing has to account for what attacks you should tank, what can't you tank, what part of the attack should be used for a damage boost, etc... keep it, it's awesome.

[@ghostoftog6128]

Stretch goals. In terms of goals, if you eventually get to make console ports, a physical edition of the game would be nice.

[@InboundShovel]

Oh yeah, that would be awesome!

[@ponodude101]

Very cool, super detailed video! Absolutely loved the thoroughness of this one!

[@BossartNova]

The animation player node is pretty extensive but i also wanted to find ways to implement a more thorough hitbox system. It was very inspiring to see your implementation of it!

[@BrawlingHedgehog]

One idea for the taking weaker hits to avoid stronger hits problem. Identify the attacker so that I-frames make you invinsible to other attackers, but if the same enemy/source has other hitboxes that come out while you're in knockback, those ones still hit.

[@KM-rw9cp]

Great video! Worth the watch, many insights that will help me and others when considering hitbox data implementations. Goodluck!

[@fadepanther6224]

Stretch goal ideas for ya: 1: A boss rush/challenge mode. 2: A rougelike mode that can randomly give things per encounter. 3: New Game Plus mode. 4: Colorization for the Main Character that can be unlocked via some internal goals. 5: An "cheat" mode, that gives some goofy things you can unlock, ala old NES, PS1, and XBOX days. (Big head mode is something I can think of but doesn't really fit in this game, but gives the idea that I'm talking about. But maybe something that swaps the sounds of the attacks out for some goofy sounds like Cat meows, Cow sounds, or quacks. XD) I've yet to get to the building part of my game, but this shows something I had been worried about for a while. I honestly wish I could get my hands on that system you're using, but fully understand that it is all yours and is for your game. Awesome AWESOME stuff all the same though. I hope your Background artist heals up fully before coming back, and I hope your kickstarter goes over well. So far, it seems you've got the solid points of a game locked down and don't seem to be willing to SUDDENLY shifting things at a moment's notice. (Daikatana comes to mind.) So I know the game will be a good one when it comes out, I just hope luck will be on your side when it does. ^^

[@sachitechless]

You gave Dahyun a voice and responded to you in the video you now legally have to make her a video mascot who occasionally pops in and talks shit about Isadora

[@InboundShovel]

This is a great suggestion, heh heh heh

[@salmonbamminfish2925]

Man I’ve just started game dev and really want to make just a simple fighting game like smash but you explaining it makes me realize how far I am from that

[@salmonbamminfish2925]

Also literally liked and left this comment right before the part where you assume I already did those things 😅

[@tevor09]

if the key art's isadora existed as human in real life i would marry her

[@DJCosmas]

I feel the simps will come fast now (nothing against you in particular, just people with questionable morals simping over Isadora)

[@tevor09]

@@DJCosmas lol

[@OxygenBeats]

Yeah, I love these videos where you really into the weeds! Keep it up! :D

[@DJCosmas]

the art (both pixel and the game art) reminds me of The Messenger's art.

[@TheGasmaskEnby]

i would love to see how to implement and like actually use this system for other projects ngl, looks like something that would make making complex real time 2d fighting systems a lot nicer to make and stuff

[@doctormk2653]

Absolutely amazing. Thanks again mate. ❤

[@Sylfa]

Fun fact, not even a closed source game engine can allow building directly to game consoles either, they have to first ensure that you've signed the NDAs before they can allow that legally. So in essence, it doesn't actually make much difference if it's a FOSS engine or not. Well, not with the MIT license like Godot has at least. For GPL style engines you wouldn't actually be allowed to make the necessary changes since you'd be forced to release the source code which would break the required console licensing.

[@hotworlds]

Said this in another comment but wanna spread it as wide as possible: a group of devs released FOSS build tools for Godot that they distribute freely but only to approved Nintendo developers. From what I understand the legality is only that you need to be approved and agree to Nintendo's license to be allowed to see any code written for their hardware.

[@gnrashu5735]

OKay but like, I literally need your frame data system xD

[@frobafett5892]

Huh.... Any chance we could get an actual step by step "dive into the weeds" tutorial on how to do this? Asking for... A friend. Totally not myself. (Ok, I'll admit it: I'm the one who needs this!)

[@TheHelderVinicius]

To me you should go more in-depth into the technical details , I'm just starting with Godot and it really helps me out !!

[@novomiracle988]

I love the system, I'm a big sucker for easily customizable and consistent systems. But for the one attack that hits with different effects on different places, it could mess with the player's expectations. Because when they got hit once by the attack and got one effect and then get hit with same attack and get a different one it could lead to frustration if it's not obvious why. So that's definitely sth to watch out for

[@ludomaster3416]

o7 Mango. I hope they feel better soon!! Edit: I really want to draw pixel art and stuff... BUT fractured both of my bones in my right arm (Dominant arm), so issues have emerged...

[@AvaThroughFire]

I’m so excited for this, I’m totally gonna steam it when it’s out. Gives very faint Celeste vibes (my favorite game) but any female lead pixel platformer kinda will

[@owencmyk]

Definitely has some room for even more streamlining, but overall this is cool as hell

[@escapegoat573]

pull a shovel knight and have 2nd playable campaign as a stretch goal!

[@escapegoat573]

60% a joke

[@InboundShovel]

That's a really interesting idea! I'll think about it! :D

[@Anerisian]

fantastic content

[@AllanSavolainen]

Silly question, why isn't the frame data just encoded as an animation? With 24bit images you could encode just about everything there could be into the image itself and wouldn't be limited to hitbox shapes but could use pixel perfect hitboxes. Damage could be encoded in R channel, thus giving 255 different options, with logarithmic damage it would scale well, also you could have hitboxes with gradient damage. G channel could encode effects like push/pull, allowing easily 16 effects with 16 parameters, like pull and 4 directions and 3 strenghts, or using G and B channels for this, you can easily have 256 effects/options with each 256 different options. You could even encode things likes, passes thru walls etc into the bits. Or for more fun, have simple encoding but allow animation to have multiple effect layers. This would be nice too as you can use the same effects in other game objects and even backgrounds or level art. Need a damaging block, just draw damage halo around it. Need slippery walls, just add ice halo around the blocks etc. To allow multiple effects from multiple objects, it is easy to add dithering, that is only required if you wanna make a shader that computes the hits and effects. If you do the check per enemy vs player basis, you only need to compare those two objects.

[@zeldack9742]

you should make the small whip attack give less which allows the enemy to do a double hit if you are hit this way

[@masterloic7180]

Hey that's so cool !

[@allstarspixel]

I hope IE is like Spark TEJ

[@pommedeter7407]

Mmh that new enemy looks very interesting! I would use her name, but I don’t know how it’s spelled. Is it "Da-hyun"? Anyway, she does look cool, and she fits the description you made of her, the incarnation of the insecurity of not being "sexy enough". I can easily imagine her taunting and belittling Isadora in a cruel way, being a reflection of her inner turmoil. But also, the "milfy dommy mommy" vibes, as you so eloquently put it, aren’t really part of the sexiness that society demands of women, it’s generally a more subservient aesthetic that is being sexualised (though that would be harder to design a threatening enemy around). To the contrary, the image of the milfy dommy mommy can sometimes be seen as a liberating role for some women because it puts emphasis on their agency, rejecting the vision of women as sexual objects to be used. Now I’m not at all saying that the design isn’t "correct" or whatever, it all depends on what kind of story you want to tell, and what kinds of themes are associated with her. I’m just rambling. It’s just that the design makes me think Isadora’s insecurity towards this enemy might be more a question of confidence and self image, more than the pressure of conforming to society’s feminine ideal. (Which is probably intentional on your part, again, this isn’t citicism, just speculation on what the themes will be). If I were to design a boss based on that second idea tho, I think I would probably make some kind of doll/puppet demon. First of all because it highlights the notion of the feminine ideal being an artificial notion that is highly unrealistic, but also how it reduces women to objects and disregards their agency. But then again, the result might be too horrifying for the aesthetics of a game like Isadora’s edge from the glimpses we’ve seen so far. So yeah I think that basically what this enemy stands for isn’t bad per se, but it is something Isadora is scared of/uncomfortable with, I would guess maybe she feels this way because this aesthetic demands a lot of confidence, notably in one’s own body and personality, and maybe Isadora lacks those? In any case, as usual both you and Fur have done a phenomenal job so far, and I hope Mango gets rest and recovers

[@InboundShovel]

Those are all really great points! And your idea of the doll/puppet boss is really cool! I think you nailed it on the head when you called out how the enemy design for Dahyun is more focused on Isadora's internal struggle - her own insecurities about her appearance. She feels that she isn't "sexy" enough, not living up to how she "should" be, and when she imagines what it would be like to be sexy "correctly", she pictures the strong, confident "dommy mommy". She doesn't yearn to be subservient, so her inner demon comes across as fully in control of her own sexuality. Once the other "inner demon" enemies get revealed, I think it will also paint a much fuller picture of her internal struggle! But I really, really appreciate the deep dive into the themes going on here! I've written up pages and pages of lore and context and intent about even small decisions, and reading you breaking down those aspects feels really awesome!

[@PawnxPawn]

I like tech details a lot. Otherwise I wouldn't watch ted talks and GDC's.

[@viniciusschadeck4992]

Daammmmmmm, i'am making a game using JavaScript ThreeJS, and i want to finish my first alpha to start trying godot, it looks sicks. Your game looks sick, this system looks cool, it is actually similar to what i did with only javascript, but yea, is like a json that i run in the game, but i fixed all my hitboxes with my frame system. Soo, if i want to add any frame, it not will blow the entire system, actually will take a extra frame to do the entire attack, and it will split the duration between the entire framelist, or even will remove the ones i put force duration time flag in, my system is kinda huge to a javascript game, but it runs fine using nwjs to make a chromium, also, due to in machine chromium i can read and write files in the computer file system making a really neat save system as well, soo my game has a lot of sysmte for a javascript game, i hope i can make it alpha stage in few time, i should release the first public version last christmas, but i did some extra system instead of focusing in the "demo" portion, and it start bugging a bit, what become a snow ball effect, and in the end i already increase the first release scope way to far. But i will polish and make it understandable for anyone, that is the goal, fix major bugs, and make it playable without any tutorial like stuff, then release... For some reasson my slime enemy has a issue when receiving damage it just break the entire game, but not leave any error message, soo, i had to figure out what is going on LOL

[@natanmaia3575]

Hi kenneth, amazing video! One thing ive been wondering is the implementation of hitstop, and if you've found any collaterals with Pause menus and alike. One of my games pauses the scene tree to display the ingame pause screen and the stage finish screen (which jave their pause mode reversed so they can run fine), and if some hitstop or slowdown (say, player death) is active it also is inherited by those menus, which leads to visual bugs with slow menus. I also couldnt wrap my head around hitbox priority or different knockback/damage values per hitbox myself. I've been using signals to do those collisions and if two hitboxes collide they both send signals and resolve those signals in random order. I wouldnt be able to sort, and multiple hitboxes would deal more damage in the same frame which seems silly.

[@FTSFBS]

all love

[@FyneServine9]

How are you handling hitbox priority? Essentially which hitboxes hit when a hurtbox overlaps multiple hitboxes.

[@QelerQr]

you said in a couple of devlogs and in the kickstarter page that isadora's edge is "Inspired by games like Hollow Knight, Megaman X, and Castlevania" which when you explain yourself in devlogs is fine but on the kickstarter page it is kinda misleading because saying a game is inspired by hollow knight and castlevania gives people the idea of a metroidvania which your game isn't so i think to avoid misleading wording you should spell out the genre more clearly

[@billydrink]

Very informative! I am wondering though, some attacks have two hit boxes overlapping, or are just really close to each other. What happens when you get hit by 2 or more hitboxes on the same frame? Does the strongest attack get prioritized? Does the hitbox closest to izadora get prioritized? Do you get double damage?

[@P1Ckl31]

These de logs come out like wildfire bro??? Please don’t get burnout!

[@j.r7872]

A W E S O M E !

[@Aim.09]

Your game looks so good When will the game be released

[@kurtisknodel]

I used to work in industry... Releasing on Switch is a huge hassle. Developer beware!

[@Idkikdhdnbd]

Can you make a short or a video about components in godot ?

[@SlimyMcTee]

Hi kinda unrelated with the main topic of the video, but since you outsourcing some of the works to the other artists, are there any general rules about what type/how much of fee/royalties etc for the artists? I kinda hope you can answer that in depth with a video but a short reply is okay too!

[@hellfiresapphire7246]

Cool

[@teh1archon]

I come from Unity and have no experience with Godot but I'm curious what are the design patterns to implement the frame data in the editor. Can you spill some light on it, please? I also wonder how difficult it will be to implement in Unity with no access to the engine's source code and how different the implementation would be with Unity's Components pattern vs Godot's Decorator pattern (I think it's decorator).

[@alfredogodoy6854]

Godot sage

[@chigstardan7285]

Never been this early to video wow

[@635574]

I didn't know console porting was this shit. No wonder the external ports are so common and expensive. I'm still sticking with Godot too

[@n0vitski]

Haven't watched the video, but will the mushroom girl be playable and will it have rollback netcode? 🗿

[@simonlow0210]

Im also trying to make an action game / fighting game, but Im also having this issue of not having an easy way to edit the hitbox and frame data and tie it to the animation. Cant really find a plugin for that so far. 😢

[@codyleaderbrand6536]

I have no development insight! 🎉😘

[@Rayu25Demon]

the game is metroidvania right? if yes, add "metroidvania tag".

[@victoralmeida6855]

What if the player touches two hit boxes at the same time? How do you decide which one should apply their effects?

[@neon-lake]

Speaking from my knowlege of fighting games here: option a: dont worry about it, just apply both as normal. Y would it be something to worry about? I guess if 2 hitboxes apply momentum it could be an issue, but your physics engine can just handle it naturally option b: add a "priority" system, basically any hitbox with a 'lower' priority is ignored and the higher priority move wins option c: make them "clash", both hitbox just 'bounce' off and no effect(or a unique effect) is applied, you'll need to add animations for the clash tho Street fighter has used both a and b: in sf6 if 2 attacks from the players overlap enough they 'trade' both characters r interrupted and take damage as normal, sf5 had a "crush counter" system: heavy attacks have more priority over medium and light attacks thus the heavier attack becomes "invulnerable" to the lighter attack. It just depends on what u want from your game, all have pos and cons. U can always mix and match depending on circumstace or even explore other options I cant remember rn If your wrried about singualr multi hitbox attacks overlapping their own hitboxes fighting games also do this all the time, and they only apply damage and effect once for that specific attack

[@matiassandoval3411]

what was the plugin used?

[@InboundShovel]

I used this one: godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/1054 Although, looks like this slightly different "button" plugin came out just a couple weeks ago (after I had already started using the other one), and it might be an improvement overall, based on quickly skimming through it: godotengine.org/asset-library/asset/3313

[@PawnxPawn]

lmao I just did this

[@jtheking6832]

Will the code for this system ever be provided?

[@Cryosimorgh]

Is Godot that primitive that you cannot manipulate colliders inside an animation or is it a clever and cheeky way of making the vid longer?

[@InboundShovel]

Obviously Godot can directly manipulate colliders in an animation - it's a powerful, capable engine, but doing that be a worse solution than the system I've created lmao

[@bob-zi3dj]

854 views

[@skepays]

I've decided to not leave a comment........dammit!

[@Sedokun]

5:17 It still make a little sense IMO. Cause Godot still can make a code that can easily integrated with the SDK but they don't.