So i had been planning for a while to continue development on Yokai Slam, my gain jam entry from last year. I feel like overall i ran out of ideas to improve it that didn’t involve turning it into a new game all together. After significant dillydallying i sat down and pumped out this prototype in 3 days. I would love to get your opinions so far on it.
I’ve decided to shift away from the name Yokai slam. This new project won’t feature exclusively yokai, and will instead contain all kinds of anthro girls. It’s also a platform fighter instead of a sumo sim. It will feature the cast from Yokai Slam, albeit with some slight redesigns. I’d like most of the roster to be very heavy but fast.
Controls:
It controls just like smash ultimate, but on a xbox gamepad.
If you don’t have a gamepad, you can use WASD and . to move and attack
NOTES:
-There are no attacks implemented yet except her forward, down, back, and neutral aerials.
-There’s no damage scaling yet, and the enemy has no AI.
-The playable character currently uses the old Kirame model from Yokai Slam. I’m already working on a new model for her for this game. See below for a preview.
-All of the sounds are currently stolen from smash until i can get original replacements.
it’s a bit hard to tell because it is early and a lot of moves/systems aren’t there. it does feel alright, there are some minor things that feels off to me about the movement.
when you jump there is a delay where you can’t do any aerials. I get that it can be there so you can’t throw out some moves on frame 1 but it is to long in my opinion. in the melee the jump squat is between 3-6 frames (bowser is at 8 but he is so bad he might just as well not be in the game and his long jump squat is part of the problem)
if you are running in one direction and then switch to the other there is no sliding/recovery most of the time. I think the times where it worked properly was when I moved the stick to the other direction a bit slow but I am not sure. I don’t know if you want to have dashdancing in the game but as is right now you have infinite time to do it basically.
you can’t push the enemy by just walking into them
there is no recovery on aerials if you land on the ground while the attack is still going
I also found some bugs
if you tap the jump button really lightly (I only managed it on keyboard sometimes) you do a little hop to the right. I do like it tough (it’s a bit like a wavedash), it’s just to hard to do and you can’t control the direction you do it in
if you mash the direction you dash in multiple times you get a speed boost every time, so you can go super fast
you can cancel all aerials with a double jump. I do like it and think it could make some interesting combos work while still not letting the player negate recovery on all moves for free.
I do like the free form nature of the movement as is. most of my complaints are basically “it’s to free form to punish” which is much better than feeling to stiff and restrictive in my opinion.
Hey! I appreciate you taking an in depth look at this! I actually am aware of all of these bugs, and it’s mostly down to some behaviors being unprogrammed. Regarding jump lag, that’s something I’ve been tweaking and can easily adjust.
I’m thinking of having a flag for some moves as being jump cancelable. Her down air comes to mind as it’s guaranteed to result in death when used offstage.
I think that sideways jump is related to the angle of the stick being invalid if it’s at the resting position when the jump occurs.
There is actually a bug alternative to the weird jump right now. Try doing a dash but somewhere between 20 and 45 degrees upward. Due to the way I programmed the dash boost, it sends you in the direction of your stick press, not just forward so you can use it as a lagless shorthop, since it doesn’t initiate any jump animation.
I think that the dash is a bit to sensitive, it seems to activate when pressing the stick about half way making it difficult to make some more fine movements on the ground
it’s a shame to see the universal jump cancel gone so soon, I would have liked to see how it would work in a proper fight. I think that the window to jump out of the down aerial is a bit to late (or the ground jump is a bit to low) but it’s hard to judge when there isn’t an up special move in the game
having the vibrations on jumps seems excessive, on hits and landing makes sense (though I don’t like vibrations in general so take my opinion with a grain of salt)
some bugs
you can still get an extra speed boost by taping dash, it’s not as big as before but it is there. the extra boost you get seems to be most useful just after landing with speed, so you can get the boost while at top speed
doing the down attack on the enemy while she is in the air causes the bounce to be limited in how high she can fly. I did manage to get to ~1100% doing that, also when at 1000% the thousands doesn’t show :P
if you walk of the edge you don’t lose your ground jump (giving you 2 air jumps). it might be deliberate though to encourage people going off stage to edge guard
if you hold the stick really gently you can move without the turn around flag getting activated. you can also approach while having the slap spam active doing that.
Thank you for giving it another thorough look!
I will do my best to work on some of these issues. Removing the jump cancel was basically just me implementing interruptability into moves. I think a good solution would be adding interruptability frames to more attacks. Her neutral air is a very long move that cannot be interrupted, so i might put one there.
I may change her down air to halt her movement earlier
As for these bugs i’m aware of them already. Maintaining ground jump after walking off the side is in fact intentional.
I am not a big fan of the hitstun on multi-hit moves locking you in place. it feel strange to just stop in place like that and you get to hit with all the moves hits for free (more or less)
I think that all moves need some vertical component to them or you need to have lower friction while in hitstun (I think there are no moves that go completely to the side in the smash games). right now the back air launches the enemy a really short distance when it is grounded (the target flew about the same distance as the enemy when the target had around 200% and the enemy had 800%)
I am not so sure about the “Sakurai Angle”. I like that some moves can be way different when at high % (moves with little to no launch scaling would be interesting of example). but on the other hand I dislike the inconsistency it could create. also 0° angles should probably be avoided as mentioned before
it says that there is a “forward charged attack” but I have not been able to do it
I find jumping at max height a bit awkward and that you need to get max height to platform on the stage. since you can’t get max height and move to the side at max speed, jumping up the pillar for example requires you to slow down quite a bit. when running, at max jump height your feet reaches about as high as her eyes are when on the ground. when standing still here feet reaches about as high as the top of the targets lower line thing (so you lose about 1/3 of your jump or so).
I also feel like the jump height is a bit low (unless this character will have the shortest jump). in the smash games basically all characters can jump up on the lowest platform in one jump with height to spare (it does look like the platforms are a bit higher tough, like the bottom is where the top would be or something like that).
I do like the lower jumping while running tough, I feel it makes the movement more horizontal which I like for some reason. I just think you jump a bit to low (you should at least be able to jump over yourself).
you could make the stages a bit more compatible with the lower jumping if you don’t want to buff the jump height but I believe something should be done
I like the jump-canceling with the walk of double jump allowing you to do some fake outs or hit someone twice
more bugs you probably already know about
whenever anything lands or takes damage the vibrations happen
the forward tilt can sometimes hit twice and can hit with the butt if you are standing right next to the enemy
the stomp is inconsistent with launching the enemy upwards when on the ground
the angle the back air launched the enemy seems inconsistent
if you run and jump holding the button until after you have reached the apex of the jump the game seems to stop registering the jump button for a bit
you can’t shorthop when running (or you can only shorthop when running)
if you jump straight up and then hold backwards you will not trigger the turn around allowing you to run backwards
if you activate slow motion mode you seem to jump a bit higher (I did all my jump measuring in slow motion so some things I say about jump height might be a bit off)
I did manage to trigger a glitch which made me unable to jump. I was stuck between the wall and the enemy (reset the position and slap twice with full recovery to get into position), then I did some small hops and I couldn’t jump anymore until I killed myself. I think what is happening is that the jumping status doesn’t get updated properly because I get pushed into the ground or something like that
Thanks again! I intend on taking a more conservative approach with hitstun in the final game. I wanna reserve it for moves designed to multi hit and stuff that does large single launches. I also agree that straight 0 degrees launch generally feels unsatisfying and awkward. I will play around with some slightly different angles on attacks. Generally keep in mind almost no concrete balance work has been done yet, as Kirame’s model and attacks are likely to be entirely replaced. She is probably going to be the heaviest character in the roster.
I’m going to play around with jump physics a bit more soon as well. I think i need to make the jump height consistent even when tilted forward or backward
the charged attack can be executed by holding forward and then holding B or , (i think , works? if not try ctrl or shift)
I will be mapping these attacks to a B+A hold or A+Tap like it’s done in smash soon, i just need to program an input buffer.
One thing of note: Her back air has a small hitbox that starts early on the underside of her belly, it launches 45 degrees downward.
I decided that before i continue any modeling work, i’m going to do some quick design tweaks to these 3 characters. I mostly wanted to work with their outfits. Since yokai slam was all about sumo, each character had sumo-themed clothing, but Kirame is the only of the 3 fighters who is actually a professional sumo. In this game, since no particular combat sport is going on, i’m going to bring out some more of their individual personality in their outfits.
-Kirame’s outfit is still very sumo inspired, but contains more hints of her sweeter out-of-ring personality. She’s gotten a lot larger, and has difficulty fighting using her arms, so most of her moveset will make use of her other features.
-Tsuyoi is trained in combat sport, but she only entered the sumo competition in yokai slam because she put on too much weight to sign up for anything else at the time. In this game, she has a slightly more casual look, while still complimenting her tougher personality.
-Glasgow’s outfit is still largely a work in progress, but i’d love to work with the idea that she kinda just showed up, since that’s basically what happened in yokai slam. She just kinda signed up to be in a sumo competition because she was already there, and thought it would be funny for her stream.
