Mortal Kombat HD Remix with MUGEN

I'm just going to have to respectfully disagree here and say that I thought Bleed's videos looked perfect in regards to the characters, animation and all. Also for example, scaling them to arcade size makes Shang Tsung look like a giant even in the original. He's further away if anything he should be smaller than the characters in the foreground but he's not. Making them bigger balances that out more. So regardless of any quality loss (which would be mitigated if MUGEN had bicubic or lanczos in it.. or if bleed rendered them out at a bigger size) I think they look better bigger.

Again, in the arcade they used stretching & overscan to achieve the illusion of bigger characters. That was always something that stood out to me in comparison to playing it at home. We don't have that on our modern HD screens.

If you're hell bent on making them the smaller size that's fine I guess. I still prefer Bleed's way. I'd take everything from option 3 except the character size from option A on character_sizing.jpg. In my opinion anyone saying it'd look horrible are saying they think Bleed's videos have all been horrible this whole time. Also the Bleed screencap example in the comparison one suffered from youtube compression... so in my opinion it wasn't exactly a fair comparison.

BTW, the latter teaser images (teaser_image_b and _c) look pretty incredible. I think the blood could use some work though particularly around the edges to make them look cleaner and I think it could use some shading around the edges too... kind of darken the edges up a bit & make the spurts look more dimensional.
 
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What unilateral opinion, only need to reduce Tsung's size. In arcade MK1 he has size similar to character's sprites.
Also I checked latesе calactyte's works and should say, that he's good modeller. Palace Gates looks much better now, especially various statues.
 
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I'm not judging anything just giving opinion and at most, constructive criticism and I'm not sure I appreciate the condescending tone that the first part of that sentence brings. If you want to have a civil conversation leave out such value judgements.

It's still a matter of perspective and when a character is closer or farther way to a camera it affects the perceived size. Making him smaller wouldn't go so well with the composition of the background I say.

Also I'm not dissing Calactyte as you seem to be implying and I've actually rolled up my sleeves and helped here and there going back to the beginning even just giving examples. I wouldn't mind doing a bit more if desired and needed.

Lastly, like I said.. if the decision has already been made then fine. But again I still prefer Bleed's way.
 
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good morning bleed, cal and anyone who can help, I just pass by to say hi and to ask you about a problem I have, I have my liu kang model rigged and the eyes attached to the head bone but if I rotate the head they rotate too but the eyes moves out of place, do you know what can it be? that's the only thing stopping from making my first animation.

also I want to apply the cloth modifier to the pants and hair so they move realistic, what you guys think?? don't you think is to much trouble to get it working right?? if it wouldn't be for those things I've mentioned I would be making animations already..I'm wasting to much time trying to get this things to work......
 
I think if characters are bigger, then it shouldn't be called MK1HD. That's a MAJOR transgresion to the MK1 spirit. Nothing is going to look right.
 
I think if characters are bigger, then it shouldn't be called MK1HD. That's a MAJOR transgresion to the MK1 spirit. Nothing is going to look right.

Agree, minor changes in stuff like costumes or stages or UI's will not affect the game spirit. but making characters bigger than what they were in the original game is a major change.
 
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Have the eye balls, with a helper around them. Link the eyeballs to their helpers, so when you rotate the helper, the eyes rotate.


Link the helpers to the head bone

Create a look at object, can be a line or whatever, floating like 6 feet in front of their face, and link it to the head bone.


Apply a look at constraint to each eyeball helper object, and set the Look at object as the target.

Now if you move the head bone, the eyes and eye target will move with it. If you move the eye target, the eyes will rotate to look at it.



As for cloth, I don't know, you can try it out I guess. I didn't bother because it's too laggy on my system.
 
Extra anim for my version, it's an alternate look for the UMK3 Axe combo. Not going to make it exactly the same, but pretty close.

I think it could have a break point maybe, so it's not always the same looking combo. Maybe every 3rd hit or so can be blocked, but has a High/Low Mixup, or fast recovery on cancel, so you can try something else mid way through the combo.

I'll have different moves like this for my end, I like the more realistic looking fighting styles.

MK1_Ninja_LightUpper_zpse4dcc9fb.gif
 
Bleed already covered everything I was going to say related to look-at-constraints. Basically Bleed has shown you how to make an eye rig which allows you to move a floating target to make your character look at what you want it to look at.

As for the cloth, I have a ton of experience with it. In the end, I found it wasn't worth it. There are tons of problems you'll encounter. Not the last of which is getting parts of the model's body to stop penetrating the cloth. Also you will need to create a cloth group for the waist band which will keep his pants "stuck" to his waist. Otherwise his pants will just fall right off.

The other thing about cloth dynamics is that they are, well, dynamic. So when need Lui to settle back into a specific pose, his pants may not animate into the same shape as before. This creates all sorts of problems with looping animations. Where it makes more sense to use the cloth dynamics is for the intro movie closeups. I suggest that you play around with it and see if you can make it work for you. Personally I found it was too much of a hassle.




good morning bleed, cal and anyone who can help, I just pass by to say hi and to ask you about a problem I have, I have my liu kang model rigged and the eyes attached to the head bone but if I rotate the head they rotate too but the eyes moves out of place, do you know what can it be? that's the only thing stopping from making my first animation.

also I want to apply the cloth modifier to the pants and hair so they move realistic, what you guys think?? don't you think is to much trouble to get it working right?? if it wouldn't be for those things I've mentioned I would be making animations already..I'm wasting to much time trying to get this things to work......
 
That looks great Bleed:) Also thank you for sending me those renders on Drop Box. I very much appreciate it.

Extra anim for my version, it's an alternate look for the UMK3 Axe combo. Not going to make it exactly the same, but pretty close.

I think it could have a break point maybe, so it's not always the same looking combo. Maybe every 3rd hit or so can be blocked, but has a High/Low Mixup, or fast recovery on cancel, so you can try something else mid way through the combo.

I'll have different moves like this for my end, I like the more realistic looking fighting styles.

MK1_Ninja_LightUpper_zpse4dcc9fb.gif
 
I agree with CARZ here Smoke. The characters in Bleed's videos look almost chunky to me. Too big in my opinion. While it works on the Throne Room stage especially in comparison with Shang Tsung sitting in the background, take a look at how insanely huge Bleeds character scale looks on other stages where the scale of the characters becomes more noticeable. I'm pretty sure English isn't LEON's first language but, I think he was saying that instead of making the characters bigger we could simply make Shang a bit smaller. That would be the solve for that problem.

Besides just how things look with the characters this large it is essentially a different game. We all know it'll be near impossible to match the original's gameplay but with the characters so huge (I won't argue they look better large, they really do) it makes the stages seem much smaller. There is less screen real estate to battle within. You can argue that this problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that we are adding pixels to the left and right hand of the screen so that we can work in HD, but I still think Bleed's characters are just too big as they are right now.

Take a look at the sample image where Bleeds character is on the far right. Does he look like he would fit through that door of the temple? As it is he would be about 9 or 10 feet tall. The solution could be to increase the size of the temple but then it is proportionally different than in the arcade. It changes everything. Although it looks better I think it is too big of a departure.
SIZE_COMPARISON.jpg


@Bleed It seems as though MUGEN is upscaling Scorp and Subzero from there original sizing. I'm using the pngs you gave me and if you just plop them down into a 1280x720 stage they appear to be the correct size. I can only guess you are upscaling upon import into MUGEN as is. Correct me if I'm wrong here.


http://www.jtresca.com/test/SIZE_COMPARISON.jpg
 
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Yes, I have them scaled to 1.25%

That is so they match with standard mugen character scale. For MK1 only, they should be smaller.
 
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Sorry but I'm reminded of when widescreen was being proposed and everyone except people like me where against it because they where afraid it would change the gameplay too much.

What I won't agree with is melodramatic assertions like it'd be a MAJOR transgression against the MK1 spirit. Part of the spirit of MK in the first place is having larger characters in relation to other games. They where talking about how their hardware allowed them to make big characters when they where making the game. Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEowGU3AdnA take a look at around 2:33 -

"At the time Midway had a hardware system that could support digitized graphics which was fairly new back in the late 80's early 90's and we wanted to really take advantage of it. And we thought a fighting game or something where characters could be represented very large on screen would be something we could take advantage of and create a game around"

But since it's just me at this point I will concede... and yeah the way you pasted it into that screenshot doesn't look right I admit.
 
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Just as long as you realize that even if the image I pasted were clear and looked nice, it probably wouldn't affect the average viewers perception that in fact the character is huge in relation to his environment.

When you say you are reminded that you were against widescreen because it would change gameplay so much in the past, why are you seemingly so willing to sacrifice gameplay now in the name of graphical fidelity? What changed from then until now? Is that you've come to realization since we can't possibly match the original gameplay at this point we probably shouldn't even try? Because keeping the characters huge is a step in that direction. It is a pretty big departure. Everything would have to be changed. For instance jump kick distance would have to be tweaked. Projectiles would probably have to be slowed down pretty significantly since larger characters and smaller environments means less time to react to them. It creates a huge domino effect of problems which can (somewhat) be avoided by keeping the characters close to their original size (in proportion to their HD environment).

Though CARZ and LEON can sometimes be dramatic (probably due to a language barrier more than anything else) it doesn't change the fact that there is truth to their statements. I personally 100% agree with you though. The game does look kick ass with large characters. It just isn't Mortal Kombat anymore. I'd like for you to agree with me here so that I don't come off like a looney who is derailing this project with fanboy ideology. Am I crazy? Sometimes I feel that I'm way too close to this project to even know anymore.






Sorry but I'm reminded of when widescreen was being proposed and everyone except people like me where against it because they where afraid it would change the gameplay too much.

But since it's just me at this point I will concede... and yeah the way you pasted it into that screenshot doesn't look right I admit.

What I won't agree with is melodramatic assertions like it'd be a MAJOR transgression against the MK1 spirit. Part of the spirit of MK in the first place is having larger characters in relation to other games. They where talking about how their hardware allowed them to make big characters when they where making the game.
 
I did say I conceded the point due to stuff like that example screenshot so no I'm not really interested in arguing further.. but just look at my previous post again.

What I do not agree with, is that it's a major transgression against the spirit considering part of the innovation of the game in the first place is how the hardware allowed them to make characters "very large on the screen". Although I realize what they mean there is larger than most other games of the time.

Another quick example, in the MK3 video John Tobias said "We wanted to do a fighting game but we wanted to exploit the hardware capabilities of displaying huge digitized graphics" @ 1:15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIMx_aBFfA There are more examples of that if you look for it. Relatively large characters where always a part of the core aesthetic. Although again I realize the size we have now was considered huge back then and the arcade screens did make them seem larger.

I just thought it (even larger characters) worked well in Bleed's videos so I was for it. But I conceded and I'm ready to move on since it's pretty much been decided. I admitted that it didn't look right in that shot you pasted it into not from the smoothness but from the size compared to other background such as that one.

To concede means to surrender or yield. I may not agree entirely but that example didn't look too good so it may not have worked out after all. And it still looks great with them at 1:1 size.

BTW, I kind of feel like I am the one being told I am a looney here. With my own ideology which is supposedely way off base with the spirit of MK or worse yet a transgression (an act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense). But I don't think so considering what the creators where saying of hardware back in the day. It's just too strong a word to use to describe it. Almost like using the word blasphemy.

Lastly, I'm not the one who was against widescreen. I was FOR it! Others where against it and where arguing against me.. that's what I'm reminded of. I said everyone EXCEPT people like me where against it.
 
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Ok I misunderstood you. Yeah I know what conceding means. At first read I thought you were saying that because the quality of the size comparison shot was bad, it wasn't really a fair comparison and that you merely conceding that in that particular shot it looked bad, not that it would look bad overall. Nah I don't think you are crazy. You make a fair point about what they were originally trying to do. And at least we can say we thought about the path untaken.
 
I'm pretty sure English isn't LEON's first language
Well, that's logical, sometimes you can get me wrong because of that.
But now you understand my position. Tsung just wasn't resized in default MK1, that was mistake.

we wanted to exploit the hardware capabilities of displaying huge digitized graphics
Also they could mean higher resolution, rather than large characters.
 
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