To what extent is CaS a good thing?

Norik

Norik

[14] Master
Oh, this is possibly the most biased discussion topic related to Soul Calibur: Custom characters. This mode was first introduced in Soul Calibur III, attracting many people who where not that much into fighting games, which were kind of dying by that time. Until this point, not many people seemed to have a problem with it. Then SCIV came along and messed everything up by , ironically, creating one of the best character creation tools to ever appear in a videogame.

Why do we hate it so much? Until what extent is this CaS crap a good thing? I made this thread to discuss what makes CaS such a beauty, yet such a horrendous piece of garbage.

1. It messes up hitboxes. Although a lot of people don't seem to get it, CaS messes up hitboxes. For those who don't know, hitboxes, as explained in the picture below, are invisible boundaries the developers set to make actions happen. This is one of the basic concepts of videogame programming: Collision Detection. In a game, when two objects collide, actions are triggered. But instead of writting five lines of code for each possible point where the objects may collide, programmers use hitboxes, reducing the amount of work (and thinking). Hitboxes are programmed for the 3D models of a character, which has different dimensions to CaS characters. This could make an attack made for Astaroth, who is bigger than CaSes, hit without even making contact, or at least that's what it would look like to us. This is particulary stupid with grabs, since a character could technically grab you without even touching you. Some attack from smaller characters, like Amy or Talim, might not even work correctly. The picture below explains hitboxes by making damage hitboxes red, and vulnerable hitboxes blue.

street_fighter_hd_remix_hitboxes.jpg

This is the reason why CaS doesn't allow chanhing the size of you characters.

2. This is NOT Mugen. Although some people apparently don't get that. I really don't care if you want to make a character from Final Fantasy or whatever, but just try not to turn Soul Calibur to something it is not. Making Link or whatever is cool, but people get to the point of making Sonic, or even the Smurfs...

PapaSmurf_288x288.jpg

So yeah... I'll keep updating this as people post reasons why CaS is just a little thingy to make your fanfictions an NOT an ugly black and red festival of ugly, horribly redesigned mugen characters.
 
Speaking of Sonic the Hedgehog...
Yeah...it's really stupid to see how bad other people's attempt at already existing characters can be. Usually they're the ones who are so concerned with how close their characters look like Mario, Spiderman, Naruto, etc,. they don't even bother learning how to play the game. I like CaS, but COME ON! Well, at least it's something to laugh at :D
 
You forgot the voices being different messing up your audio cues. For example, if I hear Xianghua say "just kidding" I know a SXS stance transition is going on, if its some custom character, I don't have that same voice cue to react to and have to rely entirely on the character animations.

The hitboxes could be somewhat fixed by just always using the hitbox of the standard character, even if it is graphically wrong (visually deceptive, but, at least the game mechanics are the same then). If this was done, I'd love to see an option to just turn off cas entirely in scv and have it replace any cas characters with the standard character model + voices.
 
Because CAS allows individuality in the game and it also encourages single player modes to unlock items. Also if your like me who spends WAY too much finding just the right color for my customs it's quite gratifying when you finished. SC isn't just a fighting game and I think all SC fans will agree it is a fighting game that is unlike any other fighting game and the CAS is part of the reason why. I think the important to remember too is that not all fans of SC have interest in frame data/hit boxes/Tiers (Like my little brother who is eight.) he just loves kicking ass and if he wants to kick ass as a custom made spider man who wields a huge axe let him.
 
DontTestMePish said:
maybe the people writing the code shouldnt be lazy and put all their effort into it so it works a lot better?
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You clearly have absolutley no idea of how collision detection works. This is how games have been made since the very begining. this would require creating a ridiculously high amount of data created per-character, and would make online matchs near to impossible to play, unless...
 
IvyFanboy said:
I REALLY need to make an article explaining fan ignorance about developers and game creation...
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What do you mean? I used to make crappy games and mugen characters back in 6th grade. And I'll be pursuing for game programming soon enough... I hope.
 
CaS helps keep the game fresh. Although I like the game mechanics better than any other fighting game I think an equally important reason for the game getting so much playtime in our console is the fact that if boredom with the cast ensues I can just build my own guest characters. Although we've all seen the pink afro Kiliks when playing online one also sees a lot of witty, well thought out or nicely designed CaS. CaS makes the game better by adding a new unique (to other fighters) and addictive element, and I think a Soul Calibur released without CaS mode today might have a very difficult time competing against other fighting games.
 
lightcycle said:
...a Soul Calibur released without CaS mode today might have a very difficult time competing against other fighting games.
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This is a fact. I know A LOT of people who just have the game to make characters and spam with them online. CaS IS fun, when I have time I'll update the first post with more cons AND some pros of it.
 
norik434 said:
What do you mean? I used to make crappy games and mugen characters back in 6th grade. And I'll be pursuing for game programming soon enough... I hope.
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I mean just something to explain to the public when dealing with things like hit boxes why they're coded one way and what ways it can be done better. A lot of times people will demand something be changed that may have been built wrong and a different route needs to be done. Wish CAS characters in SC4 the only easy way to fix the issue is either:

A. Disable model size changes
B. Recode the relevance of the hit boxes to always reflect the character it's imitating, resulting in proper hit boxes but odd visuals of when things collide or don't.
 
Well at first I thought it maybe a good idea to put CAS in a SC game but eventually I begin to think it shouldn't.

My thoughts are SC is a game supposedly to promote their own SC characters and putting CAS (with their gimmicky fashion) is like them competing with the SC cast for the spot light. CAS to me is just is just a waste of time and space to place in Soul Calibur when they got more balancing issues to take care of.

CAS deserves a game of its own and that's because if it's based on a fighting game then surely more than just unique looks there should be close-to-unique fighting styles; put it this way, ppl have a way of fighting and the tools provided for these types players as they progress may benefit the way they fight. If I'm mainly a turtle fighter I would progress and gain fighting tools suitable for a turtler.
 
CaS should make the character the exact height and have the same hitboxes of the character the CaS is using.

Leaving the hitboxes the same, and even if you gave talim tits or made astaroth flabby instead of muscular it wouldn't look too odd.
 
norik434 said:
and would make online matchs near to impossible to play, unless...
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No. Complex calculations are done client side and only the result needs to be communicated.

Also, if you make hit boxes the same even though the characters are visually smaller/bigger you'll create phantom range or the inverse of that w/e that is and in my opinion that's just as big of a problem as messed up hit boxes.
 
norik434 said:
Oh, anytime!

I didn't mean to call you stupid though, I just wanted to inform you that you were wrong. You were calling Namco's programmers lazy, not cool.
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Yeah, but you didn't have to say it how you did.

"You clearly have absolutley no idea of how collision detection works."

That's sounded harsher than it needed to be. I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but it's good to choose your words wisely. Just wanted to point that out...
 
Lasercakes said:
No. Complex calculations are done client side and only the result needs to be communicated.

Also, if you make hit boxes the same even though the characters are visually smaller/bigger you'll create phantom range or the inverse of that w/e that is and in my opinion that's just as big of a problem as messed up hit boxes.
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I didn't consider that, but lag would still be an issue (not that it's not already...). And yeah, that's kinda what I was trying to explain, but you're simply genius.


REPROBEAN_CHILD said:
Yeah, but you didn't have to say it how you did.

"You clearly have absolutley no idea of how collision detection works."

That's sounded harsher than it needed to be. I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but it's good to choose your words wisely. Just wanted to point that out...
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Yeah, I noticed after I re-read it. You're right...
 
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