User blog comment:Windindi/NvC:CoL Update 8 7/31/14/@comment-7972498-20140731171207/@comment-24796436-20140731193447

Take it as constructive criticism. You will get honest feedback here and some of it will force you to rethink what you're doing. Let me attempt to give a long summary of what's happening here:

What you're doing is perfectly fine if you


 * a) Are simply taking the hobbyist route and showing off your "personal mugen" to the wiki


 * b) Are saving others time and effort by compiling a roster of nintendo and capcom characters with stages and music.

Notice that I did not say it would be fine for the purposes of an "official release" using the mugen engine.

If you genuinely want to be taken serious when making such a release your goal(s) should be:


 * 1) Negative goal: Make something that does NOT cause people to say any of the following; "oh that's mugen" on first glance; "this game is broken"; "it's horribly unbalanced, I can beat everyone with __ or I can't beat anyone with__"; "This feels rushed"; "The characters don't blend well" . .. . You get the point?


 * 2) Positive goal: To make a game that makes people wonder why haven't they played this yet because; the gameplay is fluid and balanced, not just by a bit of tinkering with the constants or character resizing; it looks uniform as in there are preferably 1 or 2 styles of characters spriting only (you have well over 5 btw); and again preferably but not always required, it has some original "new" edits or original characters.

Here's a  few comparisons:

1)-You've heard about Infinity Mugen Team's MvC:EoH project? Look at how much original work was involved by comparison. That game has received its fair share of criticism and even the "MvC" template has been frowned upon for being overused. However a caveat: their in-game roster was fairly huge so they had their work cut out for them attempting to make a truly good game.

2)-Look at Balthazar and Cybaster's work on the Z2 series. It's not a full game, at least not yet, but the style is very consistent between the spritework and the game mechanics.

3)-Most obviously, but can't be said enough, compare it to officially published and released arcade & console titles. Ask yourself how obvious the difference is. As I said above, the goal should be to make it not seem like you're just another fan who made a game using the Mugen engine.

Now a few words of encouragement:

You've done more than I have by attempting to release anything even remotely official to the mugen community.

If you're really doing this "balancing them all out [...] I'm trying to make it all 2-D sprites." I applaud you for the work you're going to have to do in making Earth worm Jim 2D. I am wondering what exactly it is that your are doing to balance them. If you have the coding skills to do that, that is also respectable.

Just know:

Whatever you do, if you want to be taken serious with mugen, you're going to have to dedicate some serious time and effort. No shortcuts. There are people who have been coding mugen for years and still have yet to produce very much without a team on their side.