Character Moves Project

High Strikes
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Mid Strikes
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Low Strikes
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Dural Album View

This was previously called "system notes," but after talking to Myke, renaming the project to "character moves." At the moment, it is just a big picture gallery. Expect something similar to the above slides for each character (I hope the moving slides, don't give people a headache...) Currently, the images are only striking attacks from the default stance. Thanks to Plague on suggestion on capturing images.

There is a lot of trial and error, so any constructive criticism on the images would be appreciated. For example, does the individual "image frames" used to represent the move good enough or should a different frame be used?

Things that I am already aware of that is planned to be fixed in the second round of recordings:
1. moves in which the character is cropped off at the top.
2. blurry images

 

My current plans can be seen somewhat with the Akira page. You will have a list or table of some sort where you can directly click and bring you to a topic specifically related to that move. The long term goal is to have everything linked.

Aoi, Blaze, and Brad will be up tonight.

Also, I think if you mouse over the slide, it will pause it...and if you click on it, it will bring you to the photobucket webpage where you can manually view all the images.

 

If the project pans out for what I intended it to be, it will be on both the wiki and in the forums. The wiki has more format options that make organization/viewing a lot easier than on the forums. The threads in the forums allow the entire community to give their input and have discussion on the topic of particular interest.

The current plan and priority is:
1. Set Goal: Have an image file for every move/situation in the game (estimate over 3000+ moves, so far have ~700+ moves in the process of being put on the web). Basically the picture gallery. (For Wiki/Forums)

2. Planned (not set in stone) Experiment on the the "topic threads" (if this pans out, expect somewhere in the ball park figure of 1000 topic threads). This will also be the part where I will put all the good information already in the forums into organized/linkable threads. (For Wiki/Forums)

3. Planned (not set in stone) Experiment on the idea of actual game play situation/options analysis. This supplements the topic threads). This idea came from Maddy when I asked him: what he would like to see on VFDC or what would be the most helpful to other users on VFDC. (For Forums)

This is a long term project. Priority/Goal 1 will definitely be finished. Goal 2 and 3, I will play around with.

I think I have sufficient organizational skills, but, at my best, I am an intermediate level player that do not know everything. So in the end, I hope that I can provide a core backbone that is attractive and easily navigable (for both beginners and experienced members), but the main part of this project will still come from the entire community.

Also, if there is a new VF5 game to be released outside of Japan, this project will provide a good start-up for it. A lot of the game play remains the same such that information can easily be transferred/modified.

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Leonard - I will take the stage with no walls into consideration for the second video recordings (not anytime soon). Except for the somewhat reflective Dural, though, I think the wall does not distract the viewing of the other characters. The other characters should be subsequently be put up today and during the rest of the week, so we can see if a stage with no wall should be used for subsequent recordings.

 

Beyond my capabilities.

Can you list the actual moves that the still images poorly represent? That would be the most helpful criticism. I can add an additional still image to a move, or replace one that can represent the move better. I expected that for some moves 3 still images cannot do a move justice. But for the sake of space and consistency, I stuck to 3.

It is in my plan to have a small descriptive text on each move that would help explained some of the more animated moves.

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Also, there is a password to view the character album slides that is now listed under each character's thread.

The password is: virtuafighter

The password was to keep traffic low, since I have a limit on the amount of views on my photobucket free account. I will removed it in the near future, once I get a paid account.

 

I am thinking of changing the scrolling slide shows (moves way too slow) into this:

<div style="width:800px;text-align:right;"><embed width="800" height="210" src="http://static.pbsrc.com/flash/rss_slideshow.swf" flashvars="rssFeed=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedmg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv646%2Fakaiten%2FVF5%2520Sarah%2Ffeed.rss" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" /></div>

Move your pointer to the slideshow and a play/scroll bar pops up. The problem with the above is that I will need to reorganize the location of the files and possibly rename files so that they will be in the same order as the "lists." Will mess around to see if there are other options available on photobucket. Not the most important part of the project (if you want to manually go through the images, there is a link available in the "main pages" for each character) so, I might leave things as is.

Should be finishing up the last two characters within 24 hours before I start the next phase in the project.

 

Figured out an easy way to change the slide show without needing to reorganize the entire album. Everyone's slide show can be manually controlled now.

 

On the first batch of images -

Images that are very blurry or part of a character's body is cropped off (tall characters such as Jeffry and Wolf, and characters leaping into the air) are known and is in the "to do" list. Seeing how things are moving, it is likely, I won't get to fixing these images until June (this is definitely a long term project) for the second round of video recording. If a new version of VF is announced for people outside of Japan, the "character moves project" will be focusing on that version).

Leonard mentioned the caged wall as being a possible distraction to some darker characters. Is this something others find difficult with? Again, if this is something a lot of people find distracting, I can change the stage in the second round of recordings. Also a small note on the images - all moves are done from the starting position from command training mode. So the wall in the background and the "virtua fighter" letters on the floor can give you some better idea of the distance/position your character when performing a move.

All images in the next couple of months will be from the first round of recordings that are already made.

Criticism on the what "frames" within a move should be changed or removed and errors would be appreciated. It might take a while before I get around to addressing them, but there is a specific "to do" list notepad that I keep as a reminder of what needs to be fixed and what members liked or not liked.


Ok, to the second phase...

The next major round of images won't be coming out anytime soon: but it is most likely going to be throws and other "starter" moves from the default stance. I also am thinking of focusing on just one character to test out some ideas that hopefully will transition the project from just being a picture gallery to actually being a useful resource.

I will be posting on and off in this thread to put examples of different types of images and basic game theory (that will be the basis on how the character moves project is organized) for feedback.