Mobile Fight
A tech demo which revolutionizes fighting game design on the mobile platform
Using the free assets available on unity and c# I was able to create a new method of controlling a mobile fighting game. While most focus on emulating their arcade counter-parts they tend to be somewhat clunky and often feel unnatural on a touch screen. A four to six button layout requires so much more accuracy that the player has to fight the controls, which is exacerbated in fighting games which are known for difficult controls. For example, in most games the dragon punch requires an almost z movement with the stick. It also requires the player to hold the phone differently should they have to press 2 buttons at once which is often asked of the player in this genre.
Inspiration for mobile fight, simple inputs can lead to an in depth combo
The best fighting game on mobile to me is most likely Skullgirls which allows players to create long combos and is closest to what I look for in a fighting game. However, these combos feel limited by the fact that they only have 5 inputs in order to attack plus any super moves they has equipped, so I wanted to take the next step in their design.
The real issue I found is the mind set of those who design these games, in the west we use an unnamed method of writing combos where players focus on the joystick, (i.e. quarter circle forward). This focus works and is standard here, but there’s another method that is mostly used in anime fighting games. This method is called numpad notation, which takes the joystick and re-imagines it as a numpad (i.e. a quarter circle forward is 236)
This can be easily transferred to a mobile game, think about when you take a picture, the grid that pops up to help for composition of the shot can form a sort of numpad and transferring those could be the key to getting a more faithful version of fighting games on mobile. With this control scheme we open the game up to the quarter circles and dragon punches that the system is used to, and wouldn’t stop players from using the simple swipe and tap inputs as well. Thus designers are able to give players more unique characters with larger move sets