CLANG: crowdfunding an authentic historical fencing video game

[DdlR]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...g/posts/259624

This will probably be the final technical update of the CLANG Kickstarter campaign, thoroughly answering the #1 question the development team is being asked (specifically, "what happens when the two swords meet?") via detailed text and demo. video featuring Neal Stephenson, Guy Windsor and Devon Boorman. They're making the point (obvious to martial swordfighters, but not so much to gamers) that "swinging for the fences" and over-committing actions is not the way to actually survive a longsword combat.

There are five days left in the Kickstarter campaign and it is, at present trending towards just hitting the $500,000 goal - http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/260688528/clang . As a reminder, if the campaign succeeds in gaining that level of funding, the game will be made; if it misses, by however small a margin, no money changes hands. Another reminder; the longsword game is a prototype towards a MASE (Martial Arts System Embodiment) system that can potentially be modded to incorporate virtually any specific fighting style.

Please help spread the word for this final push; the CLANG project Kickstarter page is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang .

[DdlR]

Neal S. posts a final promo. video from the CombatCon event in Las Vegas, with "help" from the fight guys from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Thor.

With only one day to go, the campaign has hit the $500,000 target; thanks to all who pitched in. Now, roll on the game!

[Tameshiwhaty?]

Neal S. posts a final promo. video from the CombatCon event in Las Vegas, with "help" from the fight guys from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Thor.

With only one day to go, the campaign has hit the $500,000 target; thanks to all who pitched in. Now, roll on the game!

I love how he keeps a strait face through the whole thing lol.

[DdlR]

The first footage from the CLANG game is now online: .

Even at the Alpha-test level, this is easily the most realistic-looking swordfight simulation I've ever seen in a video game.

Here's some commentary from the lead programmer:

This is not your Soul Calibur

.. or Street Fighter or Mortal Combat for that matter.

I came into this project with a pretty strong notion of what a fighting game
should be. I’m used to having two characters facing off playing idle animations
with weapons held out front. Each attack then consists of a wind up, a cut and
a recover. The game becomes one of recognizing frames of animations and
reacting appropriately - player A presses button to attack, player B presses
button to respond; results all come down to timings encoded in the animations
themselves. This has provided endless hours of fun.

With CLANG, we want to support fighting styles that have not yet been
implemented or perhaps even imagined. This means we cannot simply encode
animations with typical cancel windows, priorities, etc. Instead, we are
letting arbitration fall to physics. This allows us to do lots of neat stuff
like making the location you get hit important, knocking off armor pieces, etc.,
but ultimately it creates an even playing field for all manner of future
techniques.

It also turns out that holding your sword out in front of you in a typical
fighter game idle stance makes it real easy for your opponent to snipe your
hands causing you to drop your sword. In real life, if you have to wind up for
your attack, you’re already dead!

The first fighting style we are tackling is Fiore’s longsword, which identifies
several stances or “guards” where you’re basically already wound up to attack.
A typical starting point is with the sword up over your shoulder like you’re
winding up to swing a bat, but there are others where you start with the sword
low and pointed at the ground to swing up like a golf club. In the story-game,
we will have trainers (think Ra’s al Ghul or Obi-wan) that you’ll have to travel
to learn and unlock these guards and their associated set of attacks for a
specific fighting style.

However, what this all does for the game, is instead of exchanging button press
for button press, combat becomes more of a dance; it becomes strategic. Player
A settles into a guard, player B adopts a good defensive guard in response.
Player B shifts around to the left requiring player A to shift stances. Player
B takes this opportunity to attack.

In a typical fighter, you start with three basic attacks: low punch, high punch
and kick (or some similar set), and the explosion of complexity comes from
chaining one attack to another (often modified by movement). When we switch
away from the gamepad to motion controls, we leave behind its limited set of
face buttons opening up the physical space around us for selecting guards (we
have seven that we’ve started with). From most guards, you can perform a low,
medium or high attack, but through the magic of animation blending and inverse
kinematics you can perform anything in between as well - discrete attacks become
continuous analog motion. If you want to get extra fancy, perform a “reverso”
attack behind your head and down the other side.

But this is just the opening salvo. The complexity explosion instead happens
when sword connects with sword. Fiore calls this “incrosada” - the crossing of
the swords. From here, there are many options based on the physics of the
situation - mostly involving who has leverage over whom (where the swords are
touching relative to each other, if swords connected to your left vs your right,
etc.). Options include stuff like grabbing the sword with your (gauntleted)
off-hand, and doing some crazy arm-bar maneuver that I’ve never been able to
follow, but results in the other dude dropping their sword. We might get to
this, but in the initial tech demo we are only providing three basic options: a
pommel strike to the face, a cover and cut, and the most typical response: a
simple thrust to the face/chest. These are all triggered and controlled using a
combination of movement and hydra input.

Hopefully this gives you a little bit better idea of the direction we are taking
things. It’s easy to look at what we have right now and only see it as a
simulator. We’re starting from grounded techniques that we know work in order
to support a common playground rooted in physics for disparate fighting styles
to interoperate. We feel we need to get this right before layering on the more
traditional trappings of a game, but our ultimate goal still is to craft a fun
and compelling experience to share with all of you.

I regret that it sounds as if the close-quarters options are going to be limited to a few simple actions during the first release, but take heart in that the plan is to continue to develop CLANG and to offer the software to other developers, towards more advanced and different applications.

[DdlR]

Hopefully I have the video link problem sorted out:

[265lbsfist]

Hopefully I have the video link problem sorted out:

Nice!

Too bad I'm too late to contribute to the fundraising.

This should also be done for unarmed combat as well IMO.

[DdlR]

Nice!

Too bad I'm too late to contribute to the fundraising.

This should also be done for unarmed combat as well IMO.

I think there's some kind of PayPal setup for late donations, and AFAIK profits from sales of the Alpha test version (probably via STEAM) are going to be put back into game development, which will presumably include other fighting styles.