Mugen Machine Anyone?

[GIjoe]

Hey Guys,

I used to play with this program called M.U.G.E.N a few years ago which allowed you to customize a 2D Arcade Style Fighter. It was always a lot of fun to do being that you import characters,stages, effects,sounds,etc. ripped from various games spanning from Arcade to Console.

As far as I know, the company behind the program abandoned the project leaving no support but the Source Code. I always hoped somebody ( who can program of course ) would play with the coding and make it accept credits....Arcade-a-nize a bit 

Ever since I discovered Mame and even better, Mame Cabinets/Machines...I was always curious if anybody else considered firing up a M.U.G.E.N game w/ Arcade Controls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.G.E.N     <----If anyone wants more Info.

[lanman31337]

Already done it.  I have about 600 characters or so set up on mine.

[Organic Jerk]

I have Mugen set up in my PC Games section (along with the mugen MK mod "Mortal Kombat Project"), but I personally lost my initial exhuberance about the app as I discovered that it was near impossible to find any good sources of material.  I would often find incomplete and out of whack characters, and many of them just didnt even out with the rest.. (I have picky fighting game friends, so characters being at least complete with all their proper move lists and proper hit point levels intact is crucial)

If I felt it were worth it, I would still like to be able to set up my own personal theme with my own screenpack and my favorite fighters...

Seems lanman may not have had the same problems...

[Howard_Casto]

I doubt it.  Mugen is quite picky, I'd like to see anyone that managed to get it running exactly as they wanted (unless they aren't fighter fans and can't tell the diff). 

The main issue is that it doesn't work well in any os other than dos, which is not the preferred mame cab os anymore.  Also the program itself has a lot of limitations, making it impossible to add the complete movesets of certain characters.  (Mk fighters come to mind, which can't have their fatalities.)

Since many of the various fighter franchies don't mix well together, it just ends up feeling rather hackish, even if you manage to get it setup well.  Also you major fighting series (sf, mk, ect) already have these "all the characters in one game" games, so in many cases, you can just go buy a retail game and save yourself the trouble. 

[Turnarcades]

I've recently discovered mugen, after seeing videos on youtube and originally mistaking it to be a new 'Marvel vs.' game.

It has got some great functionality as long as you start with only a nice screenpack to get things looking pretty, and just adding characters from certain game series'. Many characters are cheap, or setup poorly, but some have been done very well. See the 'DC vs. Marvel' version on youtube (site down at the mo).

Oh and I hate to contradict but I've just downloaded a couple of Mortal Kombat characters that have somehow got fatalities included, and work surprisingly well.

The program is far from flawless, but a quick check on the file system and a bit of restraint on how many characters you really want, and you can have a very nice fighting game akin to the 'vs.' series'.

[Organic Jerk]

Well, for better or for worse, this thread had me thinking seriously about Mugen again (glutten for punishment, I know), so I scrapped all the old files I had and started to look for content ..

After a good while of searching and finally finding some good (read: somewhat reliable) sources of content, I went to town downloading and testing out different character combinations, until I settled on what you see below...  I will probably still be editing it every now and then (looking for Shuma Gorath and will probably remove Ky), but thats generally good enough for me. 

At this point I have 55 characters (1 secret) and 48 stages...I don't really want to have hundreds of characters, since I want to have a somewhat controlled experience that can lead to ACTUAL game playing, as opposed to the just "game watching" that can end up with Mugen.. Although I still want to look for more stages and actually create a coherent setup where each character has a stage and them music for them, as well as extras...

The theme I use is a personally edited version of the "World Warriors X" screenpack with MvC lifebars and SF3 fight sparks/fight sounds.. I also had to edit some character's files in an effort to measure things out...


Another important thing was this thread, which provided me a solution to the problem that took me out of Mugen originally, the crashing.  For me, it was the handling of music files that would lead to Mugen crashing, so the solution here REALLY made me feel much better about creating a full experience... it will still crash every now and then, but it's a VERY RARE occurrence, and usually has to do with bad character or stage coding...

Again, for better or for worse... I like it so far though

FUNNY NOTE: I'm actually contributing to the next Superman character release for the DC vs Marvel project in the form of the character portrait...talk about becoming entrenched...lol


My sources in no order: (that I remembered to bookmark.. I lost one forum that I'm still kicking myself over...)
http://fanaticmugen.free.fr/
http://randomselect.i-xcell.com/
http://mugenguild.com/forumx/
http://infinitymugenteam.com/
http://www.buyog.com/mugen/chars.html
http://www.scruffydragon.com/
http://www.mugen-infantry.net/index.php (check the database)
http://blog.naver.com/crazyforsf.do
http://ma.mgbr.net/index.php?sec=chars#
http://www.geocities.jp/zzzzw_129/mugen/mugen.html
http://members.lycos.co.uk/akumanowar/
http://www.geocities.jp/mugen2004raisu/mugentrigger_top.htm
http://www.freewebs.com/warner12/personajeschars.htm (gag characters not in my main set)
http://ddrcreations.com/ (more gag chars)

Don't expect them all to be the greatest sources.. sometimes I bookmarked a site and then found the characters to be incomplete, or completed but customized (therefore not representative of what the rest of know to play)...


BTW: I know it's a cheesy name... I didn't want to put too much concept effort into this lest I find some new problem... =P