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Rising Thunder - new PC, UE4, Free-to-Play fighter from Seth Killian

ezekial45

Banned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr9KGKrj4aw

Everyone watching the streams over the last couple days probably saw the trailer for this. But now it looks like we're getting more info about it. It's made by Radiant Entertainment and Seth Killian, and the Alpha sign-ups are open, and it begins next week on the 28th

http://www.risingthunder.com/

Here are some details:
- Free-To-Play
- PC only and powered by GGPO3
- Developed by Radiant Entertainment (The Cannon brothers' dev studio) with Seth Killian at the creative lead.
- Keyboard is default set-up, but you can use controller pads and arcade sticks.
- Traditional six button set-up, with three attack buttons (weak, medium, heavy), and three special move buttons.
- Special moves are activated by one button and work on cooldowns, and don't have directional inputs.
- Similar to KI, new characters and content will be added over time.

Here are some previews:

DTOID
Radiant Entertainment are certainly confident in their new fighter, and given that they're allowing the FGC and newcomers full access to their game very soon (early alpha beginning on the 28th), they're looking forward to hearing their feedback. As with their other title Stonehearth, the community will have a major impact on the state and feel of the game. While Rising Thunder certainly does a lot of things that may go against the more iconic aspects of the genre, there's a lot of thought that went into the intricacies of this fighter. As this title is still in fairly early stages, many features and visuals are not in place quite yet, but the developers are confident enough in releasing it as the true heart of the game is in place. They also plan to actively update the game, introducing new content, updates, and other additions to keep things interesting.

IGN
And it’s easy to play. It’s easy to feel good, because Rising Thunder requires “mostly one-button, some holds, some button-plus-direction” inputs, with minimal motion input to pull off spectacular, devastating special attacks. I’ve done things I’ve never been able to do in fighting games because of Rising Thunder’s easy inputs. I’ve canceled animations, bait-and-switched opponents, and pulled off preposterous aerial combos. Playing a fighting game on a PC keyboard was the most alien idea in the world until I spent a couple hours with Rising Thunder. Passersby said it looked like I was typing frantically, like a hacker in a ‘90s movie. I felt like what I imagine pro players feel like — processing information and responding in turn with lightning speed.

PC Gamer
After playing Rising Thunder for the past couple weeks (I’ve gone 13-39, but I’m playing against its creators, so give me a break), it doesn’t strike me as a fighting game washed of complexity. As Killian says, it’s got the nuance—though I don’t know it deeply enough to say if it’s more or less nuanced than any other fighting game—without the input barrier. “It’s a completely core fighter, like everything else, it’s just that the special moves don’t involve any weird motions. That’s it. That’s really the only difference. That’s kind of the bet of this whole game.”
 
Oh wow Seth Killian is involved in this? That's interesting.

I thought it looked pretty cool at EVO. Might as well give it try since it's F2P.
 
A hardcore fighting game with accessible controls that isn't Smash Bros. is something I've wanted for quite a while. Here's hoping that it's the One Must Fall spiritual sequel we've all been waiting for.
 
A fighting game that maintains all the complex tactics of fighting games but removes the input barrier is something I've wanted forever.

I will definitely try this when it goes live.

Seth Killian said:
“[Fighting games] are hard, and that’s not a bad thing—that’s a good thing—but they’re hard in kind of a dumb way,” says Killian. “The core elements of fighting games, like the moves that, when we’re designing games, we build everything around, like fireball, uppercut … that’s not the fancy shit. That’s the ground floor of competitiveness. When we’re building these games, we assume that players are all doing fireballs, uppercuts. There’s not some accommodation made on the design side to be like, ‘Oh, players will only succeed in doing this 20 percent of the time, or 50 percent.’

“You just assume people can do this, [but] put any fighting game kiosk out on a showfloor somewhere and watch people absolutely fail, all day, every day, to actually do the moves we’ve built the whole game around. So the core of the game, the basic elements of the game, are hidden behind an execution wall, and not like a little execution wall, either. To do it, not in the sense that ‘I have technically performed this move,’ but to do it without thinking about it, which is the way you need to be able to do it to really play—that’s like, for some people, a month, because they’re really talented. For most people, more like six months—between three and six months. And in some cases a year—or never—of playing them a lot, before you have the moves.”
 
Neat. Trailer instantly reminded me of the One Must Fall games.

Edit: The YT trailer says 1080p60, but it definitely doesn't look like it. The beta sign up page has a video that plays in the background that runs at 60fps though. Animations and posing look pretty dang good.
 
Honestly this looks like two tekken characters fighting in cross tekken


Seth Killians last joint PSASBR is your game for the down time between this game coming out

You're welcome

Sigh. PSASBR could have been something special if Sony had just given the studio the proper budget.
 
I seem to recall a SuperBot dev saying that they didn't have a huge budget from the very beginning so they had to basically be as minimal as possible when making the game. I'll look for a link.

Explains a lot tbh. PSASBR was missing that layer of shine and polish.
 
You know, since they are making a PC only fighting game starring robots, they should throw some One Must Fall 2097 references in there.

omf1.gif
 
I don't really like the idea of having special moves just be button presses, but it's not completely terrible and will probably make it more accessible for people. However, having cooldowns on specials sounds incredibly dumb.
 
I'm down. I wouldn't be shocked if it makes its way to consoles eventually. Sony in particular has been very welcoming to f2p games this gen.
 
Honestly I'm kind of interested to see a how a PC-focused fighting game feels. Shooters, strategy games, RPGs definitely have a different feel when they're developed primarily for consoles as opposed to PC and vice versa, different markets and different ideologies that developers put their focus on. Hopefully they kind of embrace that and give some more variety to the genre.
 
Ooooh, Killian is involved? No wonder they kept playing adds for this during EVO. I couldn't figure out why a F2P fighter kept getting those add slots.

I mean, I'll give it a shot. Why not.
 
cooldowns on skills sounds so scrubby, haha. it's such a common scrub complaint that i have an instinctive cringe against it
but i guess that's the decision they have to make with traditional fg design + simplified inputs
it'll be interesting to see how it turns out at the very minimum
 
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