User talk:Blendmaster

The boss and navigation templates for EarthBound look so much better now! I'm looking forward to a finished product of this guide. I think it'll turn out pretty well. --Dukeruckley 06:20, 15 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Thanks, I spent way to much time on those. Sorry that I can't contribute much to the content though. I played through Earthbound about 2 years ago and Im just starting to play it again now. I still need to work on more map overlays. --blendmaster 10:10, 15 June 2006 (PDT)
 * While you're playing through the game again, you oughta check over what I've been writing. I'm sure I made a mistake somewhere that could be fixed or at least missed something that could be useful to put in.--Dukeruckley 10:15, 15 June 2006 (PDT)

Earthbound images
I noticed you created the Earthbound Images category, presumably from the discussion in community issues. If you take another look there, you'll see that opinion moved away from categories for images from every individual game, and moved to more general categories. You might want to think about that category again. --DrBob (Talk) 11:59, 16 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Well, it depends on how many Earthbound related images are uploaded. Even if I uploaded them into a game sprites category, theres hundreds of different sprites from games, and it would still be a huge set, albiet slightly smaller. I can put all the images in the Category: Game Sprites, but I still think there should be a separate Earthbound Images category subset, so if someone contributing to the Earthbound guide needs an image, they can check the category to see if its already uploaded instead of trying to browse through a giant category of all sprite images or artwork/boxshots whatever. --blendmaster 13:28, 16 June 2006 (PDT)


 * It's a tricky one really, and I'm on both sides of the fence. On one side, it would make categorisation of images better, but on the other hand, it would create a massive amount of new categories, which would really make my job cleaning up all the mess more hell than it currently is. More discussion required in community issues, methinks. :-( --DrBob (Talk) 13:40, 16 June 2006 (PDT)

Relicensing your contributions
StrategyWiki is transitioning from the GNU Free Doc license to the new StrategyWiki Public license. But in order to do so we need every contributor to each guide to sign their name on this page. There is more information on the transition there but if you could sign your name it would greatly help the strategywiki mission as a whole, thank you. -- Mason11987 (Talk - Contributions) 08:48, 30 June 2006 (PDT)
 * ok. --blendmaster 10:37, 30 June 2006 (PDT)

Control-downleft
This image appears to be corrupt somewhat. When the problem with uploading PNGs is fixed, could you re-upload it please? (Could you also work on some control button images for other consoles? :-P ) --DrBob (Talk) 04:18, 16 July 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, I always wondered why that one didn't show up. I'll upload that, along with the ps* ones I have finished. --blendmaster 13:31, 16 July 2006 (CDT)

More images
I've got to say, the control images you've done are brilliant, and I hope you continue to make more, but in the meantime, could you perhaps quickly make some (largish) images for the four big boxes on the Main Page. I'd like to bring some more colour to it, and I think images would do the job nicely. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 07:11, 9 August 2006 (CDT)
 * Well, thank you! I'll see what i can do for the main page. Probably something like the main page for the gentoo wiki. Unfortunatley, I have band camp for most of the rest of this week(yes, I am a high school student), so I might not get to them till Sunday or Monday next week. --blendmaster 21:55, 9 August 2006 (CDT)

Arcade controls.
Here's how I would break it down. There are two major categories of arcade games that I'm concerned with, Capcom's and Neo-Geo's. There are others that I will go in to after these two.

For Capcom, a majority of their fighting games use the three by two button layout like Street Fighter II. The major categories are punch and kick, and they each break down by strength; light, medium, and hard. Some fighting moves use any punch or kick, some moves use a specific strength of punch or kick, and some moves require two or three of the same kind of button be held down. So at the very least, you need a good punch button and a good kick button. Then to add to it, you could have a punch button with a little (L), (M), or (H) in a corner somewhere to designate the strength. Likewise for kick. Also, it's rare, but a few of the Capcom moves use the Start button as well.

For Neo-Geo, it's much simpler. There is only the red A, the yellow B, green C, and blue D buttons. Some games still have a general punch or kick button for their moves, so the punch or kick used for Capcom will still apply.

Of course, for both Capcom and Neo-Geo, you need a joystick knob in 8 directions (I don't think neutral is required, but sometimes a move necessitates that the joystick be released before continuing. It's very rare.)  Also, a few of the directions need charge indications (like for Guile's Sonic Boom which is hold back for two seconds, then forward.)  Back, Downback, and Down definately need it. I've seen some games that charge Downforward and even fewer that charge Forward, but none that ever charge in the up directions. Now this may be more work than you really want to do, but you could theoretically create glyphs for the more common motions like the fireball (d, df, f), the dragonpunch (f, d, df), the 360, the half circle (b, db, d, df, f) and their reverse counter-parts. But that may be more work than you really want.

Now as for other games that don't fall in to the above categories, there's games like Mortal Kombat that have a run and block button, and games like Namco's Soul Calibur that have a guard button and two different attack buttons, but they can each be added if and when someone actually decides to create entries for them.

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. Before I found strategywiki, I was responsible for the Fighting Games Moves book project in wikibooks (which was appearantly moved to wikiknowledge,) you can check that out if you like at http://www.wikiknowledge.net/wiki/index.php?title=Fighting_Game_Moves Procyon 18:14, 15 August 2006 (CDT)


 * As for other specialty controls, I took a look at what MAME emulates:
 * left and right sticks (Smash TV and a few others use these)
 * up to 10 buttons (usually labelled A-whatever or 1-whatever, but sometimes in Roman numerals)
 * select (not sure how often this is used)
 * 1-4 players start (sometimes uses "P#", other times uses special symbols)
 * trackball
 * analog stick
 * paddle (as far as I know very few games use this)
 * dial (as far as I know very few games use this)
 * That's pretty much it other than Mahjong keys and racing pedals. What player a certain control applies to can probably be implied in the guide itself. GarrettTalk 19:58, 15 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Wow, those were pretty through answers! I'll have to get started on some of the basic stuff. Since the arcade template can scale, I can add more specialized stuff after I get the joystick, kick/punch and maybe player start buttons. --blendmaster 20:54, 15 August 2006 (CDT)


 * Take your time blendmaster, this is a pretty heavy project. I'm also the guy who was in charge of the MAME 32 Plus command.dat project (technically, I still am, but I haven't taken contributions in ages.)  If you want to see what kinds of extended glyphs I'm talking about, check out http://home.comcast.net/~plotor/commguid.html
 * I would definitely say that some of those glyphs are completely unnecessary, but some of them were very useful. I was way in to cataloging fighting game moves, and then I slowed down a lot.  I'd still love to make a definitive guide on this site though.  Let me know if you need more help. Procyon 21:10, 15 August 2006 (CDT)

Jackpot!
Hi blend! I hope school is going well. I know you're busy with school and you don't have as much time to dedicate to buttons, but I hit the jackpot! Check this link out: http://www.capcom.co.jp/newproducts/consumer/cvss2/characters/img/waza.pdf

I can grab everything that I need from here, and then pretty much wait for you to come after me and clean up or improve anything I don't do quite as well as you can. By the way, what software do you develop your buttons in? Is it GIMP or Photoshop? I'd love to know the technique so I can help you out when you're busy. Talk to you soon (hopefully ^_^) Procyon 00:17, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Sorry to butt in, but as far as I am aware, all blendmaster's icons are originally done as SVG, putting both Photoshop and the GIMP out of the picture. I personally use Inkscape, but he might be using something else like Fireworks. --DrBob (Talk) 01:10, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * That's awesome. Does PDF make use of SVG images?  I notice that no matter how far I zoom in to the PDF linked above, the crispness of the punch icons never fades out.  Of course, for the sake of the site, I assume no matter how the icons are made, they need to be converted and saved in one of the standard bitmap formats. Procyon 01:25, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * I don't know about PDF too well, but it is likely that it uses some sort of vector format. But yes, all vector images will need to be rasterised before being put on StrategyWiki, as although MediaWiki supports SVG images (and in-place rasterisation), we haven't yet sorted it out (blame echelon! :-P ). --DrBob (Talk) 01:37, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, those are vector images, and I do use inkscape. Those buttons are more abstract than I would have done, but it does a bettter job at representing button movements. I can pretty easily vectorize those. Then I'll just put them through a script to rasterize them to png.--blendmaster 09:35, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Thank you so much blendmaster, that's awesome. I'm going to go ahead and upload new versions of the ones that I have, only for the sake of experimentation.  If you feel yours look better, by all means replace mine.  But at least I'll have image file names in place to use so I can start building a template.  I have been using names such as "Quarter_circle_forward.png" and "Half_circle_backward.png" but regretably, the only name I could come up for the "Z" motions is "Dragon_punch.png" and "Dragon_punch_reverse.png"  The reason I went with those is that it's very common for FAQs to literally abbreviate each of those moves as qcf, hcb, dp, and dpr (or rdp) since that motion is so widely known as the Dragon Punch (or Shoryuken) motion.  Anyway, can't wait to see what you have. Procyon 10:01, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * yep pretty easy to make. I make them 24x24px, like all my other ones. If you don't like how that pdf represents any moves, or if it has any missing, feel free to tell me how to represent other moves. Personally, I'd like to use color to represent holding the button down rather than lines before buttons, but that's up to you. Also, when you upload the buttons, I'd like to keep them in the form Arcade-button, stick-name.png(notice the dashes, not underscores), just so I can do more copy/paste work on my templates rather than starting a template from scratch.


 * Whoops, OK, I totally blew the filename convention that you came up with. I guess I'll delete mine when you finish with yours and upload them with proper filenames.  I won't do any serious development until you get some basic glyphs done.  I guess we would go with something along the lines of: Arcade-punch; Arcade-lightkick; Arcade-stick-qcf, Arcade-stick-chb (charge back), Arcade-stick-cdu (charge down, then up), Arcade-stick-360... and so on. Procyon 13:02, 6 September 2006 (CDT)

OMG, dude, those are awesome. Replace mine whenever you feel their ready, cuz they kick ass. To help you out, I created a page to remove as much of the guess work as possible. I'll add to it as I think of more. Take a note of what I did for the charge motions (putting HOLD in the middle.) You might have to think of a different approach if your glyphs are 24x24, but after looking at my clunky things, you choose the right size. This is gonna rule. Procyon 10:33, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Sweet, that page helps a lot. I'll see how much I can get done in the next week. --blendmaster 18:04, 6 September 2006 (CDT)


 * a bit more wip. Since your pages don't seem to use the buttons inline with text, 32px might actually be better, which is what the wip is in right now. I might actually just keep your existing joystick motions (for now) since they look so much better than what I have now(there's no good way to make exact curved lines in inkscape). I may find a better way to represent the joystick later. I represent the power of the kick and punch with colors, which might not be as clear as the L, M, H you already have, but looks really nice. Unfortunatly, it's really hard to pick out text within the colored button. Same goes for the 2x and 3x punch/kick, which could use text for clarity, in case someone doesn't understand what it represents. Then theres the plain plus sign and optional parenthesis, sized up, which could probably go in template form, like  and $($/$)$ . --blendmaster 23:10, 8 September 2006 (CDT)


 * "(there's no good way to make exact curved lines in inkscape)": if you're wanting to make semicircles and quarter-circles, take a circle, convert it to a path, and then delete some of the points. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 04:54, 9 September 2006 (CDT)


 * good point. Still, I can't get any better than those ones already uploaded for the style they're in. I could try to do a different way of representing them, but that will come later. --blendmaster 22:23, 14 September 2006 (CDT)

Even more wip(beta 2, cause i'm web2.0). I fit the text in there so it's not as confusing. As you can see, I have a lot of variations for the 2x and 3x buttons, with colors and separate rotations. Choose some. --blendmaster 22:23, 14 September 2006 (CDT)


 * They look awesome! I like the colors you choose for the various strengths.  As for the kicks, I could go with either sets of color.  I suppose if you go with the blue, it makes it immediately recognizable to people's eyes.  I like the multiple button presses.  The look of what you've come up with is really cool.  My only concern is the immediate understandability of the designs.  I think the rotation of the icons, and the alternate colors might throw too much variation in to the mix.  Based on what's there, I personally find the non-rotated, non-colored variety looks the clearest.  Out of curiosity, could I see an example of the multiple buttons without the fade?  And could I see an example with the overlap favoring the left side?  I'm just curious.  Thanks! Procyon 09:45, 15 September 2006 (CDT)

Test page setup
Hi blend. Have a look at Move Lists/Capcom/SF2. Appearance-wise, it's a test version, but organizationally, that's how I hope to have the whole guide arranged. I set it up to give DrBob an example of the explination I gave on my talk page. As always, I defer to your judgement about the look. The new WIP looks great! My only concern is that even though I and a few others know what orange punch means (medium), it's not a standard notation, it's just something we came up with for the COMMAND.DAT for MAME32+. We still need to find a way to get an L, M, or H on there somehow, or people won't understand which punch button the orange punch button is. Keep up the kick ass work man, and thank you so much. Procyon 16:49, 9 September 2006 (CDT)

P.S. By all means, even if you prefer to use the glyphs that I uploaded, feel free to propose a better file name scheme for the sake of a template. You're much better than me at doing that. Procyon 17:01, 9 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, the L M and H things were bugging me too. Plus, if you use the grey-blue gradient for the kick, its even more confusing.--blendmaster 21:28, 9 September 2006 (CDT)

File name conventions
Hi Blend. If we can come up with a file name convention that works for you with regard to the arcade control stuff, I can get to work and rename the files that exist so that all you have to do is replace them. Based on what you wrote above, it looks as if you want to do something along the lines of:


 * Buttons: Arcade-punch.png, Arcade-kick.png, Arcade-lightpunch.png, Arcade-mediumpunch.png, Arcade-hardpunch.png, Arcade-lightkick.png, Arcade-mediumkick.png, Arcade-hardkick.png, Arcade-NeogeoA.png, Arcade-NeogeoB.png, Arcade-NeogeoC.png, Arcade-NeogeoD.png
 * Straight motions: Arcade-stick-up.png, Arcade-stick-upright.png, Arcade-stick-right.png, Arcade-stick-downright.png, Arcade-stick-down.png, Arcade-stick-downleft.png, Arcade-stick-left.png, Arcade-stick-upleft.png,
 * Circular motions: Arcade-stick-qcf.png, Arcade-stick-qcb.png, Arcade-stick-hcf.png, Arcade-stick-hcb.png, Arcade-stick-dp.png, Arcade-stick-rdp.png, Arcade-stick-360.png
 * Charge motions: Arcade-stick-cb.png (charge back), Arcade-stick-cdb.png (charge downback), Arcade-stick-cdu.png (charge down, then up)
 * Irregular motions: Well... I don't know what these would be yet, but there are glyphs for motions for short qcfs (d, df) and the delta motion (df, db, uf), and a couple of other weird ones on that PDF.

If the above seems agreeable to you, I can start right on it. If you have any preferences or changes that you would like, just let me know. Thanks! Procyon 16:18, 13 September 2006 (CDT)


 * For the templates that I made to work properly, they need to be in the form Arcade-Type-Button/Direction.png form. Also, I'd like to do everything in uppercase to avoid bugs with the prebuilt template variables left and right, which align the template and caused wierd problems for the button templates. So, with that said, here's your modified naming:


 * Buttons: Arcade-Button-Punch.png, Arcade-Button-Kick.png, Arcade-Button-Lightpunch.png, Arcade-Button-Mediumpunch.png, Arcade-Button-Hardpunch.png, Arcade-Button-Lightkick.png, Arcade-Button-Mediumkick.png, Arcade-Button-Hardkick.png, Arcade-Button-NeogeoA.png, Arcade-Button-NeogeoB.png, Arcade-Button-NeogeoC.png, Arcade-Button-NeogeoD.png
 * Straight motions: Arcade-Stick-Up.png, Arcade-Stick-Upright.png, Arcade-Stick-Right.png, etc.
 * Circular motions: Arcade-Stick-Qcf.png, Arcade-Stick-Qcb.png, Arcade-Stick-Hcf.png, Arcade-Stick-Hcb.png, Arcade-Stick-Dp.png, Arcade-Stick-Rdp.png, Arcade-Stick-360.png
 * Charge motions: Arcade-Stick-Sb.png (charge back), Arcade-Stick-Cdb.png (charge downback), Arcade-Stick-Cdu.png (charge down, then up)
 * Irregular motions: possibly Arcade-Unique-whatever.png.

Basically everything uppercased. Also, for the punch/kick magnitudes, you might as well abbreviate them as Lpunch, Hkick, etc, if you're abbreviating dragon punch and such anyway. What should the shorthand template name be anyway? ? ? ? Besides that, it looks good, and I would go ahead and upload the stick motions. --blendmaster 22:34, 14 September 2006 (CDT)


 * OK, sounds good, I'll stick with the joystick motions that we have so far, and we upload them with the filenames above. Personally, I'm fine with the letters ARC to represent the arcade stuff, so if ARC undefined works, great.  If not, I guess  is a distant second. Procyon 09:33, 15 September 2006 (CDT)


 * OK, it took me long enough, but not only did I upload them, I finally wisened up and created a category for them so you don't have to go to my subpage anymore. Just visit Category:Arcade buttons and you'll find everything in one place.  I'll try to finish uploading the missing glyphs. Procyon 09:59, 19 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Additionally, I uploaded several missing joystick motion glyphs, and an AIR, TAP, and MAX glyph. Not sure how I feel about how they came out, but you're welcome to replace them with something better.  I've also been experimenting with table widths in an effort to line the attack buttons up.  Sometimes there's no choice and it doesn't always work out, but it makes the guides easier to read for the most part.  Have a look at the progress in Move_Lists/Capcom/SF2CE.  Thanks!!  Procyon 14:47, 19 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Just a quick question, what actually to air, tap, and max mean? I was wondering because yours aren't transparent pngs, so I was going to make new versions, and I'm wondering if I can add anything to them to make them make more sense. --blendmaster 17:18, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * OK, air means the move must be performed in the air. The player must jump and perform the motion before his feet touch the ground.  Kuchuu is Japanese for mid-air.  There are, however, some moves that may be performed in the air, but can also be performed on the ground.  I haven't figured out a good way to show that.  Many FAQs use air and (air) where the parenthesis indicate that the air is optional.  Other FAQ writers use AIR/air where the caps means air required, and the lower case means air optional.  Tap means the move is performed by tapping a button as rapidly as possible.  So basically the player rapidly hits one particular button for as long as he wants the move to be performed.  MAX is used to indicate that a super move can not be performed unless the player's super meter is maxed out.  Many street fighting games have a store of multiple super meters, and usually a super move only costs one store of the meter.  But some especially powerful moves (known as desperation moves in NeoGeo games) require that all stocks of the super meter be full before the super move can be performed.  MAX moves also deplete all stored super meters. Procyon 22:43, 22 September 2006 (CDT)

Rethinking the whole 24px vs. 32px thing...
I'm in the process of working on Move Lists/Capcom/SSF2T and the moves are getting a little more complex. I've had to resize the templates to accomodate more room for the motions. Now that I've seen the moves with the glyphs at the 32 pixel size, I'm starting to wonder if they wouldn't look better (and take up less space) at 24 pixels. It's hard to judge. I know it's not the most important thing in your life, but I'm looking forward to getting your opinion whenever you have some time. Thanks. Procyon 22:48, 20 September 2006 (CDT)


 * On the latest wip, the main ones are 32x32 and the ones at the bottom are 24x24, if you want a comparison. --blendmaster 17:16, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Ok, here's the real latest wip. It expands on the 2x and 3x thing. I'll try to get stuff uploaded tomorrow.--blendmaster 17:23, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, I'm beginning to think 24px might be better. I guess I would have to see it to decide for sure, but the 32px versions take up too much space, even if your browser is expanded to 1024x768.  Just like I explained the air/tap/max glyphs above, I just wanted to make sure you understood what the 2x and 3x punch and kick buttons are.  Most moves require that only one button be pressed.  Certain moves (Like Zangief's Double Lariat or Quick Lariat, or Balrog's Turn Punch) require that all three buttons be held down to perform the move.


 * To indicate that a single button was supposed to be pressed three times, I would use commas, so it would look like qcf + p, p, p. On the other hand, in order to perform a super move in X-Men vs. Street Fighter, I have to press all three punch buttons at the same time, so the move is qcf + ppp. See the difference?  It's the "ppp" that I would like to have one symbol for, not the "p, p, p".  And that's why I think the "no blur, no fade" version looks best because it indicates that all three buttons need to be pressed together.  I hope that clears up any confusion.  Your work looks fantastic.  Let me know if there is any more clarification that I can provide.  Thanks!!! Procyon 22:58, 22 September 2006 (CDT)