RISING THUNDER - F2P PC fighter from Seth Killian & the Cannon Brothers

K.O.Kiki

PC Gamer article

Just because I don’t have to learn how to do special moves doesn’t mean I’m instantly good, or that I’m using them at the right times. I’m learning the finer points of blocking and attacking, and I’m getting better. It's still hard, but to be showing notable progress in a fighting game after a few dozen matches is actually pretty unusual.

Orim

Sounds interestin and it's got good pedigree but that article is written like the last ~7 years didn't happen to fighting games.

Owwmykneecap

Couldn't even finish the article.


Not for me.

J0hnick

Its actually really good, I signed up for the alpha and got in. Thought id be put off by pressing 1 button for a special move or a super but it changes very little, in fact bringing down the execution barrier just makes you concentrate on stuff like footsies :-).

Have 2 redeem codes for anyone who wants them ?.

Rob2D

Yeah it's really charming. I'm enjoying it.

Sairus

It's cool, but it's got some issues that will hopefully get ironed out through various alpha updates and betas. They've already made a much needed change to the burst mechanic which was nice.

For those not playing, the game runs like this:

Very similar to SF4 but with extremely simplified buttons.

It's an 8 button fighter (you actually need 8 buttons. There's no macros.).

Light, Medium and Heavy.
These are your standard attacks. Everyone has a cross up move with j.Down+H. There's also a universal overhead on Forward+M.

Special 1, Special 2, Special 3
This is a defining point of the game. Each character only has 3 special attacks, and they each get a dedicated button. No quarter circles or anything, just tap the button. Some specials can be modified with directional input.
Each special also has a cooldown timer which is displayed on your screen. Once you attack, you gotta wait for the countdown to finish before you can use it again.

Throw
Gets its own button and functions exactly like SF4, except air throws can also be teched.

Super
As you give and receive damage your super bar fills. Tap this button to deploy your super.

I found it really friggin annoying to have to use 8 buttons, so I eventually used JoyToKey to map Throw to L+S1 and Super to M+S2. I really hope this gets added to the game eventually because it's so much friggin easier.

This game is also unbelievably easy to play on keyboard. Like, wow I was surprised how easy it was without quarter circles to worry about.

There's slight character customization available too, which you can use before and between games.
First, all character have at least one alternate special that you can swap. Dauntless for example has a dodge punch with invincibility at the start. You can choose the standard back dodge or the variant forward dodge.

Second you can choose Kinetic Advance or Kinetic Deflect mode for your character.
Kinetic Advance lets you build up to two bars of Kinetic meter by dealing damage. You can input a dash or a jump during any move to do an SF4 style dash cancel.

Kinetic Deflect lets you build up to two bars of Kinetic meter by receiving damage. You can push any two special attack buttons during hit or blockstun (even in throws) to do a burst that knocks the opponent away.

Final interesting point: It's exclusively designed to be played online. There's no local play. A bunch of the gameplay revolves around not seeing your opponent's screen. Both players can see health and super meters, but only you can see your Kinetic meter and cooldown bars. Some characters also have abilities that make use of this, like the ninja that can go invisible on the opponent's screen, but not yours.
I'm guessing they'll add LAN play eventually, but it's not in the alpha right now.

---

So yeah, that's the primer. So far, it's kinda weird to play, but I've been enjoying it. Character design is really cool and I love the touch that each character speaks both English and their native language. Chel speaks some Spanish, Vlad has some Russian, Edge has a bit of Mandarin, etc.

One thing that does bug me about the aesthetics is that I had no idea these were supposed to be giant robots. I thought they were just regular human sized guys with pilots remote controlling them. Nope! They're about Gundam sized.
They really need to add in some better visual and audio cues to get this across. Their choice of stage in the alpha is bizarre too because it really barely shows off their scale.

I've currently been playing Chel, the shoto/zoner and Dauntless the Dudley-esque brawler.

It's hilarious watching player reaction to Chel. She has a fireball that can be used on the ground or in the air and her shtick is that she only has cooldown on it if she misses. If they get hit or block the ball the cooldown meter instantly resets, so she can keep firing stuff. She can send a pretty unending rain of projectiles at you if you give her the space and gets in your head. Get close and she'll DP you to the far side of the screen. So you can imagine, let's say... inexperienced players find this a tad annoying.

It wasn't so bad with Chel, but I really started to feel the lack of buttons with Dauntless. Y'know how in MvC3 all the characters only have 3 buttons+launcher but they still feel like full characters? Rising Thunder often feels like I'm playing half a character, like I don't have enough buttons to play properly.

Sairus

Speaking of Chel..

Robert ninja

J0hnick wrote: »

Its actually really good, I signed up for the alpha and got in. Thought id be put off by pressing 1 button for a special move or a super but it changes very little, in fact bringing down the execution barrier just makes you concentrate on stuff like footsies :-).

Have 2 redeem codes for anyone who wants them ?.

PM me a code, please?

Rob2D

The rage quitting in this is rampant!

Enjoying it though. I do agree with Sairus, you feel like you're missing half your buttons or something; it's really weird at first. Hopefully the feeling passes.

Had a lot of fun with Crow in training today. Some of the stuff he can do is INSANE. If you can think it, chances are he can do it. He reminds me of a broken MK character.

I love that it defaults to 2/3. It's great to get that runback straight away. Even if they do rage quit you afterwards anyway :pac:

Ramza

2 extra codes if anyone wants em, first come first served, PM me

Sairus

Re: codes to the alpha, even if you don't have a code, just go to RisingThunder.com and sign up. Everyone who signs up gets into the alpha within a few minutes to a few hours. Codes just get you in instantly.

Re: rage quits. Often it's not actually rage quits. The game is still in alpha and it's a known issue that it keeps disconnecting after the first game before you get a chance to go to the loadout screen. Hell, sometimes I'm mid super animation about to lose a game and I get d/cs.

D4RK ONION

So I played about 20 sets today. Went roughly 60:40 as Chel, she's certainly not the cheap unstoppable zoner everyone said she was (disappointing). Plenty of the characters seem to have good anti fireball moves anyway. Lost most of my games due to complete match up inexperience and not knowing wtf is safe on hit or block. Some stuff looks wildly unsafe (Sword-Man's Guy style slide) but I can't even 2L it to punish!

Rob2D

Slide is safe.

airmax87

Anyone have a spare code?

D4RK ONION

Rob2D wrote: »

Slide is safe.

That is bonkers! Is there frame data on this game anywhere?

Sairus

D4RK ONION wrote: »

That is bonkers! Is there frame data on this game anywhere?

Oh yeah, I forgot about how weird and safe some stuff is. There's no in between on moves. Either they're insanely safe or massively unsafe. Often hard to tell em apart.

Edge in particular has safe **** out the wazoo.

And yeah, Chel is very much not a broken character. She's just extremely easy to label as OP if you're not interested in looking past her very defeatable projectile/DP wall.

Once you do open up a Chel it's extremely fun watching them just fall apart most of the time.
What do you mean I should have a backup plan if the other guy knows how to neutral jump?

D4RK ONION

Played a long online adventure set with Keith and Nutrient last night, SO much fun. Highly suggest having people over to wreck noobs online.

Have you seen my ball?

Robert ninja

Got accepted to play last night. Will have a go streaming it today

D4RK ONION

BUILD 1235

New Special Move Variants

- Edge's Binary Flux (S1v2) is a new double-projectile which powers up his S2!
- Chel's Stinging Wind (S3v2) is a new advancing attack with faster startup and recovery!

Bug Fixes

- Fixed one major disconnect issue. You should no longer see the "Waiting..." message after the first game in a match.
- Computers with slow load times should no longer display an odd camera angle and "Waiting..." message when loading is complete.
- Improved performance during normal gameplay and rollbacks.
- Change Character and Change Loadout buttons are now disabled while searching for a match.
- Fixed desync with multiple hit volume overlaps.
- Fixed issue where some moves were not properly dizzying opponents.
- Fixed combo counter malfunction that sometimes permanently maxed out the juggle limit.
- Fixed a bug where some moves were not triggering proper knockback after block damage KO.
- Fixed a bug that prevented Talos from falling gradually after wall bounce.
- Fixed a bug that caused characters to get stuck beyond screen boundaries after using Kinetic Deflect against a cornered opponent.

Character Updates

- Extended hurt-boxes on some moves to better match their active hitboxes:
--> Chel's c.M, c.H, and F+M
--> Crow's far s.H
--> Edge's far s.M, far s.H, c.L, and c.M
- Standardized block pushback caused by normal sweep attacks:
--> Chel's c.H, Edge's c.H, Talos' c.H, and Vlad's c.H
- Corrected an issue that gave the first hit of Chel's F+H and Edge's close s.H -> H an extra frame of hit stun.
- Chel's Overdrive damage has been reduced from 275 to 250.
- Edge's Overdrive damage has been reduced from 300 to 275.
- Edge's Gathering Storm (S1v1) recovery has been increased slightly.
- Edge's Relentless Pursuit (S3) behaves more intuitively after passing under a jumping opponent and stops automatically when reaching a wall.
- Talos' crouching Light attack startup has been reduced by 1 frame.
- Talos' feet now become projectile invulnerable during air Spartan Rush.
- Talos' fully charged Titan Smash (S2) no longer causes extreme pushback against cornered opponents.

(This is not intended as a comprehensive balance pass. These changes should have relatively minor impact on how characters are played.)

Visual Improvements

- Added a new look for Kinetic Advance shadows.
- Armor hits are conveyed more clearly with VFX.
- Lifebar displays combo damage, block damage, and armor damage more accurately.
- Smoothed out animation timing for Talos air throw, making it easier to identify the follow-up window.
- Fixed a strange movement issue with Crow's forward throw against Dauntless.

Audio Improvements

- Armor hits now have unique SFX to stand out from normal hits.
- Kinetic Deflect activation has SFX.
- Sound mix updates.

Still no move variants for the fetch-machine

bush

Still cant play on a 6 button stick?

Rob2D

bush wrote: »

Still cant play on a 6 button stick?

You should be able to. Did you go in and remap all your buttons?

bush

Rob2D wrote: »

You should be able to. Did you go in and remap all your buttons?

Ye you cant use super or throw

K.O.Kiki

That's the one thing stopping me, too.

Rob2D

Oh sorry you said 6 button. Only just caught that. That's a surprising oversight coming from these guys.

Robert ninja

Tried it. Not digging it... probably because I don't like Street Fighter and it feels so similar :O

Voa

I can't get any matches online. It keeps going to connect then nope.

Nutrient

Put the money on the table

Voa

Got it working.

Still accidentally doing 360s.

Sairus

You can actually use a 6 button stick to play this. It just requires a bit of tinkering with JoyToKey to set up throw and super macros.

Also this alpha went public recently so you can just go sign up and play now without a code.

shane9fingers

Does this have local multiplayer?

D4RK ONION

Nope. From Sairus' post earlier on:

Final interesting point: It's exclusively designed to be played online. There's no local play. A bunch of the gameplay revolves around not seeing your opponent's screen. Both players can see health and super meters, but only you can see your Kinetic meter and cooldown bars. Some characters also have abilities that make use of this, like the ninja that can go invisible on the opponent's screen, but not yours.
I'm guessing they'll add LAN play eventually, but it's not in the alpha right now.