【mod】A Song of Fighters and Julian

[z824650]

Hello, I am z824650, an ordinary player and fan of LF2 from Taiwan.
This mod took me three months to finish. It is not a big work, but I still hope you guys enjoy it!

Introduction (Click to View)

1. Little Fighter 2, A Song of Fighters and Julian, short for LF2-SFJ. The name is related to the story of the stage, and also A Song of Ice and Fire. XD
2. This mod doesn't have too much basic change, so players who are used to playing original version can easily get started.
3. This mod features on making characters unique, and the change of stage.
4. This mod uses the system from 艾爾卡特.(http://ztage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=13548)

Features (Click to View)

1. This mod pays attention on making characters special and unique, and substantially change characters' abilities in a certain extent, but still remain the characteristic of the original version.
(1) Louis originally featured on his armor, so I enhance it.

(2) Davis has combos with single high damage, and the good duel ability.

(3) John's attacking abilities create magic circle and need time to chant.

Features (Click to View)

2. Beautiful ultimate abilities make this mod super fun, but don't break the balance.
(1) Freeze

(2) Deep

(3) Rudolf

Features (Click to View)

3. Challenging stages ask players to use specified character, even soldiers.

Features (Click to View)

4. varied background and exclusive nature disasters
(1) This background creates fog and ghosts that attack characters.

(2) Bats come out from time to time.

(3) The three statues create different nature disasters.

Announcements (Click to View)

1. This mod is finished, but there are still many bugs. There will be no plan to improve for the present. However, players can still report any problem to me. thx!
2. The default language is English, and if you want to change it into traditional Chinese, go to "readme>language>chinese".
3. The default screen and background are black, and if you prefer the original blue one, go to "readme>panel>blue".
4. skills are in "readme>skill", materials source is in "readme>materials source".
5. The materials are from other mods, but it is hard to contact their authors. So I just took it without informing, and I owe an apology to them. If there is any material from your mod without
being in "materials source", please tell me.

Special thanks (Click to View)

1. The mods that I took materials from and also where I got the inspiration.
2. In these mods, I specifically want to mention some awesome mods like SV, JW2, RN, DRS.
3. My college friends who help me for the translation. XD
4. The original author of LF2, Martin, and Starsky.
5. Of course, YOU guys who are playing my mods!

Bugs already found(without good ways to improve) (Click to View)

1. Recording files have big chances to be error when playing after restarting the game.(big problem)
2. In stage "Ritual of the Dusk 1", in the starting, there are natural disasters which originally should have show up only in background Queen Island.
3. In stage "Ritual of the Dusk 2", at Resurrection, there may be a problem that the statues aren't clean.
4. The bombs in stage may not explode in a big chance.(big problem)
5. In the background Olympia, the three statues in the background may disappear for a short time.
6. Characters' running speeds while hanging heavy objects are the same as running normally.
7. The dash direction when crouch is different from original version.(details at the below in http://ztage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1...&start=200
8. If players enter a certain move before characters getting fallen, the characters will do the move after getting up for sure.
9. There are problems in the character AI of using abilities.(I improve it by adding some move, but it is still apparent in some characters like Henry, Julian and Bat.)
10. There are many blue places in the exe of black background.(I have no idea how to change it.), also in the loading screen.

Download (Click to View)

mediafire
mega

[STM1993]

Good to see new mods are still being created, downloaded and will give it a go some time soon.

Based on your post, some initial reactions before I play through and give a proper review:
* Ah... the 艾爾卡特 exe. I know I'd have to expect some of the bugs you mentioned below as well as the different AI.
* Very flashy super moves with big AOE there. I'm usually very skeptical of super/hell moves because they can be easily abused or stages become designed to abuse those moves, but I'll reserve judgement until I play it.
* Asked to use specific characters/soldiers? Uh oh... that's not a good sign.
* No HK Colloseum map?! RIOT!!!

I will take note of the recording bug issue you mentioned in case I do make a video to upload.

[the mad maskman]

it's marti not martin
great to see some new mods for lf2! i can't download it right now (crappy connection) but i can that you put a lot of effort into it from the screenies. keep up the good work!

[STM1993]

I'm sorry, this mod is absolute garbage and it advertises itself falsely.

It changed a lot of basic abilities and uses a lot of opoint spamming and no thought about basic mechanics. The stage/background itself spams effects that physically harm your eyes such as constant full screen white flashes (lightning effect) and it places obstacles that will punish you even if you do the right thing.

EPILEPSY WARNING: Flashing screen (Click to View)

This gif basically sums up what to expect from the mod. That's Deep normal jump/dash attack btw.
Oh, and HKC (HK Colosseum) map is not in this mod.


Characters:
Let me put it this way:
Woody's teleport inputs (D^J/DvJ) aren't even fixed in his defend frame.
Deep & Davis both have weird regular punches - the former is replaced by some big slashing move, the latter becomes an autocombo of AAA punnch x2 -> grab.
John's punch is replaced by a summon spell. All his spells automatically summon more magic circles. He has an ultimate move that does 400 damage.
Rudolf turns invisible and creates a clone whenever he takes damage, and 2 shurikens come out of his butt whenever he crouches.
Louis, Firen & Freeze passively creates random lightning/fire/ice, even if they are just running around.
Henry & Hunter both create an arrow rain whenever the arrow misses and hits the ground instead.
Bat turns invisible and summons bats every time he does an attack and has no normal dash attack. He can create a sword that shoots more bats when swung and explodes when dropped.

Julian has unlimited armor, creates mirror images that explode, shoots double the skulls & soul bomb leaves a trail of skulls, has increased damage, big bang has super large AOE & potentially instant kills... and if he grabs you he can delete you. Also, his big bang & grab will hurt your eyes because it keeps flashing full black screen effect.

Soldiers have NOT been changed in this mod btw, only Hunter is affected due to Henry & Knight's armor doesn't reduce damage.
How is this balanced at all? And how can you say that "this mod doesn't have too much basic change"?


Stage:
And as you'd expect, it spams projectiles at you and uses frustrating obstacles, and then it has a nerve to force you to use a specific character - and these chars may require the lf2.net cheat in the first place.
Do note I usually play on Difficult.

Stage Details (Click to View)

Stage 1 - Ancient Legend
You and the other fighters all gang up on a 500hp Julian, who isn't afraid to spam the above-mentioned big bang move. After that, stage clear.
The bg is on top of the tower. The problem is that in the background, the sky constantly grows brighter and then turns pure white before fading back and repeating, which is highly annoying on eyes.
You must use one of the 10 fighters.

Stage 2 - Medieval Empire 1
You must use one of the soldiers except Justin.
You just fight some other soldiers, until the end when you get ambushed by Justins along with random bats & soul bombs.
The background is Dark Lion Forest with its constant lightning flash that hurts your eyes.

Stage 3 - Medieval Empire 2
This is when I lost my patience. Again, any soldier except Justin... but I feel like you're supposed to use Jan.
Fight a bit, get lost in a foggy forest where the fog effect will hurt your eyes since it is an animated white fog. Survive the ghosts for a bit.
Get ambushed by 5 Justins with 500hp while bats & soul bombs are spammed at you.
You enter a crystal cave. You now must destroy some Knight statues. These statues can only be damaged by characters from the front, cannot be hurt by weapons and projectiles, and when they die, they INSTANTLY EXPLODE. WHAT. THE. f***.
The most viable solution is to just use Jan, stand in front of the statue, and just block - the orb's reflect effect will damage the statue rapidly and when it explodes, you will block most of the damage. Oh, and the stage also throws homing bats at you from time to time, and out of nowhere a big-bang explosion spam happens which will eat up almost all your HP if the fights prior to this bit hasn't left you drained you already. Did I mention this stage never drops milk for you?
After the statues, you still have to kill a statue in the back, but now there's a constantly respawning Justin that does the Akuma Shun Goku Satsu move. At one point the stage became unbeatable for me because the statue decided to spawn OUTSIDE of the playable area. I gave up trying to beat the stage at this point and moved on.

Stage 5 - Ritual of the Dusk 1
You must use Bat.
This stage expects you to kill things or defuse bombs before the time expires. And Bat doesn't have a normal dash attack, and he still has his weird type of weapon dash attack. I decided not to do this stage when the game placed so many bombs and then drops some more with low timers even before the first batch has counted down.

Stage 6 - Ritual of the Dusk 2
You must use Justin.
This stage is just an obstacle course. At first, you have to find a way to cross this crystal wall - basically you're expected to just run into it, roll before it pulses to push you away, and then run again - repeat until you get past the itr kind 14 barrier. you are up against several knights with probably over a million HP each who would then die by hidden timer. Bat appears and kills the knights for you. Afterwards, Bat leaves, and you have to pass more crystals while the game spawns a bunch of moves to hinder you, including a teleporting Rudolf who attacks and then creates a clone. Did I mention that behind the crystal, there's a statue? And there's no way for Justin to destroy the statue without taking heavy damage himself. Got killed by a Rudolf I believe towards the end after I blew up the statue, and I gave up and move on.

Stage 7 - Ritual of the Dusk 3
You must use Julian.
Sounds awesome right? Well, all you do is fight a tonne of soldiers who spawn from the right multiple times and have several thousand HP over and over again. You can't lose. I ended up quitting this stage because my eyes started to hurt from using Big Bang & delete (even though I avert my eyes from the screen whenever I use the moves) to try and get through the stage quickly.

Stage 8 - Fight for the Dawn 1
You must use one of the 10 fighters.
All you do is run to the right, collect other heroes, and avoid the bg obstacles.

Stage 9 - Fight for the Dawn 2
10 fighters again.
You start off fighting a bunch of Justins & Knights alone. While bats keep coming to interrupt you.
I quit.

Stage 10 - Fight for the Dawn 3
10 fighters again.
Bg is the same as in stage 1. You fight fighters who spam their super moves I think, I forgot. I quit immediately.

In summary,
I'm disappointed. The author had advertised it as a mod that "didn't change the basics", and so I was hoping it would be a mod that feels like the original LF2 with its deep & interesting combos and a stage that has me actually beating up goons skillfully. Instead all I got was a standard overpowered mod that spams tonnes of things, and it physically hurt my eyes with flashing effects. I would not have been this harsh if it were honest about being overpowered and if it didn't actually use bright flashing effects that hurt the eyes.

To the author's credit he did cite his sources for everything he used in his readme, but that's the only thing I can really praise this mod for.
(EDIT: rewlf2 said that apparently the author didn't properly credit some of the BGs he did.)

[rewlf2]

It does get on my nerves when you don't properly cite ALL references you have included.

Firstly, I do not publish Azure Field, Volcano Site and Forbidden Tower Top individually, only bundled inside LF2Hongba. I am fine if you cite me as the creator of these backgrounds bundled in my version, but you didn't credit me at all.

None of inspiration for all stage puzzle is credited. In particular there are a few puzzles and features I find directly ripped from Julian War 2.

For the balance... I should rephrase.
I tried a few matches, which I find a fighter being significantly stronger when health drops low (or some conditiions). Many of moves have very large advantage against original moves despite the damage isn't much increased.
I also find characters difficult to control and have a lot of invulnerability frames in powered moves. This style is much more like R-LF2, which basically doesn't fit with original LF2 style. I suggest you should stay on either side.



As I see between the works, you seem to lack actual knowledge to merge and amend matter properly:

Forbidden Tower in ruins has improper parallax
Stages with spawned hostile projectiles will greatly prolong stage clearing time (8-15s after killing off enemies)
Some problems said by STM
Steep difficulty spikes
Empty substages and dead air
Deep's A and D>A, JA and D^JA are difficult to distinguish
You should proofread spelling of english stage dialogues before publishing
Incredibly persistent soldier waves with no sign of boss
Lack vision (or feedback) to avoid bad aspects of mods you are referring from
You should notice a player to change character when stage is cleared, or better, stages with similar theme should not differ on controllable character
Plenty of stages without indication for helping progressing, or outdated notice (thunder storm in 2nd substage, for example)
Plenty of stages that deal considerable damage before you can react properly
Trying to let player play both as original character (Justin and soldiers) and reinforced character (Julian, Bat and Fighter) is rather unacceptable

[z824650]

The author had advertised it as a mod that "didn't change the basics", and so I was hoping it would be a mod that feels like the original LF2 with its deep & interesting combos and a stage that has me actually beating up goons skillfully.

Hmm...It seems that I made a huge mistake on this mod.

Anymay, I must thank you for playing my mod and replied so diligently.
I already knew you before by watching and subscribing your Youtube channel, and I am sorry that you were disappointed.
However, I can promise that I spent much time and energies on this mod. I tried hard to make this mod better, even though it seems to end up being a disaster.

OK, Actually I was shocked by your reply, and if you still would like to see my explanation, here it is.

I think the biggest problem is how I understand LF2.

For the characters I made, I originally wanted something like RN or JW2 that didn't have a big change from original version, but I still wanted to make something different. I thought the biggest problem in the original version is that all characters don't have their unique feature, and always rely on their dash attack. In fact, I can 1v4 in HK Colloseum map just by keeping using dash attack no matter which character I choose. As a result, I decided to make characters "unique" and "irreplaceable" after thinking.

Take Freeze for example, a person with ice must move slowly, tried to freeze anyone who gets closely(On the contrary, Firen will try to get close to his enemies and explode all of them). He makes area suited for him to fight, and wait for a good chance to beat his enemy. In the game, what he can do for his team should be the big area control of enemies team. He can freeze and let his teammates kill all of them. On the other side, he can easily counter who is good at chasing, dashing and fighting closely like Dennis and Deep. However, he will be in trouble when a character can easily attack him from a far distance like Henry. This is unique, and no other characters can do the same thing.

For deep, he must be a warrior who fears nothing. He likes to charge forward to enemies(so I change his dash), and want fights as many as he can. As a result, when his hp is lower than half, he can use his ultimate and heal himself, allowing him to throw himself into more fights. Characters like Henry and John should fear him, but Freeze and Davis can easily defeat him.

There are other unique reason how other characters were made, like that you will find Davis hard to get close to enemy and not a good choice for a team fight(countered by Rudolf), but almost no one can defeat him in a duel. There is a note in readme of how and why I created all the characters in Chinese and I am sorry that I didn't translated it into English.

However, I forgot it is a game called LF2, not a game called League of Legends, world of warcraft or something like that. What making the thing worse is that I was still thinking that I am making something not different too much from the original version. It ends up being what you see and make you disappointed.

After all, I still thank you so much for playing and replying. There will be a small chance for me to go improving this mod because of time. If there is someday that I have time and energy, I will try my best to make it better. Yet, I must tell you that it is not, and will NEVER be a garbage because I love LF2, and I put my heart and soul into making it better. This mod is what I tried really hard to make, although it may not be a good one.

Firstly, I do not publish Azure Field, Volcano Site and Forbidden Tower Top individually, only bundled inside LF2Hongba. I am fine if you cite me as the creator of these backgrounds bundled in my version, but you didn't credit me at all.

To rewLF2, I will check the sources again, correct this mistake, and re-upload it as soon as possible.
Then, I must owe you an apology.

In addition for the English mistake. Sorry not a native speaker. I asked my friend in English department to check the English version. Would you tell me where the mistake is?

[Simoneon]

That is an amazing reply, z824650. Thank you so much for giving us the insight behind all the work that went into the mod. It got me interested — would you mind sharing the design notes on each of the character if you are able to translate it? I might not able to play the mod but I'd gladly read the design behind it!

Thank you for your time!

[STM1993]

That's a passionate & well-written reply z824650! Great respect to you!

I do apologize that I was being very harsh and had assumed it wasn't with much effort - now I can see it was all thoroughly thought out & worked on even if it didn't turn out well. I too do love LF2, but I have become cynical because many mods fail to capture what made the original game great and expand upon that. If you do wish to continue to work on the mod or other projects we'd be more than happy to offer help & advice - I'd personally be on the LFE Discord.

I noticed the downloads were taken down however, I was going to re-download and try to read the readme again. Any chance of sharing at least the readme files?

[rewlf2]

If you are not familiar with english, you can still use Google translate and try translating your dialogues sentence by sentence. This will give you basic ideas of some wordings, like english of "傳說" being "Legend".