World's best LF2 mod.LF2 best

[Silverthorn]

Fine, because I really feel like playing LF2 as of now, I'll give this one a shot.

Let's start with the very first impression: 48.95MB for a compressed .zip-archive? That's pretty impressive. Seeing that I'm having a download parallel running + little bandwidth, it takes quite long to download. That makes me hope that it's a good mod, at least. I'm pretty sure that I'd rant otherwise.

Also, while waiting for this download to finish, I just read oliver's post. Hmm, this makes me doubt that I will have fun playing this game. Nevertheless, I'm still optimistic that this version will be somehow worth my time. It better should. If you wish to skip the comments about pre-gaming-experiences, please scroll down to the ">"-sign.

Woohoo, download finally finished, let's extract this archive! And here comes the first "disappointment". An Install Creator setup-file is the only object inside the zip-archive. Hooray, double extracting on my way. And here I go: installing-screen. I will let an image speak for me:

Spoiler (Click to View)

Or: uncustomized image on the left and the claim "by Rahil" makes me still hope that this person actually created (not compiled) the chars of this mod.

Also, a great bit of information following on the screen right afterwards (warning, caps-spam):

Spoiler (Click to View)

THIS IS THE BEST LITTLE FIGHTER VERSION WITH NEW PLAYERS,NEW BACK GROUNDS AND NEW WEAPONS.

DON'T FORGET TO VISIT OUR WEBSITE-HTTP://LITTLEFIGHTERBEST.WEEBLY.COM

So, I now have installed the game right into my temporary folder aka. Desktop. The future will determine if it will end up in my LF2-folder or the Trash Can. Well, I was surprised by the name of the folder. Instead of calling it "LF2 best by Rahil" or something along these lines, it's plainly called "LF2_v2.0a". Not a good start for a self-made mod.

I open this folder and a file with the intimidating name "CHEAT CODE.txt" immediately jumps into my eyes. Not that anything has changed from the original one, though. I wonder if the ending-screen (the one that is displayed after completing stage 5) has been modified in a way that the code is not visible anymore... nope it hasn't.

Anyways, it's always good to open the "readme.txt"-file; if we have to pay attention to anything. Well, not that, but something else has caught my attention. Read the following excerpt and judge yourself:

Spoiler (Click to View)

-------
UPDATES
-------
<11 Jul 2009>
1. Include the fix of the NumLock bug (In v2.0, NumLock keeps ON all the time,
after the fix, user can turn off the NumLock)

2. Fix a critical bug in Geforce 9800 graphics card - Showing wrong sprite
pictures when character facing left.

If you are typical players, this fix has no impact on you.

But if you are LF2 data modifiers, you may be interested to the following
details:

Cause of the bug:
The "left-right" mirror function of DirectDrew is no longer supported by
some new graphics cards (Such as Geforce 9800).

How did I fix it?
I pre-rendered the mirrored pictures and put them along with the original
pictures.
For example, for Davis, it's animation consisted of
davis_0.bmp, davis_1.bmp, davis_2.bmp
In LF2 v2.0a, there are
davis_0_mirror.bmp, davis_1_mirror.bmp, davis_2_mirror.bmp, they are
the "mirrored" version of the 3 bmp above

Impact to modifiers:
It is recommended that you should create those *_mirror.bmp with your
character files.
In case the mirrored pictures are not provided, LF2 will try to do the
mirroring programmatically. It means even you don't provide *_mirror.bmp,
LF2 may still work. However, if you are using Geforce 9800, the "wrong
sprite picture" bug will happen when those mirror pictures are missing.

If you have any questions, you may go to http://lf2.net/forum for help.


<28 Jul 2008>
1. Add a Survival Stage (in stage mode)

2. Add Gameplay Recording feature
(for details, go to http://littlefighter.com/record/)

3. Hold a competition to celebrate 10th year anniversary of LF2
(for details, go to http://littlefighter.com/challenge/)

4. Add background musics

5. Fix bugs:
a. Ask Yes/No after pressing ESC to quit
b. Fix the busy waiting issue in framerate controller (save CPU resources)
c. Remove the "dirty" pixels from some character's action bmps
d. Disable the menu key - F10 and ALT key

6. Other improvements:
a. User can adjust volume by pressing F11/F12
b. Compress all the bmps
c. Allow user to set Full Screen by pressing the maximize button on
upper left corner of window
d. Add update news feature (inform players for any update.)

Marti much?
Even worse:

Spoiler (Click to View)

==============================================================================
You may goto "http://littlefighter.com/" or "http://lf2.net" to check the news
of LF2 and other games developed by us and Rahil Sharma.
==============================================================================

The creator of this mod must obviously have very good connections to Marti/Starsky. Yeah, right.

Interesting, however, that the readme lists moves of the original characters, yet the splash-screen as posted in the first post indicates tons of other characters (that are in no way mentioned in the readme). Oh well, enough talk, let's finally start the game!

>
Sad, the exe seems to not have been modified in any way from what I can see at first glance. The generic blue with tons of ads is still burning itself into my screen while the standard main-music is destroying my speakers. Last controls-check -- standard-controls. Cool.

While loading, I recognize a few well-known names: Emmet, Bluna, Goku, Duke, ... well, this will be fun.

I'm gonna play VS-mode. Scrolling through the character-selection-menu is pretty disappointing, really. Here an LFE-Download, there an LFE-Download. In the end, I pick "Devis", a Davis with a green shirt. My enemies are going to be: Drupis (a Davis with eye-piercing yellow hues), Duke (iirc, hell_fightter's char), and Kroenen (wasn't that VG's creation?). Scrolling through the backgrounds isn't much greater either... I pick the only non-standard-LF2-background: Incendia (which honestly looks like a typical Marshall-background). Here's a screenie:

Spoiler (Click to View)

The good ol' nitro drops from the sky and freezes you immediately upon contact. Oh yeah, I've just recently downloaded that item myself...

Ok, so anybody who knows me a little better knows that I'm really not the worst LF2-player; yet I picked probably the worst character there is. And after a blond Jack came from nowhere, it definitely does not look better for me. Basically, I have Henry's Blast Push, Davis's Dragon Punch, and Bat's D>J. Yeah, short match, the result was devastating:

Spoiler (Click to View)

This Drupis-dude is evil. EVIL! I took my revence by beating him in a 1on1 with a attack-spamming quasi-invincible Bandit-mod:

Spoiler (Click to View)

Bah, the standard-characters are definitely extremely unbalanced. Let's see how this discrepancy will be after entering lf2.net....

Tons of downloadable characters, also, some spawn-errors. For example:

Spoiler (Click to View)

Yeah, was an uneven fight. I nuked him with a perfect :P

And now! The discipline of all disciplines. Survival! If this one has been changed somehow, I will have forgotten everything I've said before. Taking Jamel this time (hi Alblaka )...

survival-stages (Click to View)

Stage 0 - Bandit
Stage 1 - Bandit & Hunter
Stage 2 - a red-ish Bat (Tera?)
Stage 3 - Bluna
Stage 4 - EVIL Drupis (he plays cheap? I'm gonna charge an army against him!), John, some weird dude that looks like one of gad's chars
Stage 5 - Some red-haired Woody, Goku, Rudolf
Stage 6 - oddly colored Dennis with black box, Deep, Henry, Freero
Stage 7 - Aeron (say hi to YinYin & Siegvar)
Stage 8 - Louis EX
Stage 9 - Firzen
Stage 10 - Julian Emmet
Stage 11 - 3x Hunter
...
Stage 20 - Emmet & Bjeorn (sup YinYin)
...
Stage 30 - Emmet & Bjeorn & dude that looks like Gad made him
WHERE IS JULIAN? He is at least in the char-menu...
...
Stage 50 - Emmet & Firzen & LEX & Aeron
... I give up...

So basically, nothing has really changed.


========================================================


Summary
"LF2 best" does not deserve the name to be called "World's best LF2 mod". The basis of LF2 (original characters, backgrounds, weapons) has been kept completely intact. Survival has not been modded at all, so is the exe-skin still the same. The advertising is insofar rather misleading: "New and updated version of LF2 best with 50 more players added!250 Total players".
Basically, you can create such a version in one or two hours: download a few characters, download one background, download a few weapons, install them all into LF2, don't care about possible id-clashes (who would if a character is not working 100% correctly? Nobody!), do not credit anybody except yourself as one of the co-founders of LF2, and submit your Masterpiece.
If I would have to honestly rate this mod, it would not scale among the "best" LF2-versions but rather among the "worst". That is why I would like to refrain from any numeric value.
If you belong to those that do not want to waste their time, please do yourself a favor and avoid playing this one. You will just be disappointed.