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Thread: Kung Fu Superstar

  1. #16
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    DWC talks to Kung-Fu Superstar game developer

    Thought it pretty cool that they had been working on this and I had some questions about the project.

    http://darkwingchun.wordpress.com/20...ame-developer/

    CTK
    “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” – Friedrich Engels

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by couch View Post
    Thought it pretty cool that they had been working on this and I had some questions about the project.

    http://darkwingchun.wordpress.com/20...ame-developer/

    CTK
    Thanks for the thread merge.
    “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” – Friedrich Engels

  3. #18
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    Martial Arts for the Masses

    Isn't martial arts already for the masses?
    Kung Fu Superstar: Martial Arts for the Masses
    July 5, 2012 6:45AM PDT
    By Mark Walton, Staff Writer

    Mark speaks to Kostas Zarifis, head of indie studio Kinesthetic Games, about motion controls, life as an Indie, and how he's teaching martial arts to gamers.

    Would you give up a job working on one of the biggest franchises, at one of the biggest development studios in the world, in order to go out on your own and pursue a dream? To trade job security and that seldom used gym membership for a life of late-night programming, daytime TV, and the knowledge that--if all goes horribly wrong--it's more than just your livelihood on the line? That might be too risky a move for some, but for Kostas Zarifis, formerly of Lionhead and now leading newly formed indie studio Kinesthetic Games, it was the only move that made sense.

    "I had something of my own that I really wanted to pursue--I had to do it," says Zarifis with confidence. "If you'd asked me if I thought I was going to be doing it so soon, I'd probably say no. But, at the same time, opportunities arise and you have to take them. It was just a case of really believing in the project I'm working on now, and it looked like other people believed in it too."

    That project is Kung Fu Superstar, a motion-controlled action game born out of Lionhead's Creative Day, a yearly event where staff at the studio are free to come up with and pitch their own game ideas.

    "When I first demoed Kung Fu Superstar, the reaction to it was really positive. I was frequently in discussions with Peter [Molyneux] about it, and it was perceived by everyone as a potentially successful project. But the thing is, Lionhead is very much focused on the Fable franchise right now, because it's amazing, and it's been doing really well for them. Kung Fu Superstar is drastically different. Potentially you could say it's not even a Lionhead game."

    There's no denying how different it is. Kung Fu Superstar puts you in the shoes of an aspiring movie star called Danny Chang, a kid who spends his days throwing punches in his bedroom and watching Jackie Chan DVDs. His dream? To become the greatest of martial artists and star in his own films. The twist is that not only does Chang increase his skills onscreen, but you learn real martial arts moves too--"the ultimate RPG", Zarifis calls it. Naturally, that means there's a motion controller aspect to the game, but Zarifis is a little cagey when I ask exactly how it's all going to work.

    "There's a motion controller aspect to the game and there's a controller aspect too. We're not focusing on a particular motion controller platform at the moment. The project started on Kinect, but we're looking at other platforms and integrating an actual controller too. Of course, in order to physically learn the moves you have to experience the motion control side of the game. But, if you're just interested in playing a really fun, awesome fighting game, then you've got a choice.

    There's currently two schools of thought when it comes to motion controls. The first is 1:1 control, which is the Star Wars approach. Then you've got the Dance Central approach, which doesn't show the player, but instead registers what they're doing. There's an argument that if you do it the Dance Central way, there's a disconnect between the player and the game that shouldn't be there. It's not an easy design choice, but as a developer you have to ask yourself, what's the most fun?"

    It's a risky proposition, particularly as fast-paced action games and Kinect haven't exactly set the world on fire--just take a look at Kinect Star Wars and Steel Battalion--but Zarifis seems confident it will work, and work well.

    "I think it's a problem with the design approach when it comes to Kinect, rather than the technology. At the hardware level Kinect is really fast. The amount of lag it has is completely miniscule. You've probably seen it yourself when you go into the Kinect tuner and you see your wireframe skeleton--that's very quick, almost instant. As a developer that's the kind of data we get, so it comes down to how you deal with it. In our case, I'd love to say it's really fast and it's really accurate because of the way we're approaching design. We're not fighting against the technology. That's where some people get it more right than others."

    Despite this, Zarifis tells me he's "not trying to replace kung fu schools" but merely setting out to make an enjoyable game. And he's assembled quite the team to do so, which includes former Codemasters man Alasdair Martin and ex-Lionhead friend Anish Antony. But the biggest member of the team isn't one person, but rather a collection of people from across the globe--a sort of crowdfunding model where instead of seeking money, Zarifis is seeking programming talent.

    "It's amazing, because it's a very kind of different and unorthodox kind of model--I wasn't even sure it would work out to be honest. But it's working amazingly well for us. It's great to have the friction of the two worlds of industry veterans working with people with less experience, or that are just really keen. My thinking was that there are amazingly talented people out there who, for whatever reason, haven't had the chance to get a break. We were lucky enough to find a lot of those guys and bring them onboard."

    There's a long way to go before Kung Fu Superstar is in the hands of gamers, and still a few months to go until there's even some concrete information on how exactly the game will work. And despite Zarifis' confidence, there's still a little bit of me that's sceptical that Kinect really can deliver a fast-paced action experience, never mind actually teaching someone kung fu. But it's easy to admire someone who's eager to risk it all in pursuit of a dream.

    "If you think me leaving Lionhead was a big deal," says Zarifis "obviously Peter leaving to try out his own thing was a huge deal. I think that's pretty cool, because a lot of people in his position might not want to take that risk. For someone like him to go, 'You know what? Screw this' and go see what else he can do is pretty impressive. That's the biggest lesson I've learnt from Peter: to follow your dreams."
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  4. #19
    Hah Indeed they are!

    We don't pick the headlines I'm afraid! You know what journalists are like when it comes to headlines

    Hope you enjoyed the interview regardless!

  5. #20
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    so much for that

    I get so many martial Kickstarter bids. Most of them don't fly. I've heard of some scammers who used schills to meet their Kickstarter goal in order to extract money from the other contributors.
    Tue, Jul 09, 2013 | 23:02 BST
    “Launching on Kickstarter UK day one was a bad idea” – Kung Fu Superstar dev

    Kinesthetic Games founder Kostas Zarifis believes crowdfunding efforts for his Kinect fighter Kung Fu Superstar were hampered by Kickstarter UK’s early launch issues.

    “Launching on Kickstarter UK day one was a bad idea,” Zarifis said at the Develop conference in Brighton.

    The developer said Kickstarter’s UK portal launched with a poor payment interface, with confusing currency conversions. He believes that if he had waited until Kickstarter ironed out these issues, the project might have been successful.

    That said, Zarifis admitted that Kung Fu Superstar was a “niche market” game, and that Kinesthetic didn’t help itself out by implementing a confusing reward tier structure.

    Happily, the story does have a happy ending; Kinesthetic is working on two projects for US companies, having drawn sufficient attention to itself via the Kickstarter.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  6. #21

    confused

    Hey Gene,

    Not sure of the point you are making in this post? Any chance you could elaborate?

    Thanks,
    Kostas.

  7. #22
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    It came up in today's newsfeed.

    I post news here. It fortifies our archives. Our forum is set that if you put anything in quotes, it doesn't register as text in the post (except for when you max out the character count). So I commented on Kickstarter.

    Now it's your turn. You elaborate.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  8. #23
    Oh right. Sure ok I understand you're reporting the news, that's great! Just wasn't sure about the commentary. If there's any questions basically that you need me to answer or you're unsure about any aspect of the Kickstarter campaign we ran back in November, I'd be more than happy to explain! As you can see our tiny team tries to engage with the community as much as physically possible. I'd hate for questions to go unanswered or for false impressions to be formed since we try to be so readily available to clarify things that might need clarification is what I am trying to say

  9. #24
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    Well alright then

    Let's hear it then. What's up with that news piece and the Kickstarter campaign?

    My comment was directed more towards Kickstarter than to this Kinect project specifically. You got to understand - I get lots of Kickstarter campaign requests and they get rather tiresome.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  10. #25
    Of course.

    The Kickstarter campaign for Kung Fu Superstar ended back in early December 2012. Unfortunately it was unsuccessful: we set a goal of £200,000 and in the end we just hit just under half that. Just to make it absolutely clear Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing funding platform so we never actually raised any funding at all out of this. This was a conscious decision as we didn't want to collect money from people unless we made absolutely certain we had enough to deliver on what we were committing for this campaign. I am not sure based on your original comment whether this was clear so I just want to make sure I clarify this (some platforms like indiegogo do allow campaigners to keep partial funds raised even if target has not been met so I can see how someone could be confused about this)

    About this news piece: this is coverage of a recent talk I did at Develop, a games development annual conference in the UK. In it I talked about the project and it's development and I also talked about our experience with Kickstarter UK (which seems to have gotten the most coverage) and just generally passed advice to conference attendees. I wouldn't have thought this news piece would be of interest to a non games industry audience but I am very glad you cover it here nontheless (we sure need the exposure and help from the community if we're ever going to get this to happen!)

    About the current state of the project: obviously having spent all of our personal savings trying to get the project to the state it is now and not making it on Kickstarter has taken its toll on the team and it's ability to keep pushing. However we're not ones to give up easily so we're still out there fighting for 'better' fighting games that promote the use of the brain as well as the body and most of all promote the values of Kung Fu and other martial arts (a goal I am sure we can all get behind!). Hopefully there will be exciting developments soon that I will be able to announce (as always our Facebook page for early access to announcements is www.facebook.com/KungFuSuperstar)

    Lastly I appreciate you must be getting a ton of request from martial arts themed Kickstarters therefore I must thank you even more for actually choosing to report kn our project out of all those projects even long after its Kickstarter has been closed. Like I say even if that is the case the project is still very much alive so I definitely appreciate your interest and the exposure.

    Hope this helps and do let me know if there's more questions!

    Many thanks,
    Kostas

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