    M.U.G.E.N

Version 1.0 18 Jan 2011

About

M.U.G.E.N is a 2D fighting game engine with many customizable components.

Please visit our forums at elecbyte.com for support, bug reports and other useful resources.

This distribution includes a sample character Kung Fu Man. You can check his movelist in the readme file in his directory: chars/kfm/

Updates

See history.html for updates.

I. M.U.G.E.N Info II. Key Configuration III. Running the Game IV. Game HotKeys V. Speed Issues VI. Memory Issues VII. Known Issues / Notes VIII. Sample Content A. License Agreement B. Acknowledgements

===================================================================== I. M.U.G.E.N Info

M.U.G.E.N may be used free-of-charge for non-commercial purposes. For other uses, please contact us. Refer to Appendix A for the full license text.

System requirements

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or newer required.

CPU: Intel Core Duo or equivalent recommended for HD resolutions.

Memory: 512 MB or more (actual requirements may vary based on character and stage complexities).

What M.U.G.E.N?

M.U.G.E.N is a 2D fighting game engine, originally released in 1999. M.U.G.E.N was originally designed for users to create games that matched the technology level of 2D fighters from the mid '90s. However, it quickly evolved to become highly customizable, allowing very fine control over each character's behavior. In fact, there are custom games for M.U.G.E.N that don't behave like your typical 2D fighter.

The majority of content created for M.U.G.E.N tend to be distributed as individual characters, stages or motifs (motifs are like themes, that control the look and feel of the game). Assembling a game is as simple as downloading the content of your choice, and configuring M.U.G.E.N to know about it.

M.U.G.E.N is designed to be used by people with little or no programming experience, but with some artistic talent and patience to learn. Of course, having some programming background does give you a bit of a headstart. However, if you are just looking to play with downloaded content, all you need to know is how to unzip files and edit a text file.

M.U.G.E.N is also an acroymn for something, but we forgot what it is. :)

Here's a sampling of features you can find in M.U.G.E.N:

Customizable title screen, character select screen, life and power bars, game sound effects, fonts and more.
Characters can have any number of sounds and sprites of any size limited by your computer's memory.
Choose from multiple resolutions, ranging from 320x240 up to full HD at 1920x1080.
Cutscenes.

Game Engine

Use up to 7 buttons for a character.
Regular moves, special moves, super moves, etc.
Projectiles and special effects.
Move cancels and combos, multi-part moves and throws.
What your character can do is defined by a scripting language (and your imagination).

How M.U.G.E.N?

M.U.G.E.N was originally developed for DOS in C using DJGPP and Allegro, an excellent compiler and gaming library respectively. Today, M.U.G.E.N is built for Microsoft Windows using Visual Studio Express and SDL.

Where M.U.G.E.N?

http://elecbyte.com/mugen

Why M.U.G.E.N?

To tell you the truth, we were making a shooting game and all of a sudden it turned into this. Although we were making a shooting game in the beginning, we noticed that there weren't any good commercial fighting games on the PC at the time. Some of the inspiration came from early engines like SFIBM.

Who M.U.G.E.N?

If you want to contact us about something, please use the contact form on our website. http://elecbyte.com/

When M.U.G.E.N?

I don't quite remember when we started this project, but it was sometime around 1997 or 1998. Our first public release version was 9X.06.27.

===================================================================== II. Key Configuration

This is the default key configuration. You can change it from the options menu when you run the game.

Button Player 1 Player 2

Up Up arrow W Down Down arrow S Left Left arrow A Right Right arrow D X L R Y semicolon T Z double-quote Y A comma F B period G C slash H Start Enter U

If you have a joystick, you can enable it through the options screen. Press F1 to access Input Config and set up your joystick from there. Press left/right on the joystick type option to enable or disable the joystick for each player.

===================================================================== III. Running the Game

From Explorer, double-click mugen.exe to start.

Main menu Function

Arcade Go 1 on 1 against the computer Versus Go 1 on 1 against your friend Team Arcade Play various team-up modes against the computer Team Versus Play various team-up modes against your friend Team Co-op Gang up against the computer with your friend Survival See how long you can last in an endless battle! Survival Co-op Play survival mode with your friend as a partner Training Try out moves and combos Watch Watch AI-controlled characters fight Options Set up basic game options Exit Quit from M.U.G.E.N

For "Arcade" mode, the key you hit will determine which side you play on. If you chose with one of Player One's keys, your character will play on the left side. If you chose with Player Two's keys, you will start on the right side.

For the "team" modes, you first choose what team mode you would like to play in. Press up/down to choose a mode. Some modes, such as Turns mode, allow you to set the number of players on a team by pressing left/right. Press a key to choose an option. In "Team Arcade", after selecting your players, you have a choice of your opponents' team mode. These are the different kinds of team modes: Single - Just you alone. Your character has 2 rounds. Simul - You and a partner at the same time. Your team has 2 rounds. Turns - You and up to 3 partners. When one character is KOed, the next will join in. Each character has 1 round. The characters' starting life will be adjusted according the number of players on each side.

Team Co-op is slightly different. The only team mode allowed is Simul, which is automatically selected. Player One first gets to select his character, followed by Player Two selecting the partner character. When Player Two is done, Player One chooses the opponent's team mode.

In Survival mode, there is an endless stream of opponents. The objective is to beat as many opponents as possible. The game is over when your team gets KOed. You can choose to play alone or in a team. Single player mode gives you highest life points and healing (when you win a round). The more players you have on your team, the less damage each player can take, and the less each healing you get after each round.

In "Watch" mode, first choose the team mode and characters to be on Player One's side, then do the same for Player Two.

Switching order in Turns mode

When you are playing Turns team mode, you can change your team order during one of these situations:

right before the match start loading
after you lose a round, and right before the next round is loaded

The order switching is achieved by holding a directional button down. Hold forward to rotate your team order by one member forwards. Hold back to rotate your team order by one member backwards. If you have 4 available members, you can rotate it by 2 members by holding up. Note that you can only rotate with members that have not yet been KO'ed.

Here is a chart to clarify the way it works.

         starting team
        1 2 3 4  |  1 2 3  |  1 2
       ----------+---------+------

hold fwd: 2 3 4 1 | 2 3 1 | 2 1 hold back: 4 1 2 3 | 3 1 2 | 2 1 hold up: 3 4 1 2 | ^ | ^ ^ | | | | | this is the character that will come in

Command-line arguments

M.U.G.E.N accepts optional command-line parameters for Quick-VS mode.

The format is (optional parameters are enclosed in square brackets):

./mugen [player1 player2 [-s stage]]

For example, to start quick versus between players named KFM and Suave, you can type:

./mugen kfm suave

To play the same two characters in a stage named TEMPLE, type:

./mugen kfm suave -s temple

You can specify alternate .def files for your character:

./mugen kfm/newkfm.def suave -s temple

Here are other useful command-line options:

-h Displays help -r Loads a motif (more information below) -p3 Loads a character named pname as player3 -p4 Loads a character named pname as player4 -s Loads a stage named sname.def in stages/

For a full list of command-line options, type:

./mugen -h

Using motifs

A motif is a custom configuration of the graphics and sounds used in the game's interface, as well as other things such as the character roster. The base motif is found in the data/ directory. Custom motifs are placed as subdirectories under data/. For example, the "kfm" motif is placed in data/kfm/, and to use it you would type:

./mugen -r kfm

Here's what a motif covers (and which files each is in):

character roster and stage list (select.def)
title screen graphics, sounds and music (system.def)
character screen graphics, sounds and music (system.def)
versus screen graphics and music (system.def)
victory screen graphics, sounds and music (system.def)
option screen graphics, sound and music (system.def)
filenames of storyboards (logo, intro, credits, etc) (system.def)
the actual storyboard files
fight demo options (system.def)
continue/game over options (system.def)
fight screen graphics and sounds (fight.def) The fight screen includes the life and power bars, "round X" images and sounds, common hit sparks and sound effects, etc.

To set the default motif, edit data/mugen.cfg with a text editor, and change "motif" under [Options].

To install a downloaded motif, first unzip the file into a new directory. Open that directory to see if there are files in it; if so, move that directory into M.U.G.E.N's data/ directory. If there is a single directory instead, move that bottom-level directory into the data/ directory.

To make your own motif, create a subdirectory under data/ with the name of your motif, and copy system.def into the new directory. If you'd like to edit any other files besides system.def, make copies of them in your motif directory and change them there. Any data file that doesn't exist in your motif directory will default to the one in the data/ directory, so if you did not copy select.def over, data/select.def will be used when you run with your motif selected.

Sample motifs are included: mugen1 - A motif designed for 1280x720 resolution. This is the default motif. big - Gives you many spaces to put characters. kfm - The Kung Fu Man game motif.

Training Menu

A training menu is available in Training mode. You can choose menu items with your directional keys and exit Pause Mode by pressing any attack key or Pause. The following options are available:

Dummy control: Cooperative, AI, or Manual When in cooperative mode, the dummy will perform the actions you specify elsewhere in the training menu. When in AI mode, the dummy will act like a normal computer opponent. When in manual mode, the dummy can be controlled with the opponent's keys.

Guard mode: None, Auto If guard mode is set to Auto, the dummy will attempt to block most attacks. If guard mode is set to None, the dummy will not block any attacks.

Dummy mode: Stand, Crouch, Jump, W Jump Depending on your selection, the dummy will stand, crouch, or repeatedly jump. If you choose W Jump, the dummy will keep air jumping as long as it can.

Distance: Any, Close, Medium, Far If you choose Close, Medium, or Far, the dummy will try to keep the appropriate distance from you by walking forward/backward as necessary. If you choose Any, the dummy will not move forward or backward.

Button jam: None, A, B, C, X, Y, Z, Start The dummy will repeatedly mash the selected button. Good for testing a character's blocking.

You can minimize the training menu by pressing M while it is active. Press M again to reenable it.

===================================================================== IV. Game HotKeys

These are the hotkeys recognized at the fight screen:

Key Function

Pause Toggle pause ScrollLck Frame-step within pause Esc Quit

The following hotkeys are for debugging purposes and can be disabled by setting AllowDebugKeys = 0 in mugen.cfg.

Key Function

F1 Sets Player 2's life to zero Ctrl-F1 Sets Player 1's life to zero F2 Sets both players' life to 1 Ctrl-F2 Sets Player 1's life to 1 Shift-F2 Sets Player 2's life to 1 F3 Gives both players full power F4 Reset the round Shift-F4 Reloads stage, characters and fight data F5 Time Over F12 Take a screenshot (saved to mugen?.pcx) Ctrl-C Toggles display of collision boxes, target data (including remaining juggle points) and NotHitBy attributes Ctrl-D Toggles debug information display Ctrl-I Forces both players into stand state Ctrl-L Toggles display of the life and power bars Ctrl-S Run the game as fast as possible Ctrl-V Enable V-sync (stops "shearing") Ctrl-# (where # is from 1-4) Toggles AI for the #th player Ctrl-Alt-# (where # is from 1-4) Enables/Disables the player Space Restores full life and power to all players

===================================================================== V. Speed Issues

If you find this runs slowly on your machine, there are several things you can do to improve its performance. You can change these options in data/mugen.cfg.

Close other applications Closing other CPU or memory-intensive applications may speed up M.U.G.E.N.

Use the most efficient video mode Running in a window can be slow on some systens. Try running in fullscreen. Set FullScreen = 1 in mugen.cfg.

Set a smaller resolution Try 640x480 or 640x360 if MUGEN is running too slowly in HD resolutions.

Turn off shadows You can turn shadows off to speed up drawing. Look in data/mugen.cfg and set the "DrawShadows" option under [Config] to 0.

Use frameskip Auto-frameskip is enabled by default. The game will not draw some frames in case the computer is not fast enough, and this helps maintain a constant game speed. If you'd like to run at a constant framerate, you can hit Ctrl-F repeatedly to adjust the frameskip. It will switch from "auto" to "skip none" to "skip 1" to "skip 2" and then back to "auto". This works only when you are in the fight screen.

Free up memory Memory may be swapped to the hard disk when you run low, and this will severely impact performance. See the next section on how to reduce memory usage.

Disable precaching If you find the game slows down too much when loading in the background, you can disable precaching. This will increase load times, however. Under [Misc], set precache = 0.

===================================================================== VI. Memory Issues

If you find the program exiting or running slowly because you don't have enough memory, here are some solutions:

Reduce the player cache M.U.G.E.N will try to keep players in memory in order to reduce loading times. You might want to reduce the number of players that are kept in memory at any one time. Open up data/mugen.cfg and look under the [Misc] section. Change PlayerCache to a smaller number. 0 will save you the most memory.

Reduce the number of characters Having a large number of characters can consume a substantial amount of memory. You can split your character roster up between multiple motifs. See "Using Motifs" in this readme file.

Disable buffered read You can save memory while loading characters by turning this option off. It is found under the [Misc] section, and called "BufferedRead". Loading times will increase as a result.

Reduce effects and limits Set the options under [Config] to a smaller numbers (see mugen.cfg for descriptions). Reducing HelperMax gives the most savings.

Enable system file unload Set UnloadSystem under [Misc] to 1.

Optimize your sprite files When you generate a sprite file, enable settings such as sprite.autocrop and sprite.detectduplicates. If your sprites use 32 colors or less consider using lz5 compression (see work/kfm/kfm-sff-optimized.def).

===================================================================== VII. Known Issues / Notes

An up-to-date known issues list is maintained on in our forum. http://elecbyte.com/forum/

===================================================================== VIII. Sample Content

Sample content included in this distribution are:

Content Location

Base motif data/ "mugen1" HD motif data/mugen1 KFM "classic" character chars/kfm KFM character chars/kfm720 Fonts font/ Mountain temple stage stages/kfm.def, stages/kfm.sff Training room stage stages/stage0.def, stages/stage0.sff Training room HD stage stages/stage0-720.def, stages/stage0-720.sff Work files work/

All the sample content is licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial License, with optional attribution.

Basically, it means you don't need our permission to build upon or use parts of any of that content for non-commercial purposes. In fact, we encourage you to use the sample content as a starting point for your projects and replacing the graphics, sounds and behaviors. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

More info about the CC License here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

===================================================================== A. License Agreement

By using M.U.G.E.N, you agree to the terms and conditions of this license.

This license applies to the M.U.G.E.N Environment, defined as the M.U.G.E.N executable, and other associated data files provided by Elecbyte that are necessary for proper operation of the executable.

Usage

Under this license, permission is granted to use the M.U.G.E.N Environment free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

Redistribution

Elecbyte provides a M.U.G.E.N redistributable package, containing a minimal M.U.G.E.N Environment, that may be included with third party content for redistribution. Such Works based on the M.U.G.E.N Environment may be used and distributed, subject to the following:

i. Works containing the M.U.G.E.N Environment must be provided free of charge and under the terms of this license.

ii. Works containing the M.U.G.E.N Environment must include an unmodified copy of this license, as well as any other licenses bundled with the M.U.G.E.N Environment.

iii. Works containing the M.U.G.E.N Environment must be plainly marked as a such.

iv. You agree to indemnify Elecbyte from any legal liability for your use, or distribution, of such Works.

Please note that Elecbyte places no restrictions on the distribution of character files, stage files, add-on packs, or similar items which operate under the M.U.G.E.N Environment, that do not contain any significant portion of the M.U.G.E.N Environment itself.

Restrictions

This license is subject to the following restrictions:

The M.U.G.E.N Environment is copyrighted by Elecbyte and may not be used for commercial purposes in whole or in part, altered or unaltered, without Elecbyte's express written permission.
All distributions of the M.U.G.E.N Environment must retain a copy of this license.
The M.U.G.E.N executable must not be modified for use or redistribution.

Limitations

I. You agree to indemnify Elecbyte from liability for any damage incurred to any computer hardware, software, or other property, as well as from any injury incurred to your person or others, through use of this software. Elecbyte shall not be held responsible for any failure of M.U.G.E.N and its associated tools to operate properly, whether through deficiencies of the software or through user error. Elecbyte disclaims all express and implied warranties, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

II. Failure by Elecbyte to enforce any of the terms of this agreement shall not constitute forfeiture of Elecbyte's right to enforce said terms.

III. In the event of an inconsistency between this license agreement and other Elecbyte documents, the terms of this license agreement shall prevail, subject only to possible supersession by subsequent license agreements. If any of the terms of this license agreement conflict with the laws in your locale, the conflicting terms will be rendered null and void. The remainder of this agreement shall still obtain.

Sample Content

Please note that the sample content included with the full M.U.G.E.N package is not part of the M.U.G.E.N Environment, and is under a separate license, the Creative Commons Noncommercial License, with optional attribution. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

===================================================================== B. Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

All our beta testers.
Everyone who contributed to us in any way.
All of you who gave feedback to us.
Everyone responsible for the software libraries we used: Allegro, FreeType Project, GLEW, libogg, libpng, SDL, SDL_gfx, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf, SMPEG, zlib. Also everyone reponsible for the other libraries we used in the older versions.

If we forgot to mention someone, please let us know!

fanyer/mugen

fanyer

Reviews

Repository Details