01-Jan-2025
And so another year begins, 2025 is here. And in times like these people set goals. Goals that can be new ventures or farewells, that said today I announce my farewell to MUGEN. I've been messing with the engine for almost 2 decades, but the time has come. Truth be told, the only thing that still kept me tied to the old and abandoned engine was this project. See, when I decided to release the first update in 2018 after the project leader went MIA, there were two versions of the project: a version for MUGEN 1.0 and another for 1.1. But since the only things that version 1.1 had were some screenpack sprites and the intro with 32-bit images (without color loss) and zoomable stages that didn't add much, I decided to focus only on MUGEN 1.0 because many people still couldn't run version 1.1.
Although it was a valid reason, it caused problems with cutscenes/screenpacks/etc.: color loss issues. In addition to increasing (a lot) the workload by having to manually index each frame, since batch processes usually cause problems with frame transparency. So... more work for inferior quality, it wasn't a good tradeoff. MUGEN 1.1 would have made things easier and saved me a lot of time, but it's too late to cry about wasted time. But of course, just because I've wasted time so far doesn't mean I should continue wasting it.
And that brings us to the present. Instead of moving on to MUGEN 1.1, which has its advantages over 1.0, it is time to abandon the engine altogether, as its own creators apparently did over 15 years ago! But it's not like the project here is going full steam ahead either, hehe. The fact is that due to personal issues, the momentum for the project is low (and that's an understatement). At the end of last year I made some updates that hadn't been planned. It's like they say, "out of sight, out of mind". So after playing a bit, I felt compelled to work on it a bit more.
But before moving on, whether with a new engine or whatever, I took care of something that for most people probably isn't that important. But for me, who's from the 90s, it's something simple but part of the project and something I've always really liked - the intros and endings for Arcade Mode. I didn't have early access to them, and even though they're scenes from the official animations, I only saw them when I managed to beat the game properly. There was no cheating, I took a lot of beatings until I got them. Since 2010, I've basically stopped playing video games. So a casual gamer next to me is the equivalent of a hardcore gamer to them. '0'
Anyway, I had a lot of work to do with these cutscenes. I really liked their idea, something that ended up having its own identity as if it were a narrated manga, so as not to make the project file too heavy since the cutscenes are not proper videos, but a combination of files that emulate a video. However, there were problems such as the lack of synchronization between audio and image, and in cutscenes that depicted action scenes there were not enough frames to illustrate what was happening. The subtitles were also out of sync, in addition to the constant (and unnecessary) use of fade-in/fade-out.
And that was more text than I expected, but after this I say goodbye to MUGEN and if we have a new update, we will see each other talking about a new engine. Can you guess it? Below you can check the list of the most recent updates and the download link. See you.
| DOWNLOAD Rurouni Kenshin: Soul and Sword - BETA (Updated Jan 2025) File Size: 523 MB |  |
Changelog:
.=_2025_=.
01, Jan
- All character intros and endings have been recoded. They now use text instead of sprites for their lines. Some endings/intros have had their audio edited with fade out.
- New audio for Aoshi's victory clip, and Battousai's has been edited with fade out.
- New text for Game Over screen to match lifebar's.
.=_2024_=.
01, Dec
- Kenshin's arcade intro was remade.
30, Nov
- Stages bound values were updated.
30, Oct
- Some background music was replaced in some stages and cutscenes to make gameplay recording more friendly for digital platforms, because they were being flagged and the videos were blocked.
27, Oct
- All characters have new winquotes. By default, all characters now have 10 random winquotes, in addition to special winquotes with specific interactions (including mirror matches).
- All character sff and air files have been reorganized.
- All hypers, ougi and ending cutscenes have been updated to remove horizontal and vertical black lines that appeared on the edges of the screen.
- A frame from Sano's FNK cutscene has been updated, fixing the blank part of the interpolation.
- CUTSCENES: The duration of Kenshin and Aoshi's has been reduced because the last "frozen" frame was extended for too long. Jin-e's now shows his eyes fixed.
- New "Isolated Island" stage for Enishi by Slayer.
