So what's this OpenBor Development all about

[MagicMajenta]

I was reading a thread in another message board that had this link:

http://www.videogamingblog.net/2010/01/03/and-now-for-an-openbor-development-final-fight-the-last-round/

This was the first time I had heard of it and was wondering if there were members here that knew more about it who could go into it in more detail as I myself am curious. Is it just for the DC? What games have been developed? etc. etc.

[Clownzilla]

Apparently it's the engine from "Beats Of Rage" (BOR) being used to make different fighting games like Beats Of Rage. I have never seen this before but it seems like a neat idea.

[Kiddo]

I'm familiar with quite a bit of OpenBOR stuff. It's a neat engine with a lot of potential, which, unfortunately, on the other end of it means there's a lot of downright subpar fan-made material.

[bartre]

it's actually been around for quite a while.
i've seen some pretty neat stuff made with it, including castlevania and mega man games.

as far as what it's on, i know for sure that it was originally for pc, but it's also been ported to DC and XBOX, maybe more.
it's worth checking out, but i've never gotten too far into it, just stuck with the original Streets of Rage games.

[kedawa]

There are some pretty decent beatemups based on this.
Double Dragon Extreme is pretty cool.

[InsaneDavid]

Ah, BoR on the Dreamcast, what a terribly mixed bag. Beats of Rage essentially unified then killed the scene with all the bullshit and half zillion BoR mod breakaway sites it created, nearly all of which had even more BS and eventually died off. BoR modding, the Anakin Skywalker of the Dreamcast homebrew scene. "You were the chosen one! It was you who would bring balance to the Dreamcast homebrew scene, not leave it in darkness..."

Its come back a little since then with a few people that have propped it up but this is only after that cleansing of biblical proportions. I also have my gripes with the "creator" of the Sailor Moon BoR games but I chose to take the high road a long time ago and won't get into it outside of three points:

1. If you rip a bunch of sprites from a game, it doesn't mean you have ownership of that content and can distribute it for profit.
2. If you remake / rework intellectual property or copyrighted material that belongs to someone else, it doesn't make it yours and you cannot distribute it for profit.
3. It's really classless to act like a prima donna over works you do not own nor have created. Especially when one constantly shoves things down your throat they know absolutely zero about - like integrity or business ethics.

My avatar that I've always used here is an old leftover from the DCEmulation days.

I will say that the first really solid BoR mod (and the one that really got the rest of the community modding BoR), DCSteve's "Mega Man - War of the Past" is totally awesome. This was pre OpenBoR days. I can also say the graphic effect when the Gutsman (think it was Gutsman) sprites glide around was done on my advice. :)

EDIT: Yup, it's Gutsman.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Heh, yep.

I always called it MUGEN 2.0.

[Cryomancer]

I will never understand the just...baffling self-centered and overall stupid decisions made constantly by the MUGEN communities across the internet, so if it's that bad, I can imagine what it's like!

Hey we have this cool thing! Let's ruin it by splintering as much as possible and getting into bitchfits about who "owns" stolen sprites!!!!

[InsaneDavid]

I will never understand the just...baffling self-centered and overall stupid decisions made constantly by the MUGEN communities across the internet, so if it's that bad, I can imagine what it's like!

Pretty much that's how it went. Sad thing is the developers that were making really nice looking games (and I can only think of maybe five or so good BoR mods) usually put their work out there, sat back and let people enjoy it. Then the people that were cramming haphazard ideas together and pumping out one mod after the next, working on half a dozen different games usually before anything was near completion, ended up with a lot of control and the whole thing ended up collapsing underneath the weight of itself.


Hey we have this cool thing! Let's ruin it by splintering as much as possible and getting into bitchfits about who "owns" stolen sprites!!!!

Well, how about... let's go to various anime conventions and have panels and demo rooms showing our mods which are hacked together with unaltered graphics from other games, using an engine we had no part in creating, then act like we're some big time game developer and we're doing it all for "the fans." Oh, and for profit.

That was when I was out, but I was done before the above fully materialized. Took almost two years to finally get my name broken away from that mess of a project as both a "consultant" and for my voicework. Never mind the scripts, level design, testing and connections I provided during my tenure long before I knew how south it would go.

Or that nearly an entire game scenario that I pitched in good faith was eventually released from under me. I don't mind that it got out there (after all that's why I was working on the damn thing), more that it came out as a part of that train wreck from that "team" and was simply yet another half finished buggy BoR mod when it could have been something pretty original and kind of interesting.

Notoriety? Cool! Ego? Alright. Making a game you like and you think others will too? Awesome. Acting like you're Square Enix? No.

Dah.. I need to stay away from this thread. :mad: LOL

After bailing I ended up looking more into Ren'Py which I find more interesting from a storytelling aspect.

There are some good BoR games out there though. Megaman WotP is great, as I said. There was a neat Castlevania game that I don't think was ever finished (I think it was DaMadFiddler's project but I could be wrong). I know a demo was released that used sprites from the games as a proof of concept but the final release was to be 100% new content. I remember a Ghouls 'n Ghosts mod that was pretty damn cool, mainly reworked graphics from Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts but again, I don't think it got past a demo. Double Dragon had a good BoR mod, as did Final Fight which had a ton of content (I believe Mr.Q developed that one). I recall a couple mods that pushed the engine too much so they ran unstable but were quite impressive when they held up.

Mainly I remember lots of demos that never got past a couple stages. There was a Shenmue mod in development for quite awhile, I think delays in different people submitting their sprites caused it to die off. I myself too was working on a game based on 8 Man After that never got very far since my attentions got turned elsewhere. A BoR version of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out using the vertical scrolling setup didn't get much past a tech demo. There was a Road Rash game created using that type of setup though that wasn't horrible. I guess if you keep you expectations low you'll find some gold among some of the BoR mods.

[Kiddo]

I remember looking at the Dreamcast scene having tons of OpenBOR releases, wondering why there hasn't been updates on various emulators/non-BOR apps like there used to be... And the Segagaga Fantranslation seemingly died. And now no one seems interested in either making new Dreamcast homebrew or doing hacks/fantranslations of Dreamcast games. It's a bummer.

(Of course, I'm assuming these aren't all -that- tied together. Hopefully.)

I still check the DC Homebrew sites now and then.... not nearly as often though, since there isn't enough updates to warrent a "watch".

[MagicMajenta]

Wow, I appreciate the replies. Hopefully there will be more who can contribute their thoughts. Like I said I honestly just learned about this when I checked out that link a few days ago.

[LiquidPolicenaut]

I just recently got into the whole OpenBOR scene and my favs are still Hyper Final Fight 1 & 2. I liked them so much I actually fixed all the wording in the cinemas, edited/fixed many small issues and even added redone areas (In HFF 1, I changed the Indrustrial Area to the Downtown Area and made my own stage. In HFF 2, I added a small extra part with 6 extra stages)...all this done with the very little experience I have with it! I feel that since, most likely, there will never be a Final Fight 4, these games at least "feel" like good follow-ups...

[Ackman]

The best place to start would be www.lavalit.com you might want to check out Final Fight Gold CE and Nightslashers X.