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What were the development cycles for those later arcade games? How long did it take to build Mortal Kombat and how many people did they have working on it? I

What were the development cycles for those later arcade games? How long did it take to build Mortal Kombat and how many people did they have working on it? I should've looked at Wikipedia first, it answered part of my question. "The first Mortal Kombat game was 4 guys, literally, one programmer, myself (Boon), two graphics guys (Tobias and Vogel), and a sound guy (Forden) was the entire team, literally"

joezydeco 15y ago
In those days it took about a year, maybe a year and a half. Many teams would carry a core "operating system" (really a library of system routines/process scheduler/IO/audits) from game to game and build off of that. That left more time to write the game mechanics and choreography.
- trafficlight 15y ago
  I also didn't know they did motion capture for Mortal Kombat. That's even more impressive considering they only had a team of 4.
  - davvid 15y ago
    Was it motion capture (driving a 3D model from sensors) or was it video capture (making sprites from videos). I believe it was the latter. MK's photographic realism really made it stand out in the arcade.
    - trafficlight 15y ago
      You're right. Here's the relevant paragraph. The team switched from digitized actors to motion capture technology (the quote is incorrectly referring to Midway as Acclaim): "To make the characters in video games more realistic, actors are being recruited to serve as models. Acclaim, the video-game company that made Mortal Kombat, has created a special 'motion capture studio' for this purpose. A martial-arts expert with as many as 100 electronic sensors taped to his body sends precise readings to a camera as he goes through his moves—running, jumping, kicking, punching. The action is captured, digitized and synthesized into a 'naked' wire-frame model stored in a computer. Those models can then be 'dressed' with clothing, facial expressions and other characteristics by means of a computer technique called texture mapping.
    - 5hoom 15y ago
      I'm pretty sure the original was done by digitising video frames & tidying them up. There probably weren't many people doing motion capture as we know it today in 1992.
    - joezydeco 15y ago
      MK1-3 were 2D characters, all done with video capture. MK4 was a 3D camera-based game and was done with motion capture. There were other 2D fighting games around that time that used video capture (remember Atari Pit Fighter?) but MK avoided the sprite scaling and kept it flat.

joezydeco 15y ago

In those days it took about a year, maybe a year and a half. Many teams would carry a core "operating system" (really a library of system routines/process scheduler/IO/audits) from game to game and build off of that. That left more time to write the game mechanics and choreography.

trafficlight 15y ago
I also didn't know they did motion capture for Mortal Kombat. That's even more impressive considering they only had a team of 4.
- davvid 15y ago
  Was it motion capture (driving a 3D model from sensors) or was it video capture (making sprites from videos). I believe it was the latter. MK's photographic realism really made it stand out in the arcade.
  - trafficlight 15y ago
    You're right. Here's the relevant paragraph. The team switched from digitized actors to motion capture technology (the quote is incorrectly referring to Midway as Acclaim): "To make the characters in video games more realistic, actors are being recruited to serve as models. Acclaim, the video-game company that made Mortal Kombat, has created a special 'motion capture studio' for this purpose. A martial-arts expert with as many as 100 electronic sensors taped to his body sends precise readings to a camera as he goes through his moves—running, jumping, kicking, punching. The action is captured, digitized and synthesized into a 'naked' wire-frame model stored in a computer. Those models can then be 'dressed' with clothing, facial expressions and other characteristics by means of a computer technique called texture mapping.
  - 5hoom 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure the original was done by digitising video frames & tidying them up. There probably weren't many people doing motion capture as we know it today in 1992.
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    MK1-3 were 2D characters, all done with video capture. MK4 was a 3D camera-based game and was done with motion capture. There were other 2D fighting games around that time that used video capture (remember Atari Pit Fighter?) but MK avoided the sprite scaling and kept it flat.