The Mugen Has Begun!Hello all! I'm here to make a tutorial on Mugen and how to edit your characters, make new characters, make new stages, edit previous ones, edit your character's palette/moves/defense/ect. But first, let me tell you what Mugen is if you don't already know about it.
Making your Own CharactersTo go straight to learn how to make your own characters, I will post it much later, but for now, I would recommend going to download your own characters at the site I go to mainly, which is
here. There are in fact other sources to get your characters, but I forgot them. I will update this when the other tutorial is posted, so be aware, and get your character sprites or make your own sprites when you can and make sure they're in PNG format!
M.U.G.E.N. is basically a fighting game for up to four players. It was originally to be made as a simple game of ping pong, or some sports game, so instead, it was made into a nice fighting game. The system itself is basically the engine for game play. You can find it
here.
NOTE:: If your having trouble with the game, please ask me and we'll go from there, but I would prefer if you send it as a message. Then I'll put up ALL questions asked at the very bottom and they will all be answered to help further members.
These should be all of the files you should see when you already extracted it.
Now that you know what Mugen is, what about how to make your own characters? Not yet. First we will play it since our first character is in there!
But before you do, we need to set the resolution we want to play our game in! So first go to the folder 'data' and look for the file, 'mugen.cfg'. Right-Click the file, and choose what to open it with, and select WordPad or notepad or whatever is your pad, select it.
Now you'll have the entire Mugen engine in your window. But this is it's configuration file. Scroll all the way down to [Video Win] and you'll have your dimensions of the window when we play Mugen. The default resolution is 320X240. I normally have mine either in 640X480 or in 960X720. Now if you just want it in full screen, scroll down a bit more in that section until you come to 'DirectX mode' and then below a few paragraphs, there should be something called, 'DXmode = Windowed'. Now here are the basic settings, so change the word Windowed to one of the following to get the corresponding results for the window.
Hardware - Full screen
Software - Full screen
Windowed - Windowed to the resolution you set earlier and must set depth to 16 bit or better
Overlay - Windowed to the resolution as well, only faster but might not support all graphic cards!
Safe - Use this if ONLY your having trouble with the modes Hardware, Software, and Windowed.
None - Use this if everything else doesn't, but its incredibly slow and uses GDI to draw.
Once you set your modes and resolution, save it over the file 'mugen.cfg' WITHOUT changing the name. Now close.
Now go back to the main file and there are two ways to open up Mugen. There are two files that are called, 'Winmugen' and 'Winmugen_debug'. For those of you that don't know what debug is, basically it shows status of the screen, like it shows how long your were playing, buttons you hit, overall time, speed, counters, ect. But I prefer the 'Winmugen' one better.
Open it and here are your default controls.
Up = Up Arrow
Down = Down Arrow
Left = Left Arrow
Right = Right Arrow
A = Q
B = W
C = E
X = A
Y = S
Z = D
Start = Enter
My Controls:
Up = W
Down = S
Left = A
Right = D
A = ,
B = L
C = P
X = M
Y = K
Z = O
Start = Enter
The Main Menu
ARCADE - Play the Classic Arcade
VS MODE - Play against a friend or computer
TEAM ARCADE - Play with a friend/take turns with friends against computer teams/take turns in Classic Arcade
TEAM VS - Play with up to 8 friends in this mode
TEAM CO-OP - Play with a friend in Classic Arcade
SURVIVAL - Pick up to 4 fighters and see how long it takes for you to lose. You'll gain back some health after each round and you can fight up to 4 fighters per game
SURVIVAL CO-OP - Same thing with survival, but with a friend
TRAINING - Go here to practice your skills with that character
WATCH - You select up to 8 fighters you want to see battling, 4-4 computer fights and see who wins!
OPTIONS - Edit sounds/computer difficulty/controls here
EXIT - Closes the program
Now here are the screens you should see with the following menu selections.
ARCADE
Play the Classic Arcade
VS MODE
Play against a friend or computer
TEAM ARCADE
Play with a friend/take turns with friends against computer teams/take turns in Classic Arcade
TEAM VS
Play with up to 8 friends in this mode
TEAM CO-OP
Play with a friend in Classic Arcade
SURVIVAL
Pick up to 4 fighters and see how long it takes for you to lose. You'll gain back some health after each round and you can fight up to 4 fighters per game
SURVIVAL CO-OPSame thing with survival, but with a friend
TRAINING
Go here to practice your skills with your favorite characters
WATCH
You select up to 8 fighters you want to see battling, 4-4 computer fights and see who wins!
OPTIONSThese are the defaults.
You can configure them to your liking. Now here are what you can configure them up to.
Difficulty - Easy 1-2. Medium 3-5, Hard 6-8
Life - These can only be increased/decreased by 10% only. 30% - 300%
Time Limit - 20, 40, 60, 80, 99, None(this is infinite time)
Game Speed - Slow 1-9, Fast 1-9, Normal
Wav Volume - This is your music: Off, 1-99, Max
Midi Volume - This is Character sounds: Off, 1-99. Max
Input Config[See 'Input Configurations' for the menu's] - Go here to fix your controls(The (F1) is a shortcut key! press it for quicker access)
Team Mode Config[See 'Team Input Configurations' for the menu's] - This is your configurations for the Team modes
Load/Save - Press left or right to select either Save or Load. Then press the Start key to save or load the configurations you made or want to restore in Options.
Default Values - This is a quicker way to load the last settings SAVED.
Return to Main Menu - This will return you to the main menu
Input Configurations - Here is what you'll see when you select this and what they're for.
Key Config - Select this to change your buttons for the game and menu's.
Joystick Type - This is if you have a plugged in controller you wish to use with Mugen. It's currently set at Disabled.
Joystick Config - If you have a controller and enabled it, you set your key's here.
Default Values - Returns any key configuration settings to their saved default settings.
Return to Options - Returns you to the Options menu
Key Config
Press Start to begin editing your buttons. One player at a time though.
Team Input Configurations - Here is what you'll see when you select this and what they're for.
1P VS Team Advantage - This is the advantage you'll have when facing teams. The higher the percentage, the easier it is on you, and the lower the percentage, is how much harder it will be for you, and note this only affects the Super Bars[See Game play] Set it from 100% - 300% by 10%. Default is 150%.
If player KOed - This means if you die, what happens with the rest of the match. Team Loses(which means if you die, your team lost the round), AI keeps fighting(your partner is still fighting even while your KOed)
Default Values - Returns what you edited back to the originally SAVED values.
Return to Options - Returns you to the main Options menu
Game PlayOk. Now you know about the menu items and paths, we will now look at the game play screen.
Colored in:
Red - This is your fighter. You can move him/her/it and use the 6 buttons, a, b, c, x, y, z to fight the opponent.
Maroon - This is the character’s name. So right now, I’m Kung Fu Man and I’m fighting Kung Fu Man.
Blue - This is your character’s picture. It helps to tell you which side your on.
Black - This is your Super Bar. You fill it up by throwing attacks, fighting, or getting hit by an opponent.
Light Blue - This is your timer. When it reaches Zero, the match will end. However, this is the look for the infinite time length.
Pink - This is the level of your current Super Bar. You need to get up to certain levels before you can perform super special moves.
Lime Green - This is your life bar, which however if depleted, your character will be KOed. But with certain characters, this will go back to a certain point, and they will transform into a new form.
This game is like any other fighting game, only this isn’t 3D unless you create characters that looks 3D.
Now remember when fighting, normally your buttons are as of follows with Kung Fu Man… But remember his are messed up in configurations but I’ll fix that when I get a chance.
[Special Buttons]
U = Up
D = Down
B = Back
F = Forward
DB = Down-Back
DF = Down-Forward
HCF = B, DB, D, DF, F
HCB = F, DF, D, DB, B
QCF = D, DF, F
QCFD = F, DF, F
QCB = D, DB, B
QCBD = B, DB, D
Jump = U
Dash = F, F HOLD
Hop Back = B, B
Light Punch = a
Medium Punch = b
Heavy Punch = c
Light Kick = x
Medium Kick = y
Heavy Kick = z
Taunt = Start
Special Moves:
Kung Fu Palm = QCF + Any Punch (Stronger, the harder)
Kung Fu Upper = F, D, DF Any Punch (Stronger, the harder)
Kung Fu Sideways Palm = QCB + Any Punch (Stronger, the harder)
Super Special Moves:
Triple Kung Fu Palm = QCF, QCF + Any Punch
Strong Kung Fu Upper = QCB, QCB +Any Punch
Move Linkers:
Link 1: Triple/Kung Fu Palm - Strong Kung Fu Upper(Input Strong Kung Fu Upper during any palm to execute)
Link 2: Kung Fu Palm - Kung Fu Upper
Link 3: Kung Fu Upper - Triple/Kung Fu Palm
Link 4: Strong Kung Fu Upper - Triple/Kung Fu palm
With these linkers, you can basically do endless combos on a character IF you don’t have one of the following occur.
Not enough Super Bars.
Screw up button inputs.
Music/Character Importing and Character Select Screen EditingSo now you know how to play. But now here’s the thing. What if you get bored of playing with that ONE character? You can either find characters on sites, OR you can make your own(I will post a tutorial very soon). I won’t tell you where you can find characters cause there is something called, “I don’t want to waste time finding the sites again”, and another thing called searching using a search engine called ‘google‘.
Ok, now knowing you have read this, you have a new character you want to try out. Place this folder with the character your importing to the folder, ‘char’ in the main Mugen folder. Now this part may be the most stressful for people who want to insert their own character, but I will help you.
Now, lets say your character you found is named say, Link. Ok, now here’s the thing. You need to make sure the folder name is matched with the definition file in it. For example, Link’s folder name AND definition file(.DEF), must be the same. Ex: Link and Link.def. If the names are not the same, then re-name the folder to match the definition file. Now go to the folder ‘data’ again, and look for the file ‘select.def’ and open it with WordPad/notepad or whatever pad you use. Now this is where we insert characters, music for characters and stages! Now scroll to where we insert our characters and look for three lines with the same character, kfm on all three lines. Now you can put Link below or above kfm like the following parameters and this is how I make my select screen pretty…
kfm, stages/kfm.def
Link, stages/stage0.def
randomselect,
Link, stages/stage0.def
kfm, stages/kfm.def
That’s all you need to know about inserting you characters just for fun. But there’s more to it. Scroll to the very bottom to find these inputs…
arcade.maxmatches = 6,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
team.maxmatches = 4,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
This is how many battles you can do before arcade ends, like how many battles you can do and which order your characters will be faced, ect. Now the 4 and 6 are how many battles or rounds you can fight before you beat arcade mode or team arcade. The numbers after that, are the orders of the characters you want to face. Though this is similar to Tekken or other fighting games, but this one doesn’t come with a special story that if you select say Kung Fu Man, and if you have him, like you’ll fight Kung Fu Man’s worst enemy, and at the same time, play as Link, and if you have Ganondorf, you’ll play against him. But somehow, Mugen doesn’t support that. Until it does, here’s how we make our characters in order to fight them in. Like say, you want to fight Link first, then followed by Kung Fu Man, but have it random after you fight Kung Fu Man. To do that, from the line(either one you choose would be fine) “Link, stages/stage0.def”, you would simply put this in after the comma like so. order=1
Link, stages/stage0.def, order=1
This tells Mugen that Link is stored to be in order 1. But yet, we have to declare that in Arcade Mode, wouldn’t we? Now, note the numbers after the 6. The numbers are 1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0. Those are the Order numbers that you can use to declare your character, and remember the order number NOT declared is always random, but take a note that I‘m not entirely sure you can use more than 10 order values at once(0-10). Take this for example.
Arcade.maxmatches = 9,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
The first 9 is how many battles there are gonna be played everytime you play arcade mode. Now lets say that I have 9 characters total, and I gave them orders, like take these characters for instance.
MegaMan, order=1
Zero, order=2
Mario, order=3
Luigi, order=4
SamusAran, order=5
Link, order=6
MasterHand, order=7
Metroid, order=8
SSJ4NightmareBroly, order=9
With these set like this, I’ll face the characters in this order… MegaMan, Zero, Mario, Luigi, SamusAran, Link, MasterHand, Metroid, SSJ4NightmareBroly. So now you know that, lets say we want to fight 6 matches and Link first, Kung Fu Man second, and the next two matches are random, and have the last two matches bet set to Link. Earlier, we said we wanted Link as order=1 and Kung Fu Man as order=2. So here’s how we would have that typed for Arcade Mode.
arcade.maxmatches = 6,1,2,0,0,1,1,0,0,0
Now remember to make sure there are 10 values total in that line. I’m sure you can’t have more than 9 matches total, but there MUST be 10 total numbers in that line. Now what about Team Arcade Matches? Same thing, only if your fighting two people and you fight one of the characters with the order of say 1 for Link, remember that his buddy will be random no matter what. I haven’t figured out how to change that, but don’t mess with anything else for now. So if you want to fight the same perspectives as Arcade Mode, simply have the following values typed…
team.maxmatches = 6,1,2,0,0,1,1,0,0,0
So now we set our character orders and amount of matches we want to play in Arcade for both, single player, and Team. Also works in Co-op mode. But there’s something I can’t forget! Music! How can we fight without music going on in the game? We can fix that. But first, we must bring in our music! To do that, we must first make sure our music is in mp3 or midi format. If it’s not, you can easily find free midi and mp3 format converter’s online. I lost the link to mine so you’ll have to search for yourself(remember to use google!). So once you get the music, copy it into this directory…
Win Mugen è sound
Now note that although you have your sound in there, we won’t be able to hear anything until you set it to something, but for now, we will set it to our characters! To do that, in the file select.def, scroll to your characters and for who you want this to play for when you fight them, put this, say you want the song, LegendofZeldaTheme for Link. Simply type in the following(and yes, with the order parameters as well!)…
Link, stages/stage0.def, music=sound/LegendofZeldaTheme.mp3
So now we see what we did about our characters and how we inserted music, but if you want it spacey and such, we will place something called a break which after that, brings in an empty space and your cursor will go right past it.
none------------------------------------
This is useful if your making your own character select screens. But now that makes you go into another topic… Your character select screen changes. Once your done inserting your characters and ordering them with music and all, save and exit, then look for the file called system.def, not system.sff. Open it with your pad and scroll all the way down to Character select definition. Look for rows and columns. Not they have a the default 2 and 5. It has 2 rows and 5 columns of characters(2 X 5 = 10), so now if you want more characters, you can increase the rows by 1 or increase the columns by however you need. But now it adds more columns and rows by going down or right… So we would want to move our character selects somewhere it will show the characters you have already. To do that, go to pos and notice there are two numbers. This is your x and y. It appears as 90,170 and remember y goes up and down, while x goes left and right. Now change the 170 to 100 and the 90 to 115 and have our output show up as the following…
pos = 115,100
This moves our character select boxes up and more to the left so you can insert more characters and so you can SEE them. Now you can make the spacing between the boxes smaller, and you can also make the boxes themselves smaller, or bigger. But that’s pretty much up to you, though if you make your own boxes TOO small, then part of the picture from the characters will show up out of the box, so be careful on that. Now you can position the big picture and the name anywhere on the screen too. Just scroll down to Big portraits and there is the positions. Below that is the name, and remember p1 is for player one, and p2 is for player two. Hoping you understand that nicely, lets move onto something called, menu music. Scroll all the way back to the very top and look for [Music]. Now there are 3 sections to place your music, and they are…
title.bgm
select.bgm
versus.bgm
Now title.bgm is the music that will be played at the title screen and on the main menu, select.bgm is the music that will be played when you select your character, and finally, vs.bgm is where the music will be played, which is just after you select your character, the two pictures that are about to battle of the characters, THAT’S where the music will be played. Though there isn’t any bgm for any other menu known as of now. If there is, I’ll IMMEDIATELY edit it in. Now we’re done with this. Though note, that if your files you opened or edited with your pad, has like, sentences after the ‘;’, then it is telling you where your at or what that is or how to use something. It doesn’t affect the game in any way. So feel free to leave yourself a comment for later use. Now, remember if you have any questions, ask me by PM, and I’ll insert the question and answer below. Thanks for reading, and whenever I can, I’ll end up getting my characters posted somewhere on my Fighter Factory tutorial when I get that up. If there is anything I left out, let me know.
