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Read Me - Elecbyte
Read Me - Elecbyte
N
Version 1.0
18 Jan 2011
(c) 1999-2011 Elecbyte
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.
Contents
-------I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
A.
B.
M.U.G.E.N Info
Key Configuration
Running the Game
Game HotKeys
Speed Issues
Memory Issues
Known Issues / Notes
Sample Content
License Agreement
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.
---------------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
-----Up
Down
Left
Right
X
Y
Z
A
B
C
Start
Player 1
-------Up arrow
Down arrow
Left arrow
Right arrow
L
semicolon
double-quote
comma
period
slash
Enter
Player 2
-------W
S
A
D
R
T
Y
F
G
H
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
--------Arcade
Versus
Team Arcade
Team Versus
Team Co-op
Survival
Survival Co-op
Training
Watch
Options
Exit
Function
-------Go 1 on 1 against the computer
Go 1 on 1 against your friend
Play various team-up modes against the computer
Play various team-up modes against your friend
Gang up against the computer with your friend
See how long you can last in an endless battle!
Play survival mode with your friend as a partner
Try out moves and combos
Watch AI-controlled characters fight
Set up basic game options
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
Displays help
Loads a motif (more information below)
Loads a character named pname as player3
Loads a character named pname as player4
Loads a stage named sname.def in stages/
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:
=====================================================================
IV. Game HotKeys
=====================================================================
These are the hotkeys recognized at the fight screen:
Key
--Pause
ScrollLck
Esc
Function
-------Toggle pause
Frame-step within pause
Quit
The following hotkeys are for debugging purposes and can be disabled
by setting AllowDebugKeys = 0 in mugen.cfg.
Key
--F1
Ctrl-F1
F2
Ctrl-F2
Shift-F2
F3
F4
Shift-F4
F5
F12
Ctrl-C
Function
-------Sets Player 2's life to zero
Sets Player 1's life to zero
Sets both players' life to 1
Sets Player 1's life to 1
Sets Player 2's life to 1
Gives both players full power
Reset the round
Reloads stage, characters and fight data
Time Over
Take a screenshot (saved to mugen?.pcx)
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
------Base motif
"mugen1" HD motif
KFM "classic" character
KFM character
Fonts
Location
-------data/
data/mugen1
chars/kfm
chars/kfm720
font/
stages/kfm.def, stages/kfm.sff
stages/stage0.def, stages/stage0.sff
stages/stage0-720.def, stages/stage0-720.sff
work/
=====================================================================
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
=====================================================================
B. Acknowledgements
=====================================================================
Thanks to:
- All our beta testers.