I decided to mess around today and I ended up with this after a few hours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxhmR3WSc8g
It seems like it might turn out cool, so I'm going to work on it more. Ideally it would be a very simple game based loosely on DBZ, Super Smash Bros, and ESF.
I made this thread a while ago, and it's basically an updated version of that idea, without the setting / characters. I don't have a great track record with finishing stuff, so we'll see how far I get.
So the goal is to knock the other guy off the screen. The more damaged someone is, the farther they get knocked back when they get hurt. You have two options if you want to hurt someone -- Charge/fire an energy ball (no aiming done by you, it'd home in but not be very maneuverable), or you can melee. Melee is simple -- if two players collide, melee happens. When melee happens, the player who was moving faster stops moving / loses all momentum, and the other player gets knocked away in the direction that the other player was flying. So it's a 2D version of ESF's basic melee, except with the person going faster always being the winner. Like I said before, the more damaged someone is, the farther they get knocked back when hit by a beam / melee. I also want to put turbo in, but I'm not sure how that's going to work.
Anyone have any thoughts?
edit: Another day down, more progress. Melee is in and it works, although it needs to be polished a bit.
When you collide with the opponent, you both stop moving. You both flash white for a second as a visual cue that melee is engaged, and the winner aka the person doing the melee is whoever was moving faster at the time of impact. The next direction the winner presses after colliding is the direction that the person being melee'd gets knocked in. The strength of the hit is dependent on how damaged someone is. The person being hit also loses all of his ki and has to wait for it to start regenerating before recovering -- this was just a cheap way to prevent someone from stopping the knockback by flying in the opposite direction, but it works.
I made the color of the guys dependent on how much health they have. The more red someone is, the more damaged they are. I'm trying to get away with having no hud, with the exception of the ki number next to your character. I did some other small stuff like starting to implement energy balls, but mostly was just doing melee. Next time I'll polish melee a bit more and then try to implement energy balls. Not sure what key is going to fire ki attacks.