How similar are mugen and openbor?
- Thread starter PS_VITA
- Start date
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
They are, pretty much, different animals.
For sure you can learn some tricks from Mugen and both engine can share knowledge, but excluding some generic concepts (sprite and sound ripping, sprite aligment, palette creation, game design concepts, etc), everything is different, specially coding-wise.
Unless there is someone there who use both engines (like me, Zvitor and some other names), no.
@PS_VITA,
I'm two years late to the party, but for what it's worth....
Mugen is basically like the ultimate .ini config file reader. You have a huge list of attributes and formulas that work in a hard coded logic tree, with just about anything you can ever think of to configure a fighter available. It's not very human readable and has a bit of learning curve at first, but once you get passed that initial barrier it's all good. The main issue with Mugen is that it has limited versatility. It does what it does better than anything else, but that's it. If the engine does not support something natively, you either devise a (probably unstable) hackjob, or you're just plain out of luck.
Assets in Mugen are packaged up into singular units with a nice set of enforced standards. This makes them a lot more elegant and reasonably portable from one game to the next. However, they are insulated from each other within the same game and so not as efficient in terms of memory or interaction.
OpenBOR is more like reading the script to a grade school play. Everything is dumbed down or sanitized, and the engine pretty much handles all the basics for you. The only real entry barrier (understanding sprites and palettes) is a universal thing that affects every engine, and even that doesn't matter much if you are just tinkering with another module. The trouble starts when you want to get more advanced. All those beginner friendly obfuscations quickly become a hindrance rather than an asset and it can feel like playing Mother May I at times. This is where the script engine comes into play, and where OpenBOR starts showing its strength. If you are willing to learn, there's simply no functionality the engine can't have. Full stop. This makes OpenBOR a good tool for beginners and advanced creators, but frustrating for intermediate users.
OpenBOR assets and model designs are pretty much at the creator's discretion. Models can share sounds, script, sprites, and whatever else with each other at will. This makes OpenBOR a lot more efficient and interactive with its assets, but there's very little portability from one game to another.
There's a lot of other tit-for-tat stuff, but it really doesn't matter too much as almost all of it balances out. Ex: Mugen has better algorithms for rotation and scaling, but OpenBOR can put a lot more stuff on the screen without choking the platform. OpenBOR has a true Z axis, but it's much easier to do delta effects in Mugen, etc.
To sum it up, the two engines have almost diametrically opposed approaches to their layout, configurations, and behaviors. Like @O Ilusionista said, outside of basic assets and game design there's really no practical way to share items or knowledge between them.
HTH,
DC
I'm two years late to the party, but for what it's worth....
Mugen
Mugen is basically like the ultimate .ini config file reader. You have a huge list of attributes and formulas that work in a hard coded logic tree, with just about anything you can ever think of to configure a fighter available. It's not very human readable and has a bit of learning curve at first, but once you get passed that initial barrier it's all good. The main issue with Mugen is that it has limited versatility. It does what it does better than anything else, but that's it. If the engine does not support something natively, you either devise a (probably unstable) hackjob, or you're just plain out of luck.
Assets in Mugen are packaged up into singular units with a nice set of enforced standards. This makes them a lot more elegant and reasonably portable from one game to the next. However, they are insulated from each other within the same game and so not as efficient in terms of memory or interaction.
- Straight forward config files that are functional and no-nonsense.
- Harder at first, then gradually easier the more you learn.
- Has everything you need for its genre, but can't really do much else.
OpenBOR
OpenBOR is more like reading the script to a grade school play. Everything is dumbed down or sanitized, and the engine pretty much handles all the basics for you. The only real entry barrier (understanding sprites and palettes) is a universal thing that affects every engine, and even that doesn't matter much if you are just tinkering with another module. The trouble starts when you want to get more advanced. All those beginner friendly obfuscations quickly become a hindrance rather than an asset and it can feel like playing Mother May I at times. This is where the script engine comes into play, and where OpenBOR starts showing its strength. If you are willing to learn, there's simply no functionality the engine can't have. Full stop. This makes OpenBOR a good tool for beginners and advanced creators, but frustrating for intermediate users.
OpenBOR assets and model designs are pretty much at the creator's discretion. Models can share sounds, script, sprites, and whatever else with each other at will. This makes OpenBOR a lot more efficient and interactive with its assets, but there's very little portability from one game to another.
- Multiple layout files that are wordy and beginner friendly at first.
- Starts easy, becomes much more difficult, then back to easy again as you advance.
- Not as powerful natively, but can do absolutely anything once you master it.
There's a lot of other tit-for-tat stuff, but it really doesn't matter too much as almost all of it balances out. Ex: Mugen has better algorithms for rotation and scaling, but OpenBOR can put a lot more stuff on the screen without choking the platform. OpenBOR has a true Z axis, but it's much easier to do delta effects in Mugen, etc.
To sum it up, the two engines have almost diametrically opposed approaches to their layout, configurations, and behaviors. Like @O Ilusionista said, outside of basic assets and game design there's really no practical way to share items or knowledge between them.
HTH,
DC
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
Allow me to add two cents here - keep in mind that I am not talking with a "X engine is better than Y" mindset, just sharing my experience.
When working on Closed Games, things works differently and you can reuse assets on a very efficient way.
OpenBOR
Portability - there are several ports for the engine (official and unofficial), so you can have your game running on more platforms
Active development - The engine still has a development team, so possible bugs and improvements can be added to the engine.
Open source - Anyone can contribute to the development of the engine.
Ease of development of Beat em ups - Platforms, holes, items, are much simpler to do in OpenBOR
Practicality in some animations - Want an animation of your character holding the other? Just create an animation called "GRAB" and that's it, just approach the target.
MUGEN
Content - With over 20 years of existence, it's incredibly easy to find content for Mugen (and the creators have always contributed a lot to the sprite rip process). Pretty much everything has been made for Mugen, from Ryu to Ronald McDonald.
Community - There are still several Mugen communities, and finding help is very easy.
Accurate Log/Bug Report - In Mugen, when there is an error, the engine reports exactly what is happening and where the error is. For the engine to "simply close", some file needs to be severely corrupted.
Front end / Editor - Mugen has several frontends for content development, with some extremely complete and easy to use, such as Fighter Factory.
Sprite Scaling - Allows you to rotate or scale content smoothly, without jagged edges and even allows for native interpolation.
Backward compatibility - It works perfectly, the developer just needs to put it in the code for which build it was developed and, from that build onwards, the content continues to work.
OpenBOR
Editor - A unique and stable editor is missing for content development. Although there are some editors, all of them either don't support everything OpenBOR has or are unstable and buggy, unfortunately even corrupting files sometimes.
Log/Bug report - It is incomplete and does not bring all the information. For a long time, you didn't even know which build you were using. There are simple errors that simply make the engine crash in your face without saying what is causing the error.
Documentation - There are still undocumented things in the engine (and not for lack of effort from people to help with that), but because some things were added to the source code without any documentation and only the original programmer knew what it was actually for .
Lack of basic concepts - Certain mechanics are missing from OpenBOR, and if the creator wants some of them, he will have to program them from scratch. An example is friction with the ground: there is only the physics of gravity, but not ground resistance. The same goes for your character not "passing through" the enemy - there is no collision between bodies, your character passes through the enemy if he walks by him.
(I know this was on the update list, but it's not available to use yet)
Backward Compatibility - Doesn't work at all, with some points preventing engine progress in some cases. In other cases, compatibility has been broken and some content no longer works, which makes the user have to use (and know) exactly the build that was used in development
MUGEN
Inactive development team - The responsible company seems to have abandoned the project (the last update was in 2014). However, today there is a "spiritual successor" called IKEMEN that, for the first time, managed to have an engine compatible with everything that Mugen offered and expanding even more. This engine is still under active development
Portability - Mugen only officially runs on Windows. The linux version is extremely old and there is no official port for Android.
Interactivity with scenery - It's something that Elecbyte, developer of mugen, was asked to exhaustion, but it was never answered. We only have a few codes and, to achieve this, we must resort to workarounds.
Closed Source - There is no source code of the engine.
---
Both are very capable engines, but have their own specific uses. As I usually say, using OpenBOR to make a fighting game or Mugen for a beat em up is like eating soup with a fork: it's possible, but there are more appropriate tools.
That is not true. Sure thing, 90% (or more) of the content is fighter oriented, but there are other type of games done in Mugen, like Shoot em up (ironically, the engine started as a shoot em up engine), exploration, Pokemon-like duels and etc. Even Beat em up were made with it.
This is not exactly true. Depends too much on the coder behaviour. Keep in mind that Mugen was thought, since the start, to be a modular engine - so every content should work against any other content - an "open enviroment" , while OpenBOR works on a more "close enviroment" most of time - in other words, things in OpenBOR workes where they are made to. In Mugen terms, we call this "a closed game".
When working on Closed Games, things works differently and you can reuse assets on a very efficient way.
STRONG POINTS
OpenBOR
Portability - there are several ports for the engine (official and unofficial), so you can have your game running on more platforms
Active development - The engine still has a development team, so possible bugs and improvements can be added to the engine.
Open source - Anyone can contribute to the development of the engine.
Ease of development of Beat em ups - Platforms, holes, items, are much simpler to do in OpenBOR
Practicality in some animations - Want an animation of your character holding the other? Just create an animation called "GRAB" and that's it, just approach the target.
MUGEN
Content - With over 20 years of existence, it's incredibly easy to find content for Mugen (and the creators have always contributed a lot to the sprite rip process). Pretty much everything has been made for Mugen, from Ryu to Ronald McDonald.
Community - There are still several Mugen communities, and finding help is very easy.
Accurate Log/Bug Report - In Mugen, when there is an error, the engine reports exactly what is happening and where the error is. For the engine to "simply close", some file needs to be severely corrupted.
Front end / Editor - Mugen has several frontends for content development, with some extremely complete and easy to use, such as Fighter Factory.
Sprite Scaling - Allows you to rotate or scale content smoothly, without jagged edges and even allows for native interpolation.
Backward compatibility - It works perfectly, the developer just needs to put it in the code for which build it was developed and, from that build onwards, the content continues to work.
WEAK POINTS
OpenBOR
Editor - A unique and stable editor is missing for content development. Although there are some editors, all of them either don't support everything OpenBOR has or are unstable and buggy, unfortunately even corrupting files sometimes.
Log/Bug report - It is incomplete and does not bring all the information. For a long time, you didn't even know which build you were using. There are simple errors that simply make the engine crash in your face without saying what is causing the error.
Documentation - There are still undocumented things in the engine (and not for lack of effort from people to help with that), but because some things were added to the source code without any documentation and only the original programmer knew what it was actually for .
Lack of basic concepts - Certain mechanics are missing from OpenBOR, and if the creator wants some of them, he will have to program them from scratch. An example is friction with the ground: there is only the physics of gravity, but not ground resistance. The same goes for your character not "passing through" the enemy - there is no collision between bodies, your character passes through the enemy if he walks by him.
(I know this was on the update list, but it's not available to use yet)
Backward Compatibility - Doesn't work at all, with some points preventing engine progress in some cases. In other cases, compatibility has been broken and some content no longer works, which makes the user have to use (and know) exactly the build that was used in development
MUGEN
Inactive development team - The responsible company seems to have abandoned the project (the last update was in 2014). However, today there is a "spiritual successor" called IKEMEN that, for the first time, managed to have an engine compatible with everything that Mugen offered and expanding even more. This engine is still under active development
Portability - Mugen only officially runs on Windows. The linux version is extremely old and there is no official port for Android.
Interactivity with scenery - It's something that Elecbyte, developer of mugen, was asked to exhaustion, but it was never answered. We only have a few codes and, to achieve this, we must resort to workarounds.
Closed Source - There is no source code of the engine.
---
Both are very capable engines, but have their own specific uses. As I usually say, using OpenBOR to make a fighting game or Mugen for a beat em up is like eating soup with a fork: it's possible, but there are more appropriate tools.
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@O Ilusionista,
I think you mistook me. I wasn't coming from a competitive standpoint either. I was merely outlying difference between the two as I know them. I didn't feel the need to restate "right tool for the job", or as we say here, "Horses for courses". By now that should be self evident and wasn't what the question was about.
How many times have you seen me say elsewhere it would be silly to try and build a one vs. one fighter with OpenBOR? Hint: I don't know either, because it's a lot. The same holds true for trying to do anything but a one vs. one in Mugen. Of course it can do other types of games, but that's not really what I meant by saying it couldn't do anything else. I'm talking about adding non-existent functionality.
Here's an example: Say you wanted to vector draw circles or curves. Neither engine has this as a native function. In Mugen, you simply can't do it. In OpenBOR, you can write your own formulas for radius, Bezier, sine or whatever, feed it to dots and that's it. You literally added functions to the engine it didn't possess. That's where OpenBOR shines.
Now, that's not saying OpenBOR is "better", because again, Mugen absolutely wrecks it in out of the box functionality. They are just two very different things, and honestly it kind of bugs me they are seen as competitors. To me, they are opposite sides of the same coin.
That's a totally different subject. I will say Mugen's .ini styled files are a lot more practical to build editors for, but that's not really the reason we don't have them. That comes down to communities, and let's be honest - there's simply no comparing. Mugen is in a far, FAR more popular genre. Even now it easily supports several thriving communities. I say one or two will still be around and kicking long after ours eventually disappears.
OpenBOR? We're still growing, but it's a tiny trickle, and there's still just barely enough to support this one community. I have to struggle every day to keep people from splintering off into private groups, discord severs, or whatever else and just fading away.
DC
I think you mistook me. I wasn't coming from a competitive standpoint either. I was merely outlying difference between the two as I know them. I didn't feel the need to restate "right tool for the job", or as we say here, "Horses for courses". By now that should be self evident and wasn't what the question was about.
How many times have you seen me say elsewhere it would be silly to try and build a one vs. one fighter with OpenBOR? Hint: I don't know either, because it's a lot. The same holds true for trying to do anything but a one vs. one in Mugen. Of course it can do other types of games, but that's not really what I meant by saying it couldn't do anything else. I'm talking about adding non-existent functionality.
Here's an example: Say you wanted to vector draw circles or curves. Neither engine has this as a native function. In Mugen, you simply can't do it. In OpenBOR, you can write your own formulas for radius, Bezier, sine or whatever, feed it to dots and that's it. You literally added functions to the engine it didn't possess. That's where OpenBOR shines.
Now, that's not saying OpenBOR is "better", because again, Mugen absolutely wrecks it in out of the box functionality. They are just two very different things, and honestly it kind of bugs me they are seen as competitors. To me, they are opposite sides of the same coin.
That's a totally different subject. I will say Mugen's .ini styled files are a lot more practical to build editors for, but that's not really the reason we don't have them. That comes down to communities, and let's be honest - there's simply no comparing. Mugen is in a far, FAR more popular genre. Even now it easily supports several thriving communities. I say one or two will still be around and kicking long after ours eventually disappears.
OpenBOR? We're still growing, but it's a tiny trickle, and there's still just barely enough to support this one community. I have to struggle every day to keep people from splintering off into private groups, discord severs, or whatever else and just fading away.
DC
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
oh no, it's okay. I didn't mean you, I meant people who could understand that I meant that engine X was better than engine Y, that's all
I was trying to be as unbiased as possible.
In Mugen, no, you can't. But in Ikemen, yes you can.
That sounds cool, but I don't know jack spit about Ikemen. From what little I understand, it's "Mugen on Steroids", but with a bunch of growing pains.
DC
NED
Well-known member
I confirm these points from my observation and speak with some creators (including Ikemen content coders)
And basically the "weak points" on Openbor where the reasons I had to slow down my project(s) with Openbor, beside of the documentation one from my own point of view.
Sure that Mugen is completely locked in term of "upgrade" without an official update, but the community is incredibly helpful (certainly because it's bigger...)
You cannot stay stuck one full week in a problem to solve if you ask online. Sometimes in just a few minutes/hours, someone will come from nowhere and give you a way to solve your problem. sometime another person will pop as well and give you an alternative to have similar result. etc.
I rediscovered FighterFactoryStudio like 2-3 years ago, without really checking the updates before.
I was so surprised how complete was the software, the fact there is a menu full of tools and stuff for any "regular" thing you want to do.
Some functions can make you save 75% of your work time in a content creation.
Sure, if you want to code a platform or item interaction, dialogue code, you have to make it manually, but the tool do the job.
Openbor really deserve such a stable software, even if not complete.
Just something that actually works and is user friendly. --> So many new creators would create Openbor mods with such a thing.
(Perhaps I'm outdated here, I gave up on testing openbor softwares because no one of them can really help my creation process...)
Yes, both are very different... I still feel funny when some people see Openbor gameplay and ask "Hey! What mugen is it?" ^^
@NED,
The last chance we really had was Piccolo's modder's tools. It was getting close, but he hasn't been seen since last year. Before that MattMan and Gringo both had tools, but both of them disappeared (as in not just from here, but totally off the grid). Gringo's is nice but crashes if you stare at it too hard and likes to mangle your text files. MattMan's tool isn't allowed here at all because the only known copies throw virus warnings (erroneous or not I must err on the side of caution).
Even Fighter Factory was supposedly going to have some OpenBOR support, but evidently they decided to drop it.
DC
The last chance we really had was Piccolo's modder's tools. It was getting close, but he hasn't been seen since last year. Before that MattMan and Gringo both had tools, but both of them disappeared (as in not just from here, but totally off the grid). Gringo's is nice but crashes if you stare at it too hard and likes to mangle your text files. MattMan's tool isn't allowed here at all because the only known copies throw virus warnings (erroneous or not I must err on the side of caution).
Even Fighter Factory was supposedly going to have some OpenBOR support, but evidently they decided to drop it.
DC
NED
Well-known member
Right ! I think I tested all of them including the virus warning one... ^^;
When Piccolo came up with his project, I felt like it would finally be the beginning of a new era of creators and projects! Too bad he disapeared like some other creators.
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
I remember I had cleaned the file myself and uploaded it here long time ago.
I still have that verson and I can upload it if necessary.
OpenBOR support from Figther Factory wasn't officially droped, but its not our main focus right now.
The version you cleaned and posted before still triggered alerts when I downloaded, so I had to take it down. If you have another please PM me and I'll be glad to take a look.
DC
oldyz
Well-known member
@DCurrent & @O Ilusionista,
i was wondering if
the "virusy" versions of fighter factory and others would work well with programs like sandboxie - also, a few months back i used a program that enumerates all the processes an executable does and even tells you if the system has something missing - can't recall the blasted name, but i used it to attempt to run a newer version of dolphin on a wndows 7 pc - any way, antivirus software usually flags stuff as threats, but fortunately sandbox programs have gotten better
i was wondering if
the "virusy" versions of fighter factory and others would work well with programs like sandboxie - also, a few months back i used a program that enumerates all the processes an executable does and even tells you if the system has something missing - can't recall the blasted name, but i used it to attempt to run a newer version of dolphin on a wndows 7 pc - any way, antivirus software usually flags stuff as threats, but fortunately sandbox programs have gotten better
From my perspective it doesn't really matter. No responsible site owner in their right mind will ever host or allow posted links to potentially infected software.
Unless I have definitive proof a file is clean, I can't let anyone exchange it through Chronocrash.
DC
NED
Well-known member
Right... I also prefer this choice.
Even if it means we certainly will have to wait for someone skilled enough and with available time and motivation to create a real stable software "from scratch"
It would be great... even if only the basics functions are included for a start... But please, stability, no crash every time you launch it
O Ilusionista
Captain 100K
@oldyz there is no virus in Fighter Factory, but in OpenBorStats.
I will foward my copy to @DCurrent - The only virus warning I got was related to Delphi.
And strange enough, I was downling OpenBOR 6391 today and...I got a "not safe warning" from windows.
EDIT: I've uploaded the zip file to Virus Total it had returned two errors:
If I upload just the .exe, it returns 4 warnings
But I think it could be a false positive, as all the major AV had found nothing...
I will foward my copy to @DCurrent - The only virus warning I got was related to Delphi.
And strange enough, I was downling OpenBOR 6391 today and...I got a "not safe warning" from windows.
EDIT: I've uploaded the zip file to Virus Total it had returned two errors:
If I upload just the .exe, it returns 4 warnings
But I think it could be a false positive, as all the major AV had found nothing...
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oldyz
Well-known member
@DCurrent , understandable - maybe the forum posts about these tools & programs should have repeated warnings, but at least the best we can do is to point to the "best" download source without linking directly
@O Ilusionista , yes back in 2019 when i started, i had scanned the drive that had openbor using housecall and it reported that openbor had a virus -
over the years i have had lots of false positives, especially packs of games with dll's and such... (Ikemen) - so i decided to just use it.
I remember the good old days when spybot search and destroy was trustworthy.....
microsoft & bill was the devil (still are) , and mcafee would destroy HDs
@O Ilusionista , yes back in 2019 when i started, i had scanned the drive that had openbor using housecall and it reported that openbor had a virus -
over the years i have had lots of false positives, especially packs of games with dll's and such... (Ikemen) - so i decided to just use it.
I remember the good old days when spybot search and destroy was trustworthy.....
microsoft & bill was the devil (still are) , and mcafee would destroy HDs
aL BeasTie
Well-known member
Do remember thou when we got OpenBOR project started everyone had come from MUGEN scene and simply wanted to make beat em ups instead. No one wanted to make a mugen competitor, there was simply no need.