Rivals of Aether

Rivals of Aether

Omega
Pyro  [developer] 18 Feb, 2023 @ 3:30pm
Dev Notes
Just some notes on certain design choices or other things you may have wondered about. Feel free to ask questions about moveset or sprites here.

"The character resembles Model Ox more than Omega"
...Maybe. Omega as a boss in Z3 and ZX has like, 6 moves. It only made sense to draw from Ox's moveset as well as Zero's, given the context of the character. Using elemental attacks also fits the theme of Rivals, I'd say. And as a fighting game fan, meters are cool.

Fspecial uses the Ox sprite instead of the upwards slash like the boss would. I figured a move that fires a projectile didn't need a melee hitbox that was too safe, and the up slash is used for Utilt/Ustrong. It also keeps consistency with the aerial Fspecial sprite.

On release I did use the purple saber. To be honest it was mainly just personal preference, but I always considered it (and the pink saber) to be referencing Zero's techniques in X4. Tenkuuha (which translates to Aether Rule, thonkface) was a permanent saber upgrade that made it purple, and Shippuuga was an attack that made the saber pink, practically the same shade as boss Omega's. X4 is my favorite of the X series and is where most of Zero's staple techniques originate from.

When I started work on Omega, I knew I would be making something a little bit rude, to say the least. Does he have a lot of projectiles? Yes. Are his attacks very fast with little endlag? Yes. He is also a final boss and secret super boss infamous for being a challenge (in ZX anyways). I did give pretty much all of his melee attacks a 0.8 hitstun multiplier, meaning combos aren't true without some tight execution. That's probably the ssbm player in me showing. (You might think I play Marth but I'm a Falcon main. Gotta swag on em)

For anyone that hadn't noticed, all the elemental EX Skills are assigned to a direction in correlation with their respective element. Up for flame, forward for thunder, and down for ice. Just a neat tidbit.