The Killer Instinct Community Guide

General Discussion
1

I’ve been thinking of suggesting this for a while, but for some reason or other haven’t got round to it.

The Context:

For a long time now, Killer Instinct Guides have existed, stretching back as far as November 30th 1994 if the records on GameFAQs are to be believed. However,as good as all the resources around the internet are, there is no singular place where you can find versions of the vast majority of content in a format accessible to visually impaired or blind players wishing to up their game or simply learn more about the characters, stages etc.

Whilst the Killer Instinct Wiki provides descriptions of characters and stages, the descriptions could, I believe, do with some colour and while the move lists that are scattered about the internet might be useful to most, a large amount of the time is spent figuring out what arrows to use, with the exception of one guide that uses its own, mostly readable notation.

Now to the matter at hand:

I’ve been talking to members of this community for a while (@TheNinjaOstrich, @GalacticGeek, @Marbledecker and others), with a general concensus being that there could easily be an accessible, progressively updating guide for KI. I would be happy to host it on a site I run, but before we even get to that stage, I need the help of all of you, the Killer Instinct/Ultra-Combo.com community, if you are willing to assist me.

Whilst there are people who have offered to help who currently are unable to do so for reasons that I won’t detail here, I will make it known that at the time of writing, anyone can chip in on the following mattters, posting things in this topic (for others to give feedback on etc as well). I can compile the guide based on the information provided and will give credit to those who wish for it. If you wish to be credited individually, you can put the name you wish to be credited under along with your information.

This will be a very large-scale project, but we as a community do have 5 months to get this at least started before season 3 comes out. The way I see it, the sooner we get started, the sooner we get it finished and the sooner we get it finished, the more tidying up we can do.

I would be looking for the following in the final iteration of the guide (though since it is a living document, I do not believe for the foreseeable future that there will be a “final version”):

Controls/key (will help with later parts of the guide)
Types of moves and how they work.
How to string together a combo
Combo Breakers
Deeper mechanics (Counterbreakers, Shadowcounters, reversals etc)
If permitted by the author, links to Infil’s tools for shadow breaker training etc that are already accessible (with a few small notes about that side of things, like turning a screen reader off before trying to press buttons etc)
Menu Structure (particularly important as the developers keep adding new options etc occasionally)

Dojo Lessons:
Dojo text and button inputs (timings can be worked out by the player, normally at least)

Story mode (s1 and s2):
text descriptions as well as descriptions of what happens in the videos.

Character content:
Description
Backstory (taken from the news posts on this site, with permission of course)
Move list
Ultra Description (as they are not the same as stage Ultras)

Stages:
Stage general description
Dynamic elements (when events are triggered during battle)
Stage Ultra Description

Online modes:
text for online qualifying matches etc (to allow those who have no sight at all to get online and start playing with as little help as possible and so they know what will happen)

Shadow creation/how shadow points work etc

Purchasing KI Gold/items from the store

Unlocking items

If there’s anything else I’ve missed (which there probably is knowing the scope of this game), or anyone who wants to help with specific sections, then please feel free to let me know.

By the way, private messages on this forum aren’t exactly the most accessible thing as far as I can work out. If you wish to send any content through to me for checking etc, You can contact me using
this form

I wish to state now that this guide is not meant to replace @Infilament’s in any way, merely to be a fully accessible resource for those with a total lack of vision. Infil’s resources are accessible in their own way, with the materials using videos also being usible with enough experience, which I intend to document. After all, it’s better to have two very complex and useful guides than one, in my opinion.

I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with, hopefully we can pull something together.

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2

Watching this thread. Willing to contribute to whatever I’m qualified to contribute :smiley:

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I really like this Idea. Like. A lot.

I would love to contribute If I’m allowed.

Plus I need some guidance myself lol!

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Sure thing! I’ll try and contribute any way I can!

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You’re welcome to link to any page in my guide as long as proper credit is given.

Good luck, writing something this big is not easy. :smiley:

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If I write the Hisako section of the Character guides, will that make me the Mayor of Hisakotown™?

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I call dibs on Jago section! Does that make me…

THE TRUE TIGER SPIRIT? :laughing:

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Dibs on my dino riptor. I’ll be leader of the pack!

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I know I’m replying to my own post here, but it saves me replying to you all in turn. You can be credited as whatever you want, though it might be better if you were credited by, say, your gamertag or your username on here if it’s different. However, if you don’t want that, I’m OK with it, please just make it clear what you want to be credited as by putting, for example, “credited as: [mynameisacredit]”. I will/hope to put a list of people at the end with what section they worked on so having the information will be useful.

@Infilament
Thanks very much. When you say “proper credit”, how would you like to be credited?
Also, as much as I’m writing the Ki Community Guide, it is also just that. A community guide, meaning that I won’t write the entire thing. Way I see it is if we all pool our resources we’ll come out with a hopefully useful end product that can be updated as new moves are added, moves are taken away, content/features are added in Season 3 and beyond, etc.

If you choose to send me information using the contact form, remember to put what section it should go under and your creditation. I will try my best to pull this all together as we go, though it will doubtless take time. I’m, regardless, pleased with such a positive response to an idea that has been kicking around in my head for a while.

I won’t have massive amounts of free time, but what free time I can put into the guide I will endeavour to make count.

I can even make a link to a version of the guide that I can upload to a testing site so that even though it’s not fully “live and public”, you can see how it will look as it developes and maybe even make suggestions on that too.

I know this is a big responsibility and later down the line I might need people to help not just with the writing, but also with the moderation/management of contentas it comes in.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s contributions.

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I just mean don’t cut text from my site and paste them on your own site as if they were your own. Standard ethical writing stuff. If you link to my page and say “visit Infil’s guide for more on this topic” or something like that, that’s fine. Aside from a link, there’s no “strict” way I need to be credited.

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@Infilament
Thanks for clearing that up, I just wanted to check what you meant really. To be fair it might be good to simplify things a little for casual players who might not understand how everything works (people who haven’t got the game yet, for instance). If that does happen your guide would be good to link to in order that if they want to read more in-depth or from other standpoints they can later on.

I feel bad calling it “my guide” which is why I’ve avoided terming it as such. However, considering I am compiling it (even though it’s information the community has kindly and graciously provided alongwith maybe a few elements of my own), would anyone object to me saying it’s my guide in posts etc? Seems trivial I know, but part of me feels like it would be taking far too much credit for a project that the community is integral in completing.

I’ll try and set up a basic structure as soon as I can and once that’s done I’ll put it up somewhereand let you all know. But regardless of when that happens, you can start contributing whenever you want. Actually, it would be good to have certain people doing certain sections, particularly for the characters, even as a starting point. That’s not to say that only one person is allowed to contribute to, say, the Jago section, but that maybe it’d be easier to have a person start it off then other people just adding bits and pieces here and there.

Regardless of how I phrase things, I am open to suggestions of how I structure things as well so if, once I put the structure up, you think things should be moved around, I will listen and look into it, seeing how viable it is, depending on time of course.

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I dunno. Can we FT10 for that instead? :smirk:

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Just wanted to let everyone know I’ve done some work on the construction of the testing version of the guide. It’d be good to have things like character descriptions to populate those areas with something other than the backstories from this site though, as well as the exact order of the stagesin the selection menu (I can’t find this order without checking the game myself).

As I stated before, I’ll make it clear when you can all see how the structure’s going to be at least in this initial version.

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As someone who has written (and maintained/added to) a large scale guide, I think you need to be careful about a few things.

First of all, it’s very easy to bite off more than you can chew, even if you have people helping you. I would recommend, instead of covering every single detail about the game, you start off smaller. Pick a few areas you really care about and leave the rest as “coming soon”, and then see if you can finish the first bit and make it as good as possible.

Second, you need to have a real plan. You need to know exactly what all the pages will contain, and have matching formats across all the pages. You need to think about how a reader will use your guide (will he read it sequentially? will he jump from page to page? how will he navigate?). If you plan to expand, as per my point above, make sure you have an idea of how you will do that, and how expansion will fit in your guide. This includes things like how you build the menus, so you only have to change one file later (I don’t know your level of web development expertise here).

And third, with no disrespect to the very capable people that have offered to help you, it’s possible that too many cooks can spoil the broth. People tend to write with different levels of clarity, different tones, and different levels of detail. It can be difficult to “unify” a guide so that it is internally consistent if you open it up for anyone to help; you will need to decide how important this is to you.

One of the strengths of my guide, in my opinion, is that it is very unified. Maybe not everybody likes my writing style (certainly I have a tendency to “overwrite” sometimes), but the guide feels very cohesive from page to page… my vocabulary and structure is very consistent, which helps understanding. All my character pages, for instance, follow an identical structure and feel like they were written by the same person for the same audience. It is possible to get multiple people involved in a project and have it turn out unified, but it’s something you have to actively work towards… it won’t just happen. If your goal is just to “collect as much information about KI as I can, in one place, it doesn’t matter who has written it”, then this sounds more like a wiki to me. Maybe you should consider a wiki-style format where anyone can edit and add. The nice thing about wikis is that they are very easy to make, since you can download premade templates with all the functionality built! But again, this comes back to my “have a real plan” point. You need to know exactly your target audience and what you want your project to look like at the end before you start.

Just some advice to hopefully make your project the best it can be. :smile:

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15

I very much appreciate your input, as you’ve written a similar guide to mine (with varying degreees of differentiation, of course).

I’m not planning to get everything done at once, but I can see what you mean. I planned for the guide to be one page, with headings and links to those heading organised in a bulleted list at the top of the page. This means that people won’t get lost in a laberrinth of pages and will be able to easily go straight back to the beginning to relocate where they want to be.

No I can understnad the idea of being able to link to pages rather than just a single page, but if formatted correctly you can actually format a link to take the user to a specific heading as well, which is useful for accessibility if done correctly. However, you probably know that already.

I am aware that I might be doing too much at once/biting off more than I can chew, even with others assisting in the effort. As a consequence, the idea plan would be to get Character descriptions and move lists done as soon as we can, then getting things like stage descriptions, stage ultra descriptions, the complex system mechanics, etc later on before Season 3 hits.

In response to your point about unification, I can see exactly where you’re coming from. However, the reason I’m not writing this guide entirely off my own back is for one simple reason: I can’t. The content I want to include will have to be taken from the game (to get the most upd-to-date information possible, not including frame data at least in the initial stages), something which without sight is currently not possible. If Iron Galaxy/Microsoft had thought to do a similar thing from the beginning, as I mentioned since Season 2, this might not even be necessary. Believe me, If I could do all this at my own leisure without the need for help, I would do. However, since parts of the content are hard to find readable versions of (move lists) and others would only exist in my imagination, I felt it best to seek the help of people who might better be able to help. The unification process, though difficult, was always going to be that way. The use of a Wiki style format, whilst a good idea in principal, raises its own questions, as there is another Killer Instinct Wiki. Moreover, the accessibility and general clutter of Wiki sites are frustrating at times.

As for my target audience, it would primarily be players with a visual impairment/with no sight whatsoever. However, of course, anyone can read the guide if they want to.

I hope this has at least partially cleared up how I intend to tackle this project.

I would be happy to discuss any suggestions you may have to get all of this running smoothly as possible.

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Yeah, I’m not trying to say you should go on your own to do this. Just wanted to mention that having a ton of people involved with a project like this can be a good thing, but also introduce complications. You just need to be aware of those, that’s all.

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Thanks, I understand. That’s kind of why I said it might be better if, even if it’s just to start with, specific people take specific sections. Though I understand how that in itself could cause complications, but I’m not really sure exactly how best to manage that part of things at least until people actually start contributing as well :smiley:

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Is it possible the guide could include all the frame data for the characters on their pages? i know the frame data is in the game but having a location to reference it when your not by your system would be very helpful. i know the street fighter wiki on srk has one (even though its out of necessity) but i think it will help newer players like myself understand the characters and how they relate to each other better

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That’s a part of the plan. Move lists and general strategy are taking priority at the moment. I’ve been working on the dojo section (on and off) since August. Unfortunately, due to work being extremely busy, it has been spilling into my free time.

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@ZiaristThanks very much for stepping in and clarifying that. I didn’t want to involve you more than you wished to be, since I am aware your work is taking up a large amount of your time. I look forward to seeing what you have once you have the time to send it.

@YounFox
The plan, as I’ve stated before and as Ziarist kindly said, is to eventually have frame data included (with a format that doesn’t make it confusing for accessibility.). However, until such a time as the majority of the guide is completed, for the moment, character descriptions and move lists will probably be the best way to start off a project like this IMHO.

I personally don’t rely on frame data, just remembering what normals/specials have specific ranges etc and while I understand that limits me, it seems to have worked thus far :smile: