The match script controls opponent behavior at the highest level in a fight. The basic operation it performs over and over is to wait for a certain time during the round and then make some kind of change to the opponent’s configuration data. The following video shows the first round of the first fight against Bald Bull along with a representation of the match script that is controlling his overall behavior.

There are three basic operations that a match script can perform. The first is just to wait until the round timer reaches a specific value. The second is to request that the opponent change his current behavior. Behaviors are registered in a fight configuration table in memory and then called on at various times by both match scripts and the game engine itself. There are two behavior slots in the table that match scripts use that I’ll call the “main” behavior and the “special” behavior. Special behaviors are things like Bald Bull’s Bull Charge and Piston Honda’s Honda Rush, while main behaviors are the normal punches the opponent throws the rest of the time. The particular behavior scripts used to implement these behavior types can be changed by the match script mid-round, so fighters can start out using one main behavior and then switch to a different main behavior later on (you can see Bald Bull do this when the timer reaches 0:20 in the video.)

A quirk of behavior changes from match scripts is that they are overridden by behavior changes requested by the game engine. The game engine uses four of the behavior slots to request new behaviors when Mac loses all of his hearts and becomes tired, recovers from being tired, gets up after being knocked down, and after the opponent gets up after being knocked down. If the match script has issued a request for a behavior change, but one of those four game engine events happens before that request can be honored (requests can’t be honored until the opponent is in an idle state), then the game engine will get to set the behavior it wants and the request from the match script will be lost. Some fighters, like Bald Bull, request their special behavior multiple times in quick succession. The only purpose of this seems to be to reduce the chance that any one of the requests will be accidentally skipped.

The third basic operation of a match script is to patch memory. Most memory patches affect the fight configuration table where the behavior scripts are registered. In addition to behavior selections, the table also contains data related to the difficulty of the fight. For example, when the timer reaches 0:30 in the video, Bald Bull changes his guard matching parameters making it so you can no longer fake him out by tapping up and then throwing a punch to the body. Match scripts have the ability to patch arbitrary memory addresses also, but the only time it is used is at the beginning of Mike Tyson round 2 to make it so that you will get a star the first time you punch him while he is idle.

Up Next

The next kind of script we’ll look at will be the behavior scripts. These are what the match script and game engine have been selecting to run and are where the actual punching behavior gets put together. If you have anything you’d like to see covered or any questions about a post you can contact me on twitter @allan_blomquist

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Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 at 11:18 am
by Allan Blomquist
filed under retro game internals