Fighting Is Magic: Aurora, sometimes shortened to just, "Aurora" is an unofficial endeavor dedicated to reviving Mane6's fighting game Fighting is Magic, as originally conceived as the fangame based on the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic TV series, initially by using various assets contributed by fans to Mane6's unfinished leaked build, and used Premium Edition Beta 5 as its base. It is the first game to be built on 2D Fighter Maker X, a closed mod of 2D Fighter Maker 2002.
History and Development
There were plans by various groups in the fandom for an attempt to finish the highly anticipated fan-game after Mane6 officially announced on February 2013 that they are cancelling the original My Little Pony fan-game due to a cease and desist letter by Hasbro, albeit had since restarted development using an original IP. Development on the revival of the original fan-game started in earnest by several groups of fans. Many builds based off of Mane6's unfinished product started appearing such as Ponychan's Build and Iwanabrawl Build (which was the created by the same development team as Tribute Edition). One such build started in June 2013, by an individual known online under the alias "WindowsLogic", with the initial codename "Dark Chocolate". Not having much experience in 2D Fighter Maker 2002, it was supposed to be a test version and was never intended to be released to the public. However, after many beta builds and a lot of testing, the build was released just after Tribute Edition in January 2014. A year after after "Dark Chocolate" was released, WindowsLogic announced a remake of the build in order to address some of the problematic issues in the first attempt, under the new codename, "Aurora". Development for "Aurora" started in April 2015 and promised to be a new take on Fighting is Magic with a new theme and better balancing while also including a new character, "Lyra". Development went smoothly until one day, WindowsLogic lost the project files when a hard disk died, meaning the only version he had of the game was an early beta build from May 2015. Development was halted and the assets were put in long-term storage.
In August 2017, development on "Aurora" had started back up without anyone knowing. In October 2017, the second beta of "Aurora" surfaced and was released publicly on WindowsLogic's website and was shown on WindowsLogic's YouTube channel. All beta releases since then have been fully public since WindowsLogic wanted everyone to test it and report bugs and glitches. The results for the current beta releases have been overwhelmingly positive.
Gameplay and Features
Like the original Fighting Is Magic, it also consists of the first initial six main characters from the official show (Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash), a simple main menu, story and versus mode. The plan for "Aurora" was to take elements of the original plans which were taken from video footage they had shown in past live streams and unofficial tournaments for Fighting is Magic and improve upon them, including balance changes from the original Mane6 builds and the base Premium Edition beta build.
The story mode in "Aurora" is planned to not just be a back-to-back arcade mode and will have a full story released in episodes, starting with Applejack, then later on the rest of the Mane 6.
A note-worthy feature of "Aurora" is that it's the first Fighting is Magic build with a launcher to launch the game, launch netplay (online multiplayer), change game settings, debug settings, send feedback and receive automatic updates. The launcher is programmed in Visual Basic.NET using Visual Studio 2017 and .NET Framework 4.5.2. This launcher can be used in the future to add more features to the game like an art gallery or music player.
Another note-worthy feature is that "Aurora" cannot be edited by 2D Fighter Maker 2002 or 2D Fighter Maker 2015 due to the file types being different and the embedded locking code being different. This fixed a bug where an attacker could inject malicious code into the main game executable by putting data where the unlock code was/is.
Plans for an options menu are coming soon with the ability to change training settings and display an in-game command list before jumping into story or versus mode. This was a feature in Tribute Edition but was removed for unknown reasons. This feature is planning to be released after the first initial release of "Aurora".
After the initial release is finished, new characters will be introduced and added. Trixie, Lyra and Vinyl Scratch are confirmed as DLC to Fighting is Magic: Aurora and will be added with their stories in the future.
Plans for a Macintosh release of the game has been thought of, but there is no way to make a compatible launcher at this time.
Characters
Returning Playable Cast
- Applejack (voiced by Karen Hayman)
- Twilight Sparkle (voiced by Meredith Sims)
- Rarity (voiced by Kimlinh Tran)
- Rainbow Dash (voiced by Susanna Brown)
- Fluttershy (voiced by LilyPichu)
- Pinkie Pie (voiced by Emily Fajardo)
Later Confirmed Additions (DLC)
- Trixie
- Lyra
- Vinyl Scratch
Non-playable characters
- Mayor Mare (voiced by Kira Buckland) as the announcer
Telepone
Telepone is the preferred netplay client for "Aurora", developed by a fan named Anniie and includes many improvements, both aesthetic and technical, over the old netplay client, MTSP. It was built around a server system, a player hosts a room for other players to join and use as a matchmaking. Some features like emoticons, replays, stats manager and more command shortcuts to certain functions were also added. It also features an item drop system, where players online would have a small chance to get an item or steal an existing item from another player. These items, however, cannot be traded and does not have any effect at the moment. Telepone is built-into the launcher of "Aurora".
Version History
| Version | Released |
|---|---|
| Beta (0.1) | May, 2015 |
| 0.2.0.0 | October, 2017 |
| 0.2.0.1 | October, 2017 |
| 0.3.0.0 | November, 2017 |
| 0.3.1.0 | November, 2017 |
| 0.3.1.1 | December, 2017 |
| 0.3.1.2 | March, 2018 |
| April Fools' 2018 (0.3.1.2) | April, 2018 |
| 0.4.0.0 | May, 2018 |
| 0.4.0.1 | May, 2018 |
| 0.4.1.0 | October, 2018 |
| 0.5.0.0 | To Be Decided... |
| 1.0.0.0 | To Be Decided... |