🥊 10 Episodes · Ages 10+ · MUGEN

MUGEN World Workshop
Build Your Own Fighter

MUGEN is a free engine for making 2D fighting games. You bring the characters and the stages, and the engine brings the fight. Start in the browser with the Mod Studio, then follow the series to build a fighter, give it moves, add a stage, teach it some AI and put it all together.

👶 Ages 10+ ⏱️ 10 Episodes 🥊 MUGEN ✓ Free workshops
🗂️ The def layout 🎮 Commands 🏙️ Stages 🤖 Enemy AI 🕹️ Game setup 🥊 Sensei badge
🛠️ Start in your browser (no install) 🥊 Start Episode 1 (needs MUGEN)
Lights up This little fight is drawn live. Click it to change the crowd lights, and watch the fighters trade blows.
🛡️
What you need: MUGEN is a free engine you download and unzip (no installer). The full series is a home-computer job best done with a grown-up. But you can start right now in the browser Mod Studio, with no install at all.
🔥
Ember says: a character is just a folder of text files the engine reads. The hard-sounding words (def, cmd, cns, air) are only file names. Learn the shape once, and every character after that is the same shape with your own art and moves.
🥊 Open the MUGEN Mod Studio A browser playground for this series: fill in a fighter def, lay out a stage and preview it, read a broken engine log and choose the fix, then download a real character and stage as a zip. No install, works on a school computer. Start building →
⏱️ Your first 15 minutes (no install)
  1. Open the Mod Studio.
  2. On the Fighter def tab, change the name and author, and watch the def file write itself.
  3. On the Stage def tab, move the camera bounds and watch the preview change.
  4. On Download your mod, get the zip. That is a real character folder and a real stage folder.

Then, when you have the engine and a grown-up to help, drop the folders into MUGEN and pick your fighter on the select screen.

Your progress
0 / 5 episodes complete
Open the Studio for a no-install head start.
🥊 Fighter Sensei
Finish all 10 episodes to earn the badge.

The 10 Episodes

Follow them in order. Each episode adds one new skill and ends with something you can fight with.

Episode 1 · Beginner
Get Set Up 🥊
Install MUGEN, learn the folder layout and meet select.def.
Episode 2 · Beginner
What Makes a Fighter 📄
Meet the six files: def, sff, air, cmd, cns and snd.
Episode 3 · Improver
Sprites and Palette 🎨
Learn indexed colour and recolour a fighter with a new palette.
Episode 4 · Improver
Animations 🏃
Read and write .air animations and control the timing.
Episode 5 · Improver
Commands 🎮
Turn button presses and motions into named commands.
Episode 6 · Advanced
States and Constants 🧠
Write the rules a fighter runs by: statedefs and controllers.
Episode 7 · Advanced
Hitboxes 🎯
Make attacks connect: Clsn1, Clsn2 and fair hits.
Episode 8 · Improver
Make a Stage 🏙️
A floor, a camera and a background: build your own arena.
Episode 9 · Advanced
Teach It AI 🤖
Make the computer play your fighter: attack, block and back off.
Episode 10 · Capstone
Build the Whole Game 🕹️
Assemble the roster, stages and screenpack into a full game.
Reference · Printable
MUGEN Cheat Sheet 📋
Folder paths, the def sections and the common engine errors, all on one page.

🧰 What you need

For the browser Studio: any computer and this website. For the full series: the free MUGEN engine, a folder to keep it in and a grown-up to help with the first setup.

🥊 The badge

Finish all 10 episodes to earn the Fighter Sensei badge on your progress page.

📋 Keep it open

The cheat sheet has the def sections and folder paths so you never have to guess.

🥊
Go deeper: the older Build Your Own Fighter, stage, AI and game setup workshops go over the same ground from other angles if you want a second explanation.