Rising Thunder Devs Releasing Source Code For Cancelled Fighting Game

Rising Thunder, a canceled fighting game that was showing promise back in 2016, will have its final build released for free in January.

The final build will be called Rising Thunder: Community Edition. 

It's a barebones build with a few features working for the community to play with. Seth Killian, producer for Rising Thunder at the time, posted on the Rising Thunder subbreddit informing the community of the quality of life improvements done with the final build of the game. Features such as local play will be available but will support keyboard vs controller only, which can be adjusted with a few tinkering in the code. Online is possible as well since the community will have access to an open-source version of the Rising Thunder Server. Seth Killian says they "whipped up a first pass at a bare-bones server that will allow you to play online with rudimentary matchmaking and limited features. And we're making it open source so that if you're inclined you can tinker and improve it."

Don't expect any new characters or features to make a debut with this build. What was available during the alpha phase back in 2016 is what you'll get once it's released for free in January.

Rising Thunder was announced back in 2015. For a fighting game, it had known names in the fighting game community working on the project such as Tom and Tony Canon, founders of the annual Evo fighting game tournament and also founders of Radiant Entertainment, the developers of the game. Seth Killian, the known face for Capcom during Street Fighter 4's development, was Rising Thunder's producer at the time. 

Sadly, the studio was bought by Riot Games, makers of the MOBA League of Legends in March of 2016. Then, development ceased shortly after. 

The key feature that the devs were pushing during the development of Rising Thunder was that the keyboard can be considered a viable controller with the game. By simplifying the game's control scheme, users wouldn't have to commit to complicated moves to memory. Rising Thunder is a fighting game with robot characters planned to be equipped with loadouts set by the player before the match, which modifies and upgrades their abilities. 

No exact date was given for Rising Thunder: Community Edition. Radiant Entertainment is still working on a new project but will reveal it "when the time is right".

Rising Thunder trailer during Evo 2015