Represent
your nation.

Why we are asking instead of just making them

Fighting Nations is a bare-handed 3D martial arts fighting game, built in Unreal Engine 5 by one person, with no outside investment. The roster you can play today was assembled from licensed and free Unreal assets. That is the honest version, and it is also the reason this page exists.

No fighting game has ever had a fighter for every nation — not Tekken, not Street Fighter. A studio cannot commission four hundred characters; the arithmetic does not work at any budget. But a fighter representing your country should be made by someone from there anyway, not picked out of an asset store by someone who has never been.

That includes the thirty-four we already have. Those fighters are stock characters with new names — placeholders we put in so the game could be played at all. Every one of them is meant to be replaced by something made by a person from that country. So if your nation already appears in the game, it is still yours to claim.

So: claim your nation, build the character, and it goes into the game with your name on it.

Your nation is yours first

We want each country's fighter made by someone from that country. When two people ask for the same nation, the one from it goes first — that is the whole point of this.

• Just tell us your connection. We take your word for it. We will never ask for a passport, an ID or any document — we are not running a nationality check, and we do not want your identity papers.
• Diaspora counts, fully. If your family is from a nation and you grew up somewhere else, that nation is yours to claim on the same footing. Some of the people who most want to see their country in a game are the ones who left it, or whose parents did.
• If nobody from a nation comes forward after a long wait, we will open it to anyone who wants to do it properly and research it seriously. An empty slot represents nobody. We would rather a well-made fighter exist than a country stay missing on principle.

What you get

• Your character in the game, under your nation's flag.
• Your name and your nation credited in-game — on the character select screen and in the credits.
• You keep the copyright. You license it to us for Fighting Nations; you can still use and sell the same work anywhere else.
• If a paid character store ever opens, contributors from this call get the first offer, before anyone else.

What you do not get — we would rather say it plainly

Every fighter is equal — a design rule, not a slogan

All fighters share the same 255-move set and identical base stats. No character hits harder, moves faster or reaches further than another. The only things that differ are the body, the face, the clothes and the name.

You can count the moves yourself: all 255 are public.

The spec

1. The skeleton — the one thing that cannot bend

Rig to the UE4 Mannequin hierarchy, also known as the Epic Skeleton. It is still fully supported in Unreal Engine 5, and it is what every attack, hit reaction and throw in this game is authored against. A character on it plays all 255 moves natively, with no retargeting.

root
└ pelvis
  ├ spine_01 → spine_02 → spine_03
  │ ├ clavicle_l → upperarm_l → lowerarm_l → hand_l → (fingers)
  │ ├ clavicle_r → upperarm_r → lowerarm_r → hand_r → (fingers)
  │ └ neck_01 → head
  ├ thigh_l → calf_l → foot_l → ball_l
  └ thigh_r → calf_r → foot_r → ball_r

• Not the UE5 Manny/Quinn skeleton. It adds spine_04, spine_05 and neck_02, which makes it a different hierarchy and forces a retarget pass on every move.
• Not CC4, Rigify, AdvancedSkeleton, Mixamo or MetaHuman rigs. Each needs a per-character IK Rig and Retargeter, plus revalidation of all 255 moves.
• Extra bones are fine — chest, cloth, hair, accessories — as long as the hierarchy above is intact and correctly parented.
• No weapons and no weapon bones. This is a bare-handed game: no blades, guns, staves, bows or shields, not even stowed.

2. Proportions — why this matters more than it looks

We measured this the hard way. Across 4,319 automated sparring matches we logged which limb actually made contact on every attack. On characters with distorted proportions the arms stretched to 137–148 cm of reach, so a kick registered as a punch — the hand arrived before the foot did. Detection accuracy fell from 60% to 48% and the whole run had to be thrown away.

Stylisation is welcome — heroic, slim, heavy, muscular, all fine. Reach is not stylisation. Reach is gameplay, and a longer-armed fighter would break the promise that every fighter is equal.

3. Bones the hit detection reads

These must exist, be named exactly this, and sit anatomically where they belong — a ball_l floating off the foot will miss.

4. Face and expression (optional)

The game plays facial morphs on hits, taunts and victories. A character without them still works — it just keeps a flat face while winning. If you include morph targets, use ARKit blendshape names. We currently drive browInnerUp, eyeSquintLeft, eyeSquintRight, jawOpen and Sad, plus a smile shape for the victory pose.

5. Technical budget

Content rules

These are not negotiable, and two of them exist because we have already had to turn work down.

1. No real people. No likeness of any identifiable person, living or dead — not athletes, not fighters, not musicians, not politicians.
2. It must be your own work. You warrant that you made it and may license it to us. Nothing ripped from another game. Nothing resold from a marketplace as your own. If you built on a third-party base, you must hold a licence that allows this and you must tell us.
3. A nation, not a caricature. You are designing someone your country would be glad to see represented. Traditional dress, modern streetwear, a martial arts uniform — all good. Ethnic, religious or national stereotype played for laughs — turned down.
4. No flags, state emblems, military insignia or religious symbols as costume unless you can show they are free to use that way. The game handles flags separately; a palette that reads as your flag is a better idea anyway.
5. Fight-appropriate. The game is rated for violence, not sexual content.
6. AI-generated geometry is allowed, at the same bar. We use AI-assisted 2D art and music and we say so openly. We have also kept an AI-generated character out of the public build because the quality was not there. Tell us what you used — it will not count against you, and hiding it will.

Licence, in plain language

You keep your copyright. You are giving us permission to put your character in Fighting Nations and to show it in trailers, store pages and press material. You are not selling us the model.

• You grant Deother a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual licence to use, reproduce, modify, retarget and distribute the work as part of Fighting Nations and in marketing for it.
• Modification matters in practice — we may adjust skin weights, generate LODs or retouch a material to make it run. We will not redesign your character without asking.
• You retain copyright and may license or sell the same work elsewhere.
• We will not resell your model as a standalone asset.
• If a paid character store opens, your character does not go into it without a separate agreement with you.
• You may ask us to leave your character out of future builds. We cannot recall builds already shipped.
• No payment is due under this licence. Credit is the consideration.

How to claim a nation

1. Email us first, before you model anything. Tell us your nation, your connection to it, and whether you are building the man or the woman — so two people do not build the same fighter. We will confirm it is yours and tell you what that nation still needs.
2. Build it to the spec above. Ask us anything while you work — a rig question answered early saves a week.
3. Send the FBX, the textures, a turntable render or four screenshots, and your name as you want it credited.
4. We test it in the game — the paired throws first, because that is where a bad rig shows immediately — and come back to you with either "it's in" or a specific list of what to fix. We will not sit silently on your submission.

We can turn work down, and we will tell you why. A character goes out under our name as well as yours, so the bar is the bar. If a submission is close, we would far rather tell you what to change than quietly drop it.

Nations we would love to see first

Any of the 194 nations is welcome — these are simply the biggest gaps right now.

Africa currently has two fighters. South America has two. Oceania has none. Email us and ask — we will tell you straight away whether your nation is open.

See the game before you decide

Do not take our word for any of it. The Windows build is free, there is nothing to buy, and the full move list is public.