I can answer the "why not hack mugen" one. Because that's impossible. There is no source code.You're actually wrong here.
Mugen's bounds have been defined for years, we've had plenty of intelligent people who could hack it pop in and out of the community yet none of them have ever thought online mode was a possibility, because with mugen as it is, it's not.Well, I never talked about online mode. I was actually talking about things like animated portraits during Character Select, a continue with a timer, a better win screen with an alternate option of having a port for the defeated oppoent as well (just like in SF2), unlockable characters, a proper story mode, you know, the usual full game stuff, but with that being useable outside of full games as well.
If there is any coder here and want to be part of something that is really made by the community and to the community, I suggest OpenBOR instead. We have monthly releases, sometimes even weekly releases. No 10-years betas...B-but I don't want to code Final Fight-styled games. I don't have any ideas for games like these anyway. It's a lot easier for me to code classical fighting games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters or the more specialised stuff like Guilty Gear or Touhou.
So yeah, I though that's not a bad idea to create a thread for this MUGEN clone...sorry pal, I think you`re my only chance, since the authot never replied my e-mails...