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How did SG get its start?

kupo15

kupo15

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I'm not sure if this is the right section, I was thinking General Discussion but this is related to SG which is why I put it here. Let me know if it should be moved if this isn't the right place!

I've been lurking these forums a bit and its amazed me at how passionate and willing this community is to want to support other people and projects they want to create to follow in Mike Z's footsteps. I for one have huge respect for what Mike Z has accomplished and its been inspirational for something I've been working at for the past 2 years which is making my own fighting game with the same amount of prestige that SG has.

I'll try to keep information about my game and its situation brief for now and I'm intentionally not posting any media about my game (unless asked) because the point of this thread isn't about shameless plugging. Its about asking for advice and trying to understand SG's development story not only for the help but because I find development logs extremely fascinating.

I've been researching as much as I can about how Skullgirls came to be from the very beginning but the information I've found is generally basic. So Mike prototyped the game before meeting Alex and Alex had the roster before meeting Mike? Did they partner up and bring the game to the vertical slice that got them a publishing deal by themselves? As in did Alex invest his time in doing all the animations for the first character or does anyone know if Mike hired other artists to help create the vertical slice funding it with his spare change for a while? Does anyone know how long it took them to get a vertical slice from the time the concept and direction was clear (aka from the first animations)?

Even though I have a good game plan right now with my game, these behind the scenes things would be invaluable to know to get a better grasp of how Mike Z succeeded so I can try to follow suit. In the past 2 years I've made a 6 character pre alpha fighting game doing everything needed (even prototype art despite art not being my strength or passion). I've taken the game as far as I can go and have been struggling with getting to the vertical slice stage even though I found my art partner 6 months ago who has solidified the art direction and can do animations...his technical ability in being able to do everything in the art side is inspiring to me. However development to get to the vertical slice has been more challenging than either of us has expected so I'd thought I'd ask to see what SG's life was like at the stage where we are right now

I've got more questions I'm sure but I think this is a good place to stop for now. If anyone is kind enough to offer insight I would be extremely grateful but if not then that is ok as well and we can let this thread peacefully die.

Thanks!
 
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That video does a pretty good job at explaining it. Skullgirls was years in the making. Mike Z wasn't the first person that Alex came to when trying to develop this game. You could actually find at least gameplay for some old skullgirls prototypes if you search hard enough. I'm also curious about your game because this stuff is interesting.
 
Have you watched any of @blackbookalpha's art streams? He worked on the initial Skullgirls development and sometimes shows the early pre-Mike work. It's really cool, I think you'll like it!
 
Find a good artist and be a good coder and the rest follows
 
MetroKoolAid said:

That video does a pretty good job at explaining it. Skullgirls was years in the making. Mike Z wasn't the first person that Alex came to when trying to develop this game. You could actually find at least gameplay for some old skullgirls prototypes if you search hard enough. I'm also curious about your game because this stuff is interesting.

I actually have seen that video, it was interesting though I wish there was more detail...like how was development like after they met in 2008 to get to the vertical slice to get that Autumn Games deal. Was it just the two of them to get to that prototype I saw in that Family arcade place or did they have more people to team? Its very important to get the logistics of the team down when handed over a large chunk of money instead of figuring it out then and risking losing momentum and delaying things. Perhaps they did add more people after the publishing deal and things worked out, in any case all these nitty gritty details behind what they went through would be fascinating to know!

I would love to share my game since you asked though. I'll wrap screens up in spoilers because I don't want to actively promote my game here.

Here is where the game is now, my 2 years of work working on the core experience, balancing and everything. I did the animations out of necessity to get my idea across perfectly even though it isn't my strong suit.
BKelc22.gif
2ag1e0l.gif
iei25t.gif
35kie7q.jpg
U9a3Yzn.gif
V9H3pw5.gif

Here is where the final version of the game is going to go (an old screenshot)
l0NaxOf.png
Characters so far
12314149_823616034413494_8926644609527049508_o.jpg
Some Animations (pay no attention to the kick timing, mostly for demonstration)
6uIFMbv.gif
G4vpjmB.gif

The Dave: I don't believe I have seen any, I'll check out that thread, seems it will be interesting. Thanks!

Sinclair: I believe I pretty much have that covered, still a bit of a struggle. I guess it takes more than a couple of months to get in a groove and figure out the best way to work together
 
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Man you started the 'shameless plugging' pretty quickly, no? Haha!
 
Ninja said:
huh... got a name for this game? or some place where we can follow progress?
Rising Spirit www.facebook.com/risingspiritgame :)

Armageddon11 said:
Man you started the 'shameless plugging' pretty quickly, no? Haha!
Damn...really wasn't my intention honestly. Sorry about that! :( When the time is ready I would like to post it in the Other Fighting games section if that is ok. Should probably keep discussions about my game to the PMs and try to keep this related to SG pre vertical slice. Hopefully more people have insight about it and want to continue that discussion otherwise this thread will be short lived hahha :)
 
wow! that looks super great!!

I'm sure if you made a tumblr blog a bunch of people might start following you since it has a huge FG community + people on it are always interested in projects
 
That game looks pretty awesome.

kupo15 said:
I actually have seen that video, it was interesting though I wish there was more detail...like how was development like after they met in 2008 to get to the vertical slice to get that Autumn Games deal. Was it just the two of them to get to that prototype I saw in that Family arcade place or did they have more people to team? Its very important to get the logistics of the team down when handed over a large chunk of money instead of figuring it out then and risking losing momentum and delaying things. Perhaps they did add more people after the publishing deal and things worked out, in any case all these nitty gritty details behind what they went through would be fascinating to know!

I just remembered the Beast's Fury thread that happened a few months ago. I suggest you give it a read because it offers some very interesting background on the development of Skullgirls by Mike Z himself. This thread is about a different fighting game but Skullgirls is used as a comparison.

http://skullheart.com/index.php?threads/beasts-fury-updates-discussion.6723/
 
also Beast's Fury is a wonderful cautionary tale. it has somethings that you should just not do when making a fighting game.

But Rising Spirit looks okay so i'll keep an eye out on the project.
 
Sinclair said:
wow! that looks super great!!

I'm sure if you made a tumblr blog a bunch of people might start following you since it has a huge FG community + people on it are always interested in projects

Thank you! I had no idea tumblr had a big FG presence, I just created an account and linked it to my facebook and twitter. Is there a certain place I need to be following on there or just start posting content? Sorry not too familiar with tumblr
MetroKoolAid said:
That game looks pretty awesome.
I just remembered the Beast's Fury thread that happened a few months ago. I suggest you give it a read because it offers some very interesting background on the development of Skullgirls by Mike Z himself. This thread is about a different fighting game but Skullgirls is used as a comparison.

http://skullheart.com/index.php?threads/beasts-fury-updates-discussion.6723/
Ninja said:
also Beast's Fury is a wonderful cautionary tale. it has somethings that you should just not do when making a fighting game.

But Rising Spirit looks okay so i'll keep an eye out on the project.

Yes I actually read that whole thread, both of them! Talk about a disaster! That is the thread where I really saw this communities passion and willingness to support other projects which was really awesome to see! I was getting just as upset as everyone with what was going on in that thread so rest assured we will definitely not be going down the road Beast's Fury did at all with development.

I've also seen Mike's GDC talk about how to make fighting games and it was very insightful as well. He brought up so many points about proper fighting game programming that sinked up with my beliefs about them so I really enjoyed that talk.
 
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kupo15 said:
something I've been working at for the past 2 years which is making my own fighting game
Only 8 years left...

kupo15 said:
As in did Alex invest his time in doing all the animations for the first character or does anyone know if Mike hired other artists to help create the vertical slice funding it with his spare change for a while?
Alex hired other animators to help, not me. It's too much work for one person to do even one character in a reasonable amount of time, but at the beginning "animation" was both animating and cleanup. We nearly killed ourselves on Valentine, she was animated and cleaned up and implemented in about 4 total weeks, but that was a whole team by that point.

kupo15 said:
Does anyone know how long it took them to get a vertical slice from the time the concept and direction was clear (aka from the first animations)
Depends on what you mean.
From the time we started working on an HD version of Filia (the original was in SD aspect ratio, and she got redesigned) until the time we had the all-Filia first playable public version was around two years. That was the version we showed to publishers.
But that's not the whole story, because Alex had been working on the characters for about ten years, and had been making other (SD) versions of the game engine before I worked with him for like...4 or 5 years? And I'd been working on the engine for about ten years also, since college, and had a fully playable thing with Hsien-ko and Chun-Li and Makoto, which also had a hitbox editor and input parser and all that stuff, and ran on the Dreamcast.
So if you count THAT part of the development, from scratch to first-playable it's more like 11-12 years. Most of that was part-time, though, and the rate did greatly accelerate once we quit our jobs, so if we had worked at it full time it probably would have been more like 5-6 years.

I'll say from your example that you need a game engine, which is more difficult than you think.
I don't normally talk myself up, but having talked to a great many amateur and professional fighting game engine developers, I'm pretty good. A lot of the nonstandard approaches I took HELLA paid off.
And (for the stick people ones) you also need to come up with moves where the direct reference is less obvious, so that people aren't calling them by the names of moves from other games. That's harder than it seems, I sadly say from experience. :^P

I'll leave you with a thing I show everyone:
 
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Thank you very much for responding with this, Mike!

Mike_Z said:
Only 8 years left...
.......
I'll leave you with a thing I show everyone:
These two go hand in hand. Wow that is a long time, this is reassuring to think whenever I think the game isn't moving fast enough and that is a nice video to put things into perspective.

Alex hired other animators to help, not me. It's too much work for one person to do even one character in a reasonable amount of time, but at the beginning "animation" was both animating and cleanup. We nearly killed ourselves on Valentine, she was animated and cleaned up and implemented in about 4 total weeks, but that was a whole team by that point.
Interesting, so did Alex have a full animation pipeline set up for the workflow or did several artists do different animations and Alex touch up the animations where needed to make sure things was consistent? I assume it was the former though. What would you do if your main animator/art lead loves doing all aspects of animations and wants to do it all? Its great from a consistency perspective but from the amount people who did your art it seems like setting up for failure to not have extra animation help. Might be ok for getting to the vertical slice but to do 7 more characters with a proper budget and deadlines...its probably too risky and improbable to have one person doing the animations even if that is what he wants to do.
Depends on what you mean.
From the time we started working on an HD version of Filia (the original was in SD aspect ratio, and she got redesigned) until the time we had the all-Filia first playable public version was around two years. That was the version we showed to publishers.
But that's not the whole story, because Alex had been working on the characters for about ten years, and had been making other (SD) versions of the game engine before I worked with him for like...4 or 5 years? And I'd been working on the engine for about ten years also, since college, and had a fully playable thing with Hsien-ko and Chun-Li and Makoto, which also had a hitbox editor and input parser and all that stuff, and ran on the Dreamcast.
So if you count THAT part of the development, from scratch to first-playable it's more like 11-12 years. Most of that was part-time, though, and the rate did greatly accelerate once we quit our jobs, so if we had worked at it full time it probably would have been more like 5-6 years.

I think I'm mostly concerned with the art side of things of getting Filia completed and in the game. The past 2 years of work I've put into the game has been nothing but building the game engine to make it tight and feel good, created 2/3rds of the initial cast (still missing several moves in prototype) and balancing them all as well. At this point to get to our vertical slice its a matter of me swapping out the old graphics for the new graphics. Of course I will have to pretty much rebuild the game as far as character movement and feel because the graphic sizes are going to be different but at least this time I'll already have the entire fighting engine done to make the job easier.

So you said it took 2 years to get the whole game into the first playable public version, taking into account coding and art and all...but Filia's art animations took 4 weeks by itself? But that was accomplished quickly because you guys pressed full force and had a team of artists to do that for the whole 4 weeks? How many people were in the art team initially to create Filia?

I'll say from your example that you need a game engine, which is more difficult than you think.
I don't normally talk myself up, but having talked to a great many amateur and professional fighting game engine developers, I'm pretty good. A lot of the nonstandard approaches I took HELLA paid off.
You mean other than GameMaker Studio? Cause technically I'm using a game engine with cross platform support. Its nothing as serious as your engine since I believe you created your own game engine from scratch. That is unfortunately beyond my skills at this point but actually Studio has been serving me quite well. I don't use any of the drag and drop nor the built in variables so I essentially built something as close to my own as I can that gives me a lot of control. I'm not sure what your views are with GM but unfortunately it has a bad rep due to what it initially was created to be...however its gotten much more robust with studio (studio 2.0 is planned to come soon so that will be better) and is performing really well running at 60fps (many hundred more uncapped) at 1080 resolution. (yes the prototype graphics are sized in 1080 believe it or not. I did it so that way I can anticipate the amount of strain I will be experiencing early on to tackle those problems instead of getting blindsided when all the HD art comes)

And (for the stick people ones) you also need to come up with moves where the direct reference is less obvious, so that people aren't calling them by the names of moves from other games. That's harder than it seems, I sadly say from experience. :^P
Hahaha....yes. Well the stick character was the very first one I built and I used a lot of common moves from other games to help me build the engine and figure out what to do. That character is purposely going to be the most generic to give people something familiar but I agree that I probably should try to tweak those moves up a bit to make him feel more fresh :))
 
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kupo15 said:
I actually have seen that video, it was interesting though I wish there was more detail...like how was development like after they met in 2008 to get to the vertical slice to get that Autumn Games deal. Was it just the two of them to get to that prototype I saw in that Family arcade place or did they have more people to team? Its very important to get the logistics of the team down when handed over a large chunk of money instead of figuring it out then and risking losing momentum and delaying things. Perhaps they did add more people after the publishing deal and things worked out, in any case all these nitty gritty details behind what they went through would be fascinating to know!

I would love to share my game since you asked though. I'll wrap screens up in spoilers because I don't want to actively promote my game here.

Here is where the game is now, my 2 years of work working on the core experience, balancing and everything. I did the animations out of necessity to get my idea across perfectly even though it isn't my strong suit.
BKelc22.gif
2ag1e0l.gif
iei25t.gif
35kie7q.jpg
U9a3Yzn.gif
V9H3pw5.gif

Here is where the final version of the game is going to go (an old screenshot)
l0NaxOf.png
Characters so far
12314149_823616034413494_8926644609527049508_o.jpg
Some Animations (pay no attention to the kick timing, mostly for demonstration)
6uIFMbv.gif
G4vpjmB.gif

The Dave: I don't believe I have seen any, I'll check out that thread, seems it will be interesting. Thanks!

Sinclair: I believe I pretty much have that covered, still a bit of a struggle. I guess it takes more than a couple of months to get in a groove and figure out the best way to work together



Color me interested, I like the look of all these characters. Best character design I've seen since ahads circus cerebella characters cirque Descartes or some such... I'm not much of a lore man, but those and your designs are very cool :)
 
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Dime said:
Color me interested, I like the look of all these characters. Best character design I've seen since ahads circus cerebella characters cirque Descartes or some such... I'm not much of a lore man, but those and your designs are very cool :)
Thanks man, glad you like the character designs! Things sure have come a long way and it could have easily turned into something worse if I hadn't met this artist...I have the old art direction stored somewhere but its pretty embarrassing! :P

Really appreciate the support!
 
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kupo15 said:
Thank you! I had no idea tumblr had a big FG presence, I just created an account and linked it to my facebook and twitter. Is there a certain place I need to be following on there or just start posting content? Sorry not too familiar with tumblr
I started a project a while ago and managed to get 500 followers (and a very small community!) by just being very active and tagging my posts correctly. Just make sure that you're active from time to time! Having a blog is also a great way to just keep all the news and art neat in order, if you tag it you can always create a page with "concept art" or "news". If you ever do start i'm willing to give you a shout out on my project and personal blog!! It's nice to see people be so passionate about their works.
 
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Sinclair said:
I started a project a while ago and managed to get 500 followers (and a very small community!) by just being very active and tagging my posts correctly. Just make sure that you're active from time to time! Having a blog is also a great way to just keep all the news and art neat in order, if you tag it you can always create a page with "concept art" or "news". If you ever do start i'm willing to give you a shout out on my project and personal blog!! It's nice to see people be so passionate about their works.
Thanks so much! Yes I have created an account risingspirit.tumblr.com What is yours so I can follow you and get pointers on how you set up your page? When you say I can create a "concept art" page do I need to go through the dashboards somewhere to physically create a new page instead of just uploading photos? Would that be the "create a new blog" link or somewhere else?
 
Anyone got vids of pre alpha parasoul where she still has her black and white rough frames.
 
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kupo15 said:
Thanks so much! Yes I have created an account risingspirit.tumblr.com What is yours so I can follow you and get pointers on how you set up your page? When you say I can create a "concept art" page do I need to go through the dashboards somewhere to physically create a new page instead of just uploading photos? Would that be the "create a new blog" link or somewhere else?
I'll make sure to give you a shout-out. Despite dropping my project i've not been very active on the projects blog but i'm sure people would still check you out! I'll make sure to drop a journal too on my dA. You can edit everything on your blogs theme. I'm sure if you visit your blog (Not your dashboard) right in the upper corner there must be a thing called "change theme" or something similar. If i'm right there is an option for adding pages. making sure people can search through your tags its smart to tag them like #art #news and then redirect them (you can do that in the option menu of your theme) on your blog. Just link them to http://risingspirit.tumblr.com/tagged/[tag here] !

You can also get tons of different themes! In options menu there is a thing for changing the theme code, just copy paste it into the thing and everything will change.
Here is a theme i think would be perfect for your blog
Here are more
Also, my friend makes themes. Not sure if they fit your taste but they are view-able which i think is important when it comes to a blog

I changed a lot about my projects blog, but if you wanna use it as a reference about how to set everything up and how to present yourself here you go!
 
Tank said:
Anyone got vids of pre alpha parasoul where she still has her black and white rough frames.
That would be really cool to see!

Thanks Sinclair! I saw that create a page button before so I'll have to find it and I'll give that first theme you think would be good a test! I'll see what I can do with the info to build the page and come back or PM you if I have more questions! Appreciate the help! :D
 
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This thread is really fascinating. I enjoy all the game dev insights and new vocabulary (never seen the phrase "vertical slice" said so much outside of a Bushido Blade match). But there is a bit of confusion that needs dispelling:
kupo15 said:
So you said it took 2 years to get the whole game into the first playable public version, taking into account coding and art and all...but Filia's art animations took 4 weeks by itself? But that was accomplished quickly because you guys pressed full force and had a team of artists to do that for the whole 4 weeks? How many people were in the art team initially to create Filia?
Mike_Z said:
We nearly killed ourselves on Valentine, she was animated and cleaned up and implemented in about 4 total weeks, but that was a whole team by that point.
Filia was the first character. Maybe the longest and probably the toughest character to make because everything made for her pioneered a path for the rest of the cast. She cleared the way for the last characters, like Valentine, to be completed in the final crunch. Keep in mind, crunch time is not unlike a star: very heated with overwhelming pressure. It is an unusual time not to measure against normal development.
 
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BallotBoxer said:
This thread is really fascinating. I enjoy all the game dev insights and new vocabulary (never seen the phrase "vertical slice" said so much outside of a Bushido Blade match)..

Haha :)

But there is a bit of confusion that needs dispelling:

Oh man you are totally right! I must have been caught up in the excitement of responding I misread the character's name! That makes much more sense, thank you! You are so right about that first character, that is something we are dealing with now and its much harder than we thought it was going to be since the moveset is all laid out...but once that is figured out like you said it should get easier

So 2 years for Filia

Thanks for clearing that up! :)
 
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I think you're looking pretty alright for a small fighting game project, given 2 years development time, but I'd give some serious thought to maybe changing that name. Rising Thunder is already a thing that will be hitting full release in the next year or so, and I can't see any benefit from having a name so similar to that existing game.
 
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Thanks! Yes...as soon as that news hit back in the summer I cringed at their name. We came up with the name before the announcement and it was agonizing to come up with a name that we liked. I was wondering about that myself if it'll be a problem but I got mixed answers from the people I asked. I'm curious to know what does everyone else think about Kai's point with the names being too similar? At this point, as much as I like the name I'm still thinking similarly with Kai on the cautious side
 
Call it Fighting Game: The Fighting Game and then roll around naked in all the money you make.
 
Don't forget to add pewdiepie or markiplier to the cast!!!!!!!
 
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NO
There is a limit to bad that shouldn't be surpassed. Maybe.

On topic, your project looks interesting.
 
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Sinclair said:
Don't forget to add pewdiepie or markiplier to the cast!!!!!!!
What about Maximillian? How could you forget him ;)

ArgonBern said:
NO
There is a limit to bad that shouldn't be surpassed. Maybe.

On topic, your project looks interesting.
Thanks! :)

I'm curious, do you think we should be considering a different name? We had it before Rising Thunder when public...had mixed opinions from people so far
 
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hmmm... what is the over arching theme with the fighter? Because I see like a Shadow guy, an Irish Sailor, a Persian Warrior, A Ninja Woman, and Staff Lady. What is connecting all of these guys together?
 
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That is still something we have yet to truly nail down but we've thrown ideas around. Something like these characters have been summoned by or are seeking out this rare treasure that will help them in their world, maybe like Kira (staff girl) will be able to save her dying tribe, the Persian will be able to be the warrior he wants to be or perhaps be able to free his people, Gaston the Shipmate (so not Irish :)) will be able to own the seas, the thief (not pictured) will be able to rob the entire world to be rich etc...they are the special people of their world to have this sort of a spirit within them that will protect them or gives them special abilities to perform things other people can't. There is actually some sort of mechanic present in the game that deals with the spirits "rising" out of the characters hence why spirit is in the name.

Another route is that they are all trapped in this ethereal world, like a purgatory so to speak, and they are trying to fight their way out to release their spirit...or perhaps fight their way out to release the other fighter's spirits as they defeat them so they can be at peace. Like perhaps they were punished by some main person and were cast into this other world to be trapped hence why they have to fight their way out or by defeating the people they wronged, it releases their spirit but at the cost of condemning his spirit for eternity which is the sacrifice he has to pay to have their wish granted.

Still unsure what exactly to do, but we are of course trying to avoid the whole "world tournament" thing that MK and lots of fighting games do. There is another character not pictured who has ties to the staff girl being some sort of dark force in her world so they are connected.

hxt79X6.png

Also the two ninja girls you see are sisters or twins that took different paths so they are connected. So we could have this duality angle of a good evil thing going on in each character's world trying to compete for the rare treasure to do what they want for their land. Also that shadow character in the stage pic was replaced by the yellow ninja girl. He will probably come back as DLC if we get that far but also be much different looking. That was an old version

2015-09-30%20Shade%20Concept.png

Yes by themselves they could seem somewhat random but I guess that is where the story is important to link them altogether like you are saying. So while they all may be from different parts of the world they will all be sharing in the same world. I've took the approach of gameplay first then create a story to make sense of things instead of the story first and being limited gameplay wise.
 
kupo15 said:
Don't forget to add the word "pixel" somewhere in there. Its like indie dev law or something..

More points if it's closer to "8-bit" graphics than 32 or 64 bit. (Don't forget to not consider monitor or color limitations.)
 
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