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The "social media updates" thread - now with 99% less drama

Shnarfl said:
wow autumn games sure is unlucky being unable to pay every studio they've ever worked with

maybe next time it'll go well
Maybe they'll pay for the work contracted if we all go out and buy more season passes and relic bundles, and then we can all visit EightySixed and get some Skullgirls merchandise.
 
Autumn Games has taken control of the Skullgirls Mobile Twitter account to announce:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1897742300588962251

The bolded "guess what guys, Guilds are coming!" paragraph made me laugh. That's like not even in the top 20 of my SGM wish list.

Do you think the "unwavering backbone" that can't pay its bills will be able to finish the work HVS was doing?

Skullgirls 2nd Encore
- voiced story modes for Season 1 Pass characters
- balance patches? (for more on what HVS was up to, see this May 2024 update thread)
- Skullgirls Championship Series
- what else?

Skullgirls Mobile
- 2 new fighters every month
- Roxie as a Guest Star
- Valentine cross to throwing star revisions
- more Guest Stars
- new characters?
- fighter tuning
- character kit updates/reworks
- main menu redesign
- more game modes
- new origin stories
- guilds

And what about the forums? Both here and the SGM forum are moderated and updated by HVS staff. Now they're just gone. Does that mean these sites are sunk?
 
BallotBoxer said:
The bolded "guess what guys, Guilds are coming!" paragraph made me laugh. That's like not even in the top 20 of my SGM wish list.
It feels that the guilds are a little more than a meme at this point.

BallotBoxer said:
- what else?
Maybe guest stars for the main game?.. I have no idea.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't know the details, I have nothing against the new development team, but the whole situation is just ugly.
 
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While not directly related to Skullgirls development, I think it's worth to note that the 2 major active groups of developers who are experienced in developing Skullgirls are currently working on launching their new games. If you care about any possibility of future Skullgirls development, it would certainly help if these developers stay in business.

With the current issue regarding payment from Autumn Games, these are probably the only revenues they will be able to get in the near future, so it would be worth checking them out and contributing if you can, as well as spreading the word to your friends.

Hidden Variable Studio:

store.steampowered.com

Spellomancer on Steam

Battle your foes for enchanted letters using wacky weapons and earn points by constructing words in your team's spellbook in this new action platformer spell-em-up!
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

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Appears to be a free game with no announcement date set, but if you add it to your Wishlist, that would certainly help to get it more exposure

Future Club:


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The Kickstarter is ending around 12th April
 
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Oof. Makes me miss Cellsai even more.

Notes for the AG intern that opened Photoshop for the first time:
- don't use in-between frames like this. There's a reason they are meant to be quickly seen between the key poses!
- hire actual artists (like Future Club, who's recent Kickstarter project that sadly failed) if you need something drawn
- that bevel and emboss layer style border is hideous
- trend chasing to bandwagon popularity is desperate and pathetic. Quite the long walk in both concepts
- good luck getting your paycheck

EDIT:
Wanted to point out their bizarre in-between frame choices in SGM too:
spring-SGM-huh.jpg

Annie is spinning (insert spine snapping like a firecracker sound effect) and Valentine is... sawing her arm off? Using the throat slash grab frame with no victim is certainly a choice.

Please apply a little bit of thought to your compositions, AG!
 
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Corridor89 said:
here's, uh, an unexpected development.
Yeah, I'm very cautiously optimistic. The intro to the new mode in Mobile was pretty poorly written so I have very little trust in Autumn, but I can give it a pass that it was not a proper story and they will actually get someone who know what they are doing to write an Origin Story. At least with Kai's involvement, that gives me some assurance that there is someone who knows the lore in the process

Corridor89 said:
Frankly, I never imagined her ever opening her eyes ever.
Hmm. It is basically commissioned "fan" art so I wouldn't take it to be confirmed canon unless someone at Autumn specifically says it. But it is possible that Autumn could have shown the artist some internal concept art that shows Aeon's eye colours so I wouldn't rule out that they know something we don't
 
Do you know if the writer/s for SGM and 2nd Encore's DLC were out of LabZero/FC/HVS?
I keep meaning to look it up for something, but I also keep forgetting.

I doubt the Aeon design is canonical, but I do like it. The heterochromia and clock designs are cute for her.
Edit: Speaking of Aeon's design: after looking up additional images and fanart of her some doodling references, I found myself wondering why I had previously drawn Khronos with two heads instead of as more traditional "snake devouring its own tail" ouroboros. Took me a while to remember that it's actually an image from Robo-Fortune's story that that depicts him as having two heads (albeit chibi). None of Aeon's other official art has Khronos with two heads.
I wonder what's up with that, exactly. Kind of funny how a lot of these little design details slip through inconsistently.
 
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Corridor89 said:
Do you know if the writer/s for SGM and 2nd Encore's DLC were out of LabZero/FC/HVS?
I keep meaning to look it up for something, but I also keep forgetting.

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Even without the confirmation, I think we can tell from the writing styles that stories have had different multiple writers. I know that when Alex was still involved, there were some stories, such as Eliza's, that he would be heavily involved in and where he would lay out the plot points, but he's not a writer either so a writer would be brought in to properly flesh out the story. For the original release stories, apparently multiple writers were also brought in by Reverge Labs to polish them.

Corridor89 said:
I doubt the Aeon design is canonical, but I do like it. The heterochromia and clock designs are cute for her.
Edit: Speaking of Aeon's design: after looking up additional images and fanart of her some doodling references, I found myself wondering why I had previously drawn Khronos with two heads instead of as more traditional "snake devouring its own tail" ouroboros. Took me a while to remember that it's actually an image from Robo-Fortune's story that that depicts him as having two heads (albeit chibi). None of Aeon's other official art has Khronos with two heads.
I wonder what's up with that, exactly. Kind of funny how a lot of these little design details slip through inconsistently.
Yeah I highly doubt it as well, but I can't rule out the possibility especially with Autumn technically being in charge of the lore now rather than the people who had been involved in it in over a decade lol.

Also, I would not be surprised if the art in Robo's story was a mistake, especially with it being intended as non-canon, maybe the lore keepers did not pay as much attention to the design. In any case we know there are instances where there are errors or retcons to the story arts, such as the Cirque des Cartes not having their canon palettes in Cerebella's story.
 
I have checked the credits for the DLC since writing that post and it only credits Aevee Bee from Future Club as Story Support in Annie's story and is later credited for Writing/Story Support in Umbrella/Dahlia/Marie's stories, but I didn't see any other names, at least from the HVS or FC section of the DLC stories with express writing credits. Maybe they were further down. I know Kent Salvatore (with Christian Nutt) got numerous credits for pre-Annie story stuff. And of course know Alex was involved with the stories (although as you say, not involved in the writing per se).
But thank you for digging up that screencap. I'm really not privy to a lot of the more clandestine parts of the Skullgirls community (especially anything from the SGM side since I've never played it), so I not terribly familiar with Pen Stroke and MightyZug (Charley Price) beyond them being HVS devs. But that's good info, regardless.

A lot of the writing being team-produced or at least team-reviewed tracks, and that's what I've basically suspected. Individual writers get put in-charge of the brunt of a story and then it gets passed around and reviewed, edited, shored up and so on. There's probably a lot of lore checking behind the scenes and then some larger lore changes (such as the decision to confirm Franz was alive with his headless design which we knew previously wasn't necessarily canon). It's interesting. And it probably helps the stories keep some level of consistency even if, as you say, one could tell that there are some different styles at play.

Hard to say about Aeon's design. I could understand not taking the Robo-Fortune Story panel at face value, but it's also one of the two cases of Khronos' face being visible at all. At any rate, that drawing in particular does have some noteworthy/interesting details beyond two-headed Khronos, like Venus's boot having a winking face (which is a detail that's shown up on occasion in Alex's drawings, but never in-game). Makes me want to see Aeon's model/design sheet.
 
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Holy Goose said:
There's a mini-documentary about the new story update for SGM, and it's out now.

Did somebody mention this? Does it count? Is it the right thread?..

Good video and I think they are doing a good job of showing that they are putting some effort into this. Tim is clearly well-aware that his team joined SG development in a less-than-ideal scenario and they have a long way to go in winning people over, which I think is a good attitude to have.

There are a lot of animated sequences in the story which, at least so far, we haven't seen in any of the SGM stories (we have had cutscenes but they were all static images). Tim did say they are bringing in "small form animatics" so I suppose they will actually be in the game rather than just promotional videos. Some of them look a bit janky to me personally but I'm not against it.

(Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not against having animations in the cutscenes, but I'm definitely against the style of animation they are using lol. Where they rig parts of the body and make them move digitally rather than drawing the in-between frames. I've seen them use this in some promo posts for SGM as well and they look terrible. I guess they look "smooth" but they look extremely cheap, and having hand-drawn frames, even at lower framerates, would look way more classy)

It was also confirmed separately in another post I think that the story will be fully voiced which is nice, at least with Beo and Annie voices being confirmed here. Although obviously because of the timeline a lot of the younger characters would not be appearing in this story lol. I'm more interested in the actual story than them being voiced (hey we played SG without voiced stories for years before they were released with 2E), but I'm sure they will be received well by most people, especially since people keep asking for them for the new DLC stories.

In the video I think there are some interesting previews of the story:

  • Beowulf's dad, Theo, was either a wrestler or a boxer. Seems like he was asked to throw matches against Medici-affiliated fighters. I guess this means he ends up not doing it and got in trouble with the Medici (as shown in the script preview where he seems to be forced to work for the Medici). Would be a bit cliche but eh, it's a simple enough story to set up why his family was struggling

  • Beowulf's mum, Elaine, seemed to have some health issue, and seems to have signed up for experiment with Lab 0, maybe for money or maybe for some experimental cure. Probably both. A little bit iffy on this small detail because at the time (and still), Lab 0 is the secret lab, so I don't think she would have been made to sign on a piece of paper that is labelled "Lab 0". Would have made more sense if it was just an agreement with the "Anti-Skullgirl Labs" or something and then she was transferred to Lab 0. But I guess we'll see since I dunno anything about what led up to this scene

  • The contract also showed her surname partially "Har-". Assuming she changed her surname after marrying Theo and Beowulf took that surname as well, we might have the first clue to Beo's real surname. (EDIT2: Someone pointed out that you can compare it against her signature and the surname clearly ends with a T, so it is most likely "Hart")
 
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Chrono_Tata said:
Good video and I think they are doing a good job of showing that they are putting some effort into this. Tim is clearly well-aware that his team joined SG development in a less-than-ideal scenario and they have a long way to go in winning people over, which I think is a good attitude to have.

There are a lot of animated sequences in the story which, at least so far, we haven't seen in any of the SGM stories (we have had cutscenes but they were all static images). Tim did say they are bringing in "small form animatics" so I suppose they will actually be in the game rather than just promotional videos. Some of them look a bit janky to me personally but I'm not against it.

(Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not against having animations in the cutscenes, but I'm definitely against the style of animation they are using lol. Where they rig parts of the body and make them move digitally rather than drawing the in-between frames. I've seen them use this in some promo posts for SGM as well and they look terrible. I guess they look "smooth" but they look extremely cheap, and having hand-drawn frames, even at lower framerates, would look way more classy)

It was also confirmed separately in another post I think that the story will be fully voiced which is nice, at least with Beo and Annie voices being confirmed here. Although obviously because of the timeline a lot of the younger characters would not be appearing in this story lol. I'm more interested in the actual story than them being voiced (hey we played SG without voiced stories for years before they were released with 2E), but I'm sure they will be received well by most people, especially since people keep asking for them for the new DLC stories.

In the video I think there are some interesting previews of the story:

  • Beowulf's dad, Theo, was either a wrestler or a boxer. Seems like he was asked to throw matches against Medici-affiliated fighters. I guess this means he ends up not doing it and got in trouble with the Medici (as shown in the script preview where he seems to be forced to work for the Medici). Would be a bit cliche but eh, it's a simple enough story to set up why his family was struggling

  • Beowulf's mum, Elaine, seemed to have some health issue, and seems to have signed up for experiment with Lab 0, maybe for money or maybe for some experimental cure. Probably both. A little bit iffy on this small detail because at the time (and still), Lab 0 is the secret lab, so I don't think she would have been made to sign on a piece of paper that is labelled "Lab 0". Would have made more sense if it was just an agreement with the "Anti-Skullgirl Labs" or something and then she was transferred to Lab 0. But I guess we'll see since I dunno anything about what led up to this scene

  • The contract also showed her surname partially "Har-". Assuming she changed her surname after marrying Theo and Beowulf took that surname as well, we might have the first clue to Beo's real surname. (EDIT2: Someone pointed out that you can compare it against her signature and the surname clearly ends with a T, so it is most likely "Hart")
thank you for this info!! being excited for something in relation to Autumn Games is like walking on eggshells for me right now (pay for the damn work that was done) but everything in this so far looks really nice! I really don't mind if the animatics are presented similarly to Dead by Daylight's character story scenes. It's a wonderful start to see freshly animated stuff!

Is there any link you could share in DMs or in replies that shines more light on the new team? I've been curious ever since they put this vid out.
 
spooky-clown posse said:
thank you for this info!! being excited for something in relation to Autumn Games is like walking on eggshells for me right now (pay for the damn work that was done) but everything in this so far looks really nice! I really don't mind if the animatics are presented similarly to Dead by Daylight's character story scenes. It's a wonderful start to see freshly animated stuff!
Well, I just played the Origin Story and they have lost me lol. I went in with extremely low expectations, hoping that since Beo is such a side character, there is no way they could mess up the lore by covering his origin story, but they still managed to screw it up lol. I probably will make a proper post about it later, but right now I just need to lie down after playing this crap

spooky-clown posse said:
Is there any link you could share in DMs or in replies that shines more light on the new team? I've been curious ever since they put this vid out.
All I know about the new team, particularly their leads Tim and Anthony, is that they used to work at a company called Arcanforge. Not sure how exactly they came to be working for Autumn. I think MadamRinRin is the one who did the art for this story. She was previously a fan artist who had been regularly commissioned to do promo art for SGM, and Autumn hired her as the Art Lead I believe. Bruce the new Community Manager used to work at VidMob which is another company which was co-founded by the same people who founded Autumn Games. I haven't looked any deeper into any other of the new devs
 
By "mess up the lore" do we mean actually fucking with established continuity or just adding bits and bobs and other details? I've seen a surprising amount of the SG fanbase confuse the two since the DLC stories first started dropping. Y'know, there's retcons like creating a character like Florence, who is basically a harmless addition to the lore, but was obviously never a part of any of the game's original vision vs a retcon like Marie being a Beowulf fangirl in her combat dialogue, which is weird and doesn't fit with Marie that much, let alone their interactions in Beowulf's story (not that I'd take in-game dialogue at face value most of the time).
 
Corridor89 said:
By "mess up the lore" do we mean actually fucking with established continuity or just adding bits and bobs and other details? I've seen a surprising amount of the SG fanbase confuse the two since the DLC stories first started dropping. Y'know, there's retcons like creating a character like Florence, who is basically a harmless addition to the lore, but was obviously never a part of any of the game's original vision vs a retcon like Marie being a Beowulf fangirl in her combat dialogue, which is weird and doesn't fit with Marie that much, let alone their interactions in Beowulf's story (not that I'd take in-game dialogue at face value most of the time).
Actual fucking with established continuity. Additions of characters like Florence or expanding Marie's personality, which fit into the established framework of the lore, aren't retcons. There were retcons during HVS's stewardship of the lore, yes, but none had as much flagrant disregard for established lore as Beo's Origin Story.

I will post a full thought in the main Beo's Origin Story thread in a bit, so you can check it out if you'd like
 
Popping in here for the first time in...2 years? 3 years? Mainly took a hiatus after the Marie update but popping back in again to see how things are doing, especially after HVS leaving the project.

....and my goodness, I didn't realize how rough things actually were.
 
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