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Ask Ravidrath...!

render said:
Officially letting people request them makes things a bit of a hassle, but as long as it's not more than a handful of people we could probably accommodate. :P
I want to do this, and Mike would surely LOVE to do this for me. Whom do I send a PM?
 
oashkoash said:
On that note (Eliza's completion and Beowulf's continued development), I was curious to find out when we'll be seeing a playable Beo on the Endless Beta, is it the same ol' satirical two-weeks period or so?

I would love to tell you an exact date but it's the same answer we always give: when he has all of the tools we require characters to have before we add them to the beta. That is, all of his normal attacks and his ground/air throws.

IsaVulpes said:
I want to do this, and Mike would surely LOVE to do this for me. Whom do I send a PM?

I'm sure he would, but please wait a month or two before messaging me about it or I will forget for sure. Sending me a PM here on Skullheart should suffice. :P
 
@Mike_Z I have a question about character development. When designing a character move set, mechanics, the type of style they'll play as i.e zone rush down. How do you go about doing that? Also how do you go about balancing out characters? I wanted to know cause im interested in the design aspect of the game
 
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Add a second question to mike when he get time:

Has Lab Zero thought about selling their engine? Any company demonstrated any intrest in using it? Mike already shown it works pretty well with 2d-on-3d games, and could be used for a stellar beat'em up

We have the "fighting is magic" people doing something with it, but other than that...
 
DukeMagus said:
Add a second question to mike when he get time:

Has Lab Zero thought about selling their engine? Any company demonstrated any intrest in using it? Mike already shown it works pretty well with 2d-on-3d games, and could be used for a stellar beat'em up

We have the "fighting is magic" people doing something with it, but other than that...
Dearly Noted Sir
 
I was wondering something:

Is SG going to get a new or updated opening cinematic to include the IGG characters?

I might be wrong but I recall hearing a something about it a long time ago.
 
Can I still update my backer tier to get the Sketches and CD? I have the $100 tier.
 
I remember that Bigband was hard to implement on the current engine because the sprite was too big, and after that that the PS3/X360 were limiting what you could do in term of animation, so you had to do some trick to make Bigband possible, like using two sprites one on top of another i suppose. There were similar problem with a Peacock intro that were too big.

So, i'm quite curious about how it's done, or more precisely what is the limitation that prevent big HD sprite to exist on the last generation? Is is simply a size limit, a maximum of pixel per sprite, or is it more complex? And if it's a size limit, is that limit still a big problem in current generation(PS4, current PC)? After having 2D games for so long, that limitation in HD sprite(and not just for Skullgirls, i heard that many times for many project) puzzle me.
 
K.Radical said:
So, i'm quite curious about how it's done, or more precisely what is the limitation that prevent big HD sprite to exist on the last generation? Is is simply a size limit, a maximum of pixel per sprite, or is it more complex? And if it's a size limit, is that limit still a big problem in current generation(PS4, current PC)? After having 2D games for so long, that limitation in HD sprite(and not just for Skullgirls, i heard that many times for many project) puzzle me.
It's not per frame of art, it's just total for everything that is limited by how much memory there is on the console.

Let's do some math.

HD sprites are big, even compressed.
An SNES sprite, let's say a big one, maybe 64x64 at 8 bits per pixel (256 colors) is 4096 bytes. Big Band is roughly 405 x 570 = 230,850 pixels at 3 bytes per pixel = 692,550 bytes for one frame. That's about 170 64x64 sprite frames for one frame of Big Band. And HD sprites are expected to be animated at higher frame counts than SNES sprites were.

PS3 = 512MB memory, well not really more like 430MB because the OS takes a lot.
Big Band's source art, in PNG format (which is zipped!) = 949MB. Massively compressed by our proprietary junk = 87MB.
6 characters x 87 MB = 522MB.
430MB memory - 522 MB characters = -92 MB. Heck, 512MB if no OS - 522MB characters = -10MB.
That can't possibly fit, and that's ignoring the space required by stage backgrounds and menus and sounds and music and code and display buffers.
We have to do all kinds of tricks to fit six characters in memory, so you see 8-bit sprites sometimes on PS3/360 when you tag, and assist characters don't stay in to perform their win poses if they are called when you win...but eventually if they get too big there are no more tricks and you just run out of space.

PS4 doesn't care, we could load all the game's assets simultaneously, 3x, on PS4. Many PCs still don't have 6-8GB of RAM but can at least fit everything once.
PC/PS4 have no 8-bit sprites and assists do stay in to perform win poses, etc.
 
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Wow, that's quite a lot indeed! I didn't thought about a good amount of these factors, but it makes sense at the end. I admit that everything put together is quite taxing indeed! It must have been quite alarming the first time you saw that 6 BigBand were over the limit!

Glad to see that the next generations seems more capable to handle all this, we always hear about the technical limitation in 3D games, but almost never for 2D games.

Thanks alot for the detailed answer, i didn't expected as much and it was quite informative!
 
K.Radical said:
It must have been quite alarming the first time you saw that 6 BigBand were over the limit!
6 Big Band is WAY over, but the problem was that 5 x other characters + 1 x Big Band was over. :^P (And then 5 x other characters + 1 x Eliza was over, and probably Beowulf too, sigh...)

DukeMagus said:
Has Lab Zero thought about selling their engine? Any company demonstrated any intrest in using it? Mike already shown it works pretty well with 2d-on-3d games, and could be used for a stellar beat'em up
You would be immensely surprised at the amount of non-interest. We have good 2D tech, but nobody really cares about 2D. Or beat-em-ups.

Zazz said:
Is SG going to get a new or updated opening cinematic to include the IGG characters?
No idea. We want to, but time and work.

PKStoopKid said:
When designing a character move set, mechanics, the type of style they'll play as i.e zone rush down. How do you go about doing that?
I swear I covered this a lot before...it mostly falls out of what moves are concepted. I generally don't have a "this character is GOING to be a pixie" mindset before starting. Cerebella had a lot of art of her grabbing people so she ended up a grappler, Peacock had a lot of throwing things around so she became a zoner, etc. I go with what the character's actions suggest.

PKStoopKid said:
Also how do you go about balancing out characters? I wanted to know cause im interested in the design aspect of the game
I covered this a lot before too, but basically think of various situations characters can be placed into, and make sure they have answers for all of them. Dealing with projectiles from fullscreen, being pressured on wakeup, etc. They can be crappy answers, like Fukua vs throws or Valentine not having anything invincible vs wakeup pressure without meter, but there should be SOME answer at all times. That way you don't end up with a character that is able to completely shut down another character for any reason because the 2nd character has no answer to some situation (V-13 vs Tager, Sentinel vs. Hayato, etc.)
An example of why to do this is Justice in GGAC+R. She can create situations that some characters in GG are completely not equipped to deal with (multiple controllable projectiles that you can't hit and that eat other projectiles, fullscreen knockdown off any hit) and she herself is not equipped to deal with some situations that everyone else can (metered forward dash, terrible movement). As a result, she's not a top tier character but her matches are either HEAVILY in her favor or HEAVILY not, and generally not fun either way. That's what you want to avoid.
 
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Skarmand said:
Also do you agree with the Lame Duck thing further down the page in regards to team games?
Kinda? I think that's also sorta bad design related, because in MvC2 you are choosing characters that are useless as points just for their assists, so if it comes down to just CapCom why bother. Storm or Magneto by themselves can do fine.
And I'm not sure I would pick out X-Factor as something that is good, I mean sure it helps your last character be more viable but in sort of a stupid way.
 
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oh yea i meant to ask. I recently moved and forgot to update the address (Still received the packages, my old apt manager kept an eye out for them)
For the future items like the physical CD and whatever else is left. how do i go about updating the address on record?
Its for my GF and myself. do i just contact through the IGG message system?
 
KidPanda said:
oh yea i meant to ask. I recently moved and forgot to update the address (Still received the packages, my old apt manager kept an eye out for them)
For the future items like the physical CD and whatever else is left. how do i go about updating the address on record?
Its for my GF and myself. do i just contact through the IGG message system?

Fill out the form on the HB download page again with your updated address and we'll be sure to use that one.
 
Mike_Z said:
Cerebella had a lot of art of her grabbing people so she ended up a grappler...
MIND BLOWN

tumblr_inline_mkqibaQmAZ1qz4rgp.gif


EDIT: Mike, just tell me right now, should I buy Xrd? I played the demo, but I remember that you had some disparaging comments about it.
 
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Night Phyre said:
Mike, just tell me right now, should I buy Xrd? I played the demo, but I remember that you had some disparaging comments about it.
I remember Mike saying about both this and Killer Instinct that if you want to buy and play it then buy and play it. Doesn't matter if someone else doesn't like it, or even if it's actually bad, if you have fun with it then you have fun with it. Do you think you can enjoy the game without someone else saying "yeah it's good"? If so, buy it.
 
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Zidiane said:
I remember Mike saying about both this and Killer Instinct that if you want to buy and play it then buy and play it. Doesn't matter if someone else doesn't like it, or even if it's actually bad, if you have fun with it then you have fun with it. Do you think you can enjoy the game without someone else saying "yeah it's good"? If so, buy it.
QFT, thanks!
 
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Zidiane said:
I remember Mike saying about both this and Killer Instinct that if you want to buy and play it then buy and play it. Doesn't matter if someone else doesn't like it, or even if it's actually bad, if you have fun with it then you have fun with it. Do you think you can enjoy the game without someone else saying "yeah it's good"? If so, buy it.
"If you like it then buy it," is all well and good, but for me, Mike's opinion is relevant in that he designs the only fighting game I currently enjoy playing. It stands to reason that if he likes it, I might like it too. Seems pretty simple to me. No need to get sanctimonious.
 
Night Phyre said:
"If you like it then buy it," is all well and good, but for me, Mike's opinion is relevant in that he designs the only fighting game I currently enjoy playing. It stands to reason that if he likes it, I might like it too. Seems pretty simple to me. No need to get sanctimonious.
You might like it even if I don't, though! I'm sure many people will.
Generally the problems I notice with games don't tend to become problems for other people until a decently-sized group of players get really good, which takes months or years.

It seems like all the flavor-of-the-month-anime-game players will be playing it as well as all the 09ers who said "Well I never played Guilty Gear before but I'M GONNA START WITH XRD!" and a decent part of the existing GG playerbase, so there will be people to play, and competition of all levels makes a difference in the enjoyability of any game. It's a valid complaint people have about SG, albeit one the developer can't do much to influence.

Probably the bit you are looking for:
I am not buying it, because I hold GG to the rising standard set by #R->Slash->AC and mostly upheld by AC+R, which IMHO Xrd does not even come close to continuing. I'm not looking forward to another GG with unblockable loops, nor to the needless new random elements like Danger Time, nor to the heavy role OS's already play in it thanks to YRCs.
But if you won't miss Force Breaks, the way characters played and interacted after 7 years of refinements, or half the cast not existing (i.e. if you are new to GG or preferred #Reload), then why not?

tl;dr
If you want to learn GG to appreciate a truly amazingly designed game with huge character variety and great balance, I would fully recommend AC+R. AC's online is bad enough to count as nonexistent outside of Japan, unfortunately for us.
If you want to learn GG and must have online (a valid criterion for some, at this point), or you want to play a new game that will surely feature at majors and have a large initial playerbase, or you for some reason buy games based on their review scores*, get Xrd.

*Look at me, I can predict the future!

I didn't list FRCs because I don't miss them. :^)
 
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@Mike_Z "You would be immensely surprised at the amount of non-interest. We have good 2D tech, but nobody really cares about 2D. Or beat-em-ups."

*Raises hand timidly* I...I would. what's the price
 
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Mike_Z said:
It's a valid complaint people have about SG, albeit one the developer can't do much to influence.
This reminds me: when SG originally was released, I recall you having a few guest appearances on various streams to explain how SG worked (I think it was on CrossCounter and on Ultrachen?).

When Beowulf/Robo-Fortune are officially done, would you be doing that again? The entire cast has gone through so many changes (not to mention overall game system modifications) but it feels like everyone who doesn't go to this forum still thinks SG is pretty much the same as its vanilla release.
 
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PKStoopKid said:
@Mike_Z "You would be immensely surprised at the amount of non-interest. We have good 2D tech, but nobody really cares about 2D. Or beat-em-ups."

*Raises hand timidly* I...I would. what's the price
Many thousands of dollars.

Game engines are expensive.
 
Ravidrath said:
Hey guys.

I'm going to try and pay more attention to Skullheart from now on, but I don't have time to read the entire forum and answer everything that appears in a million threads.

So, in an attempt to make this manageable for everyone, I'm going to try this out!

So ask me questions and I'll do my best to answer them all here.

-Peter
How come the final boss is ridiculously hard with those stupid projectiles? I beat the boss by the way, but it was just annoying.
 
Mike_Z said:
nobody really cares about 2D

You have no idea how that fact hurts. At least with the indie scene it came back from the dead in great number, but most of the major publisher have abandonned it.

I could ramble about that for hours, but that would be redundant and i'm sure tons of people already did this!
 
render said:
I would love to tell you an exact date but it's the same answer we always give: when he has all of the tools we require characters to have before we add them to the beta. That is, all of his normal attacks and his ground/air throws.
Speaking about characters, I remember you saying in a stream a while back (at least a few months ago) that LZ would be looking into using existing sprites to piece together new win poses/intros for for some characters that only had one of each. Is this still a possibility?

I guess it would fall under Mike's explanation of something that needs "time and work".
 
Zazz said:
it would fall under Mike's explanation of something that needs "time and work".

You basically answered your own question here, but yes, if there is time, we would like to do that. It's a little low on the priority list, though.
 
About time...are you working on a strict time limit? I know that the matter got complicated, and at first i thought the priority was to complete the 'contract' of the promise made in the indiegogo campaign, but after that you added a lot of the stuff that wasn't an obligation like more than on stage per new characters and even the whole Fukua deal! So without going in details i'm curious if you're free to do as you want or if there a Damocles sword hidden somewhere in all this. You definitely seems more free than at the beginning that's for sure!
 
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K.Radical said:
About time...are you working on a strict time limit?
We're already past the Indiegogo money schedule so eventually we will have to get other jobs and won't be working on the game no more, that's the time limit. Can't get more serious than that.
 
Oh I see, sorry about that. I thought that with the new publisher you got another source of revenue or something like that

With some luck, the arcade version and the PS4/Vita will give you the money your team rightly deserve and attract some publisher deal!
 
K.Radical said:
Oh I see, sorry about that. I thought that with the new publisher you got another source of revenue or something like that

With some luck, the arcade version and the PS4/Vita will give you the money your team rightly deserve and attract some publisher deal!
It's been a little while since one of the team went into the full spiel, but from what I remember, they don't make shit from sales of the game, regardless of version. This has to do with the byzantine publisher situation. To make another game, either their current publisher would have to start paying them a salary to make it, or a new publisher would need to buy the rights to the franchise, and then hire the team.

The IGG money is all there is, and it's pretty much gone. They're finishing it on principle, which is great, but technically also makes us slave drivers. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOURSELF?
 
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