- Joined
- Sep 3, 2013
- Messages
- 2,844
- Reaction score
- 6,554
- Points
- 113
- Age
- 40
- Location
- Chicago, IL
- Website
- www.killallinstinct.com
- Steam
- Kai
- PSN
- Night_Phyre
When did the idea of Fukua (as a seriously considered addition to the game) first come up?
MIKE Z: Fukua came from a typo from Brady a long time ago, and he had even done most of the UI assets back then. As a seriously considered addition to the game, last Thursday, so...the...night of the 27th?
How long did it take to go from concept to completion on the character? Were there any ideas that were dropped?
MIKE Z: Concept to completion was Thursday night, only a few hours on Friday because of Salty prep, most of Saturday, none of Sunday due to some patch problems requiring work, and Monday. Approximately 3 long days of work, with help! (Brady, Brian, Rich, Vince, Jon, Brenton, and Earl you all rock!)
She has no new art, everything is re-used. Her alternate normals are old Filia attacks that were replaced with Samson attacks during SG development - they were also used for Double to differentiate her from Filia the same way - and everything else is a hack job. She re-uses bits of script from Zoner Filia and Grappler Filia, which were alternate green and red skin versions I'd made for the first public Evo demo of SG back before we had a 2nd character. Some people may remember them, possibly even fondly. (Those are the two souls in her April Fools' story, which is not meant to imply anything else.) The divekick-only-on-contact comes from Grappler but it was an idea I had for a long time before that. New ideas were added, and two or three things I didn't have time to do were dropped but they weren't really necessary. I mostly knew how I wanted her to play, so she got things that reinforced that ideal.
The over-3-year-old Zoner and Grappler scripts I reused as starting points worked without any changes, which is the thing I'm happiest about since it means the engine is pretty darn robust.
Should she stay on the roster, will Lab Zero try to implement her into the story (Brain drain clone)? Maybe a story mode?
MIKE Z: I have no idea if we'd do anything for her story. She's not canon and I don't imagine Alex has much interest in shoehorning her into the SG universe, nor do I imagine anyone wanting to go through the work of creating a full story mode, but what do I know?
Currently her story is Locked because there's no way to remove a character from that screen and locking it prevents the game from crashing when it tries to read a file that doesn't exist after you pick her. :^P
Fukua serves as something of a, "test," for Robo Fortune, but does she also herald the coming of other Clone/Ex characters somewhere down the line?
MIKE Z: Fukua doesn't mean jack squat for any other EX characters. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
There were relevant jokes to be made, there was a holiday where such things are encouraged, there was a previous Skullgirls joke to capitalize on, there were old move ideas to begin with if they still worked, there were old unused animations to use as new things, and UI for her already existed. That, and if we're gonna do an April Fools joke it's gonna be whole hog, since everyone always says "Oh that should be a real thing!" So the idea of making a trailer where people would comment "I WOULD SO PLAY HER" and then having them really be able to do that...was irresistible. The perfect storm, minus three nights of sleep.
Is there anything else you wan to add?
MIKE Z: Consider her a very special bonus. Or don't. But don't hold out hope for anyone else not already announced, and don't bother us either way. :^)
- Her name is pronounced, "foo-koo-uh." *
- She will not be getting any new artwork done for her. All her frames will be the result of existing work already done by the art team. *
- Fukua will eventually get an announcer voice clip for when she's picked on the character select screen. *
- Fukua will get her own loading screen art. *
- Fukua will have some kind of effect added to her that help players differentiate between her and Filia. *
- Fukua will not be a code-unlock character, she will remain on the character select screen. *