I’ve got the latest update from Rey, producer of SSF2T HD Remix. I’m very thankful, because I know it took a looong time to write all this up, and he’s extremely busy trying to actually make this game. There’s also a tiny bit of new artwork for you.

Click through to read Rey’s latest update.

[More:]

Man… It’s been a while since I’ve had time to do an update for you guys. Sorry if any of you were waiting, but with E3 and Comicon within a week of each other, I’ve barely been in the office and I’ve needed a while just to catch up on my work, not to mention sleep.

I don’t have any pictures from E3, but I did bring my camera to Comicon. We held the Evo West Finals for Super Turbo at the awesome boxing ring we set up in our booth. It was pretty cool to see the US’s top players really brining their game on. There were at least 3 double KO’s during the finals, which is pretty rare for this level of competition. As you can see, it attracted quite a big crowd. (Everyone’s looking up because we had monitors hanging above ring showing the action).

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Also, we had a “pros vs joes” contest going one. Basically, anyone could come up and challenge one of the “pros” at Super Turbo, MvsC 2, or Super Puzzle Fighter II HD Remix. For the Super Turbo contest, it was supposed to just beat a pro in a round to win a shirt, but we soon realized that the Evo guys were just man-handling everyone. Eventually, someone was able to win a round when the rules were changed to beat a pro, with the pro playing with only one hand. By the way, I don’t think this isn’t the guy that won a shirt:

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One last thing about Comicon: we had some pretty cool shirts with one of the Ryu frames from SSFIIHDR on the front, with “Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix – Fall 2007” on the back. Capcom employees at the booth had special staff shirts that looked the same, except with “STAFF” with written across the back, but we also had them for sale without the staff logo to the general public. If you didn’t make it out to Comicon, you missed out.

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I’ve received the final list of achievements providing by you guys. Holy moley! That’s a lot of stuff to look through and most of them are pretty good. We’ll be going through them this week to select the best.

So as Brian mentioned weeks ago, I’m probably not going to be posting any new sprites until I have the game in motion for you guys. A lot of people complained that they didn’t want to be teased with sprites and just want to see full game screens. We’re getting to that point soon, but I’m holding off until we iron out some kinks. So you’ll just have to be patient.

But I know I can’t post without showing your something. As I mentioned before, the endings are being re-worked in layout and in content, but they will remain true to the message and story of the original endings.

As many of you can probably guess, below are a couple of panels from Sagat’s ending. I won’t show the whole thing as not to ruin it, but I think you get the picture. I’ve attached early sketches of them because personally, I love line art. If I could, I would have a whole game with nothing but lineart, but that’s just me. So I hope this will tide you guys for a little bit. I know it’s still a tease, but until I feel we’re ready to show you guys some gameplay assets, it’ll have to do.

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As for the actual game, not too long after the last update, we got a version running with some new backgrounds working with some of the new sprites in place and man does it look good. There are still some things that need to be ironed out though before I feel they’re ready to show you guys though. We still need to work on the UI, the shadows need some work, and I think some of the coloring could use some slight tweaking, but it’s really coming along.

OK, so let me get to your questions/comments. There’s been a megaton of stuff since I last posted and I’m going to try to cover as many topics as time will allow. Sorry if I miss your question or even answer a question I’ve answered before, but it’s been a few weeks since I’ve had a chance to update.

– There are comments from those that just don’t like the new art. Which is totally fine. While I’d love to please everyone, I believe that no matter how they are drawn, there will always be those that will not like it. It’s just what happens when you take on a project like this a redraw something that’s been around for so long. I’m not saying anyone is wrong in their opinion, just that it would be impossible for us to attempt to please everyone.

– Will the game be in widescreen? (revisited) Again, I hate to say this, but no, the gameplay itself will be in 4:3 aspect ratio. I’ve seen all of the arguments and the fixes proposed by fans and this is something we’ve been tackling since the projects inception. But our goal is to visually upgrade the game, without changing the gameplay at all. Unfortunately, many of the fixes proposed by fans will distort the play field, decrease the visual space of the field, or introduce some gameplay changes that they may not have thought about. I understand why the desire for 16:9 (including my own), but it’s most likely not going to happen in this title.

– Fully customizable soundtracks will probably not happen. I’m taking about putting your own music to play during specific portions of the game. Like during certain stages, character select screen, etc. You will most likely be able to play your own playlist during gameplay, at least for the Xbox 360 version, but it will not be tied to the game state. It might be something we could do with more time, but not within the constraints of the current development schedule.

– A comment on the blog asked if we’re using “puppet” animation techniques because animating sprites with this much detail will be difficult. “Puppet” animation techniques (not even sure if that’s the right term) can be seen in the opening sequence with Ryu doing his fireball in Super Turbo, and in the very gorgeous looking game “Odin Sphere” from Atlus for the PS2. The short answer to this is no. The way the game is coded does not support this. We are using a very common technique of re-using sprite parts when we can. Now before I hear anyone storming the castle with cries of Capcom being lazy, this is a very common animation technique and very simply consists of cutting and pasting body parts across different frames of the same character when possible. Quite simply, if Cammy’s thigh is in the same position in 2 frames, just reuse that drawing instead of redrawing it. This will help keep the details as consistent as we can.

– A lot of people have been talking about GGPO.net and touting how great it is and asking if we will be using it. All I will say is that one of the top priorities for the project is the online play and how the game plays online in the final version will be the best we can possibly make it.

– I’ve seen a lot of comments, especially on SRK, asking for a tournament mode. That is something that we’re definitely looking into. I would love to see it in there.

– At the moment, we have not announced any plans for a Wii version.

– Some are asking about the backgrounds. I know you guys know that they are being redrawn also, but just to clarify, they are being planned to be more or less the same as the original. There will be slight changes here and there though. For instance, Balrog’s (boxer) stage is being changed slightly to give it a little more contemporary Vegas style, but you will be able to look at it and recognize it as Balrog’s stage.

– We will not be adding mid-bosses to the game, like there is in Alpha 3.

– I realize the Super Turbo has probably the hardest AI of any Street Fighter game. We are looking into a few options to fix that without changing the single player gameplay too much.

Sorry, but that’s it for now. I know there’s a ton of questions I’ve missed, but it’s kind of hard to pick out the questions from all the posts on the blogs and the forums. If I didn’t get to yours, post it again on this update. I’m going to concentrate the next round of Q&A’s to what comes from this post.

Also, just one last note, try to keep the flaming down. There have been way too many flamewars back and forth between people on this blog. If anything, some of you might want to tone it down only because no matter how sincere you may be, a tactless response will not get your point across and I’m more likely to ignore it. I’m not looking for posts that only blow sunshine up my you-know-where, just some basic courtesy. (On the internetz? Yeah right =P)

Anyways, thanks for reading and hope I won’t keep you guys waiting too long for some full-on media updates.

To add to what Rey said there at the end, please keep it clean and civil here in the comments. While I was at Comicon and unable to monitor things as closely as I normally do, things got a little out of hand. The comments now require approval before going live. That means I am reading your comments before they go up, and that also means that if you post overnight, your comment might not show up until the next day (unless I happen to check the blog at home). Hopefully that will help cool things down a bit.

Remember, if you just want to talk about Street Fighter, we have our official Capcom SF forums (with rules for forum etiquette, of course), much better suited for large discussions and debates than the comments section here on the blog. There are also various SF-related forums, including SRK, to hang out at.

We do very much appreciate your feedback in the comments here, positive or negative. Just watch the language, and the name-calling, like you would on a normal forum. Thanks!

—Brian