Here’s the latest word from Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix producer Rey Jimenez.

How are all you Street Fighter heads doing today? Last week I mentioned that I was having a hard time keeping up with all of the questions spread all over the place and to please restate your questions in the last blog entry. Thanks for that. It makes looking for the questions that much easier. I even noticed that the guys at the Capcom BBS and SRK have created new threads and forum areas to help organize everything in one place. Not that any of that was done on my behalf, but it just makes hunting down questions that much easier.

Before I get on to answering some questions from you guys, I wanted to show you a much requested background. I’m sure you can tell, but this is Balrog’s stage.

Click through to read the rest of the update.

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Last week, I mentioned that some of the levels will be changed slightly, but you’ll still recognize them. As you can see, we updated the cars and some elements of the stage. Some of the people will animate in the game, but as you may have noticed, there aren’t as many people on the screen as there were in the original. Being that this is a download title, we have to find ways to minimize the download size. One of the ways we’ve come up with is to subtly cut down on the amount of animation in the background. This will only be apparent in some stages. Yes, I know some of you are thinking it, but this unfortunately means we will not be giving them extra frames.

One thing before I move on: this isn’t a screenshot from the game, but these are the exact assets we are using for the game and the same resolution they will be in the game. So the window size and placement of some of the elements may not be the same as the final. Also, you’ll notice that the casino in the background is called the Crazy Buffalo. As you know, it used to be called the Golden Nugget. But as that is a real casino, I renamed it Crazy Buffalo in honor of one of Balrog’s moves.

So right now, game development is going very well. Since it looks like we’ll be able to get this new feature in, I might as well tell you guys about it.

I’ve mentioned it before as a possibility, but I can confirm that we will be putting in a new mode to the game. It will be, for lack of a better descriptor, a re-balanced mode. This mode will be optional for online and offline play. I will not go into the details about the mode, but the changes therein were taken from some of the best Super Turbo players out there. As you may or may not know, one of the principal members of the development team is David Sirlin. Aside from being an excellent developer, he is also a pretty accomplished Super Turbo tournament player. Talking to his buddies from the Evo scene (BTW, the Evo finals are going on this weekend in Las Vegas), he compiled a list of changes that they agreed would be good for the game. Just to be clear, this is an optional mode for online and offline play, so if you don’t like it, you can always play the classic mode. Even still, many gamers, like myself, probably would barely notice the changes. So unless this mode turns out to totally break the gameplay, it should make it into the final.

Now, I have a slight problem that I hope you guys could help me with. We don’t know what to call this mode. I don’t want to call it “re-balanced” mode for obvious reasons. I was thinking something along the lines of “Players Mode” or “Fighters Mode” since it was developed from tournament players’ input. But, as of yet, nothing has really seemed to jump out to me as being a good name for it. So, any of you can come up with a good name for it, please post it as a comment and I’ll make a decision on it by my next post.

One last thing before I get to questions/comments. There has been some confusion on Udon’s role in the creation of the art in the game. The confusion has been to the point that I’ve seen people say Backbone is drawing the game sprites.

So, let me clear the air here. Udon is drawing the model design sheets and key frames for the sprites. Another party is also involved in creating the rest of the sprites. This is merely because Udon does not employ enough artists to get the job done, namely all of the animation frames, in the time-frame that we are aiming for with the production of this game. Udon artists are working very closely with them and they are overseeing the quality of content provided by the other studio. Essentially, all of the frames of animation will be up to par to the quality that you would expect from Udon. Other Udon artists are also working on redoing the opening sequence, the backgrounds, the character portraits, and the endings. Basically, because of the nature of the project, it is necessary for us to hire another studio to help with the in-between character animatiojn frames.

I don’t expect everyone to know this, but this is a very common practice in any art medium involving large volumes of content. Practically every anime and cartoon you’ve ever seen is a product of this process. Even in most major video games there’s a great deal of art outsourced (take Gears of War or God of War as examples). The key is that this outsourced content be imperceptible to the user in the final product, which we will take great pains to ensure.

Moving on…

We’ve collated the Achievements you guys suggested and we have selected our favorites. Right now we’re determining which ones are actually technically feasible. Once that’s done, we’ll whittle the list down to the winner with your help, when we put it up for a vote on our forums. Just want to let you know we haven’t forgotten about that.

Ok, so now onto your questions. Like always, sorry if I don’t get to your question on this round.

– Since we’re limited to using a 4:3 screen, it has been suggested that we use the player’s character art on the side bars. I really like this idea and I’ll see if it’ll be a viable option.

– We are using the same number of frames of animation as the original. Since we are using the same art code, we cannot add frames and this will change the basic gameplay of start up frames and the like. Also, as a download-only title, we are not allowed unlimited size on the all of the platforms we are releasing on. Adding to the frames of animation will greatly increase the size of the game. And that’s no good, because we are already pressed for space as it is. For those concerned about how an HD game will look with the old frame counts, you’ll just have to wait and see. To put this in perspective, most Japanese anime uses a lower framecount than US animated cartoons, but animes still animate nicely.

– Training mode is something we’re looking into having for the game. How robust it will be remains to be seen. I’ve seen some very good suggestions using the training mode style from the SF EX series or VF 5, but I’m not sure if we have the time or extra file size to support such a feature.

– We are working on the ranking system. It will not merely be a win/loss ratio. The ranking system will be inspired by those used in chess.

– I think I talked about this before, but we are addressing the problem of people that disconnect before losing.

– We did come back from Comic-Con with extra “Evolve” shirts. I’m sure the marketing folks here are devising creative ways to get rid of them. !!And they don’t all come in XXXXXXL!! How great is that!? I actually have a gaming shirt that fits me =) Speaking of the shirt, that is not how the fireball will look in the game. It will look more like the traditional fireball.

– Unfortunately, alternate outfits are not a feasible option for the game. We would essentially have to draw every sprite multiple times in order to have this feature. This would double the time to create the sprites and increase the size of the game. I’ve heard that it would be cool to do a head swap with Gouken on Akuma’s body just for kicks. While I agree this would be cool, it’s also not a feasible option. That’s all there really is to say about that.

– There was a comment about having SF1, SF2, SF2CE, SF2CEcustom, SF2T, SSF2, SSF2T, SFA, SFA2, SFA3, SF3, SF3D play modes for the characters. Unfortunately, that is just way beyond the scope of the downloadable version. There’s a bit more work involved that some simple programming. If we were making a console version that would be something we could look at doing. But we’re not.

– For online matches, blind character picking is something I’d like to see in the game. Oh…and a timer on the selection screen. I mean really, why would you go AFK when your turn is up on quartermatch? I guess that also answers another question: Quartermatch will be returning for this game. We are looking into adding more spectators if it doesn’t effect latency too much (before you say it, it can affect latency).

– We are doing our best to make the stat tracking for the game as robust as possible. While every little thing you do in the game may not be a trackable item, we are going to try and go as deep as we can.

Well that’s it for now. I know I missed questions, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to get to all of them. If yours wasn’t answered, all I can say is try to repost them in the comments here and hopefully I’ll see them.

As a parting gift, here’s Akuma having his coffee in this morning in the office. Looks like the Raging Demon doesn’t go into effect until after some caffeine.

—Brian




EDIT: The artwork has been updated, see it here.