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Skullgirls |OT| New age of Heroines
- Thread starter SolarPowered
- Start date
DiscoShark
Banned
Gah, missed this. I'll add you when I get the chance, haven't been playing many gaffers since Solar's PS3 exploded ^^; FTL's been dominating my life for the past few days.
PSN is DiscoShark in any case.
This is insane. I was genuinely surprised that the community had barely secured 3rd place while taking on DOA but to overtake Melee and now to potentially rival what My Little Pony is bringing in? Bravo. Seriously impressed by the dedication the SG community has put in with trying to make Skullgirls an EVO game. I'll be scraping funds to donate whenever I can, have been seriously motivated to.
darkblade77
Member
Skullbats #15 is going on tonight at 6PM CST.
One of the users has pledged to donate 20$ to the Skullgirls breast cancer drive for every entry that shows, so enter even if it's just for kicks!
One of the users has pledged to donate 20$ to the Skullgirls breast cancer drive for every entry that shows, so enter even if it's just for kicks!
DiscoShark
Banned
Ughh, kicking myself for missing that Skullbat donation drive for entrants thing. I think I missed this weeks Vampire Savior Ranbat as well, been on meds + bedridden all day basically. Anyone down for matches sometime during the weekend or tonight?
Edit : Just a reminder SG is streaming at Socal Regionals at ~
http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed
Edit : Just a reminder SG is streaming at Socal Regionals at ~
http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed
SolarPowered
Member
Beat me to it.
The new LE Valentine's Day shirt is up, and I'm really enjoying the macabre simplicity of the design:
Also, there will be a special fundraising edition of Salty Cupcakes this Thursday night at 8 PM PST!
We've got people that will match donations for up to $3000, and there will be some rather "vocal" guests making appearances, too.
Also, there will be a special fundraising edition of Salty Cupcakes this Thursday night at 8 PM PST!
We've got people that will match donations for up to $3000, and there will be some rather "vocal" guests making appearances, too.
Still waiting for the 360 patch.Any movement on it yet?
Mike came up with a slightly more complicated way of delivering it that was previously thought impossible (even by MS tech support), but it may require extra testing so it may not actually speed anything up except the initial submission.
I just sent Konami an e-mail trying to spur them to movement again, so hopefully we can get some movement soon.
SolarPowered
Member
You guys just love the smell of my hard earned dollars, don't you? Gonna buy the shirt and put a bit into this donation drive too. Three thousand is a lot of money...The new LE Valentine's Day shirt is up, and I'm really enjoying the macabre simplicity of the design:
Also, there will be a special fundraising edition of Salty Cupcakes this Thursday night at 8 PM PST!
We've got people that will match donations for up to $3000, and there will be some rather "vocal" guests making appearances, too.
That is some of the best art I've seen post launch yet.Just a reminder about the fundraising livestream on Thursday night at 8 PST!
http://personasama.tumblr.com/
Link for the other posters and a sick drawing featuring Double and Ms.Fortune.
I'll see if I can make that happen.
shaowebb
Member
Im really hoping to hear news sometime of you guys getting either some backing or hired to develop more fighters for some publisher. Has there been any discussions with any publishers to either get backing or to develop games for them lately? I'll understand if you aren't at liberty to discuss such internal matters I just always wake up hoping to find that Labzero Games has gotten some footing and funding to develop bigger projects given how impressive your efforts were with Skullgirls.
DiscoShark
Banned
Going from some of the stuff Mike's been talking about at various Salty Cupcakes then they have in fact been talking to other publishers to try to get funding for separate non-Skullgirls related projects. I'd hate to misquote the guy but I believe the team's been trying to pitch everything from new fighting games, metroid-vania types, and beat-em-ups as well.
Yeah, we've got a good amount of interest from publishers, but all this stuff is really slow.
We have one pitch that we're waiting to hear back on that I feel pretty good about, but you never know what will happen. And making quality pitches takes a lot of time, especially when no one's being paid.
Got some other things cooking that will be revealed soon, too.
shaowebb
Member
I hope someone bites and takes the plunge with them because these guys produce some amazing combat for fractions of what it costs other dudes. I keep hoping that Konami gives their idea of making a Castlevania fighting game another chance using Lab Zero as the studio to develop it.
I'm glad to hear it. God knows you guys deserve some clients. Your fan relations and loyalty are amazing and your combat is spot on. I wish someone would try to snatch you up for an in house action game developer for them. Warner Bros, Disney, Sega, Nintendo...anyone! Here's hoping you make good on the pitch you're waiting to hear back on. I can't wait to see what Lab Zero Games has in their future.
The problem is that no one actually seems to know this, and we have to explain it to everyone every time.
For whatever reason people think fighting games are cheap to make, and they think we're expensive to work with. But we have a pretty good idea what some other fighting games cost to make now, and our prices are really low by comparison.
Like, we've heard that there are SF4 skins that cost more to produce than entire characters for us.
While the illusion of security with a situation like that could be nice, I don't think it fits the team's style at all.
I'd say we're all pretty uncomfortable with hierarchy and bureaucracy, and being owned by a major publisher would require those things.
shaowebb
Member
Really? Crap fan modders do it for FREE. Its not even that hard once you got an unpacker working to get the maps and model files to load into photoshop and Maya. I could only imagine the cost differential Lab Zero Games would have between costume packs if they did 3D stuff instead of hand drawn compared to the other guys. Of course going 3D would kind of change the flavor of the appeal your characters have a lot though. The amount of squash and stretch you guys are able to use with your 2D frames looks so good in action.
2D's definitely cheaper than 3D in the long term, but the costs are front-loaded a bit due to in-house preproduction.
3D seems cheaper because it can be faster, but you need more people working on a particular thing at all times. Modelers, texturers, and probably a lot of animators.
We've heard that SF4 cost around $40M, for example, meaning the average cost of each character was over $1M. Ours are closer to $200k each.
Also, we're really fast. BlazBlue's characters take a full year to produce, apparently? And I would argue that their quality is nowhere near ours.
shaowebb
Member
I feel ya. I finished my animation degree and yeah it seems about what I figured. AFTER you got a model ready you can animate, pose, repurpose and what have you super fast but the initial setup of basing it, modeling it, doing the high poly, then doing the low poly retopo of it, then baking the high poly normals to the low poly model after you unwrap the UV map and do the texturing/poly paint cleanup, and then rigging and weighting it takes a LOT longer to setup than just hand framing. Even if you are just drag and dropping 3DS max skeletons and weights or Maya skeletons on it without setting up your own IK and FK junk you can still run into trouble getting them to pose right on stock rigs even if you change the rig's weighting envelopes to control your character's muscles the way you want them to. At least zbrush has single click UV unwrapping these days...thats several HOURS saved. At least when it can be used.
2D animation stays the same pace from start to finish where 3D takes a lot of front end before you can start doing anything then takes off fast to catch up. Problem is you got to watch with 3D because clipping errors between models happen more than folks want to believe in preproduction QA and a TON of model shattering happens while working out the collision sensitivities for combat.
My guess is some of the problem is deadlines are tight in 3D fighting game studios and that requires more staff dedicated to singular parts of the pipeline in order to meet it. It looks like they are flying with those models but look at how many folks have to be dedicated to each aspect of the CG to make any of them. Its not faster to go 3D if your one dude because it takes a lot more to get your assets up and usable in CG than 2D. Indie dudes that go 3D don't get to specialize because they aren't at liberty to do so and have to do every single aspect of the modeling and animation themselves...its why so many indie games are 2D in general. Its quicker and easier to do on small teams considering a 3D game asset with a rig can take over a week to get right sometimes.
Really with 2D being so augmented in its pipeline with vector art, after effects work, tablets, and photoshop these days Im really surprised you're the only ones going back into it heavily for stuff outside of the indies. You'd think it'd be easier to hire traditional artists than CG software guys. Glad I went middle of the road and learned both. Wish I could convince my indie studio Im working with that we got more animators than modelers and that they could likely produce the titles they are after easier if they went 2D instead.
DiscoShark
Banned
Skullgirls' Donation Drive Stream is now up and running. Expect commentary from MikeZ and random shenanigans as well!
http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed
Stream is up now and this poster is AMAAAAAZING!
Stream Surprise #1 -
They've got the voice actors in the house and they're going to be voicing story mode!
Stream Surprise #2 -
MikeZ special build with playable boss mode Marie? Snap?!
http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed
Just a reminder about the fundraising livestream on Thursday night at 8 PST!
Stream is up now and this poster is AMAAAAAZING!
Stream Surprise #1 -
They've got the voice actors in the house and they're going to be voicing story mode!
Stream Surprise #2 -
MikeZ special build with playable boss mode Marie? Snap?!
darkblade77
Member
Salty Cupcakes is live! Tonight's the donation drive promotion, so consider bringing your wallet with you!
EDIT: Kurses, outsponded. Haha
EDIT: Kurses, outsponded. Haha
shaowebb
Member
Oh God $50 donations will get you a voice mail from one of the voice actresses in Skullgirls if you show them a receipt of proof!
Skullgirls is only trailing by $1400-ish right now behind Smash Bros and if it wins its the 8th game at EVO. All donations go to Breast Cancer research for those wondering if this is for anything more than gaming. Make some donations!
LINK TO THE FUNDRAISER
Skullgirls is only trailing by $1400-ish right now behind Smash Bros and if it wins its the 8th game at EVO. All donations go to Breast Cancer research for those wondering if this is for anything more than gaming. Make some donations!
LINK TO THE FUNDRAISER
Our fundraising poster is now for sale!
Our awesome friends at Sanshee are now selling the fundraising poster, $5 of which will go to the breast cancer/Evo 2013 drive!
http://sanshee.com/store/product/li...ls-evo-2013-poster-for-breast-cancer-research
Our awesome friends at Sanshee are now selling the fundraising poster, $5 of which will go to the breast cancer/Evo 2013 drive!
http://sanshee.com/store/product/li...ls-evo-2013-poster-for-breast-cancer-research
darkblade77
Member
If you've got a SRK account or feel like rolling one up, consider putting a few holes in breast cancer down there!
If you have no plans to post at SRK but still want to participate, I can maybe serve as a liason or something... so shoot me a PM.
DiscoShark
Banned
Also worth noting ...
Mr Fanatiq talking to the Skullgirls voice actors on stream~
http://www.twitch.tv/mrfanatiq
Mr Fanatiq talking to the Skullgirls voice actors on stream~
http://www.twitch.tv/mrfanatiq
Triple Da G.O.D!
Member
http://skullgirls.com/2013/01/update-on-the-pc-verison-of-skullgirls/
Skullgirls X Senran Kagura! DO IT #4THEBOOBS!!!
Deputy Dangle
Member
Potential lobbies for the PC port! This is great news!
Lobbies are definitely happening, just can't confirm what all we're going to do with them yet.
SolarPowered
Member
Thread for the news below.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510819
Edit: Should have replaced "released" with "published", but eh.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510819
Edit: Should have replaced "released" with "published", but eh.
notworksafe
Member
How about PS3/PC crossplay?
Probably impossible. :\
Our best chance of getting it done in a reasonable timeframe was Steamworks on PS3, but it's not an approved middleware and, now that the Steambox is coming, likely never will be.
darkblade77
Member
yeeeessssssssssss
based Marvelous AQL
based Marvelous AQL
DiscoShark
Banned
Totally double dipping, happy to hear something solid on the PC front for sure.
Edit :
So the DLC colors for SG were leaked on the European version of the store (only work with the EU Skullgirls) but uh ... for those interested, here's a video of all the colors you can look forward to!
http://youtu.be/y3Tinb9hQOE
If I remember correctly the 5th color for each character is a bonus color given if you either buy the bundle or individually buy each color set. Some really awesome choices for colors in there though.
Edit :
So the DLC colors for SG were leaked on the European version of the store (only work with the EU Skullgirls) but uh ... for those interested, here's a video of all the colors you can look forward to!
http://youtu.be/y3Tinb9hQOE
If I remember correctly the 5th color for each character is a bonus color given if you either buy the bundle or individually buy each color set. Some really awesome choices for colors in there though.
Being a Mac guy myself, this is something I want to look into. But it really comes down to how much testing a game made in Wine, etc. would require.
Also, I don't think Mac plays nice with most game controllers?
notworksafe
Member
It works pretty well with PS3 arcade sticks, but less so with Xbox ones. There's an driver you can get to make 360's work on Mac, but it wasn't super reliable the last time I tried it (which was quite a while ago).
Man...I'll be going from #1 Skullgirls hater to Skullgirls double-dipper in only a few years. Who knew!
I'm sure there were people that hated it more than you did, just maybe not on GAF.
notworksafe
Member
Not sure if I should be pleased or bummed by that.
Me neither?
But I think you're the most vocal hater that has come the longest way?
SnakeSlashRO
Banned
Nice poster... I ordered one =D
Master Milk
Member
What's the deal with the 360 patch? I completely forgot MS was holding up my DLC colors . . .