| Professor 4697th Post
  
MMCafe Owner
     
|  "Re(1):SNK Stuff Thread 16- Winter 2015 Editio" , posted Thu 10 Dec 23:03:  
Famitsu did an interview with KOF14's producer Yasuyuki Oda. Normally, I'd just write a quick outline for these kinds of things, but he mentions a few pretty interesting things like keeping scanlines in mind when doing pixel art in the NeoGeo era (almost like old interlaced screen tricks) which had me interested enough in translating the whole thing.
[NOTE: Feel free to link but please try not to copy-pasta to other forums and whatnot. Reason is, this translation was sort of done on the fly without much editing so it's likely that I'll come back and fix things later (took really long).]
Summary:
- All 50 characters will be playable at launch/release. Roster is already solid.
- Additional characters/dlc is undecided
- All voices have already been recorded. Some VAs will be different from before due to various circumstances.
- Online will feature a 3on3 mode where 6 players each control a character when it's their turn. Same characters will be allowed (at current planning stage)
- Development went full throttle in spring 2014.
- Project started out after company CEO (Kawasaki?) suddenly said in 2013, "We're gonna be #1 in [fighting] games again!".
- Oda comes from the former SNK R&D Division 1, aka the "Fatal Fury/AOF dev team".
- A bunch of other staff from R&D Division 1 have also returned to work on the game; the dev team is a mix of seasoned and new staff
- All the returning staff have been active in the front line, meaning no washed out staff.
- Game is returning to its roots in terms of graphics with "sharp looks on the characters"
- Attention is being given to game balance and controls
- Fighting game aspect for both offline and online are priority, but single player/story mode experience will also be given focus
- Whether game will be updated by versions (ala SF4) or go by sequels (KOF15,16) is still undecided, but it'll be the beginning of another new saga in terms of storyline
Translation of Famitsu's interview with KOFXIV producer Yasuyuki Oda
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201512/10094237.html
-When did you join the company?
I originally joined SNK in 1993 and was placed in R&D Division 1 which mainly did the "Fatal Fury" and "Art of Fighting" series. I left SNK when the company went in its fiasco near the end of the 20th century. Then in 2014, I came back together with other ex-SNK staffs to work on KOFXIV. So in other words, KOFXIV is being developed by a team consisting of core ex-SNK staffs that've reunited as well as new excellent dev members.
- So basically you were entrusted with the creation of "KOF XIV". How exactly did this happen betweem you and SNK Playmore?
It happened in 2013. The CEO back at the time suddenly flipped his switch or something and said "We're gonna take back our Number 1 spot in [fighting] games again!" (laughs). So that was the start of everything and everyone came around, and so we ended up with a team of old and new staff. The project went in full throttle in spring of 2014.
- So that one word from the CEO got everyone fired up.
Right. Of course I told him "it'll cost this and this, and the development time will take as long as this", but he still said "We're still gonna do it!", so I went "OK then, let's go!".
- So was it you that reassembled the former SNK devs?
Actually it wasn't me. There's a staff who's been in the company since the old SNK era and he's kept in touch with everyone all this time. He's the one who called them up.
- That's a lot of drama, reuniting staff that've worked from the past.
Yeah, but because the skills and the environment for developing have changed so much during the years, we've called back the core members from SNK R&D Division 1 that are still active in the front line. Even up until now the KOF series has been in 2D, but this time we needed developers that had 3D skills.
- Members of the core staff including yourself have been keeping up with the times after leaving SNK, leveling up your skillsets.
Correct. The members gathered (for XIV) have been around the industry this whole time, and they've got over a decade of development experience in consumer games and fighting games.
- That's quite an amazing team. This time, the graphic have changed from 2D to 3D. Why 3D?
After leaving SNK, all the games I made were in 3D. Moreso, going from 2D to 3D is pretty natural when you consider the evolution in hardware, and we decided to take that path when thinking about things that are ahead.
- There weren't any internal debate on whether things should go 2D or 3D?
It was already decided that we'd be developing for the high-end enviornment so it was never a debate. However, even though we've gathered good staff, we don't have the technology/knowledge base as SNKPlaymore yet [for doing 3D], and that's something we'll need to do building up from this project.
- It was a bit surprising since KOF has always had a reputation of going 2D.
Back in our days, the Neo Geo had restrictiona and we only had the option of going by pixel art. But even back then, there were high-quality 3D games like "Virtua Fighter", and it was certainly something I wanted to try if we had a good PCB. 2D pixel art is still something that remains as a culture, and I know there's a lot of people that like them. I like them too. But on the other hand as a developer, there's always the unconfortable feeling that there's no tomorrow if you can't keep up with the times, the progress, and new technology. So it's a hard decision.
- So those are the reasons behind going 3D.
Just to add on to that, this is personal opinion, but remember scanlines on CRT screens? Back in the old days, we'd say [to our artists] "add 0.5 of a pixel", and have them draw in the pixels by taking scanlines into account. But with the modern Full HD monitor, the pixels comes out too clearly and too perfectly that you can't have that same taste. I don't think that modern hardare and monitors go well with pixel art.
- "KOF XIII" came out in 2010, so it's already been five years. As a new game, what's the concept behind KOFXIV's project?
First, we're focusing on the sharp character design that's always been a trademark in KOF. We've been around SNK since the old days when KOF was still called by its project name "Survivor", and we certainly remember the impact that KOF94 made in its debut. It was back when the fighting game craze happened from Street Fighter II and Neogeo titles like Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting were smash hits. Back in those days, pixel art with realistic more artstyle were mainstream. And then came along KOF, featuring characters with much a sharper, aesthetic look. It had an impact. Right now, KOF13 is pretty popular so everyone has the image of KOF = anime-ish, but back then, that was the image we had for the series.
- Back then, KOF's graphics were different from other fighting games.
And another thing is character volume. Back when KOF94 came out, it was a time when having 16 characters was considered to be big. And KOF94 had 24 characters. I still remember being amazed, thinking to myself "man they sure were able to throw in a ton of characters", considering the hardware spec and development enviornment. I think that sort of astounding volume is what makes "KOF", so we plan to have 50 characters in the game. We're hoping that throwing in that many will be enough to surprise everyone (laughs).
- The all-star feeling that KOF94 had was quite something. Nowadays, fighting games are getting attention as an e-sport. Is that something that's being kept under consideration for KOFXIV?
E-sports has widespread and there's a lot more people that are knowledgeable about fighting games compared to the old days. So we're putting in a lot of attention in KOFXIV's controls and balance to satisfy those kinds of people.
- Are you keeping KOF98 and KOF2002 in mind when doing that? Those two games are well praised by hardcore players.
Yes, and of course KOF13 as well. Although let's be honest, when you play KOF98 now, you realize that its controls aren't really that great (laughs). We know that we need to keep things [for KOFXIV] at a good enough quality so that people can play it worry-free as a modern game. We're also keeping into account that it's for the PS4 this time, so it needs to be playable on a pad.
- As a console title, are there anything in particular that's being kept into account?
One thing that's certainly different from the arcade is the sound. In the arcades, it's noisy and you can't hear things too well. But at home, you can hear the acted voices that aren't even shouted out. Because of that, the character's actings and lines have to be chosen more carefully. Also, there needs to be more focus on the single player experience.
- By that, do you mean better single player modes?
Right. Of course we'll be throwing in a lot of effort into the fighting game side for both online and offline mode. But I don't think people will really consider us to be SNK unless we have a good story mode. We also think that, the more that e-sports gets attention, the more important it also is to make a single player mode that compliments it.
- Are there that many people who play the single player modes?
While we haven't actually taken statistics, it's certainly true that a lot of people play SNKPlaymore titles, thinking, "I want to play KOF but I don't want to seriously go head-to-head" or "I'm not really good at doing special moves but I still want to play". And we need to treasure such fans.
- Some fighting games are finally starting to get a substantial story mode, but the KOF series has always sort of had focus on storyline and characters since its early releases. That's probably why there's so many fans of the characters.
And of course we're focusing on the quality of online play too.
- As a fighting game, online play is really important. Are there going to be any elements to compliment it?
Live streaming has become a part of gaming, so we want to throw in some mechanisms that'll compliment that. We can't say anything solid since we're still working on the game, but one of those additions will be the "Party Battle". You'll fight as a 3-member team where each player uses one character; up to 6 players can participate. We're still figuring out other fun elements that we can add in, like things that players can do while they're waiting for their turn.
- That sounds like fun.
We might change it, but we're thinking of allowing same characters to be picked, so you can have a match of Kyo-Kyo-Kyo vs Kyo-Kyo-Kyo for example. It'll be truely chaotic (laughs)
- For example, what do you have in plan that players can do while they're waiting for their turn?
It'd be fun if they can type in comments like Nico Nico Douga. Eh, not saying we'll do it! (laughs)
- It'd be fun if there's a bullet hell of comments during the matches.
Texts have a more visual effect than voice chat, and it certainly gives a better appeal for live streams.
- Changing the topic, you said there's going to be 50 characters. Were there any criterias in the character's selections?
I can't talk in details, but we've had a draft for a roster that was nearly all old characters and another one that was nearly all new characters, and we took them and also put into consideration our market which has become pretty global. Either way, we wanted give the roster some regional colors. Teams by countries, teams by concepts like the female fighters team... until the game gets released, feel free to fantasize about the roster.
- The popular characters like Kyo and Iori have already been announced. It seems likely by that flow that other staple characters in the KOF series may also be appearing...?
In selecting the characters, we've considered everything including characters that we knew that "everyone would be pretty happy if this character was in the game".
- Do you mean that all 50 characters have been decided already?
Yes. They're solid.
- What's the ratio like between the old and new characters?
I can't disclose that yet, but with as many as 50 characters, the popular characters might be in the game. That's all that I can say now (laughs)
- Let's change the question. Are you adding new elements to the new characters to distinguish them from the older characters?
Well yeah. When we're to make a new character, we emphasize "adding in completely new element(s)" and "taking on a challenge". Back with the NeoGeo, we had to release a KOF every year so there simply wasn't enough development time and there was no choice but to take a conservative approach. But this time we have plenty of time, so the new characters will show more of our challenge.
- Can you tell us what sort of essence/elements you've incorporated into some of your new characters?
There's various things but for example, [some of them] feature a design that would've infuriated the designers if we told them to do it in pixel art (laughs)
- You mean it's a design that was possible because you're going 3D? Like having a really wacky costume?
You can take it that way. It's certainly possible to do so in 2D, but it would be a considerable pain (laughs)
- In some ways, going 3D has broadened the possibilities in designs. Have the designs [for old characters] been re-tuned when shifting from 2D to 3D?
Yes. If you design them with a 2D mind, they often cause issues when you make them into 3D. So there's been a lot of cases where where we've tweaked things numerous times while moving forward.
- Personally, Leona looks completely natural in 3D and it actually sort of makes her look even more sexy. So have there been some characters that were easier than others to make into 3D?
Really muscular characters and characters that are deformed(simplified) tend to look good when they're in 3D. They don't cause problems, their shadows look good, and they look pretty three-dimensional. But KOF has a lot of slim characters, and they're pretty hard to shift to 3D (laughs)
- In that sense, Chang must've been pretty easy to render.
Actually he was a headache. He was easy to render because his body shape is pretty unique, but he has accessories like his jingling chains.
- Let's talk about the voices. You said that you're putting attention into voices and dialogues. Have you already decided on the voice actors?
The recordings are already done. Some characters have a different VA and some are still the same. Please stay tuned to more details in the future.
- The Neogeo has a long history so there's a lot of fans that have memories about the voices. As far as the characters with a new VA goes, did you search for VAs that have similar voices?
Basically yes. We had to go through voice samples for 50 characters, and record the voices for 50 characters.. it was quite something (laughs)
- We can certainly imagine. Did you basically use the same VAs for anyone that was available, and switched to new VAs for those who couldn't continue providing their voices?
It really depended on various reasons including the situation of the VAs. We certainly didn't switch VAs because of a single policy.
- So you're not creating characters based on the availablity of their voice actors.
Yes. The game comes first, and then we pick VAs that are close to their images.
- When it comes to fighting games, the motivation of players will certainly change depending on whether there's a huge tournament or not. Talking about a bit into the future, are there any plans to run a nationwide tournament once after the game's launch?
We don't have any solid plans, but once the game gets released I plan to ask my company that "we want to run a tournament like this!" (laughs)
- Aside from official tournaments, do you also keep EVO and other tournaments in mind?
We'd love to see it get played at various tournaments including domestic tournaments and Evo. Realistically speaking, we need to start thinking about how to expand [to tournament events] worldwide.
- Are there any elements/modes that have been implemented with e-sports in mind?
There isn't any game system with that sort of thing in mind, but we want to keep a good game balance. However, it's not fun if every character played the same, so if one part [of the character] is strong enough to be 10 points we'd tone down some other points for that character, and make sure its charasteristic stands out.
- In fighting games, it's not too fun if all the characters played the same.
KOF is a game where you use 3 characters, so we hope that players would cover for the weakness of a character by picking another character to cover for that. That sort of thing is one of the strongpoints of a team battle game, but being able to use 3 characters becomes mandatory. So we need to tweak the characters so they're playable on the fly to a certain level. That's one of the differences from balancing characters in a 1-on-1 game.
- With 50 characters, it seems like you'll be working on the balance until the very end. Will they all be playable on the game's launch?
Don't worry about that. You'll be able to play all 50 characters on launch. It's not going to be a game where you can only use a few characters at launch and the roster will gradually increase. Make sure you write that clearly (laughs). After all, it's not a KOF if doesn't have many characters.
- It's pretty common for a normal fighting game to gradually get new characters together with version updates, but having 50 characters right on bat is certainly going to have a huge impact.
Having 50 characters at launch is something we'll be ussing as KOFXIV's selling point.
- Will you have additional characters after launch?
We'll have to see about that once the game and its 50 characters are out. We don't have any plans yet. As we keep releasing more titles, it would be cool to release some characters like those from "Sasuke vs Commander" (laughs)
- Will KOFXIV continue on as a series?
Whether to release verion updates for XIV or to release XV isn't decided yet, but we've been releasing each KOF story in trilogies, so we're looking at XIV's saga from a similar viewpoint.
- This time there won't be an arcade release, meaning there won't be a loketest. Are there plans for any sort of hands-on event prior to launch?
In terms of game balancing, we'd like to gain feedback from players prior to launch by having an event or something. That's something we'll need to plan.
- Talk about balance, what do you think makes KOF's battle unique?
I think it's the mind-reading that takes place during the speed-paced battle. All fighting games aren't too different from each other when it comes to their speed of attack motions, but the moving speed of characters, the timings for cancels, hitstops, hit detections, reset timings, amongst other basic points in game systems makes a huge difference. So we're certainly keeping a lot of attention on that. Although when it comes to talking about "what makes a KOF", there's so many iterations of KOFs (laughs). But it won't be the type of fighting game that emphasizes "footsies". There'll be running and jumping; we want to bring the thrilling battle that makes a "KOF".
- Any last words for tne fans?
We're going crazy and fighting with a tremendous amount of data every day, but we're confident that it'll be a fun game so please look forward to more details.
[this message was edited by Professor on Fri 11 Dec 04:38] |
| the real kap
97th Post
Occasional Customer
  
| "Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 08:10
I understand that my positivity is like Charlie Sheen's to some people here, but whatever, I'll just say my thing because I didn't expect KOFXIV discussions in the cafe to be so depressing. This bothers me the most because this board has been around for so long and there are barely any dedicated forums (or people) left to discuss this game. I didn't think it would turn out like this. I started following SNK games fanatically since my cousin hooked me up with an emulator in 2002 and have been a fan ever since and bought many of their products, so I'm not a longtime fan as most of you people are. But still, there are many of you here and on other sites who are in serious need of a reality check.
This is such a stupid situation that spans across multiple sites and communities, normally I'd use more profanity and address people specifically, but I respect the Professor for all the work he has done during all these years for the SNK community and I don't want to ruin the mood here too much. Besides, my years of arguing on the internet are a thing of the past, it's way too stressful.
I've said before that gameplay matters more than graphics, but most SNKP fans turned into a bunch of pathetic casuals/Twitch chat trolls who only harp about the looks (that are improving every time it appears in public) and don't even bother to talk about the fact that we get 50 goddamn fighters. It's barely acknowledged, exactly what the inebriated Christ is going on? We all love SNK characters, right? We've grown up with them; with their appearances, evolving fighting styles, costumes, music, artwork etc. They are a big part of games, so why isn't anybody hyped? It's said that Prisoner Chang was a lucky guess, but even if the leaked roster is fake, I'm still more excited than I expected. Would you rather have a gorgeous game with 30 characters and the rest locked behind expensive DLC that you won't see in a while? Did we all forget what happened with XII and how destructive that game was? There are still delusional people who want to see sprites AND a huge roster. Not going to happen.
Let me refresh your memories by comparing the production of XII/XIII and what we know so far of XIV:
KOF XII/XIII:
- Took 6 years (from the planning of KOF12 in October 2005 until the console release of KOF13 in November 2011)
- Tons of work hours and a huge amount of money. It was their most expensive project ever
- A lot of stressed employees in awful work circumstances
- Regulation A2 was canceled, Falcoon has left the building
- Nona left the building. Old interview says the reason he was the art director was because he was the most consistent with quality output and the hardest worker
- Old IGN article hinted at the fact that XII was supposed to be released in 2007.
- Debut was Feb 2008, would have been released in the same year. Ended up getting delayed until April 2009 because not enough characters were completed.
- Arcade version bombed, didn't even enter the list of top revenues, something that KOF2001 managed to do
- Console version was released and pretty much everything was missing. Let me stress the fact that they needed to release a 60 dollar beta to survive. A 60 DOLLAR BETA. --I actually bought a PS3 for this game-- They didn't even properly patch the online, they moved on immediately to arcade XIII. Thanks for the quality 480p sprites and expensive music DLC though, SNKP. The datamined characters on the XII disc and K'/Mai portraits on the anniversary site also managed to piss people off.
- Arcade XIII was much closer to the intended product and is a good game
- After a long silence, console version is finally announced and YAY ON DISC DLC I LOVE YOU SNKP
- The game now has 36 playable characters that feature headswaps, some lacklustre movesets here and there and very conservative roster choices. Also, many animations from previous games are missing, they were clearly scraping the barrel.
- After XIII, almost everyone left the building and the gaming division was on the verge of getting shut down
- XIII finally achieved attention at Evo, but not because of the graphics because KOFXII was sharper and had more lighting effects
- XII was $60 new, XIII + 3 character DLC = $65. $125 combined.
And people still want sprites, after all this drama. Keep in mind that XII was made when sprite fighters were more common, at least there were more artists compared to now. They could have achieved more if they went with simplified shading like Arc does, because they achieved more with much less of a budget for the X/XX series. They severely underestimated the work it would take and it cost them big time. Fans should know by now that graphics aren't everything, they won't save a poor product with a painful lack of content.
SNKP would never be able to do KOF real justice if they continued with sprites and you know it. You have an autistic obsession with sprites if you think it's best for this company and the gamers to keep making 2D graphics.
KOF XIV:
- They were planning this game around July 2013 and development started full throttle in spring 2014. For convenience and to make a point, let's say it started in June 2013.
- They're going to release this game in 2016. I'll give you this as well, let's say December 2016.
- WE ARE GETTING 50 GODDAMN CHARACTERS WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED. It's confirmed that we're getting new characters as well, it won't be a high school reunion like XIII was. No retail exclusive on-disc pre-order season pass microtransaction Red Bull Subway social app BS. Even if there are EX head swap clones among them, that's one hell of a goddamn deal.
- Underwhelming graphics, looks last-gen
- First impressions are positive, the gameplay is ace and there are no complaints about the mechanics
- (Major) problems that could occur: some characters with poor movesets, poor netcode, not enough stages, not enough modes, balance issues, graphics aren't polished to an acceptable minimum level
They'll have achieved more in < 4 years, and that's being VERY generous, than XII/XIII did in 6 years. Even if the game was delayed, it would still offer way more content in a shorter period of time.
Now, I've been quite critical of SNKP in the past --Rhythm of Fighters is unplayable now, period. Can't even play it offline, it basically Ashed itself. A refund would be nice. MSD is also an expensive cluster fudge.-- I'm not a blind fanboy who defends SNKP on every whim, I tend to look at both the good and bad aspects of their products and try to rationalize it. Again, 50 fighters. No pre-order/on-disc/season pass nonsense like other companies do and yet they still get fellated by their degenerate fanbase.
Ask anyone who works in gaming development; creating high quality graphics/animations is the most expensive part of a project, especially with a 50-man roster. Why can't you focus on the good things? The characters don't seem to lack any moves because they're building on the foundation that XIII laid, it would be a giant waste to throw all of that away. Chang smashes people around the world with his Climax DM and still has his funny Wild Ball DM enders, they seem to do characters justice here. From what we've heard so far, we're also getting remixes of fan favorite themes and no doubt new tracks as well for the newly formed teams.
Many companies kicked the bucket in the HD era because they couldn't keep up with the rapidly increasing development costs and SNKP was on the brink of pushing daisies again BECAUSE THEY FOCUSED ON GRAPHICS TOO MUCH. Can you sprite loving spergs seriously blame SNKP for playing it safe now? You do remember what happened with SSF2T HD Remix, right? They started development with way too many color gradients and the game kept getting delayed over and over until Capcom Japan told them to decrease the amount of color detail so they could finally release the damn game.
Yes, the debut trailers were poor and I don't know what they were thinking revealing the game in that state and I don't blame people for having a bad first impression because I felt the same way, I'll give you that.
SNKP is making good moves here by making gameplay their top priority and it's not fair of people to disregard that because of the poor graphics. If you want to talk smack about the graphics, that's fine, but realize that there are alternatives where you get less quality for your buck and if you care so much about polygons then go play goddamn Clayfighter Street Fighter V that's made by a richer company but still looks like trash and barely has any fighters available. Oh, and enjoy the expensive DLC that you can't grind for that's coming your way. I detest awful DLC practices, but if SNKP released for example alternate costumes after the game was released I'd buy them without thinking twice because they already give so much value in the base game.
Call me a cheerleader, whatever. I'm just telling it like it is. Not saying that you should get on your knees and praise them blindly, but at least be fair with your criticism instead of going LOLOL PS1 GRAPHICS XD and saying "They don't know what they're doing" without goddamn explaining why. Discussions are so goddamn insufferable everywhere, it's all people talk about. The FGC is really filled with abused housewives who will buy yearly upgrades and on-disc scam products, but won't acknowledge a company that wants to give you a rich gameplay experience. I haven't said everything I wanted to yet but it's late and I'm tired so I'll just conclude this.
TLDR: The SNK community is niche enough as it is, and it's too bad that it's filled with ignorant jackasses (I'm being very polite here) who happen to be the loudest and most prominent as well. Be reasonable for a change, will you?
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| Maou 3002th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
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Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
    
    
    
  
| "beeves" , posted Fri 11 Dec 08:46:
Oh, I wouldn't be too sad. We just had a spike of about 300 visitors today based on a link on Neogaf alone, so I assume there are still stalwart fans out there somewhere, despite SNK's best efforts. Besides, this particular new thread is pretty positive.
As a rare non-KOF person at the Cafe, I've always observed the many years of criticism of hapless SNK as coming from the place of people who desperately want it to do well despite its exasperating failings. SNK is sort of like everyone's inept ne'er-do-well high school kid with a heart of gold, and these comments are parental and know best. I don't think the mean-spirited detractors you're looking for are here, though I'd be happy to fake it.
As another observation from outside the KOF fold, I can note that whether or not beautiful sprites or weak 3D are more viable business-wise, there's no way that KOFXIV as observed thus far is anything other than a graphical embarrassment. It does not matter if this graphical embarrassment took less time to make than previous games, better or worse. Other gaming options are delivering better and in less time, and the average player will not give a game a pass just because it had fewer resources. This is my reality check.
So why does this matter, especially if they're giving people a lot of characters? Because of a history of strong story- and character-centered atmosphere that uses good art as its vehicle, and because if KOFXIV wants to sell a single copy more than KOFXIII outside of low-spec machines in China, it needs to have characters who look like they're not from Tekken 3 achieve a minimum level of respectability and graphical appeal for people who don't have the many years of happy associations with these characters from better times. Put another way: why would the uninitiated, or anyone really, pay attention to it when there are a great many new fighters, both 2D and 3D, which also play well?
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 11 Dec 08:56] |
| Iggy 10072th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P Requiem
| "Re(1):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 10:09
I... appreciate what you're saying, TRK, but I also have the feeling you're generalizing a bit.
First, I don't think anyone is clamouring for the return to sprites in this particular Café. We're all aware of how the video game industry works in 2015, and we know that quality sprites is an even worse business decision now than 5 years ago (and it was already a pretty bad business decision then). The people here who champion XIII's looks do so because, even though it was a disaster for SNKP, it's still a graphical masterpiece. You also have to understand that many people here have studied arts for long enough to give a lot of importance to the visual aspect of things, which is an area where SNK used to excel into. I think most of the Café was positive on XII's look, including Athena and Ralf/Clark. We were quite the minority.
The distinction you need to make is between pretty graphics and artistic mastery. No one here wants the game to look like most modern fighters, MKX, SF5 or KI, because these games, even though they have modern graphics, are aesthetically terrible. SF4's overwhelming ugliness will not be easily forgotten, regardless of the amount of polygons each character had. Are the textures of KOF14 improving? Yes. Is it going to fix the fact that their lead 3D artist doesn't have enough skill to tell the story of a character through his motions? Never, and that point is viewed as paramount by some of us here. No amount of money can cover for lack of aesthetic education, and it doesn't seem the game has that much of a budget to begin with.
Speaking of, nobody is talking about the backgrounds, but let's be honest here. We need to prepare for the worst, right? Like, NGBC-tragic? I don't want to think about it. I fell like playing 99 now.
Indeed, 50 characters is huge and all. 2002UM had, what, 60? More? Good. Mugen has more. We're past the point of wanting big rosters for free in KOF. I think everyone agrees that sizing down to 16 is a good thing for SF5, even though most fan-favourite didn't make it. Not only because it allows the game to be prettier, but also because it allows the game to be more focused. A new KOF cannot get customers with roster alone: it needs to give a reason to play the new game over 2002UM. 13 had amazing art direction. 11 had the crazy tag system. 98 and 2002 are better games. Even 2000 and 2001 try interesting things with their mechanics, and 2000 is gorgeous. Maybe 14 will be a better game as well, but until the game is finalized a cautious approach is not a bad idea.
You're allowed to be enthusiastic, no fashion police is going to gun you down, but the concerns many people have voiced in the Café are reasonable as well. Jojo ASB had 41 brand new characters, plus their stands, amazing 3D models, a rather good graphic design, but still ended up being a mediocre fighting game. Its only quality over Miraihe no Isan is the formidable roster. And KOF cannot have a formidable roster in a world where 2002UM exists. That's the problem with raising the bar too high (and the same thing happens to Jojo EOH now: it has 54 characters, but after ASB it's just "OK" and "We need at least 10 characters more"). Meanwhile, Smash needs Cloud to have people talk about it again.
The main reason old fans are unimpressed by KOF 14 is that they are not hungry for new shiny things at any price. They're old enough to remember the good old games, and they know that, if KOF14 underdelivers, they can still play these games from the past which still play perfectly fine now. What KOF14 needs to do is to convince us that it has qualities beyond its roster, that it outperforms the old games on at least some areas, and it hasn't for the moment. It doesn't mean we're not going to buy the game at launch to make up our own opinion, it means the reason that allow you to be excited for the game just aren't there for people with different perspectives.
On a personal note, I have never understood the serious KOF players. Probably because I'm old, but KOF has always been the vulgar cash-in that got popular by dumbing-down fine mechanics and bastardizing characters. No one from South Town got any better when appearing in KOF, and several characters actually suffered severe brain damage (Mai, Joe, Yamazaki, the Sakazaki family...). Then, when they finally made everyone into a moron, they started doing the same to their own characters (Poor Athena, Shermie catching people with her boobs...).
My main issue is: if one wants to play a mechanically solid fighter, why not pick RB2? KOF is fun, it has some great characters, but it's a game that needs the help of the visuals and the atmosphere to be enjoyed along with friends. Focusing on the mechanics never made it any good in a world where at least 3 Fatal Fury games are more solid than all KOF released between 94 and 2003. And I don't even like FF! And then we could also play SSS, SS0S or games made by other companies... KOF really needs all of its most superficial aspects if it wants to earn a place on the sofa. SNKP should have called it a day and turned NGBC into its own series. Actually, I think I would have been more excited if KOF14 had been NGBC2 with 50 characters from the whole SNK legacy. When you're dumb, you need to go dumb all the way.
You could say "but the company needs to keep making games, and KOF is their most popular franchise, you want the company to die!" and I would answer "SNK died in 2001. SNKP is a different company. I do not care much for it, sorry".
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| nobinobita 1523th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(1):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 11:09
quote:
I understand that my positivity is like Charlie Sheen's to some people here, but whatever, I'll just say my thing because I didn't expect KOFXIV discussions in the cafe to be so depressing. This bothers me the most because this board has been around for so long and there are barely any dedicated forums (or people) left to discuss this game. I didn't think it would turn out like this. I started following SNK games fanatically since my cousin hooked me up with an emulator in 2002 and have been a fan ever since and bought many of their products, so I'm not a longtime fan as most of you people are. But still, there are many of you here and on other sites who are in serious need of a reality check.
This is such a stupid situation that spans across multiple sites and communities, normally I'd use more profanity and address people specifically, but I respect the Professor for all the work he has done during all these years for the SNK community and I don't want to ruin the mood here too much. Besides, my years of arguing on the internet are a thing of the past, it's way too stressful.
I've said before that gameplay matters more than graphics, but most SNKP fans turned into a bunch of pathetic casuals/Twitch chat trolls who only harp about the looks (that are improving every time it appears in public) and don't even bother to talk about the fact that we get 50 goddamn fighters. It's barely acknowledged, exactly what the inebriated Christ is going on? We all love SNK characters,
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
If it makes you feel any better, I earnestly, from the bottom of my heart think that Street Fighter V has infinitely more offensive art than KOF14. Most of my friends are super pumped for that game too, while ragging on KOF14, so I also feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
I used to get super worked up bout these franchises, but as Iggy has pointed out, if the games don't appeal to me, I can always just go back to the old ones.
I used to have a sense of loyalty to these franchises. But then I realised, the people who actually made the games I cared about aren't around anymore. For instance, Street Fighter V is the first time a SF game has an art lead that never worked under Akiman or anyone trained by Akiman. I care more about the individual careers of Akiman, Okamoto and Ikeno than Capcom as a company. So as long as they are up to new and interesting things I'll be happy.
When I think about following creators instead of brands, I actually feel a lot less jaded!
www.art-eater.com
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| kofoguz 1204th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(2):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 13:38
Oh boy! Everybody has real solid arguments here. TRK I understand you and your points about DLC con. I also hate to hear when people ignorantly want Capcom to buy SNK to keep the IP's alive, or they needed to have XRD style. If I had a dime everytime I see it on some comment, I would be a millionaire now. And I consider myself ignorant. I have no real knowledge how companies run. Still dont know who is who and so on. I only know what I observe from this cafe and other sources I like to follow. Even I know Capcom wont be interested in other IP's their own gems are buried in deep. And XRD style is easy when you have 12-14 characters. And they just add two more characters and voila it's a sequel. It doesnt work for KOF. I know this as a fact as much as any fighting game fan. KOF XII did exactly that. Real fancy sprite work and had around 22 characters and everybody was up in arms. I migt told it before If it was any other fighter, it might be considered as a masterpiece. Think about Garou MOTW2 with the same roster number in glorious sprite art. It doesnt even have to have a story or a boss. Instant hit! Or any other Fighting IP; AOF, WH, LB, SS. They would be definitely put as masterpiece, not a barebones lackluster! So as a KOF fan I wished they didnt do a ambitious HD sprite project with KOF. Oh and by the way I rather have Yoshi's Wooly World's art direction than XRD one. Yes Xrd is beautiful and such but I want different titles to introduce different art styles.
Also I understand your frustration because of other forums. I lurk in NeoGaf and it was really annoying to see 16 pages of "OMG, graphic sucks"posts that insistingly blocking "Ok, they suck we know can we allowed to talk about other aspects we are interested in" posts. I was also wondering what members here meant by "producer sounds like he doesnt know what he is doing" comment but then guess comment was about the producer talking about things with so "big doe eyed" attitude and kind of wishful thinking. I loved producers ambitious stance and am happy that finally SNKP has a spokesperson again since Falcoon.
I agree with about backgrounds. And I care about them. I hated how SVC has thematically right, when looked at standalone each is beautiful style backgrounds become extremely boring when you see deserted environments again and again and again. NGBC also have similar taste though not everything is ruined, still have deserted backgrounds except for a few cameos and cool cool toon bg. But I dont agree on the 99 backgrounds. I think background had a spirit fitting to the game. Rainy stage is a masterpiece. The worst one for me the museum one and I love it dearly because it fits with the theme.In KOFXIV I am sorry but other than the Aquarium one, none of the stages are promising. The first one is a hot mess and the stadium one looks like a bad copy of previous stadium stage. It lacks theme, color and liveliness. Also mostly crowded with unnecessary details. But this all can change.
It's crazy how awful and ugly SFIV's art direction and how it was accepted as ok. I do like SFV's better because I like stop motion. But I am not studying art like Nobinata, after tasting mud of SFIV I can see no problem/difference with the SFV's sugarcoated mud! But KOFXII sprites were bludgeon to death by FGC.
KOF had peaked in different aspects but not at the same time.
-Graphics were beautiful in 94-96 and XII-XIII.
-We have tourney worthy games 98-02-XIII and the UMs.
-We have champions of roster size in each iteration except for KOF XII. Still the smallest roster size title was still the champion of its time.
-Also we have even nicher fan fovurite titles such as 97, 99, 03 and XI. We never had it all at the same time. The closest thing was KOFXIII it had graphics, gameplay, story and roster. Roster was still considered missing since no exclusively new characters were introduced.
But one thing that they excel is characters, their interaction with each other and relation to the story.Those little details. The moment I understand Mai is in love with Andy. The wedding dress. That is what KOF does best and dont think any other fighting game (company) is no wehere close yet.
So in short, to tell you the truth at first I wasnt excited when I see the trailer.Because I dont like 3D like I love 2D. I am not an expert player so even though I was superglad the gameplay is focused (no expert, yes, but it needs to play like KOF) the excitement werent there yet. What made me excited was Chang's Climax move. Finally they're using that wedding dress. Now I am excited what kind of details we will see. Also really wondering how much they can fix the graphics. Angel gives me more optimistic stance.
Also I wonder what is next. There is a 3D Samurai Spirits coming (garou as well? ). So they need to dip on 3D eventually to excel on it. But I still want some 2D masterpiece. SNK can do it seeing how crazily unstable and unpredictable they are. Creat a new IP (Geese's own fighting game as the young hero) or pick an existing IP. Just have graphically cutting edge 8 characters and sell new ones as DLC. They deserve it.
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
How I wish to see NGBC back T_T
End of Spoiler
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| Spoon 3167th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 13:55
I am 100% with following IPs/brands even if the original creators aren't involved, because it has been demonstrated that others are capable of adding interesting new things to the world/setting/characters/whatever established by the original creators. The IP/brand defines a certain flavor that the thing will have that I want. It certainly sets expectations, both in terms of kind of experience and quality.
Example 1:
The ArcSys Hokuto No Ken game clearly had no new writing from Buronson, did not feature a single new piece of art from Tetsuo Hara, and did not have any new music from either TOM*CAT or Nozomi Aoki. None of them are even listed in the ending credits as a special thanks. But that game was 100% awesome, both as a fan of crazy fighting games and as a fan of HnK. In fact, I wouldn't have loved it half as much if I wasn't the rabid HnK fanboy I was.
Example 2:
Jagi Gaiden is neither written nor drawn by Buronson or Tetsuo Hara. Jagi Gaiden is singularly the best contribution to HnK after the original TV anime, both in terms of recasting how we look at Jagi as well as in being a fascinating fusion of seinen/shounen. Maybe 2nd best, depending on how fondly I am thinking about MARVELOUS DEADLY FIST BLOW KOs.
Example 3:
Counter-Strike GO was made without the founder of Counter-Strike, Gooseman. It has been a significant upgrade to Counter-Strike, even including its missteps.
Example 4:
None of the Devil May Cry sequels were made with Kamiya at the helm. Devil May Cry 3 is roundly considered the best overall entry in the series, and it was not made by the Devil May Cry 1 team, Kamiya, nor the same art directors. On the flip side, the art director of DMC3 was Ikeno, which means that if all you ever did was follow Ikeno, you still would've gotten around to playing DMC3. Dante in each of DMC1, 3, and 4 was designed by a different person, but they all maintain an essential Dante-ness, even when somebody as notable as Ikeno is not the one handling his design.
So I think there absolutely is value in following an IP or brand that you care about when they have quite historically produced a lot of good things, even with different people. Different people, including previously unheard of people, can absolutely bring something new and good into the thing, even when it is no longer part of the original artist's oeuvre. Following specific creators has plenty of value, but doing so exclusively also has the possibility of narrowing your horizons in the way that just following the IP/brand could.
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| Spoon 3168th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 14:14
quote:
The IP/brand defines a certain flavor that the thing will have that I want. It certainly sets expectations, both in terms of kind of experience and quality.
To follow my own point in a manner which hasn't already been elaborately and exhaustively examined above, I'd say the literal one-word way of looking at the most reactions to the new KOF is "uncharitable".
In a very literal sense, it's 100% accurate, because the one time we were charitable with KOF was with 2001 because the company had literally just be resurrected and had no time and no money to kick out a KOF. But we do not expect to need to be charitable with KOF, we expect KOF to wow us with its own merits, of which it has historically had many. Especially recently, KOF redefined its own standards of artistic excellence in a huge positive way, and now we have to be charitable with how it has redefined its artistic standards in a huge negative way.
We are not happy with needing to be charitable with KOF.
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| Professor 4698th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(4):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Fri 11 Dec 20:54:
Whoa, a lot of talk has been going on during the past half a day!
I can feel the SNK Love in the air!
OK, so talking about aesthetics, here's a food of thought to crunch on.
...What if you were told that the staff working on KOF XIV's character motions is a guy that did them for the Street Fighter 4 series?
...What if you were told that the same guy did character sprite art for games as old as Fatal Fury 1 in the ye old NeoGeo days?
It's just an intriguing thought that a pixel artist from the old days did those tweened motions in SF4 and now he's doing them for SNKP.
Either way, I think there's enough seasoned graphic devs at SNKP right now who realize their game in its current state is artistically subpar to modern games, and I'm sure the renderings will be improved over time and over the course of additional iterations. In that sense, it seems plausible to think of KOF XIV as the Windows Vista for the next batch of KOFs. It might end up being bad, but it'll still be the stepping stone for XV or XVI where things will be more refined.
Let's be honest; making 50 characters in just 2 years of development time is plain crazy. Personally, I'll be picking up the game regardless of quality to support the company so that they can make a better version on their next release but it's still hard to keep a blind eye on its current state of graphics. I just hope that the netcode isn't as bad as before, otherwise with its new Easy Beat combo system Rush combo system, it could very well end up being the next Jojo ASB where you have a bunch of popular characters but all you do is just keep jumping and mashing the square button with top tiers because things are so laggy.
quote:
On a personal note, I have never understood the serious KOF players.
I can probably explain this.
In general, many of the core players, at least in the Japanese scene, don't care about the characters. They see them as something akin to chess peices to see who's the best at playing the games. That's why character-specific players are so rare and most people pick top tiers. In that sense, they have a mindset that's really matching with E-sports and it may sort of help in explaining why they often win tournaments in other fighting games.
There's still a pretty hardcore player base for the Fatal Fury series here, but comparing them to KOF is sort of like apples and oranges at this day in age because the game mechanics and player mentality are quite different.
[this message was edited by Professor on Fri 11 Dec 21:36] |
| Ishmael 5341th Post
PSN: Ishmael26b
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 03:00
Good grief, there's a lot of material in this thread. First off thanks to everyone who took the time and energy to contribute, it made for engaging reading. Since I'm writing this while working on other matters my thoughts are going to be much more disjointed and brief than these posts deserve. Sorry about that.
KoF XIV: As far as gameplay goes I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about XIV which is a massive improvement from the debut. The new game mechanics sound like they could be fun and the positive early reports are encouraging. Many things can happen between now and the release date but I at least can now see what they are trying to make. Still, those good points are never going to overshadow the sloppy visuals. I realize that the producers are going for quantity over quality at this point but it's frustrating that more often than not KoF games are built on compromises.
I also hope that those in charge are thinking about how the distribution of fighting games have changed. The vague comments about public balance tests and unknown tournament support are a bit worrying. Simply tossing the game onto shelves and waiting to see if it sinks or swims isn't a sound strategy anymore. If they are smart SNKP is looking at how modern game companies are supporting their fighters in both positive (the willingness of NRS to constantly tweak their games) and negative (the constant patching of NRS games drives players bananas since they are never playing the same game twice) ways.
quote:
I am 100% with following IPs/brands even if the original creators aren't involved, because it has been demonstrated that others are capable of adding interesting new things to the world/setting/characters/whatever established by the original creators. The IP/brand defines a certain flavor that the thing will have that I want. It certainly sets expectations, both in terms of kind of experience and quality.
This is probably another topic for another thread but I do agree with this sentiment. Seeing new interpretations of familiar work can be really interesting. While I appreciate the contributions that the creators of a material provide I'm also not going to automatically discount something just because it's being done by others. It would be like dismissing that [url=https://youtu.be/-Gbs67ApxL4
]Batman of Shanghai short because Bill Finger wasn't personally involved. Collaborative mediums, be it movies, comics, video games or whatever, is often a shared rather than singular vision. While I greatly enjoy following the work of artists I also like seeing how their creations live on. There's no one correct way to appreciate artistic expression.
Going along with that, there's no one way to enjoy a fighting game. It's a shame I'm probably not going to be able to enjoy the visual aspect of KoF XIV since it looks rough and will never get better. Still, I'm hoping for fun character moments, a game engine that's can be monkeyed around with and maybe some interesting tournaments to watch. Speaking of which...
quote:
In general, many of the core players, at least in the Japanese scene, don't care about the characters. They see them as something akin to chess peices to see who's the best at playing the games. That's why character-specific players are so rare and most people pick top tiers. In that sense, they have a mindset that's really matching with E-sports and it may sort of help in explaining why they often win tournaments in other fighting games.
That's an interesting observation. It helps explain that why a game with such a large roster is often played in such a mercenary way. The promises of a 50 character roster sounds great but I know that most tournaments are going to feature teams of Iori and two other overpowered assholes. Oh well, as was noted earlier tournament play is only one part of the equation when it comes to fighting games.
In the end I don't know much of anything other than that KoF needs to take a hike and NGBC 2 should be green-lit.
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| Fygee 1220th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(5):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 04:16
quote:
Whoa, a lot of talk has been going on during the past half a day!
I can feel the SNK Love in the air!
OK, so talking about aesthetics, here's a food of thought to crunch on.
...What if you were told that the staff working on KOF XIV's character motions is a guy that did them for the Street Fighter 4 series?
...What if you were told that the same guy did character sprite art for games as old as Fatal Fury 1 in the ye old NeoGeo days?
It's just an intriguing thought that a pixel artist from the old days did those tweened motions in SF4 and now he's doing them for SNKP.
Either way, I think there's enough seasoned graphic devs at SNKP right now who realize their game in its current state is artistically subpar to modern games, and I'm sure the renderings will be improved over time and over the course of additional iterations. In that sense, it seems plausible to think of KOF XIV as the Windows Vista for the next batch of KOFs. It might end up being bad, but it'll still be the stepping stone for XV or XVI where things will be more refined.
Let's be honest; making 50 characters in just 2 years of development time is plain crazy. Personally, I'll be picking up the game regardless of quality to support the company so that they can make a better version on their next release but it's still hard to keep a blind eye on its current state of graphics. I just hope that the netcode isn't as bad as befor
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
I will say that I haven't seen anyone complain about the animations, and they look pretty damn solid to me.
Really, I think the biggest thing they need to work on is the character's faces. The rest of the models (aside from the hair) look fine to me, and the textures on their clothes also look perfectly fine. If they can fix the faces and add some detailed textures to them, then problem solved.
Some other things like improved lighting effects would be gravy, but as long as they get the graphical mashed potatoes right, I'll be a happy camper.
First post here in many years by the way. :P
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| sibarraz 561th Post
PSN: DefensorVirtuoso
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
New Red Carpet Member
| "Re(6):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 11:32
I feel like some of the criticism really comes from the new fans that the saga made after the release of KOF XII, which was the first entry of the series to get a relative "mainstream" success and it was the first try of lots of players who never knew, or cared for the saga. That being said, those criticism are spot on, the game truly felts like something made quick, and until we don't see the 50 characters, that excuse will not work either if all the fighters are as ugly as Andy.
In the other hand, this last PSX really rised my hopes for the game since the game actually looked fun with polished mechanics (unlike xii) and some new characters looked better that the original release, so I'm still hoping that in later stages of developments will be capable of at least releasing something that would have looked great on the last gen. In the end I don't care for others people feelings, I will start to worry if the core of SNK fanbase hates the game since that could be the final nail in the coffin of SNK "traditional" game development.
In other topic, I recently bought the Neo Geo Humble Bundle, since SNKP released KOF 2002UM/98 UM I was expecting to see some humble bundle from snk with some steam games, but I never expected to see a release with lots of roms with their own front end and without steam. even less a neo geo emulator built for browser.
In one hand, the the roms had little to no work on it. It was really only putting the nebula emulator with a rom downloaded from a torrent and a frontend where you don't have many option. You can't even map the buttons which could be a little confusing since the layout that they used for they keyboards isn't a traditional one (The D button is alone in the second row of the keyboard, upside the other 3 botons)
Even though this could be a deal breaker for me, I still think that this bundle is awesome, just for the fact that FINALLY snk made a collection with the best of their catalog without using the same games from 1990-1994 that they ALWAYS include on those packages or releases from now plataforms.
It was a nice surprise to see games like Twinkle Star Sprites, Sengoku 3, Shock Troopers, and Neo Turf Masters, plus the release for the first time outside the Neo Geo of SSV SPECIAL. If you want to show to a friend how great and special the catalogue of the console was, I think that this bundle will be a great choice since all the games included are great.
I even felt in love again with the company, the last time I left to a side the neo geo games because I wanted to play newer experiences, but this bundle made me replay some masterpieces that I shouldn't had ignored.
Also, the games are well emulated, the metal slug games run better on Nebula that in the Awful steam ports that DotEmu did for Steam and Iphone
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| Gojira 3157th Post
PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(7):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 14:27
Apologies to the other hardworking cafe-ers in this thread; as much as I'd love to join in the conversation about whether or not to be mean to KoFXIV, I'm too lazy to write walls of text about my analysis of old SNK, SNKP or KoFXIV. It'll have to suffice to say that my confidence in the game is a work in progress that started low with the initial trailer.
With that out of the way, I'd now like to go back to that interview to highlight this:
quote:
- Are you keeping KOF98 and KOF2002 in mind when doing that? Those two games are well praised by hardcore players.
Yes, and of course KOF13 as well. Although let's be honest, when you play KOF98 now, you realize that its controls aren't really that great (laughs).
What...? Of all the criticisms that have ever been leveled at KoF98, this is by far the newest and strangest one to me. I've heard "unbalanced," "buggy," even the occasional "ugly" but bad controls? I wish the interviewer had prodded this statement a little more before moving on because when a person important to the future of KoF says something like this about one of the best in the series, you kind of want to understand where it's coming from. Is this based on some known consensus of the game in Japan that I'm not aware of?
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| Professor 4698th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(8):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 15:42
quote:
What...? Of all the criticisms that have ever been leveled at KoF98, this is by far the newest and strangest one to me. I've heard "unbalanced," "buggy," even the occasional "ugly" but bad controls? I wish the interviewer had prodded this statement a little more before moving on because when a person important to the future of KoF says something like this about one of the best in the series, you kind of want to understand where it's coming from.
I was scratching my head over this one too, but I think it's for small reasons, like how players needed to pull off some tricks for even basic combos, like holding on to a button so that special moves won't come out when you did a certain motion. The hitstops (cancelable window) were quite short too, at least by today's standards.
Then again KOF13's basic combos weren't nessesarily easy either. I don't think the producer's played much of 13 at all though, so he may not know. I do wonder how good his understanding of the games are though, compared to some other dev staffs that they have. Keep in mind that Hee Sam Woo who was semi-finalist at one of the EVO tournaments is an employee at the company.
I'm a bit relieved that some people mentioned how the backgrounds are stale in kof14! Personally I feel there's no depth compression and things in the background look way too alienated from the player characters. Another thing, despite how KOF13's stages were criticized a lot for the obese spectators, I still loved the way they moved so well. And especially the animals, like the Tucan and lizards in the Jungle stage. Animals have always been animated so well in the KOF series like the chickens back in 97.
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| Toxico 5989th Post
PSN: Toxic-Baron
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
|  "Re(8):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 15:45
quote:
What...? Of all the criticisms that have ever been leveled at KoF98, this is by far the newest and strangest one to me. I've heard "unbalanced," "buggy," even the occasional "ugly" but bad controls? I wish the interviewer had prodded this statement a little more before moving on because when a person important to the future of KoF says something like this about one of the best in the series, you kind of want to understand where it's coming from. Is this based on some known consensus of the game in Japan that I'm not aware of?
The KoF controls have some pretty embarrassing history across the game eras; one of the main things that it's completely impossible to forget is that when you move behind the enemy at high speed (like running behind a jump or behind a roll); the controls "replicate"(for example, if you hold db to press a weak kick, the machine "assumes" that you are holding db and df at the same time). When you are good, that happens all the time (since it's an opportunity to combo from light kicks); and it's hard as hell to get what you want because the machine creates whatever direction it feels like; if your character has a df slide or a HCF or a dp or a d, d move with the button you are using, you are royally screwed and needs tons of practice to reduce the randomness and it's impossible to negate it.
There are a bunch of other stupid nuisances like that (like 1f normal throws eating up control inputs even when they don't actually throw).
さっきの感じならあと100発はもつ‥‥と思うぜ
Update 24 as of 03/04/12. // 104 personajes traducidos
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Last update : Chapter 25 as of 31/08/12
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| Doshin
79th Post
Occasional Customer
| "Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 19:03
quote:
If they're aiming at new fans they're using a totally wrong strategy, since the graphics looks terrible
Even the KOF fans AND developers realize this.quote:
and a cast of 50 playable characters could be very disorienting.
How is it "disorienting"? Especially when there's KOF2k2UM.quote:
making XIV with recicled sprites from XII-XIII adding just 5-6 characters would have been a better option than what they're doing now...
They could, but do you realize how long it takes just to make one character sprite set? Do you also understand what little payoff it would be to hold off a game for AT LEAST two years just to have maybe 9 new characters at best when not only is dot art a niche thing despite the hipster trend, but the fact that KOF was considered by many a casual crowd "too hard" that it was rather off-putting to them, making KOF less viable financially? At least consider the more realistic point of view, here.
quote:
they need to deliver that now like never before: they need new cool characters to attract new fans as well as old favourites for their loyal fanbase. At this point I'm afraid they can't do that, the characters in XIV right now looks too generic and lost much of their original charisma...
...All we've seen are a handful of returning members. This just goes back to the remark about graphics.
quote:
The point is not how many characters you can deliver but the quality of the characters in itself as well as how much the rooster looks cohesive.
True, and you can't really expect much cohesiveness in a KOF game, since KOF games are notoriously large rosters. On the other hand, I admit I do miss those times back in 94 where teams were split up by nationality, even if some were questionable.
Are you drinking, by the way?
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| Professor 4699th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sat 12 Dec 19:04
quote:
Hello, I'm a long time lurker =D
Regarding KoF XIV what bothers me is that it's not clear what they're aiming for.
If they're aiming at new fans they're using a totally wrong strategy, since the graphics looks terrible and a cast of 50 playable characters could be very disorienting.
If they're aiming at the old school fans I think they got it totally wrong. Speaking as a fan of the character and the story aspects of the game, the KoF CR pachislot looks a million times more appealing than XIV, and that's ironically sad...
In my opinion making XIV with recicled sprites from XII-XIII adding just 5-6 characters would have been a better option than what they're doing now...
One of the main strenght point of KoF was the ability to deliver a rooster with a mix of old fan favorites as well as new cool characters. XII-XIII failed in this regard, since we had just one inedited character and two newcomers from the original Fatal Fury... they need to deliver that now like never before: they need new cool characters to attract new fans as well as old favourites for their loyal fanbase. At this point I'm afraid they can't do that, the characters in XIV right now looks too generic and lost much of their original charisma...
The point is not how many characters you can deliver but the quality of the characters in itself as well as how much the rooster looks cohesive.
Welcome to the MMCafe BBS Doctor!
Hope you like it here.
Also, I should say welcome back to Fygee as well!
Personally, the thing with KOF13 was that the game brought me back with its graphics. The Fatal Fury and AOF characters felt as skinny as toothpicks in the traditional KOF graphics, but in 13 they felt a lot more like their original games. In that sense, I'm wondering how they'll look in KOF14 after reading the interview.
quote:
There are a bunch of other stupid nuisances like that (like 1f normal throws eating up control inputs even when they don't actually throw).
I never realized this. Was it situational?
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| The Doctor
1th Post
New Customer
| "Re(2):Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is goin" , posted Sat 12 Dec 20:38
quote:
How is it "disorienting"? Especially when there's KOF2k2UM
I was talking about new fans, I specificated that in the first post
quote:
They could, but do you realize how long it takes just to make one character sprite set? Do you also understand what little payoff it would be to hold off a game for AT LEAST two years just to have maybe 9 new characters at best when not only is dot art a niche thing despite the hipster trend, but the fact that KOF was considered by many a casual crowd "too hard" that it was rather off-putting to them, making KOF less viable financially? At least consider the more realistic point of view, here.
My point was that right now their not having any payoff for their choice, since they got all that negative feedback on the internet right now, they're doing just a bit better than the XII fiasco... XII was defended by die hard fans for the beauty of its graphics, XIV for the large rooster and the gameplay. General public is bashing it and I don't see in which way it can attract casual gamers right now, if that was their target...
I'm not a great fan of XII-XIII art style, I was saying that what they're doing is so bad that it was better to recicle sprites. By the way they kept the franchise on hold for five years now so what I was saying was reasonable, 5-6 new characters means draw one character per year...
Of course right now the best option is going 3D, but not like this
quote:
...All we've seen are a handful of returning members. This just goes back to the remark about graphics.
Yes, we've seen only returning characters, some have being redisgned (Iori, Andy, Chang) and to me they look generic/boring, just my opinion.
quote:
Are you drinking, by the way?
No, if I wrote something weird it's beacuse English is not my first language and it's actually very hard to express myself...
quote:
Welcome to the MMCafe BBS Doctor!
Hope you like it here.
Thank you Professor!
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| Maou 3004th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Let's go to South Town" , posted Sun 13 Dec 03:56:
quote:
No, if I wrote something weird it's beacuse English is not my first language and it's actually very hard to express myself...
Not to worry, probably around 50% of the Cafe is non-native English speakers, and it works great! It's particularly apt for this thread, since from what I can tell, one of the things that originally drew people from far and wide to the Cafe is a shared love for SNK. At 5,500+ views in two days, this new thread seems to fit the bill.
quote:
If they're aiming at new fans they're using a totally wrong strategy, since the graphics looks terrible and a cast of 50 playable characters could be very disorienting.
As someone who only knows Samurai Spirits and Metal Slug, I'd agree. I've traditionally felt the tug of KOF despite it seeming overwhelming as an outsider because of the beautiful art and the characters people seem to love, but here I just see a slew of characters who all look ugly. Even the gorgeousness of Guilty Gear is incomprehensible to my Street Fighter- and Soul Calibur 1&2-adled mind, so what hope does KOFXIV in expanding its audience in this state?
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Sun 13 Dec 03:58] |
| Mrkarate23
4th Post
New Customer
| "Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is going on?" , posted Sun 13 Dec 08:50:
While I admire snkp effort put into kof xii and xiii, I don't see how reusing the sprite will be a better option. Is any of you expecting to sell better than xiii? The last sales figure for kof xiii was its debut sales in japan which was 21,525 on the ps3, we have no clue what it sold elsewhere. The whole blazblue series as of 2012 sold 1.7 million across a couple games means one game sold more than what kof xiii sold. It took six years to get to kof xiii. Even then several characters were unfinished, most win pose were static, no special intro.I am playing older kofs and they feel more a live than kof xiii. Are you telling that snkp can go back and work on the 36 characters on top of the 9 new characters. Who is to say snkp won't cut corners. The kof xiv made with sprites will still be sub hd and with the standards of fighters much higher now, this is not go flying without the game costing less than 30. Tekken 7, SF V, MK X, Smash 4 are running at 1080p 60 fps, besides fans why would people want less for their gaming hardware. The chance of it getting with evo as a main game when games like SFV, Sf IV, MVC3U, Smash 4, Meele, MKX. KI, GG XRD, Tekken 7 are just as viable. Is snkp going to address that the game was hard for new comers to the series. I don't see this as a better choice its just as bad.
If kof xiv had less characters I don't think it would look better. The major fighting game makers in japan are all using unreal engine, snkp is not.Unless they gets unreal engine 4 and more skills programmers, you have to be delusional to think it look any where near SFV or Tekken 7. The older kofs were colorful it popped out, i want to see vibrant colors in kof xiv and not this wash out look. Sknp still needs to apply lighting and shaders. Snkp wants to attract new audience, but they don't have
tools or staff to make it look the competition. If they cancel this game its not like they are going to sprites. Outside of mobile games what else are they good for beside being dead. This what they decided and i hope they are serious enough for the challenges that will face them. I hope they considered releasing a betas to test the netcode and flesh out the single player elements, and be active in the tournament scene. They need to be confident in their product.
[this message was edited by Mrkarate23 on Sun 13 Dec 10:25] |
| Doshin
80th Post
Occasional Customer
| "Re(3):Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is goin" , posted Sun 13 Dec 10:45
quote:
My point was that right now their not having any payoff for their choice, since they got all that negative feedback on the internet right now, they're doing just a bit better than the XII fiasco... XII was defended by die hard fans for the beauty of its graphics, XIV for the large rooster and the gameplay. General public is bashing it and I don't see in which way it can attract casual gamers right now, if that was their target...
You must understand that it is in really extremely early development, compared to our first previews of KOFXII. So what we see is of course going to be trashed. It's sad that they decided to show it so early, but it seems like Sony has something to do with it, in my opinion.
If they were to go the sprite route, they would simply add in maybe 6 characters, and take a couple years of development time to manage such a feat. On top of that, ratings board submissions and test phases and publishing. That's a lot of time that uses up a thing called money, and these devs aren't getting paid by commission, they're getting paid by the length of time (which is also why deadlines are often in place). It's also time they're not making money from it by not having released the game, yet.
SNKPlaymore (or whoever is overlooking the budgeting), I imagine, looked at and weighed the two options and decided which would be more cost effective in the long run. It's as simple as that. It's all about optimizing workload/time and money. They can roll out KOF with 50 characters, very good graphics (eventually) and nice gameplay in the same amount of time, maybe less, that they would have to be able to add in a handful of new sprites for KOF, with less of a budget than doing the latter and easier post-production fine-tuning. It's also highly modular when it comes to 3d graphics due to use of vectors rather than pixels, which is not the case for pure raster graphics. So when the next generation comes up, they can up the amount of geometry, make the appropriate tweaks and refurbish the textures, and voila. Also, they can learn how to manage shaders better in their offtime which is an excellent thing to learn for stylistic purposes. They can later find a way to build a synthesis algorithm that takes all the above, and rasterizes the images appropriately and make 2d sprites from that. You just can't get that flexibility with sprites alone.
As for what kind of fans they're looking for, I'm sure they're looking specifically at the KOF fans, casual and hardcore. They appear to be somewhat aware that KOF is still a niche franchise compared to giants like SF and Tekken. At the same time, they don't want to add only a few more characters and then it turns out it still doesn't attract the casual crowd because it looks like pixel-based games from the PS2 era to them, or that it's too hard still. It sucks, but them's the ropes.
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| Spoon 3172th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is goin" , posted Mon 14 Dec 05:14
quote:
One last thing to take into consideration regarding "what is SNKP aiming at": China.
Everyone has pointed at the fact the game is still very early in development. Yet the loadings are surprisingly fast for an alpha version (especially if it loads all 6 characters in one go).
So I wouldn't be surprised if the ugliness of the graphics were not only because of lack of skills, but also because the framework of the project is "the game must run on any computer able to run LoL".
Because let's be honest: SNKP doesn't need to make a game that appeal to the US (or even Japan)'s tastes. The game would cost ten times more and would only sell a couple dozen thousands without creating any growth for the franchise. Evo is a nice little thing, but they won't make a living there.
China, on the other hand? They probably have more potential customers there than Street Fighter worldwide. And I'm not sure how many computers in China can run SF5 decently.
I know I hit this point before, because another mmcafer immediately pointed out that the game has only been announced for PS4 so far. There has been no announcement of it for any other platform, namely PC and mobile. Now, maybe the premium market audience which actually owns PS4s somehow aligns with the same age demographic that actually cared about KOF, that's entirely possible and not something I know the numbers for. But at this moment, no PC/mobile announcement to me reads as limited initial interest in the game in China.
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| Spoon 3173th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):People's Republic of Fighters" , posted Mon 14 Dec 08:14
quote:
Remember how much you loved seeing KoF96 sprites for years? Well, get ready because you ain't seen nothing yet!
The irony is that the current competitive games which are super-popular and on PC pretty actually have done visual overhauls for their old characters in the game over the years. World-beater League of Legends recently did so for one of their oldest and most neglected characters. DOTA2's crowdfunded prizepool for the world championship included a vote on which character would receive a visual update, which wound up being quite underwhelming in spite of a few laughs it gave us. The funniest thing of all? After the characters have gotten visual re-works, old cosmetics you bought for them either get busted, feel sub-par, or get deprecated. In some cases, you'll have people intentionally rocking a skin that makes them look like their old ugly selves.
This is actually happening right now:
In the year 20XX, somebody will, in a deliberate act of irony, play with the equivalent of the up-rezzed Morrigan sprite in spite of the original company having finally acceded to fan demand and given it an overhaul.
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| Spoon 3174th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(7):Re(10):Seriously, what the hell is goin" , posted Mon 14 Dec 08:22
quote:
I know I hit this point before, because another mmcafer immediately pointed out that the game has only been announced for PS4 so far. There has been no announcement of it for any other platform, namely PC and mobile. Now, maybe the premium market audience which actually owns PS4s somehow aligns with the same age demographic that actually cared about KOF, that's entirely possible and not something I know the numbers for. But at this moment, no PC/mobile announcement to me reads as limited initial interest in the game in China.
Even if this version itself is ps4 only for ever and ever; the next version is gonna be the usual copipaste fix build on top of this engine; and to be honest is only natural to expect that at one point and probably quite soon, they will make a chinese market only budget version for either QQ or for their utterly bad & shady arcade boards.
I think the central point is, why didn't they just do that in the first place? Why even bother with going through the motions of making a PS4 version for a market that isn't interested in the IP, while also hampered by technological and know-how inferiority with the genre champs on that platform? If the whole discussion of the sale of KOF to a Chinese stakeholder is "KOF is big in China", wouldn't the shareholders/etc. be more pleased with a product that's actually going to be relevant in the Chinese market?
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| Maou 3005th Post
PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(2):People's Republic of Fighters" , posted Mon 14 Dec 10:38
quote:
Wait, we can see how many people check the thread.That's news for me.
It is a secret! You must master the Ougi/Secret Technique! What you need to do is highlight the top of the opening post subject line like this to see it. Prof pointed out one time how you can do this to see total BBS visitors, too. It spiked with this thread for a day. We're...being watched!
quote:
In the year 20XX, somebody will, in a deliberate act of irony, play with the equivalent of the up-rezzed Morrigan sprite in spite of the original company having finally acceded to fan demand and given it an overhaul.
I would love to actually see a Morrigan lookalike appear, then have them keep using it in successive updates until it becomes as un-funny as Dan!
To your point about the Chinese market, I'm still puzzled by who they're aiming for right now. If two-generation-old graphics are to enable the game to run on simpler Chinese machines, why (as mentioned) isn't it a PC launch? Not even 1.5 million PS4's have sold in Japan as of mid-2015, so that's not the market unless there's a magical one-to-one console-to-game selling ratio. As far I know, the market isn't in the US, either? Are they hoping to cobble together fans from around the world in the same way that SNK attracts people to the Cafe globally? I don't get it. Then again, maybe they don't, either, which might be part of their challenge.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| nobinobita 1525th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(3):People's Republic of Fighters" , posted Mon 14 Dec 12:13:
quote:
Wait, we can see how many people check the thread.That's news for me.
It is a secret! You must master the Ougi/Secret Technique! What you need to do is highlight the top of the opening post subject line like this to see it. Prof pointed out one time how you can do this to see total BBS visitors, too. It spiked with this thread for a day. We're...being watched!
In the year 20XX, somebody will, in a deliberate act of irony, play with the equivalent of the up-rezzed Morrigan sprite in spite of the original company having finally acceded to fan demand and given it an overhaul. I would love to actually see a Morrigan lookalike appear, then have them keep using it in successive updates until it becomes as un-funny as Dan!
To your point about the Chinese market, I'm still puzzled by who they're aiming for right now. If two-generation-old graphics are to enable the game to run on simpler Chinese machines, why (as mentioned) isn't it a PC launch? Not even 1.5 million PS4's have sold in Japan as of mid-2015, so that's not the market unless there's a magical one-to-one console-to-game selling ratio. As far I know, the market isn't in the US, either? Are they hoping to cobble together fans from around the world in the same way that SNK attracts people to the Cafe globally? I don't get it. Then again, maybe they don't, either, which might be part of their challenge.
Being on console keeps the brand alive. It's like why Disney will make a Winnie the Pooh movie every decade with a modest budget. It won't make as much money as a Pixar flick, but it will go on to make much more in Merchandise.
The recent KOF mobile game is probably the most profitable KOF game ever. Whether they plan to port those KOFXIV assets to other platforms or not, I'm guessing they're not planning on putting much money into the console game. It probably ins't expected to make much profit. It's just there to remind people that KOF still exists.
quote:
China, on the other hand? They probably have more potential customers there than Street Fighter worldwide.
Yup! KOF is really really really popular in Chinese speaking territories. Historically all those arcade machines are probably bootlegs though. So it's nice they can finally make some $$$ off of mobile and online games.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Mon 14 Dec 12:15] |
| Professor 4704th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "KOF14 to be 'The most easy to play KOF ever'" , posted Thu 17 Dec 16:53:
New KOF14 Producer Interview from 4Gamer.
I'm doing a summary translation this time around since the interview doesn't feature that many things which require nuances.
http://www.4gamer.net/games/317/G031749/20151216086/
Summary:
- The concept for KOF14's development is "The most easy to play KOF ever"
- They want to make the game so that it plays naturally for fans of 98, 02, and 13 which were the most popular.
- Since Producer Oda was in the FF/AOF dev team, he wasn't really involved with the KOF series up until now. This will be the first time that he's on a KOF project from its plot stages.
- SNKP's been away from console development for quite some time now, so this will be the beginning for them to build up their 3D knowledge and skills
- When asked "If KOF14 succeeds, could we be seeing the comeback of other franchises such as Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, or Samurai Shodown?", Oda replied "If everyone supports us, we might be able to bring things all the way there."
- When asked about Trailers 1 and 2, Oda said the renderings were mostly the same but they changed the lightings amongst other various tweaks. They want to continue improving the game's quality
- As reported earlier, all 50 characters will be playable at launch. 16 teams (3 characters each) + 2 characters.
- The game is roughly 70% done. They'll be starting to work on game balance.
- The game is designed to play like KOF13 just during MAX mode where you can use EX moves and 3 levels of Supers that can be canceled in their order of hierarchy. Oda says that with enough studying it's possible to juggle opponents like in KOF13.
- For beginners, there's the automatic and simple "Rush Combo" system
- The devs are still tweaking the game's Just Defense system through trial and error
[this message was edited by Professor on Thu 17 Dec 17:18] |
| nobinobita 1532th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(1):KOF14 to be 'The most easy to play KOF" , posted Thu 17 Dec 17:29:
quote:
New KOF14 Producer Interview from 4Gamer.
I'm doing a summary translation this time around since the interview doesn't feature that many things which require nuances.
http://www.4gamer.net/games/317/G031749/20151216086/
Summary:
- The concept for KOF14's development is "The most easy to play KOF ever"
- They want to make the game so that it plays naturally for fans of 98, 02, and 13 which were the most popular.
- Since Producer Oda was in the FF/AOF dev team, he wasn't really involved with the KOF series up until now. This will be the first time that he's on a KOF project from its plot stages.
- SNKP's been away from console development for quite some time now, so this will be the beginning for them to build up their 3D knowledge and skills
- When asked "If KOF14 succeeds, could we be seeing the comeback of other franchises such as Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, or Samurai Shodown?", Oda replied "If everyone supports us, we might be able to bring things all the way there."
- When asked about Trailers 1 and 2, Oda said the renderings were mostly the same but they changed the lightings amongst other various tweaks. They want to continue improving the game's quality
- As reported earlier, all 50 characters will be playable at launch. 16 teams (3 characters each) + 2 characters.
- The game is roughly 70% done. They'll be starting to work on game balance.
- The game is designed to play like KOF13 just during M
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Awesome, XIII is one of the 3 most popular KOFs? I wonder what the criteria was. Sales? Overall fan feedback?
In any case, I can continue to wait in vain, hoping with all my heart for a new Samurai Shodown in the style of KOFXII and XIII
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Thu 17 Dec 17:30] |
| Loona 966th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(2):KOF14 to be 'The most easy to play KOF" , posted Thu 17 Dec 19:03
This isn't directly related, but could become relevant within a few years, depending how things turn out - yesterday Extra Credits posted a video about China's Sesame Credit system, which reminded me of something I read about it before - namely, how the system penalizes the use of video games.
I have no idea how this is bound to play out for SNKP considering their Chinese associations - the system punishes importing foreign goods and games, which would work against them, considering how China's one of their big markets - on the other hand, the system being partially run by Tencent, with whom they have associated with more in the past few years, not to mention the new owners of the company.
Maybe it's not to late to refocus on Korea and the west in case the ambiguity of the situation doesn't work out well for them?...
...!!
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| nobinobita 1533th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(3):KOF14 to be 'The most easy to play KOF" , posted Fri 18 Dec 14:19:
quote:
This isn't directly related, but could become relevant within a few years, depending how things turn out - yesterday Extra Credits posted a video about China's Sesame Credit system, which reminded me of something I read about it before - namely, how the system penalizes the use of video games.
I have no idea how this is bound to play out for SNKP considering their Chinese associations - the system punishes importing foreign goods and games, which would work against them, considering how China's one of their big markets - on the other hand, the system being partially run by Tencent, with whom they have associated with more in the past few years, not to mention the new owners of the company.
Maybe it's not to late to refocus on Korea and the west in case the ambiguity of the situation doesn't work out well for them?...
There's a lot confusion going on around the Sesame credit system. Alibaba and Tecent have rolled out 2 separate credit systems. Neither of these are associated with the government system that's being proposed for the future.
More info here:
https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-orwellian
That Extra Credits video is just spreading misinformation and fear mongoring. It's the kind of information that people WANT to be true because it confirms their existing biases and also paints an exciting distopian sci-fi future scenario haha.
Thanks for posting it though! It still brings up a lot of interesting points.
On a semi related note ...
I recently found out why Arcades died out in Thailand. About a decade ago Galaxy Group, one of the larger corporations in Thailand successfully lobbied to put huge limitations on the importation of foreign arcade machines. You can't import an arcade game into Thailand that's less than 10 years old. Suddenly I realised why Guitar Hero was the most recent arcade game I'd seen.
This was probably meant to foster the growth of local devs. But there's just one problem: THERE ARE NO LOCAL ARCADE GAME DEVS IN THAILAND. This bone headed decision killed off most arcades.
The interesting thing is, Galaxy Group was historically the largest importer of arcade games in Thailand. I'm not clear on why they intentionally killed off the industry they founded here. Maybe they saw the death of arcades coming anyways and decided to end it early? Maybe they were overstocked on machines and wanted to become the only source in the country? I dunno, but it's scary to think how a single uninformed law can torpedo an entire industry.
In any case, I really hope whatever actually happens in China, it won't put huge limitations on video games like this. When you have stupid laws like that, it just ensures that people rely on piracy rather than official means to get their fix.
Oh one more thing to keep in mind. Chinese people aren't so credit card crazy as Americans. Most people still prefer to spend cash. It's likely that if the new credit system punishes you for purchasing games, people will just pay cash for their games. Even if it's an online game, you can just go to the convenience store and pay cash to recharge your account. Same with mobile games etc. I really resent Extra Credits use of the word "obedient" to describe the Chinese (especially given the current state of partisan politics in the US), because the people there have been subverting government imposed limitations for centuries, millnenia. That's just how things work in a culture with such a long history of crushing bureaucracy.
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Fri 18 Dec 14:25] |
| Professor 4709th Post
MMCafe Owner
| "SNKPlaymore Exec interview" , posted Tue 29 Dec 00:20:
Famitsu.com's posted their interview with SNKP Executive and Chief of Gaming division Yutaka Noguchi.
....He looks young because he probably is. Afaik he's about the only Japanese worker at SNKP that's using modern sites like LinkedIn for example (which btw tells us that he became chief pretty recently in 2013).
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201512/28096392.html
I'm dead busy with year-end commitments right now but here's an overview of what's written ----
- New Pachislot regulations are one of the main reasons why SNKP decided to switch back to gaming. New releases of Pachislot machines were going to need huge changes, and when they laid down their business plans they decided it may be better to focus their resources back to gaming
- Noguchi: "Even as of now, we're better known as a game company than a pachislot company. People still talk about us (as a game company) when we say our name."
- When SNKP took their IPs into consideration, they decided that going back into the gaming business and taking advantage of their IP would probably be better. Also, their smartphone and Steam stuff were doing well and it helped push things in that decision
- Noguchi's heard from many people that they're happy SNKP is back in gaming. He says it's a market where they can hear the user's voices more directly, but it's also a harsh market that consumers will go away unless the games are actually fun even if it's based on a popular IP. He hopes they'll create fun games with the fans becuase that should be enjoyable for their development staffs as well.
- They're focusing on the PS4 since it's selling well throughout the world. They'll be focusing on KOF at first but want to make better use of their other IPs as well and to further raise their value. They have over 200 IPs in terms of titles
- They've been out of the gaming scene for a while so they're basically starting off from scratch together with returning dev members
- KOF14's main dev members are old staffs from SNK's golden days.
- Noguchi : "A lot of staff are coming back, saying 'hey, if it's a new KOF'....".
- In addition, old game staff(s) that've been working in the Pachislot division have also returned
- They also have talented staff members that've been the fans/players of KOF, and Noguchi hopes the new and old staffs will cause a synergy effect in development
- Right now in terms of console games, SNKP is focusing on KOF14's development. Their contact at SCEA is a fan from the NeoGeo era who's been requesting for some hardcore titles, and so they've been working together which is one of the reasons why some PS4 ports are in progress.
- SNKP released the Hunble Bundle 25th anniversary set because they know their titles are well known overseas
- Noguchi predicts the Smartphone game market will still continue to grow, and SNKP will continue to focus on it. He comments that the Metal Slug series is not just popular in Japan, USA, Europe, but also Middle and South America, and southeast asia.
- Metal Slug Attack is one of the main titles they'll be focusing on in 2016
- In the old days SNK used to develop for arcades and then port to consoles, but Noguchi realizes that times have changed. KOF14 is being developed for console. He says that personally he'd like to release titles for the arcades as well.
- They're going to put more effort into their licensing business.
- As one of their plans, they're going to issue out licenses that'll fit the needs of various regions. For example with Asia, they licensed KOF98 and a spinoff-app based on the game's world view was released by a third party (KOF98OL by Tencent). They're also hoping to license out characters, like say if Iori is popular in China and Terry is popular in North America, they'll allow them to come out in those region's games and whatnot
- When asked about any collaborations with Japanese companies like "Capcom vs SNK", Noguchi laughed and commented that they've just restarted their game business and there's still a far way to go.
[this message was edited by Professor on Tue 29 Dec 05:24] |
| Baines 464th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(2):Incoming Chinese KoF series?" , posted Mon 11 Jan 10:43
quote:
Can't be worse than the Gorden Chan movie, can it?...Can you think of a video-game based live action movie or series that was actually good? I'm seriously asking.
I remember Silent Hill being passable, although "good" is a stretch. It can only dream of reaching "good" when viewed specifically as a video game adaptation, because that genre has such a horribly low bar. Viewed as a horror film, it might have trouble reaching "mediocre."
How was Gyakuten Saiban? I remember people having hopes for it, but I never saw it myself. I don't even know if it ever came out.
Mind, it is hard to imagine any new KOF film being worse than the Gorden Chan film. I can only hope that the people involved with that project were deliberately trying to ape Street Fighter as a "so bad it's good" film with intentionally terrible casting, intentionally terrible writing, a script written by someone who knew absolutely nothing about the subject matter, etc... (That, quite honestly, is the only way I can see that film's version of Rugal existing. It was so completely wrong on every level that it could only be deliberate. Even someone who knew absolutely nothing about Rugal would have created a more accurate version than that film delivered. I can only see it as a deliberate attempt to recreate the magic of Raul Julia as M.Bison, performed by people who should never again be let near the film creation process.)
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| Spoon 3199th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Incoming Chinese KoF series?" , posted Mon 11 Jan 12:14:
KOF doesn't suffer quite as much as SF does when it comes to its characters being put into a setting outside of the ring, but especially with real people acting the parts it's still quite a stretch.
When the characters aren't fighting, and not fighting for long stretches, it feels "weird" for the characters. When they are fighting constantly, trying to come up with excuses for it over and over again start to wear thin. When we put them into more ordinary clothes around more ordinary people, their iconic appearance which is so strong makes that feel not right. When they're in their iconic appearances going around "ordinarily" dressed people, they feel out of place and weird.
If they're going to make a movie which is necessarily punctuated by lots of individual fights but needs to somehow sell a ton of strongly unique characters, I think they need to adopt a different narrative structure for the story. Whether you want to call it Tarantino-esque or Kurosawa-esque or Waiting For Godot-esque, I think it'd work better if they just put all the characters into a bar and have them drinking together as the overarching story conceit, in which each person could recount a vignette and the other characters could either laugh at it or toast it or be embarrassed about it or tell them they are full of shi* and how that isn't how it went down. The KOF/SF characters are a bunch who have been around each other for over two decades, and trying to squeeze all of them inside a wholly linear story makes for a cumbersome experience. You could even set the bar years and years ahead of the stories they are recounting, such that they can laugh at their old fashions and rivalries, see how their relationships have changed (or not), and just not stoically be their caricatured selves all the time. Just imagine them recounting that time they totally saved the world, and how it was totally cool, but man Guile just got here and a car drove past him in the rain and now his hair is ruined but it's ok and Chun is buying the next round because she won the bet about how late Guile would be but she she cheated by using the NSA tracker via INTERPOL on her smartphone, meanwhile Hakan is in the men's room having a man to man talk with whoever it is that is about to be married and is having cold feet about commitment, and everybody has to let Ryu pay for a few drinks out of unspoken courtesy even though he's hobo poor and Ken could afford to buy the whole establishment.
Alternatively, what I'm saying is I would totally watch My Dinner With Andore.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Mon 11 Jan 12:15] |
| Loona 972th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
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Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(2):Incoming Chinese KoF series?" , posted Mon 11 Jan 20:41
quote:
Can't be worse than the Gorden Chan movie, can it?...Can you think of a video-game based live action movie or series that was actually good? I'm seriously asking.
People typically cite something like Mortal Kombat 1 as an enjoyable video game-based live action movie, even though hardly resembled the source material. Even I'll raise my hand on that one.
But besides that, I can't recall one live action adaptation that clicked with me personally.
Prince of Persia was alright, and MK had the benefit of its game borrowing from Enter the Dragon, whose structure it could then recycle for its own movie adaptation.
As for KoF's viability to handle non-fight scenes, between Shinkiro's slice-of-life body of work and all the material in official team backstories for each game, drama CDs and story elements from FF and AoF they could get a lot of ground covered - maybe they could borrow Lost's structure of using flashbacks in the middle of episodes to flesh out everyone's circumstances as they move through the tournament - that show had a pretty big cast, and that was a neat way to make it work. And unlike Lost, there's at least some notion of what a (season) ending looks like using the games as templates.
The biggest issue would probably be how they'd handle the passage of time or lack thereof, but between compressing some events (94 and 95, for example, like ReBout did in a way) and hinting at the time-twisting shenanigans of the Ash saga early on could help make it work (say, having a calendar's displayed year change in a background between cuts during some character conversation, without specific attention being brought to it).
...!!
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| Baines 465th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(4):Incoming Chinese KoF series?" , posted Tue 12 Jan 01:27
quote:
KOF doesn't suffer quite as much as SF does when it comes to its characters being put into a setting outside of the ring, but especially with real people acting the parts it's still quite a stretch.
When the characters aren't fighting, and not fighting for long stretches, it feels "weird" for the characters. When they are fighting constantly, trying to come up with excuses for it over and over again start to wear thin. When we put them into more ordinary clothes around more ordinary people, their iconic appearance which is so strong makes that feel not right. When they're in their iconic appearances going around "ordinarily" dressed people, they feel out of place and weird.
I think video games have developed an unwarranted reputation for being hard or impossible to adapt into a live film. It isn't the fault of video games that most live action adaptations are awful; it is the fault of Hollywood (and elsewhere) being stuck to certain processes and beliefs that pretty much doom any video game adaptation from the very start.
I remember when Silent Hill was reviewed, some film critics responded to sections of bad writing with pretty much "it was based on a game, so it was to be expected" or "I guess if we knew the source material then that would make more sense". No, bad writing is bad writing regardless.
If a video game film has characters performing some nonsensical actions for no apparent reason, it isn't a nod to video game puzzle design, it is bad scripting. Just like it is bad scripting when the same stuff happens in non-video game films. The same goes for relying on an unbelievable string of coincidences. Or throwing in an over-explanatory info-dump at some point because the script never bothered to explain important information in a more reasonable manner elsewhere.
There is a common excuse that fighting games have no story. Fighting games are just a bunch of people gathering for a tournament, and Hollywood has to create a feature-length story from scratch because it doesn't exist in the source. I've heard this sentiment voiced by various actors and writers. Directors have mentioned it. It comes up when film critics review films.
It just happens to be false.
Most fighting games have too much story, at least for the kind of films that Hollywood wants to produce. In addition to the main storyline featuring the boss and certain major characters, every character has their own story. Some of these stories are thin, little more than hooks, but each is still enough to build a film around. These stories cover a multitude of genres, as well.
Which is where the film industry has a problem. The film industry doesn't want to make a romantic comedy about Mai Shiranui, an espionage thriller about Nina Williams, or a film about Chun-Li avenging her father. (Yes, I remember that Legend of Chun-Li exists.) The film industry wants to make "Street Fighter", "Mortal Kombat", "The King of Fighters, or whatever.
But even then, the film industry doesn't want to make the existing main storylines of a game. It doesn't, for example, want to make the KOF story of Kyo, Iori, and Chizuru uniting to stop Orochi. No, it wants to feature specific characters regardless of their existing stories. So a KOF film can't just be about Kyo, Iori, and Chizuru uniting to stop Orochi. It has to feature Mai as well. And Rugal. And Terry Bogard. Since those characters don't fit together, they get new stories.
Which leads back to the big issues with the film industry that extends far beyond video games... Source material is pretty much the least important element of the Hollywood filmmaking process. Scripts are written and movies are made to established formulas, regardless of the source. Casting can be completely wrong for a multitude of reasons. And there are some really awful writers, along with bad directors and poor actors, in the industry, though the process is so adept at destroying whatever is originally input that any accountability for individual dearths of talent can be largely hidden. And the lower priority a film is, the worse it can get.
Comic books shared a similar Hollywood position for decades. The big differences are that comic books had a few accepted mainstream hits to go with the garbage and schlock, and that Marvel has in recent years shown a largely line-wide success through putting actual concern, effort, and talent into the process. But even now, Sony continues to produce complete garbage while clinging to the Spider-Man license, Fox misfires badly as much as it produces something acceptable with the X-Men license, and DC film-wise has been a trainwreck outside of Batman.
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| neo0r0chiaku
105th Post
PSN: n/a
XBL: IAMDC1
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Regular Customer
| "Re(5):Chinese KoF series Premiering Q1 2016." , posted Thu 14 Jan 05:13:
quote:
KOF doesn't suffer quite as much as SF does when it comes to its characters being put into a setting outside of the ring, but especially with real people acting the parts it's still quite a stretch.
When the characters aren't fighting, and not fighting for long stretches, it feels "weird" for the characters. When they are fighting constantly, trying to come up with excuses for it over and over again start to wear thin. When we put them into more ordinary clothes around more ordinary people, their iconic appearance which is so strong makes that feel not right. When they're in their iconic appearances going around "ordinarily" dressed people, they feel out of place and weird.
I think video games have developed an unwarranted reputation for being hard or impossible to adapt into a live film. It isn't the fault of video games that most live action adaptations are awful; it is the fault of Hollywood (and elsewhere) being stuck to certain processes and beliefs that pretty much doom any video game adaptation from the very start.
I remember when Silent Hill was reviewed, some film critics responded to sections of bad writing with pretty much "it was based on a game, so it was to be expected" or "I guess if we knew the source material then that would make more sense". No, bad writing is bad writing regardless.
If a video game film has characters performing some nonsensical actions for no apparent reason, it isn't a nod to video game puzzle design, it is bad s
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
King of Fighters Animated Adaptation Premiering Q1 2016 on Streaming Services
In other news,
snk-playmore chief samurai shodown part of revived gaming divisions future plans
My bizarre VS. wish list:
Soul Caliber vs Samurai Spirits, by Namco Bandai
Last Blade vs Blaz Blue, By SNK Playmore
Arc Sys vs SNK, by Arc Systems
Garou vs Virtua Fighter, by SNK Playmore
Bangai-0 vs Metal Slug, by Treasure Inc.
Long Live!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Thu 14 Jan 05:13] |
| Gojira 3171th Post
PSN: Gojira_X
XBL: Gojiraaa
Wii: n/a
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(1):Re:Complete Breakdown of rumored list" , posted Sun 17 Jan 09:50
Is it too late to follow up on the supposed list source?
The time frame of the leak is not altogether wrong. Even if SNKP closed their pachislot division, XIV was in development for an undisclosed length of time, probably since that recruitment ad a couple of years ago on the official website. Even now when I look at the CG for the Samurai Spirits pachislot I see some similarities in the modeling, movement, even the choice of music. (As well as our reactions to said modeling, lol)
To say that SNKP might use their pachislot and mobage IPs in KoF isn't terribly far-fetched either. The recent shmupilations interview about '94 reminds us that KoF began with SNK throwing all their IPs into a soup and seeing what floated to the top. And since they haven't added many gaming IPs in the last 5-10 years, why not? I know very little about pachislot development, but I'm sure those IPs took some amount of work to create and maintain, so it'd be a shame to let that go to waste. Instead of promoting them, now KoF becomes a way to preserve them, saving them from the dissolution of the pachinko division.
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| Spoon 3207th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Re:Complete Breakdown of rumored list" , posted Mon 18 Jan 07:31
quote:
Regarding the rumored list, I remembered something a little bit amuzing. Since we're on the talk of Japanese stuff with pachi, may as well mention this as well.
One of the characters in the rumored roster is a "Handicapped Boxer", which I'm not sure how accurate that Chinese-to-English translation was. That character actually became a bit of a subject between Jp fans, reason being that it's extremely taboo to feature handicapped people as a topic in Japan.
I recall how back when Katawa Shoujo was announced, it was a bit of a hot topic since the game probably wouldn't have been able to come out if it were in Japan-- at least not as a commercial product given the risks of various handicap associations making a fuss and bringing the game to a recall. So when the rumored KOF14 list came out, people were scratching their heads over how SNKP plans to pull it off, if the roster turns out to be legit.
I think the fans have too much time in their hands though. If Jojo had N'Doul, it can't be that hard to throw in handicapped characters into videogames.
Is it particular kinds of handicaps that are particularly taboo? It seems like characters that are blind and/or deaf have long been common tropes across the different Japanese entertainment media, and in the western world those certainly count as disabilities.
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| Maese 799th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(5):Re:Complete Breakdown of rumored list" , posted Mon 18 Jan 13:59
quote:
Regarding the rumored list, I remembered something a little bit amuzing. Since we're on the talk of Japanese stuff with pachi, may as well mention this as well.
One of the characters in the rumored roster is a "Handicapped Boxer", which I'm not sure how accurate that Chinese-to-English translation was. That character actually became a bit of a subject between Jp fans, reason being that it's extremely taboo to feature handicapped people as a topic in Japan.
I recall how back when Katawa Shoujo was announced, it was a bit of a hot topic since the game probably wouldn't have been able to come out if it were in Japan-- at least not as a commercial product given the risks of various handicap associations making a fuss and bringing the game to a recall. So when the rumored KOF14 list came out, people were scratching their heads over how SNKP plans to pull it off, if the roster turns out to be legit.
I think the fans have too much time in their hands though. If Jojo had N'Doul, it can't be that hard to throw in handicapped characters into videogames.
Is it particular kinds of handicaps that are particularly taboo? It seems like characters that are blind and/or deaf have long been common tropes across the different Japanese entertainment media, and in the western world those certainly count as disabilities.
Times have changed indeed... I remember when it was perfectly OK for a Japanese videogame to throw elderly people in wheelchairs out the window of a skyscraper. I feel so old.
A Talking about Japanese History sword in hand
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| Micky Kusanagi
6th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(1):Benimaru de-Polnareffs for KoF XIV" , posted Wed 27 Jan 21:28:
quote:
New trailer featuring Robert, Benimaru and K'
Robert appears to have acquired a moustache... he always seemed like more of a goatee. Then again, I think his father had a moustache too.
Uhmmm...I'm very likely to lose any hint of rationality talking about KOF and SNK/SNKP games in general, but I'd still try and give this thread a shot. I'd be hyped for a new KOF even if it had Atari 2600 graphics, so I don't care about the PSX/2/3 tier thing xD Beni and Terry's XDZW models look flashier than XIV models? I acknowledge it to Jade Studio, but I don't care, as long as KOFXIV plays like numbered KOF.
As for the art direction, I find it very alike to Dead or Alive, which is fine to me. As soon as I started playing KOF:MI I thought the same about it. I knew from the beginning KOF was gonna get a DoA-like art direction in case the numbered series was to make the shift from 2D to 3D, so it came to me as no surprise. The only thing I'm really gonna miss is hand drawn official art: while SFV is getting a whole lot of it, that doesn't seem to be the case with KOFXIV. Such a shame.
I wish I could hear more music, because I think we're gonna get a blast of an OST if all the other tracks are on par with that Esaka? remix.
2D gameplay is a huge relief: while I really like the MI spinoffs, I've always hoped the main series didn't shift to a hybrid gameplay. There's this competitive player, Laban, who played the PSE demo a lot and wrote an insane report on the SRK forums. He's a huge OG '98 fan, and he kept comparing XIV to OG '98 with some 2002 (maybe more UM than OG) and XIII elements in said report, except for the floaty jumps. Other PSE goers were satisfied from a gameplay standpoint. So, I'm confident XIV will play great.
I don't care about sales, as long as XIV sells enough to keep SNKP alive and kicking.
EDIT: Dreamcancel is hinting at the Taipei Game Show demo possibly sporting Mandarin voice acting, because it was revealed in the SCET conference that the TpGS demo build will be a Traditional Chinese version. Your thoughts? I find it unlikely, since the Chinese audience have always loved KOF with Japanese voices, but SNKP is under a Chinese juggernaut now...we'll see.
Ore no...kachi da!!
[this message was edited by Micky Kusanagi on Wed 27 Jan 21:39] |
| neo0r0chiaku
112th Post
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XBL: IAMDC1
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Regular Customer
| "Re(2):Benimaru de-Polnareffs for KoF XIV" , posted Wed 27 Jan 22:24:
quote:
New trailer featuring Robert, Benimaru and K'
Robert appears to have acquired a moustache... he always seemed like more of a goatee. Then again, I think his father had a moustache too.
Uhmmm...I'm very likely to lose any hint of rationality talking about KOF and SNK/SNKP games in general, but I'd still try and give this thread a shot. I'd be hyped for a new KOF even if it had Atari 2600 graphics, so I don't care about the PSX/2/3 tier thing xD Beni and Terry's XDZW models look flashier than XIV models? I acknowledge it to Jade Studio, but I don't care, as long as KOFXIV plays like numbered KOF.
As for the art direction, I find it very alike to Dead or Alive, which is fine to me. As soon as I started playing KOF:MI I thought the same about it. I knew from the beginning KOF was gonna get a DoA-like art direction in case the numbered series was to make the shift from 2D to 3D, so it came to me as no surprise. The only thing I'm really gonna miss is hand drawn official art: while SFV is getting a whole lot of it, that doesn't seem to be the case with KOFXIV. Such a shame.
I wish I could hear more music, because I think we're gonna get a blast of an OST if all the other tracks are on par with that Esaka? remix.
2D gameplay is a huge relief: while I really like the MI spinoffs, I've always hoped the main series didn't shift to a hybrid game
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
The gameplay looks to be more legit for me. I remember when MI was announced, people said the same thing they are saying now,"Forget the graphics and hope for same KOF style gameplay." Deja Vu if you ask me. Its just that you expect that SNKP would have learn by now after MI. As such, fans would expect more and better.
I hope they make good numbers in sales and everyone approves as well. Will be a tough cookie to crack since SFV is being released around the same time. Again, this is Deja Vu from 1994 when Street fighter had only 8+4 characters while KOF released 24 characters. At the moment, SFV has 16 and KOf 50!!! Its the battle of who is the best fighting game company rivalry once more! If this repeats itself, then we may again go through the excitement and era of the 90's fighting game scene for the rest of the 2010's years!
Long Live!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Wed 27 Jan 22:28] |
| neo0r0chiaku
114th Post
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Regular Customer
| "Re(8):Benimaru de-Polnareffs for KoF XIV" , posted Fri 29 Jan 04:33
quote:
I am still extremely worried for the release of the game. SNK doesn't have a history of releasing polished games (proper debug was conducted in a rush, in the last few days, and whatever happened, happened) and I can see it becoming a real problem. The game is huge, and they have barely showed 15% out of it. For a game supposed to be released later this year, it's quite worrying.
I just hope it doesn't become a KOFXII-like issue where they release this "as-is" in a rush to make the deadline, and then release a polished version with more characters sometime next year. We also had something similar with MvC3 to UMvC3. The complaints are predominantly about the graphics at this point. And if they're not listening to the loudest complaint of them all, the people complaining in question as well as other fans will feel quite a bit of disconcert.
A debate among others is did SNK make the right decision with coming out with KOF XII and XIII with the higher than expectation 2-D graphics that everyone in the gaming scene agreed as a masterpiece? Reason for this question is what if they came out with KOFXII (or any other fighting game for that matter) with a 2-D graphics style that was new but nothing extraordinary, just a simple 2-D art style, and focus solely on fighting system, vs mode, and network mode. It could have been a digital release. That way, it will improve as time progresses (DLC, new versions, new releases, other fighting games, etc.). Fans around the world will start returning and will grow. Profit will be generated and return in investment is successful. After that, maybe around this present timeline, release a fighting game masterpiece they originally created with KOFXIII? Maybe it was too early for them to have released KOF XII and XII at the state it was in. It was not ready for the masses and the fan base support was not enough for SNKP. It’s probably why we expect more but they do not have the man power, money, and infrastructure to create a game like that again.
Long Live!
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| Mrkarate23
4th Post
New Customer
| "Re(8):Benimaru de-Polnareffs for KoF XIV" , posted Fri 29 Jan 12:29
quote:
I am still extremely worried for the release of the game. SNK doesn't have a history of releasing polished games (proper debug was conducted in a rush, in the last few days, and whatever happened, happened) and I can see it becoming a real problem. The game is huge, and they have barely showed 15% out of it. For a game supposed to be released later this year, it's quite worrying.
I just hope it doesn't become a KOFXII-like issue where they release this "as-is" in a rush to make the deadline, and then release a polished version with more characters sometime next year. We also had something similar with MvC3 to UMvC3. The complaints are predominantly about the graphics at this point. And if they're not listening to the loudest complaint of them all, the people complaining in question as well as other fans will feel quite a bit of disconcert.
Snkp knows about the graphics otherwise they would not bother continue to change things, I mean Kyo face has change through out the teaser trailers, lighting has change, and they recently apply some kind of skin shaders.They are doing something but it wont be enough for a lot of people, snkp has to work with what they got.
Are fans and detractors expecting some mega change that makes it look like the competitors before release?
Any of you expecting them to extend development time on a new engine for it to look good?
What are you expecting for the game to suddenly look good?
The producer acknowledge that the team was not experience and shows with how kof looks. I get it its on snkp for not having the tools and the skilled staff needed to have productions values of a fighting ganme by namco, wb or capcom. Snkp mistakes was to go hire anyone they could get and use their own engine. As a result we have kof xiv to show. They probably should have pony up thee cash to contract cyberconnect and ect... the results would have being different.
I honestly want to know. I sound like I am repeating myself unless snkp move development to another engine such as unreal 3 or 4, have the capital, and a skill team to have their vision realize, I just cant see it looking as good as sfv or mkx. Building a game of that caliber is expensive even for capcom other wise street fighter v would have came much later than soon. Even if snkp dropped that kind of money to create a product on par with the competition, they will end up loosing big time.
This game is due or die for their game development, if they cant produce a decent game what was their point of developing kof xiv. Their mobile venture have being doing well for them, maybe they should stick to that since they are out of their league in todays market. With the advent of delaying games and day one patch, cant see why it would make no sense for them to release a broken game out in this day in age.
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| nobinobita 1544th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(2):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Mon 1 Feb 14:04
quote:
Does any of you have enough knowledge of game development economy to tell me if it's true that licensing a game engine is more expensive than building your own? Sadly, saying SNKP is on a tight budget is an euphemism I guess...
Generally licensing an engine these days is much cheaper than building your own.
Anyone/Any company who makes less than $100,000/year can use Unity for free. You are free to develop and sell your games as you please. All that they require for the free version is that every game begins with a splash screen that says "made with Unity" (which these days telegraphs that you are using the free version and wouldn't look good for a high profile company).
Once you make more than $100,000/year you must get the pro version which costs a one time $1500 fee and then an additional $1500 each to export to iOS or Android devices. So if you're making a mobile game you're looking at spending $4,500 (Alternatively you can pay $75/month per Mobile device license too)
Developing your own engine internally will cost a lot more than $4,500 worth of time to a group of developers.
I'm not familiar with Unreal, but I believe they also a free model in addition to the pro license. I think there's a free version for students, and if you want to sell your game there's a small monthly fee. However I've heard they might also take a percentage of your games profits, which may be unappealing to a bigger developer.
In any case, the amount of time you save using Unity or Unreal will generally way outweigh the time it takes to develop an engine from scratch. However, a company might still want to develop their own engine because:
1) There are specific things they need their engine to do that would be more difficult to implement with Unity or Unreal
2) They want to develop their own engine to use internally across multiple titles, thereby saving money in the long run (plus all the benefits of the above)
3) If Unreal requires revenue sharing (which I'm not sure of, just something I've heard in passing) and you expect your game to sell mega millions, you might not want to share such a large cut
I'm not a programmer though, so I'm sure Spoon and other folks can explain this way better than I could.
www.art-eater.com
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| nobinobita 1545th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(6):KOF14 devs acqknowledge visual complain" , posted Mon 1 Feb 14:15
quote:
So they know that the graphics sucks and they are working on polishing it, a miracle can still happen, right?
Of course not, like hell. In order for the game to really improve how it looks, they should get rid of the current graphic engine, and do a new one from scratch (and by another staff, else it will end close to what we have).
What they are actually doing is making patches and fixes on top of the current graphic engine so that "it looks better", but that "it looks better" it's an euphemism rather than an statement.
When a game looks bad, it's never cos of the graphics engine, but how a developer is using it.
KOF looks bad because of the plasticky lighting, the more generic overall look of the characters and the sub par poses.
Just like Street Fighter V with its much superior technology looks horrific because of poor art direction, terrible character design choices, generic lighting full of gaudy Instagram-like filters, and poor poses.
Games have looked beautiful since at least the NES era. You can't blame the engine, just poor execution (which is often the result of poor planning, being rushed, or lots of corporate meddling etc, not necessarily cos the artists aren't capable--though that's often the case too!)
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| Micky Kusanagi
13th Post
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| "Re(3):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Mon 1 Feb 17:25
quote:
Does any of you have enough knowledge of game development economy to tell me if it's true that licensing a game engine is more expensive than building your own? Sadly, saying SNKP is on a tight budget is an euphemism I guess...
Generally licensing an engine these days is much cheaper than building your own.
Anyone/Any company who makes less than $100,000/year can use Unity for free. You are free to develop and sell your games as you please. All that they require for the free version is that every game begins with a splash screen that says "made with Unity" (which these days telegraphs that you are using the free version and wouldn't look good for a high profile company).
Once you make more than $100,000/year you must get the pro version which costs a one time $1500 fee and then an additional $1500 each to export to iOS or Android devices. So if you're making a mobile game you're looking at spending $4,500 (Alternatively you can pay $75/month per Mobile device license too)
Developing your own engine internally will cost a lot more than $4,500 worth of time to a group of developers.
I'm not familiar with Unreal, but I believe they also a free model in addition to the pro license. I think there's a free version for students, and if you want to sell your game there's a small monthly fee. However I've heard they might also take a percentage of your games profits, which may be unappealing to a bigger developer.
In any case, the amount of time you save u
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Being a long time lurker, I knew your lenghty, interesting insights about video game art and industry, but receiving one of them as an answer is a pleasant surprise. Thank you!!
Besides remembering how SNK(P) has never been totally reasonable in terms of development and marketing choices -making the HNG64 a 3D system? Whatever...-, the only scenario I can think of is that SNKP is dead sure about selling a ton copies of KOFXIV in China -I've learned not to believe media stereotypes, but I've never heard of the Chinese as a population who can lightheartedly spend all the money required for a current gen console and a brand new game on day one- and wanna take advantage of this revenue to develop new 3D titles in other franchises, as Oda hinted in the SRK interview. Hence the decision of building their own engine instead of licensing UE. Time will tell...if most characters only have their "basic moves", it's a long road before KOFXIV is released.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Lord SNK
110th Post
Regular Customer
| "Re(7):KOF14 devs acqknowledge visual complain" , posted Tue 2 Feb 04:27
quote:
Of course not, like hell. In order for the game to really improve how it looks, they should get rid of the current graphic engine, and do a new one from scratch (and by another staff, else it will end close to what we have).
What they are actually doing is making patches and fixes on top of the current graphic engine so that "it looks better", but that "it looks better" it's an euphemism rather than an statement.
quote:
When a game looks bad, it's never cos of the graphics engine, but how a developer is using it.
KOF looks bad because of the plasticky lighting, the more generic overall look of the characters and the sub par poses.
Just like Street Fighter V with its much superior technology looks horrific because of poor art direction, terrible character design choices, generic lighting full of gaudy Instagram-like filters, and poor poses.
Games have looked beautiful since at least the NES era. You can't blame the engine, just poor execution (which is often the result of poor planning, being rushed, or lots of corporate meddling etc, not necessarily cos the artists aren't capable--though that's often the case too!)
Nobinobita, I remember your post some times ago with the analysis of the trailer, Kyo poses, etc.
I know that it's almost impossible that the game could change drastically if it's really to be released in the next months, but a man can still dream 
(that's why I said "miracle")
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| Baines 470th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(3):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Tue 2 Feb 10:28
quote:
I'm not familiar with Unreal, but I believe they also a free model in addition to the pro license. I think there's a free version for students, and if you want to sell your game there's a small monthly fee. However I've heard they might also take a percentage of your games profits, which may be unappealing to a bigger developer.
Unreal Engine 4's standard model is a quarterly fee, which is 5% of the gross after the first $3000 that quarter. Epic says it is willing to negotiate other terms, if a company would prefer an upfront fee instead of paying royalties.
Unity's Free Edition isn't really a legal option for most businesses, as the free version's license restricts use for organizations that gross over $100,000 a year or has a budget of over $100,000 a year. There are also apparently restrictions on sharing development between Free and Paid licensed copies. (I know at least one group in the past admitted to buying a single paid license for its benefits while having others work using free license copies.)
For serious game development, Unity may be easier to get going with, but it also potentially brings some performance issues to the table. Unity's ease of use comes with the cost of it being easy to do things in really inefficient ways, until/unless you learn a better way to do it. Unity can also have performance and graphics issues with integrated graphics solutions (Intel HD) and some laptop graphics cards, beyond what people might expect.
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| Baines 472th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(4):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Tue 2 Feb 10:31:
quote:
I'm not familiar with Unreal, but I believe they also a free model in addition to the pro license. I think there's a free version for students, and if you want to sell your game there's a small monthly fee. However I've heard they might also take a percentage of your games profits, which may be unappealing to a bigger developer.
Unreal Engine 4's standard model is a quarterly fee, which is 5% of the gross after the first $3000 that quarter. Epic says it is willing to negotiate other terms, if a company would prefer an upfront fee instead of paying royalties.
Unity's Free Edition isn't really a legal option for most businesses, as the free version's license restricts use for organizations that gross over $100,000 a year or has a budget of over $100,000 a year. There are also apparently restrictions on sharing development between Free and Paid licensed copies. (I know at least one group in the past admitted to buying a single paid license for its benefits while having others work using free license copies.)
For serious game development, Unity may be easier to get going with, but it also potentially brings some performance issues to the table. Unity's ease of use comes with the cost of it being easy to do things in really inefficient ways, until/unless you learn a better way to do it. Unity can also have performance and graphics issues with integrated graphics solutions (Intel HD) and some laptop graphics cards, beyond what people might expect.
I'm fairly certain both Unreal and Unity had extra costs in the past for supporting console development, but I've no idea what their arrangements are these days.
[this message was edited by Baines on Tue 2 Feb 11:48] |
| Spoon 3223th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Tue 2 Feb 10:45
quote:
engine costs
If you are, say, Ubisoft, and you have a really particular engine need (open world game with high-end rendering capable of handling large crowds of AI entities inside a 3D environment that however complex is mostly static) upon which you will be building a multi-game franchise property, it can make sense to develop your own engine. Making an engine for AAA content is EXTREMELY expensive. It is expensive along multiple dimensions. It costs time and money to acquire a vast amount of very smart domain experts, it costs time and production expertise to identify exactly what it is that the product needs that merits the creation of this engine, it costs a lot of time and money to build the engine, and while the engine is being built NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY MAKE REAL STUFF WITH IT. That last part is really huge. You could have genius designers on your team that are not actually able to do anything meaningful on it for years while its being made.
EA has largely unified their entire games business under Frostbite. Their sports games use it, their TPS/FPS games use it, and RTS that was being planned used it, etc. Ubisoft has more than one in-house engine. Konami (hahahaha) has FOX Engine, which was intended to serve as their new engine for their Pro Evo Soccer franchise, Metal Gear, and whatever else... except that I don't even know how much longer they'll be making PES for, let alone any kind of non-mobile game.
Unity and Unreal have a number of differences and advantages/disadvantages.
Unreal has a much more open license: even at the free/nobody/student level, you have source code access to the engine. That's amazing and honestly a serious selling point. Unity absolutely does not have this for the free user, and some key technological components of Unity are not on the level of some other engines out there. Unity's networking architecture is largely sealed off from the user, and was not very good but has been overhauled recently. Unity's character animation module is also sealed off, and sophisticated animation blending on it is kinda hacky to build, as well as being a clumsy tool with regards to interrogating its state. Unity does not have a very good built-in shader/material creation tool, so everybody who wants something more sophisticated than the simplest of the simplest stuff for 3D objects gets Substance Designer. And so on.
All of that sounds pretty crappy, but what Unity does have is a Component architecture that is really quite easy to learn (and easy to abuse). If you've never used a game engine before, Unity is certainly the easier one to get into compared to Unreal. Unreal has a long history of being built for online games unlike Unity, so Unreal's architecture is better set up for that.
Synchronized online play for a complicated game with a lot of users, by the way, is an incredibly expensive feature. By "expensive" I mean it has substantial design costs, extremely substantial engineering costs, and substantial art costs.
Great looking games are absolutely possible with both engines, but as nobi says, design has to meet the challenge of the constraints. One of the fundamental problems with how KOFXIV looks right now is a manifold problem of character modelling, character texturing, character posing, and character shading. That sounds like everything! But it's got particulars to it: they are using a simple lighting model (this is not a crime! Not everything in the world has to use physically-based/accurate rendering!) on characters with little differentiation in how the shading is handled on the clothing and the hair, with the shading on both dialed to a fairly high specularity value. The result of that is that the hair and clothes look like they are made of the same stuff, and that stuff is plastic/vinyl. Now, vinyl pants might be totally okay for Iori or Benimaru, but vinyl EVERYTHING including their hair makes them look homogeneous. PS2-era onwards, hair having a very distinct shading model from the rest of the characters is commonplace. Whether or not that shading is good, at the very least it creates differentiation.
In older 3D games (think PSX), specularity was dialed down or set to zero on many things, and the effect was achieved through careful texture painting. Some games had contrivances to help this. Good example: House of the Dead 1 has a first boss which is a big armoured dude in a room featuring an enormous overhead skylight. The contrivance of him always facing the camera and always being in the middle of the room allowed them to paint his textures in such a way that it looked like he was brightly lit overhead, with prominent highlight/blowout and sharply defined shadow edge. Take a look at this video. He creates a bold, dramatic figure that has a look clearly defined by the lighting suggested by his environment in a game that has absolutely primitive lighting technology. This is the kind of design effort that is more than just "is this an appealingly-modelled character model" or "is this a well-painted texture". The issue of pose choices we've been over lots of times, and while nobi has plenty of misgivings over SF4/5, the complexity and uniquely customized rigs enable them to make characters move and pose in ways that are very distinct from each other. Even if not all their poses/animations are good, they are at least distinct. This isn't always possible, though, and with SNK's goal of releasing 50 characters on launch, having 50 highly complex and uniquely rigged characters would probably be asking for way too much. But if they are going to try to maximize the value they are getting from what rigs they have, then they need to look deeper into how they design the motions for them so that they have good snap.
nobi have you played Fire Emblem Awakening or watched its combat animations?. The combat animations in that game are of course strongly inspired by the superb GBA sprites, but the snappy timing they achieve in recreating those animations in 3D feels really good. This is another topic we've gone over before, but it's quite worth examining in the era of 60fps HD 3D games. So far the best explanation of this I have seen anywhere is in Shirobako.
Wow, that's a lot of text!
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| nobinobita 1548th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(4):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Wed 3 Feb 00:41:
quote:
engine costs
If you are, say, Ubisoft, and you have a really particular engine need (open world game with high-end rendering capable of handling large crowds of AI entities inside a 3D environment that however complex is mostly static) upon which you will be building a multi-game franchise property, it can make sense to develop your own engine. Making an engine for AAA content is EXTREMELY expensive. It is expensive along multiple dimensions. It costs time and money to acquire a vast amount of very smart domain experts, it costs time and production expertise to identify exactly what it is that the product needs that merits the creation of this engine, it costs a lot of time and money to build the engine, and while the engine is being built NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY MAKE REAL STUFF WITH IT. That last part is really huge. You could have genius designers on your team that are not actually able to do anything meaningful on it for years while its being made.
EA has largely unified their entire games business under Frostbite. Their sports games use it, their TPS/FPS games use it, and RTS that was being planned used it, etc. Ubisoft has more than one in-house engine. Konami (hahahaha) has FOX Engine, which was intended to serve as their new engine for their Pro Evo Soccer franchise, Metal Gear, and whatever else... except that I don't even know how much longer they'll be making PES for, let alone any kind of non-mobile game.
Unity and Unreal have a numbe
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Thanks for that great explanation! I wouldn't be able to make games without the existence of Unity :D
I don't have any experience with Fire Emblem. I always enjoyed the sprites in the older games, and I've been a longtime fan of Yusuke Kozaki (even since he was just a humble amateur artist who went by KYMG!)
That clip from Shirabako is great! Really really good explanation. It's funny, the older I get the less I care about high frame rates. Like, I've been animating exclusively in SPINE for the last year (its a GREAT program!) so when its exported to the game engine, it can go as high as 60fps. But i honestly just prefer how it looks at lower frame rates. There's a punchiness to figuring out how to make stuff look awesome at 8fps that's totally lost with super smooth tweens.
quote:
In older 3D games (think PSX), specularity was dialed down or set to zero on many things, and the effect was achieved through careful texture painting. Some games had contrivances to help this. Good example: House of the Dead 1 has a first boss which is a big armoured dude in a room featuring an enormous overhead skylight. The contrivance of him always facing the camera and always being in the middle of the room allowed them to paint his textures in such a way that it looked like he was brightly lit overhead, with prominent highlight/blowout and sharply defined shadow edge.
YO. Have we talked about this before? Cos this is one of those things I like to get on a soap box about. Stylized 3d looks SO MUCH BETTER when you don't rely on realtime lighting! Just use local colors!
It's the reason why Megaman Legends has aged better than just about any other 3d PSOne game! There isn't any cheap/fake/distracting lighting. Just nice, flat colors that let you focus on the exact shapes the artists intend for you to see.
Ever since I started making mobile games in 2007 I've told all my clients "you know this game will look so much better if you turn off the lighting engine" But they never listened! Thankfully it's common practice now though.
Look at how great these new games look!
https://twitter.com/FlorianVltmn/status/693229052484788224
It's so clean people often mistake it for cel shading haha.
You can get awesome results with painterly textures too. Like Remember Usavich?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGI-Ealzs84
Very very subtle lighting, the textures do all the work, giving it a hand made feel. I think this will be a new trend in Indie games in the near future. Basically just PS2 graphics but in hi-def haha.
**I should note that in alot of the examples I've posted there IS lighting, its just suuuuper subtle. Very well done!
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[this message was edited by nobinobita on Wed 3 Feb 01:58] |
| Loona 995th Post
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Red Carpet Regular Member++
| "Re(10):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Thu 4 Feb 19:30
quote:
DLC for buff Kyo would be hilarious.
Not to mention alternate muscle proportions for the likes of Ralf, after the Xi to XII clash...
In unrelated news, there's a Kickstarter for a supposed Fatal Fury fan film, but it feels odd on multiple accounts:
* the first reference they make in the video isn't even to the games, it's to the animation
* the description at the same time mentions Fatal Fury 2 and the "revenge for Jeff" plot point from the original game, which doesn't really add up
* according to their site they cast a(n anime) Krauser, but no Geese, which kinda misses the point
* the Krauser in question not only looks too young, the poster art gives him a glowing red eye a la KoF Rugal...
* their Terry looks more like an Andy - which apparently isn't cast,but of course they tossed in a Mai front and center in the poster
* speaking of Mai, their KS video on Youtube is titled in a doubly misleading way, calling itself "Mai Shiranui in Real Life (New KOF 2016)"...
* it doesn't help that most of the video and blurb is mostly them mentioning Fatal Fury and terry a lot while asking for money
It all feels very dodgy... on the other hand, who the hell tries to reach a large audience by promising the public something related to Fatal Fury?...
At this point I feel like these attempts in Spanish have a lot more love for the source material put into them, clumsy and low budget as they are...
...!!
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| Micky Kusanagi
15th Post
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New Customer
| "Re(4):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Thu 4 Feb 21:17
quote:
Spoon's insanely long -but interesting- discussion about 3D engines and art
The praise I gave nobi the other day is for you as well, of course. Such an educational post. And written in a way that people illiterate in 3D game design -like me LOL- can understand without a hitch.
quote:
I wouldn't even be angry if the alt. outfits were paid DLC, personally. Obviously, some people will be bitter, but it's cosmetics and I follow a Harada philosophy on that. And maybe I'm alone on this, but for the love of god, please don't make the alts as ridiculous as MI. You might as well turn those designs into separate characters.
I agree. I had a little of a bitter history with costume DLC: I immediately bought the whole first wave of DLC costumes for vanilla SFIV and DoA5, cause I was sure for some reason that those were gonna be the only DLC costumes ever...man was I wrong. I stopped buying them at once.
After that, I made my mind to only buy DLC that add to the gameplay -ie. characters...I'll be crazy enough to buy the DLC chars for SFxT one day-, but the only cosmetic DLC I'd actually buy are those for my favorite character -say, Kyo in KOF, Ken in SF, Hitomi in DoA- and those that add some gimmick to the game, like DoA5LR's destroyable outfits LOL xD DLC music is something I wanna think about on a per-game basis, I still haven't bought any for my games as of now...
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| shindekudasai 431th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(5):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Thu 4 Feb 23:20
quote:
After that, I made my mind to only buy DLC that add to the gameplay -ie. characters...I'll be crazy enough to buy the DLC chars for SFxT one day-, but the only cosmetic DLC I'd actually buy are those for my favorite character -say, Kyo in KOF, Ken in SF, Hitomi in DoA- and those that add some gimmick to the game, like DoA5LR's destroyable outfits LOL xD DLC music is something I wanna think about on a per-game basis, I still haven't bought any for my games as of now...
I agree in theory, but in some cases I'm compelled to get everything just because I want to support the continued production for the game (as well as enjoying the hell out of the added gameplay elements). Case in point, I grabbed the last batch of Smash Bros DLC last night and I am absolutely thrilled to add Knuckles to the cast, even if it's just a costume, because of all the effort that went into supporting a game I love for over a year with NEW - not held back - content.
For KOF though, we'll see how it goes. I don't think I would want to buy a bunch of outfits at Maximum Impact levels of ridiculousness, but I would absolutely grab classic outfits or character tributes.
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| Micky Kusanagi
30th Post
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| "Re(4):New Samurai Shodown...?" , posted Wed 17 Feb 00:23
quote:
Humm, the renderings are starting to look better for KOFXIV, or at least their faces.
It looks like the devs are trying to match them to Ogura's art style.
True, but I'm afraid hoping for in-game models on par with player select ones is a dream in a dream.
Even more depressingly, animations aren't on the same level with any last gen or current gen competitor...if I had the money, I'd pay 3D animators experienced and numerous enough to redraw all the animations in KOFXIV so they get XIII quality on time (did somebody speculate a September 2016 release date for XIV?), not for me, but to persuade those who only would buy the game if it had better graphics.
Really, all the hating on the visuals is pissing me off to no end, especially because I can't do shit about it, except buying KOFXIV brand new and day one -by the way, I hope for some jam-packed Japanese collector's edition, maybe Ledo is willing to give it a shot.
Nothing against you Cafers, cause your critique is reasonable and focused on art direction more than mere visuals. My rant's against those who can only yell "SHITTY GRAPHICS UGLY GAME I WON'T BUY IT UNLESS IT GETS AS GOOD AS MKX OR KI", which sadly are the majority of the gaming market and will make KOFXIV bomb miserably...unless it gets 98OL tier revenue in China.
Come to think of it, what do Japanese and Chinese KOF fans think about visuals in XIV? I remember reading somewhere that Japanese fans got excited about the 50 chars roster, but posted character shading "suggestions" on Twitter on the other hand.
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| neo0r0chiaku
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| "Re(8):Re(10):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Thu 18 Feb 03:42:
quote:
I'm glad to see Ralf and Clark looking like normal people instead of steroid mountains, and King with a normal-sized head (hopefully Yuri will have the same luck whenever she's announced). Tizoc's new identity, though... yeah, not my favorite right now.
Nevertheless, KOF XIV seems to be improving with each new trailer. It still needs A LOT of improvements, but it is in the right track.
I was actually pretty impressed with the trailer. Not only with Tizoc's new identity, the animations and especially the effects are standing out making the game look good. So it makes me wonder, will people still complain about the graphics of the characters? Obviously, everything else graphics wise looks real good.
On the roster note, I really rather see more new or characters rarely used in the KOF universe. If the change to 3-D is major, the roster should as well.
quote:
The fact the moves have no impact hurts Angel the most. She's now firmly in Momoko (was it even her name?) territory, in that it doesn't make sense that whatever she's doing hurts her opponent.
Maybe she knows the human pressure points to inflict serious damage! lol
Long Live!
[this message was edited by neo0r0chiaku on Thu 18 Feb 03:48] |
| Orphen
2th Post
New Customer
| "Re(8):Re(10):Re(10):Taipei Game Show roundup" , posted Thu 18 Feb 18:09
Greetings Professor and fellow KOF players! Have not been active for a long time.
The 6th teaser definitely looks great with more revealed players and graphics improvements! I'm pretty impressed by it.
To be honest, I was quite disappointed with when XIV was announced. It went 3D (Max Impact) and the graphics were unacceptable for me. It seem like a unfinished product made by a 3rd party company. I was drawn to KOF because of their character's design and presentation.
Well, there are actually some arguments on the graphics. As posted previously, hardcore players wouldn't actually care about the graphics. However, to draw in new 'blood', especially on the a new gen console. There has to be a benchmark. I wouldn't mind if they reused the sprites from XIII. It was beautiful for me. Nonetheless, they have made improvements with each teaser, hopefully the end product will look beautiful.
Gameplay wise, they took out the drive meter & HD combos, which is a unique system for KOF. Not sure if it's a good idea? Since it's simplified system, I assume for now that the combos will not be fanciful as before. Not a fan of auto-combo especially for KOF. Let's see what the finalized version looks like.
Lastly, are we going to see the return of Yashiro, Chris & Shermie? There's a leaked roster sometime back, but is it legit?
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| Micky Kusanagi
38th Post
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| "Re(2):Re(10):Re(10):Re(10):Taipei Game Show r" , posted Fri 19 Feb 00:36
A couple random thoughts.
Not for defending SNKP at any cost -they don't pay me for damage control, so I'm not doing it xD-, but I think music is too loud in these teasers. If music volume was lower, maybe hit sounds would get a bit more impactful (but still less than optimal).
I love the church ruins stage because it looks dramatic and melancholic, and I hope this hints at an equally dramatic plot.
The accuracy of the leak so far is scary indeed...I would have bet nothing in its favor before December 5th!! I only started believing the leak when Angel was revealed: seeing her in a canon KOF game was more shocking to me than Orange Is The New Chang. I see lots of people don't want it to be true because it includes pachislot chars and concepts possibly weirder than Falcoon's creations, all while keeping faces like Yashiro, Shermie, Chris, Mary and Vanessa away from KOF, but that's the way it is for fighting games. Street Fighter V is upsetting fans of Sagat, Sakura and Blanka, KOFXIV is upsetting fans of the characters I've just mentioned.
(I still don't believe the Pachislot Team part anyway)
Ore no...kachi da!!
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| Loona 1011th Post
PSN: IkariLoona
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Red Carpet Premium Member
| "Re(7):Re(10):Re(10):Re(10):Taipei Game Show r" , posted Fri 19 Feb 21:34
quote:
Loona:...should we expect a Korean KOF98OL with KOFXII cast? LOL. (I'm actually curious about this thingy)
You're talking about the RPG thing? The one illustration/slide about that had a "94-XIII" bit, but no idea if it referenced the history of the series or the cast they might draw from.
However it turns out, I hope it eventually goes beyond Asia to make it easier to promote the series and help lure some licensing deals and talent - that sort of visibility seems like the sort of phenomenon that eventually made SF Capcom USA's business, which in turn made it easier to spread around the world.
quote:
I also noticed in the list a cyborg boxer, could it be Rocky?
One leak said something about a handicapped or one-armed boxer, the other mentioned a cyborg, so I only expect a single arm to be artificial, while Rocky seems to be more extensively modified - I'm not really expecting him.
Maybe they'll try something similar to K9999's move where he uses his arm like a shotgun for a while, to take advantage of the prosthetic.
quote:
Someone said it could be a revived cyborg version of Rick Strowd. He is a boxer now. Anybody knows what happened to him in RB2?
Rick seemed pretty fine by the end of RB2
quote:
Isn't this list exactly the same as the one that surfaced aged ago, that got revived when we saw Prisonner Chang?
Except that list was organized by team, while this one is one solid paragraph. I don't think there's anything new in it, is there? My memory is fuzzy.
As long as CYS don't get botched by this graphic style, they can include anyone they want, really.
I'm not sure if this one's older - but it's been unmodified for about half a year and it's been pretty spot-on - and no CYS in it, so at most they could get a cameo in a story section involving Iori's undead teammates.
...!!
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| penpen35
2th Post
New Customer
| "Hong Kong C3 Show Stuff" , posted Sat 20 Feb 00:12:
Welp, I can't seem to access the Orochinagi forum threads and I can't remember my old password when ON was down and I registered here (I even forgot the e-mail so that account is pretty dead now). So I had to register a new account - this is PenPen from Orochinagi, by the way (and yes, I was the one who uploaded the KOF XIII HK loketests).
So uh, I went to the C3 show (with anime/games/figures and wahtnot) and took a few videos secretly, but not many of the Sony Playstation people really cared, and there wasn't a lot of people playing. So the match quality was kind of poor. The kiosk doesn't have any sticks for us so people had to use the gamepad (I suck with the pad).
Overall I think the game plays pretty well for now, and Robert, King and Billy are playable. I got into Max mode a few times but only managed to do some SDMs, but haven't tried them out enough. Obviously graphics is not the strong suit of this game, at this point. It plays smooth, and plays decently well for me, but needs some getting used to as I'm not hitting sprites anymore. I can't describe it well...it's kinda like an adjustment that I had to go through with the old KOF sprites to KOF XII/XIII transition. And some animation changes with the 3D models versus the sprites that I needed to get used to. Speaking of animations, all female characters have boob jiggles. I can't hear if there's any music.
Robert feels like a mix of old and new, I'd say mostly from stuff in KOF XIII, but his spinny kick is the KOF 98 version instead of his XIII version. His f+A goes a bit farther than you are usually used with.
King is pretty simple. No air fireballs this time, but you can still cancel light attacks into her slide, into Tornado Kick. She also his her qcbx2+K super from 98.
Billy felt very much like his KOF XIII version. Moves are almost exactly the same to me versus XIII.
As for others, I tried out Kyo mostly, some Kula, Robert, Billy, maybe a game of Iori, King, and Chang.
Also videos! I had some videos taken as said above. Unfortunately my phone would almost set itself on fire after some extended recording, but the quality of the players there wasn't all that impressive, so it's not really good. Anyway, here they are.
Vidya 1
Vidya 2
Vidya 3
Vidya 4
Vidya 5
Vidya 6
The whole show itself was something that I wasn't interested in. So eh, left after I got around 2 hours in there. Got to play a round of SF V though.
I really don't see myself going there to record more though - so that would be all I would have.
rer
[this message was edited by penpen35 on Sat 20 Feb 02:58] |
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"Re(4):Re:Complete Breakdown of rumored list" , posted Mon 18 Jan 05:46
