Character Portraits in the Lifebar Display

This is gonna sound somewhat trivial and stupid but I’m kind of annoyed that most modern fighting games still don’t color-code the portraits (especially concerning mirror matches):

[media=youtube]xUhJlXVWQOw[/media]

Even without listing who the specific players are, you can tell which Player-1’s Ken from Player-2’s Ken at a passing glance. Now, here’s Street Fighter IV, which was released almost a decade after SFIII: 3rd Strike:

durr which ken did the flaming shoryuken?

obviously the red ken

UMvC3 does. And you could well have, no portrait, you know. See Tekken, Soul Calibur.
For an old game, Super Turbo doesn’t either.

I agree, it was pretty nice when you could see effects happen to the health icons, getting burned, electrocuted, etc.

Now they just shrink the character portraits, its kinda lame. But it would feel weird if they added it in SSF4 AE 2012 Portraits Plus

Also a little off topic, UI in SF4 is excellent otherwise. You know a game with a shitty UI? Skullgirls. Yeah I said it.

Took me a while to find the super meter, and its right beside health, so the bottom of the screen has nothing on it, and its just an imbalance and ugh.
Just put the super bars on the bottom like everyone else.

lmao

It’s one of the reasons why I hated the new aesthetics for Online Edition. They didn’t even use the official portraits for a couple of the characters, but that’s a different gripe.

CVS2, MVC2, Rival Schools/Project Justice and CFJ are also offenders, though CVS2 gave you different art depending on which groove you go with.

I loved Guilty Gear’s. They had a miniature sprite version of the character that would show everything the player did.

you should still be able to easily see who did what if the characters are different colors, the portrait shouldn’t matter

Yeah, but it does make things a bit easier in terms of which character’s which. It’s nothing really major, but you have to admit it’s more useful than just regular character portraits. It’s those little details that some people can appreciate.

Does anybody prefer classic SF3 portraits over the new Online Edition portraits? I honestly thought that the new portraits for Online Edition was one of the few positive aspects about the port.

Your character is the one that punches when you press the punch button.

cropped portraits stolen from the char select screen that aren’t colour-coded, often face the wrong direction and in one case is the wrong picture altogether are a positive aspect of the port? i’d love to know what you hate about it then.

I just thought some portraits in the old version looked like ass (Example: Ken and Dudley) in comparison to the great artwork featured in the game.
I thought some of the old character portraits were good (Example Ryu and Chun Li)
In my opinion, the new portraits mesh better with the overall artwork by being more subtle than their predecessors.
I am a big fan of the CvS2 CAP groove portraits as well

I prefer the OG HUD over whatever the hell they did in OE. It looks like they just did quick crops in Photoshop and I think Q’s HUD pic is random fanart and they don’t change colors with the color you picked so it’s a definite step back.

I guess they could put a little color bar below the portrait, I think melty blood does that.

It’s just my opinion, but I don’t like the new artwork. Are they drawn well? Yes, and Artgerm is a talented artist. I just don’t like his work on OE because of how lifeless they feel. Bland, forced poses and little expression shown. Compare them to Daigo Ikeno’s old 3S works and you can see a difference.

That was an intentional decision. They used to have the health bar on the bottom due to tradition, but they moved it up so that you don’t have to shift your eyes between both parts like you do in most fighting games.

I’m torn on whether that is a good idea or not. On one hand, they’re perfectly right that you should be able to judge health and super meter at the same time without having to split your focus. On the other, having all the stuff on the top forces the eyes away from the center of the screen, and as you said it’s a tradition to have super meter on the bottom.

Obviously player 1 ken did since he has the combo counter showing that he performed a 3 hit combo with his shoryuken.

[media=youtube]UwiNCh7VBfA[/media] 6:20 reflects my opinion on the matter.

Most big name fighters have super meters that glow different colors per level, so at a glance you know how much meter is avaliable for both players.
I haven’t seen skullgirls on a wide screen yet so it may work when I get it, but I’m going off the youtube videos and streams I’ve seen.