Post your question, and I’ll draw his attention to it.
Ok, it’s an odd question:
Obviously you’ve been around the fighting game community for quite a while. You played a multitude of games in a serious competitive environment, on top of breaking them down (with videos about glitches, combos, and so on).
What do you plan to do with Skullgirls? Are you going to take the role of being part of the company and watch what we do with the game (break it down, develop it, promote it) or are you going to be as big of a part of promoting and playing the game as you have been in the game’s production? You know, holding secret Peacock strats for Grand Finals, or perhaps the opposite and letting people know of intentional changes / glitches / etc that weren’t made public? Maybe there’s a tiny bit of selfish pride of wanting to see who can beat the guy who’s been working on the game from the start? Healthy competitive stuff~
:S
with many games devs have to sign an agreement to not participate in tournaments
Anyone who knows me knows I don’t STSFN. I’d rather improve the overall level of competition by sharing information, and I wish more people were that way. If I find a new technique in SG after it’s out, I’ll either fix it or make a video explaining how to do it. :^)
The overall answer is: I’m making a game I want to play. That’s why I started, it’s why I’m still working on it, and you can be damn sure I’ll be sitting around just like everyone else saying ugh-the-devs-don’t-know-anything-why-didn’t-they-fix-Cerebella-she’s-so-awful-oh-hey-I-got-next, and probably get some weird looks. (^.^)'
Of course I’ll play people - and since I usually play some low-tier character, everyone in the world can have the selfish pride of beating the guy who made the game! There won’t be any monopoly there. Heh.
I don’t have to sign anything agreeing not to enter tournaments, however I have been told by several tournament organizers that I’m not allowed to enter any SG tournaments they hold, which I understand…but now that I’ve developed a fighter, I can pretty much say that there’s nothing the devs know that the players don’t figure out within around 6 months, and anything after that is new unexplored territory for the devs also. Just designing it doesn’t make me any better at playing, and certainly doesn’t eliminate the weaknesses of whoever I use.
I am very much looking forward to what the community does with SG, but for that I’ll have to wait…
Skullgirls… so FLUID.
I can imagine how hyped you are Mike. Having people finding broken stuff, studying frame data, etc. with your own creation as you’ve done with other fighting games must be very exciting.
Also yay, another American fighter. First MK9 and now soon Skullgrils. America’s steppin’ it up!
I tried spreading the news of this game on Facebook.
Gonna do that again with all this new info. I want this game yesterday. 
Can the Fat Man bomb be set off prematurely or do you have to wait until its counter goes down? In the video clip it looked like another little bomb with legs set it off.
Fat Man’s life is also the countdown - goes down by a set amount each frame, and each hit decreases the time left; both teams can hit it (him?), and the explosion can hit both teams.
GameTrailers has three clips of Peacock in action, so you can finally see her in all her insane glory.
Best character ever. I don’t care if she sucks, she is my main from day one.
Who the fuck is the genius that made her? He/She deserves a fucking medal and a key to the city.
Wouldn’t that kinda clearly be Alex Ahad?
She has THE FUCKING PSO CHAINSAW.
Day 1. DAY FUCKING ONE.
Wow, this game looks better and better each time I see it. There is not a single character in the game that I did not drop my jaw for. The animation is THAT GODLIKE! Like seriously Peacock looks fucking amazing and I’m definently getting a Hsien-Ko vibe from her with the Hammerspace arsenal and all. Everything about this game just screams AWESOME! The way they move, walk, talk…just everything. I literally cannot wait for this game, and I can’t wait for more info on the new characters! Keep up the good work.
Oh, and if you can, I would also like to hear some more music samples from Yamane-San! She’s great!
I’m hoping the zombie-stitches character (can’t remember the name) is the next one to be releaved! She’s my predetermined main. Peacock turned out extremely well though. When I first saw her art and so on I wasn’t that impressed but seeing her ingame and how she plays I did change my mind about Peacock.
Game is looking so sick, hope it comes out soon!
A few questions, not sure what has or hasn’t been unveiled about the game:
- Are you guys doing replays? Local saves, sharing with friends online, SSF4-like “replay boards” or any combination of these?
- I thought I heard somewhere that included in the game would be a “how to play fighting games” tutorial mode, showing the importance of blocking, or footsies, or what have you… am I wrong on this? If not, what details have been revealed about it, and how extensive is this mode going to be? It’s so hard to explain to newcomers how to “properly” play fighting games and a tutorial mode that does more than teach impractical combos is long overdue
- How do you call your assist in a 6-button fighter?
- Is your goal to create a supremely balanced fighter (that is, are you trying to make matchups close to 5-5 across the board), or are you more focused about just creating a fun combo engine and letting the balance work itself out however it does?
I usually find it hard to get excited for indie fighters, but you guys are doing a great job changing my mind so far!
He also made Venus. No more Key to the City for him, Venus scares people…me included.
While Alex did come up with the character, Mike and the rest of the art team deserve a lot of credit, too.
The actual moves are brainstormed by the artists as a group, but with some direction from Mike about what he needs the character to have. They come up with a ton of ideas, and they’re approved and collated by Alex. Mike then fills out a character’s repertoire with a portion of those moves.
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I can’t talk about any of that yet, I’m afraid.
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You’re not wrong - we’re planning on having really robust tutorials to teach players how to play fighting games. Just about every game genre has drastically improved in its ability to teach players how to enjoy them, and we’re hoping we can advance that cause for fighting games. Beyond the tutorials, our single player AI will be designed to make you better at playing your character by being a little more pattern-driven and weighted to your characters’ strengths.
We wrote a blog post about our AI philosophy not too long ago: http://www.skullgirls.com/blog/2011/05/03/a-new-perspective-on-single-player-ai
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Assists are diagonals: i.e. LP + MK, MP + FK, MP + LK, etc. Tagging out is both Mediums or both Fierce - both Light is Throw.
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This is kind of a hard question to answer.
We’re trying to make the best competition-worthy fighter we can, so we’re going to try and make things as balanced and well thought-out as possible to start. However, it’s almost impossible to predict where the community will take things from there. That’s where our infinite detection and other systems come into play: not only do we think they’re good for the game in general, they should help prevent any problems that do arise from getting out-of-hand. And while we fully intend to keep improving the game with updates, Mike doesn’t believe in kneejerk fixes or constant tweaks, since they can create more problems than they solve and the community is actually pretty good at adapting and countering most perceived issues in the longer term.
Mike talked more about his philosophy on game balance in his interview with Gamezone, so I’ll link that here: http://www.gamezone.com/editorials/item/mike_zaimont_breaks_down_the_future_plans_of_skullgirls/
Hope that answers some of your questions and help continue the mind-changing trend.
There are going to be more characters, right? Like, more than the original eight characters that were mentioned very early in development.
wouldn’t it make more sense to switch the tag and assist commands? surely you assist way more than you tag? it just seems super awkward to have to assist like that…
edit: i guess lk+mp and mk+hp would be fine, lp+mk and mp+hk are bleh though since you have to reorient your fingers to press them
Just one question:
By the time this game reaches EVO, are you planning on putting out as much as possible regarding playable roster size, or are you more concerned with making sure each character is fluid before you move onto more?
Being a spiral/cable player I can’t wait to test out Peacock, she looks beast!