It’s not really noticeable, but that’s the build before they tweaked Ryu’s face slightly.
@Eternal To me it looks a bit sluggish like they way Ken jumps for example and of course all the other stuff like sparks etc…
My point with that post is people are judging and being negative way too early. We should all just be a little patient and see how things turn out before we judge negatively
O btw, that little leaping into the middle of the screen animation Ken does in that video is still in his character file as an unused introduction animation. Fun factoid. 
lol, wow.
ok. so many disagrees? lol, ok ok. I give up. I wont post here in the SFV anymore.
You guys win.
SF loses.
ok.
I just realized something. A revelation.
Capcom didn’t kill Street Fighter.
Its players did.
Enjoy your “dying in popularity by your own stupidity” franchise.
Yeah that early SF4 footage looks extremely similar to the final build and the gameplay flow is nearly identical. The only thing that is noticeable to me is the models are a bit different.
Although, when I looked back at early footage of C. Viper vs. Chun Li a while ago, it looked very different in terms of appearance and flow.
I’m way more on board for this than the early reveal of GG Xrd to be honest (probably largely due to SF5 already presenting the characters I played the most, in a way that is interesting to me).
A lot of people around me were hype for Xrd pre-console release, but I just wasn’t feeling it that much/wasn’t following the trailers/disliked the visual redesigns/etc. It really wasn’t until like last week that I finally got more hype and decided that I wanted to get Xrd after watching match videos of players who improved their skills with the game over the past few months (especially with the new characters because the old characters seem almost identical to their XXAC versions).
With this game I’m kind of the other way so far and hopefully new reveals/trailers will keep me that way until its release. I haven’t wanted to play a new game like this since TVC first got revealed.
SFIV went through LOTS of changes during development. Some changes are just more noticeable than others. The biggest change of course was the switch to 2D hitboxes. The character portraits when through lots of revisions (they were actually based on the 3D models, which were later flattened). It also had a different UI and fewer animations (Abel’s Ultra was hilarious). Facial animations were also heavily tweaked. Before, the chars’ top lip hardly moved. The super meter was like 3rd Strikes (no individual EX bars).
Guile was fugly even in the later SFIV builds. This was like 1 month before release:
You can see Abel’s poverty Ultra in this vid:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2008/02/20/street-fighter-4-x360-gdc-2008-abel-vs-chun-li-off-screen
What’s pretty interesting to me is actually how overall little changed outside of the UI elements.
Guile’s face got a pretty drastic rework: (only really applies to up close shots)
Chun’s arms got smoothed out a bit to be less muscular looking.
Mouth animations were toned down/tweaked a little bit (only really matters for up close shots like ultras)
A couple of animations were slightly tweaked but nothing drastic other than Abel’s Ultra being reworked almost completely other than the ending.
Hit sparks were tweaked.
None of this stuff was MAJOR shifts to the overall graphical style of the game or characters. I’d say that the only real major graphical shifts were in the UI elements, otherwise it was pretty close to the final product. Different enough to certainly require the polish it got, but it was just that: polishing/tweaking rather than like a real change.
I think we can safely say that SFV final release will end up looking pretty close to what we saw in that gameplay video in terms of stylization and art direction. What we can expect however is some polish on things like perhaps lighting/particle effects and maybe a few improved textures or small adjustments to the character model. Gameplay flow could however change pretty drastically and I’m sure that facial animations will be ironed out and improved.
During development they had 3 different versions of Ryu (actual working models) before they settled on one they thought would work:
The developers said they can’t even count how many times Chun Li’s was model was changed. This was before the loke test. After the loke test, they had another month dedicated to refining Chun Li.
For now, noone really knows at what stage of development SFV is in (alpha? beta?). The stage assets and character assets might be fixed for now simply because of how much time was already invested into them, but the models can still change a lot.
Also, at some point during SFIV’s development they decided that each stage should have a dominant colour, so that if you take screenshots and line them up they form a gradient. (there’s a pic of this on one of their dev blogs). Stuff like that is not really that hard to implement, and it can have a big effect on what the game looks like. Whether or not they’re planning the same thing with SFV is anyone’s guess.
edit: Found the pic
They said they added ambient lighting to make certain colours more dominant.
They had lots of ideas for stages that never made it into the game. You can see a few here:
Were any of those majorly changed models shown in game or simply during retrospective developmental blogs which were likely showing stuff from before they even revealed the first trailer? I’m betting that the stuff for Ryu’s early designs were shown as more of a post mortem rather than as a current progress.
I didn’t say that they chose a concept and then never changed it. I said that what is surprising is how little is changed which was in the context of the first views of the game given to the public until release very little changed in the art style or graphics beyond simple polishing and some new animations. Behind the scenes before the game was announced to the public I’m sure there were TONS of major changes.
I believe some of those early models were used in the pre-alpha builds of the game. There are a couple of pictures of them where you can tell its pre-alpha by the fact that the HUD is just generic, flat bars.
They should’ve kept the UI they showed during the beta of SF4. Everything looked cleaner and much more uniform.
Was that shown to the public before the trailers or those images post mortem retrospective images about the development of the game like the dev images from vanilla SF4 gallery?
No they weren’t.
SF4 must be the first time they ever worked on 3D models. Chun and Sak’s face were ugly as hell and it took a couple reworks. But Super and on, they seemed more comfortable as the new chars look a lot better. Ibuki was given extra mechanics or whatever you call it for her long hair. Blanka and Ken didn’t get it. Their hair just stays still like a cheap toy.
One more example is one of Chun’s win poses when she does her kicks “Ya ya ya, haaaaah!”, the pose is ugly as hell.
SF5 looks good so far, so I hope they stay consistent.
Random character related question. So Karin is supposedly problematic because Masahiko Nakahira created her right. Well didn’t he also create Evil Ryu? Or is the rights situation with that difference since he’s a version/variant of an existing character?
As you said Evil Ryu is a no-problem
For Karin if they REALLY want her back i suppose they will find a way… after all Edgemaster from SC1 was replaced for the same reason in SC2 and 3 (by Charade and Olcadan), but he returned in SCV
I for one hope that she stay out, but the thing of being designed by an external artist probably don’t 100% kill her chances, just make her appearence less likely than others that don’t have the same problematic
I wonder how much royalty it would cost Capcom to be able to use Karin in another street fighter game? If it is a large amount I can easily see them leaving out Karin despite her popularity. Capcom is very conservative financially, at least in recent years.
Sony is bankrolling this project aren’t they? Things might be a bit different this time around, especially if Somy wants to push SFV as the big new thing in the FGC and as an answer to Microsoft’s KI.
You know what the worst thing is? It seems like Microsoft decided not to invest in SF5 so that it could instead market Killer Instinct as its flagship fighter. Don’t get me wrong, KI is actually quite a good fighter. Its just no Street Fighter.
I think that they’re just being lazy asses and making up excuses as to why they haven’t tried to acquire the rights to her. I mean, Karin is the top 5 most demanded SF character. Because of this, is it wrong to believe that she’ll rake in lots of sales given her popularity? I don’t think so. So wouldn’t it be wise to invest in her? I’m not knowledgeable with licensing stuff, but I just figure this would make the most sense.
Plus, fans heavily demanded Strider to be in UMvC3 and he too had licensing issues apparently, but they made it happen anyway. So it shows that they are mostly able to acquire rights to these characters. I highly doubt Nakahira would be so stubborn about this situation as well. It just doesn’t add up in my head. Either they’re lying or we’re not given the full extent of this situation.