Hmmm, I’m new here so I shall now proceed to post my uninformed criticisms
I’m one of those who dont like the new art style. Whilst my preferences are pretty irrelevant, I worry that such a unique art style will cause problems if the character designer (is he called Nona?) leaves SNK. Personally I would have been much happier with a standard (ie. boring) anime style that any animation sweatshop in Korea can do easily. The new artwork for kof02UM looks awesome.
From looking at Ralf’s machine gun punch, and Robert’s rapid kick move, they’re not using the “anime motion blur” effect that the older sprites had. That’s a shame, I really liked that effect. Hopefully they add it in afterwards? The best use of this effect is Vice’s Far C, and also her hcf+P snake-arm throwy move, if you want examples to look at. Ralf’s Extra mode dodge-attack is good too.
I really wished they would use this effect whenever there was a big chunk of movement without enough animation frames (eg. Ralf’s far C backfist).
Some of the special effects look really bad. I hope they’re placeholder or WIP…
Whilst some are good (Terry’s power geyser, Benimaru’s lightning etc), Kyo’s flames look terrible. There’s not enough transparency on the black smoke so it just looks like a big blob of awful. His DM flames look especially bad, it’s like this giant sideways mushroom. Also I hate Athena’s new DM effect, it doesnt have nearly as much impact as the original. If they’re going to have a “field” style DM, at least use the old SDM look?
Also the clash effect is too big, it obscures the view of the fighters! Better to have something like Melty Blood’s subtle spark-like effect.
I like that the backgrounds are getting closer to 97’s “big media event” sort of feel. It always bothers me that these so called world tournaments are done in some abandoned railway station or some grassy field. Or on a wooden boat. Whilst I dont care about realism or anything, at least I like to have a coherent world and concept. (one reason why I tend not to like crossover games like the VS series.)
Well, anyways, I’m still looking forward to the game, I hope it has decent netplay. (I am worried it wont though, since SNK has never been much of a technology company. Hopefully they’ll learn from Capcom and license the GGPO tech). Although if they announce that 2002UM or 98UM will come out on PS3 with netplay then I will care about kof12 somewhat less. I’m pretty hyped for KOF13 tho!!!
(damn them releasing 98UM on XBLA… they’re giving me urges to buy one >_< )
Kyo’s flames look like they havent applied on the alpha channel on it yet, this is why it has black borders, I think. Interesting fact, that Ash has both nice like looking FX, and with the black borders too. I’m pretty sure this all will be fixed in the final version.
I keep wondering WHY they would use an “alphaless” flame in all these trailers, though. That got me to thinking that maybe the black outlines are just suppose to be dissapearing smoke from his flames… differentiating him from the other special effects. I hope it’s just a lack of the transparency though, because it really does stick out too much this way.
I have to say, ALL the effects ALREADY looks A LOT better than CAPvsSNK 2. I really hated that games projectiles… and most of the SNK characters special effects lost a lot of personality there. Vice was really well done though, and I’d love to have that version of her in another game… -ahem-
Oh, and Leona still seems to have the hand drawn motion blur effects on. Which I’m glad for. I have no problem with what I’ve seen of Athena’s effects so far…The sparkles around her body feel very magical… though I wouldn’t mind seeing a reference to her old style also, maybe with a different button press.
Clash size doesn’t bother me much either, it’s not like we NEED to see the character upon clash, and the effect is off the screen by the time you can react again basically, isn’t it? Big, small, actually, I wouldn’t mind there being different levels of clash… who knows? If 2 DMs clash, it should be important and strong, but if it’s 2 medium blows, then it’s not all that important…
I’ve always loves SNK’s special effects, I find it funny how almost no “amateur” pixel art uses fresh special effects, they always seem to borrow SNKs, or Capcom’s. To me, that’s always been a testament to their quality. So XII better not disappointed!
Does she? That kinda sucks - it’s better to be consistent (ie. they should put the effect on the other characters too!)
I dont want a repeat of previous kofs where some moves had that technique in their animation, and some other moves that really needed it, didnt. Almost as if different people worked on different things, and one of the animators really liked that effect and the others didnt
I always guessed it was size or time constraints. I can’t even remember CvS 1’s anymore, lol, 2 overwrote all the memories, and now I just think “Man, At least SvC Chaos did THAT better than CvS…” :shake:
Well, Leona, much like Heidern before her, has that special “cutting hands” ability. So that explains why her hands move so fast, that they appear to cut through the air. And the Orochi characters (especially Yamazaki and Rugals dear Secretaries) move their hands in such a fast way that they appear like Snakes, which is suppose to represent the serpentine features of Orochi.
Thus, not every effect is suppose to look the same. However, which moves do you think needed the look, that didn’t get it? I always figured that if everyone moved like, say, Yashiro, that the effect would lose much of it’s personality.
Yeah, it’s strange, and kinda confusing. Same with not having super bars. Showing incompleted things in videos is always confusing. I think companies usually try to avoid this, to prevent further confusion, but not SNK this time for some reason.
But I’m sure everything will be fine at the end. After all it’s SNK, not just a teenage mugen developer copypasting shit in his free time. :wgrin:
Btw, Mugen. Those light FXes works exactly the same in mugen, as in KOFXII or as in CVS2 for example. The inner part of a fire blast effect (or a spark effect, or anything) is the most shining or the most closer to color white, while the outer side of it is almost black, like we can see it on Kyo’s flames in XII. If mugen has that alphachannel stuff switched on the black will be the transparent, and the more black it is, the more transparent it will be. Also, the more white is it, the less transparent. Pure black means total transparency.
Yeah, I’ve messed with Alpha Channels in 3DSMax and Photoshop a ton, so I definitely got the explanation! :woot:
I kinda wish all these demos, even THIS incomplete, made it to XBL Marketplace, and PSN, though. Maybe not as feature-filled (Half the cast would be A LOT, I think most I’d put would be 4 charas), but it’d be great to get the same chance to play, that OTHER people attendees had, at a PUBLIC convention.
Ever since hearing about the “surprise” Lost Planet Demo, which premiered before I got a 360, and was still played even after the game itself came out, I think such things are smart ideas for companies to take advantage of. Capcom seems to be the strongest at these ideas, but now that SNK has some current gen games in the works (this and Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny), I hope they start taking advantage of it all… It’d be so cool to get to play test this game as it’s in these “Early Development stages”.
Same as HDRemix Beta, except possibly more room for actual comments and changes to be made.
Really, in an age like theis, where games leak online before releases, and even enclosed media events can get taped and leaked to the net, I think SNK could turn their awkward “Lets shows the game multi times without super flashes, super bars, or all the transparency working!” mentality into a promotional strategy. Show the games at the roughest part of development, could make gamers really appreciate how hard it is to make graphics like this. Then they may get sales not only from hardcore SNK gamers, but also aspiring game creators and artist, who dig the whole “Insider Information” angle.
I’d love to see SNK take it’s on take on Capcom’s recent community-friendliness. If they don’t do it loudly and publicaly (like Capcom) they could at least do it in a sneaky way (leak sprite art onto the internet in order to stir up the artist community, start a multi-lingual site to give updates to all fans, have the playable build show up for surprise test at random locations or on game systems too, including in US and Europe, for example)… I dunno, I’d just like to see them OUT there, rather than just riding on press releases from Ben Herman every once in a while. It was nice seeing some ads for KoF MI in gaming mags… I hope they go all the way with Edge of Destiny and XII… but I’d like to see them do it for the Samsho and Orochi collections also…
So with kof98um confirmed for 360 (with online play of course) and now kof02um announced (only for ps2 so far? =/) isn’t that kinda bad to release 3 kof games close together?
