Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix: State of the Union
March 12th, 2008 Seth Killian
Here’s the straight story on the glorious highs, devastating lows, and delicious middles behind making Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, from the game’s producer, Rey Jimenez:
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Long time, no see Street Fighter fans. Sorry for not writing in a few months, but hopefully David Sirlin’s articles have been keeping you in the loop on HD Remix news. The reason I haven’t posted in a while is that there has been a lot of changes in HD Remix and we really had to focus on what was going on with the game. But now, I think it’s time I give you guys the run down on what’s been going on the past few months.
First of all, creating HD Remix has turned out to be a much more difficult task than we could’ve anticipated. There have been many recent challenges ranging from developing rock-solid netcode from the ground up to creating super-polished art for that truly lives up to the name Street Fighter. If we had gone the “good enough” route, you probably would be playing the game right now, but that wasn’t the route we wanted to take here at Capcom.
The first major revelation I have for you is that we’ve done a fairly large facelift to the character graphics. If you guys have been keeping up with the SFHD news, you probably remember Ryu looking like this:
As you can see below, we’ve changed the look a little bit (or maybe a lot, depending on how you look at it):
(Please note that this screen has not gone through the edge clean up process the other one has gone through, so it may seem a *little fuzzy.)
There are a number of reasons we decided to change the art and here’s the run down of how we came to that decision: As a necessary part of development, we had to outsource a lot of the work to an outside company that based their work off of Udon’s key frames. This company has an excellent reputation and ability as an outside art contractor and we were very impressed with their overall resources and their infrastructure. Without going into the nitty-gritty of it, the art they were producing just wasn’t up to par or schedule of what we needed. To be honest, a lot of their art was looking pretty good, but just not “good enough.” It just wouldn’t satisfy the quality bar that both Capcom and Street Fighter fans demand.
So, we turned to Udon to help solve this problem. First, they identified that all of us (Capcom and Udon) were aiming way too high with our render style. In the original style, we were going using at least 6-8 tones to go from the darkest to the lightest values of a particular color. This, as some fans actually pointed out, is extremely hard to do. We decided to stick it out and go with that route and unfortunately, it didn’t work out too well.
Udon’s suggestion was to take the tones down to about 4. So now, a particular color will go through about 4 shades when going to light to dark. Some tweaking was also done to the line art to match this new rendering style as well. The overall result is a different style that is still going to be in full HD, but will be more efficient to animate and therefore get the game to you guys sooner. It also looks pretty damned good.
Once Udon and Capcom agreed to go with that route, we had to essentially reboot the whole art pipeline. The character art pretty much started over from scratch with new reference art from Udon. Using lessons we learned from the start of the project we are now using a team that utilizes more Udon talent and an outsource partner (still very necessary) that uses a smaller, but more focused group of artists.
We know that it sucks that we all have to wait longer to play HD Remix, but the plus side to all this is that with the extra time needed to reboot the art pipeline, we have extra time to: a) cram in tons of cool features that weren’t planned from the onset of development and b) further refine and test features that we had planned all along.
One of the coolest features of the game is the new “HD Remix” mode in the game. As you guys have read from David Sirlin’s posts, we’ve been doing some changes to the game to create a mode in Super Turbo using input from some of the best Street Fighter players in the world. As I’m sure David would tell you, this is not as easy as it may sound. It’s taken many revisions, sessions of playing with pros, and further refinement to get it to where it is now, and it still may see a few more changes before release time. (From what I’m hearing, after a session of playing HD Remix, the pros are finding the changes so fun that it’s hard to go back to normal Super Turbo when they get home, which is super cool!)
As previously mentioned, we’ve also been hard at work on the online features. Recent tech solutions dedicated to online play have really raised the bar on what it means to have lag-less input during online play. We’ve put a ton of time in meeting this expectation and are confident that SFHD will provide the best online console experience to date.
I’ve seemed to be getting pretty long in my post here, so before I bore you to death, let me give a quick run down on a few more features that this extra time has allowed us to put in:
• 8-man Tournament Mode. This has been especially challenging with the new netcode
• Both Remixed and Classic music
• Hit Box Display. (Woohoo!)
There are more that we’ll announce later on, but I really wanted to mention the hit box feature as I know the guys at SRK would love to hear about that.
The last thing I’ll mention is concerning the talks the have been occurring online concerning the filesize of the game with respect to features on the 360 and the PS3 versions. I can officially say that the filesize will not be an issue. With great help from the guys at Microsoft, we will be able to offer the same features on both platforms to the same quality as each other. To use the term I’ve been reading on the forums, neither console version will be “gimped” due to any kind of limitation.
Overall, the project has proved to be extremely challenging, something that I’m sure that all those involved at Capcom, Backbone, and Udon would readily admit to. I think in the end, the product you guys get in the end will be the most ambitious title put into the console download space and be well worth the wait.
Stay tuned to the Capcom-Unity blog for more updates on SFHD. I promise to not wait months until the next update and to stop using my cell phone to release video.
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I was wondering when there’d be another update! The news on how the game is coming along is really exciting, especially after waiting nearly 5 months for a general update!
I really like the direction of the art style on the characters - the decision to let up on the color tones was a good one. The new design gives the characters a very “old school” look while maintaining a level of freshness thanks to adapting Edayan’s line art style, which is also coming along well. Here’s to the BEST SF artwork in an SF game EVAR!!!
By the way, I cheated by going over to Gamespot and taking a look at the new pics over there. Of course the UI looks a whole lot closer to OGST, but I think the font should look more like ST, and not so much like a comic book. Lovin the Guile stage! I’d really love to play the beta on my PS3 but we’ll see if you guys’ll actually put it out. I’d love to hear the remixed music and who’s composing it - now that’ll be a treat.
One last thing: I PROMISE TO BUY COMMANDO 3 IF YOU RELEASE THE BETA ON PS3!!!!
Thank you, Capcom, Backbone, and Udon, thank you.
It’s great to finally get an update-
Rey, we need a CPS1 option for sound effects and music. This will be easy to implement, and go a long way to pleasing fans who never made it past Hyper Fighting. Please give the Announcer, Guile etc their balls back…
Further, a mode where the “New Challenges” are omitted (CPS1 mode) would also give this game greater appeal and variety.
I totally agree with the announcer thing…
I don’t think anyone likes the SSFII New Challengers announcer, and an option to get the old school japanese master dude voice would be oh so sweet!
I like the simpler look of the new style, and if that gets it to us that much quicker than so much the better.
I also want to express my desire to see a PS3 beta test, and my willingness to pay the price of admission.
Actually i like the more detailed one than new one. I will miss those i wish you can find away in the future to update the art to more detailed one but yet i’m still interested on the game especially on the 8-man tournament mode.
I think if you have problems on art and graphics you could always turn the background on 3D(more light weight) while keeping the Fighter Sprite ART at its BEST.
Thank you Capcom and more power. I hope seing a HYPER version of this game in the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zqMho8wlvI
Excellent, the Guile stage looks great: updated graphics which are true to the original arcade look. Ditto for what little is shown of the Sagat stage.
I will say I wish the life bars and fonts used for naming were.. better. For lack of a better word. I’ll accept that changes need to be made to update the appearance, it just looks out of place to me.
Anyways, request time: PLEASE, please, work on a PlayStation Portable port of this release. I’d gladly pay $15-20 for a downsized HD Remix for the PSP (as a download only game; if you actually put it on a UMD I’d be willing to go up to $35, though I’d prefer it as a downloadable game). I know the HD graphics won’t port so well to the smaller screen (though they’d still be better than the arcade graphics since the PSP screen is a higher res than the arcade monitor was), but between the remix mode and the simple fact that there isn’t a Super Turbo available on PSP, I’d definitely buy it. Think about it. =)
Oh, and it’s just criminal you guys aren’t making a beta available for PS3 users.
I actually like the new art a lot more than the old stuff. It looks more like a hi-def version of the originals (and has fewer over-the-top lines for the muscle tones).
Also, yaaaaaahoo for visible hit boxes!
this has got to be the most fan influenced game ever created by a large company! and i’m happy to actually say, good job on the art!!! glad you listened to most of us and made the changes. i’m also glad to hear that there’s been so much stuff added to this project. i’m actually more excited for this game than sf4!!!
plz give us Beta Test on PS3:P
I think a same-color costume comparison would have obviously provided a more accurate idea of the changes. In particular I wonder about the loss of detail in folds on the left pants leg.
But thanks for the great update, the art still looks fantastic, and like everyone else I’m itching to play this classic in HD!
Just saw the crazy deluge of STHD videos and I just gotta say that “I’m impressed!” (I couldn’t help putting Guile’s win pose quote from SFA3 in there LOL!!!) I take back what I said about the font. It somehow works really well. Just a few things seem a little strange. The HUD looks better than the last one, but still needs work. I’m glad that it looks closer to the OGST, however. I’m sure you guys will figure out what to do about that. Ken and Ryu’s neutral and walking animations don’t flow so well - please work on those. Nearly all the music fits in the game nicely except for Vega’s stage. Rap music seems out of place especially for a joint where acoustic guitars and castanets play in the background. Please go to gh.ffshrine.org and check out the Street Fighter 2 Alph Lyra album, and listen to Vega’s music titled Splendor. That’s the type of sound that I’d like to hear out of the Taberna in Spain. Hopefully you’ll implement some music that sounds a lot closer to guitars and castanets.
Ahh, one thing I’ve kept forgetting to ask: any chance of the between fight bonus rounds returning (beating up the car, breaking the barrels, etc)? As I recall, they were taken out of Super Street Fighter II, but it’d be cool to see them available in the HD Remix mode of this game (the arcade perfect mode would, of course, still lack the bonus rounds).
Anyways, can’t wait to play this! =)
What kind of online features will this game have?
I’d be really interested if you could have more than two people in a room so you could all talk to one another and watch the action and then replace the loser in the next round, like a round-robin gameplay. That would really bring back the old arcade times for me.
Just having 2 people with nobody able to watch just doesn’t seem like as much fun.
Waiting for your turn was half the fun of playing these fighting games in the arcade.
Original SF1 fan here.(yeah, I rock!)
I love the updates and the technical details and I speak for all of us when I say we need you to give us a lot more. The more I hear from you guys, the more confident I am you are fans, are doing a kickass job and the more happy I will be to send you pictures of my naked girlfriend. Ah, and to buy the game, but I was going to do that anyways, even if it was 160×120 and black and white with no online. (ok, now I’m lying).
tl;dr: NEED MOAR UPDATES!
i really hope this game comes out for the pc i think it would be leniant on the hardware front so it would appeal to a broader audience and sf fans alike like me and its got multiplayer with which i would kick my friends butt’s and other ppls alike and this game could also be the defining game for crossplatforming b\w the 360 and pc the pc ver could also use the 360 controller as an option and it could have online leaderboards and stats to share with the 360 ver which would make for some fun times for everyone and capcom alike ………but i can only hope this comes out for the pc ohh well back to cod4 now
The art looks very good still. I can’t say enough about how cool this game is going to be… the rebalanced mode sounds excellent! If it somehow gets released on the PC too, all will be well!
Consider including the art you had done with the hardcore shading as an unlockable feature if only for a few characters. I would love to play as the “hardcore” ryu. The new one is a compromise, and apparently necessary, so be it, but don’t just throw away everything you had done before. The old art looks jaw dropping (I’m sure the reason you had such a hard time abandoning it).
Anthony
P.S. Please unnerf one of RYU’s dragon punches : )
Will it be possible to select the original SFII colour for each character or only the ST colours will be available in the finished game?
It would be nice to be able to play with a white Ryu, red Ken, etc again.