[Xrd] News & (Theoretical) Gameplay Discussion

[SynikaL]

What's happening at the end of this video with Sol? He does some sort of uppercut, the camera changes quickly, then he's in front of May when the camera returns to normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECWJwnFPnyA

Dust > 6 (Dash Forward) transition.

[stickystaines]

What's happening at the end of this video with Sol? He does some sort of uppercut, the camera changes quickly, then he's in front of May when the camera returns to normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECWJwnFPnyA

I think that's dust hitting and then the 6 followup.

[Arobadope]

I wonder if they'll change the HUD at all, not really a fan of the life bars.

[werewolfgold]

Just as an addendum to what I said earlier, I think something else that adds a little bit of visual dissonance to it is that the effects are all seamlessly animated. Things such as the fire and lightning effects, Millia's Chroming Rose flowers as well as some other hair effects. It's like in Blazblue with Litchi and her staff or Mu and her gun turrets. But, maybe people are use to seeing things like that by now because of how some things are done in Blazblue.

And then after that, it's not like when the camera does it's super-action shots upon the KO that any frames are skipped. So, it kind of has this dual-presentation that almost feels like it's jumping back and forth between being 2D and 3D. I think that some people will enjoy it, but some will find it strange after a while.

[Alzarath]

What's happening at the end of this video with Sol? He does some sort of uppercut, the camera changes quickly, then he's in front of May when the camera returns to normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECWJwnFPnyA

That was Dust + [6] followup

[Chipp12]

Chipp's scarf is still there in gameplay vids!

And damn... 2 intro vids and both were skipped

Also is that me or Chipp actually canceled a-blade in the 1st vid?

Edited August 10, 2013 by Chipp12

[Jocelot]

I'm guessing that flashy yellow moves of May's was also her Ensenga, eh?

But jeezus this game is still so pretty looking.

[Koozebanian Fazoob]

Hey ElvenShadow, not sure if you'll get a chance to go back or not, but any chance you could check or ask if Potemkin Buster or Heat Knuckle can be YRCed on wiff? Guessing not, but the possibilities if so are pretty hilarious. Not that it matters much since that stuff is all very possible to change before release, but just for humors sake.

[Chipp12]

Looks like Assassin's stage have that "location testing" thing too.

[Jocelot]

I forgot, has it been said if you can jump after a super jump (like in BB?)

[Henaki]

Hey ElvenShadow, not sure if you'll get a chance to go back or not, but any chance you could check or ask if Potemkin Buster or Heat Knuckle can be YRCed on wiff? Guessing not, but the possibilities if so are pretty hilarious. Not that it matters much since that stuff is all very possible to change before release, but just for humors sake.

PB RC Heatknuckle, Heatknuckle RC PB.

Yes. It's like that Cerebella option select. lol

[TheMonsterKing]

It's more for the opening cutscenes and "Ultra Move" cutscenes where the camera has the close-ups on the specific character. It kind of looks 12-15 frames per second-ish. For comparison, typically a cartoon is around 24 fps and a live action (NTSC) show is about 30 fps. So, since the art looks THAT awesome, your brain thinks of it more as an anime. But, then it doesn't animate as well as one. I hope that kind of makes sense. When you have the game in 3D, and all of your "competitors" seem to look a lot more fluid (even something like, say, the Naruto Storm series that has the same style), it may be something that can be used against them in the general public perception area.

During the match, it's basically no different from the XX games in terms of how it animates. But, for me at least, even that's kind of annoying because they certainly have the capability to smooth things out more since they aren't drawing the individual frames. I don't know if full animation tweening for everything would look right for the game. But something to, -without a doubt-, make it look like you are playing the -next- GG after years of XX and its updates, something to really set it apart, would be appreciated on my end.

it does sound like it takes an extra effort to separate in-game 3d animations as "sprites" instead of just interpolating animations

to me its the coolest thing

it has the advantages of vector and 3d

but it's animated like sprites which is more appealing to me (has that hand-animated feeling to it!)

The innovation on display in regards to the game's look and motion is being understated, I feel. [...] because their is truly nothing that looks like this on the market. And it looks wonderful.

ahahah yeah thats what im saying glad im not the only one

[Kitsoru]

Wow, when Sol is walking, the way you see light and shadow move on his shoulder especially you can tell it's 3D, but the entire rest of him still looks so 2D it's surreal.

I'm noticing a tiny bit of slowness... on walking animations and whiffed moves like May's Ensenga, but on hit it seems to be the same speed to me? Or maybe it's changes to the characters' walking speeds that I'm seeing? Not sure but it was noticeable for me on Sol vs May, but not with Millia and Chipp which is why I'm not sure which it is.

[stickystaines]

Just as an addendum to what I said earlier, I think something else that adds a little bit of visual dissonance to it is that the effects are all seamlessly animated. Things such as the fire and lightning effects, Millia's Chroming Rose flowers as well as some other hair effects. It's like in Blazblue with Litchi and her staff or Mu and her gun turrets. But, maybe people are use to seeing things like that by now because of how some things are done in Blazblue.

And then after that, it's not like when the camera does it's super-action shots upon the KO that any frames are skipped. So, it kind of has this dual-presentation that almost feels like it's jumping back and forth between being 2D and 3D. I think that some people will enjoy it, but some will find it strange after a while.

Does it look like the intro and close up shots are actually meant to be like that? Or could it be that the game is just slowing down and skipping frames because they haven't sorted it out yet?

[Rhiya]

To be fair, even though anime is shown at a 24 fps framerate, the vast majority of shows are not animated at 24 fps, since it's expensive as hell. 12 fps is typically the upper end, with 8 and 6 fps being the more typical, budget friendly speed for TV. 24 fps is reserved for really expensive scenes and movies, most of the time.

[xAKUM3TSUx]

Hmmm...So Chipps so called "scarf" is more like a stash. Anyways thanks for the vid uploads! The game looks a lot more fluid but at the same time I cant say anything about the speed. To me it looks about the same but I could be wrong...otherwise this game looks so blazin' awesome!

(Now if only we could see the ground slide thingy they showed in the trailer)

[Ultima]

The innovation on display in regards to the game's look and motion is being understated, I feel. How long have various developers - older and modern alike - churned on and on about their love for sprite work, but it becoming exceedingly unfeasible due to the costs and manpower instigated by HD proliferation? This is BETTER than a compromise. This is BETTER than sprite work, imo, and is a legitimate EVOLUTION of that style. Seems as though the implications for this technique are larger than Arc Sys fighting games, and are something developers of other genres (i.e. platformers) and indie developers can look forward to.

Can software development techniques be patented? I'm guessing not, but I can't imagine other development houses not wanting to get a closer look at this game once it releases. Arc needs the awkward Dust transitions and other things to remind viewers this shit is 3D - because their is truly nothing that looks like this on the market. And it looks wonderful.

I agree 100%.

I'm not just excited about Xrd -I'm excited about who else might use this technique. I want a new Street Fighter game that looks like this (that uses SF3 sprites as a model). I want a new Samurai Shodown game that looks like this (that can reuse SS3's artwork as a base if they don't feel like doing anything new). Hell, even though it already looks spectacular, imagine another Dragon's Crown game in this style!

Some people were excited about King of Fighters XII(I)'s artwork. I was not. Even before I learned it took 16 months to create a character and that artwork isn't actually HD resolution, I knew that art style was a dead end. Sure, the end result looks good, but you have to be insane to expect other companies to follow suit. It's just not economically feasible.

But Xrd's style? Assuming it doesn't take too much more work than a regular 3D model, this method is worth copying. This has the potential to have the advantages of both 2D and 3D - We should wait to see if alternate costumes are as easy to implement in this style as with regular 3D models before we get a confirmation on that. But if alternate costumes are no more difficult in this style than regular 3D, I'd say that's GAME OVER YEAH for 2D sprites. Outside of developer skill, there would be no reason to actually use them again.

[ZenTzen]

I agree 100%.

I'm not just excited about Xrd -I'm excited about who else might use this technique. I want a new Street Fighter game that looks like this (that uses SF3 sprites as a model). I want a new Samurai Shodown game that looks like this (that can reuse SS3's artwork as a base if they don't feel like doing anything new). Hell, even though it already looks spectacular, imagine another Dragon's Crown game in this style!

Some people were excited about King of Fighters XII(I)'s artwork. I was not. Even before I learned it took 16 months to create a character and that artwork isn't actually HD resolution, I knew that art style was a dead end. Sure, the end result looks good, but you have to be insane to expect other companies to follow suit. It's just not economically feasible.

But Xrd's style? Assuming it doesn't take too much more work than a regular 3D model, this method is worth copying. This has the potential to have the advantages of both 2D and 3D - We should wait to see if alternate costumes are as easy to implement in this style as with regular 3D models before we get a confirmation on that. But if alternate costumes are no more difficult in this style than regular 3D, I'd say that's GAME OVER YEAH for 2D sprites. Outside of developer skill, there would be no reason to actually use them again.

If capcom does a DS4 like this i'll be happy, if SNK does a Garou MOTW 2 and a new SamSho like this i'll be happy

[Arobadope]

@Ultima

Well you might want to consider that SNK may not have been looking to have other teams copy their style. I mean devs really, more or less, just do what they want to a game and use the art style they want. Look at the difference between the recent DBZ games and Naruto games, both give great representations of the manga/anime, but both are pretty different from each other. So the goal probably isn't always to have other companies follow their process. Also, I am not sure having a bunch of games follow this style will really be a good thing, but I prefer differentiation in styles compared to a unifying of them.

[Ben Reed]

The acid test of how far Xrd's graphics style goes will be how easy it is to work with.

When Ishiwatari says this 3D style isn't THAT much easier to work with than 2D, I think he's mostly right. The main advantage 3D has over 2D for games like these is reduced time for art asset creation. This advantage probably isn't QUITE as pronounced where Xrd is concerned not just because they have a whole new engine to work the kinks out of, but also because they must be busting their asses trying to make models that look right with the lighting in Xrd. (I am SERIOUSLY impressed by what they did with May; she had every right to look hokey as fuck, and instead she looks just as anime as she ever did in 2D. ArcSys' modellers did INSANELY good work on her Xrd model.)

But I imagine this approach will still prove easier to work with as time goes on and the developers get more experienced with the Xrd engine. It's still really hard to ignore the advantages of 3D asset creation for professional development. You get the model's proportions, deformation, textures, etc. right in the game engine, it's more or less right for good, and almost all your character animations can just build on top of the model. Mistakes in traditional animation are much more costly and time-intensive to fix, because you may lose a LARGE chunk of your animation if the proportions/intensity of the animation don't look right. And a lot of animation errors are VERY difficult to spot until you're SEVERAL FRAMES DEEP in an animation.

(Example: I once hand-drew sprites for an unfinished MUGEN character years ago. I gave him a sweep like Iori's c.D dropkick, which was somewhere around 18-20 unique animation frames, and it took me about 10 frames and about a week of work to realize I'd unintentionally and GRADUALLY ballooned my character to TWICE his normal size during the dropkick animation. And that was JUST me, drawing JUST for FUN. Imagine how annoying/costly that would be for a salary, as part of a development team who's waiting for your assets so that the rest of the project can move ahead. Being able to severely reduce these kinds of animation errors is a MASSIVE blessing.)

[Sarvets <---xbl]

I already described new May hoop move and that's all I know. Capps will post new May stuff later.

If I had to describe Xrd as a color? The color of crystals on a fresh fluffy nug! And Xrd smells skunky with a sweet hoppy aroma!

So its highly recommended? haha

[FlameIce]

Where can I find footage of XRD? Besides the 2 videos I viewed on SRK, or is that it?

[Ragnarok_F4]

Ok, that gameplay looks awesome. It's really impressive the work they did with 3D models. It looks and already feels like a GG.

...And now, the long long LONG wait begins....it would be nice if the release it for consoles sometime before 2016...

[SDC]

it would be nice if the release it for consoles sometime before 2016...

It was about six months from SFIV's first loketest to the arcade release, and about a year after that for console. BB was more like eight months from loketest to arcade, and then another eight months to console.

Should be out by late 2014 to mid 2015, assuming there are no giant hurdles in development. And that these other two games development cycles are roughly in the same ballpark.

[ElvenShadow]

Hmm, after watching these vids multiple times through now, I don't really see where people were saying the missing animations are jarring or w/e. It looks fine to me, maybe it's an in person thing?

I certainly never said this. I think the animations seem fine.