Skull Girls discussion thread

Sairus

The absolute final patch notes have been posted. The list is way too massive to copy paste here, so off to SRK with you.

http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/sg-slightly-different-edition-patch-notes.163719/

Most recent word on the patch is that as of about a week ago the PS3 version entered certification at Sony (hence the final patch notes). The 360 version was still tied up with Konami for some reason.

Mike Z has mentioned that as far as he's aware, free patches like this are not bound by any contract to be released simultaneously, so it could arrive on the PS3 as soon as it clears certification, regardless of how far behind the 360 version is.

EDIT: +3 frames of blockstun across the board? Wow that's a mad change.

GorySnake

Lost all interest in this game when the patch was delayed and online became a ghost town. New patch notes aren't encouraging me either. The changes are good, the Painwheel nerfs aren't :mad:

Sairus

You're not the only one worried about the nerfs for Painwheel. However, Mike was on SRK defending the nerfs.

Apparently Painwheel was a monster in the new version without the nerfs. The new focus of the game is resets instead of combos, and Painwheel was already terrifying in that area.

She has been placing high at Salty Cupcakes for the last while, so the nerfs haven't weighed her down too much.

Sairus

So the end is in sight. The Patch has been approved by Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) and is now waiting on their European branch (SCEE) and Microsoft.
Once SCEE clear it it should hopefully roll out pretty quick regardless of how far behind MS are.

Also, the patch weighs in at about 524MB on PSN (or somewhere around that. I can't remember the exact number). That seems awfully hefty for a patch, even with all the stuff they're adding. I mean the entire Skullgirls game was 1200MB.

How big were BB's patches? I know the one that updated BBCS to CS2 was 700MB, but that also packaged Platinum in with it.

Sairus

We're happy to (finally) announce that the Skullgirls patch will go live on the PlayStation 3 version on November 20th!

That patch has over 300 improvements, fixes and tweaks! We'll be posting the full patch notes once it's up!

When we know more about the Xbox 360 patch release, we'll let you know!

Finally

Also, the reason the patch is so big is because they rejigged the entire file system so it loads faster on 360. Still no word on the MS release date though.

Sairus

The patch is now live in the US PSN anyways, EU should be along whenever.

Alongside the patch came the full change list over here: http://skullgirls.com/2012/11/skullgirls-1-01-slightly-different-edition-patch-notes/

And some other news which explains why it took so long to release the patch in the first place. This is a long read, so tl;dr is Reverge Labs actually let the entire Skullgirls team go in June. They have since formed their own studio Lab Zero Games, still alongside Autumn Games the original publisher. PC version and DLC characters have no confirmed date.

Welcome to Lab Zero Games.

Forward-thinking and retro-minded, Lab Zero Games is an independent game development studio founded by the original team that brought you Skullgirls. Lab Zero intends to continue its critically-acclaimed work on Skullgirls as well as leverage its unique design and artistic sensibilities to develop new games.

As many of our fans know, Skullgirls had more than its fair share of difficulties getting to market, but thus far none have been quite this dire: last June, the entire Skullgirls team was laid off from Reverge Labs.

To try to prevent such calamities from befalling us, our games, or our fans again, the Skullgirls team decided to form its own studio.

Autumn Games, the publisher and owner of the Skullgirls property, is fully behind the new studio and will continue to work with us in the future on all Skullgirls-related endeavors, such as the just-released patch, more merchandise and a few other things we can’t quite announce yet.

...However, we are sad to report that these unfortunate circumstances have delayed the resumption of work on the PC version, and indefinitely delayed the first DLC character. Don’t take this as a sign that we’ve given up - we haven’t, and are doing everything in our power and then some to resume work on these as soon as possible. When we have more news, we’ll be sure to let you know.

So there you have it.

Not being able to tell anyone about these rather significant developments has almost been as bad as being largely unemployed and unable to continue our work on Skullgirls. We have always strived to be as open and transparent as our business and legal obligations will allow, but we feared news of these events would discourage our fans more than our conspicuous silence would. Being able to finally fill everyone in on everything is a huge relief, and we hope you understand our reasons for keeping quiet until now.

Everyone at Lab Zero would like to thank all of our amazing fans for their patience and support through this ordeal and as we (re)start on this new adventure. And even though this change was largely out of our control, the Skullgirls team still sincerely apologizes for the delays and lack of information in recent months.

We’re doing this for you, and we can’t wait to get back to work!

Until then,

Sincerely,
Lab Zero Games

Finally, MikeZ and Ravidrath both told me to expect good news relating to Skullgirls and Japan next month

UberPrinny_Baal

No word on the Xbox live patch date though?

Sairus

Nope. Ravidrath said definitely not this week anyway.
They're usually only given a week or two notice about these things, so it could potentially be next week. I'd try to be more conservative and assume it's at least two weeks away.

K.O.Kiki

Damn, that blows.

I hope they can get PC & DLC sorted, would hate for them to go under so soon.

Sairus

EU PSN is now up. SRK players have been reporting not perfect, but still extremely playable full combo games from Japan-Washington, so the net code has been seriously optimized. One British guy is saying his games from central UK to the US are smoother now than his prepatch games with people in London.
'course my internet is so awful that's still not going to help, but whatevs :pac:

Also, I doubt that Lab Zero will be going under any time soon. If they managed to churn out the patch and have apparently secured a deal for distribution in Japan I imagine they're fairly gung ho about keeping this going.

Yreval

Skullgirls: Nominated For Annie Award
http://iplaywinner.com/news/2012/12/3/skullgirls-nominated-for-annie-award.html

UberPrinny_Baal

Skullgirls XBLA patch has been delayed this long because it is a hundred and forty seven times bigger in filesize than what is allowed for patches

http://www.xblafans.com/microsoft-holding-up-skullgirls-xbla-patch-due-to-size-restrictions-61789.html

No ETA on a resolution...

Nutrient

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Skullgirls XBLA patch has been delayed this long because it is a hundred and forty seven times bigger in filesize than what is allowed for patches

http://www.xblafans.com/microsoft-holding-up-skullgirls-xbla-patch-due-to-size-restrictions-61789.html

No ETA on a resolution...

R.I.P SkullGirls

K.O.Kiki

I blame Sony for not allowing me to put my profile & games on a USB stick like Microsoft does

RIP downloadable fighters.

Sairus

I've seen that article, but I'm a little confused. BBCS's CS2 upgrade was 500MB or something too right? Why is SG's 600MB patch suddenly 150 times over the limit?
Maybe they have different patch limits for downloadable titles versus retail or something

PPC

Sairus wrote: »

Maybe they have different patch limits for downloadable titles versus retail or something

Bingo.

Yreval

http://www.xblafans.com/sticks-and-stones-couldnt-break-skullgirls-bones-61880.html

Some signs of life on the Xbox side of things, at least.

Sairus

Mike Z was on Salty Cupcakes this week mentioning a bunch of stuff.

Firstly, the 360 patch is being heavily redone and may now be down to the 4MB limit, with all the hefty weight of the patch being pushed to an optional compatibility patch included with DLC or something. I haven't been able to watch the stream so that's second hand and probably very confused information. This redo has meant that it needs to be resubmitted to MS for certification. Not quite there yet, but almost.

Second, the PC version is still ongoing. Mike has been working on it solo for free for a while, but he's now at the point where he needs another guy to work on it too. Autumn have given him the go ahead to get another programmer. So development hasn't started, but he's been given the green light to hire someone to start development. Or something.

Thirdly, there's going to be a donation drive next Thursday during Salty Cupcakes for the Skullgirls at EVO fund. All donations during the show will be matched by a bunch of people up to $1,000. So if total received donations during the show are $1,500 a few other people will put $1,000 in each.

Lastly, SoCal Regionals were on this weekend and Skullgirls had a semi-official side tournament. They were given half of the bring your own consoles room to themselves and were allowed stream it. EightySixed have the archives on Twitch. The finals start in that video at about 00:32:00
Also notice that this build has match recording built in (I assume as a PC only feature) and all the combo words have been changed to 'Donate!'
The finals have a pretty sick ending.

UberPrinny_Baal

Sairus wrote: »

The finals have a pretty sick ending.

Link to finals?

Your link to the Eightysixed's twitch channel goes to the donation drive page. I was able to find it myself no prob but I'm only seeing casuals archived.

Sairus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Link to finals?

Your link to the Eightysixed's twitch channel goes to the donation drive page. I was able to find it myself no prob but I'm only seeing casuals archived.

Woops. Fixed the link:

http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed/b/358714206

There's a few tournament matches archived as well as the casuals. They're really badly named so it's annoying to sift through em.

The finals are in the above link at about 00:32:00

Sairus

Here's the finals in better quality:

Also, Mike Z mentioned "There will be Surprises!" on this Thursday's Salty Cupcakes donation drive stream. It generally starts 3am-ish UTC on http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed

K.O.Kiki

Wow, game looks MUCH faster now that resets are the best option for damage!

Sairus

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Wow, game looks MUCH faster now that resets are the best option for damage!

Yerp. Some characters still combo for way longer than I'd like (Painwheel particularly), but halving the length of the IPS tolerance was a massive improvement.

Also, here's proper details on the donation drive majigger should y'all be interested:

MikeZ wrote: »

- January 24th, 8PM PST until at least 11, probably till much later (^.^)
- Streamed on twitch.tv/eightysixed
- There will be Surprises with a capital S. Be sure to wear socks.
- So far we have $3,000 pledged for matching donations made during the drive. I can hardly believe it! (If you'd like to pledge some more matching funds, which I can also hardly believe, PM me.)

Fergus_

Beats eating minute long Painwheel combos into resets >:|

fu snake

Sairus

Skullgirls donation drive stream is now active: http://www.twitch.tv/eightysixed/

Virtually all the voice actors are at the venue and they're doing a bunch of stuff. They're currently doing a voiced run through of the story mode. Story mode has also been altered for this build so that player two is now player controlled - including Bloody Marie for the first time.

There's also going to be a signed Skullgirls art book auctioned off soon enough.

You can donate here http://tinyurl.com/sg-evo

K.O.Kiki

Lots of yummy Skullgirls art on Tumblr, too.

Yreval

As I type this:

https://www.wepay.com/donations/evo2013-sg (Skullgirls: $20,580)
https://www.wepay.com/donations/evo2013-ssbm (SSBM: $15,344.69)

Skullgirls at Evo. Believe.

chopperbyrne

Much rather see SSB:M at Evo than Skullgirls.

Are we still waiting for the patch that was announced on something like day 6 of the game's release?

Nobody plays this game.

Melee was featured at a recent major and was positively received.

UberPrinny_Baal

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Much rather see SSB:M at Evo than Skullgirls.

As a huge Melee fan, I absolutely disagree with you.

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Are we still waiting for the patch that was announced on something like day 6 of the game's release?

Nobody plays this game.

These two points are related. A lot of people aren't playing because they're waiting on the patch. The patch was delayed because the company laid off the dev team, and then the patch exceeded the size cap. It's out on PS3 just not 360. They're working on it though.

chopperbyrne wrote: »

Melee was featured at a recent major and was positively received.

It was a Smash major it was featured at, so it being positively received is a pretty redundant point. Apex has been running for a number of years, the Smash community doesn't need any help keeping their 12 year old game alive, they're doing a good job of it themselves.

The biggest challenge to the Smash scene is going to be the incorporation of Smash 4 into their rosters, and how that will affect/split the pre-existing Melee and Brawl communities.

The fate of Skullgirls on the other hand will likely live or die based on it being featured at Evo; and people from the FGC worked hard on that game so I'd personally like to see them get a chance at having the product they love get some stream monster acclaim and maybe some knock-on commercial sales.

They badly need it.

Sairus

Coming up on the last day of the donation drive with Melee keeping just ahead of Skullgirls and Super Turbo making a totally random last minute play for the slot. SG held a big fund raiser last week which was a hoot to watch. This week will be doing similar, with voice actors and Lab Zero dev staff along with donations putting you into a raffle for a dual modded SG TE, plus a bunch of other stuff.

Lab Zero also just announced that they have secured a publisher and funding for the PC version: http://skullgirls.com/2013/01/update-on-the-pc-version-of-skullgirls/
Gist is that they should start working on it in a few weeks and it should take about 4 months to finish from that point (so maybe Christmas :pac: ). It'll come with some PC exclusive stuff like lobbies and presumably built in replay recording, since Mike's been showing that off at all the recent events.

Also, the DLC color pack was accidentally released on EU PSN this morning: https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/#!/en-gb/games/addons/colour-palette-bundle/cid=EP0101-NPEB00910_00-B000000000000136
It might be taken down again soon because Microsoft don't like PS3 having exclusive DLC, so grab em while they're hot. It's €4ish for 5 new colors for each character, plus it unlocks any palettes you hadn't unlocked yet.