Monday
Nov242008
Super Balance Articles II Turbo
SirlinI was the lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix. This is a collection of all 20 articles I wrote about designing the game. Together, they are even longer than my book. CLICK ON THE PORTRAITS BELOW for each character's article. Enjoy.
--Sirlin
Special thanks to all the Evolution tournament players who playtested the game and helped it be what it is.
(Text-only version of this page here.)
Reader Comments (26)
Great job on these articles man, Ken sweep it (lnice one).
Hey, Dave!
You should probably point it out more concretely that if you click on the character portraits in the Changelist, you get to the detailed articles. At first, I couldn't find them anymore!
Kudos to you David. I'm an avid SF2 championship edition player (we have it at work) and I cannot wait to play the hd version. From what I've seen the hd version looks incredible all while keeping the physics of the original in tact. I'm not a serious gamer by any means however SF2 has always been a love of mine and now I'll get the chance to play others around the world. I consider myself a good player so the thought of playing serious challengers is really exciting. There are many others out there just like me that absolutely love the original versions and are equally excited about future ones. Keep up the good work and thank you!
Wade Lewis
Is there a tiers list yet for this game, just so we can have a general idea to what are the match ups. I know it is still early, and I know tiers list are never all too accurate, but it is none the less interesting.
nice site btw. Learned a lot.
Great stuff, very informative!
I do wish throw traps had been toned down a little more, most especially Balrog's. I've always hated it when good matches degenerate into a jab/grab fest... not much fun to watch, really.
Still, great job all around!
Excellent work on SFHD! Thank you for making my favorite characters Cammy and Fei Long conteders in this version. Also good call changing Guile's voice "back". I only wish Cammy had her XMVSF voice though, "Cannon Spike" just always sounded cooler.
That fake fireball really payed dividends.
Nice work David, this is the best game to come out in years! along with SF4. You guys did a superb job in my opinion, and I'd just like to thank you for breathing life again into an old classic. I'm from Australia, been playing online since it came out (Wednesday) the netcode is pretty sweet. I have won somthing like 70+ matches in a row, casuals + ranked agaisnt random people, some locals as well but mostly Americans, it's crazy stuff. Playing GGPO and Kailera for years tends to help :)
I'd love to challenge the worlds best. The lag isn't too bad either, I've been using Gief and Sagat - runs very smooth mate.
Cheers,
10/10!
Sirlin, I just have a fast question. Nothing negative or anything, just a curiosity.
I've recently become really good with Zangief in HDR[well comparatively speaking compared to how good I was with him before]. At first, I thought I was just better at 360 inputs with the analog stick on my 360's pad. But after checking out Classic mode, I noticed that it was a lot lot harder to do 360's with Zangs there. So my question is such:
Is it by accident that hcf,uf+P works as an SPD command? Not that I'm complaining at all, it's made him really pleasant to use, but I'm curious. Maybe I'm just imagining things, but I can SPD at whim in HD Remix mode, but not at all in Classic mode. Thanks.
Dude, good job! The only thing I dont like is the throw traps especially for balrog and honda. They are too difficult to counter, and players using these characters online just do these throw traps over and over again, and theres pretty nothing much you can do to get out of it once your in the trap. Like the a previous poster said this I think spoils the fun of the game and takes away the skill needed to win. Lastly e-honda flying head butt going through fire balls is a mistake in my opinion, instead of it balancing him against fire ballers, it now gives them the advantage. It took a great amount of skill to use honda, but anybody can just use the throw trap to get cheap easy wins...This goes against the spirit of the game. Honda would still be deadly without the fire ball destroyer, but with it he's well nigh invincable.
That said, thanks for making a great game available online, my only concerns are the potency of balrog and e-honda due to their throw traps and fire ball destroyers. Its a fine line between balancing characters and making them too good.
@Xeroma: That's probably just a more lenient time-frame for the command imput that's present in HDR. Only Sirlin can confirm this, but that's my guess.
I'm also really pleased with Zangief in HDR, I can finally SPD people's faces to the ground! Always wanted to be able to do that. :D
Wow, Cammy has become a total "pressure" character all of a sudden with her safe cannon drill and cannon spike, simplified move inputs (hello, hooligan throw), super-easy combos, and overall speed. It's amazing how a couple of simple tweaks almost completely changed her playing style.
Honestly, I'm actually a little worried about her ability to spam un-punishable cannon drills and cannon spikes almost endlessly. Even when someone anticipates the cannon drill correctly and catches her with a jumping up or back attack, she's still able to block, which is just insane. Characters without a dragon punch-type attack are going to have a devil of a time coping with the new Cammy :)
Command list is incorrect for anyone with a 'fireball motion' move (PS3 Us version)
This game is absolutely spectacular. Brings me back memories from my youth.
Great work from a fan to the fans.
Thanks Sirlin
Hey Sirlin!
I live in Europe and i really really really...want to have and play SFHDRMX. But it still isn't out in EU. Can you tell when it will come out here?
Sometimes I almost wish I was 21 again when I had nothing but time to play SF. I am finally going to get my hands on this game tonight at a friends! And if the netcode is as good as I suspect, I might be buying a PS3 to play HDremix soon. I love the way ST has stayed relevant for all this time. Can't wait!
Great job on SFHDRemix. It is awesome. I'm hooked again like I was back in High School.
Also, I love playing the new Cammy as a pressure character against all the turtles out there.
HDRemix is great, I'm loving it! Please see if you can remix Alpha 2, that would be super sick, especially with how good HDRemix is!
Dave, thanks for a GREAT game and the in-depth analysis of the above characters. From a guy who wasted his life and life savings away at playing ST, you've just made me buy my first console and spend all my free time online. Ugh!
But seriously, really great.
Great job in the new street fighter. I never played a street fighter game beofre (except little bits at a firends hopuse but never owned it) and this game has got me addicted. I've recently fallen in love with Zangief, SPD's are freaking awesome. But I got a question, are there any plans for a patch? As you probably have heard, the ranking system is broken as is Zangief's super. Right now the only way to perform Zangief's super is to do the clockwise motion, it doesn't work with the counterclockwise version. Now maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal, but playing as T. Hawk, his super is ridiculously easy thanks to a working counterclockwise super. I know there are a lot of people who are complaining about this and it would be great if there was a patch or something to fix it.
It was recently announced SSF2THD is to officially receive a patch, which is good news. Are you involved with this effort in any formal capacity?
Shane: I am not involved in the patch at all, I wasn't contacted about it. As always, I am fully available to help on any patch because I want to the best game for all of us in the long run. I am especially available to fix Akuma's problems, but again, I wasn't asked to.
Hi Sirlin, cheers for the reply. Thats a shame. Speculation from me suggests that as a result the changes implemented may well be purely technical (dropouts, desync, etc) and not so much gameplay adjustments or character tweaks as I gathered that was largely your arena. Frustrating. Then again, who knows. Perhaps you will be contacted (I certainly hope so - both for your accumulated knowledge on the game and for consistency's sake) or perhaps the lads at Backbone are aware of what needs reworked in the gameplay department on their own, however minor.
I mentioned on SRK that perhaps your comments post your departure from the dev team that worked on SSF2THD may have bit you on the arse. They certainly could have been taken either way and people tend to be over-sensitive about such things.
Either way, I for one (among many I'm certain) really appreciate what you have achieved with the game. On the whole I like the slight changes and am particularly impressed with the online play. I am in Australia and am able to enjoy stable and completely playable matches with guys in the US and Asia - something I NEVER imagined being possible. The netcode was my largest area of doubt and I was utterly blown away by how well you guys pulled it off. I really hope Capcom paid attention for IV, because if it isn't as good as what SSF2THD offers online, I'll be very disappointed.
Oh and cheers for Ryu's fake fireball. It feels so deliciously dirty whenever I dupe people into jumping! I can almost feel their frustration and hear them slapping their own forehead when they get suckered - I know when the shoe is on the other foot I certainly do :D
Best of luck with any future projects. The SSF2THD one has turned out to be a respectable notch in your belt. Here's hoping you get reeled into to assist with the patching effort.
Mr. Sirlin,
Fantastic job on making the final, definitive version of Street Fighter II!
Would you consider making a similar upgrade to SFIII? As much we love third strike, I think it would be awesome to tweak the characters and matchups a bit more, and maybe make the game run in 1080p.
Thanks, and again, Kudos!
One of my complaints is that Guile vs Blanka is even worse then it was in vanilla st. The command overhead doesn't hit Blanka when crouching, the rh flash kick is way to risky to use against slide spam, and all the cross up and dirty throwing is still extremely difficult to deal with. And with Blankas safe balls, the new jab ball, dash and etc. To me, the goal was to take those extreme matches and make them a bit more fair, but, unless you know something about this match up that I'm missing, I think this matchup went the wrong way of the design goal of st remix. I seriously think it went from 7/3 to a 8/2.
And the only other thing is that nothing new or fun was added to boxer. He is the same badass as he was before but turned down one notch. On a scale from 1 to 10, he went from 11 to 10. But that's all I have to complain about. Aside from that, I love what you have done with the game, and I hope to play you again.
Edited by Sirlin: Guile's upside down kick did not hit ducking Blanka in ST and still doesn't in HD Remix. That is not a a change at all. Also remember that Blanka takes extra damage when hit out of his ball in HD Remix.