Domino and TaJai of the hip-hop collective Hieroglyphics (pictured above with Capcom’s own Marisol) stopped by the mighty Capcom HQ yesterday. They were here to talk about some upcoming projects and, of course, to play some Street Fighter IV.
Though it was their first time playing IV, they picked it right up and were busting out the fireballs like they were back at the 7-11. Stay tuned to see what Capcom and the Hieroglyphics crew may cook up next...
Street Fighter Remix #0 is the first of UDON's new series of Street Fighter comics, and is on sale today in comic shops everywhere. Sayeth UDON:
“A whole new Street Fighter era begins here! Street Fighter Remix #0
feature 3 all-new, pulse-pounding, bone-breaking, fireball-hurling
stories and sets the stage for UDON’s 3 new SF comic book series –
Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter III, and Street Fighter
Legends: Chun-Li! Join the Street Fighter 20th anniversary celebration!”
The "Street Fighter: Round 1, Fight!" DVD takes the hotness from the UDON Street Fighter comics and
"utilizes the actual artwork and story content from a series of
published comic books and with the addition of animation, motion-style
techniques, character voice-over, music, and special effects, creates a
fast-paced, content production"
I dunno what a content production is, but this seems like a pretty cool idea, and you gotta love that art! Hit the jump for the full press release.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CAPCOM® AND EAGLE ONE MEDIA TEAM UP TO BRING STREET FIGHTER® ANIMATED COMIC SERIES TO DVD
Based on the acclaimed Udon Studio Street Fighter® comic book series
September 3, 2008. Eagle One Media is proud to announce it has teamed with CAPCOM® to produce a line of animated comic DVD based on the iconic video game property Street Fighter® for the retail market. This DVD series will utilize the acclaimed Street Fighter® comics published by Udon Studios and be presented as a direct adaptation in the form of an Eagle One Media animated comic production.
An Eagle One Media animated comic production utilizes the actual artwork and story content from a series of published comic books and with the addition of animation, motion-style techniques, character voice-over, music, and special effects, creates a fast-paced, content production that can be watched on any DVD device or made available for download. Each entertaining animated comic production DVD has a run time of 70 to 80 minutes and can be found at your local DVD store or on-line retailer.
The initial Street Fighter animated comic DVD, titled Street Fighter: Round One – FIGHT! will be released on February 3, 2009, in anticipation of the worldwide theatrical release of the live action motion picture Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li on February 27.
In the universe of Street Fighter, fighters of every size, shape and color collide in a global battle for supremacy. From every corner of the world, martial artists, boxers, wrestlers and fighters of every conceivable sort perform superhuman acts in their willing (or unwilling) participation in the Street Fighter Tournament-the contest being hosted by M. Bison, the sadistic dictator and leader of the underground Shadaloo criminal organization. Some contestants fight for reasons as diverse as their nationalities...some fight for money, answers, or vengeance, while others fight for reasons completely shrouded in mystery. Street Fighter, the legendary franchise by CAPCOM that revolutionized gaming and entertained players and fans for over a decade with its unforgettable cast of World Warriors, comes to DVD based on the bestselling comic series. A unique DVD series that will carry every pulse-pounding Dragon Punch and bone-crushing Sonic Boom intact, just like it was meant to be!
Street Fighter: Round One - FIGHT!: Ryu and Ken set out to investigate the murder of their martial arts master. Their search for answers takes them to Japan where M. Bison and his assorted minions including Cammy, Vega, and Sagat keep a close eye on Ryu for reasons unknown. This draws the attention of up and coming Hong Kong Interpol agent Chun-Li and US Special Ops officer Guile who each bears their own personal grudge against the evil Shadaloo syndicate.
About Eagle One Media:
Eagle One Media, Inc. (www.eagleonemedia.com), a multi-media company, produces animated comic DVDs based on well-known, globally recognized, licensed properties for the retail market. It has recently released animated comic DVDs based on the anime classic television series Voltron: Defender of the Universe, the blockbuster sci-fi film The Terminator, and the world-wide popular toy line of the Micronauts. Eagle One Media also releases feature length “family friendly” animation features on DVD for the retail market such as Dragon Blade: The Beginning - the world’s first 3D computer animated martial arts feature film from action director Stanley Tong. And Dragon Hill, the GOYA Award (Spain’s Academy Award) winning and European hit animation feature film.
For additional information contact Eagle One Media (info@eagleonemedia.com).
Capcom is either a registered trademark or trademark of Capcom Co., Ltd., in the U.S. or other countries. Street Fighter is either a registered trademark or trademark of Capcom U.S.A., Inc. in the U.S. or other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective holders.
We're throwing a National Street Fighter IV Tournament in Japan!
The tournament runs from
November 1, 2008 through December 7, 2008, with qualifiers held at arcades across the country. The winners from the qualifiying events will move on to compete in the finals on January 18, 2009 at the Shinagawa Inter
City Hall in Tokyo.
The tournament is focused on the arcade game, and although it hasn't been officially distributed outside of Japan, Street Fighter addicts around the world have managed to get their hands on the game. We'll be looking into ways to get a few of the best from around the world a berth in the Japanese nationals as well, so stay tuned!
Below is a piece from Street Fighter devotee and the Mozart of online networking, Tony Cannon. It gets a little technical in the details, but the upshot is raw awesomeness: playing ST HD online is going to be sweet!
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My main man Seth asked me to write an article for the blog about a recent trip to Backbone where I had the pleasure of doing a little consulting on the network code for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. I've also added some color commentary on why I started GGPO, how we got where we are now, and how I think STHD's networking can be improved.
First a little background on me: I've been participating in and organizing Street Fighter tournaments since 1991. I'm also a co-owner and Tournament Director for the Evolution Championship Series: the most premier, international, and open fighting game tournament in the world. I think it's safe to say that my passion for fighting games goes right to the bone.
I started GGPO as an experiment to see if intensity of competitive Street Fighter could be brought online without compromising the quality of the game play. Street Fighter at it's core is a test of skill between two human opponents. The arcade scene in America was on life support, and going online was clearly the only way the genre was going to survive.
It turns out the timing couldn't have been more perfect: in August of last year Capcom took notice of GGPO and arranged a meeting where we discussed the technology, how it worked, and particularly why it was ideally suited for arcade games. Other genres have used similar latency hiding techniques, but GGPO is the first to prove that they could be used for the most latency sensitive games, around the world, on the public Internet. Capcom was impressed and convinced Backbone that STHD needed similar technology in order to replicate the arcade experience online.
Last week I had the opportunity to work with Dan Halpern at Backbone to check in on they've networking stack and provide some pointers for improvement. We hooked GGPO up to the same latency simulation tools you've read about on Gary's blog and compared it to STHD. I'm happy to report that the Backbone code held up very well. At all test points, GGPO measured only slightly better than STHD on the impact latency had on the duration and intensity of the visual glitches causes by the latency hiding code (i.e. the dreaded "rollback" effect). This is great news for people concerned about the quality of STHD networking. It means that there's most likely no architectural reason why STHD cannot be as good as or even surpass GGPO when it is released. It also suggests that the reports by some users of GGPO greatly outperforming STHD are most likely a matter of tuning or minor bug fixes. I made two suggestions on how I thought Backbone should spend their time improving their code.
The first recommendation I made was to do more testing on the Internet instead of using latency simulators. Simulators are great for testing basic correctness, but there's no substitute for the real thing. GGPO was developed and tuned on my wireless home network, bouncing packets from my cable modem off a UDP reflector located on the east coast and back home again. Since all the tuning parameters for things like the reliable UDP layer, windows sizes, etc. were developed on a life, in-home network on a cross-country network between two players, GGPO naturally preforms best in that environment. Adding more internet testing to STHD may reveal some corner cases or mis-tuned parameters in their networking code which could dramatically improve the quality for end users.
The second was to add a configurable, fixed amount of latency to all moves a player does. GGPO calls this the "smoothing" value because it really reduces the magnitude of a rollback. For example, a 2-frame input delay on a 125 ms ping game will reduce the length of a rollback by 20%. That 20% can make a huge difference in reducing the visual glitches caused by rollbacks.
Fixed input latency also helps insure that a player with a persistently bad connection will not impact the quality of a match for users with a superb connection because the delay can be shared. For example, if I'm using 3 frames of input delay and you're using 0 frames, we can actually share the 3 frames of benefit by running my copy of the game 1.5 frames ahead of yours. That both of our packets sent over the network an extra 25 ms of time to run across the Internet before manifesting themselves as a rollback. Stated another way: it makes a 120 ms game play more like a 70 ms game. That's a huge win.
Most players cannot tell the difference between 0 and 2 frames of input latency. Those people would absolute prefer a much smoother online experience to having their moves come out a tiny fraction of a second sooner. Tournament players: put down your pitchforks! There are those of us who can detect as much as 1 frame of latency. Those of us who bought that specific Samsung flat-screen LCD rather than the cheaper Sony one because the Sony one added display-lag. Those players shoud be allowed to throttle down the frame-delay all the way to 0 to preserve the exact, offline timing they've spent 10-years of accumulated muscle memory perfecting. I've been using this system of 0-9 frames of fixed, configurable input delay for a while on GGPO and it's been working great.
Overall I was very impressed with Backbone's efforts. They're already going to have the best networking code seen on a console fighting game at the time they release. Many companies would have stopped working on it by now, and they should be applauded for taking the extra effort to squeeze every last ounce of performance before shipping. I'm also happy that Capcom has been so receptive in allowing the community to come in and help on the project (in all ways, not just the networking code) and am proud to have been able to help out in the ways that I could. Those of your worried about the quality for the networking code in future non-Backbone titles should take heart. Capcom has secured a multi-year, multi-game license for the GGPO. While I obviously cannot discuss any of the details, I'm sure they won't let another great title ship without lag-free gameplay again given the attention they've put on STHD.
