"The tragedy of all losers is that they think they were on the verge of victory." - Joe the Condor
That Joe is one ruthless dude (have you seen his gameplay footage?)! The Japanese website has had this up for a week (yah we're lame), but we finally have the English (French, Italian, German and Spanish also included!) version of the Tatsunoko.VSCapcom.com website. Click and read about Joe the Condor, Zero, Roll and more!
Niitsuma-san is here to 1) gripe about how busy he is, even though they just finished the game 2) tell you the story about how he's been climbing the mountain of putting a serious Wii fighting game online.
--
Hi guys, it's me, still pretty busy even though development is finished.
So, the development is done!! All we have to do is think of ideas to sell the game... but it's been busy all along, so that hasn't changed. How can I be so busy even though development is over... I just wonder looking at this pile of stuff that are waiting for me to check.
So, I would like to talk about the background story of development #3 (last episode)
"Implementing of the Network Mode"
Going back a bit to when we started off the project...
When we were having a meeting about whether we will implement Wi-Fi network mode, the feature that we received strong user feedback, this kind of debate was going on:
"We would like to implement Wi-Fi this time" "But Wii is wireless, can we implement this feature properly?" "Doing Wi-Fi is fine, but can we do this on a 'fighting' genre?" "Well, if we can learn from what Capcom has experienced with network?" "Can we get any Nintendo's technical support?" "Do we need to implement a network fighting game for Wii users to begin with?" "Oh, let's not start that again!"
... is the kind of debate that we had.
While I was working on Street Fighter IV which implemented network features, I asked our tech experts at Capcom at a meeting to decide about this feature for TvC:
"So how is it, fighting game, online on the Wii platform?"
"Might be difficult, but it's not impossible" After I heard this, I decided that I will implement the Wi-Fi mode.
After that, I asked many people for opinions and advise and when we talked to Nintendo about tech-support, the person at Nintendo also said:
"Ok, we'll do our best to help you!"
This was very encouraging too, but when we first mentioned it to Nintendo, the person was quite surprised too.
So, looking into each of the online features.
Because it will be against Nintendo's regulations and policies, I can't mention too many details, but basically, it's about matching those with good connection and the one that is not as good, determining transmission speed, and nailing down where it is the most appropriate to develop and implement the online battle mode while we figure out the development restrictions that we have.
Through a long testing process with extensive trial and error, we were able to make it happen, so it would be great if you could try and test it when the game is released.
Lastly, having worked on a game/genre which tend to get a lot of challenging demands, people would ask me about Wii's network related things, it gave me the impression that it is not impossible, worth trying.
Of course, there were some realities that we had to face (like wireless) but we spent a lot of time looking into it and there is something that can be done. (we worked very hard on it, but we want you to tell us what you think).
To be honest, playing wired or wireless - wired is faster of course, but this is really up to the users. Thanks for reading, I hope to tell you more info again.
If there's anything you would like to ask , please feel free to send me messages here: TvC official forums
Unity favorite, Master Abbott, recently posted a nice interview with Seth about Tatsunoko vs Capcom on the Wii. They discuss all manner of things, including the challenges the team has had to overcome, the fighting mechanics in the game, and even being stranded on an island with Gold Lightan.
Just a few words from the infamous Ishizawa-san (aka "Neo_G", TvC game director), who is busy burning up TvC roms and providing us some amusing new TvC: Ultimate All-Stars videos.
For the record, it's stuff like this video above that makes me absolutely love this game. Why did they bother programming this? Because they love these characters and are having fun. That fun is infectious--play this yourself and see...
-- Hi everyone, it's Neo_G, doing some ROM burning party these past few days.
Recently, the development schedules started to calm down so I thought I sit down, take it easy, but that was just for a little moment - I've started to receive lots of requests for ROMs to present the game at many different events in the pan-western territories.
Well of course, this is great!
America, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland... TvC is one of the titles that's receiving the most ROM requests in all titles that I ever took part in.
Talking about being well-received with TvC in pan-western territories, at one of the major gaming websites "IGN" has chosen TvC as "BEST WII GAME" in "TGS09: The Best of Tokyo Game Show"!
We didn't have any playable booths at TGS! After receiving many E3 awards, I'm very happy about this!!
...With that in mind, I keep burning ROMs, on and on... I'm the director of the game, but every 1 ROM, I burn them myself!! (Other Capcom R&D members take their master-up holidays, and so there are only 3 of us: Niitsuma-san, Kadowaki-san and me, so I take care of little chores to directing games :p)
So here's a picture of me burning ROMs and checking whether the ROMs work on the dev kits and writing each ROM label by hand.... (these are all manual labor... X( )
