1. It has been confirmed that SF4 is getting a Friday release at midnight EDT.

2. We played a lot today, and the netcode does seem to actually be vastly improved. There's the odd slowdown here and there, but the "waiting for players" box didn't come up a single time and what slowdowns there were were few compared to what we've typically experienced. Pang hosted, I hosted, no problems to speak of, really. I was even able to have matches with Skills without issue, and if you were there when we tried to play last time you'll remember what an absolutely futile exercise that was.

So because of all the bullshit happening over at Twitch I went and streamed us playing Ultra Street Fighter IV at Hitbox.tv tonight. Looks like it keeps recordings for 14 days but you can save recordings as Videos and I have no idea if they ever expire. In any case here's the video of the recording from my stream at Hitbox.tv tonight. Enjoy!

http://www.hitbox.tv/video/198930

Hey Punchfriends, I made a thing.

I really didn't like the SF4 announcer's lines during combat ("I've never seen a combo like that before!" etc.) so I decided to see if I could get rid of them. And you can! And I did! It took a fair bit of research and converting files three thousand times, but the end result is that you can take the linked file above and replace the extant copy in /SteamApps/common/Super Street Fighter IV - Arcade Edition/dlc/03_character_free/battle/sound/narration/

This keeps the lines like "Round 1 - Fight!" "[Character] wins!" etc. but gets rid of all the commentary on what's happening during the actual match. I like it a lot better.

It has undergone very minimal testing, but I think I got rid of everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j78X5LluM5U

I'll just leave this here

Dude, Lethal League looks dope.

THE FEI LEGION WILL NEVER STOP ITS RELENTLESS MARCH. THE GEARS OF THE RYU MACHINE WILL GRIND TO A HALT UNDER OUR OUTPOURING OF BLOOD AND COLON PUNCHES.

LET THEM COME AT US FROM WHATEVER DIRECTION THEY LIKE.

Last night's new friend Steven was the best thing. When you guys were laughing so hard so was I.

We gonna continue offsetting our goblins next week?

The Rembrandts must be crushed!

Burger Tally

SuperSonic: 1
Term: 1

Are you guys actually playing Ultra on Steam on a regular basis? It's $30 on there which I don't really want to drop since I already have it on 360, but I've got someone who is willing to trade me a Steam code Ultra for a $16 item I'm selling.

Also have they done any work on the weird netcode/freezing issues? Saw a ton of people in the first couple of days saying it was kinda fucked online with the PC version.

Punching happens to a greater or lesser extent at least every other day, estimating conservatively. The netcode has been pretty solid for our group since Ultra dropped; most of the current issues only affect Ranked matches.

Well fuck, I had no idea people here even played the game, much less on a regular basis. I will take that guy up on his trade. I'm essentially a filthy casual stream monster; I watch a ton of Marvel and SF (and other games) but I've played fighting games casually forever. I know enough in SF4 to basically fuck myself over, so this will go well.

Update: Trade is completed and I'm downloading Ultra right now.

Update 2: Online has largely been a shitshow for me. Get an A on the Benchmark on the highest settings. Arcade and Trial mode run flawlessly. Online in either Ranked or Endless I get random frequent (usually 1-3 times a match) complete freezes that last anywhere from 1-3 seconds. Gotta either be the game or my internet, and I really don't think it's my internet. Looking around online seems like people are having experiences all over the place; fine for some people, some people Ranked is fucked but Endless is fine, some people are still having hard game crashes frequently (which is ridiculous). I've seen some speculation that private Endless matches specifically are mostly fine, and that supposedly the issue with the freezing is the game running some sort of ping search or something along those lines, no idea. At some point I'll have to try to get in an Endless private lobby with someone just to see if that works any better or not.

Anyway if I had any idea that the requirements to run the game were THIS low I would have gotten the PC version of AE forever ago, kinda mad at myself about that.

For anyone who used that modified audio file to kill the announcer, I had missed a couple of lines that I thought were from outside the fight that were actually from the beginning if nobody's doing anything. I removed those as well, and the updated file is here.

Daravon, don't forget to set your framerate to variable. That helps in online matches.

I think it's just a crapshoot. I got on earlier today with Fixed framerate and had two matches that were totally fine. Then got back on just now and had mixed results with both Fixed and Variable, generally Fixed actually seemed better but I had both settings go both ways. I think it's just luck of the draw to some extent right now. Looking into it it does seem like it's still the same issue they had at launch where it's continuing to Ping for matches even after you're already in on causing the problems for folks. I can maybe try some more extended troubleshooting in a private lobby with one of you guys at some point to see what works out better, right now it's all over the place with some of my matches being fine or mostly fine (maybe one lag spike or some slight stutter that is not cool but is playable) and some that are total shit.

I did play one match with a guy where it wasn't this game being shit, the connection was just ass; the entire match literally played at a consistent 5 FPS or so, it was kind of amazing in a way. It went to the end of the third round, I think the entire match took literally about 10 minutes.

We tried a whole bunch of anecdotal shit and the framerate thing did seem to help empirically but we have no way of knowing whether or not it was more than coincidence. That said, Capcom has fixed a lot of the netcode and it's much better now that it was, so the framerate thing can probably be ignored.

The pinging you're discussing is only really an issue with ranked matches. If you get into an endless battle lobby (and haven't tried ranked right beforehand) I suspect you will not encounter the same problems.

Public endless lobbies still have the same problem for me. Some people say private endless lobbies are completely fine for them which lends some credence to the pinging theory (since that wouldn't occur in a private lobby) but again who knows. But yeah, Endless is no better or worse than Ranked for me.

Have you immediately loaded an endless lobby right after firing up the game, or are you going in after trying ranked first? Apparently you continue pinging everyone from the ranked list even after leaving ranked, which is the dumbest implementation ever. Hopefully they have it corrected soon.

Not 100% sure, will try that out right now. That would be great if it fixes it, this is really frustrating.

Edit: Did a few matches, it seems better but not perfect. First two matches had some slight lag/stutter but nothing like before. Last two matches had it worse (but still not as bad as before) but those last two were against the same guy so that could have potentially been the connection. Also the last two matches were in a different endless lobby, so if it is a ping thing that could have even just potentially been an issue from me leaving the first lobby or something. Dunno. Still hilariously incompetent of Capcom either way.

This is a Google Docs spreadsheet someone made that contains all the currently known prize codes for titles. Hopefully he'll keep it updated.

Guys, I'm really sorry about last night. Looks like the merry zombie apocalypse wasn't all that fun for everyone involved, especially not for those on the receiving end of whichever despair-dealing tool I had at my disposal. I did not anticipate that a single experienced person would skew things that much in a 7-player match, but that's how the game's learning curve works. In hindsight, we really should have considered shuffling teams around after the first couple of maps... sandbagging is never easy in that kind of game, I considered some things but I was afraid that'd be considered condescending and, in the end, even more infuriating. Also there's not much you can do as infected except not attacking and just taunting around, which is, well, see above.

At any rate, I hope I didn't make too much of an ass of myself, and my utmost apologies if I did. Lots of things said on the Skype call just fly way over my head, and I certainly was a tad slow to pick up on subtle hints that people were getting annoyed. :(

In case anybody wants to watch the session, I streamed and archived it on hitbox. Not for the purpose of annoying people further, so if that's what happens, I'll gladly take it down.


Anyway, as was mentioned at some point, you really just need three or four players for most of the game modes. If anybody fancies playing some coop campaigns or survival rounds, I'd be down for that anytime. That would probably end up being a lot more fun for the newer players than last night was, and hopefully give them a better taste of the game's awesomeness. :judge:

Sorry if i made you feel guilty during that game, i wasn't having the best night. As for sandbagging, well, only using right-click to attack the survivors was working pretty well for me. Sorry to my team when my internet conked out halfway through the game (though the AI would have been more helpful).

I won't be around for the next couple of weeks, my students arrive tomorrow and i'll get like two or three days off in the next 3 weeks. Sorry to the DnD bunch, but it is what it is.

We are clearly going to have to revisit stretch out Velvet Sundown when the new content swaps in might be a spaceship.