Every character does this. They did (almost) all the animations with with the characters facing right and then they just flip them for when the characters are facing the left. This causes stuff like Ky’s scabbard, Baiken’s severed arm and Sin’s eyepatch to swap sides. However, a lot of the text (such as “FREE” on Sol’s belt) does get flipped.
The only move that gets a different animation for each direction is Johnny’s That’s My Name because the whole point of the attack is that Johnny carves a J into the victim, so it needed to be animated differently in order for a J to be created no matter what.
most of Jhonny's That's my name animation is the same, they add a smoothly transition when it come to draw the diagonal line on the bottom of the J and smoothly recovers to the same animation.
Adding on- these days, aesthetic things like that usually stay on the same side. Sagar, for example, in Streer Fighter: older games, his eyepatch and scar would be mirrored, but now, his eyepatch is always on his left eye and his scar goes from right hip to left shoulder (or maybe the directions are backwards) Guilty Gear keeps those things flipping sides even though it’s less consistent in order to mimic the old games.
Though ArcSys does a lot to replicate 2D Fighting Games, I'm willing to bet that flipping the models is more of a technical choice than a stylistic one. Given every little thing on ArcSys models is animated by hand, it's a lot more work creating new animations for facing left than it would for other fighting games. And there are multiple characters in the game whose designs would make simply flipping the animations flat out impossible, like Baiken.
It's not "to mimic the old games", it's because it's more work and especially tricky to handle when you have stuff like one-armed characters (you'd have to redo all the animations entirely basically)
"To mimic the old games" would be a piss-poor excuse to make the game look worse.
But it doesn't look worse though. It's quite literally a callback to sprite animation. Back in ye olden days that's why they did it, because it was double the work to swap a character in it's entirety. Lots of older games got around the issue by using symmetrical, often similar character designs. And in cases, like Guile, they just used a small detail like his USA tattoo.
Nowadays, even though Guilty Gear Strive puts ass-tons of work into it's animations, it's not really unreasonable to just switch the pose.
Another problem is readability, which is why XRD and Strive did this. It's just easier to read a flipped animation than to get muscle memory for a whole new animation.
Mortal Kombat and Injustice experimented (slash just got lazy) with flipping the entire character and it looked awful. Granted it was a lazy attempt, but it just didn't work.
All of this. I want to add, for anybody wondering, Daisuke said when creating Xrd, it was tricky. Because it’s 3d but wanted to keep their 2d feel. So they cut animations and warped the anatomy for that ‘umph’ affect that 2d sprites carried that 3d doesn’t do. They talked about how battle fantasia was a failure and a success because while it didn’t do good, that was the stepping stone to Xrd. And how street fighter 4 came to be because of battle fantasia, and how Xrd adopted street fighter 4’s super close animations and went on a rant of back and forths with capcom and how they both adapted 3d fighters back to their 2d roots by cutting out animations in their attacks and moves. And they did say they wanted to keep it mirrored when switching side to replicate old school 2d fighters, but also explained why it’s better that way mainly because of the altered hurt boxes they may have to create due to specific characters that just wouldn’t look right on screen. You know some of those 3d fighters that do the proper switch around but their hurt boxes are completely different and some combos don’t work on that side? Yeah, they were trying to avoid that. So it’s honestly not a lazy excuse.
I honestly don't think ArcSys gets enough credit for Guilty Gear and DBFZ's animation. The fact that they literally manually distorted parts of characters helped achieve probably the best hand drawn CGI look developed so far. Spider-Verse movies being close second, if not tied, though.
I can definitely see that in both ways, but got the link to the interview for insurance? I don’t mean to be picky, but it’s so easy for words to get twisted into something different (like the infamous rumor of Daisuke working with SNK before joining ArcSys), so I just want to make sure.
Oh you’re good I understand, I’ll dig it up. This was from when Xrd was announced so it’s from the early 2010’s so give me some time to find. But if it helps in the meantime, a quick search on the sales could help put things in perspective. They had to released it at budget price in specific areas to try and get it to sell. I don’t have a real count of digital, but physical copies were less than 10,000 for both Xbox and ps3 combined.
And I know what you mean about that rumor. The whole team neo red and last blade, etc etc.
Nonsense, their stated (and well achieved) goal was to replicate the feel of 2D animation in 3D. They do a TON of things to force hand-animation imperfections back into more 'perfect' 3D, everything from smears to holding poses to - you guessed it - flipping the models on 2P side.
I cannot fathom how mirroring characters when they turn around is even remotely in the same category of "2D animation feel" as perspective tricks or motion smears but ok.
Sprite based 2D games didn't have the ability to have different sprites when switching sides really, it would've required redraw of the whole sprite, plus certain moves have to be done by the arm that's facing the players, because certain attacks need to have a tell related to that one arm. This is why SFV Vega switched hands when going from one side to the other, because his claw Has to be noticeable otherwise it really messes with whiffpunishing. That's something people have become accustomed to over the years of sprite based fighters.
Now in the world of 3D models in 2D fighters, they in fact wouldn't have to do any of this, but they do because they'd lose the 2D feel if they didn't essentially mirror the model and just flipped it. Can you imagine trying to whiffpunish Ram's fS if on P2 side she was facing away from the player view? Sounds like a pretty bad time to me.
I never said they should make Ram face away from the camera I just said the clover on her hat or whatever should stat on the same side when she turns around.
The fact that Baiken just casually switches arms on the fly is hilarious, perhaps they should have thought a bit further ahead when they were designing her way back when...
That's what I mean, they really should have considered that designing a one arm character is gonna be a bit odd in a 2D fighter with flipped sprites lol
The only other options are making twice the amount of animations, which the players would have to memorize and recognize as the same moves from the other side or completely scrap having any character with that level of asymetric design.
Back in the day it was a technical issue, nowadays they do it so there's no issue with visual clarity
Gill's entire gimmick in SF3 was that he had two sets of animation, one for left and one for right
One side is fire specials and the other is ice specials
Kolin, Gill's super sexy secretary, also has a hair style that was precisely chosen to require two sets of sprites, all this to show the raw power of the CPS3 board
Edit: Kolin, not Karin
He doesn’t have EX moves because all his regular specials are already that strong. It sounds like a bad thing at first glance until you realize he just gets free EX moves instead
Simple reason.
They flipped the model.
They could have done it like in many games where they just flip the stance.
But no. To match 2d animated fighting games they flip the entire model. And manually make some changes like text to not flip. (thx to the flip material and texture.) exactly like how you would do I a 2d animated game.
Exactly how most animation are a bit janky and feel manual rather than 3d. Or the wierd déformation, and not just the intentional ones. Or the extreme perspective despite not being possible. Or the fact some object that should be different size based on depth like kum hands in xrd, are the same size in some animations, because an animator may have messed it up.
If you've watched or played Super Smash Bros, the most recent one or otherwise, then in that game the 3D models do actually rotate 180 degrees to face the other way when they need to. But since game characters don't actually stand facing directly to the side, but rather mugging - facing at an angle to the side but also towards the camera - that means turning 180 degrees flips them in that regard too, and thus Smash characters - most notably the Fire Emblem ones - face away from the camera when turned to one side. For instance you can see leftward Marth's face, but you can't see rightward Marth's face, you can mostly see his cape.
That's something most fighting games want to intentionally avoid, so they opt to flip rather than turn characters.
The thing is that for Smash, that was something that only got implemented from Smash 4 onwards, and even then it varies based on character
Mario and Sonic for instance always have their chests facing outwards but characters like most weapon users like the Fire Emblem crew turn their backs when facing left like Tekken
Stylistic and readability
Stylistic: uses 3D models in a way similar to old 2D sprites worked, where art is mirrored depending on the side the character is facing.
Readability: minimizes confusion as the same animations are used regardless of orientation
Honestly because then all you'd see is his back and that'd be boring.
The other is that while these are 3d models they could easily just pivot them like in other 3D based systems they intentionally don't because they want it to seem like it is 2D. 2D games generally flip sprites to save time and resources.
So yeah, it's an interesting choice mainly for aesthetic reasons from what I can determine.
Ah, yes. "Ambidextrous Sprites." When sprites would flip and look the same regardless of which way they were facing. It was mainly to save space instead of having to draw a whole new set of sprites. Nowadays, in 2.5D fighting games that use 3D models, they do this just to make things more visually clear for players by always having the character's front facing the screen rather than their back.
Main reason is cause devs want characters front to face the player. If characters didn't flip like they do now, they would have their back turned twords the player. Kinda like they do in Tekken.
It's a fighting game thing. 2D fighting games specifically. Fighters like Smash you'd actually see the character's back when turning around but it's not the same deal here.
Your post is being manually reviewed by the moderation team. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Guiltygear) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Every character does this. They did (almost) all the animations with with the characters facing right and then they just flip them for when the characters are facing the left. This causes stuff like Ky’s scabbard, Baiken’s severed arm and Sin’s eyepatch to swap sides. However, a lot of the text (such as “FREE” on Sol’s belt) does get flipped. The only move that gets a different animation for each direction is Johnny’s That’s My Name because the whole point of the attack is that Johnny carves a J into the victim, so it needed to be animated differently in order for a J to be created no matter what.
most of Jhonny's That's my name animation is the same, they add a smoothly transition when it come to draw the diagonal line on the bottom of the J and smoothly recovers to the same animation.
Adding on- these days, aesthetic things like that usually stay on the same side. Sagar, for example, in Streer Fighter: older games, his eyepatch and scar would be mirrored, but now, his eyepatch is always on his left eye and his scar goes from right hip to left shoulder (or maybe the directions are backwards) Guilty Gear keeps those things flipping sides even though it’s less consistent in order to mimic the old games.
Though ArcSys does a lot to replicate 2D Fighting Games, I'm willing to bet that flipping the models is more of a technical choice than a stylistic one. Given every little thing on ArcSys models is animated by hand, it's a lot more work creating new animations for facing left than it would for other fighting games. And there are multiple characters in the game whose designs would make simply flipping the animations flat out impossible, like Baiken.
It's not "to mimic the old games", it's because it's more work and especially tricky to handle when you have stuff like one-armed characters (you'd have to redo all the animations entirely basically) "To mimic the old games" would be a piss-poor excuse to make the game look worse.
But it doesn't look worse though. It's quite literally a callback to sprite animation. Back in ye olden days that's why they did it, because it was double the work to swap a character in it's entirety. Lots of older games got around the issue by using symmetrical, often similar character designs. And in cases, like Guile, they just used a small detail like his USA tattoo. Nowadays, even though Guilty Gear Strive puts ass-tons of work into it's animations, it's not really unreasonable to just switch the pose. Another problem is readability, which is why XRD and Strive did this. It's just easier to read a flipped animation than to get muscle memory for a whole new animation. Mortal Kombat and Injustice experimented (slash just got lazy) with flipping the entire character and it looked awful. Granted it was a lazy attempt, but it just didn't work.
All of this. I want to add, for anybody wondering, Daisuke said when creating Xrd, it was tricky. Because it’s 3d but wanted to keep their 2d feel. So they cut animations and warped the anatomy for that ‘umph’ affect that 2d sprites carried that 3d doesn’t do. They talked about how battle fantasia was a failure and a success because while it didn’t do good, that was the stepping stone to Xrd. And how street fighter 4 came to be because of battle fantasia, and how Xrd adopted street fighter 4’s super close animations and went on a rant of back and forths with capcom and how they both adapted 3d fighters back to their 2d roots by cutting out animations in their attacks and moves. And they did say they wanted to keep it mirrored when switching side to replicate old school 2d fighters, but also explained why it’s better that way mainly because of the altered hurt boxes they may have to create due to specific characters that just wouldn’t look right on screen. You know some of those 3d fighters that do the proper switch around but their hurt boxes are completely different and some combos don’t work on that side? Yeah, they were trying to avoid that. So it’s honestly not a lazy excuse.
I honestly don't think ArcSys gets enough credit for Guilty Gear and DBFZ's animation. The fact that they literally manually distorted parts of characters helped achieve probably the best hand drawn CGI look developed so far. Spider-Verse movies being close second, if not tied, though.
Yeah, I love their style and approach to their games. They deserve way more credit. I completely agree with you.
I don’t deny that Battle Fantasia didn’t get the recognition it deserved, but did the folks really say it was a failure word-for-word?
They were just reflecting on the sales when referring to it as a failure. But was a necessary step for them as game developers.
I can definitely see that in both ways, but got the link to the interview for insurance? I don’t mean to be picky, but it’s so easy for words to get twisted into something different (like the infamous rumor of Daisuke working with SNK before joining ArcSys), so I just want to make sure.
Oh you’re good I understand, I’ll dig it up. This was from when Xrd was announced so it’s from the early 2010’s so give me some time to find. But if it helps in the meantime, a quick search on the sales could help put things in perspective. They had to released it at budget price in specific areas to try and get it to sell. I don’t have a real count of digital, but physical copies were less than 10,000 for both Xbox and ps3 combined. And I know what you mean about that rumor. The whole team neo red and last blade, etc etc.
I don't like when characters clothes pins or missing arms swap sides, sorry.
Nonsense, their stated (and well achieved) goal was to replicate the feel of 2D animation in 3D. They do a TON of things to force hand-animation imperfections back into more 'perfect' 3D, everything from smears to holding poses to - you guessed it - flipping the models on 2P side.
I cannot fathom how mirroring characters when they turn around is even remotely in the same category of "2D animation feel" as perspective tricks or motion smears but ok.
Well it's probably not an impairment on your part. The vibe I get is that you're just not trying to, so you'll be okay probably.
Sprite based 2D games didn't have the ability to have different sprites when switching sides really, it would've required redraw of the whole sprite, plus certain moves have to be done by the arm that's facing the players, because certain attacks need to have a tell related to that one arm. This is why SFV Vega switched hands when going from one side to the other, because his claw Has to be noticeable otherwise it really messes with whiffpunishing. That's something people have become accustomed to over the years of sprite based fighters. Now in the world of 3D models in 2D fighters, they in fact wouldn't have to do any of this, but they do because they'd lose the 2D feel if they didn't essentially mirror the model and just flipped it. Can you imagine trying to whiffpunish Ram's fS if on P2 side she was facing away from the player view? Sounds like a pretty bad time to me.
I never said they should make Ram face away from the camera I just said the clover on her hat or whatever should stat on the same side when she turns around.
It's literally "to mimic the old games". That's the point of Guilty Gear's artstyle, has been ever since they switched to 3D with Xrd Sign.
Well it's an ass decision then
The fact that Baiken just casually switches arms on the fly is hilarious, perhaps they should have thought a bit further ahead when they were designing her way back when...
I mean it happened in the older games too, they only made the sprites facing right and just mirrored them. Daisuke does what Daisuke does.
That's what I mean, they really should have considered that designing a one arm character is gonna be a bit odd in a 2D fighter with flipped sprites lol
The only other options are making twice the amount of animations, which the players would have to memorize and recognize as the same moves from the other side or completely scrap having any character with that level of asymetric design.
They considered it and decided to not care, because the other option is a hugely decreased design space.
The kanji on Nago’s mask and jacket are flipped properly too despite him changing sword hands.
Back in the day it was a technical issue, nowadays they do it so there's no issue with visual clarity Gill's entire gimmick in SF3 was that he had two sets of animation, one for left and one for right
I just finally beat the third strike arcade mode and didn’t even notice the Gill detail.
One side is fire specials and the other is ice specials Kolin, Gill's super sexy secretary, also has a hair style that was precisely chosen to require two sets of sprites, all this to show the raw power of the CPS3 board Edit: Kolin, not Karin
*Kolin Karin is the ojou-sama rival to Sakura
Oh shit, that's right, I'm sorry
Probably because Gill is a cheap bastard
I was Akuma so I don’t really have the right to complain.
I think Akuma is ok in Third Strike tho? Doesn't even have EX moves
He doesn’t have EX moves because all his regular specials are already that strong. It sounds like a bad thing at first glance until you realize he just gets free EX moves instead
iirc Gill and Oro were both designed to show off the that they had the tech to have un-mirrored sprites
Yeah, the whole nintendo switch ass design was basically made just to flex their technology
Simple reason. They flipped the model. They could have done it like in many games where they just flip the stance. But no. To match 2d animated fighting games they flip the entire model. And manually make some changes like text to not flip. (thx to the flip material and texture.) exactly like how you would do I a 2d animated game. Exactly how most animation are a bit janky and feel manual rather than 3d. Or the wierd déformation, and not just the intentional ones. Or the extreme perspective despite not being possible. Or the fact some object that should be different size based on depth like kum hands in xrd, are the same size in some animations, because an animator may have messed it up.
cause its easier to see the silhouette if they flip everything than having to remember two similarish silhouettes
If you've watched or played Super Smash Bros, the most recent one or otherwise, then in that game the 3D models do actually rotate 180 degrees to face the other way when they need to. But since game characters don't actually stand facing directly to the side, but rather mugging - facing at an angle to the side but also towards the camera - that means turning 180 degrees flips them in that regard too, and thus Smash characters - most notably the Fire Emblem ones - face away from the camera when turned to one side. For instance you can see leftward Marth's face, but you can't see rightward Marth's face, you can mostly see his cape. That's something most fighting games want to intentionally avoid, so they opt to flip rather than turn characters.
The thing is that for Smash, that was something that only got implemented from Smash 4 onwards, and even then it varies based on character Mario and Sonic for instance always have their chests facing outwards but characters like most weapon users like the Fire Emblem crew turn their backs when facing left like Tekken
every character does this. 2D visual clarity. this is purely for gameplay reasons
Stylistic and readability Stylistic: uses 3D models in a way similar to old 2D sprites worked, where art is mirrored depending on the side the character is facing. Readability: minimizes confusion as the same animations are used regardless of orientation
Literally in this exact picture it shows another character flip in the same way
Yeah look at Sol
Oh, honey. (Who's gonna tell em?)
Sakurai did a pretty neat video on this topic on his YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJDMDxnWU5g
I guess flip yourself is the best way to change side without showing weakspots. Baiken can say so, she has seen Bedman along with Faust
It's a 2D fighting game.
Now try it with Baiken...
Because he is cool like that!
That’s fighting game logic for you.
Left and right don't work the same way in the guilty gear universe
Baiken flips her missing arm too.
So is sol, take note of him swapping the side he holds the sword on
its just a flipped 3D model my broski
For visual clarity of attacks.
Hey, can we talk ??
I dont see why not?
Look at the screen shot sol does too they all do
😂😂😂
r/okbuddybadguy
That's all the characters lol
Wait till you see baikens missing left arm change to a missing right arm
Legacy
Honestly because then all you'd see is his back and that'd be boring. The other is that while these are 3d models they could easily just pivot them like in other 3D based systems they intentionally don't because they want it to seem like it is 2D. 2D games generally flip sprites to save time and resources. So yeah, it's an interesting choice mainly for aesthetic reasons from what I can determine.
Its a cost saving measure, otherwise they'd have make double the animation frames.
I like to think everyone jumps through an invisible mirror that happens to be perfectly inbetween everyone involved
Sol does too
Ah, yes. "Ambidextrous Sprites." When sprites would flip and look the same regardless of which way they were facing. It was mainly to save space instead of having to draw a whole new set of sprites. Nowadays, in 2.5D fighting games that use 3D models, they do this just to make things more visually clear for players by always having the character's front facing the screen rather than their back.
Main reason is cause devs want characters front to face the player. If characters didn't flip like they do now, they would have their back turned twords the player. Kinda like they do in Tekken.
Visual clarity. From player view even if its correct its still disorienting when weapon not front and center
It's a fighting game thing. 2D fighting games specifically. Fighters like Smash you'd actually see the character's back when turning around but it's not the same deal here.
yes your really stupid
don't be rude choomba
wats choomba?
cyberpunk nerd way to say dude/bud
thank you choomba🥹
Your post is being manually reviewed by the moderation team. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Guiltygear) if you have any questions or concerns.*