With Lab Zero Games having shipped their latest game Indivisible (which just got a new DLC out now), it looks like the developers are now back to updating their fighting game, Skullgirls.
A recent update from April 28th was pushed for players on the game’s Steam Community page which “massively improves netplay”.
To be more specific, it addressed an issue where the game dropped frames after rollback occurred- so playing Skullgirls online should be more responsive with less dropped inputs.
The Skullgirls Twitter account retweeted this testimony of the new netcode update.
More recently, a smaller update for the opt-in test branch sees the game having a Wi-Fi indicator. As the blog post on Steam explained, this allows players to see if the person they are facing online uses a wired or wireless connection.
In fighting games, a wired connection is preferred to ensure the consistency of the network connection. Even if games like Skullgirls uses GGPO rollback netcode- a better netcode solution than delay-based for fighting games- it’s better to avoid occasions where the netcode has to kick in to begin with.
However, the implementation might not be accurate. As detailed in the other Steam Community post, it can trigger false-positives, because it will show the Wi-Fi symbol when the game detects any wireless connection happening. For example, laptops with wired connection and has Wi-Fi still turned on.
With the current situation where you can’t go for offline weeklies and tournaments- a staple in the fighting game community- better online experiences are now more important than ever. And it’s good to see Skullgirls being at the forefront of making online netplay in fighting games better.
Via Eventhubs