A week and a half after an historic U.S. election here in the "real world", I'm proud to announce the release of the (near-)final version of Lex Luthor! This represents countless hours of hard work from ScruffyDragons Smogon, Enzo, McCready, Arque, Magus, SethZankuten, and myself, plus many additional hours contributed by SD forum members Kojunho, Tenchimuyo4ever, Doktor Avidan, Gate, ShockDingo, R@ACE45, and many more.

Here's the shortlist of what's new since the Beta 1b release a few months ago:

• bugfix: added juggle checking to standing hard punch and Tyrant Drill


• added two R@ACE45-designed hypers: Kryptonic Blast and Tyrant Finisher (thanks, man!)


• added air version of Kryptonite Ray


• separated electricity from Lex himself in electric armor sprites


• tweaked several gethit sprites


• new special: Air Tyrant Drill


• new special: Energy Shield


• new intros: "Speak softly" and injustice league


• added damage dampener to Nanite Swarm


• new special: Flamethrower


• added "special finish" background for win-by-hyper


• tweaked Stiletto Blade: order of slashes changed, split it into three strength levels


• added taunt


• added custom intros versus Dr. Doom & Superman


• new winposes: "Mercy, I need a drink", and bootjet flyaway


• added Red and Blue modes to Kryptonite Ray


• new Kryptonite Ray sprites by McCready -- thanks a ton, man!


• added arcade intro


• created several "novelty" palettes for the higher slots (ironman/warmachine/superman/drdoom, several others courtesy of Doktor Avidan)


• added "burned" sprite


• added triple-jump and air dash (in lieu of a true "flight mode")

Head on over to his page to download him, and feel free to post your feedback on the ScruffyDragon release thread or via email (my address is in the readme file).

Well, the votes are in, and although the polling process went smoothly here in the real world, in the DC-verse there appear to be some... irregularities. I'm told Lex has dispatched his crack team of mercenary attorneys to resolve the situation; by tomorrow a fully qualified and realized President Luthor should be known to the world at large.

(peeling back the curtain briefly) Lex isn't quite ready for release tonight. He's really close, but there are a few things yet to be done that I hate to leave out for the sake of making a deadline. Sorry for the wait, but the finished product should be worth it.

If you're in the U.S., don't forget to vote next Tuesday! And remember, whichever candidate wins, he's got to be better than THIS guy:


Whatever the result is next week, though, you'll have a full release of Lex to help you celebrate and/or commiserate with. :)

So... yeah. Big presidential election coming up here soon in the U.S. Me working on a MUGEN character that actually WAS president for a while, until he went cuckoo and put on the green-and-purple battle suit. Hmm. Almost seems like I should commemorate election day somehow, doesn't it? Hmm...







Well, I'm sure I'll think of SOMETHING. :lol:

As I promised earlier in the week, here's the latest Lex Luthor update. He has all the following updates over the alpha release from last January:

- 27 Sep 2008: Beta 1b
- fixed bug in Failsafe Emission
- added air version of Failsafe Emission (& you can can combo into it!)
- lots of minor bugfixes and combo tweaks throughout
- added Special: Tyrant Drill
- added shocked, frozen special anims

- 25 Sep 2008: Beta 1
- tweaked Special: Stiletto Blade (it's now an expansion-type move, for one thing)
- added Special: Electrified Armor
- added Hyper: Failsafe Emission
- added Hyper: Nanite Swarm
- added fwd/back dashes
- added new sound effects, voices, and effect sparks

All in all, he's a much more solid character than he was before: 4 specials, 2 hypers, pretty decent AI, etc. Still quite a bit more we plan to do with him before he's done, but I felt like I needed to get him out there for all y'all to start playing with. Enjoy, post any feedback/ bug reports here at the ScruffyDragon forum.

What're you waiting for? Go grab Lex Luthor Beta 1b here!
(Will be uploaded to the ScruffyDragon portal later)

I just sent out the beta invitations to my testers and ScruffyDragon teammates to get final feedback before this weekend's release. Looks like he'll have 3 specials, 2 hypers, and various other smaller tweaks & enhancements over the January 4th alpha release. Stay tuned for the release announcement later this week! :)

So the past few days I've been inspired to, if not finish Lex Luthor, at least make a more well-rounded beta fit for public consumption. To that end I've been adding several new moves and tweaking old ones (as I mentioned a few weeks ago), adding sound effects to various movements (e.g. the intro), double-checking clsn boxes, and adding most of his missing sparks and animations: tonight I added the various dust & hitspark effects my characters all use, plus a new forward dash, boot jet sparks on jump & superjump, a lose pose... basically lots of little stuff. Plus this new hyper:


So what's left? Well, you can always check his page at our team's WikiDragon site. The "what's left" entry over there, which I just updated, lists these things I still want to do before the beta release:
* still needs a hyper portrait! :(
* backward dash
* Special: Energy Shield
* a few more sound effects

Yeah, that's it. :) I've still got quite a bit I want to add to the final version, but this beta is LEAGUES ahead of the first one I released earlier this year. My beta testers will be getting it later this week, so a public release may drop as early as this weekend.