Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[godofrock72]

Wow, finally also for PAL, you guys are amazing!

I will download it this week, can't wait for it =D

Sadly i'm at work now, so i must wait xD

But yeah, looks awesome =D

Thank you so much =D

That's what you do at work?

This is so much better than Brawl+! You've really narrowed the tiers down.

 

[Rapax]

That's what you do at work?

This is so much better than Brawl+! You've really narrowed the tiers down.

Yeah, i have nothing to do xD

 

[FabDelux]

Same. Getting a black screen with Stack Error. Tried using gameconfig.txt (Because i read that someone make the Genesis Update work this way) but nothing.
Thank you for help.

np it's just that we newbies have to stick together

by the way when i try to launch any cheats on ssbb NTSC-U with neogamma, all i get is a horrible "green screen of death". However it works when SD cheats are unchecked. My Dual Layer SSBB PAL disk works with Gecko OS, too.
Any advices?

 

[stRIP]

We germans have problems with the PAL version, there just comes a blackscreen and some NON delicious Code Salad

 

[Linkshot]

Are you going through homebrew? Just making sure.

 

[Rapax]

The same for me... Yes, i start from homebrew, yes they are in ther respective folders... (Brawl+ worked fine, btw.; and no, there aren't brawl+ codes on the sd-card, and it's not sdhc and it's only 2GB big)

 

[Johnknight1]

Time to start making tournies! We need a lot of tournies for this to seriously catch on but I'm postive that it will work out. BBrawl FTW!

Agreed. In fact, just to celebrate we should have a "Meta Knights and Ganon's only" tournament to compare how "balanced" this game is!

Meta Knight will probably win due to how advance his meta game is, but it'll still be pretty awesome.

But yeah, I'm definitely getting this. I can't wait to use a actually good Link, Jiggly-smack, Ganon-****, & Captain Errected Nipples (of death).

 

[The_Bear735]

This is just silly.

 

[Rapax]

You guys did a great job. Really, you have my respect. But it seems like there were some NTSC codes in the PAL version...

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I got one volunteer to help test the PAL version who didn't get back to me; what could I do?

Anyway, there shouldn't be any NTSC codes in there; I got every PAL code from a PAL code source (such as the PAL code database here!)... The next question is which codes are causing the crashing. Try turning off the throw engine/throw data as a first attempt and then generally trying assorted codes to narrow down the crashing. I really can't do much here; neither Thinkaman nor I own a PAL Wii so we can only rely on testing from PAL users before we can make this work right. We are going to make it work, but we really do 100% depend on testing from PAL users to diagnose problems here.

 

[SaltyKracka]

Are there any changes to this from the test version you put up recently, or is it the exact same as this?

Also, I will be watching the metagame for this. This may end up less balanced than you hoped...

 

[Rapax]

I got one volunteer to help test the PAL version who didn't get back to me; what could I do?

Anyway, there shouldn't be any NTSC codes in there; I got every PAL code from a PAL code source (such as the PAL code database here!)... The next question is which codes are causing the crashing. Try turning off the throw engine/throw data as a first attempt and then generally trying assorted codes to narrow down the crashing. I really can't do much here; neither Thinkaman nor I own a PAL Wii so we can only rely on testing from PAL users before we can make this work right. We are going to make it work, but we really do 100% depend on testing from PAL users to diagnose problems here.

I don't will test it today, it's late and i have headache. But i looked over fast, and compared with your former test version in the old thread on page 55. The old one worked...

So i will test it tomorrow if it isn't done then already. But i think i saw some codes which were identically with the NTSC version. But i might be mistaken. We will see.

So, good night. And good luck if you do it yourself (or anyone else) now.
If not, i will do so tomorrow.

Anyway, good work. My respect =)

 

[Thinkaman]

Guys the PAL version doesn't work for me and other PAL users.

Could you please create a zip for the SD card with all the required files that works? It is possible that we are missing something or that we are doing something wrong...

+1 (I'm a PAL user too)

Same. Getting a black screen with Stack Error. Tried using gameconfig.txt (Because i read that someone make the Genesis Update work this way) but nothing.
Thank you for help.

There does seem to be a PAL issue, and we'll try to resolve it as quickly as possible. Could you guys try testing the codes independently to see if you can find the culprit? I, meanwhile, will check the array sizes.

Checked, array sizes are good. I'll diff the data contents to be sure in a sec.

Marth right?

Because I agree with these two statements. By the next release...one top priority should be nerfing Dancing Blade. It's pretty stupidly good. Basically a 4 hit Jab combo that you can do out of dash, and it does a little too much damage for that matter...outspeeding and outdamaging most DAs.

Yeah...you can make his life miserable if you can bait him however, although I honestly don't see some characters being able to handle him still even with a few damage/knockback buffs. Obviously Ganondorf comes to mind since he's still slow and easily gimped by a Marth that spaces well, and then even with Luigi's fireball buff, vs Marth is probably still pretty stupid since Marth unlike MK can fan away projectiles.

I'm not surprised how reliant on DB Marth is. It's overall his best move, and is one of the best out of dash options in the game. This is pretty huge, since wavedashing doesn't exist in Brawl for the most part.

But anyhow, it's pretty stupid that it does like at least 17% or so, and at the same time allows him to laugh off diminishing returns. Especially considering that it punishes almost anything you whiff on Marth....

Expect a long designer note post about Marth soon. Marth and G&W were actually the hardest characters to balance, which at first glance may appear strange since they got no changes. It has more to do with not any specific move or technique, but the overall design of a character that has both speed and priority. In Brawl, it is a very uphill battle to overcome an advantage in both. They are the worst matchups for a lot of characters even in normal Brawl; worse than Meta Knight!

The fact is, a very, very significant amount of the buffs were designed around "What moves can I actually hit Marth and G&W with?" Examples: Peach mains explained to us that bair is extremely important for spacing around Marth. In most matchups dair and fair are obviously more important to Peach, but against Marth the spacing utility of bair is critical. Meanwhile, Kirby's Stone attack is not particularly amazing, but is one of the only thing that can edgeguard the slow but usually invulnerable recoveries of those two characters. Jigglypuff got +1% on Pound because it's her primary option against these characters.

It's very easy to find buffs that help much against Marth and G&W, while improving most other matchups are really easy. Finding things that specifically help against those two guys was a big challenge for this project, but we are very pleased with the results.

I have a question, sorry if this has already been asked. But will european wii's always need homebrew channel 4 this or is getting this to work on euro wii's still being worked on?

A PAL version of Stack Smash seems to be in the works.

Are there any changes to this from the test version you put up recently, or is it the exact same as this?

Also, I will be watching the metagame for this. This may end up less balanced than you hoped...

There are a few minor changes, a couple fixes. A good example is that ZSS's d-smash was tightened up, featuring a higher angle. It is now slightly better for followups than in standard Brawl, instead of worse. Small things like that.

As for the success of this project, we're not perfect, nor is any game designer of any stature. Precisely balancing 666 matchups is not something that will ever be able to be done perfectly.

 

[PKNintendo]

Woah, going to test asap.

 

[RyuReiatsu]

I'm not surprised how reliant on DB Marth is. It's overall his best move, and is one of the best out of dash options in the game. This is pretty huge, since wavedashing doesn't exist in Brawl for the most part.

But anyhow, it's pretty stupid that it does like at least 17% or so, and at the same time allows him to laugh off diminishing returns. Especially considering that it punishes almost anything you whiff on Marth....

I might have not expressed myself correctly, my apologies.
DB does need nerfs, especially the damages and knockback.
F-Air damage's pretty high also. But I just don't want to see anything unnecessary, as he was overnerfed in Brawl+ at first. His DB was slower, weaker and had its knockback extremely lowered. Plus most of his aerialshad become weaker...

In any case, I'll just stop right there. Since I'm pretty sure, you, people working on BBrawl, are professional enough not to overrate or underrate him.

Jigglypuff got +1% on Pound because it's her primary option against these characters.

Wasn't B-Air Jiggly's primary option against Marth?

 

[HowaitoKumaSan]

I was curious until I saw Falcon's list of changes. This is just ridiculous.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Jigglypuff also got a buff to back aerial as well for a variety of reasons, but Pound is Jigglypuff's main "anti-disjoint" move. The thing is that Pound has truly obscene priority (I think it is really disjointed) that lets Jigglypuff make opportunities in matchups that are otherwise good at shutting her down. Even in standard Brawl, it makes the Meta Knight matchup go from "totally hopeless" to "decently fair", and it's Jigglypuff's shining light against her most feared matchup of all, Mr. Game & Watch. I can't say I specifically know the Jigglypuff vs Marth matchup well (Jigglypuff in particular is really Thinkaman's specialty, for obvious reasons), but I can say with absolute confidence that the Pound buff is extremely important for her in dealing with the other half of the duo mentioned, the half she feared more in the first place, Mr. Game & Watch.

I know they're different characters with different concerns, but it really is like Thinkaman said that so much of this project's design on every character was informed by the fact that Marth and Mr. Game & Watch (and Meta Knight) are in this game. With chaingrab problems gone, Luigi is instantly viable... except he loses pretty badly to that trio. We gave him the Fireball buff because it's buffing Luigi's best tool in that matchup. In this way, they are nerfed; we gave half the cast specific tools that were designed to help in these matchups. Internally, we even had a name for this trio: team disjointed. It's a shame our more in-depth descriptive content isn't done yet because one thing I couldn't help but notice writing what I have (about 1/3 of the character design descriptions) is that I was constantly explaining what we gave them specifically to fight those three characters...

Also, the way the change list is being formatted makes the list of changes look longer than it is. For instance, if a move has 4 hitboxes, it may get 4 entrees on the changelist... even though we're really only changing one move. Captain Falcon received a very long list of changes compared to most of the rest of the cast because, frankly, he was a lot worse than most of the rest of the cast with a variety of fairly fundamental problems. Still though, it's really a lot less than you'd think; Captain Falcon still feels like his old Brawl Captain Falcon self... just with the ability to win added in. I mean, consider these "six" changes.

Falcon Kick hitbox 1 damage (13%) -> (14%), knockback (70/50) -> (0/128), angle (45) -> (65)
Falcon Kick hitbox 2 damage (11%) -> (12%), knockback (40/62) -> (0/110), angle (85) -> (80)
Falcon Kick hitbox 3 damage (7%) -> (8%), knockback (60/50) -> (0/102), angle (50) -> (95)
Aerial Falcon Kick hitbox 1 damage (15%) -> (16%), knockback (70/40) -> (70/65), angle (-) -> (80)
Aerial Falcon Kick hitbox 2 damage (13%) -> (14%), knockback (65/40) -> (65/65), angle (-) -> (80)
Aerial Falcon Kick hitbox 3 damage (11%) -> (12%), knockback (60/40) -> (60/65), angle (-) -> (80)

In other words, Falcon Kick does a little more damage and hits upward. It's not as much as it seems at all, like I was saying.

 

[Mit]

I was curious until I saw Falcon's list of changes. This is just ridiculous.

Is that a bad ridiculous, or a good ridiculous? O_o If you think they're changing too much, you need to sit and play Falcon for yourself. His entire playstyle is the exact same, only his moves don't backfire on him even when they hit (stupid aerial raptor boost and falcon kick), and he overall does more damage and can kill faster (which almost makes up for his horrible priority and lack of projectiles/disjointed hitboxes).

 

[Thinkaman]

Wasn't B-Air Jiggly's primary option against Marth?

Bair is effective against aerial Marth, though Pound is still good for fighting nair. Against a defensive grounded Marth, bairs are pretty easy to swat. Honestly I use grab a ton against Marth.

I was curious until I saw Falcon's list of changes. This is just ridiculous.

Falcon's changes are actually pretty small, although they are numerous. There really wasn't a particular "flaw" in Falcon's game, he was just plain bad with Brawl's physics. Falcon is definitely not going to take the roster by storm and be top tier, I can promise you that. In fact, this is just my personal preference, but I think Falcon vs. Olimar is one of the hardest matchups in BBrawl right now. (Perhaps one of the few ~35:65 matchups that have managed to survive? Maybe developing this matchup better will help Falcon.)

Edit: See Ampharos's Falcon Kick example. It's a really long list for pretty small effects.

 

[SaltyKracka]

If any hard counter matchups have survived, and I'm **** sure that they have, I can guarantee you that most of them will show up with Ganondorf.

 

[Thinkaman]

If any hard counter matchups have survived, and I'm **** sure that they have, I can guarantee you that most of them will show up with Ganondorf.

Actually, since we were so obsessively worried about Ganondorf, I feel pretty good about him. For example, I tested a TON of Ganon against Olimar, ICs, Sheik, Falco, and Pit. I mean, an absolute ton. I'd be more ready to believe that some random matchup we overlooked is slightly skewed, something oddball like Peach vs. Wolf or ZSS vs. DK. (I just totally said random characters there, I have no reason to believe those are messed up either way for any reason.)

 

[RyuReiatsu]

Oh, I didn't know much about Jiggly. Thanks for putting some light on it.
And also, it seems nobody has answered my question about Snake. Do you have plans on removing his extended hitbox on his F-tilt or will you actually leave it?

 

[MorpheusVGX]

I would like to know if there are any Diddy, Metaknight or Snake mains supporting Balanced Brawl.. They deserve an appluasse ... It would be sad if only low tier mains or characters that got some buffs support this patch.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Oh, I didn't know much about Jiggly. Thanks for putting some light on it.
And also, it seems nobody has answered my question about Snake. Do you have plans on removing his extended hitbox on his F-tilt or will you actually leave it?

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=246327
Here's your answer... just read what's in orange

 

[Thinkaman]

And also, it seems nobody has answered my question about Snake. Do you have plans on removing his extended hitbox on his F-tilt or will you actually leave it?

Hitbox changes are too troublesome; it's one thing when attacks are hitting differently when they connect, but it's a whole 'nother can of worms when attacks aren't connecting the same in the first place. All hitbox changes we tested were universally hated by players, it's just annoying to learn adn annoying to deal with, and even more annoying when you go back to normal Brawl and have to relearn how things are.

Take basketball. BBrawl might be like something along the lines of "3-pointers are now 4-pointers, and some types of fouls are now technical fouls." That is going to change your tactics and strategy, and might make some matchups go differently. However, doing something like "the basket is now 10% more narrow and 2 inches higher" would really throw people off. They would have to practice the new basket and relearn their skills, and unlearn them when they went back to a normal basket.

Make sense?

I would like to know if there are any Diddy, Metaknight or Snake mains supporting Balanced Brawl.. They deserve an appluasse ... It would be sad if only low tier mains or characters that got some buffs support this patch.

A few Meta Knight players have had favorable impressions and voiced support; if you'll notice, it's going to be the more offensive Meta Knight players. You know, the ones who are less campy, use nado sparingly, and play Meta Knight because they enjoy his style of play rather than his general superiority. These players are less impacted by the nerfs, and are generally a force to be reckoned with in BBrawl.

Snakes too, especially the most tactical and interesting Snakes that do things besides defensive tilt spamming.

 

[A17]

does this basically run off the .gct and gameconfig.txt? if so, is there a link to the .txt to the .gct?

I'm asking because I want to be able to switch between regular brawl, B+ and this without having to change file names on the computer. I have a setup where I will use cheat manager on HBC and simply decide which kind of brawl i'd like to play that day, and pick out the appropriate txt file (what I mean is I have a .txt that contains everything needed for B+ only, and another that contains BBrawl stuff) and play.

I don't need to have BBrawl setup without HBC like you mentioned, because I have many custom stages I'd like to keep on my SD and play on once in a while.

 

[Marcellus Caesar]

Hey, just wanted to say great job on making a modification for Brawl that maintains its core physics without speeding it all up like Brawl+. I am very thankful for your work, and I have high expectations for this!

 

[TreK]

I would like to know if there are any Diddy, Metaknight or Snake mains supporting Balanced Brawl.. They deserve an appluasse ... It would be sad if only low tier mains or characters that got some buffs support this patch.

*applauses himself*
nah but seriously, till I get my PAL version to work, I'm not supporting this because I'm a French dooshbag.

Told about the release to the French players ; the opinions are unanimous, we don't like the removal of cgs. But besides that, I guess ppl are okay with everything. Looks like it anyway. *says ggs to the makers for the third time*

 

[Thinkaman]

Guys, we are working really hard to get the PAL version up and running.

Until that happens, we are pulling the NTSC-U version from the download site so we can double check everything. Expect it back up in an hour.

Alrighty? Back to work I go.

 

[TreK]

Hey I was jk, don't make them wait because of me/us, we're accostumed to wait now (lol27june08)

 

[Thinkaman]

We're not doing this to be "fair" or anything like that, we jsut want to understand the PAL problem and make sure it is nothing that would affect the NSTC-U version. Just a very small precaution.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I have received some private reports that there are some... issues with the standard release. By issues I mean lines of code are there that have literally no reason to be there, that neither Thinkaman nor I recall ever writing. A few very trivial things are also missing; things we did write that disappeared from the main codeset for literally no reason. We do not pretend to have an explanation, but the product we released was not the product we believed it to be. I want to be clear to those already enjoying it that it's 99.9% correct, but these 0.1% do matter and are not something we're satisfied with. We released with confidence we had the game we wanted, but we had no idea the game was not the game we thought it was completely.

Do not be alarmed. These mistakes are truly bizarre; they make literally no sense. Regardless, we are going to restore our intended launch tonight, after some VERY careful error checking. I confess we rushed the release because we were already behind relative to Smash Stack's surprise launch, and Thinkaman's Indiana "adventure" wasted basically a whole day (not really his fault). To be clear about our approach, we could easily put something up right now that puts things in the correct, developer intended order, but we're waiting until tonight to be very, very sure this does not happen again and to have a fully functional PAL version released alongside it (waiting for Australia to wake up and get online...).

I do not want to put a damper on things at all. Please feel free to continue to play Balanced Brawl. If you enjoy it and are going to play some more, just download the minorly fixed version sometime after tonight. You will never notice the difference unless you're very explorative or observent. I feel really embarrassed that we managed to muck up something as simple as a launch of code like this, but all I can do now is work to resolve this. I apologize for all inconveniences this may cause, but I offer my assurances that we're resolving these issues of mysterious origin and that for most users this should not be an issue.

Also, lastly, I want to re-affirm that our commitment to the 4-6 month window has not wavered. I know at this point we look like we're backpedaling, but as I see it we're still attempting to complete the standard release, that is deliver the code we originally intended to the userbase. I can't really do anything but apologize and hope the userbase can look past this, like a bump in the road that is to be soon forgotten.

 

[Linkshot]

Haha. Yeah, Ottawa has turned ghey.

My cousin and another local are like "No, lol. Don't nerf top tier. Top Tier is supposed to be top tier and it's what makes this game competitive, durrrrr. If I wanted to play a balanced game, I'd play Street Fighter :V"

My cousin, specifically is "WTF MEAT LOOP DOESN'T KILL AT 0% PUT vBRAWL BACK ON"

You going to mention those errors, for my curious mind?

Spoiler

And since I discovered one

 

[Thinkaman]

Just to clarify, I did not mean that I promise the PAL version will be doen in an hour. We need the help for PAL testers for that--I was talking about finishing my checking of the NTSC-U download.

 

[TreK]

I wanna be PAL tester.

 

[NintenJoe]

Kudos. I'm looking forward to see how this meta game develops. The only thing left to do is to set up a BBrawl community in Chicago/Midwest.

 

[illinialex24]

Hey, you owe me, Comex, and Bionic Sonic credit for the no Homebrew hack ok. We found out the exploit, how to fix the IOS reloading issue, and the disable custom stages thing respectfully.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Hey, you owe me, Comex, and Bionic Sonic credit for the no Homebrew hack ok. We found out the exploit, how to fix the IOS reloading issue, and the disable custom stages thing respectfully.

Comex did make Smash Stack, and if we forgot to give him due credit, it was merely an oversight for which we apologize. However, we worked out all issues with making Smash Stack work with Gecko OS 1.9.2 properly before Smash Stack's release (we just weren't told when it was releasing). To be blunt, I don't see why we need to credit you or Bionic Sonic since you did post about it first, but we definitely had a working version well before your posts.

 

[illinialex24]

Ok at least give him credit.

 

[Almas]

Well, I guess I'll go ahead and sticky this one. Please one of you drop me a PM as to how many threads you'd like to maintain regarding this stuff. I want to give you sufficient room but this board is starting to get messy again and needs thorough cleaning up.