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Even if some stages only get one posting, it would still be a nice reference for people. The one post could be a comprehensive stage analysis, and maybe nothing else needs to be said. But when PM is updated, people could add a (for example) 2nd and 3rd post talking about what changed (or what didn't change or is in need of change).
As a casual, I personally wouldn't want those changes... But they're not TOO bad.
yooo, please tell me this isn't just a mockup and you actually made the model for this / plan on releasing it.Not sharkable, since the underside has ceilings, but something similar might be feasible on the left.
I'll go over the notable elements the design offers:
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The outhouse
On the left side, there's a very steep incline leading up to a short platform on which the ledge lies. Recoveries can circumvent edgeguarders by going under the platform and through the stairs, but they risk being hit by any attacks that can clip through the collisions.
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The patio
On the right side, there's a very low, short platform, mirroring the left. Being right next to the ledge, it can be used for some tricky edgeguarding tactics.
Of course, both of these platforms seem like superb camping spots, hence why there's still occasionally:
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Das kleine Krokodil
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The roof
Up top is wrinkled and curled upward, a nightmare for players who are bad at accounting for slopes. It's at an unusual, middling elevation; high, but should still be accessible.
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The river
Down below I didn't bother to depict, but it should act like Melee if possible: basically just wind. Usually a nuisance for vertical recoveries, with potential for sporadic utility.
Is fine the way it is. The only way it could be better would be to replace the worthless rocket "transformation" but as we've seen that's easier said than done.
Sorry, I'm no expert at modding stages, and even less so at modeling. However, the mention of Pictochat and recent ruleset discussion have spurred my imagination and motivation. Expect an exhaustive explanation and example of my stage philosophy in the coming week.
Unfortunately, there's no good way to add or manipulate sound effects with current stage modding tools.
Damn :/
Yup! Layout-wise it takes the best from both Brawl and Melee Battlefield (Brawl's ledges, but Melee's platforms).
That's cool. A subtle combination to get the best of both worlds. Nothing too extreme that causes turmoil unless you're the nitpicky guy I heard the other day. Otherwise there isn't much to say about this stage since it's always done it's job well. I think it'd be neat to have an original reskin as others have mentioned, but I'm also really fond of the Brawl style. That being said, some 64 references such as that rock carving design would be awesome.
), but I'll admit that the backgrounds for Battlefield should contrast those of Final Destination to make variety between the two. If we had sort of a visual mesh of the two, akin to the Final Destination for SSB4, than that could be both unique and keep it based on Brawl.
A few peeps suggested a redone version of Smash 64's Battlefield.
Maintaining the overworld scene thats for sure. But not using brawl's.
They also might not look too great. For one, it can be jarring at first to see such familiar stages so different. But I also didn't really fix the shadows or optimize the camera, and didn't change much cosmetically. Partly because I've got no sense for it, but mostly because it's not the point yet.
You wouldn't, by chance, have a tl;dr version, would you?Here is something.
I’m not quite sure of the most appropriate place to post this. I considered the ruleset discussion thread, but I think that should be more about working with what we have now. In any case, this is the full concept behind what I call
Core Stages
PM needs starters; that much is plainly clear. Pretty much everyone agrees on Battlefield and Smashville, but what else? PS2 seems like an alright choice, but its crazy proportions make it kinda polarizing. That's okay, though, right: we'll just add other polarizing stages to solve everything?
For other Smash games, that's been as fine a decision as any. However, I don't think it's right for PM.
The Problem
For one, not every character can have their best stage as a starter. Samus wants a wide stage with high ceiling and distant walls, Snake wants a wide stage with low ceiling and distant walls, and Falcon wants a wide stage with low ceiling and close walls. That's already 3 stages out of what would ideally be 5. Why should any of those have priority over any other? Why not instead just have 5 stages that are arguably "neutral?"
Not that a character's best stage being a starter would actually help that character; the striking system is designed to make sure of that. Even if we're not talking about a character's best stage, certain elements are inherently polarizing, so in most matchups there will be one character that wants the element, so the other character will always strike it. What's the point of having 5 stages if it's usually just 2 that get picked? A couple of matchups might occasionally strike to one of the less common stages, but might there be some way to change the stage so that they still might strike to it, except so would many other matchups?
To be clear, I'm mostly talking about extreme stage sizes, as opposed to also-polarizing stuff like jump-through floors. Partly because it's much more likely to show up in a starter list (it's the main thing people bring up when discussing lists, under the pretense that we need this-many big stages and that-many small), partly because it's such a binary property (most matchups will have one character preferring either direction, with the more extreme the better), and partly because it's so shallow an element.
Really, it's many elements, but there are three that stand out as both highly influential and numerically quantifiable: stage width, the horizontal distance from one ledge of the stage to the other; side distance, the horizontal distance from the stage's ledge to the side blastzone; and ceiling height, the vertical distance from the floor of the main stage to the top blastzone. Exceedingly near/far blastzones don't really add stage variety; they have little effect on interactions and can't be used very creatively, instead mostly just serving to skew the matchup in favor of whichever character can kill/survive more effectively in that particular direction. Stage width is a much more interesting variable, but its strategic merit is still quickly outstripped by its unbalancing effect.
A Solution
I think it a much better direction for Project M to follow the example of Battlefield and Smashville. Take what makes them so universally acceptable and expand it into a full 5 stages. This goes beyond choosing a starter list, and must be begin from inside the game, which I emphasize with the term "Core." The DT may have no interest in dictating the "right" ruleset (although the very layout of the stage select screen inevitably does so), but the goal here is to make a set of stages that are so incontrovertibly right that no one needs to be told to use them.
First, of course, is for normalized sizes. Not totally uniform, but only just different enough to have an effect on gameplay, without giving anyone a definite advantage. With that out of the way, balancing should also become much easier. Character viability would no longer be so dependent on stage choice, and developers would have a much stronger frame of reference for whether a character struggles. The core would be a stable foundation upon which to build a structurally sound game.
The next obvious consideration is that every set will play its first match on a core stage. The players might not be fully warmed up and they’ll need to assess each other's playstyle, hence the stage should be fairly basic and allow them to focus more on learning. It should also be simple enough that anyone can quickly figure out enough to easily handle what the stage offers after the first time it's seen. As one might expect, this means the stage's most distinctive features would lie in platform layout. This still allows tons of variety which the core as a whole should maximize, with a focus on how different layouts create natural currents of movement. Having a good mix of other common elements would also be desirable.
Ultimately, the core should comprise 5 stages that most people would be unconditionally fine with playing on, stages that are just plain comfortable. As with BF and SV, there may be some who absolutely hate particular stages, but that should be more of a player-by-player thing, rather than character dependent. Stage striking should become a more subjective, less predictable choice, where any matchup could feasibly end up anywhere depending on player preference. That is the essence of true variety.
Having 5 simple, basic, fair stages would really change the game, in my opinion. That's twice as many as any other game offers, and with proper care in designing them with the whole core in mind, I think they could satisfyingly suffice as the entire list in a conservative ruleset. These stages would get used a lot, so for a bit of visual and musical variety, PM could use the ASL to execute a proper rendition of Smash 4's "Omega" concept: have the core on the bottom row of the SSS, and every stage that's in the same column as a core stage would alternate-load as an exact reskin of that core stage. Such alternate forms could just reuse existing assets, such as making Distant Planet literally Pokémon Stadium, or could go for something more unique that fits in the same series, such as Orpheon becoming a Crateria-themed Smashville with a Ripper for the platform. To tie in with the current conversation, Yoshi's Island and FoD or Halberd could lie in Battlefield's column and have alternate forms which are just properly-shaped versions of Yoshi's Story and Dreamland (YS would need to become a floating stage, so maybe throw in some YI 64 aesthetics as well).
PM is made with the community in mind, so it can do what other games never will but always should have. I think this falls in that category.
A few caveats first, but the tl;dr is that this is just a proof of concept.
A lot of choices were made for this, many of which were largely subjective. The platform heights in particular weren’t thoroughly scrutinized and aren’t beyond refinement. In fact, I included alternate animations for some stages that change the heights to be based on Melee stages. I just thought it'd be a cute experiment, and the result seems to indicate that just copying Melee might not always be the best solution.
The exact numbers for stage size are another example of what could justifiably be different, but there was a lot more thought put into them. They approximate the mean and median values for both Melee and PM 3.5, as well as the values of 3.5's Battlefield and Smashville, but were rounded out slightly to look nice (and a couple other reasons). I went with a fairly narrow spread on them (±5 at most for blastzones, ±10 for stage width) which I doggedly don't think needs to be broader, as explained above.
Plus there's this
They also might not look too great. For one, it can be jarring at first to see such familiar stages so different. But I also didn't really fix the shadows or optimize the camera, and didn't change much cosmetically. Partly because I've got no sense for it, but mostly because it's not the point yet.
Finally, the testing for these stages has shown no problems, but I wouldn't say it was truly rigorous. Hence there may be some flaws in balance or functionality.
Regardless, I think these superbly achieve the intended goals as-is.
Or at least, this is what BrawlBox says.| Stage Width | Middle Point Distance to Side | Side Distance | Ceiling Height | Ceiling Height from Highest Platform | Stage to Bottom | Low Platform Height | Low Platform Size | High Platform Height | High Platform Size
Battlefield | 137 | 219 | 150 | 204 | 150 | 125 | 27.2 | 37.6 | 54.4 | 37.6
Smashville |140 | 225 | 155 | 199 | 170 | 121 | 28.8 | 47.7 | - | -
Pokémon Stadium M | 147 | 222 | 148 | 196 | 169 | 120 | 27.1 | 27.5 | - | -
D.I.Y. Studio | 133 | 219 | 152 | 201 | 152 | 115 | 24.9 | 44.3 | 49.3 | 22.2
eShop | 143 | 217 | 145 | 200 | 148 | 119 | 29.0 | 31.3 | 52.0 | 28.0
Median | 140.0 | 218.5 | 150.0 | 200.0 | 151.7 | 120.0 | 27.20 | 37.60 | 52.00 | 28.00
Mean | 140.0 | 220.0 | 150.0 | 200.0 | 157.7 | 120.0 | 27.39 | 37.67 | 51.89 | 29.26
Standard deviation | 4.82 | 2.97 | 3.41 | 2.61 | 9.78 | 3.22 | 1.467 | 7.605 | 2.101 | 6.363
Red denotes important stuff. For comparison with current values, see here.
Note that platform space was balanced against stage width, top blastzone distance balanced against platform height, side blastzone distance balanced against platform proximity thereto, and bottom blastzone distance balanced against both side blastzone distance and whether the stage has walls. The "Middle Point Distance to Side" turning out so uniform was just a nice coincidence.
Technically these values should be considered on a logarithmic scale, but they're close enough that it doesn't make much difference.
Battlefield & Smashville
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King and Queen of Core.
Not much to say about them. Practically unchanged: only slight tweaks to account for the additional stages. Still have the same old flow you're used to. But the rest have been tweaked a bit more…
Pokémon Stadium M
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Tweaked enough for a new name, perhaps.
Essentially 3.5's PS2, except rescaled to be appropriate for Super Smash Brothers. Still possesses the same kind of flow and the same selection of elements, but now the polarizing ones aren't.
D.I.Y. Studio
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!!!
Same case as PSM. WarioWare's square layout is way too interesting to pass up, although just looking at it gets me wondering what effects minor alterations might have.
While a bigger WW would work in principle, I felt it wasn't a good representation of the series. Thus I gave it a little something for flavor, which I nevertheless think falls well within the bounds set by Smashville's moving platform that goes completely off-stage sidling right next to the blastzone and also there's a balloon. Not to mention what other Smash games (and PM itself) have had to deal with before.
The stage remains in the standard layout for the first ~60 seconds (minus the countdown, because), then switches to a new one. Each successive layout lasts 4 seconds less than the last, and the transition itself is 2 frames faster. This means most matches would only see a couple switches while still allowing for several unique forms total, and the increasing tempo both mimics the series’ microgames speeding up and forces more approaches as the match approaches a time out. The order is always the same, and exclamation points appear 4 seconds before a switch, both as a warning that it's about to happen and as a marker of what it'll be.
I wanted to add a bit more, like having the bomb-clock on the floor to give an exact countdown to each switch, but such is currently beyond me.
It does seem like certain characters could camp the top, and I don’t have anyone good enough at playing lame to be certain. If so, there’s still room to shrink the stage width to make fleeing harder, or the platform layouts could be reordered to disincentivize it.
The file also contains animations that may replace the original ones either for switches that happen near-instantly, or for platforms the same height as Yoshi's Story.
eShop
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It looked less cluttered in my mind.
I don't think there's any other current stage that should be core, and this proposal might be less appealing without something totally new, so I came up with this. Note that the actual file I provide goes over (and looks like) Norfair, but this was imagined as taking over the default slot of Pictochat (assuming the functional ASL everyone assumes now).
Has an interesting "t" shape to it that provides even greater potency to center-stage. To keep it from becoming too overbearing…
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A thing happens.
the platforms periodically shrink, so someone camping the top has less space to dodge and someone down below is less protected from aerial approaches. The platforms have individually short cycles that take 8 minutes to realign, so every moment in the match is just the slightest bit different from any other.
Visually, I imagine it scrolling through the products available on the eShop one at a time, with a logo and some screenshots popping up for each and gently floating about. The top platform is based off the rating system, and I think could look pretty cool with proper manipulation of draw order. It might be best if the products were in a random order, or started at a random point, to avoid the implication that the stars are meaningful. Just before the bottom platform shrinks I imagine the current product's logo hopping into the bag (the bottom platform is supposed to look like a bag), implying a purchase.
I also have elaborate opinions on how the other stages should be approached, but they have no bearing on the above points so I won't delve into them here.
I think it's a pretty solid plan, but I posted this here for discussion, so I welcome any challenges to just how well-founded this all is.
I actually second this. Brawl Battlefield's kinda boring visual-wise; I personally preferred the visuals of Melee battlefield but I really think assets from Spear Pillar can help get the best of both worlds.
