Okay, so in addition to wrapping up PAL stuff, I'm looking into some exciting new stage stuff that basically serves as a bug fix to the Rumble Falls + Pokemon Trainer issues. Long story short, here are a few values internal to the game by default:
Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 scrolling rate: .91
Luigi's Mansion respawn time: 20 seconds (1200 frames), begins counting when last section FINISHES crumbling (not just the pillar taking the last hit)
Green Greens block falling frequency: 30 (lower means blocks fall more often)
To be consistent with the current Bbrawl, I set them to these values:
Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 scrolling rate: .455
Luigi's Mansion respawn time: 40 seconds (2400 frames)
Green Greens block falling frequency: 60
These values are highly malleable and no longer affect anything else on the stage. If anyone has anything to say about them, now would be an excellent time to speak.
The first two (Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 and Luigi's Mansion) affect basically nothing from the current Bbrawl release except making the stages animate more smoothly by being more focused changes. Green Greens is a bit trickier though. The original design idea was to make the blocks replenish more slowly so camping the far platforms could be more realistically countered by block destruction strategies. Combine that with our special anti-ledgestalling code, and there really is nothing wrong with Green Greens. However, with our previously limited tools, we just set the whole stage to animate at 2/3 speed which was about as slow as we could make it without making the wind just too stupid. The single parameter I'm changing now is how often blocks fall, and I have set it to 60 (instead of 45, which would actually represent 2/3) because it's more in-line with the original intent and further now the blocks fall at normal speed once they spawn so this kinda compensates for that. I could try to find the value that affects how fast blocks fall and change that as well, but I'm not sure that would actually be making the stage better so much as mimicing current behavior. I'd really like to hear some thoughts in particular about play on Green Greens and experiences with the timing of the blocks both in their spawn frequency and in their fall rate.
No, we still can't edit stage hazard hitbox data. Don't ask me to make the bomb blocks less powerful because, regardless of whether it's a good idea (personally, I'd probably do it!), I can't make it happen. If you or someone you know can, of course refer them to me immediately.
No, this isn't constituting any sort of "new release". We're just planning on slipping in some stage polishing to go alongside a PAL release; we're definitely not changing any characters in any way. Thinkaman also proposed we do some improving to Spear Pillar to make the breaking floor a little less dumb; I'll keep you guys posted on how that works out.
Now off to see if I can figure out anything about how PictoChat works...
