Fortress
Smash Master
I'd rather edit than self-bump, but if anybody sees this, likes it, and CAN do it, or wants to, feel free. I'd love to someday see a Shadow Moses that IS Shadow Moses but better.
Personally, I enjoyed vanilla Shadow Moses Island. It had a great atmosphere, an excellent choice of tracks, and was a pretty comfortable size. The main qualms that my household and myself (and I'm sure many others) had were the walls, and the fact that floor kills weren't really a thing at all. Looking through the Vault, I found no real stage designs on Shadow Moses that only did slight alterations, and not just retextures or flat-out replacements. So, with that in mind, I drew up a few templates for what I liked to think of as a new take on Shadow Moses.
(Let me open up by saying that, while I have very little experience in creating stages for Smash Bros, I have a solid background in level creation in things like Unreal, Halo, CS, and the like; so, I'd love the input of people who are savvy with Brawlbox editing. Also, forgive me if I refer to a 'stage' as a 'map'; force of habit)
First and foremost: the size of the map.
So, Shadow Moses was a pretty decent size for your average stage. I would think most could agree on that. It had a lofty ceiling, and comfortably 'long' walls, fettered only by the breakable towers lying in front of them. Getting killed off of the side of the stage wasn't particularly easy, but heavy-hitting characters could often take advantage of the flatness of the upper and lower levels, and lack of platforms and ledges, to perform easy carries off of the stage's walls. Apart from that, it was very comfortable to move around Shadow Moses, with or without the towers, and was very comfortably sized.
Breakable Towers
This was the 'quirk' that Shadow Moses tried to bring to the table; its Randal, FZero racers, and (god forbid) giant fish ala Summit. They were, more-or-less, the defining feature of Shadow Moses Island. For better or for (in most cases) worse. The towers, we felt, created a Temple-esque feel, where kills were much harder to get than they should be. While bouncing and knocking people off of walls had some merit for comboing, more often than not, they just broke the flow of combat in the stage.
Flat Ground Level
With the towers destroyed, battling on the ground level usually boiled down to fights to see who could carry or F-smash their opponent off of the side of the stage first. Without any sort of ledges or falls, it felt like there was no clear dynamic other than 'hit whomever's in front of you harder'. It was a straight up slugfest, but without all of the trickery and technique that comes with trying to recover onto a stage with a similar layout, such as Final Destination.
Okay, so it's been established that Shadow Moses island has a little room for improvement in the 'terrain variety' department, as well as in the fact that it's a gigantic smash closet. What were the changes we had in mind at the house?
Firstly, some slight adjustments to the size of the stage. By extending the walls a very small amount, and bringing the ceiling down, more focus on game play will be brought to the ground floor. Combat focus will shift from strictly wall kills (which, with extended walls, won't be quite as easy to get as before), to trying to line opponents up to get them to the upper levels of the map for some low-percent ceiling kills. In just changing where the blast lines are placed, the core focus of where fighting would take place on Shadow Moses can be molded whichever way is comfortable. Additionally, we felt that by moving the player spawn positions to be exclusively on the middle and lower level, that there'd be more focus in driving players upward, and moving upward to meet other players when you spawned in (i.e. less focus on the sides of the stage).
Secondly, changing up the objects on Shadow Moses. What we had in mind, was removing the breakable towers entirely (perhaps relegating them to background objects, as they'd be nice to bring an aesthetic 'pop' to the stage), and replacing them with a third platform underneath the top level to form another 'triangle' stage. What would (hopefully) set Shadow Moses apart from other well-established triangle stages, would be that the size of the three platforms would be a bit longer, spaced out a little farther than Battlefield's, and brought down a little bit from their current Shadow Moses height. This would hopefully drive the flow of the game upward more often, putting more emphasis on the low-percent ceiling kills that were mentioned in the first change suggestion.
Finally, the quirk. This one was a bit crazy, but it involves a slight stage transformation. At about forty seconds into every minute, a pit would open up in the center of the lower floor of the stage, filled with water (and would be opened completely at forty-five seconds, the five seconds before to alert players of the transformation). Having this opening could instantly impact the game flow, and place more priority on setting up spikes and floor kills (something Brawl's Shadow Moses lacked) during the time that the pit was open. It would remain open for fifteen seconds. We're about half-and-half split between having water or no water, but agree that some sort of bottom killing power happening for a brief amount of time could add some flair and variety to Shadow Moses, without changing up too much of the core concepts behind it.
Anyway, here's a quick rendition of what we were thinking of. All red areas are where the areas of the blast lines and beyond would be, blue areas are water, and the colored circles are player spawn positions.
Personally, I enjoyed vanilla Shadow Moses Island. It had a great atmosphere, an excellent choice of tracks, and was a pretty comfortable size. The main qualms that my household and myself (and I'm sure many others) had were the walls, and the fact that floor kills weren't really a thing at all. Looking through the Vault, I found no real stage designs on Shadow Moses that only did slight alterations, and not just retextures or flat-out replacements. So, with that in mind, I drew up a few templates for what I liked to think of as a new take on Shadow Moses.
(Let me open up by saying that, while I have very little experience in creating stages for Smash Bros, I have a solid background in level creation in things like Unreal, Halo, CS, and the like; so, I'd love the input of people who are savvy with Brawlbox editing. Also, forgive me if I refer to a 'stage' as a 'map'; force of habit)
First and foremost: the size of the map.
So, Shadow Moses was a pretty decent size for your average stage. I would think most could agree on that. It had a lofty ceiling, and comfortably 'long' walls, fettered only by the breakable towers lying in front of them. Getting killed off of the side of the stage wasn't particularly easy, but heavy-hitting characters could often take advantage of the flatness of the upper and lower levels, and lack of platforms and ledges, to perform easy carries off of the stage's walls. Apart from that, it was very comfortable to move around Shadow Moses, with or without the towers, and was very comfortably sized.
Breakable Towers
This was the 'quirk' that Shadow Moses tried to bring to the table; its Randal, FZero racers, and (god forbid) giant fish ala Summit. They were, more-or-less, the defining feature of Shadow Moses Island. For better or for (in most cases) worse. The towers, we felt, created a Temple-esque feel, where kills were much harder to get than they should be. While bouncing and knocking people off of walls had some merit for comboing, more often than not, they just broke the flow of combat in the stage.
Flat Ground Level
With the towers destroyed, battling on the ground level usually boiled down to fights to see who could carry or F-smash their opponent off of the side of the stage first. Without any sort of ledges or falls, it felt like there was no clear dynamic other than 'hit whomever's in front of you harder'. It was a straight up slugfest, but without all of the trickery and technique that comes with trying to recover onto a stage with a similar layout, such as Final Destination.
Okay, so it's been established that Shadow Moses island has a little room for improvement in the 'terrain variety' department, as well as in the fact that it's a gigantic smash closet. What were the changes we had in mind at the house?
Firstly, some slight adjustments to the size of the stage. By extending the walls a very small amount, and bringing the ceiling down, more focus on game play will be brought to the ground floor. Combat focus will shift from strictly wall kills (which, with extended walls, won't be quite as easy to get as before), to trying to line opponents up to get them to the upper levels of the map for some low-percent ceiling kills. In just changing where the blast lines are placed, the core focus of where fighting would take place on Shadow Moses can be molded whichever way is comfortable. Additionally, we felt that by moving the player spawn positions to be exclusively on the middle and lower level, that there'd be more focus in driving players upward, and moving upward to meet other players when you spawned in (i.e. less focus on the sides of the stage).
Secondly, changing up the objects on Shadow Moses. What we had in mind, was removing the breakable towers entirely (perhaps relegating them to background objects, as they'd be nice to bring an aesthetic 'pop' to the stage), and replacing them with a third platform underneath the top level to form another 'triangle' stage. What would (hopefully) set Shadow Moses apart from other well-established triangle stages, would be that the size of the three platforms would be a bit longer, spaced out a little farther than Battlefield's, and brought down a little bit from their current Shadow Moses height. This would hopefully drive the flow of the game upward more often, putting more emphasis on the low-percent ceiling kills that were mentioned in the first change suggestion.
Finally, the quirk. This one was a bit crazy, but it involves a slight stage transformation. At about forty seconds into every minute, a pit would open up in the center of the lower floor of the stage, filled with water (and would be opened completely at forty-five seconds, the five seconds before to alert players of the transformation). Having this opening could instantly impact the game flow, and place more priority on setting up spikes and floor kills (something Brawl's Shadow Moses lacked) during the time that the pit was open. It would remain open for fifteen seconds. We're about half-and-half split between having water or no water, but agree that some sort of bottom killing power happening for a brief amount of time could add some flair and variety to Shadow Moses, without changing up too much of the core concepts behind it.
Anyway, here's a quick rendition of what we were thinking of. All red areas are where the areas of the blast lines and beyond would be, blue areas are water, and the colored circles are player spawn positions.
