Golden Sun Project M map WIP thread

[Llama Juice]

It's 9 AM, I still haven't gone to sleep.

Here's why.

Finally got transparencies to work, figured out a lot of the lighting in the game and so I tried to make a day-night cycle. I think it works ok, the clouds in the background don't follow the lighting just yet, and any time I added the fog in it would just crash or cause the entire mesh to go pitch black.... sooooooooo I removed that for now.

I haven't ever seen a day/night cycle in Brawl done as an animation, so I thought it'd be amusing to do so. I ran into a mountain of problems in the process (One where random frames of an ambient light would get random colors on them, so halfway through your match you'd have a disco rave)

All I have left now is some shader tweaks, shadows, and getting the map splitting in half animation into the game.

If I can push my day/night cycle further in terms of the fog being a part of it, I'll also look into trying to add some lights to the towns in the background that turn on at night, maybe have the small pyramids on the tower light up in some way. Not too sure yet.

Anyhow, I'm going to bed now.

 

[Shin F.]

It's 9 AM, I still haven't gone to sleep.

Here's why.

Finally got transparencies to work, figured out a lot of the lighting in the game and so I tried to make a day-night cycle. I think it works ok, the clouds in the background don't follow the lighting just yet, and any time I added the fog in it would just crash or cause the entire mesh to go pitch black.... sooooooooo I removed that for now.

I haven't ever seen a day/night cycle in Brawl done as an animation, so I thought it'd be amusing to do so. I ran into a mountain of problems in the process (One where random frames of an ambient light would get random colors on them, so halfway through your match you'd have a disco rave)

All I have left now is some shader tweaks, shadows, and getting the map splitting in half animation into the game.

If I can push my day/night cycle further in terms of the fog being a part of it, I'll also look into trying to add some lights to the towns in the background that turn on at night, maybe have the small pyramids on the tower light up in some way. Not too sure yet.

Anyhow, I'm going to bed now.

That's really awesome! Just watching that video gets me pretty excited to be able to play on the level.

 

[Raziek]

It looks gorgeous, but it REEEALLY needs to be like 1.4 times bigger or so. The side platforms especially are just too small.

I'd love to use it as an actual competitive stage, but it needs to have room to do that.

 

[UltimateWario]

Holy ****. That is REALLY cool. I know there are some cool Golden Sun series emblems floating around out there for you to use instead of the Smash Bros. logo.

It'd be great if, after deciding to use Isaac, they'd use your stage as his home level.

 

[Thethiala]

Man, that is looking terrific indeed. I've already started planning on which songs to use with your stage when it's done.

It's almost a shame you've posted this thread in this part of the forum, I think you would be getting a lot more attention for what you're doing if you had posted it in the Brawl Workshop or in the Customized Content section of Project M. You might want to cross-post when you release the map at least.

 

[Llama Juice]

Yea, I wasn't sure where to start this thread when I started it. Im still new to the board and so I wasn't entirely sure where things were supposed to go. As for music... I started looking around for Golden sun songs to use without realizing that one exists in Brawl to begin with. (Its on Norfair usually)

@ Raziek , the size of the stage feels small but the stage itself is as wide as battlefield without the side platforms, and wider than FD with them. I wanted a stage that was gameplay different than most of the other stages out there while still being fair.

I could extend the stage a bit, but I don't want to do so until after a bunch of play testing happens. The stage is a bit cramped, but I think it works well that way. I don't want to just have a Peach Castle clone for gameplay.

 

[Raziek]

Fair enough. When you release it, I'll be happy to help test.

 

[Llama Juice]

Yesterday I wanted to learn how to do stage animations, collision animations, texture animations, and water.

So now the stage has a (very WIP) animation of the stage splitting apart and the ball rising up and "spinning" (The texture on the ball is animated, I didn't want to make the ball actually spin because it creates a weird effect along the left and right visible edges of the ball) I also tried to create water for the stage, borrowing heavily from the Rayquaza lake water, and tried to add in "reflections" to the water.

Yesterday was a lot of engine related learning, and a lot of "How the heck do I split this thing apart and still make it look good?" I think I did alright at that part

 

[Thethiala]

Is it possible to add sound and visual effects to special events on custom maps, for instance having the camera zoom out and shake as well as playing sound when the tower is split in two? I can't remember seeing any custom maps with special effects/sounds like that, so it might be an engine limitation when adding new maps?

Visually it's looking good, but it's lacking that "oomph" you would get with added sound effects and custom camera (think how the camera zooms out when that boar riding guy appears on Eldin Bridge, with some added shaking thrown in as well). This would help with how in the video you posted one might almost miss the stage splitting at around 35 seconds due to the camera being zoomed in. I hope it's not impossible due to engine limitations.

Nice to see the animated water as well, you're really putting a lot of effort into this.

 

[Llama Juice]

Apparently sfx are impossible currently. The suggestion that I've gotten is to edit the song that's tied to the stage, and just put the sound effects into that song. Just hope that people don't pause the game and offset the sync between music and stage. Also, you then have to do that for every song that can be used for your stage, and they all have to be the same length (So they loop with the animations properly)

I feel like that can't be true though, doesn't Pokemon Stadium and Bridge of Eldin have SFX for transitions/destruction? I'm going to see what I can do to dig through this... Also, camera stuff... I have no idea how that works. I'll try, but I don't know yet how to do that stuff. (I'm still the new guy here after all )

 

[Thethiala]

As far as I know SFX are tied to the stage slot rather than the stage itself. For instance Bridge of Eldin will have special effects if it's placed in its default position, but if you use the Classic Expansion Pack to get more stage slots and place it in one of the new ones it'll lose them. The impression I've gotten is that it's not possible to add custom SFX with the tools currently available, but that it might potentially become possible in the future. It's a shame, because it would totally add to the immersion of a stage like this. I don't think putting the sound effects directly into the song is a good idea, as you say it'll be out of sync immediately if anyone pauses.

I'm new to this as well though, I've been trying to modify stages the last few days with BrawlBox. It's taken me a lot of time to figure out how to swap out models, change hit boxes etc., so props to you for figuring it out this fast.

 

[WorldWithoutWords]

Wow man this is awesome and really inspiring, I've just gotten in stage building for smash so I hope to post some cool stuff soon! Btw you have twitter or something?

 

[Llama Juice]

Thanks buddy best of luck on getting started, the biggest thing that helped me out was setting up an account on http://forums.kc-mm.com/ and browsing the tutorials on their forums. (You need an account before you can see any of the tutorials for some reason.)

I have a Twitter that I never use. I used to try to be a pro youtuber so I got big into the twitter world for a while, but I just never could get into it. Best way to keep up with what I'm doing is to either subscribe to my youtube channel or keep browsing these forums

 

[Llama Juice]

Here's my stage with the current animations going on that I've come up with so far. I think it works pretty well for the stage. I just need to figure out camera animation, and tie the lighting in to work with this a little better and I think I'll be happy with it. Speaking of which... does anyone know how to make the camera shake?

I've been trying to make the shader for the green ball look good and I think I'm finally happy with it.

The one big shader issue that I'm running into is that the beam that comes out will look like garbage in front of water

I can't figure that out either. If anyone has any ideas, please share

 

[Thethiala]

You could try poking at Mewtwo2000, he's pretty much all knowing when it comes to stage creation. If you show him your progress thus far I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping you a bit with technical issues.

 

[Llama Juice]

Spent the entire weekend pretty much just tweaking everything.

Remade most of the animations for the stage, fixed the beam issue (I had the beam effects in the wrong modeldata folder..... rookie mistake..), added waves along the shorelines and added a slight current to the river. I also added player shadows to the stage.

All I really have left to do is animate the clouds and then rework the dirt/sand paths along the ground. I don't like them right now, they look too haggard.

 

[CardiganBoy]

It's funny that you won't have to do anything related about the music of this stage, since there's a pretty epic Golden Sun song in Brawl already, plus it will leave us a free music slot in Norfair.

You're doing an awesome work on this, keep it up!

 

[F. Blue]

What happens if the stage crushes you while fusing together?

 

[Llama Juice]

You just keep falling down. I might try to add in a thing to quickly sweep players straight down when this happens, as you can still sometimes jump back out of the collision, and I don't want that happening.

 

[Raziek]

Why not straight up? You could have a geyser of energy burst upwards along with a windbox to push them back above.

 

[Llama Juice]

If you're already falling in the middle and you're getting crushed, I feel like the player should be killed rather than rewarded.

 

[Raziek]

That's fair, then you just need to make sure there's ample warning for when it's going to close.

 

[Llama Juice]

It's a slow close, I've had Mario wall jump like mad getting out of it. That's pretty rewarding.

 

[Guilu]

Really liking the looks of this, great work so far.
Still though, it's a bit small. You mentionned earlier how the lighthouse was as large as Battlefield, but that's with the lower portions; the top portion, which really is the only one that's big enough to look playable, is Yoshi's Story sized. On the other hand your doors are quite high, perhaps too high, so you can't just resize the whole thing. I imagine it would be rather tedious, but I'd love if you could expand the stage horizontally, especially since walls are generally a no-go for duels so you need space for four people on there.
The elevator platforms are also a bit iffy to me. Can you go through them ? I was very surprised to see that they had ledges you could grab.

Still, I'm really looking forward to playing on this stage

 

[Llama Juice]

The way I see it, 90% of the fight happens along the edge of a stage. With my map I wanted to give the edge game a little bit more meat to it. I know a lot of people have said that they feel that it should be a little wider, but the fact is that the only time the fight even naturally flows to the center of the stage is when the stage pulls apart, and the only reason why people gravitate to that spot is because it's so rewarding to spike someone down that hole. For this purpose, I don't feel that it would be worth the effort of actually making the stage any wider. I've played around fifty matches on this stage in it's current layout, and it's a lot of fun as it is. It might not be the most competitive layout, but that's what battlefield is for. I don't want this stage to just be a skin for an already existing stage, I want it to be it's own creation.

That's not to say that I entirely discount the feedback that you all have been giving me, it's just that I don't agree with the widening of the stage, as the way the stage is laid out it pushes all of the fighting to the sides of the stage and it creates a more interesting dynamic for how the players can recover. I'm not saying that my layout is perfect or anything, but I feel like my stage is very fun and its layout is unique enough to stand out from all of the other battlefield skins out there.

I know that walls are generally frowned upon, but at the same time I really like playing on Onett and Corneria.... Soooo *shrug*

I appreciate the feedback, and I fully accept any feedback that you guys give me, but I of course have to look at both sides of it, and I have to weigh out why or why not to do things. I hope I didn't bore you all with my explination as to why I don't feel that change is needed.

I might still do an open doors version, but I'm not sure yet, as that'd take a bit of work that I'm not too certain about how I'd want to pull it off yet.

 

[B1ackJack]

I personally love what you've done with the layout of the stage and it looks hella fun to me. The only issue I can see with the middle opening is that it'll make recovering with Ness virtually impossible.

 

[Shin F.]

I stopped getting notifications again It's looking really great, though! The layout looks really fun, and it's incredible that you got such great animations for it. I can't wait till it's ready for release! I'll definitely be adding it to my build!

 

[Arteen]

It does look a bit cramped, but I'll just need to see for myself once you actually finish it. It definitely looks nice!

How does it play with larger characters like Bowser and Dedede?

 

[Llama Juice]

Here's an older video showing off three players on the stage, one of them bowser. I thought I had another video of me vs DeDeDe (as one of my roommates mains DDD) but I guess I don't. I constantly get wrecked in DDD vs Jiggs on this stage. His third jump can be funny if the player using it isn't paying attention. Jumping from the low platforms towards the center of the stage while it's split apart will land him straight down the center hole. It's pretty great. My resident DDD player said that he really likes the stage, and he pins me against the center walls all the time. I know it's cheap, he knows it's cheap. I see it as a game of then just avoiding trying to get pinned there. It's just another element you have to think about while playing.

Again, it's an older video, so the stage animations and such aren't the best but the gameplay is what you'd be interested in here anyway.

One of my roommates gave the description of "This stage has so much bull**** to it, and I think that's why it's great." Referring to the 90 degree walls and the platforms on the sides being grabbable, Ivysaur being able to up B or solarbeam his opponents while they're walking along the top platform when Ivy is on the bottom platforms... just a lot of things that kinda change up the gameplay quite a bit. It makes it interesting.

 

[Thethiala]

Not every stage needs to be a Battlefield clone with one main platform and 1-3 smaller platforms above, I for one love the more creative stages like this.

 

[Llama Juice]

This stage has been released! Go to the release thread to grab it :D

http://smashboards.com/threads/golden-sun-venus-lighthouse-stage-released.349184/

 

[210stuna]

Oh my....
Love!