Hacked Melee Tournament Version?

[chaddd]

I'm sure many of you have seen the costume and music hacks for Melee that have been available for a while.

When I first saw this I thought about how cool it would be to see finals done with a completely new look to the characters, but when available at a tournament I see that many people opt to play on an original copy of Melee.

The reason for this is pretty simple. With things like altered backgrounds and background animations, stage hacks, and alterations like the one made to Green Greens, no one wants to wager a serious match on something they feel could cost them the game.

I have personally been against any stage alterations as well as things like almost all black costumes.

My question is if anyone thinks we could agree on a version of the game with no stage alterations and approved costume changes to make a more balanced and tournament friendly hacked version. I would be really interested in a more agreed upon version of hacked Melee so that something this cool doesn't just disappear.

Thoughts?

 

[Cactuar]

How does this improve balance? You haven't mentioned anything other than aesthetic changes...

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I used to be a proponent of hacks, as i didn't think they changed too much. Then I stopped using them for a long time (it was my friend's hacks), and when I played on them in tournament even background music hacks were messing me up.

Basically, I think cosmetic hacks are unfair to the person who has played them more. Things like move sound effects, background music, and visual changes can all alter the way someone parses information during a game causing them to perform worse than normal.

 

[Teczer0]

I personally am not a fan of hacked melee in tournies actually. I'm not not particularly affected by the aesthetics but I know a lot of people have trouble with it.

I think it'll need far more effort than its worth to create a list of allowable costumes anyway, and not much benefit. No matter what people will complain eventually and no matter how good your list is.

 

[Cactuar]

I would sooner allow for MBR-approved hacked stages than make custom skins and music legal lol.

The former allows us to standardize things we see as being balanced. The latter is, as pointed out already, just distracting.

 

[Marc]

I still want an Akatsuki Peach skin on my Melee. =[ I really need to figure out how to get some hacks going.

But yeah, from Brawl experience it's really hard to have custom skins etc that aren't distracting. The ones you see on YouTube are often just done by the uploader rather than used during the actual tournament matches. I think the game is fine as it is, though I would seriously consider taking out things like PS transformations and DL64 wind.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

There is also a couple cool stage hacks if were discussing those. I dont think its practical to use them in tournaments though

 

[Strong Badam]

I think the best thing to do is just have hacked melee only playable if both players agree, and a vanilla copy of Melee request be undeniable.

 

[leffen]

I have I hacked version of melee that have removed shy guys, have no stage transformations on PS, no wind on Dreamland64 etc. I really fail to see how anyone would argue against playing on this provided there are no textures ;o

EDIT: Its worth mentioning that I also have a regular version of melee on the same disc

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I dont think its good to have a setup for this as its likely one player can get pressured into playing on that setup against his will. No transformations on PS, Shyguys and other minor random things do effect the game and some players use them as part of their strategies. Shy guys can block projectiles, transformations obviously change how the fight happens, and wind can be used to mess with people's grounded spacing.

I think a tournament ruleset with these things forced would be obviously better, but having a different game being played is no different than having 1 setup thats PAL at an NTSC tourney (or vice versa)

 

[chaddd]

How does this improve balance? You haven't mentioned anything other than aesthetic changes...

I wasn't looking to make the game more balanced, just simply eliminate the aesthetic changes that are truly distracting. I don't find costume alterations distracting at all, save the abundance of solid black outfits that people have felt the need to make for their characters.

I can see where the confusion came about and I altered my original post to make it clearer.

I dont think its good to have a setup for this as its likely one player can get pressured into playing on that setup against his will. No transformations on PS, Shyguys and other minor random things do effect the game and some players use them as part of their strategies. Shy guys can block projectiles, transformations obviously change how the fight happens, and wind can be used to mess with people's grounded spacing.

I think a tournament ruleset with these things forced would be obviously better, but having a different game being played is no different than having 1 setup thats PAL at an NTSC tourney (or vice versa)

Once again, I'm not looking to alter the game in any way other than character costumes. And that seems to be very far off from PAL vs NTSC. Ganondorf wearing a purple and gold costume in NTSC doesn't make him almost unplayable.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

^ yeah my last post was replying to leffen's last post

 

[chaddd]

^ yeah my last post was replying to leffen's last post

I still feel that it's pretty far off to compare it to switching between NTSC and PAL.

 

[Cactuar]

My question is if anyone thinks we could agree on a version of the game with no stage alterations and approved costume changes to make a more balanced and tournament friendly hacked version.

This is the statement that I was addressing lol. I don't know what you changed about the first post, but this implied something to make the game "more balanced". No biggie, was just looking for clarification.


We could hypothetically put out an MBR endorsed version with reviewed and approved costume changes, but I would still be forced to include a "Either player may elect to play on a standard copy of melee if they are unwilling to play on the hacked copy. This takes priority over a player wanting to play on a hacked copy." clause in tournament rules.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I still feel that it's pretty far off to compare it to switching between NTSC and PAL.

They are both different games no matter how similar. I see the difference between fighting on regular PS and neutral only PS as analogous to sheik's dthrow sending at a more horizontal angle. Nobody can really say which is more "fair" but the fact is that they are different, although similar, games.

 

[leffen]

Doing a MBR recommended version with balance changes is pointless since noone cares about balance or everyone play with PAL

 

[chaddd]

This is the statement that I was addressing lol. I don't know what you changed about the first post, but this implied something to make the game "more balanced". No biggie, was just looking for clarification.


We could hypothetically put out an MBR endorsed version with reviewed and approved costume changes, but I would still be forced to include a "Either player may elect to play on a standard copy of melee if they are unwilling to play on the hacked copy. This takes priority over a player wanting to play on a hacked copy." clause in tournament rules.

I like that idea. This is just something I've been thinking over for a while and decided this would be the best place to at least open it for discussion. It's obviously not in NEED of anything official, but I just wanted to know what others opinions were on hacks that could be considered unfair and incredibly distracting (All black Jigglypuff or writing words on the background for Final Destination to name a few).

Doing a MBR recommended version with balance changes is pointless since noone cares about balance or everyone play with PAL

I don't consider PAL balanced. No matter how much you alter a game it will never become something that will remain completely balanced in every aspect. In my experiences the most enjoyable games are those where you can, within reason, embrace the brokenness.

I also don't own any TV's that run at 50 frames per second.

 

[Strong Badam]

PAL runs at 60 FPS....

 

[Cactuar]

I thought PAL's default was 50.

 

[Strong Badam]

afaik no. some PAL TVs run at 50hz (refresh rate, it's different from FPS) which makes it seem weird to us but most self respecting smasher has a TV that runs at 60 FPS, 60hz.
"This is distinct from the measure of frame rate in that the refresh rate includes the repeated drawing of identical frames, while frame rate measures how often a video source can feed an entire frame of new data to a display."

 

[Cactuar]

Yeah, I know the difference between them, I just read someone elses post about it a long time ago and never really followed up on the background information. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Pink Reaper]

Arent most of the stage changes, like for instance Green Greens just "make the stage into battlefield"? Why not just play on Battlefield?

That's what's in my version of Hacked Melee anyways. Well that and Touhou music. And captain falcon yelling "YEAHZ" every time he hits with a Knee.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

the green greens one isnt like battle field. Its more like neutral pokemon stadium