How many characters can they possibly fit in this game?

[GuyverProxy]

I've heard around 50, and that any character from nintendo and even 3rd party characters could make it into the game. Personally, I don't beleive anything until I see it or when the game comes out. I was wondering if it was possible for this game to have even more than 30 characters in it? It seems like it would take alot of work to get that much into the game. I'm still learning how to model and animate in 3-D so my knowledge is limited. Info please!

 

[Drik Khaail]

Well, the first smash had 14 or so characters ( I can't remember...) melee had on 25 characters, 26 plus sheik. So, it could vary from 40 to fifty, going on an idea that the amount doubles each time... but, that would mean ssb 4, would have nearly 100 characters, and that is just freakin' ridiculous, so... plus maybe 15 characters per game.

 

[Bowserlick]

Remember characters are being taken out. I expect about 35 characters at the most.

I think all the clones except for Gannondorf will be taken out along with Sheik and G&W.

26 minus 6 is 20. So there is room for 15 new characters (which seems like alot).

5 spots are already taken by Metaknight, Pit, Snake, Wario, and Zamus.

So ten more spots. 2 will possibly be 3rd party.

So that leaves 8 unrevealed Nintendo characters according to my theory.

 

[Player 4 Ever]

I mean, they will run out of characters in one time. There is a point when it is a crazy amount of characters. Then you would have to master them all. (Hey, I'm still not good with Mr. Game and Watch!)

But, they do have the capabilites of doing 50 or more characters. It is just difficult for the designers themselves.

 

[GuyverProxy]

Sounds interesting. I never had an N64 so I only played the original at my friends house, but this was months after discovering Melee. I messed around with a few characters when i first started and I eventually stuck with Marth. I'm starting to use Fox and Kirby more just so I have some skill with other characters. Not too many of the fighters besides those really interest me, but for Brawl, oh boy. The second I saw Meta Knight, Snake, and Pit I thought I HAVE TO PLAY THEM! And I'm still losing sleep (not really) over the un-announced characters. Plus online play? When this game comes out I think i may dissapear from the world playing all of these new characters and playing online!

 

[RVD_fan]

You don't have to master them all. Just your faves. And I'd say 35 minimum, 50 max

 

[Devastlian]

I'd say their apparent focus on balance this time around bodes against just cramming as many characters as possible. I think thirty-five is our magic number and would be small enough to reasonably balance (and I'm saying this with no knowledge of this sort of thing) while adding enough to be new.

 

[RVD_fan]

Well the jump from SSB to melee was almost 2x. While I doubt it'll be that big in brawl, I'd say it woulnd't be that far off from that.

 

[Paranoid_Android]

Expect 35-45 characters, and no rushed clones.

 

[Meta_Owns_Ur_Dad]

well, the Wii is 2 times stronger then the GC. So i say around 50.

 

[RVD_fan]

^^^That's true, they might be able to have that many on the wii.

 

[Devastlian]

Well, the Wii isn't that much stronger but the discs hold around three times more data. Keep in mind that the individual characters could be made of more data than their SSBM counterparts and there are going to be more things besides just characters and stages that have to be put in so disc size isn't really a good means of guessing either. I don't think there's really anyway to know. :/.

 

[SSJ4Kazuki]

The wii is around 1.5 times stronger than the Xbox 1.

Now there's something to be proud of.

 

[OysterMeister]

The capabilities of the Wii vs. the Gamecube really don't enter into characters so much. Consider this: Melee is first Gen Gamecube software, which means that it was running on the maximum they could fit into a disc at the time. The amount of data that a disc can hold has dramatically increased over the past, what, seven years? Just look at how far the PC or the ipod has come in that time.
Also take into account that the physical size of the disc is greater with the Wii than with the Gamecube, and you've got far, far more than 3x the space to fit a game on.

I don't think it's really feasable that they could overload a wii disc with characters, it would just take way too many of them at way too high a quality to be reasonable.

What truly makes a difference in the number of characters is the size and ability of the development team, and the time they have to work with. With Brawl, these things are all in abundance. Read anything about the Brawl development team and you'll find that they're all motivated and highly skilled. Plus, there's a lot of them. As for time, it's theoreticaly unlimited, although I really hope they manage a 2007 release.

I'd say 50 is a maximum, and 30 is a dissapointing minimum. Personaly, if all the characters I want to get in get in, then Brawl will have to have at least 40 characters.

 

[Meta_Owns_Ur_Dad]

The wii is around 1.5 times stronger than the Xbox 1.

Now there's something to be proud of.

wrong. Suprisingly the GC was the most powerful system last gen (graphics wise) and the wii is 2 times more powerful. Xbox was like 3/4 the power of the GC. so u do the math and the wii is more then 2 times stronger. ( i think maybe 3 times stronger...)

 

[Devastlian]

Ya, with the advancements in compression (which I forgot to mention in my last post :/) and dual-layering they probably don't even have to consider the space restrictions.

Also, I agree that, with enough good people dedicated to the characters, I'm sure we'll get enough solid additions to satisfy us. So...to answer the question in the topic title: plenty.

 

[PrinnyFlute]

With the time they have, I'm sure 40+ won't be any problem. While modelling, unwrapping and texturing on the Wii is obviously going to take more man hours than on the GC, this still isn't 360 or PS3 we're talking about, where even just modelling and/or texturing can take weeks for a seasoned veteran. Of course, what's going to take the majority of time (as far as I can tell,) is the second half. Programming, tweaking, playtesting, then tweaking and playtesting repeatedly for balance? Ouch. As long as the team maintains the fantastic fighting game we've come to love, including balancing, I say the more the better.

And as long as I get characters in that I actually feel overjoyed about playing as, I don't give a flying fudgemonkey whether they're clones, outfits, or fully original characters.

 

[GuyverProxy]

Think about it, for every character they add, wouldn't they have to come up with a new set of moves for them and then test them out against the rest of the characters to set balance? The more characters they add, the more work it would seem to present.

I would like to test video games, anybody know how to get into something like that?

 

[EnFerris]

I don' know a lot about games on the programming side, but I think I'm pretty astute about actual design choices. And in my opinion, there's a point when there are just too many characters for a game to be good. The characters start to overlap too much, and they're all competing for the player's attention so much that none of them really hae their own space. 50 is beyond that limit.

That's why i think the next Smash game after Brawl will be smaller and on a handheld. That way they wouldn't have to add new characters. After that, they'd probably start switching characters out and concentrating on the rest of the game rather than adding tons of characters. OR, they may not continue Smash at all, although I find that unlikely.

All in all, I think 35 is the magic number.

 

[Eight Sage]

You don't have to master them all. Just your faves. And I'd say 35 minimum, 50 max

well, the Wii is 2 times stronger then the GC. So i say around 50.

Expect 35-45 characters, and no rushed clones.

(Put Quantity)

some wise man said...

False. No such statement has ever been made. No one has any idea how many characters there will be, and anyone that claims to is lying.

 

[.shu//masaharu]

wrong. Suprisingly the GC was the most powerful system last gen (graphics wise) and the wii is 2 times more powerful. Xbox was like 3/4 the power of the GC. so u do the math and the wii is more then 2 times stronger. ( i think maybe 3 times stronger...)

I knew Gamecube was better than Playstation 2, but I'm not sure about Xbox.

Also, the Gamecube's horribly bottlenecked architecture, small disk size, and barely any third party exclusives made it difficult to find and make graphically smooth and well-made games.

Nintendo has also made a statement that the Gamecube was ultimately a step towards the Wii. That means they probably thought more about gameplay and innovation than graphics (E.G. Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine).

 

[M]

Well Sakurai wanted 40 characters minimum, and because this time around there are no serious time restrictions, they will most likely create that 40+ character roster. If they have a little more time on their hands they might decide to throw in a bundle of clones or 1 or 2 original fighters.

 

[shadenexus18]

Nintendo's most likely to put around 50 characters into Brawl, but I think that the game can probably store double that amount.

 

[Jihnsius]

I would like to test video games, anybody know how to get into something like that?

Move to Los Angeles. They have a few game companies looking for testers (no credentials required), EA most noticeably. Just don't expect to test anything outstanding (Barbie, sports, bull like that.)

As for the comment "Wii is 2x more powerful than NGC yada yada," the power has absolutely no relevance to how many characters can be in the game.

As for having a balanced character selection: Good luck. It took Namco 7 releases of a game before it was anywhere near balanced (the Tekken series,) and it's still not even perfect. Unless they hire videogame analysts and/or professional gamers in the community to assist them, I doubt they'll even know of half of the new advanced techniques that'll be discovered after the game is released. How many of the following techniques do you think were intentional: wavedashing, waveshining, superwavedashing, bomb jumping, desyncing, reverse blazer, blaster hopping, double jump cancel, jacketing, etc, etc? One? Maybe two? Possibly none?

Unless they keep the exact same physics engine (which they're not,) don't count on an anywhere near balanced character list.

EDIT: Another thing about the max limit, stop saying "the game can probably store this much, blah, blah," because it's possible that the discs they're using could store up to hundreds of thousands of characters if they wanted it to. Nevermind that if they did have that many, they'd be nothing more than solitary two dimensional sprites and/or poor quality models.

 

[shadenexus18]

He's right. This is only Smash's third installment so their are still some massive improvements to be made. Perfect example, Mewtwo needs to be able to endure a whole lot more than he did on Melee......that is if he comes back.

 

[Jihnsius]

He's right. This is only Smash's third installment so their are still some massive improvements to be made. Perfect example, Mewtwo needs to be able to endure a whole lot more than he did on Melee......that is if he comes back.

There's a whole plethora of things that would need to be done to characters to bring them up to par (because toning characters down would seriously upset the community, such as taking out waveshining, etc). Yoshi needs a horizontal recovery move that actually works (his forward B egg roll only gains an inch of horizontal distance in the opening animation, then it's a regular diagonal fall), Bowser should get flame cancelling back and be a little less laggy, Snake should be removed altogether, and so on.

 

[Leoneri]

Move to Los Angeles. They have a few game companies looking for testers (no credentials required), EA most noticeably. Just don't expect to test anything outstanding (Barbie, sports, bull like that.)

As for the comment "Wii is 2x more powerful than NGC yada yada," the power has absolutely no relevance to how many characters can be in the game.

As for having a balanced character selection: Good luck. It took Namco 7 releases of a game before it was anywhere near balanced (the Tekken series,) and it's still not even perfect. Unless they hire videogame analysts and/or professional gamers in the community to assist them, I doubt they'll even know of half of the new advanced techniques that'll be discovered after the game is released. How many of the following techniques do you think were intentional: wavedashing, waveshining, superwavedashing, bomb jumping, desyncing, reverse blazer, blaster hopping, double jump cancel, etc, etc? One? Maybe two? Possibly none?

Unless they keep the exact same physics engine (which they're not,) don't count on an anywhere near balanced character list.

EDIT: Another thing about the max limit, stop saying "the game can probably store this much, blah, blah," because it's possible that the discs they're using could store up to hundreds of thousands of characters if they wanted it to. Nevermind that if they did have that many, they'd be nothing more than solitary two dimensional sprites and/or poor quality models.

So you seem to be saying that this should "How many characters should there be?"

 

[M]

Sakurai is still in decision of wether this is his last Smash game or not, if it is, he will cram as much into it as possible.

 

[shadenexus18]

There's a whole plethora of things that would need to be done to characters to bring them up to par (because toning characters down would seriously upset the community, such as taking out waveshining, etc). Yoshi needs a horizontal recovery move that actually works (his forward B egg roll only gains an inch of horizontal distance in the opening animation, then it's a regular diagonal fall), Bowser should get flame cancelling back and be a little less laggy, Snake should be removed altogether, and so on.

Whoa, flame canceling. Now that's a good idea. As for Yoshi, I don't have any love for this sorry excuse for a character. The developers can do as they please. Also, if Snake doesn't please people this time around then he's likely to be removed from the next game. Besides, he's just a special guest.

Anyway, Brawl needs another character made up from scratch, and they need to have a copied character moveset like Unknown & Tetsujin(Tekken Tag Tournament), or Dural from Virtua Fighter. This would rock!

 

[M]

they need to have a copied character moveset like Unknown & Tetsujin(Tekken Tag Tournament), or Dural from Virtua Fighter. This would rock!

Wouldn't Ditto fit that category?, or am I thinking of the wrong thing?

 

[Jihnsius]

So you seem to be saying that this should "How many characters should there be?"

Yeah. How many characters can possibly fit into the game would be the amount of data on the disc minus the smallest possible engine and interface size plus RAM size divided by the smallest possible amount of disc space a character can be.

Let's do a little math and I'll have the main purpose of this thread completely cleared up. A little bit of research into how big the discs for the Wii are left me empty handed. Let's just assume they're half the size of a DVD (although they're probably bigger).

2464153.6kilobytes total disc size
+ 524288kilobytes RAM
= 2988441kilobytes total memory (rounded down)

Let's go ahead and not research minimum possible size for engines and interface and let's just go with an engine of 1kilobyte and an interface of 1kilobyte. Let's also not research into the smallest sprite size and just go with 1kilobyte there as well.

2988441kb - 1kb - 1kb / 1kb

This gives us a total possible character amount of two million, nine hundred and eighty-eight thousand, four hundred and thirty nine possible characters.

Of course, this is only hypothetical, and it could be more.

 

[shadenexus18]

Wouldn't Ditto fit that category?, or am I thinking of the wrong thing?

You're thinking of a character similar to the infamous Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat (cause he morphs) while I'm thinking around the lines of Combot from Tekken 5. There's a difference between copying and morphing.

 

[Jihnsius]

You're thinking of a character similar to the infamous Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat (cause he morphs) while I'm thinking around the lines of Combot from Tekken 5. There's a difference between copying and morphing.

I agree. Copying would be neat, while morphing would suck anus. How about a trap and defense based character like Yoshimitsu? That'd rock. We're getting off-topic here, though.

 

[M]

You're thinking of a character similar to the infamous Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat (cause he morphs) while I'm thinking around the lines of Combot from Tekken 5. There's a difference between copying and morphing.

Oh, now I get what you're saying. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Infil]

Coming from a programmer, they are not limited by disc space. No developer will be for quite some time. They fit Oblivion (with insane amounts of voice acting) onto a single-layer DVD! Space is almost never a concern for a developer. They could fit 1000 characters onto a disc with super high-res models. But they can't make that many.

Don't think that Sakurai has all the time in the world to make this game. If he really wants a 2007 release, which I think is becoming more unlikely by the day, he will have to cut ideas out. Having actually developed games before, I was absolutely amazed at how much time stuff takes to do. The general principle is (and I'm not kidding): take 10% of your "wish list" for a game, and that's the maximum you can expect to get in the time frame. You can maybe increase that a bit for experienced developers, but not by much. It's a brutally hard process. And if any one, single fighter is broken, the entire system is ruined. Think about that.

I'd say 35 characters is even pushing it, and I'd say 40 characters is the absolute maximum for characters in this game. My guess is between 33 and 35 characters. People expecting more than 40 are simply not living in reality (or don't know the reality of game design).

 

[mexleo1225]

Most people would rather have new characters more than anything, but nintendo might not consider that. I guess around 20 more characters.

 

[Jihnsius]

Coming from a programmer, they are not limited by disc space. No developer will be for quite some time. They fit Oblivion (with insane amounts of voice acting) onto a single-layer DVD! Space is almost never a concern for a developer. They could fit 1000 characters onto a disc with super high-res models. But they can't make that many.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Everything (except for redbook audio) is affected by the "size" of the disc. The redbook is affected by the "length" of the disc. Sure, you can have compression, encryption, and what have you to reduce the size of said data, but it'll always eventually be stored into the data sector of the disc, and thus be restricted by the realm of how much data is allowed on the disc. As for voice acting (or any audio) being able to fit into what seems to be an "unreasonably" small amount of space: There's a few ways to go around this. If the file sizes are insanely big, go with redbook audio, completely eliminating file sizes. If you really must store them as data, the most space efficient way to do that would be multiple bit rate MP3. By varying the quality bitrate of the MP3 at specific times, you can get maximum efficiency with minimal space.

 

[OysterMeister]

Exactly, Jihnsius, space doesn't matter. Because there are always ways around limitations. For instance, in Melee many effects were simply data-saving sprites. They looked awesome AND allowed the game to run at a blazing framerate.
Just like useing redbook audio, the use of sprites allowed far more to happen on screen than should have been possible.
And that was roughly six, maybe seven years ago. There're probably way more shortcuts that a development team can take, and the overall amount of space to work with is also much greater. So space is not the limiting factor, time is.

As for balance, Melee is already one of the most balanced fighting games out there. I've plenty of confidence that Brawl can at least match Melee on that.

 

[Andromeda]

MY question is: Will the game really be better with more characters? Isn't it good with what we have?

 

[EnFerris]

MY question is: Will the game really be better with more characters? Isn't it good with what we have?

THANK YOU SO FREAKING MUCH! I made a poste to this effect over a page ago and no one seems to heve read it. It's not a matter of how many they could possibly fit, or how much time they have, but how many characters make a good game.

There's a certain point when there are so many characers in a game that people take a look at the character selection screen and go 'Eugh!' especially new players. Thirty five is probably the upper limit of what feeels like a select group of elite video-game fighters.