Super Smash Bros. General v24: Joker Waiting Room, Please Take A Number - Games

God, Brawl looked awful in hindsight. The textures are fine, but the Wii had an absolutely trash shader engine, even for the time. Their attempts at smooth lighting completely failed the moment the ambient value dipped below a certain point, you'd see obvious polygons for days in darker maps.

I like how many characters revert to old animations when holding items. Lucas had Ness's animations (in 4 at least), Daisy has Peach's and Yoshi in 4 reverted to Brawl animations when holding an item.

I'd feel better about it. My biggest fear is that the DLC will be too one note. That it will all be JUST Anime, or something. If we get a good mix of cartoony, gritty, pretty, than I wouldn't mind whoever they chose.

Xander is like 19 and is only the announcer for 4 and Ultimate

If theoretically, in the planning stages of Ultimate, they decided Kumatora would be a part of the roster, then they could have taken a sensible route towards de-cloning a bunch of characters. It starts with the fact that Smash Lucas uses PK Freeze, Fire, Thunder, Magnet, Starstorm, and his Up & Down smash attacks and aerials are supposedly PK Love, given their hexagonal particle effects. Out of those six PSI techniques, he only uses one in Mother 3, PK Love. Every other PSI move in his moveset is unique to Kumatora. (also Duster is the one who uses Rope Snake, but, he's probably not making it in so :/) So for accuracy's sake, a good decision would be to have Kumatora inherit Lucas's moveset. People who enjoyed his gameplay could use Kumatora and retain that moveset and its options. Meanwhile, they could take Lucas and devise a new moveset more faithful to his original appearance. I don't know what that would be, but maybe it'd have to do with PK Flash, healing, buffs, and possibly rhythm? And so that approach would also make a ton of sense for a bunch of other characters. By Smash 4 they had made some progress decloning Ganondorf, but it was still odd that he used mostly magic-enhanced punches and kicks when his business was always about floating and sorcery or pure swordfighting. Giving his moveset to a new clone, Black Shadow, was a popular suggestion and IMO, a really good idea. Then Ganondorf could have been reworked to something more faithful and really cool, while his gameplay would remain in Black Shadow. The same could have been said of Roy, giving him a unique moveset while letting Lucina or Chrom inherit his gameplay for a little more variety among the franchise reps. Or Pichu, or Wolf, or Young Link, etc...

26*

I'd like to think that they got Xander when he was 13 as an adolescent who absolutely fucking moonwalked his way through puberty.

As a Brawl modder, I can tell you that while, despite the odds and limitations, the fan tools approach professional levels, that Brawl's engine cuts so many corners to achieve it's goals that it's hell to deal with. Even transparency doesn't work as expected because sometimes things simply won't draw in front of others. Gets even worse because sometimes, they draw correctly in an emulator, but not on real hardware! The effect engine is also really bizarrely inefficient and things as basic as making a texture scroll across more than a handful of objects (think like the speed pads in Mario Kart) can make the game drop under 60fps . . . . . a basic tenant of design!

I don't want to argue relevance too much, it's more just like, Kumatora is good for being a mother 3 character, Porky is an earthbound AND mother 3 character, whilst also being a nice new antagonist addition, so you can match off Ness against Porky, or see who the meanest villain is.

https://twitter.com/monachin112/status/1093045367027916800

I would be 100% fine with it if they announced "chill, we're gonna do a Season 2 and maybe more". Like, I was really bummed that Roshi didn't make it into DBFZ, but not horribly upset because hey there's Season 2. And knowing how popular the game is, maybe we'll get a Season 3 (or even a full-on new game). But Smash doesn't operate like other fighting games, because Nintendo still doesn't really understand how e-sports/FGC stuff works (especially modern e-sports). So there's a good chance that we'll get 5 DLC fighters and Piranha Plant, then that's literally it until Super Smash Bros. 7 half a decade from now. I really think that's why people in the Smash community take it so seriously, because it's not a Mortal Kombat/Injustice/Street Fighter scenario where you'll get like a dozen brand-new characters consistently for the game's entire lifespan, then a brand new entry 2 or 3 years later. With Smash, you get what you're given and then that's it until next time, which Sakurai is constantly telling us may never come. Like, if Noob Saibot isn't in MK11, I know he's got a chance of being in one of the inevitable multiple seasons of DLC. If a character like Banjo doesn't end up in Ultimate, then I guess we're gonna have to wait until 2025 at the earliest to see if there's another chance of a chance of seeing that character I want represented in the game.

If I had to guess, the tech is in such a shabby state because it was rushed the entire way through development. Trailer #1 was pure CG, and the SSE cutscenes were on their way, so the team had to try their best to mimic the same soft-shaded style that "quick-n-dirty" CG tends to have. Not to mention, they had to publish regular updates on the game to keep fans interested this time, which surely lead to heaps of short-term hacks just to get the game looking presentable when they needed it to, explaining all the bizarre engine limitations modders found themselves running into; they didn't have to make sure scrolling textures worked in a wide variety of situations, they just had to get them working under one or two hyper-specific circumstances, then call it done and work on another urgent part of the game while the PR team shares their work.

Well, to be fair, I would not blame Sakurai for sparse DLC specifically in the case of Ultimate, with it being as huge as it is. I'm legitimately astonished we're getting any DLC at all, since the base roster is ~70 characters.

One of my favorites is that they programmed a specific way to load entry animations on a costume basis, but only used it for Peach to load identical umbrella animations on each costume without even having differences despite having the exact same animations in the separate-but-always-loaded-with-her file that is used by her umbrella that go unused. Also, part of the reason Brawl modding was able to take off during the PMDT era wasn't just the sheer luck of having the Brawl devs make a spectacular enough fatal error for an SD card to hijack the system on, but they managed to screw up so hard that they left a list of all function names used by the source code in English (but not the code, itself) on one of the regional discs!

And now, for fun, via a 3-day poll in one of my Discord channels, How Tilted Does Losing Make You? - The Tier List https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/228820/a0885d36-0f26-4443-9134-e09af1701b70/tiltedtiers.png (I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted that three of my most-played are top tier rage-inducers apparently )

why the f u c k is Rosalina so low. No other character tilts me as hard as Rosalina does and I really can't be alone on that one

Donkey Kong NEEDS to be in one of the top two

The way the voting worked, it was a score system, and everyone got to vote three characters up and three characters down, then suggest a specific place for one of them that they didn't already upvote/downvote. Direct picks weighted the character's score based on how many times they were singled out, and the average tier they are suggested to be. Kinda complicated, but since this was opened up to a big group we wanted to make it a little easier to see obvious trends early and account for them. As a result though, characters few or no people voted on or picked directly stayed roughly mid-tier unless they were shifted up or down by others moving, and really controversial ones swung wildly up and down the list, which is apparently why Icies are so high.

Literally the only tools about Ike and Roy that are somewhat similar are their neutral B and down B, the rest is entirely different in function and overall usage. I really wouldn't put Ike into the "Marth bag", not even Corrin whose only two moves that resemble Marth's are up air and forward air.

I didn't get a chance to play him until recently thanks to KH3 but I gotta say, kinda dissapointed that plant is basically a ivysaur clone. They both have a similar air attack where they helicopter at you both fo them are plants and they both munch balls I hope joker isn't such a let down

They still feel samish to play. You play Marth, understand his gameplay and you know most of the FE reps game plan. Ike and Roy are close to how Wolf and Falco are to Fox. Or the Links to some extent. In a more optimistic approach, they allow a player to choose which gameplan they like more without have a huge difference if they don't like a specific FE fighter. Unlike say Mario and Luigi, which require complete different approaches. Or Peach, if we talking rep wise. If FE reps were more akin to how the Pokemon reps are handled, doubt people would dread another FE rep when it comes to playstyles. I think we can agree that another Robin-esque FE fighter would be much more welcomed than another Marth/Roy/Ike-esque. Probably worded it wrong initially.

the munch balls part made me contemplate if this is satire or not

Speaking of Melee, a lot of Melee characters look really off-model nowadays, too. Yoshi's the biggest standout for me personally, but we also still have Mario and Luigi using their N64-era designs while Brawl onward uses their modern designs from Luigi's Mansion and later. Bowser also looks pretty weird. And on the topic of Fox and Falco, I actually find their Melee models really ugly compared to their Star Fox Command-inspired designs in later games. Melee Fox in particular looks perma-constipated with his expression.

I really, really can't picture Ike as samey to Marth and co. Ike has an entirely different kit and gameplan and a different set of strengths and weaknesses, and has an entirely different schtick to how he fights in comparison, being a strong, burly swordsman while Marth have a more elegant style. He is not as similar to Marth as Roy is or how Falco is to Fox in any way aside from having a sword and a counter.

Mewtwo was easily the biggest offender: https://www.ssbwiki.com/images/2/27/Mewtwo_SSBM.jpg Those fingers. . . . .

Even as an Echo Fighter she wouldn't work, because Echoes are required to have the same overall proportions. Kumators is notably taller than Lucas is. It's the same reason why Isabelle didn't end up as an Echo, she has different proportions.

Complain all you want about their samey character designs, but the argument against FE reps on the gameplay side of things is extremely dated as of Ultimate. It's obviously subjective as you can find a Marth on QP that does nothing but spam F-Air, but anyone who has mained one (or more) of them at some point can tell you the FE reps absolutely aren't designed with the same game plan. Marth is designed to reward proper spacing, Roy is a rushdown fighter encouraging getting in the opponent's face, Corrin is a zoner that has all the tools to cover a majority of the field if the opponent can't keep up. Ike used to be the heavyweight, but he's in a weird place now where all you have to do is spam N-Air and F-Air to win Genesis. Most importantly though they all carry differing strengths and weaknesses from each other. Everyone is more than happy to accept Cloud, Meta Knight, Link(s), etc. as different enough from each other, but as soon as it's a FE rep people seem to become blinded by their frustration against FE overrepresentation (a very valid complaint!) that they make false claims like they feel the same to play. If you still think they all play samey, then it might just be your distaste for sword-users in general. I can give a personal example with Melee. To me the 2 space animals feel exactly the same and I don't like playing as either. That said I know Fox/Falco mains could give me a long and detailed essay as to why their game plans are much different, but to me they just aren't my play style so my personal game plan won't change whenever I try them, nor will my perception of them change when I'm getting my ass clapped by them.

Ah frig, I forgot about Mewtwo. Yeah, he aged poorly, too.

I feel this is disingenuous and not understanding of why people are fine with Link, Cloud and others and also why Ike and Robin are usually not lopped in with the rest of the FE group when it comes to being interpreted as similar. Marth, Roy, Lucina, Chrom and Corrin all share extremely similar animation styles. They're slash-heavy, they all have down B counters, their recoveries are all lazy rises (not lazy in terms of effort, but as in they lazily rise), and they're all heavily dependent on arc-based attack hitboxes. Link and Toon Link even manage to be far more distinct, and Link is also significantly more popular so all three of him tend to get a freer pass. Know how Corrin could have avoided that connotation? If more moves emphasized the chainsaw. Multi-hitting stab aerials that are held out, multi-hitting slashes. Their blade's behavior makes normal slashes seem very impractical for such an advantageous weapon state. No fucking down B counter. Wow, people suddenly would be more willing to treat them like Ike and Robin . . . . except they were still another FE rep that even the FE fanbase doesn't like outside of the people making lewds of fem. PM Roy is a way more interesting than SSB4 Roy despite having no reverse hilt jab or Ike-like d-air because he actually has more distinct animations elsewhere. His f-tilt is a long-ranged stab, he has a backwards option out of Double-Edge Dance, his up tilt is the reverse motion of Marth's when it's the same motion in SSB4/SSBU, his down smash is lighting the ground on fire in a circle when Roy's is just Marth's. Roy's recovery is much slower in PM and is a homage to Mega Man's Zero, which makes it more pronounced. His n-air is spinning in a circle in PM when it's basically Marth's in SSB4. Want to argue that SSB4 Roy has a more unique jab, f-tilt and f-air? Sure, go ahead, but it's not more distinct than PM Roy was made in terms of niche. I wish people would stop thinking there was some attack on the FE series going on and accept that maybe, just maybe, these characters actually are very similar besides in playstyle niche, and that MvC:I should tell you that functions aren't everything.

Speaking of slash-based animations, I see people claim that a lance or axe user would just be different slashes and swings which is ridiculous. The shape of a lance and axe allow for very different animations and any good character designer is going to take advantage of those shapes. Lances are long and narrow, so a lance user would have lots of long but narrow hitboxes. For instance, pokes and lunges would have long reach but could be ducked by smaller characters. Spacing differs in that you need to focus on distance rather than trajectory (a sword arc is not the same as the maximum length of a spear thrust). Other attacks could involve spinning the lance, providing short but very wide hitboxes that are close to the character and hit multiple times (think Waddle Dee's helicopter spin). And in addition to throwing it like a javelin, you could come up with things like pole-vaulting with the spear for mobility, or launching off it while it's lodged in a wall like a special wall-cling variant. Someone like Ephraim who regularly does risky nutty stuff would fit this perfectly, although it could be adapted to fit someone like Azura instead. For all his 'dragon' powers, Corrin actually uses pokes like this very uncommonly. Axe heads are big disjoints but unlike swords or spears, they're not one long continuous hitbox. Instead they're more like a big circle moving some distance away because the handle of an axe does nothing. Imagine if Marth's tipper was a big circleand he had no other hitboxes. A large hitbox that deals good damage and knockback but doesn't provide any 'get off of me' options would be an interesting take on the spacing-emphasis most FE characters have. Handaxes that boomerang back are a common weapon in FE, and it's not uncommon for characters to spin like helicopters or spinning tops with their axe. If it's a double-sided axe then maybe it could even deal damage after the main attack when it gets pulled back. Axe knights have especially cool animations where they use chains to haul back their axes after attacking, which is basically a big slow hitbox that would hurt you no matter which way it comes at you. Hector would be a great fit for this. And of course, they would add visual variety on top of playing differently.