Stages!

I've made some quick updates to the prototype.

Move drafting is finished, there are now six moves that are reasonably balanced. (Reasonably balanced means that every move except the blue Line Shot was called OP by at least one person in testing, and I think every move was called trash at least once as well.)

We have five stages now, which is partly an attempt to stop the disengage problems we were having.

This is Classic. We were having problems with players engaging to melee so they could hit every move, and then being unable to disengage. We've since realized that this is at least partly because this stage is a subtle pit, and the one platform provides a roof that effectively makes it so that if two people meet in the middle of the map, the only way for one of them to leave is exactly the way they came, which involves moving uphill.

This is Lava Platforms. It doesn't have that issue, but testers don't seem to like it. Maybe it's too dangerous, maybe it's too hard to navigate without blink. (Right now you can't jump through the platforms from beneath.)







This is Rage Cage. It's our least subtle, and most innovative, attempt to solve the disengage issue. Quite simply, there's a wall across the middle of the stage. You can't close to melee at all without Blink. This stage tested extremely well, so we may continue with this idea. I think at very least we'll ship with some 'Cage' stages if we move forward with this idea.

This is Final Destination. Named in reference to Super Smash Bros. Melee, it is the simplest possible stage, more or less, and it's amazing how much difference not having the platform makes. You can dodge attacks with jumps. You can run away, you can jump over the other player, you can reposition yourself in ways that aren't possible at all on Classic. Right now I'm pretty sure Classic is just terrible.


This is Giant Temple. It is more or less the platform layout (and loosely scale) of Hyrule Temple, again from Super Smash Bros. Melee. I wanted to put in a big stage with room to explore and fight in different environments, but I didn't want to spend too long building it (I am not a level designer, nor did I have one on hand) so I swiped an existing map layout. It plays surprisingly well, and is the only stage where all six attacks feel equally powerful to me. Blinking downward through platforms for an un-chaseable escape is a lot of fun. This stage is roughly four times as large as the others, in case scale is unclear.

This prototype is playable online now, go to fighting.loulessing.com to play. It requires two players and two Xbox 360 controllers plugged in. It still controls like crap, I'm going to rework movement before Tuesday.