They wouldn't necessarily have added more characters/stages had they not done SSE, it could just as easily have been a smaller game with a lower budget.
The reveal trailers are all way better than anything in SSE because they go to great lengths to be faithful and representative to the characters and their worlds. Most of that SSE custscenes (like that pseudo Death Star bit) feel so superficial.
I seriously want a Nintendo Hearts spin off. Smash Bros fulfills that childhood fantasy of finding out which one of your favorite characters is stronger.
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CokomonOur butts are worth fighting for!Registered Userregular
I didn't really like the generic world of the SSE. I missed the game/world hopping from Melee and wished that had been fleshed out more. Maybe I'll get my wish in the Wii U game.
Of course, Melee's Adventure mode had about only 3 levels until it turned into themed Classic mode.
I liked the idea of Subspace Emissary mainly because the idea of a Kingdom Hearts-esque game (not with the game's mechanics, just the idea) using Nintendo-related characters gives me a nerdgasm of the highest magnitude.
Pity that it'll probably never happen. A Nintendo Universe RPG. *sigh*
Subspace Emissary was, to me, a game that was not worth the development resources it cannibalized from Smash.
What resources were cannibalized? This statement makes zero sense to me. If they didn't do SSE, what would they have done instead?
There are lots of ways they could've spent that time to make the game more fun.
They could spend more time balancing the characters, give everyone unique target tests, add some non-Landmaster final smashes, bring back race to the finish and board the platforms modes, add more personality to the characters' animations, balance the characters better, improve the stage creator, make that trophy collection minigame less tedious, put more effort into the Masterpieces mode, give ROB his own stage, general polish, actually release the game on its original launch date?
Subspace Emissary was, to me, a game that was not worth the development resources it cannibalized from Smash.
What resources were cannibalized? This statement makes zero sense to me. If they didn't do SSE, what would they have done instead?
Make the game more fun?
They could spend more time balancing the characters, give everyone unique target tests, add some non-Landmaster final smashes, bring back race to the finish and board the platforms modes, add more personality to the characters' animations, balance the characters better, improve the stage creator, make that trophy collection minigame less tedious, put more effort into the Masterpieces mode, give ROB his own stage, general polish, actually release the game on its original launch date?
You're making the mistake of assuming development resources are fungible.
Subspace Emissary was, to me, a game that was not worth the development resources it cannibalized from Smash.
What resources were cannibalized? This statement makes zero sense to me. If they didn't do SSE, what would they have done instead?
There are lots of ways they could've spent that time to make the game more fun.
They could spend more time balancing the characters, give everyone unique target tests, add some non-Landmaster final smashes, bring back race to the finish and board the platforms modes, add more personality to the characters' animations, balance the characters better, improve the stage creator, make that trophy collection minigame less tedious, put more effort into the Masterpieces mode, give ROB his own stage, general polish, actually release the game on its original launch date?
How does developing SSE take away from time to balance? Or character animations? Maybe stages I guess, but most SSE stuff was recycled stages so that's not really likely. You seem to be doing a variation on the mythical man hour where you assume more people makes a task go faster or be done better. It doesn't really work like that. We might have gotten the game sooner, and it would have been cheaper to develop. Outside of that there really wouldn't be a big difference.
Subspace Emissary was, to me, a game that was not worth the development resources it cannibalized from Smash.
What resources were cannibalized? This statement makes zero sense to me. If they didn't do SSE, what would they have done instead?
Make the game more fun?
They could spend more time balancing the characters, give everyone unique target tests, add some non-Landmaster final smashes, bring back race to the finish and board the platforms modes, add more personality to the characters' animations, balance the characters better, improve the stage creator, make that trophy collection minigame less tedious, put more effort into the Masterpieces mode, give ROB his own stage, general polish, actually release the game on its original launch date?
You're making the mistake of assuming development resources are fungible.
I'm not saying the CGI cutscene animators should all be put on programming duty, but I doubt there's an insurmountable difference between working on SSE and working on other game modes like break the targets. Or between animating a SSE enemy or animation everything else in the game. Or making a SSE stage and making a multiplayer stage.
And by cutting out SSE entirely, Sakurai, as the director, would have more time to focus on other aspects of the game. SSE is so unlike everything else in the game that getting rid of it would result in a more focused project overall.
The most important development resource is money~ and it's the fungiblest
Maybe man hours are mythical but it seems with only 4 people on balance no one got around to playing mk
Except money wasn't likely a huge constraint. I doubt Nintendo decided to just suddenly skimp on what would be projected as one of their top sellers at the time. All the money in the world won't turn the CGI team into testers though. They won't take someone who works on levels and suddenly makes them geniuses of balance. People have specialized skill sets, and at the top tier you want those who have a lot of experience in the specialty that you need. Game development just doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.
On the other hand, imagine what Brawl could have been like if they had cut out all the resources used for designing and balancing multiplayer and put it all into polishing SSE instead.
I think that no matter how popular, games have budgets, and I also think you can turn an animator into a tester by giving the tester the money you were going to give the animator and a little extra to let you call him by the animator's name
On the other hand, imagine what Brawl could have been like if they had cut out all the resources used for designing and balancing multiplayer and put it all into polishing SSE instead.
This deffo would have made sse better! Though following the logic I am encountering it is not possible to have made sse any better by focussing on it more?
I think that no matter how popular, games have budgets, and I also think you can turn an animator into a tester by giving the tester the money you were going to give the animator and a little extra to let you call him by the animator's name
On the other hand, imagine what Brawl could have been like if they had cut out all the resources used for designing and balancing multiplayer and put it all into polishing SSE instead.
This deffo would have made sse better! Though following the logic I am encountering it is not possible to have made sse any better by focussing on it more?
When you can realistically expect a game to sell 8+ million you don't suddenly find you only have a budget for 4 testers. If that was a real thing (and I suspect it wasn't) then it was a decision made absent money constraints.
According to sakurai, he balanced melee alone, brawl with 4 people, and this time I believe it was twelve. When challenged to a 1v1 at the e3 roundtable for the chance to help balance the game sakurai says have you ever designed a game - the payroll budgeting has been long since nailed down there's no way we can add anyone.
You're right that having 4 guys in balance was not likely a decision made on budget concerns, but that was just an example of a way in which brawl came up short - in the end there were absolutely some decisions made with the budget in mind, the unfinished content on the disc wasn't a purely design decision.
According to sakurai, he balanced melee alone, brawl with 4 people, and this time I believe it was twelve. When challenged to a 1v1 at the e3 roundtable for the chance to help balance the game sakurai says have you ever designed a game - the payroll budgeting has been long since nailed down there's no way we can add anyone.
You're right that having 4 guys in balance was not likely a decision made on budget concerns, but that was just an example of a way in which brawl came up short - in the end there were absolutely some decisions made with the budget in mind, the unfinished content on the disc wasn't a purely design decision.
Yes but that gets into the mythical man hour. Twice the people on any given aspect might have done nothing to speed up the process or the quality. More time might have helped, but that's a delayed game which could happen either way.
According to sakurai, he balanced melee alone, brawl with 4 people, and this time I believe it was twelve. When challenged to a 1v1 at the e3 roundtable for the chance to help balance the game sakurai says have you ever designed a game - the payroll budgeting has been long since nailed down there's no way we can add anyone.
You're right that having 4 guys in balance was not likely a decision made on budget concerns, but that was just an example of a way in which brawl came up short - in the end there were absolutely some decisions made with the budget in mind, the unfinished content on the disc wasn't a purely design decision.
Yes but that gets into the mythical man hour. Twice the people on any given aspect might have done nothing to speed up the process or the quality. More time might have helped, but that's a delayed game which could happen either way.
Also probably SSE was already planned at the time the budget was decided, which factored into how much money they received for the project. If Sakurai had instead told the bigwigs "it's the same as before but with twice as many characters!" I don't think that's a pitch that would have gotten the same level of investment.
0
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
SSE was awesome. Not the most polished, but it gave us a world of mixed franchises built into a huge fanfiction story told through the eyes of the biggest Nintendo fanboy of them all: Sakurai.
It was a guy who loves Nintendo allowing us to watch him play with his favorite toys.
The most important development resource is money~ and it's the fungiblest
Maybe man hours are mythical but it seems with only 4 people on balance no one got around to playing mk
Except money wasn't likely a huge constraint. I doubt Nintendo decided to just suddenly skimp on what would be projected as one of their top sellers at the time. All the money in the world won't turn the CGI team into testers though. They won't take someone who works on levels and suddenly makes them geniuses of balance. People have specialized skill sets, and at the top tier you want those who have a lot of experience in the specialty that you need. Game development just doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.
They wouldn't turn the CGI team into testers. They'd hire qualified testers instead. They aren't going to take level designers and have them balance the characters. They'd take those level designers and have them work on another mode instead of SSE. Or hire the appropriate talent as needed.
As far as the "mythical man hour" goes, I take it that's essentially equivalent to the idea of "too many cooks in the kitchen"? That's valid as far as the core aspects of the game go. You only need so many programmers to build the core game engine. You can't just double the number of developers and expect double the number of characters without it being a colossal mess. If you have a huge endeavour like SSE, putting more people on that isn't necessarily going to help it.
But I don't really buy the argument that the resources working on SSE couldn't do just as well working on other parts of the game. Lots of the various modes in the game are small, self-contained, and don't really impact the core development. You could add extra manpower onto these ancillary modes and expect to see benefits. Considering how underwhelming certain modes were in Brawl (e.g. Break the Targets, Stage Builder) or how other game modes were missing entirely (e.g. score mode, Race to the Finish), I don't get the impression that much effort or attention was paid to them in the first place.
And simply getting rid of SSE means Sakurai can focus his attention entirely on the core multiplayer gameplay rather than having to design the characters to all work in both the traditional multiplayer and the awkward sidescrolling platformer beat-em-up mode that was a centerpiece of the project.
And simply getting rid of SSE means Sakurai can focus his attention entirely on the core multiplayer gameplay rather than having to design the characters to all work in both the traditional multiplayer and the awkward sidescrolling platformer beat-em-up mode that was a centerpiece of the project.
They're still doing the sidescrolling platformer beat-em-up mode but this time it's called Smash Run and they had the beginnings of it in Melee's adventure mode. Really it seems like Sakurai wants to give Smash a proper single player mode.
If Nintendo characters weren't so untalkative I'd suspect the Wii U version of having a Kid Icarus style story, it neatly sidesteps cutscenes as rewards by baking the majority of the story into gameplay sections
Pic of the day. Nightmare Wizard appears as an Assist Trophy! He will engulf the stage in darkness, and fighters will need to brawl blindly for a while. Look out for the effect before it goes dark, and play it to your advantage. Blinding and reversal effects even make the computer players mess up.
Like Little Mac, maybe Skullkid will make it next time. Possibly after a Majora's Mask remake is released?
Or he could even be DLC. Have they said anything about adding new playable characters in the future?
Given that the characters in the shot are Triple-D, Metaknight, and Kirby, I'm going to assume he's a Kirby character. Looks like a suped-up version of Count Blech to me.
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Though I understand the reasoning, that we won't get stuff like this with Mega Man and Pac-Man and Wii Fit Trainer is a shame.
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If you didn't enjoy it then call it because your inner child is dead
Of course, Melee's Adventure mode had about only 3 levels until it turned into themed Classic mode.
Twitter: Cokomon | dA: Cokomon | Tumblr: Cokomon-art | XBL / NNID / Steam: Cokomon
Smash Run seems to have fixed this complaint. I like seeing all the enemies they've added, even if half of them are from Kid Icarus Uprising.
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Pity that it'll probably never happen. A Nintendo Universe RPG. *sigh*
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
What resources were cannibalized? This statement makes zero sense to me. If they didn't do SSE, what would they have done instead?
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Added the favorite character of whoever's doing the complaining, obviously.
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Like a landmaster
They could spend more time balancing the characters, give everyone unique target tests, add some non-Landmaster final smashes, bring back race to the finish and board the platforms modes, add more personality to the characters' animations, balance the characters better, improve the stage creator, make that trophy collection minigame less tedious, put more effort into the Masterpieces mode, give ROB his own stage, general polish, actually release the game on its original launch date?
You're making the mistake of assuming development resources are fungible.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
How does developing SSE take away from time to balance? Or character animations? Maybe stages I guess, but most SSE stuff was recycled stages so that's not really likely. You seem to be doing a variation on the mythical man hour where you assume more people makes a task go faster or be done better. It doesn't really work like that. We might have gotten the game sooner, and it would have been cheaper to develop. Outside of that there really wouldn't be a big difference.
I'm not saying the CGI cutscene animators should all be put on programming duty, but I doubt there's an insurmountable difference between working on SSE and working on other game modes like break the targets. Or between animating a SSE enemy or animation everything else in the game. Or making a SSE stage and making a multiplayer stage.
And by cutting out SSE entirely, Sakurai, as the director, would have more time to focus on other aspects of the game. SSE is so unlike everything else in the game that getting rid of it would result in a more focused project overall.
Maybe man hours are mythical but it seems with only 4 people on balance no one got around to playing mk
Except money wasn't likely a huge constraint. I doubt Nintendo decided to just suddenly skimp on what would be projected as one of their top sellers at the time. All the money in the world won't turn the CGI team into testers though. They won't take someone who works on levels and suddenly makes them geniuses of balance. People have specialized skill sets, and at the top tier you want those who have a lot of experience in the specialty that you need. Game development just doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.
This deffo would have made sse better! Though following the logic I am encountering it is not possible to have made sse any better by focussing on it more?
When you can realistically expect a game to sell 8+ million you don't suddenly find you only have a budget for 4 testers. If that was a real thing (and I suspect it wasn't) then it was a decision made absent money constraints.
You're right that having 4 guys in balance was not likely a decision made on budget concerns, but that was just an example of a way in which brawl came up short - in the end there were absolutely some decisions made with the budget in mind, the unfinished content on the disc wasn't a purely design decision.
Yes but that gets into the mythical man hour. Twice the people on any given aspect might have done nothing to speed up the process or the quality. More time might have helped, but that's a delayed game which could happen either way.
Also probably SSE was already planned at the time the budget was decided, which factored into how much money they received for the project. If Sakurai had instead told the bigwigs "it's the same as before but with twice as many characters!" I don't think that's a pitch that would have gotten the same level of investment.
It was a guy who loves Nintendo allowing us to watch him play with his favorite toys.
That makes it amazing.
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They wouldn't turn the CGI team into testers. They'd hire qualified testers instead. They aren't going to take level designers and have them balance the characters. They'd take those level designers and have them work on another mode instead of SSE. Or hire the appropriate talent as needed.
As far as the "mythical man hour" goes, I take it that's essentially equivalent to the idea of "too many cooks in the kitchen"? That's valid as far as the core aspects of the game go. You only need so many programmers to build the core game engine. You can't just double the number of developers and expect double the number of characters without it being a colossal mess. If you have a huge endeavour like SSE, putting more people on that isn't necessarily going to help it.
But I don't really buy the argument that the resources working on SSE couldn't do just as well working on other parts of the game. Lots of the various modes in the game are small, self-contained, and don't really impact the core development. You could add extra manpower onto these ancillary modes and expect to see benefits. Considering how underwhelming certain modes were in Brawl (e.g. Break the Targets, Stage Builder) or how other game modes were missing entirely (e.g. score mode, Race to the Finish), I don't get the impression that much effort or attention was paid to them in the first place.
And simply getting rid of SSE means Sakurai can focus his attention entirely on the core multiplayer gameplay rather than having to design the characters to all work in both the traditional multiplayer and the awkward sidescrolling platformer beat-em-up mode that was a centerpiece of the project.
They're still doing the sidescrolling platformer beat-em-up mode but this time it's called Smash Run and they had the beginnings of it in Melee's adventure mode. Really it seems like Sakurai wants to give Smash a proper single player mode.
If Nintendo characters weren't so untalkative I'd suspect the Wii U version of having a Kid Icarus style story, it neatly sidesteps cutscenes as rewards by baking the majority of the story into gameplay sections
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I dunno about you but that screenshot looks pretty damn rad
I don't even think Nightmare would've made for an interesting character, so this is pretty much the best thing they could've done with him
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Or he could even be DLC. Have they said anything about adding new playable characters in the future?
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Or at least what Waluigi would look like if he got possessed by something….
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I think it's the other way around.
I think we know him better as just Nightmare, the final boss from Kirby Adventure.
Steam: pazython
Given that the characters in the shot are Triple-D, Metaknight, and Kirby, I'm going to assume he's a Kirby character. Looks like a suped-up version of Count Blech to me.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
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