This is a collection of stage modifications I have created for Super Smash Bros. Melee. They are designed with competitive gameplay in mind. To use this repository and play on these stages, see Installation.
I have been playing Melee in tournaments since 2007, and have been organizing tournaments that entire time as well. I am interested in exploring the design space of competitive Melee and platform fighters, and also game design in general. Stages have interested me greatly for most of my time as a competitive player.
Nearly all the stages players compete on are extremely simple and have several key features in common; this is contrast to the great diversity of stages included in any Super Smash Bros. game, let alone all the unexplored possibilities. 20XX, PM, and other community mods have brought many new stages to Melee-like environments, but they are extremely conservative in their design, and players do not need to alter their strategy much (or at all) to play successfully on them. I am tired of playing on Battlefield clones.
After thinking about stage design quite a lot, and creating many different stages, I have some picture in my head about how different stage elements affect matches.
Generally, Melee's stages are too big. Players tend to have a lot more fun interacting on smaller stages. If you are curious about making stages, I would start out thinking from a Yoshi's Story kind of width.
Platforms that are lower are more interactive than platforms that are higher. We can see this clearly even in vanilla Melee. This is simply due to the fact that players can take more risks against a player on a platform when the platform is low to the ground. For instance, Dreamland's side platforms see less character interaction than FoD's low platforms. Of course, more interaction does not always mean the gameplay is healthier; it just means that characters do things to one another more frequently.
Platforms that are wider involve more reading and mixups than small platforms. Many of Melee's platforms are a similar size, so this isn't all that obvious if you're just used to playing vanilla Melee. Making platforms wider can actually dramatically affect how 'flowcharty' punish game feels in a lot of matchups.
Melee's engine is surprisingly resilient. Generally, if you don't add too many crazy f-ed up totally random elements to a stage, it will end up extremely competitive. And generally, if it does end up bad for competition, it's usually because of some specific interaction that could potentially be avoided with a very slightly different design.
Stages are the medium through which characters in the game interact. There are no inherently good or bad stages.
My stages attempt to reduce unfun situations, and to create more fun situations.
When most players describe randomness in stages, they are actually talking about chaoticness or chaos. Even if a stage element operates predictably, it may still interfere with other elements of the match at unknowable times. If players cannot predict the future state of the game well enough, they cannot strategize about it, and so their gameplay is randomly interfered with.
Players prefer some level of chaos; it is a main selling point of Melee. Increasing the level of chaos can increase the fun as well. This should be done carefully so that players can always parse what their next decision should be.
When players think about stage elements, they generally only consider static ones. However, nearly all stage elements can be made dynamic. By making different stage elements dynamic, we can create more varied stages and increase the chaos of those stages.
- Circle Camping
- Fox Shine Infinites
- Ledge Camping
- Jigglypuff Air Camping
- Top Platform Camping
- Trivial Top Blastzone Kill Setups
- Moving Platforms
- Slopes
- Stage Hitboxes / Hurtboxes
- Walls, Generally
- Unique Stage Mechanics
- The Performance of 'Inflexible Characters' (i.e. Low-Tiers)
Haha. I bet you thought I was going to write something here. Sorry, this is still WIP. This stage pack is only for exafold gigachad technomancers right now. Come back later.