Smash 4 Stage Builders Guide Part II - Section C

(1-C) The Importance of Large Flat Surfaces: Many players have a desire to play tournament style, which mostly just means they want a medium to a large sized area (about the size of Battle Field or Final Destination), preferably flat; with no ceiling above, no gimmicks and little-to-no platforms, with at least one grab-able edge, preferably two. Even if you want to include unique terrain, ceilings, platforms, barrels, lava etc. you can still have an area of your stage devoted to a much simpler design that more serious players might enjoy, and this will allow your stages to accommodate a larger variety of play styles. This is just a suggestion of course, but it might help to make your work enjoyable to more people. Tournament minded players will still probably rather play on a tournament friendly stage, but at least this way they will have a more accommodating experience.

(2-C) Avoid Building Too Close to the Blast Zones: I recommend that you stay at least 10-12 blocks (preferably more), away from the Sight Zone (green line), and about 15-20 from the top. Building too close to these zones will cause very early KO’s, which few players will enjoy. If your stage needs to be closer to the edges, then you might consider putting up a wall there, to limit early KO’s.

(3-C) Limit the Use of Ceilings: Again, tournament style players hate ceilings, because they require you to either tech (by pressing the shield button just before you hit a surface) or else be ricocheted and possibly hit again by your opponent. The lower the ceiling, and the higher your damage, the harder it is to tech. I personally like this play mechanic when used sparingly, and of course you can put as many ceilings as you like, but it will limit the appeal of your stage. If you have ceilings, try keeping their location strategically away from any simple flat, tournament style areas, and try not to make quarters that are tight. I recommend a ceiling being at least 14-16 blocks away from the ground surface below it. Also, you could take a tall character with a decent jump, like Shulk, and test the area, to see if he is hindered or limited.

Another thing that you can do is to keep the ceiling angled; this will at least prevent fighters from bouncing straight up and down repeatedly when launched. The angle will cause them to fly in a direction that will make it harder for their opponent to punish them during a ricochet.

(4-C) Angled Ceilings Above Lava: There’s nothing more obnoxious than landing on lava when you have high damage, and then being fired upward into a ceiling that causes you to ricochet back down to the lava. This is made more dramatic with higher damage percents, and or lower ceilings. A way to avoid this, if you really want to keep the solid mass that makes up your a ceiling, is to create an angled bottom, so that people hitting it will fly along that angle, and not be ricocheted to death. See below.

(5-C) Angled Ceilings for Structures with Ledges: Also illustrated in the example above is that having an angled bottom to a structure with grab-able edges is good for many characters up-B moves. Hitting the angle near the bottom with Mario’s up-B for example, will cause him to move along the ceiling and end up auto snapping to the ledge once in range. This is a fun movement option during battle, and can be rather practical, so look into utilizing this little feature. The steepness of the angle will affect the usefulness of this type of mechanic.

(6-C) Create with a Flow: Having your platforms placed in a way that will allow for a natural flow of movement will cause your stages to feel alive and fun, rather than frustrating or tedious. What I mean by “flow” is that in some places you can walk right off of one platform or structure onto another, and another from there. Not every single surface has to be this way, but using this principle as much as possible can make the players movement around your stage feel natural and fun. And being able to walk off isn’t the only thing to keep in mind. In some instances being able to walk off and do an air jump, or to do a grounded hop or jump to get to the next surface is just as effective. Below is an example of maximized flow, starting with point (1) and moving numerically around the stage.

Notice how in my stage Lunar Operation (above), the flow of movement is natural, and each main path circles back to the center, with multiple options allowing a constant flow of movement with several paths to move around the stage that all feel natural. Of course this chart doesn’t cover all options.

Just in case you missed it, there is a spring at 5a that will pop you up to 6a, simply by running on the ground into the spring. And at 5b the red circle is just the tip of a cannon that cannot be used; it’s just there to mark where you need to stand if you want to catch the elevator.

Lunar Operation - https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkA0ULZ8g

(7-C) Get Creative with the Items: There are some fun ways to use the items in the game for things other than their intended use. Looking again at Lunar Operation, I used the cannon simply as a decorative red circle to indicate where the elevator rises. The back end of the cannon can be used in a similar fashion for a smaller black disc shape to decorate with.

Below you can see a spring hidden inside the tower, in an area that cannot be accessed by the player, making the spring purely decorative. These things can be used to spruce up the design of your stages quite a bit.

(8-C) Atmosphere: The mood of your stage can absolutely make it or break it. Picking the wrong song, or creating a disjointed mess can make your stages feel wonky.

(a) Music: If your stage is high paced, or frantic in that there are lots of hazards, or some tricky navigation, then pick a song that gets the players pumped up to take it on. If your stage is simple and elegant and it uses one of the calmer looking layouts then you may not want to pick a heavy metal song, if it doesn’t feel right. However, sometimes juxtaposing opposite elements, like a calm looking stage with a dark heavy metal track can work in your favor for a bit of comic value. As long as you test the stage while paying special attention to how the song works with it, you should be able to compliment the stage well.

(b) Design: Sometimes your stage may just look like a Battlefield or Final Destination type, being very simple, with just a single platform to fight on. But, creating an actual location that feels like you are in another place, especially if the music is right, can really set your stage apart. Again, stages don’t always need to be an attempt to create, or re-create a location from a game or real life, but give it a shot from time to time. The results can be very positive. Being intentional about using the same or similar designs or angles can make a stage feel more cohesive. For example using a 45-degree angle right in the corners of where a wall meets a ceiling in every instance of this junction can make a stage feel like it is an actual piece of architecture.

(9-C) Test with Multiple Characters: With stage builder, you can create structures, tricks and gimmicks that benefit specific characters or moves. If you commit to testing each stage not only with Mario, but also with another character or two; and the next stage with Mario and 2 different characters, then you will eventually stumble upon ways to create things that will be either very fun, or beneficial to those characters. Below are some pictures from my stage Jungle Jitters version 2.0, where I simply added some slopes in strategic places for Link to throw his boomerang against. Note the practical uses for each slope; these aren’t just for show.

I firmly believe that the stage builder will not only keep this game fresh, but that it will also create interesting new ways of play, that the stages original to the game have never done, and I want other people to recognize and work toward that potential. It's kind of like seeing a bag of charcoal (stage builder), where each piece (character) is harboring a diamond inside of it, we simply need to take the time to break it open. See the next to last section of this guide, section (Y) for some notes about specific characters.

Jungle Jitters - https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkKY0PezQ

(10-C) Synchronize Your Movers: As I’m sure is obvious, movers is a quick and easy way of saying moving platforms. Having movers that are in sync with one another will add quite a bit to the feel of your stages.

In the image below, take note of the construction of the moving platform. There is (a) the actual platform itself, which we’ll call the Start, since this is where a platform begins a match; then we have (b) the Blue Path Line, which we’ll call the Path, and (c) the yellow rectangle representing the end destination, which we’ll just call the End. These terms are just to make the following information easier to understand. (a): Start, (b): Path and (c): End.

Note that the Path begins on the top center and stops on the top center of the start and end. This is how we count grid blocks for a mover. Each platform in the picture above goes 10 blocks out and 10 blocks back, meaning that they will be perfectly in sync. If you were to turn the grid off, and move any piece by any amount, they will no longer be synchronized.

Let’s say you need the start of the vertical moving platform to be dropped by one pixel in order to pick people up from a structure below it, and you wanted both platforms to remain in sync, well you have a couple of options. You could drop the end of that same vertical platform by one pixel to restore its Path distance to normal, or you could move the start or the end of the horizontal platform away from center by one pixel, making its Path distance match the other.

Different Speeds: One more thing to note is that the large platform moves a bit slower than the small. Previously I simply pointed this out, but thanks to DawnBlu-3 (https://miiverse.nintendo.net/users/DawnBlu-3) for pointing out that the speed difference is that the larges move ¾ the speed of the smalls. This means that if you place a small that moves 4 blocks, and a large that moves 3, they will change directions at the same time every time. The formula is fairly simple for larger path links. Take a small and place it to your liking. Count the number of blocks it moves, and divide by 4. Take that number and subtract it from the original path distance, and this is how far your large will need to travel in order to remain “in sync” in a manner of speaking. Let’s say your small’s path is 24, well divide that by 4 to get 6. Now subtract 6 from 24, which equals 18, so you would make your large platforms distance 18. If you need to place the large first, then count it’s distance and divide by 3, adding that number to the original number. Obviously you want that number to be a whole number, so you would want to make efforts to accomplish that.

If you want a large and small to be synchronized, you could make a large out of 3 smalls; then they would travel at the same rate of speed, if you can spare the weight.

Brighter Blue Lights: And finally, placing two platforms into the same space will cause the glowing blue lights to be a little brighter. In the picture below, taken on “Stage Fright”, I used a conglomeration of platforms to make one large moving surface. The center platform is actually two that occupy the same space. Notice how it is brighter than the surrounding ones?

Stage Fright –
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkIOAJ4Sg

If you want the tops and bottoms of multiple moving platforms to be butting right up against one another (as seen above), you’ll have to adjust them with the grid off. Here’s what I do, for each step you must place the platform with the grid on, and then, in 4 out of the 5 steps you’ll need to turn the grid off and move the start and end of the platform 1-2 pixels up or down.

1 The first one is laid down and needs no adjustment.
2 The second is laid down (grid on), and then with the grid off each end is shifted up by 2 pixels. Be sure that it doesn’t shift left or right.
3 The next is only shifted Down 1 pixel.
4 Up 1 pixel.
5 Down 2 pixels.

Then repeat from step 1.

Of course you could place them by eye, but you will need to do it this way at least once in order to get an idea for what the ends look like when stacked this way. Also, it is really easy to stack them just one pixel too far up or down, so that they look to be stacked properly, when they are not. If one start is improperly placed, and the ending of that same mover is properly placed, then the movement will be out of sync.

Don’t think that stacking them in this manner is the only way to make a conglomeration; this is just one way. Staggering them left and right, or cramming them tighter together than the stacking method above can yield some interesting visual results, so play around with your construction!

Odd Timing: Synchronization doesn’t always mean that a platform exactly mimics another. Below is a picture from my stage “Picasso Escalate”, where I used 3 different Path lengths that were all divisible by 5. The left platform moves 10 blocks, the center 20 and the right 15.

This results in a different platform set up each time they rise from the stone ground. The movement pattern for the above construction is as follows.

1- All three start a match level and fall together.
2- The left rises alone, followed by the right.
3- The left rises in sync with the center.
4- The left with right.
5- The left with center followed by right.
6- The left only.
7- All together again.

The result is a transforming stage, with a repeated pattern, that makes the game play feel fresh with each new alteration. This also gives people an opportunity to learn the pattern and use it to their advantage, if they choose to.

You might think that learning a pattern isn’t very useful since it only pertains to one stage, and you’d be correct, although it still has it’s fun factor, even if you don’t bother to learn to predict it. However, if you find a pattern that you really like, you could make it a re-occurring feature on several of your stages, allowing it to be more beneficial for someone to learn.

Picasso Escalate –
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkId4SJbA

And one last thing I noticed is that when performing a Final Smash on a moving platform, it can cause that platform to become slightly out of sync. I did Dr. Mario’s FS for the write up of my stage Union Specific on the “train” and it became just slightly out of sync with the rest of the movers. I’m not sure what causes it, or if all FS will have the same effect, but I thought it’s worth noting.

Union Specific -
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkKKpmRMg

(11-C) Spawning Points: Be aware of the players starting positions at the beginning of a match. If you have a structure that is closed off, but open in the center, characters might spawn inside, so test for this. From my experience, there are four starting points on each stage. Since 4 is the maximum number of players allowed on custom stages, start a four player match and make sure that no one starts in a place that they cannot get out of. If they do, then there are a few things you can do. You can move the structure to a place that will resolve the problem by freeing up the spawn point; you can paint lava on the surface that they are starting on; or you can place a moving platform above the surface, as characters will not spawn on lava or moving platforms.