Project M: Turn Brawl into Melee!

[quidmonkey]

I know there's quite a few Smash Bros fans on this board. Last week Project M (http://projectm.smashmods.com/) released a demo. What is Project M?

YanWLuu4tMc

Project M is a Brawl mod that turns Brawl into Melee. It is the culmination of over a year's worth of work by a team of over a dozen. They managed to hack Melee, extract all the physics and do a copy/paste. Project M plays almost identically to Melee, including the return of the Melee's air dodge, wavedashing, L-Cancelling, among other things. The demo features 10 Melee vets (Marth, Mario, etc) and 2 Brawl characters (Sonic and Snake) that have been Meleefied, in addition to new stages (Saffron City!) and new music. The team has gone all out and tweaked character movesets and done their best to rebalance the game and make all characters viable as top tier.

Here's the best part: you don't need to mod your Wii in order to play. The wizards of Project M have found to way to allow you to load the files via Brawl's Stage Creator menu. All you need is a 2 GB SD Card (can't be larger than 2 GBs) and a way to download the Project M files to the SD Card. From there, all you do is simply load up Brawl and load the Stage Creator. Then, viola, Project M!

[TheFlyingOrc]

Sounds pretty neat, but wavedashing was the stupidest thing. It's clearly an exploit of the physics that wasn't intended.

[quidmonkey]

Sounds pretty neat, but wavedashing was the stupidest thing. It's clearly an exploit of the physics that wasn't intended.

Maybe, maybe not. This is still great for those of us who liked Melee over Brawl.

One of the other cool things I forgot to mention is that the CPUs have been properly Meleefied, and you can play online as long as you and the other player(s) has Project M.

[destoo]

Awesome. I was not aware of this project.
I had buddies who have Gamecubes just for Melee.


Btw.. "viola" means "raped". correct word is "Voila".

[TheFlyingOrc]

Maybe, maybe not. This is still great for those of us who liked Melee over Brawl.

Oh, agreed, it's pretty cool. Wavedashing, which I could actually do, was moronic. There's no way it was an intended game mechanic.

[Shrinn]

Here's the best part: you don't need to mod your Wii in order to play. The wizards of Project M have found to way to allow you to load the files via Brawl's Stage Creator menu. All you need is a 2 GB SD Card (can't be larger than 2 GBs) and a way to download the Project M files to the SD Card. From there, all you do is simply load up Brawl and load the Stage Creator. Then, viola, Project M!

THAT is really, really cool.

[quidmonkey]

Derp. Just realized I forgot to include the link (http://projectm.smashmods.com/).

[Kagger]

I've been playing Brawl Plus for a while now. It does a total rebalance, brings it to like Melee levels. It's not a direct conversion.

Makes Link usable again, and gave the whole game new life.

http://www.smashmods.com/forum/page/bpdownload.html

Same thing, no need for a real mod.

Also, Brawl- completely breaks the game. Everyone is overpowered.

[quidmonkey]

I've been playing Brawl Plus for a while now. It does a total rebalance, brings it to like Melee levels. It's not a direct conversion.

Makes Link usable again, and gave the whole game new life.

http://www.smashmods.com/forum/page/bpdownload.html

Same thing, no need for a real mod.

Also, Brawl- completely breaks the game. Everyone is overpowered.

I tried Brawl+. Didn't care for it. It's still Brawl, with a smaller timing window. Brawl- is silly. Great for messing around and some late nights, but not for anything serious. Project M, on the other hand, is something special.

[Urizen]

Sounds pretty neat, but wavedashing was the stupidest thing. It's clearly an exploit of the physics that wasn't intended.

Looks like someone let the backdoor to GameGAQs open.

You are being outrageously silly, sir. I'm sorely disappointed that this could be the attitude of anyone with professional aspirations in game design and development.

You make it sound as if EAD accidentally gave Mario an infinite jump in a platformer. That's clearly not the case here. Consider Ninja Gaiden, where you can take damage cheaply because of unseen projectiles, and follow-up spam from enemies can damage cheaply from you before yo are given an opportunity to recover.

If there was some exploit in the physics there, that allowed the player to overcome the cheapness, then it's not cheap anymore. It becomes a strategy. That's the nature of 1-on-1 competitive games - whether they be fighters, shooters or puzzlers.

Yes, it sucked that you could repeatedly spawn in the same room that had multiple Proximity Mines and Laptop Guns, but you could inflict the same damage on your opponent. The playing field was level. At that point, glitches, and quirks (like Luigi's slide, as opposed to DK's slip in Smash) become opportunities for strategy.

To dismiss any opportunity for advantage as silly, cheap, boring...represents a fundamental failure to understand the nature and purpose of competitive play.

[Ondo]

I'm sorely disappointed that this could be the attitude of anyone with professional aspirations in game design and development.
Yes, heaven forbid anyone who wants to design games look at a game mechanic and note whether or not it actually makes the game better. Clearly they should just be checking whether it can give them an advantage. :confused:

[Urizen]

Yes, heaven forbid anyone who wants to design games look at a game mechanic and note whether or not it actually makes the game better. Clearly they should just be checking whether it can give them an advantage. :confused:

Fair enough. I did a poor job expressing myself there, and sounded like an idiot.

What I was trying to get at is that TFO is being very superficial and close-minded, and I those aren't two qualities in the people behind the games I play. TFO isn't interested in the effect wave-dashing has on the game simply because it was likely unintentional. Because it's accidental, it's 'moronic'.

And that's why I mentioned the infinite jump in a platformer. In certain genre, these unintended nuances in the final product are happy accidents.

Here (http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html) is the argument made by someone much smarter than me.

[OrangePulp]

Oh, come on. That 'playing to win' thing is a bunch of crap. It opens with "Introducing... the Scrub", for chrissakes.

Now, I don't think that anything not intentionally put in by the game designers should be ignored/removed. That being said, not everything that's in the game as is should be fair game; I seem to recall Iceclimbers having an infinite that was banned in most/all tournaments, because infinites are lame. Really it just comes down to judgement, and for better or for worse, wavedashing is part of upper level Melee play, and that's the target audience (and the background of the devs themselves) of Project M.

What really interests me about Project M (ignoring the fact that I've been too lazy to actually hook up my wii and check it out) is that they're going to try to balance characters. I think? Now that I'm writing that, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere. But yeah, it would be nice to have more characters as equally viable options.

It's funny, the buffer overflow in Brawl's stage editor may end up being the best thing that happened to it.

[quidmonkey]

Oh, come on. That 'playing to win' thing is a bunch of crap. It opens with "Introducing... the Scrub", for chrissakes.

The Scrub, or n00b, is a key figure in the competitive mindset. Nothing is cheap when you're playing to win. Read the section on Yomi and tell me it's crap.

Now, I don't think that anything not intentionally put in by the game designers should be ignored/removed. That being said, not everything that's in the game as is should be fair game; I seem to recall Iceclimbers having an infinite that was banned in most/all tournaments, because infinites are lame. Really it just comes down to judgement, and for better or for worse, wavedashing is part of upper level Melee play, and that's the target audience (and the background of the devs themselves) of Project M.

The difference between the two is that the Ice Climber's infinite removes depth from the game; indeed, if allowed, then every serious contestant would only be Ice Climbers and spam the infinite exploit. Wavedashing, on the other hand, can be done by any character and adds a tremendous amount of depth to the game. Indeed, it's not a glitch, but a serendipitous byproduct of the physics engine.

What really interests me about Project M (ignoring the fact that I've been too lazy to actually hook up my wii and check it out) is that they're going to try to balance characters. I think? Now that I'm writing that, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere. But yeah, it would be nice to have more characters as equally viable options.

They've already done this with Balanced Brawl, Brawl+ and Brawl-. Many other mods/hacks exist for the game purporting to do that. Project M is special in that it's a return of the Melee environment.

It's funny, the buffer overflow in Brawl's stage editor may end up being the best thing that happened to it.

No doubt.

[OrangePulp]

They've already done this with Balanced Brawl, Brawl+ and Brawl-. Many other mods/hacks exist for the game purporting to do that. Project M is special in that it's a return of the Melee environment.

Well, right, it's a (ideally) balanced Melee. If it was just straight up melee, well... we can already play Melee. The idea of getting actual improvements on Melee is pretty sweet.

[Urizen]

Oh, come on. That 'playing to win' thing is a bunch of crap. It opens with "Introducing... the Scrub", for chrissakes.

So....you didn't read it then?

I'm only saying that when competitive play boils down to its basest form, the only thing that matters is the result. If the tip of Marth's sword has priority over every attack, then, as Marth, I should focus on understanding the range and speed of Marth's sword attack if I want to use Marth well -- if I want to win. If you are in it to see compelling play, or beautiful play, then you're not playing to win.

Not sure what you're saying besides pointing to the silly man for saying the word 'scrub'.

The difference between the two is that the Ice Climber's infinite removes depth from the game; indeed, if allowed, then every serious contestant would only be Ice Climbers and spam the infinite exploit. Wavedashing, on the other hand, can be done by any character and adds a tremendous amount of depth to the game. Indeed, it's not a glitch, but a serendipitous byproduct of the physics engine.

Yes, and I would go further than either of you. An infinite isn't merely 'lame' or 'shallow'; it's a game breaker. It doesn't remove depth, because sometimes discovering and executing an infinite chain requires an astute understanding of system's nuances to allow exploitation. What it does is remove competition. The same way Akuma's aerial fireball removed competition from SSF2T (I think it was).

These things undermine the very purpose of the game and everything the design aims to achieve. You can't call it competition where competition isn't possible.

[SilentScreams]

Now I remember why I hate the SSB competetive community.

[Deadend]

Indeed, it's not a glitch, but a serendipitous byproduct of the physics engine.

serendipitous byproduct of the physics engine

byproduct

So you are saying that it wasn't intended to be part of the game. Therefore falls under the idea of a glitch.
Thank you, come again.

[Urizen]

Now I remember why I hate the SSB competetive community.

If anything, it's competition itself you hate. Which is fine, really, because there are thousands of other reasons to play.

[Dorkandproudofit]

And people will still only use this on Final Destination with all items turned off.

Fuckers ruin the game when they do that.

[SilentScreams]

If anything, it's competition itself you hate. Which is fine, really, because there are thousands of other reasons to play.

No. I'm pretty sure it's the community.