Balanced Brawl Version 2 Release

Get *****, world.

hey, so if I wanna bring over my costumes, music, etc. over to BB2, how do I go about doing that?

Just take your SD card that has all that stuff (assuming none of it is gameplay related) and merge it with Balanced Brawl, overwriting any overlaps. If you had Zelda, Sheik, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Charizard, or Castle Siege textures, be sure to keep them separate and re-implement them afterward (they work fine and have no gameplay effect in Balanced Brawl, unlike in standard Brawl). Do note that texture hacks to Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1, Corneria, and Spear Pillar [Dialga] are not supported by Balanced Brawl (all the other stages are fine though).

Who's the artist behind "Breakout"?

Also, congratulations on another release guys. Taking a step back, this is an amazing project that I'm incredibly proud to be a supporter of.

Keep it up.

It's been so long since the standard release that I forgot that there were eventually going to be more versions. I'll be sure to read up on this and try it out.

Hmm I think I'll try this!

hype

G.D. said:

Get *****, world.

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Thank you so much for getting that in first post in this thread too.

Anyhow, my question from the last thread: Which stages does the stage-speed reduction code affect still? Right now I thought some of the stages had their speeds changed through their .pacs, but maybe I'm wrong. Again, just concerned for textures' sake.

and

Are the following files necessary for those of us playing with Homebrew channel:

pf/system/common5.pac
wii/app/title/everything inside of here. Random data.bin files.


I'm scared I'm going to miss the planking fix How is that implemented exactly? Through character .pacs? A code?

Can I have a changelist on mu_menumain.pac and common5.pac? I mean, just in case I want to merge my current modified ones with these ones.

This is a thing of beauty -- I can't wait to play it!

Excellent job, guys!

EDIT: Happy Birthday AA!

tastyyyyyy

should we have a wifi tournament for this?

kyokoro_pamuyo said:

Congratulations on the 2nd relase!!
I'll test it by monday (though, most likely alone by the moment...)

By now, I'll start translations and the update on the Mexican forum!



EDIT: and (late) Happy Birthday, Amazing Ampharos! ^^

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To be clear on a minor point, you're not late at all. My birthday just started.

Steeler said:

tastyyyyyy

should we have a wifi tournament for this?

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I say we should!

And Happy Birthday Amazing Ampharos!

Steeler said:

tastyyyyyy

should we have a wifi tournament for this?

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a wifi tourney to kick off the release?

hellllllsss yeaaahhhh

Now that Balanced Brawl has had another official release, I've added it to my Brawl Hacks Changer XML for those who use Riivolution. You can get the it here. Just a quick note, Riivolution users need a .gct without the File Patch code.

I have a couple technical questions that need to be answered though. Is the data in sc_selmap.pac the same as the sc_selmap_en in common5.pac? Because Riivolution loads the sc_selmap_en from common5.pac, while the File Patch Code loads sc_selmap.pac from pfmenu2. If they're different, you'll need to import sc_selmap.pac into sc_selmap_en in common5.pac through BrawlBox.

I noticed a file called extra.pac in fighter/lucas. Is this loaded through codes or something? Or is it just... there? Because if it is used, it may not load at all.

How are the different stages for stages like Spear Pillar decided? I know that Dantarion's Alternate Stage Loader doesn't work with Riivolution, so it's possible that you may not be able to choose which "part" loads (I haven't been able to test this out yet, I'm probably getting a larger SD card today though). Early tests show that the code still works.

I saw that for stages that have been physically changed (ie. death boundaries moved) textures aren't officially supported. Couldn't you just import custom textures into the official stage .pacs through BrawlBox?

Oh wow seriously. AWESOME!!!

(I'm digging the character changes. Ness', Link's, Mario's and Yoshi's impress me the most)

Great job guys. We as a community truly appreciate the balance changes put forth by both AmazingAmpharos and Thinkaman.

PS: Happy birthday!

Edit: The breakout video made me cry tears of joy.

The different files load textures at different times, and they're not all identical. I know different ones are used for different places (like normal Brawl versus My Music versus WiFi versus the Additional Rules menu...).

Extra.pac is never loaded; it's an old file that somehow got included. I'll tell Thinkaman to remove it from the downloadable set because it does nothing.

There's an older code that decides the loading of Spear Pillar (and Shadow Moses Island) forms. It should work with any loader.

You could import textures for those stages with Brawlbox, but you'll have to import them into the Balanced Brawl .pac files.

Thanks. Just got my new SD card and it does work but now that I changed my XML file to incorporate Balanced Brawl it doesn't. Same thing happened before though (so it's not related to BB), but once I figure this out I'll test that stage loading code.

Lucario's buff is called Evasion Clause...

I sense a competitive pokemon player among us.

Early tests show that the stage select codes for MK and Spear Pillar work on Riivolution so yay.

Edit: Hey isn't WiFi Waiting Room supposed to be selectable? The Random Stage Select screen in the rules show it over Hannenbow but the Stage Select Screen keeps the Hannenbow stage picture and choosing it doesn't go to the WWR so... eh? Whoops, it looks like PW's code to add 9 extra stages interferes with the CSS, changing BBrawls's custom layout. I suppose I'll have to remove support for it from the XML for BBrawl since it can't be used anyways.

The World will know of our endevour HAHAHAHAHH!

Anyway if Think or AA is reading Ill try to do some graphics for the site.

Banner. Update some of the stuff you already have to make the site more lively

Mushroomy Kingdom doesn't use a code for its selection behavior. You can do that in standard Brawl too; it's just a part of the game. The code is only needed for Spear Pillar (and also works on Shadow Moses Island, albeit only changing the background and having no gameplay effect).

Also, BBrawl uses PW's SSS code; Hanenbow itself is actually in one of the extra "slots" (and WiFi is in Hanenbow's original slot, thus giving its place in random to WiFi). I advise not changing anything on that front though. I haven't really investigated code interaction with anything in Balanced Brawl mixed with non-Balanced Brawl codes, and I know for a fact that our fighter.pac injections are not compatible with some Project M stuff (which doesn't bother me even a little).

Lokee, I'm on the chat right now.

question though about stage legality... wasn't there going to be more added to make more stages playable? and without chain grabs, doesn't that make more stages viable?
I guess you'd have to worry about people getting comboed off the side easily, but can't you expand the side blast zones?


Bridge of Eldin - I guess it's too big? and that barrel of splosion is bad, though I guess it could get nerfed.

Shadow Moses Island - Other than the walls, this is more balanced now I guess. Is there a code to keep the walls from coming back or keep them off altogether?

Skyworld - Is it possible to keep the floors from breaking? I mean, it does sort of remove the essence of that TERRIBLE stage, but you'd think if it weren't for the floors...

Green Hill Zone - This would be a cool stage if the side blast zones were farther out. The only edits I would see would be to nerf the save point or remove it entirely and keep the floors from falling too quickly.

WarioWare Inc. - I remember discussing this awhile back. The stage could be counter pick if it didn't give you invincibility or size. Health gift was fine. Also, the challenges should be nerferd in knock back. other than that... if it were possible to do...

Summit - Meh, give the edges grab points, keep that fish out of the way, and don't lower gravity on the slide, you'd have a good stage, cept for the circle campping...

The_Altrox said:

Bridge of Eldin - I guess it's too big? and that barrel of splosion is bad, though I guess it could get nerfed.

Shadow Moses Island - Other than the walls, this is more balanced now I guess. Is there a code to keep the walls from coming back or keep them off altogether?

Skyworld - Is it possible to keep the floors from breaking? I mean, it does sort of remove the essence of that TERRIBLE stage, but you'd think if it weren't for the floors...

Green Hill Zone - This would be a cool stage if the side blast zones were farther out. The only edits I would see would be to nerf the save point or remove it entirely and keep the floors from falling too quickly.

WarioWare Inc. - I remember discussing this awhile back. The stage could be counter pick if it didn't give you invincibility or size. Health gift was fine. Also, the challenges should be nerferd in knock back. other than that... if it were possible to do...

Summit - Meh, give the edges grab points, keep that fish out of the way, and don't lower gravity on the slide, you'd have a good stage, cept for the circle campping...

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Part of what I love most about this project is that it tries to keep most of the tweaks from messing with what I (and many others) love about Brawl. I like WarioWare and Summit as they are, especially with my more casual friends (as it keeps me from winning every time >.>)... and actually, I was and still am a little annoyed by Temple. I would be annoyed by Spear Pillar, if they didn't keep the original versions as playable stages. Now if they could keep that sort of option for all the other I-don't-want-to-be-competitively-viable stages, and "fixed" them accordingly, then everyone could be happy.

I remember seeing a hack somewhere which allows you to load different stage files (for textures) depending upon the button input you chose for a stage (like with BB2's Spear Pillar, and vB/BB2's Mushroomy Kingdom). But I'm genuinely uncertain and not knowledgable; could such a thing be used to make original/competitive stages possible?

G.D. said:

Part of what I love most about this project is that it tries to keep most of the tweaks from messing with what I (and many others) love about Brawl. I like WarioWare and Summit as they are, especially with my more casual friends (as it keeps me from winning every time >.>)... and actually, I was and still am a little annoyed by Temple. I would be annoyed by Spear Pillar, if they didn't keep the original versions as playable stages. Now if they could keep that sort of option for all the other I-don't-want-to-be-competitively-viable stages, and "fixed" them accordingly, then everyone could be happy.

I remember seeing a hack somewhere which allows you to load different stage files (for textures) depending upon the button input you chose for a stage (like with BB2's Spear Pillar, and vB/BB2's Mushroomy Kingdom). But I'm genuinely uncertain and not knowledgable; could such a thing be used to make original/competitive stages possible?

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still think the Sonic stage is viable though...

Can't wait to try this out.

Nother quick question: Which stages are affected by the slow down code and which stages are slowed down within their own .pac files?

Or are all stages slowed down with the code?

The_Altrox said:

question though about stage legality... wasn't there going to be more added to make more stages playable? and without chain grabs, doesn't that make more stages viable?
I guess you'd have to worry about people getting comboed off the side easily, but can't you expand the side blast zones?


Bridge of Eldin - I guess it's too big? and that barrel of splosion is bad, though I guess it could get nerfed.

Shadow Moses Island - Other than the walls, this is more balanced now I guess. Is there a code to keep the walls from coming back or keep them off altogether?

Skyworld - Is it possible to keep the floors from breaking? I mean, it does sort of remove the essence of that TERRIBLE stage, but you'd think if it weren't for the floors...

Green Hill Zone - This would be a cool stage if the side blast zones were farther out. The only edits I would see would be to nerf the save point or remove it entirely and keep the floors from falling too quickly.

WarioWare Inc. - I remember discussing this awhile back. The stage could be counter pick if it didn't give you invincibility or size. Health gift was fine. Also, the challenges should be nerferd in knock back. other than that... if it were possible to do...

Summit - Meh, give the edges grab points, keep that fish out of the way, and don't lower gravity on the slide, you'd have a good stage, cept for the circle campping...

Click to expand...

I am going to give a good and very detailed answer to this, but then I don't want to talk about it more. Let's talk about things actually in the release after this.

Expanding side blast-zones on walk offs isn't productive. It just makes the walk-off farther out. They aren't unfair as they are; just "learn to play". A lot of people use chain throws as kinda an excuse not to learn how to properly play on stages with walk offs; that is just not going to fly in this game. Nerfing stage hazards... We really tried, but no one else seems to care so we got zero help from anyone else and weren't able to find what we needed. That is something that is maybe in the next release.

We also refuse to strip the soul out of stages. It's better a stage be a quality design and banned than a soulless husk of a stage that is legal. That will be a recurring theme here.

Bridge of Eldin: The hazard isn't a problem at all. The size and flatness make it iffy. I won't say flat out that it has to be banned, but it does have problems. Olimar in particular is really, really good here; run-away Olimar is very hard for most of the cast on Bridge of Eldin. We decided not to push the buck on this (and a few other) borderline stages. We wanted a set of legal stages we could stand behind with confidence, and while I don't think this stage is 100% ban-worthy, I can't stand behind it with confidence like I can with Onett or Mario Circuit or other stages I catch trouble for.

Shadow Moses Island: The walls do need less health for this stage to be viable; characters like Sonic and Meta Knight just can't get kills here at all. We weren't able to implement that so this stage saw little to no playtesting since it's obvious how things pan out. Getting rid of them altogether is an non-option on the "strips the soul out of the stage" criteria.

Skyworld: This stage isn't as bad as you would think, but it does favor gimping too much and in general isn't something I can stand behind with confidence. It could be fine with just strategic health tweaks of the ground (more health on anything with a ledge, less health on the top two platforms that create the "cave of life" effect). We can't do that now so it remains as it is.

Green Hill Zone: This is the closest stage to legal we left in the "extra stages" group. It's mostly just a worse version of Mario Circuit; the checkpoint really is kinda ridiculous, and the general structure is campier. I don't think it's that bad, but I don't have confidence. I would want to make the checkpoint a little less dumb before giving this stage another whirl. The blast zones don't need to move; people don't need to live forever here.

WarioWare: We just can't implement anything that doesn't ruin the stage. The situation is cut and dry here.

Summit: There's nothing wrong with non-grabbable ledges. There's nothing wrong with it being all ice. There's nothing wrong with the low gravity. The fish isn't nearly as bad as it seems even. The loop, however, is a big deal we can't do much about. Making that huge chunk of ice passthrough like some projects have done is just too awkward. I really find this stage fun, but I don't see much we can do for it.

Realistically, if we get stage hazard editing, the four stages that spells good news for are Port Town Aero Dive, Green Hill Zone, Spear Pillar [Cresselia], and Flat Zone 2. If we could edit breakable terrain health piece by piece, we'd look a lot into Skyworld and Shadow Moses Island. The ability to edit events would open up WarioWare and Rumble Falls. Once things have progressed and I think we can have to worry less about defending the 27 we have now, I'd like to give Bridge of Eldin and Big Blue another shot. The remaining banned stages (Temple, New Pork City, Hanenbow, Mario Bros., 75m, Summit, Mushroomy Kingdom 1-2, Spear Pillar [Palkia]) are the "very difficult" ones that would require massive reworking to be legal stages without just ruining what makes them unique. Of course, editing in general of some of this stuff mentioned would also be used to somewhat improve our 27 legal stages!

Most "original" stages suck, including SSE stages. None of them move or transform. None of them have damaging hazards or interactive elements of any kind. Maybe someday they will be worth considering, but for now, they are just not up to the standards of the stages we have now, and I'm not making the game worse by including a bunch of generic flat + plat stages.

All slowed down stages are slowed down via the code. I worked very hard on slowing down MK 1-1 via a .pac edit, and I didn't succeed and when I asked for help from numerous sources no one knew what to do and/or no one cared. It was very frustrating, but the fact that people get super hyped about stuff that is not useful for major projects (I could give examples, but I'm not going to insult people's work just because it's not useful to me) and don't care much about this stuff (or at least don't voice it!) is what causes this situation.

So, the in short, please do enjoy the 27 stages we strongly stand behind, and feel free to experiment with the others! Let's not worry too much about what didn't get into this release; for now, let's talk about what did.

just a minor comment, i really do think this edit of temple is really quite solid. the way the boundaries are set, it maintains the sense that stocks on this stage last a long time and the main platform is not your traditional "flat + plat" setup. the little pillar that juts out slightly is interesting.

i would make the ceiling boundary a bit lower and wall boundaries a bit wider, but that's it. i believe it's a better stage than distant planet for this project.

yes, i will continue to mention it whenever the topic of stages in bbrawl arises.

Sorry I didnt come to chat AA. Iv been busy or more like scrambling to find out whats going on with my computer. I can still work on Photoshop however I cant use the Explorer or certain other functions.

Im nearly finished a custom character select screen for the Character page. Its bigger and has better resolution and of course its Custom. I didnt want to work on a banner until I got more opinions on it or at least a basic Guideline on how to approach it. Ill see if I can post my progress and at the same time give you the original logo files to cut and paste around.

Oh and guys, remember to change your signatures.

Grats for hitting V2 guys. Once I get myself an SD card, I'll have to try this.

On another note, the update got mentioned on Joystiq: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/19/unofficial-super-smash-bros-brawl-rebalancing-update-released/