Competitive Custom Stage - Lylat Cruise α
Tremendo Dude - May 27, 2017Skip to the bottom for Download instructions.
The past few weeks have been filled with controversy over the current stagelist. At the forefront stands Lylat Cruise, a controversial legal stage long seen as a "necessary evil" addition to the stage list to avoid overcentralization of the metagame. Discussions flared through the Smash scene, and the cry to ban the stage due to its seemingly unpredictable and potentially fatal glitches begans to sound louder than ever against the cry of the stage's necessity in the metagame and the cry that the glitches are predictable and able to be consistently avoided.
Another cry, however, has risen up, asking players to consider adding agreed-upon Competitive Custom Stages to the accepted tournament stage list, and to consider replacing Lylat Cruise with an identical custom version of the stage.
I decided to answer that call.
Through painstaking hours of squinting and pixel-pressing on the Wii U Gamepad and using datamined measurements provided by Ruben, I was able to create an almost exact replica of Lylat Cruise's Level/un-tilted state in Smash 4's Stage Builder. Based on the old cries for a way to disable hazards on otherwise competitively viable stages (and the common referral of such potential stages as Alpha stages as opposed to Omega stages), I decided to name this stage "Lylat Cruise α".
The goal is to eliminate the stage's jank and glitches as much as possible while keeping as faithful to the original stage as possible. Stage length, slope angles, stage thickness, Top and Side Blastzones, and platforms are all identical to the original stage, while the engine collisions on the stage's surface have been removed and flattened out. The underside is identical to Lylat's Level state and the underslope is almost exact, allowing players to ride up and snap to the ledge with ease, or to safely travel under the stage. All without risk of Lylat's tilt turning the slope into a ceiling, pulling the ledge away, or causing the character to phase through the bottom of the stage.
Just barely thick enough for Shulk to stab through...Differences from Lylat Cruise
LCα isn't without its flaws.
In Version 5, the engine meshes were replicated to the best of my ability. However, the meshes aren't perfect, as the measurements for the interlocking vertices are impossible to perfectly replicate. At the very least, all the tech that was possible on the engines on the original Lylat Cruise (such as Megaman's Up Tilt from the engines landing on the side platforms and Dedede's Gordo shenanigans off the engine's angles) should be possible here with a bit of practice. Due to the lack of stage tilting, the strange issues associated with the meshes (such as tripping on the engine, ROB's Gyro falling through the stage, throws being interrupted, and Bayonetta teleporting when using Witch Twist) should not occur. Also, because the meshes were created using very gentle slopes that continue into the stage, clipping into the stage on the vertices should not occur in any circumstance, nor should the slopes themselves be treated like ledges or walls for the purpose of teleport tracking. If for some reason they are, I will remake the engine meshes or remove them.
In order to keep the side slope angles identical to the original stage's without having identical engine meshes, the ledges in LCα were placed just one Unit (a decimeter in-game) higher to compensate. (Slope angles verified using Shulk's Instant Shadow Eye.) The resulting difference is overall almost insignificant. Since the meshes peak an insignificantly tiny bit higher than Lylat's actual meshes, Sheik needles from as far on the ledge as possible now behave very similarly to how they do on Lylat when level, as only some needles will poke over the mesh.
The Bottom blastzone is slightly closer to the stage than the original stage's blast zone (5 Units closer, to be exact). Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about this due to the limitations of Smash 4's Stage Builder. Thankfully, the Top and Side blastzones are identical to the original stage's, so the effect on gameplay is minimal, and is probably much preferred to the issues that Lylat Cruise originally had.
Lastly, because there is no way to set spawn points on Custom Stages, due to the center platform on this stage it is impossible to automatically start players on opposite sides of the stage, as, in a 1v1 match, one player will spawn in the center and the other on the side (a terrible starting position when considering Stage Control). In older versions of the stage, I forced the 2nd and 3rd player characters to spawn on the floor, creating a pseudo-neutral mismatched start.
However, in version 5, the engine meshes being added made this impossible. Instead of opting to spawn P2 too close to the center platform (while P3 still spawned on the side platform for some reason even though the stage was symmetrical; Stage Builder is busted), I decided to just allow P2 and P3 to spawn on the side platforms. This is definitely an imbalanced start, unfortunately. For tournament matches, players may have to call for a forced Neutral Start, where P1 would jump to the unoccupied platform before players start fighting in ernest.
How to Download
I made a simple guide to downloading the stage, so anyone who has no experience downloading custom stages or using Miiverse can easily find this stage. I plan on leaving Lylat Cruise α as my banner/favorite post for a while, so these instructions should last for a good long time. Also, any future revisions of the stage will be downloadable using the same method.
If in the future something goes wrong and I no longer have this stage available to download on my Miiverse page, feel free to contact me through Twitter and I'll help you out!
Future Plans
This version of Lylat Cruise α is pretty close to perfect, now that the engine meshes have been added and all clipping glitches seem to have been resolved. The lack of a neutral or pseudo-neutral start is unfortunate, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. That said, if there is an issue found with the meshes, I will remove them and restore the pseudo-neutral spawn positions that the stage had before.
As for making other stages, I don't think there's a serious shot for filling voids that don't need to be filled. That said, some other stages remade, such as Pokémon Stadium 2 or even WarioWare, would definitely be interesting additions to the competitive stage list. The limitations of the Stage Builder may prevent them from being exact, though. I feel that the stars aligned in even allowing Lylat's Blastzones to be replicated as perfectly as they were.
I'd love to see Custom Stages be seriously considered as a compromise for the Lylat controversy, though. Feel free to spread this stage among your local scenes and to use this stage in your local tournaments. Most importantly, share your thoughts with everyone else! If you have any comments or concerns with the stage, or if you're interested in seeing and testing a version with the meshes intact in the future, please let me know! Let's push the meta together.
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