A while back, we asked fans what questions they had about the development and content of the recently released Super Smash Flash 2 Update 1.4. An overwhelming amount of questions were asked, and in this QnA we will go over some of them. Please note that due to the huge number of questions we received, we sometimes merged certain questions into one. This time around I’ll be joined by an array of other developers, also!
Let’s jump right in!
On our characters and character changes,
Generally speaking, what irks y’all to give characters new moves after having their moveset solidified for a good while?
It’s usually a case-by-case basis, with Naruto FSmash for example being due to the personal feeling a more ‘flashy’ move could be fit in the smash attack, while Bandana Dee is both an improvement on the stabs to make them more impactful as well as the case of jab being a callback to an actual attack he does in the newer games. But more often than not it’s to try out an idea we think might look cool and could flesh out a character, but not as drastically and time-committing as an entire revamp.
Why do veteran characters stick so closely to their official versions from the Smash Bros. titles?
This question was probably asked the most this time around, so let’s get into it right away.
Generally speaking, what we do with veteran characters is very contextual. We generally feel like Smash Bros. does a great job representing its characters and very little changes are needed (outside of balancing characters to fit into Smash Flash’s ecosystem). With characters like Ganondorf, Wario and Sonic we got more adventurous because we wanted to push either different facets of their personalities or their powers and we felt that our changes weren’t intruding on their playstyles.
We also wanted to avoid situations where people might get real excited about being able to play as characters like Ganondorf or King DeDeDe, only to find out they were changed significantly.
It’s cool that some characters (Like Issac and Kirby) have new custom lines. How do you find VAs for these characters, and how does the recording process go?
We aim to recreate and represent our characters down to the bone, meaning that often we seek out the voice clips from their origin titles. In the case of Isaac this simply wasn’t possible and his audio from his Assist Trophy appearance wasn’t sufficient. A friend of the dev team, Darcy Wheelahan, happened to be a proficient voice actor and we felt she fit the part.
In the case of Kirby’s new copy ability lines- they were done by Meggie-Elise who we met via social media. We felt her voice and energy might be a good fit for Kirby, and we really wanted to try and give Kirby unique lines for his SSF2-unique abilities. It was an incredibly pleasant collaboration.
We’re open to even more collaboration with any and all voice actors, though it’s something we usually only look into when the need arises.
How come you guys make some moves (etc. Bowser’s pre-ultimate and neutral air) based off older iterations of older smash games?
Super Smash Flash 2 exists outside of the iterative nature of the official Smash Bros. titles, meaning it’s easier for us to pick bits and pieces from across the entire franchise to incorporate. We don’t have the intention of just making sure that our project alligns with the most recent Smash Bros. title, but more so that it represents the entire franchise as a whole!
What criteria does a character have to meet in order to be in SSF2?
One of the things we decided way back, is that the characters must have made at least 1 appearance on a Nintendo console in some form or way. Furthermore we try to look into characters that are beloved and unique (be it visually or mechanically). We try to pick characters we ourselves and the community would be really happy with.
What makes you decide when it’s time for characters to get new portrait arts ? (such as Yoshi, Bowser and the many many portraits of Sonic and Tails)
The in-game portrait arts are primarily worked on by 1 artist. If he feels like he can do better he usually takes a shot at it
Something im very curious about is how the playtesting works on the development of new moves or when reworking old ones? Do you guys just play around until something feels off or the general philosophy is determined before the balance?
Usually playtesting the move and how it feels in relation to the character’s moveset goes first before any sort of balance starts to be discussed, so it is kind of both. Usually a normal attack will fit the ‘play around’ method more while specials take a bit more planning due to their complexity though. Afterwards, we basically just monitor community reception and make adjustments where we think it’s necessary.
Do you have any criteria when you choose the alternate costumes for a character, like for example for Goku and Dedede in the last patch?
We try to strike a balance between bringing as many official variants of a fighter’s looks to the game as well as paying homage to their home series. We believe every character’s current line-up shows this off well.
On our new (and reworked) characters; Meta Knight, Goku, King DeDeDe and Lloyd,
I love learning more about the roster. How long has Dedede been planned for?
Dedede was planned and slowly started taking shape in a similar timeframe to when ganondorf was wrapping development. Both Ganondorf and DeDeDe were the most requested returning characters for the roster, and for good reason! We also knew we really wanted another heavyweight fighter on the roster.
What took Dedede so long to get in?
His Neutral Special, Inhale, was very complex to code. Kirby’s, Inhale (a very similar Special Move) is ‘hardcoded’ into the engine, which means that it’s very difficult to work with. For balancing purposes we knew we had to get its functions out of the engine, which was an overwhelmingly difficult process.
What sparked the complete overhaul of goku’s moveset? He’s like a completely different character with all of the changes that were made?
Goku’s moveset rework initially started mid 2020 with his resprite starting roughly a year later. There was a growing sentiment amongst the development team that Goku wasn’t hitting the mark as a Dragon Ball representative. So the development team came together to discuss what we wanted from an overhaul and landed on three points: 1) Goku needed to feel more like a Dragon Ball character (speed, power and proper martial arts), 2) His overall gameplay design needed to be looked over and defined (like what archetype he would be, etc), and 3) There needed to be a balance between Goku’s base state and Kaio-Ken state.
This led to his redesign to be more of an aerial combo-centric rushdown character. Things like making Dragon Dash his Side Special and changing Neutral Aerial and Side Tilt into a 3-hit moves was motivated by that concept. The activation of Down Special was changed from an on-hit transformation to a chargeable meter-based design to make it in line with more traditional Dragon Ball mechanics from the games. Additionally we looked into various Dragon Ball media such as the manga, anime, and video games to pull moves and ideas. Even small things like his Dodge Roll being from the Anime, namely from an episode of the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai Saga.
Why did you keep Kaio-Ken, especially over Super Saiyan?
We kept Kaio-ken as the primary power up for a few reasons. A playable Super Saiyan form would require every animation to have both a base and Super Saiyan version. Not only does this increase our workload, but it would increase the level of maintenance needed for future changes as now there’s essentially two characters to maintain and balance. Additionally we found Kaio-ken more mechanically interesting compared to Super Saiyan. Super Saiyan is generally portrayed in the source material as a buff without any weaknesses, so we found it weird if we artificially gave it a drawback (like a time limit or debuffs). In comparison, Kaio-ken has both risk and reward which we translated to an increase in speed and damage dealt, but also an increase in damage received.
But that is not to say we don’t love ourselves some Super Saiyan transformations. Not only does Goku transform during his cinematic Final Smash Meteor Combination, but he can now use his taunt to temporarily power up to Super Saiyan. We also took this opportunity to include all of his Super Saiyan transformations, from Super Saiyan 2 to Super Saiyan Blue
About the Lloyd resprite, what was the inspiration the artists based his new look on?
Lloyd’s looks are primarily based on the gamecube title Tales of Symphonia. However, characters in Tales of Symphonia are pretty stylised in terms of proportions (including the game’s additional artwork by Kosuke Fujishima) which is why we also took a look at Lloyd’s appeareance as a guest in Soulcaliber Legends. One of the things we tried to preserve as best as we could is that he wears his pants pretty high up, for example.
Is there a reason Lloyd’s swords were changed from his fire and ice ones to the more basic ones with his resprite?
Although the Vorpal Blade and Flamberge looked really good, Lloyd is often portrayed with dual katanas in his crossover appearances. We also felt the previous weapons were a bit spoileresque. In terms of overall design we really wanted to root Lloyd more in his development in the mid-game of Tales of Symphonia, where he’s growing as a person but still has that rough and brash edge to him.
Will Lloyd’s current voice clips be replaced for his voices from Brian Beacock’s such as Soulcalibur Legends, Dawn of the New World and Radiant Mythology?
No, we’ve made a very deliberate decision to stick with Scott Manville (who you might also know as Teen Titans’ Robin). It’s our preferred take on the character.
On stages,
Will we ever get more Stages that are aimed to be for compititive SSF2 Or no more?
Whatever stages end up becoming legal in the compititive ruleset is up to the community; if they decide they don’t want stage in their rulesets, that’s up to them, as such we can’t really design stages around the compitetive aspect. We do monitor reception and sometimes see if certain things like blastzones and the like can be tweaked to accommodate appearing in said rulesets though.
Why do so many stages have Star KOs temporarily disabled? I’m really curious about this; were they causing bugs or…?
Often the Star KOs overlapped with foreground artwork and it ended up looking really flat, definitely not how we intend it to look. We’ve disabled them as we work on a more sustainable layer solution.
What graphics engine or program did you use to create the stages (and characters)?
Paint (‘ol reliable), Aseprite and Photoshop
Was Polygon Zone really meant to be Mario Kart’s Baby Park?
Polygon Zone, or rather making a ridiculously small stage, was something we planned on doing as a fun idea. It was kind of based on those ‘8 Bowsers fight eachother on a small custom stage’ videos. We toyed with the idea of making it Baby Park from Mario Kart, as that particular racetrack’s gimmick is that it’s really small and simple. In the end we felt like it was better to make it its own thing, though.
Why was the Jungle Island stage from Super Monkey Ball included?
The artist who spearheaded the stage’s development had a lot of childhood love for the game and always felt it fit the Smash Bros. vibe.
On development and miscellaneous things,
How are you able to get so much content into a Flash game like this? I thought there was a limit to how much you can do?
Never underestimate what the power of teamwork, dedication and just the passion to see cool characters punching each other can achieve.
What’s your process when deciding who to add as an assist trophy to the game?
It’s really similar to how characters end up in the game; they have to be fun and have to have some unique concept or visual we could do with them. Assist Trophies are always kind of difficult, because people are always upset that said characters won’t get to appear as playable fighters in the game. It’s still a great opportunity to have all sorts of characters show up, though.
In the time between 1.1 and 1.2 there has seemed to be an art style shift in ssf2 (menus, stages etc) is there a reason for it?
This was really the time where I think most of us found our artistic footing. From that point we were able to just do so much more with newfound confidence. It’s also the moment in time where we started to solidify our desire for Smash Flash 2 to exist as our own take on Smash Bros. rather than an adaptation of Brawl.
What feature/content took the longest to be added in 1.4?
Dedede (‘s Inhale) took the longest.
What were the main causes for the update’s delays relative to internal expectations?
As time went on during development each one of the devs started to have their free time taken by up and coming adult responsibilities like full-time jobs and growing families, as well as some parting ways with the team early on to focus on their other work. This reduced avaliable workload combined with a few engine roadblocks when working on the new content for the patch threw a wrench on initial plans for release.
Getting some of the coding work done also took significantly longer than expected.
Has there been any new art style techniques developed for the game’s art between updates? I read up on a SSF2 Style guide that gave good notes and inspirations that goes into the pixel art. Likewise, does the new update still follow the same art style process as past updates?
This update came with a huge focus on Color Theory, primarily used for Stages. You might have noticed Hidden Leaf Village looks a lot more vibrant now compared to old versions, as we applied a special coloring technique to make highlights more yellow and shadows bluer, which helps bring out the realism as the colors don’t remain one same uniform hue throughout the sprite. Color picking was taken from real life photographs for instance.
Are you guys still using Adobe Flash to make the game? Are you planning on switching to a game engine or some other framework in the future?
At this point it’d be a herculean task that would only hinder our ability to work at the current pace we do. Flash is a fantastic program for streamlined program editing that anyone -could- do. Building the entire engine from scratch making characters from the ground up and having to basically start all over again would not be feasible.
Is there a hesitation among the staff about including content from more modern games?
There isn’t any hesitation to add stuff from more modern games, no. As you can see with Commentator Waddle Dee in Dedede’s Arena or Hisuian Electrode, we’re open to have more modern content in our game . It’s just that our focus has been on more established characters, games and locations up until now- which usually happens to be games that have been out for a while already.
The problems of the game with the Ruffle engine are caused by what, and is this something that you guys can change?
Ruffle isn’t a new engine we have moved to, but rather an emulator for Flash games that allows websites to run flash files after Adobe had discontinued the service in 2021. It’s also worth noting that none of the team members are involved with the creation of Ruffle.
Will the update model stay as one Big Update every few years and hotfixes or is it going to change?
1.4 had some content that was difficult to finish (Inhale) that held back the release by quite a bit- we absolutely aknowledge that a wait this long wasn’t good for the community and we will be keeping it in mind. This time around we simply had no other choice, however.
What is this food? Coke? Iced coffee? Something else?
A refreshing drink of cola.
On personal questions to the Team,
How do the Devs feel about SSF2 hitting that big 20 year milestone soon?
How often is the team still working on the project?
Kirb-Star: It’s hard balancing our free time and personal lives, but in my case I work pretty often each week on the game.
ElvisDitto: Can’t speak for anyone else but I try to contribute at the very least once a week.
Steven: It varies depending on how busy my day job is. I try to check in at least twice a week, preferably more.
GabeDut: Admittedly I have much less free time to work on the game now than 5 years ago, but I still try to open up time each weekend to do spritework here and there
What are the Dev team’s favorite characters and why in SSF2 1.4?
Likiji123: I will always consider naruto a comfort character to me he’s just always fun to play as.
Kirb-Star: Meta Knight might be mine, I am so proud of the little details I was able to add onto his animations and he’s been my favourite Kirby character for a good while.
ElvisDitto: I loved Dedede in smash 4 and I feel like we did a good job bringing that fun into our version. However when it comes to original characters Naruto is up there for me design flow and animation wise.
Turbo: Naruto is my go to character, I really love implementing the clones into fun combos.
Steven: Bandana Dee.
Zero Insanity: Captain Falcon is my favorite because I love how he plays, especially trying to land a Falcon Punch from time to time. HHHYES!
GabeDut: Ness was my main in the canon games and that extends to SSF2 as well. I love how his iteration retained the DJC mechanic and really vibe with the recent changes he got this patch
What was the best thing that you guy has achieved working on SSF2 so far?
Kirb-Star: I’m very proud of my work with Falco’s reshaded sprites. It was the first time I got to work on a sprite sheet of that scale and seeing him successfully get costumes this update was a great feat. I’m also very proud of the animation for Camera Dee in Dedede’s Arena.
GabeDut: when mentioning strictly this patch, it has been great to finally have villagers in the Smashville background after several patches of the stage being barren, as they were also the first time drawn sketches were used as bases in my spriting process rather than low-res pixelated ones. Beyond that though, it was probably working on Waluigi back in 1.2 or somehow completing the sprites for Jigglypuff’s Final Smash
L0Z741: I think the things I enjoyed most when working on Super Smash Flash 2 were building upon the Brawl-based sound design back for Beta 1.0, arranging the audio for newcomers like Simon and Rayman, and creating cinematics for Dedede’s and Lloyd’s trailers. As someone whose contributions sometimes exist in the background, it’s nice to get a chance to make something that people can enjoy. (Honorable mention to conceptualizing Lloyd’s costumes as well).
Out of the new Pokéball Pokémon, which are your favourites?
GabeDut: I particularly really like Regirock. Those falling rocks really come in handy and pokemon with the funny big effect attacks in general are very cool to see.
Steven: I really enjoy that some of the mythical pokémon from Smash Bros. got their own effects in Super Smash Flash 2. I’m a big fan of cats so working on Mew was a blast.
Kirb-Star: Cyndaquil was such a cute oddball from Melee that I’m glad got to return here at last, I think it was done very well.
Zero Insanity: Regirock is my go to, he turned out great in terms of programming. REREREREGIROOCK ÜN ÜN ÜN ÜN . I love its shiny, too.
Do the developers like to listen to the game’s music while they work?
Kirb-Star: Definitely! To get a good feeling for the visuals of some stages, I spend a lot of time listening to the game’s OST.
Steven: I tend to go with audiobooks and video game longplays, mostly. It helps me focus. I went through a quarter of a The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt longplay whilst working on Ganondorf’s Final Smash, for example
Of all the new stages + stage upgrades, which one does the team like the most?
Kirb-Star: I’m very proud of how Namek ended up looking like, getting to put the islets from the 0.7 version in the background is my greatest achievement. I also love the new All-Star Rest Area.
Zero Insanity: Oh boy, Sector Z got the glow up I’ve always wanted. The Great Fox never looked better. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.
Turbo: My favourite revamp has to go to Kingdom 3. It was a challenge coming up with a new gimmick but once I had an idea set in stone, I ran with it. I made multiple layouts to play off of.
How do you want Smash Flash 2 to be remembered?
Steven: Smash Bros. fanworks have changed so much over the last few years; there are now many ongoing projects worth keeping an eye on. It’s cool to be part of that mythos. But our goal is, and has always been, to be the best we can be. For people to start up our game, play a couple of matches and just.. have a lot of fun. It’s extrmely humbling that something you work on has such an effect on people. It’s the energy we hope to carry on, ever onward.
That’s it for today!
Thank you so much for sending in your questions and tuning in to give this QnA a read. We hope to see you guys around!
