Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Ganon's Castle

Stages are the thing I enjoy the most, specially when they’re based on epic places from epic games.
I’m sure this is one of those epic places from epic games. Near to the end of Ocarina of Time (N64), Link goes where Zelda’s Castle was when he was a child, and he finds a new black castle suspended in the air. It’s commonly known as Ganon’s Tower.


The stage was made before DAE importing was possible. It’s made the same way I made Peach’s Castle and others, just by vertexing already existing brawl models.
Now for the explanations. There are 7 versions of the stage in the download folder. Well, not really, there are 14 stage files if I’m not wrong. 7 of them are for FD and other stages, other 6 go for Eldin and Temple specially. The last one is just one of the others with a different set of models. That one is called ‘original’ because it’s the version using original brawl models. The other 13 versions use compacted versions of those models, made by exporting my brawl models, making them to be 1 single model, and importing them again. This way, the castle itself is made by one model, while in the original version there are like 30 models. Same for ground and other models. But you don’t care about this, cause the stage plays the same (maybe a litte lagless in extreme cases).

So, let’s talk about those 6 different versions:

STGGANONCASTLE_STANDARD – This version is played just at the end of the road that comes from the city, with the castle in the background. Just where Link stands when he sees the castle for the first time. There’s a wall on the left, you can die on the right (walkoff) and upwards.


STGGANONCASTLE_FRONT – In this one, the action is just in front of the rainbow bridge created by the sages. You can die on both sides and upwards. Walkoff again.


STGGANONCASTLE_FRONT2 – In this one, the action is on the rainbow bridge. It's the smaller one, and the boundaries are far, so you're most likely falling into the lava when you're dying.


STGGANONCASTLE_TOWN – This one is facing the opposite, so the town (in 2D) can be seen in the background. It’s a walkoff stage again, with both sides to die and such. It’s near the border and isn’t the best in terms of cameras.


STGGANONCASTLE_RAINBOW – This version is less flat, but still walkoff. You fight on the rainbow bridge, which is taller to the rest of the place.

 

Well, okay, it seems that I’m doing the same as always, I recreate a stage nicely, but it’s not very playable at all, even with different versions to play. But, here comes the different thing this time. The platformed versions:

STGGANONCASTLE_PLATFORM – I present you this custom platform to play on. This makes the stage non-walkoff anymore, with ledges on both sides, and a decent space to play. It’s similar to Final Destination, but not the same. Because of this, it’s not wifi safe. Still, the playstyle is fitting brawl, and yet not exactly the same as currently existing stages. The Castle is seen in the background, and the lava, and the rainbow bridge. Mostly everything can be seen from there, while you can play a decent match.


STGGANONCASTLE_PLATFORM2 – In addition to the custom platform, there’s another platform floating in the air on the previous one. This way, the stage is not that FD-like, so the advantages for characters are different. People may prefer this one because of this. The rest is exactly the same as the other platformed version.



You can check my youtube channel if you’re interested on looking how the stage looks while playing:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mewtwo2ooo
I got plans for this stage to be continued in the future. It’s technically finished, but it will be nice to have new versions, with lightings and a castle which gets collapsed, while ganon awakens in the ruins. But I wanted to leave this for the future, cause I need to work on other stages, and I didn’t want to keep this one in hold for more time. Maybe it isn’t my most beautiful stage, but I’m certainly proud of the result.

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