qubodup {l Wrote}:Another idea: make the maps customize the HUD. So the level designer can decide where the best place is. If there is no HUD placed, choose some default for it. This will only work if there is a maximum of players I think. Is 4 players max?
Just with regards to the count of characters - I like to think about USF as being unlimited in a lot of ways, and so ideally there wouldn't be a max count of characters that could play at a time. Of course, why would you have 1,000,000 CPUs fighter each other, and you? But, we shouldn't restrict something like this arbitrarily, ideally, I think.
I have roughly the same feelings about a lot of other parts about USF: characters, items, and stages come to mind. Each of these things should be created by players, and so there will eventually be thousands of combinations of them. The same variety can be extended to higher level aspects of the game as well, such as physics and gameplay rules. In that case, players could create different
ways that smash is played. For example, each game in the Nintendo series (64, Melee, Brawl) is just 1 way to play smash, and one criteria by which we can differentiate these ways is, for example, by how air dodging is done/performed. In Brawl, when you air dodge, you only have one option, which is to continue on in that same trajectory - the same trajectory as the one you would have been if you had not air dodged, and just continued moving normally; Whereas in Melee, when one performs an air dodge, you have 2 options, which are to either 1) influence the trajectory you go in by using the Dpad, or 2) not do that (influence the trajectory you go in), and so just stay in the same place for the duration of the dodge.
To help give more of an idea, there is also lots of common ways that smash is played, that extend across all 3 game series - those being things such as shields, rolling, dodging, and jumping. Every character in ever installment can do all of those things, but my point is that USF should have the option of not being like that. Someone might like different styles of play within smash, like not playing with shields (shieldless matches), or with enhanced rolling, or whatever. A lot of what I'm saying is related to the "special" options in Melee, such as Stamina Mode, and Giant Mode, and Invisible Mode, and all that. I guess when I'm talking about the different ways to play smash, a good analogy would be the gameplay modes - just different ways to play the same game.