@ShadJV Oh, I forgot to mention the remixes that need to be composed that accompany the characters and their stages. Also, they're working on Mii costumes and testing for discovered bugs and adjusting for balance based on information they're getting from Elite Smash. Characters take a good amount of time to make and balance, especially with a roster this large, but even beyond that, it's not all they're doing. Sakurai himself said his team was capped at 100 for initial development. I imagine it was reduced further for DLC. He also said their team took up to a year for some of the STAGES to be developed.
I feel like you don't have much actual experience in game development if you really think you know better here or you have never worked at a large studio on a large project. You don't really understand development pipelines or how much time it takes to make quality products and experiences in a big game from the sounds of it. We work on a bulk of things at my studio to be released in waves like they do for Smash. Even if something is "done", we keep working on it and checking it until the rest of the content is done. The difference is we often have to push stuff out with known bugs because we have hard deadlines from our publisher. Sakurai seems to have some leniency on that front, and is allowed more time for meticulous work. Either that or they're just good at hiding their deadlines. Or they have "softer deadlines." I have no idea how much space they give him and his team..
Even if you were correct and these characters were done a lot sooner than they let on (which I don't believe they were), it is really stupid to release small chunks of content as soon as that particular piece is done.
It just makes sense to do it in large batches for reasons like replays (they break every patch because they recreate matches based on button inputs to reduce file size and more frequent, small adjustments would be a nightmare.) It's doubtful Nintendo is artificially making them hold back content. It's, at worst, for stability reasons. At best, because they actually needed the time.
@ShadJV Hey there, I've worked in AAA game development. It DOES take a while to make a new character. You have to model it, rig and animate it, design a moveset, make sure it's all working as it should be, balance it versus the rest of the fighters, do iterative adjustments to it as you develop the moveset, you have to make sure hitboxes are what they should be, you have to make sure that the character has no wonky interactions with any of the items, stages, modes, or other characters before release, making videos for it for promotional material...the list goes on.
A LOT of work goes into a single character. These were 100% not done when the game came out. With how release schedules work, they were working on the game up until the game the day launched and only just started working on the DLC fighters a couple weeks before it launched at BEST. Sakurai said they wouldn't start until the game was out, but I have a hard time believing they didn't do any preliminary work on it at all. Given how much work goes into each character, their release schedule has been snappy and impressive as far as I'm concerned.
Comments 2
Re: No, Tomorrow's Smash Ultimate Terry Bogard Livestream Won't Reveal Any New Fighters
@ShadJV Oh, I forgot to mention the remixes that need to be composed that accompany the characters and their stages. Also, they're working on Mii costumes and testing for discovered bugs and adjusting for balance based on information they're getting from Elite Smash. Characters take a good amount of time to make and balance, especially with a roster this large, but even beyond that, it's not all they're doing. Sakurai himself said his team was capped at 100 for initial development. I imagine it was reduced further for DLC. He also said their team took up to a year for some of the STAGES to be developed.
I feel like you don't have much actual experience in game development if you really think you know better here or you have never worked at a large studio on a large project. You don't really understand development pipelines or how much time it takes to make quality products and experiences in a big game from the sounds of it. We work on a bulk of things at my studio to be released in waves like they do for Smash. Even if something is "done", we keep working on it and checking it until the rest of the content is done. The difference is we often have to push stuff out with known bugs because we have hard deadlines from our publisher. Sakurai seems to have some leniency on that front, and is allowed more time for meticulous work. Either that or they're just good at hiding their deadlines. Or they have "softer deadlines." I have no idea how much space they give him and his team..
Even if you were correct and these characters were done a lot sooner than they let on (which I don't believe they were), it is really stupid to release small chunks of content as soon as that particular piece is done.
It just makes sense to do it in large batches for reasons like replays (they break every patch because they recreate matches based on button inputs to reduce file size and more frequent, small adjustments would be a nightmare.) It's doubtful Nintendo is artificially making them hold back content. It's, at worst, for stability reasons. At best, because they actually needed the time.
Re: No, Tomorrow's Smash Ultimate Terry Bogard Livestream Won't Reveal Any New Fighters
@ShadJV Hey there, I've worked in AAA game development. It DOES take a while to make a new character. You have to model it, rig and animate it, design a moveset, make sure it's all working as it should be, balance it versus the rest of the fighters, do iterative adjustments to it as you develop the moveset, you have to make sure hitboxes are what they should be, you have to make sure that the character has no wonky interactions with any of the items, stages, modes, or other characters before release, making videos for it for promotional material...the list goes on.
A LOT of work goes into a single character. These were 100% not done when the game came out. With how release schedules work, they were working on the game up until the game the day launched and only just started working on the DLC fighters a couple weeks before it launched at BEST. Sakurai said they wouldn't start until the game was out, but I have a hard time believing they didn't do any preliminary work on it at all. Given how much work goes into each character, their release schedule has been snappy and impressive as far as I'm concerned.