Devblog 2 – 10/3/2017

Ever since Alpha 4’s release, we’ve underwent a plethora of major changes and breakthroughs. This time, Halvorsen is speaking on behalf of the team. It has been over 6 months since the release of the last Alpha. We are proud to announce that we have released a new version, entitled Release 0.1.

From now on, we plan to create a new release at least once a month, and by the time Release 1.0 rolls around, we will have every character finished! During the time we have been a bit quiet, and we have many things to announce. We also have an official 3DS theme based off of the mod’s name as well. Swiftloke has worked steadfast on steady builds of Smash Selector, now known as Mod-Moon. USM-eM itself has gone through almost a complete rework internally thanks to Karma, and now has a more complete user interface on 3DS, created by yours truly. There’s even three new stages for 3DS by M-1!

The latest release was majorly delayed due to the Hurricane Irma, but everyone on the team is now safe, thankfully. For specifics on what has changed with gameplay, we are compiling a changelog which will be ready soon.

In short,

-Replays will automagically rename themselves while running USM-eM for less confusion between Vanilla Smash.
-UI elements have received a major overhaul, including a revised logo.
-New competitive oriented tips have been included with the game.
-Stages such as Temple, 75m, 75m BF, and Pirate Ship have been added to 3DS.
-Global parameters, slight unification of the size classes, the buffer system removed, and landing lag has been restored. (Major gameplay features)
-Bugfixes, new characters such as Sonic, Ness, Mega Man, Samus, Dr. Mario, and Bowser, have been added.
-New costumes for various characters.

We hope to have pleased you with many months of hard work and determination and hope you will continue to support us in the future. Our smaller development team has undoubtedly gotten a bit tiresome and slower, what with managing a website, repository, three servers, developing the pack itself, and personal life. Two unannounced members have joined the dev team to ease these burdens. Consider joining our Discord server for our individuals’ opinions and chill with the team.

(…oh, did you notice? Smash 3DS is exactly four years old today!)

-Halvorsen

Devblog 1 – 4/03/2017

Well, would you look at that… we actually released something. Amazing. Let me introduce myself and the mod: I am Karma, Short for Karmic_Backlash, I am one of the main moveset modders for USM-eM, the Melee inspired mod for Smash 4. We strive to make a mod that pleases Melee fans and Smash 4 fans, veering more toward Melee, possible in a PM-wordly direction, but pleases both fans nonetheless.

This blog in the future will be used to give public announcements, trailers, teasers, development details and development woes, and in this edition of the USM-eM Devblog, I want to talk to you the process of creating Alpha 4.

It was not a simple process. It involves the joining of many members (Including me!), the loss of one, the retooling of our privite file sharing system, the disasterous near merger of USM and Pheonix (Another mod for Smash 4), and the purge that lead to the departure of that one team member.

If you have been following our Discord server for a long time, you may remember a time when the only mainly active members of dev team comprised of Vye, Gryz, Swiftloke, Halvorsen, and FM360. They are the ones that assembled the first 3 alphas of USM-eM, they worked in harmony and created the mod for which you now read the blog. The first member to join the team after the was me, Karma, the reason for me joing the mod was due to Vye seeing a rather in depth write up on how to improve Zelda, this was very soon after the release of Alpha 3, and at this point the only people who were posting anything on the server were either shitposting or not being helpful. But Vye saw something in me. He asked me if I wanted to join as a developer, and I said “Yes.”.

The next major event to transpire was the rather unfortunate event of the merger between USM-eM and Phoenix, something that could take an entire blog to itself. I’ll just say that it was something that was attempted without consent and was ended before any damage was done.

After this, was the single largest problem we encountered with the mod, and the was the departure of one of the core members of the mod (FM360). For reasons that I will not disclose, for his sake and mine, it was nearly universally decided that he needed to be ejected from the devlopment team. It was a hard time and it caused very strong emotions for everybody on the team, nearly leading to a collapse of the mod. But as you can see, it is still going strong.

Since the, two more members have joined the team, those being seijinshu, coming on as a programmer and researcher, and Cydget, of Smash-Selector fame. He also programs and researches, with Swiftloke, to produce Smash-Selector.

This concludes USM-eM’s first devblog! Thank you for your support!

– Karma