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Bandai Namco shares more insight into Smash Bros. Ultimate's development (work load, challenges, stress-testing Switch, & more)
We've already covered some details from the Smash Bros. Ultimate panel at this year's CEDEC, but another round of information has come in. Check out a summary of Bandai Namco's insights into development below.
- with over 100 stages, Bandai Namco had the task of bringing back and creating new stages
- they had to balance the ‘game’ (functional) and ‘art’ (aesthetic) aspects
- Smash Ultimate’s Battlefield stage ran with the concept of ‘a grand place,’ and went through many designs
- the devs brought over Super Smash Bros. Wii U and tested how much they could do with it on Switch
- in the end, a majority of the Switch’s GPU is used on the stage, with fighters being second
- this is followed by the system, effects, items, and finally UI
- the team had to work on pushing down the GPU loads for each character
- for larger fighters like King K. Rool, even the insides of his cape are rendered
- the team reduced load by not rendering the parts that overlap with his body and aren’t seen
- Bandai Namco's basic strategy was to reuse as much of Smash Wii U's assets as possible
- problematic aspects were replaced entirely, and the team further optimized their development efficiency
- in order to reduce the game's file size, they removed duplicated data that was the same across fighters
- they also removed textures that were used in multiple parts of the stage
-Mario’s eyes and nose are consistent across the models
- the Super Mario Maker stage has reused textures