Custom Stage Designing Tips

[Ozone]

Here are some things to consider and remember when designing your custom stages. It could make a difference.

How big should your stage be?
Do you want a small, cozy stage? A medium-sized stage? Possibly a large stage? This pretty much decides your experiences. A large stage (14 x 18 has the most room to spread out your platforms and other places and lets speedy characters get away from slower ones. A medium-sized stage (11 x 14) offers the same, except a little less room. A small stage (8 x 10) is for slower characters since it allows the speedy characters to only run small distances.

Do you want easy KO's or difficult KO's?
A big question to remember. Easy KO's mean that the stage is a high-kill zone or it could be suitable for beginners. Do you want players to use strategy to get KO's or do you want someone to easily get KO's? It's all up to you.

An example of an easy KO stage would be a platform like Final Destination that is dangerously close to the top of the screen. That way, even low percentage characters could get killed easily. Or, you just will fall to far below the platform and you will be unable to recover.

Do you want the stage to be made for a specific character or for any character?
Big factor as well. Do you want the stage to be made for wall jumpers or some other special skill? Do you need spikes everywhere for floaters like Jigglypuff and Kirby? This is important to remember and this will make the stage last longer if you pull this off successfully.

Do you want to encourage juggle combos or other special strategies?
Low ceilings encourage juggle combos, or the ability to repeatedly attack a character by making them bounce off of the ceiling and attack so that they may not get out without taking a beating first. Be sure to remember that combos are a big key to the way you Brawl. If you want to, make a stage where you can easily practice a preferred combo.

Where do you want characters to spawn?
Do you want characters to spawn at the top? Bottom? Middle? Sides? You may not know this, but you can control where characters spawn. Put spikes where you do NOT want the characters to spawn. Characters cannot spawn on spiked areas. Once characters die, they respawn at the top center screen.

Extra Parts in Stages. Watch out for them.
Trust me. A stage full of ladders and falling blocks with springs can get a good laugh out of you and your friends at first, but these types of stages get old fast. People tend to spam the features on their stages. You can get a kick out of them at first, but you will think they will get old. Be sure to use minimal amounts of extra stage parts, such as spikes.

Where do you want characters to be launched?
If you have a box with one opening, then I can say right now you are not going to get many KO's. If you have a box with multiple holes for KO's, then you can get a moderate amount of KO's. Remember, for several KO's, have plenty of areas to launch opponents. For few KO's or long-lasting battles, have limited launch zones.

I will update this regularly.

[Pretz]

Very nice guide

I had one on another forum I could have copied here but they re did the organization of it and the section my guide was in got removed