Smack Studio Online is here!
After months of testing and working to perfect our rollback netcode, we finally feel that we’re in a place to open up online play to the public with a beta release!
Both online and offline, we have a 2-frame delay in-game (roughly the same as Super Smash Bros. Melee and Slippi online). That’s 3x faster than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's 6-frame delay offline, and 5x faster than Ultimate's online (11-fame delay minimum).
You can play with up to 4 people in a session, whether it’s a free for all or a team battle, and each player can customize their input delay. So if 3 players are on the WC server, and one is in the EU server, they can all have the same experience with customized input delay.
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As an added surprise, our online beta is also launching with 3 new stages:
🍄 Mushroom Heights
🌇 Neon Metro
🌄 Highland Ruins
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There are nearly 800 playable fighters in our Steam Workshop, so don’t forget to browse the workshop for characters before heading online.
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Online Play FAQ:
Do workshop characters work online?
Yes! When a player in your session selects a workshop character that you haven't downloaded, it temporarily downloads the character the second your opponent selects it.
Is this a full release for online?
Our online play is still in beta and some bumps still need to be ironed out. With a larger player base, we hope to find bugs and causes of desyncs much faster to make any necessary changes (if needed) for our 1.0 launch.
Can I play a character online that I haven’t uploaded to the workshop?
No, the only way you can play characters online is if they have been uploaded to the workshop. This helps us maintain version control and fight against desyncs and crashes.
What if characters are extremely overpowered?
Since the power of a character is determined by its creator, characters can be extremely OP. When you create a session, you can decide if workshop characters are allowed. In the future we’d like to implement “collections” of characters, so online sessions will have “workshop collections,” and only characters within that collection can be played.
How can I find a game?
You can see a full list of sessions around the world, so in most cases you can find a match quickly. To voice chat with other players or find matches, join our Discord and grab the Matchmaking role!