Difference between Melee and Project M/+

[CaptainAnime]

I have been playing Melee for a good two months and have been adjusted to how it feels. I play Project M for the first time in about a year and it felt a bit weird. Is it just me? Can someone give me the mechanical differences between both games? I'd like it as detailed as possible please

 

[Strong Badam]

I have been playing Melee for a good two months and have been adjusted to how it feels. I play Project M for the first time in about a year and it felt a bit weird. Is it just me? Can someone give me the mechanical differences between both games? I'd like it as detailed as possible please

It's not just you. There are subtle differences in the way physics resolve each frame between the games. The short version of the story is that in the order of operations within a frame, Brawl/PM's engine updates character position before it updates their momentum, whereas Melee does the opposite. This means things that grant or change momentum would comparatively occur 1 frame later than they would in SSBM. An air dodge will stay in place for 1 frame before moving them in the direction of the analog stick on the 2nd frame. This generally doesn't impact how interactions resolve but certainly 'feels' different and is likely what you're noticing.

Otherwise, most of the changes are differences in input leniencies; SSBM's input windows for things like dashing, dashing backwards, shorthopping, and shield dropping are notoriously strict. PM's were made more lenient on purpose because it feels better. The SSBM community later adopted UCF to address some, but not all, of those issues in SSBM, namely dashing backwards and shield dropping.

 

[CaptainAnime]

It's not just you. There are subtle differences in the way physics resolve each frame between the games. The short version of the story is that in the order of operations within a frame, Brawl/PM's engine updates character position before it updates their momentum, whereas Melee does the opposite. This means things that grant or change momentum would comparatively occur 1 frame later than they would in SSBM. An air dodge will stay in place for 1 frame before moving them in the direction of the analog stick on the 2nd frame. This generally doesn't impact how interactions resolve but certainly 'feels' different and is likely what you're noticing.

Otherwise, most of the changes are differences in input leniencies; SSBM's input windows for things like dashing, dashing backwards, shorthopping, and shield dropping are notoriously strict. PM's were made more lenient on purpose because it feels better. The SSBM community later adopted UCF to address some, but not all, of those issues in SSBM, namely dashing backwards and shield dropping.

Ok the input thing I can see. Some examples are I short hop much better than I do in Melee (which in the end ****s up my ability in short hop in Melee) and as for dashback, sometimes when I wavedash forward, I dashback and wavedash back (a habit I have cuz I'm too obsessed with wavdashing lol). In PM/+, when I do the same inputs, I don't dashback but instead just get wavedash forward. And wavedashing as a whole did seem odd to me in Pm/+ so there's that.

One thing I noticed has to do with shield stopping. I feel like I have to delay when I press up on the C-stick before I can buffer jumps out of shields compared to when I could just quickly do it Melee, otherwise, I would just get a sliding Up Smash. What's up with that?

Also, are character's frame data in PM/+ different from Melee, like Marth's and are the rules for spikes and meteors the same as in Melee (thus, moves like Falco and Marth's dair still are spikes)?

 

[Strong Badam]

One thing I noticed has to do with shield stopping. I feel like I have to delay when I press up on the C-stick before I can buffer jumps out of shields compared to when I could just quickly do it Melee, otherwise, I would just get a sliding Up Smash. What's up with that?

Yeah that's just because C-stick up doesn't do anything during a dash/run in SSBM, so you can input it before shielding without any action occurring. In PM it results in an UpSmash. You must wait until after the shield has come up first in order to use the C-stick to jump to avoid an unwanted Up-Smash.

Also, are character's frame data in PM/+ different from Melee, like Marth's and are the rules for spikes and meteors the same as in Melee (thus, moves like Falco and Marth's dair still are spikes)?

Frame data parity varies by character, there are many more discrepancies on SSBM's mid/low tiers than its top/high tiers whose data matches quite faithfully in most cases. You would have to compare them individually, move by move. Most characters have stickied threads in the Melee/Project M forums here on Smashboards with the frame data you seek.

Spikes and Meteors work the same, though some PM spikes send at an even further angle such as DK's Side-Special, or Snake's Forward Air.

 

[_Chrome]

PM's camera is also more zoomed out than Melee's. It can lead to a vastly different feel for people.

Stick inputs are different too, Melee requires more horizontal of movements to dash, and its throw direction inputs for uthrow and dthrow are stricter (diagonally up is more likely to give a forward or back throw for example).