Muno is one of the most prominent Workshop creators in the community, amassing a strong variety of characters, stages, buddies, and even mods. Muno has hosted their own Workshop directs, reworked their own classic characters from the ground, and has even won the first ever Workshop Wednesday contest for their technical buddy submission that instantly displays frame data on moves used in Practice Mode.
Muno’s characters have exploded in popularity, seeing use in practically every Workshop series to date, including Coda and Otto coming to Riptide . On top of their character and stage creation, Muno’s attention to detail has introduced some of the most practical mods into the game. We recently reached out to Muno to learn more about them and their history in Rivals community.
How did you first hear about Rivals and get into the scene? As a prominent Workshop developer and community member, how often do you venture into playing the base game?
Muno: I was introduced to Rivals as a player, since I’d heard about it being compared to Smash. At first I mained Kragg and Orcane, but when Elliana dropped, I switched to her because I really enjoy the strategic push-and-pull of her steam mechanic. (she ended up influencing the design of a couple of my workshop characters too!)
Nowadays, I don’t play workshop OR base cast very often, since I focus more on making mods whenever I have RoA open. I enjoy playing friendlies though; I normally just play my own characters and Orcane. (not elli because I’m out of practice and she’s pretty technical).
You have a distinct variety in characters, stages, and even technical mods to the game. What creations are your favorite to create?
Muno: My favorite kind of thing to make is definitely characters, especially ones based on other works (e.g. my favorite games). It’s always really fun to adapt ideas into the gameplay of RoA.
Original characters can be pretty fun because of the freedom offered, but it’s hard to beat getting to work with a property you have an attachment to.
Over the course of Workshop’s lifespan, you’ve created several tournament viable characters including Otto and Trummel & Alto. Since then you’ve gone as far as completely remaking them, including sprites and movesets, what compelled you to make these decisions instead of working on new projects?
Muno: The original versions of Otto and Trummel were my first two character mods, and so their coding, design, balance, and (in my opinion) artwork weren’t as good as my later stuff. At the time, I was organizing the big “Muno Direct” where I also revealed my next four characters, so I thought I’d throw these remakes in too – I guess just to have really high-quality versions of what had basically turned into my “mascots” haha.
Here are the updated versions:
What is your favorite aspect of creating a character? Why?
Muno: My favorite part is finishing a new attack and then spending 30 minutes in training mode messing around with it. It’s fun to see the character gradually come together as development progresses. This is especially true in my case, since I basically make up a lot of the normal attacks as I go – instead of prototyping with placeholder sprites, I just animate a move and then immediately add it into the game.
This doesn’t count as “creating a character,” but the most fun part is definitely hearing the voice chat reactions when your trailer gets shown off as part of one of the community “Workshop Directs,” or watching a streamer try your character out.
You have a few game modding buddies in your creation list, including a buddy that recently won our first ever Workshop Wednesday contest. What inspires you to work on game mods instead of other in game elements? How much more difficult are they to create?
Muno: Frame Data Woodcock was actually my first buddy, I think! I don’t normally make a lot of them, but it was a fun change of pace for the contest, and ever since you guys added custom drawing scripts, the scope of what you can do has been expanded a lot. Buddies use the same coding language as characters, so the only difficult part (as a mostly-character dev anyway) is getting used to the different rules imposed on them by the workshop system.
I remember back in early Workshop when you had to devote a whole character to something like a free-flight mode – so it’s cool that buddies let you easily add new ways to play any character.
What has been your favorite original creation so far? What about it stands out above the rest?
Muno: The thing that probably stands out is the MunoPhone system, just because it was a really big technical project that adds pretty cool functionality to training mode. The code is messy behind the scenes, which is why I’m also working on a rewrite to help performance a bit haha. And the accompanying stage, Training Town, is definitely my favorite stage to play on, since in VS Mode it randomly cycles between all of the base game stage layouts + my workshop stages whenever someone loses a stock.
Do you have any personal goals or interests outside of Rivals that you’re focusing on?
Muno: Short-term, just college and other uninteresting irl stuff. Eventually I’d like to start doing stuff in game dev, but I probably won’t approach that for a little while. My game jam game from earlier this year actually had a character based on one of my workshop mods! And in a general sense, modding RoA gave me a lot of useful intuition for building my own, similar engine from the ground up. (this time with less older_old_hsp)
Is there anything you would like to say to the Rivals community reading this feature?
Muno: If you enjoy Workshop or find it interesting, you should totally check out the Workshop 2Prints Direct that Zetta is hosting next month, where a lot of creators will be showing off their cool new mod trailers! I have some of my own surprises planned, and if the February one is any indication, so do a lot of other devs. It’s gonna be a really fun time!
Thank you for having me, and take care!
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