I spoke with Alex "Sonic" Freitag and Jared "Vertigo" Glastetter, the developers of Smash Pros, to learn more about their project and what they're looking to do next.
What exactly is Smash Pros?
Smash Pros is an all-in-one utility app for competitive Super Smash Bros Ultimate. With Smash Pros you can find tournaments, create customizable tier lists, play sets with a full step by step walkthrough (including a stage striker), record player notes, and keep stats from all your sets played on the Smash Pros app.
What inspired you to start building Smash Pros?
While getting excited for the new game, we were trying to think of how we could get the most out of the game competitively, especially with the potential for many legal stages in the newest iteration. Having a lot of stages meant that banning and picking could get complicated, so we wanted there to be an easy solution that anyone could use. For newer players that would make the competitive rules less intimidating. From this initial feature we realized there were actually so many useful tools you could add to a mobile app.
What's most exciting to you about this latest release?
The most exciting part of our latest release is the ability to find tournaments near your physical location, as well as well as online, featured, upcoming and the ability to search overall. We actually found some hidden tournaments in our area using the location services. We were very excited about this new feature but we are even more excited about what this new feature will branch out to and become in the near future.
How has your experience been with our public API?
Working with the API has been a breath of fresh air. This was our first time working with a GraphQL API, and start.gg provided plenty of resources to get started. The variety of examples given along with the API explorer allowed us to quickly build the right queries for our use case. When we ran into trouble, the development team was readily available to answer any questions in the community Discord. Overall, this has been our best experience working with an API so far.
What can users expect to see next from Smash Pros?
We are currently hard at work developing a Smash Pros website. The website will provide in-depth statistics and information on all aspects of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate esports scene. Users will be able to find upcoming tournaments, view past results, track their own performance, and more!
Are you looking for contributors? If so, what for and how can someone help?
We are currently looking for beta testers to try out the website and help us get it ready for launch. If you are interested in becoming a beta tester, please apply here. You can also get updates about these opportunities on our Twitter.
To download: Smash Pros on the Google Play Store