Unfortunately what tends to happen is that if you play the same game for too long, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. You can sink into a routine and stop looking at the game with an open mind. (This happens in all creative endeavors.)

Sometimes you just need a change of scenery to keep your mind fresh. To me, that’s the biggest advantage of playing multiple games – or even temporarily switching to a new game every once in a while.

It really doesn’t matter whether you learn to predict tick-throws in SSF4AE2012 or SSF2T or Skullgirls, right? Once you figure it out, that concept will be with you forever. If you’re having trouble defending against throws in your “main” game, it might be easier to pick up another game and start fresh from a different angle.

Plus, each game emphasizes a few specific areas of the fighting game spectrum. For example, SF4 kind of does a bad job of teaching defensive composure, because you can option select your way out of so many tough situations. You don’t really have to think too hard about what your opponent is trying to do.

If you play MvC3 or Skullgirls, it’s a completely different feeling because you’re kind of terrified of resets/mixups all the time. It forces you to face that challenge and become comfortable with it on a much tougher level.

Then you can go back to SF4 and those same mixups won’t seem so scary, which allows you to see your opponent’s intentions to a much greater degree of nuance. Instead of thinking “Damn he’s right next to me, i gotta mash throw tech” you’ll start thinking “This guy always throws after two low jabs, so next time i should be ready to uppercut!”

So i’d say it always helps to learn a second game. Think of it as learning a second language; helps expand your horizons.

The only time this might change is if you become an Evo top 8 class player, in which case you might want to spend all your time learning every technical details of a single game. But i don’t even think that’s true anymore, because all those dudes play multiple games now.

Also, great articles, man! I went back and read a lot of them! It’s like I just discovered the philosopher’s stone of fighting games or something lol.

to have the maximum number of possible combinations of courses of action you have to empower 4096 to (99*60) frames in the game and that is a freaking big number even for a machine but it is a very finite number.

All that to say there is nothing that restricts a machine from trying one of the combination it (or anyone else from whom it analysed a replay) has not yet tried in that given situation at that given time more than it restricts you, if you want to walk up close and taunt as okizeme why not, the machine can do it too, and then store the result in its database.

there a a lot of easy formulas to seed reasonablme random into an otherwise dull heuristic procedure. which will make the AI efficient but not exactly predictable.

for example lets say you recognise a situation you have several options (for simplesness of descrition lets restrict the X possibilities the game engine allows to only 3)
option
A tested in that very situation, works perfectly weight 89
B tested in that situation but against anotrher character, trades weight 10
C one of the not tested solution weight 1
(weight have been chose to add up as a 100 but really they don’t matter, the machine calculates them and updates them in its database whenever it gets feedback from playing or from watching replays)
here we are going to set a cursor that we are going to call ‘surprise /humdrum’ to 2

courses of action sum 89^2 + 10^2 + 1^2 = 8022
select random number between 1 and 8022
0< number < 7922 choose A (odds 98.7%)
7921 < number <8022 choose B (odds 1.2%)
8021 < number < 8023 choose C (odds 0.1%)
you can call that profile
"solid game play but room for learning"

now if the player was to modify that cursor to 1
we have
0< number < 90 choose A (odds 89%)
89 < number <100 choose B (odds 10%)
99 < number < 101 choose C (odds 1%)
the machine having the same game knowledge has a much more suprising behaviour you can call that profile
" varied gameplay reinforce new strategies behaviour"

put the cursor at 0 you get
A odds 33.333%
B odds 33.333%
C odds 33.333%
the machine in spite of it game knowledge
you can call that profile
"pure random unbiased feedback gathering"

set that cursor to -1
option A odds 0.1%
option B odds 9%
option C odds 90.9%
you have a machine that resents using what it knows works and will very likely use something it has never tested or knows doesnt work.
you can call that profile
"serendipity behaviour"

a few month later the machine having ben,efited from a lot more feedback in the very same situation could very well have updated the weights as such
A works perfectly good damage weight 50
B trades against that character but cause a untechable knockdown on opponent weight 45
C beats opponent flat but cause minimal damage and gives frame adv to opponnent weight 5

and all situations with the cursors give other odds for each course of action.

add more cursors, expand the possibilities from 3 to the whole lot of what the game engine allows (150 maybee for any given okizeme situation)

and all you coded is the formula and where in the formula the cursors interact, and the player sliding the cursors before the match just like you set the stars for the current AI,

everything else is the machine modifiying her weights in the database detecting what the current situation is and using the formula you designed to act upon what it sees and what it knows yet about the current situation it has detected, and when it knows jack it just tests random stuff or try something that worked in a similar sitatuion (same timing and distance other char, same char and postion one/two frame before or after, same char same frames, but slightly different distance and if it still has nothing test out something compeltely random) and then updates its knowledge base with the result.

as the weights are never fixed in stone the machine is never completely "finished" as the cursor can always be slided, even in a given situation and with a very seasoned knowledge base the machine can always be made diffrent from the match before by a simple randomization of the cursors and yet equally challenging , just like playing daigo's then poongko's ryu, both have a very similar basis and will share a common ground of ryu's common sense, but then they have different personnas, shortcomings, strenghts and generally speaking playstyles.

(BTW, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Kazuya usually a broken character in Tekken? If so, then we all should have seen that one coming >_>)

it’s a fun game, and i think it has huge potentials, but in it’s current form just not even close to being competitive.

the numbers speak for themselves – last tournament i went, sfxt had FOUR registrants.

making sfxt teams at evo is probably not helpful but regardless, i’m sure many many of them regret entering that game now. more to follow in the coming months for sure. :)