It’s been a while since the last one, hasn’t it? With this pair of challenges i tried to focus on the essence of each character – the main reason people seem to choose them. Hopefully it’ll be fun for Rufus and Viper players. Neither character has appeared in a prior game, so i had a little fun with the bonus combo.
Rufus and C.Viper both have access to a wide variety of juggle combo options.
Challenge R: Using Rufus, juggle four or more moves. (Start by knocking down the opponent, then connect four or more distinct moves before they touch the ground. Multi-hit attacks still count as one move.)
Challenge V: Using C.Viper, combo together all three of her special moves, all of her EX moves, and her ultra. (For the purposes of this challenge, all three regular versions of her Thunder Knuckle count as the same move. Ground and air versions of her Burning Kick count as the same move.)
Rule #1: Start from 0 stun. (If you intend to dizzy the opponent, that is.)
Rule #2: Obey gauge limits. (Set S.C. Gauge to Refill but use only 4 stocks. If you plan on building enough meter to use 5 or more bars, set S.C. Gauge to Normal or Max Start so that we can verify your method. Keep in mind that super meter charges slower during combos.)
Now THIS is how you get back at those dudes with the bad comments! Got a big mouth? Show us what you got in the challenge!
Lol @ the bonus kombo, did not see that one koming.
hell yeah, i love UMK3! someone’s gonna get mad at me for this, but akuma can take notes on how a dive kick works from kung lao.
I was asked to repost a question I asked Maj here. I guess the video has something to do with the answer? Here it is…
I’ve been trying to figure out for a while if there really is a “hit
pause” within sf4, or if that’s just a result of players’ perceptions.
By hit pause, I mean that the game takes some amount of extra
frames/milliseconds to resolve the animation of a move when the move
hits and/or is blocked compared to what the animation might take
during a whiff. And if there is such a hit pause, what are its
attributes in different situations. (Such as jabs, med/hard hits,
anti-air, air-air, air-ground, specials, grabs, etc.)
I’m not sure what the best way to test this would be. But perhaps
there’s something that’s possible with programmable controllers?
Any advice or information on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
yes both characters stop when hit. Time doesn’t stops for any on screen projectiles and vice versa. Wouldn’t be to much trouble to figure out how much timestop each hit causes but it’s not useful info. Only thing use I can figure for it is figure out how to buffer charge specials. Far as I know throws don’t cause it.
Theli: Right, so, the way it usually works is frame data gives you startup, active period, and recovery. When an attack connects, the remainder of its active period is converted to recovery (unless it’s a multi-hit attack).
Impact freeze definitely exists and the easiest way to spot it is by mashing jabs. It’s impossible to chain a jab into another jab before it reaches an active frame. You can stand next to someone and double-tap jabs all day and you’ll never one to whiff chain into another one before it connects.
So now that we’ve established that mashing whiff jabs reach at least their first active frame, you can compare whiff jabs against connecting jabs. It’s easy to tell that the whiffed ones are coming out like three or four times faster than the connected ones. That’s because when they whiff, it’s like 4 frames startup followed by 1 or 2 active frames and then canceled back to startup. When they connect, it’s like 4 frames startup, followed by around 12 frames of impact freeze and then back to startup. Whiffed reps take around 5 frames, connected reps take around 16.
Now take a look at the video. First of all, Rufus’ j.DF+MK divekick connects almost on the last frame, right before he lands. Yet you can still see the impact of the attack. If there was no impact freeze then he’d basically shoot right through her leg and continue the combo with no pause whatsoever. The same thing is true of his s.LK -> s.HK chain, which was executed with only a 5 frame delay between the buttons, yet you can clearly see the s.LK connect.
As it turns out, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 has no impact freeze. On the ground, most punches are cancelable and most kicks aren’t. First of all you can see Shang Tsung chaining s.LP -> s.HP then canceling into the Kung Lao transformation. But you only see that s.HP animate for one frame before i cancel it. Furthermore, Kung Lao cancels vertical j.HK into divekick and then vertical j.HP into divekick. In both cases the divekick actually whiffs, so it’s almost impossible to see the move that actually connects. You can kind of see the startup of j.HK and j.HP but they disappear on impact. That’s what it looks like when a game has no impact freeze.
Going back to the SF4 example, check out Viper’s c.HP xx HP Seismo Hammer. You can clearly see the c.HP animate before she cancels it. I completed that command quickly as well, so if there was no impact freeze then it would look like something connected then immediately canceled into ground pound.
The reason this is important is because it stabilizes canceling timing. For example, Viper’s EX Seismo Hammer is a really slow move which always combos when her c.HP is canceled into it. You have that entire 15-frame (or whatever) impact freeze window to complete the input. That’s what makes it easy. As long as you do it before impact freeze ends, she automatically cancels into it as soon as it ends but never before it ends. If there was no impact freeze, then the timing on it would vary dramatically. For a slow move like that, you’d have to do the command very quickly in order to get it to combo. Match gameplay would be a mess.
As for its attributes, each move has a specific amount of impact freeze that it causes regardless of how it connects (antiair, air to air, air to ground, etc). In most games, light attacks freeze around 11 frames, medium attacks around 13, hard attacks around 15. In the oldschool SF2 series they were all around 12 regardless of button strength. Some specials have very long impact freeze while others have relatively short impact freeze. Projectiles actually have no impact freeze whatsoever so they kind of operate by slightly different rules.
Make sense?
error1: It’s important during trades, any kind of elaborate setup involving a projectile, and absolutely crucial for charge characters. It’s also important for avoiding projectiles in matches, using slides and jump attacks.
For example, Dee Jay’s c.HK slide can go under certain projectiles only when it connects, because it freezes both characters without affecting the projectile. This works for invincibility as well. There’s a famous clip of Fei Long uppercutting through a Dee Jay fireball which wouldn’t have worked if the uppercut hadn’t connected and frozen during an invincible frame.
sure, without it the game wouldn’t be the same, but there is little reason you would need to know exactly how much hit pause each move caused. Projictials do cause hit stun, just not for the char who made it. It’s very cool to watch a projectile to hit during supperfreeze.
That is very enlightening. It fully confirms that impact freeze can potentially make a variety of situations possible to react to that might not otherwise be. And explains how projectiles seem to miss moves with very few invincibility frames pretty easily if that move connects.
Few questions (hoping you done mind me picking your brain a little):
1. Does the impact freeze last the same amount of time for a move no matter which active frame of that move connects? (Assuming it’s the same active frame “set”, in the case of multi-hit moves.)
2. How does the impact freeze vary when a move is blocked, rather then hits?
3. Is a button press for a cancelling special move buffered if it is pressed a little before the impact freeze (and before the hitting active frame)? Or must the button press (or negative edge) have to take place during that impact freeze (and/or hitting active frame) in order for the move to cancel?
4. If the answer for #3 is that it must be pressed, or released, during the freeze… Does this essentially explain how option selects function? That the freeze blocks buffered button presses from taking effect? Or does it appear to just be a case of user timing, where the player/recorded dummy enters the OS with the same timing each time, but impact freeze changes window of move stun to allow or disallow the input.
My first instinct is the former, because of the difference between option selecting a special move on a whiffed jump in… And executing a move after a jump in connects. And that’s what it “feels” like to me. But I really can’t determine for myself exactly where the windows for these two inputs might be.
It may or may not realistically make a difference to the player. So for curiosity’s sake if nothing else…
For #1 and #2, i don’t think the duration changes when it connects meaty or when it’s blocked, but i haven’t tested it directly. Counting via emulator frame stepping would probably be the best way to check, or you could simply record different scenarios and watch them frame by frame.
For #3, the answer was no until SF4. If you complete a special move input before a nomal move connects in older games, either you kara-cancel the normal move or nothing happens. In SF4 the kara-cancel input has been shortened to one frame and the rest of it buffers into a stored cancel which automatically occurs when the normal connects.
For #4, there’s no universal explanation for option selects because they’re all unique to game engine properties. You can build an option select out of tons of different pieces. But yeah, the anti-reversal jump-in tactic is based on the presence/absence of impact freeze from the jump attack. It comes down to jump attacks not being cancelable. It wouldn’t work if instead of using Ryu’s j.HP and Shoryuken, you were using Viper’s j.HK and Burning Kick. (Or rather it would work, but you’d be option selecting her j.HK xx air Burning Kick versus her whiff j.HK, ground Burning Kick.)
Ahhh. This helps tremendously in understanding why certain things work. Thanks!
error1: You’re right about projectiles causing impact freeze for the victim. However since only one character is affected, the only difference between one-sided impact freeze and pure hit stun is that the victim is briefly frozen in place before pushback takes effect. In the corner there’s no practical difference.
Also, knowing the exact numbers probably won’t change much, but they might be interesting for people whose characters have multiple slides of different strengths. Like if you had frame counts for the fully reclined parts of Dhalsim’s slides, they’d be kinda incomplete without knowing their hitstop durations. I’m sure there’s someone out there who’d love to have that info, even if they don’t know they want it yet.
in modding the pc version of the game I have found that hit/self freeze (these are separately controllable actually but i don’t believe i have seen a move where it is actually separate that isn’t some hack that i’ve made lol) is like:
light attacks: 8 frames
medium attacks: 10 frames
heavy attacks: 12 frames
throws: 0 frames
for an example of modded moves with hit freeze that is inequal to self freeze see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbAJp70bjW4
this is generally required for me to make it possible to combo off of throws as the animation tends to take a very long time to finish even though when it appears it has… but i have to tweak carefully for the throws that throw into crumple so that rethrow infinites are not possible. (to my knowledge the 2nd part of focus crumple is treated by the game as airborne/juggle state for the most part)
also if i recall right specials mostly do 15 frames of freeze but i’m not 100% on this.
in the case of projectiles the projectile freezes instead of the opponent… it is possible to create a construction where the projectile freezes for a longer time or something so that they get hit by hit 1 of ex fireball and then get up and the 2nd one unfreezes and hits meaty
Ah, thanks for clarifying those numbers.
What’s your goal with these hacks? Are you trying to create a custom version of SF4? Not to discourage you or anything, but you might run into trouble distributing it. Though if all you want to do is make videos, i guess you wouldn’t get in too much trouble for that.
i won’t run into trouble if it still requires having the purchased version of the game to use…
but i primarily just intend for it to play with my friends / take my laptop to tournaments and then let people have casuals on it for some laughs
also its just fun for me to do, just like it’s fun for you to make combo videos :P
while I like watching combo videos i dont think i could ever have the patience to work with a program pad.
i remember after watching some joo mvc2 vids going on sf4 and just for laughs programming a macro on my computer for in tiger uppercut fadc tiger knee (not to use, I just wanted to see how easy / difficult it is to create) and it shocked me how much harder it was than i expected just using timers and telling software when to hit buttons/directions and when not to
Cool. SF4 Rainbow Edition, huh? That actually sounds like a fun way to kill time between matches at big tournaments.