Last night i removed all advertisements from Sonic Hurricane. They were an ugly eyesore and never made any money anyway. The only reason it took me so long is because i liked using them to break up my massive walls of text without having to search for a relevant picture.
Luckily i figured out how to make ComboVid banners of the exact same size and placement, which load much faster and aren’t nearly as creepy. Sonic Hurricane is now 100% profit-free! (Not that i ever managed to break even in the first place.)
In the process of removing all embedded ads from individual articles, i couldn’t help but notice that some of my old writing is pretty damn weird. Um, sorry about that y’all.
You know, it’s not that i’m trying to sound smart or take myself too seriously. I’m just not that good a writer. I get bored and start trying to find new words i’ve never used before, or substituting longer/shorter words to even out paragraph shapes. Also i like playing around with new grammar tech; occasionally bending the rules for fun. Unfortunately sometimes it ends up sounding inordinately abstruse.
Hehe, I didn’t read every word in every article on this site, and I don’t doubt that you know yourself when you say it can be written better, but for what it’s worth your writing was my effective intro into fighting games and fgc “culture” and history and such(I’m not American), and the writing’s always been clear to me anyways. =)
Thank you sir. I suppose my writing could be worse, and it’s probably not bad enough to bother anybody. More than anything, it’s just inconsistent and sometimes confusing.
Once in a while, some random link or comment makes me skim over an old article again, and i’ll notice an ambiguously-phrased or poorly-structured sentence. When it’s a glaring enough problem and i can think of a quick fix, i usually take the time to address it.
A lot of times i had to get something done by a certain deadline, but absolutely didn’t want to do it, so playing with words was the only way i could motivate myself to finish it. Yes, i am a thesaurus addict; big-time. So if something seems awkwardly phrased or overly formal, don’t give it too much thought. Chances are, i was just trying something new.
Truth be told, i have kind of a love/hate relationship with writing. When it works it’s great, but it’s always a lot of work because writing never comes easily for me. English isn’t my first language either, but it’s become the one i’m most fluent in.
“Not a good writer” my foot. Your writing, especially stuff like the Footsies Handbook and the articles on balance and the classics are still,in my opinion, some of the best articles in the FGC today. In fact, if not for these, I probably wouldn’t have been inspired to try my hand at writing for Shoryuken.com in the first place.
I knew I wouldn’t be the only one to praise Maj’s writing :)
Thanks for the kind words, both of you. Honestly i’ve never really liked compliments, but i do appreciate the support.
d3v: Keep up the good work on SRK! I know it’s kind of a thankless job at times, but as long as you enjoy it enough to keep doing it, you should know that it’s appreciated.
You know I’ve always enjoyed your writing, and I’m sure a ton of people do as well. Please make a return to writing! How about a breakdown of Daigo vs Infiltration for example :P
Thank you sir, but even if i did start writing strategy articles again, it wouldn’t be anytime soon because i’m busy with other projects. Plus i haven’t played competitively or entered tournaments in many years, so i don’t feel qualified to write as any kind of authority on the subject anymore. There are lots of good writers in the FGC who place high in tournaments and are way more relevant than me in 2013.
The thing I like about Maj’s footsies handbook and other writings is he’s always writing about “fundamentals”, and I owe him a small debt not only for “setting me right” early, but also for helping me appreciate fighting games fully. Like Maj, I’m lazy and haven’t learnt a lot of the SF4 tech that I should, but the most enjoyable part of the game will never be taking advantage of newly-learned tech per se and will probably always remain in the basic movement and feints and entering enemy space and feeling the other guy’s state of mind etc, i.e. the wonderful things they call “footsies” and “reading”. That sort of thing is probably stuff that will never get old or dry.
Actually I’m gonna take muttonhead’s comment as an excuse to ask about something daigo said about his ft10 with infiltration(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dARsb8ATQ-s, 10:07 – 12:30, I’ve reproduced that part of the text translation at the bottom of my post).
The interviewer was asking how daigo managed to walk forward while blocking low attacks, daigo seems to be saying “crouch when you see him crouch”, then talks about “feeling” and then I’m not too sure of the meaning from there on, yet daigo said he hopes it can help people deal with low strong attacks so I wanted to ask about it. Personally there have (only) been a few times when it felt that I was reaction blocking that sweep. Is Daigo just talking about instincts/enhanced reaction, i.e. when you’re on edge or instincts let you partly anticipate and so you react better/faster/instinctively? Or is he saying something more than that, or is he saying something else entirely? (Also, I was moving backwards, which is bound to be easier than pulling your stick from the forward position)
— From Air’s translation in the video(10:07 -12:30) —
Interviewer: ” I thought it was amazing that you walk up to Akuma so much and not getting hit by Akuma’s, it’s not like you weren’t getting hit at all, but how did you manage to do it?”
(Daigo first talks a bit about why he felt he needed to go forward, then at 11:16:)
Daigo: “Back to not getting hit by the sweep, I hope everybody will find this useful when fighting against strong low attack opponents: when the opponent crouches, you crouch at the same time, this way you can guard properly.”
Interviewer: “From standing to crouching?”
Daigo: “First is the feeling, there is the feeling that he will crouch or when he is standing I am safe. If the opponent is going to do something at that range, then you already know a sweep is coming. By matching the crouching motion, you crouch with him, then you will realize that the sweep is actually different(?)* then you can start pressing buttons. It becomes easy to react.”
* (Air put this question mark, so I guess he was unsure of the exact meaning there. Daigo also said a lot at this part that perhaps can’t be put easily in a few sentences)
Hahaha man, i just watched that entire video and i have no idea. It seems like reacting to the crouch animation would certainly help if you’re already almost fast enough to block sweeps on reaction, but i don’t think it’s any kind of instant solution to transform everyone into Diago.
Regarding the second part, maybe he’s saying that if you get within range, notice them crouch, react by blocking low, and they don’t attack – then you can press a button since the fact that they crouched means they’re probably still within range. Also how would they counter your delayed button press? They’d have to delay pressing a button themselves, which would just screw up their rhythm more often than not.
So it seems like something worth trying, but it’s not a silver bullet unless i’m totally missing something in his explanation. Trying to isolate and evaluate a single footsies technique in a player as nuanced as Daigo is tough to do.
That’s also all I could guess at…I think the guy in the comments who summarized it as “just be as awesome as Daigo” sums it up best for me :D Personally I will never shoot for conscious reaction crouching in time to block lows, it’s undoable for me(an attempt at approximating the difficulty: you usually have at least 10 frames to react to successfully punish a typical whiffed low forward, but blocking an Akuma sweep “on reaction” while holding forward requires you to react + hit down-back in 5+frames max. Even teching a throw on reaction would be more feasible I imagine).
In fairness, “just be as awesome as Daigo” is pretty good advice.
Another quick question ‘cos I’m guessing you wouldn’t mind…I’ve always wondered why Evil Ryu’s cr.mk to fireball is so airtight compared to say Ryu’s. Longer block stun? (I think srk wiki’s frame data suggests the block stun is 1f longer than usual, with fireball startup identical to Ryu; yet isn’t Ryu’s gap at far range greater than 1f?) And Ryu is rumored to gain this airtightness in USF4?
Evil Ryu’s c.MK moves him forward a great deal when it’s canceled, whereas Ryu’s doesn’t move him forward at all. It’s just a matter of where their position boxes are placed during active frames, so that’s probably all they had to change in USF4.
It’s pretty easy to test this. Just put the opponent in the corner and stand at a specific line on the training stage grid, then do c.MK xx fireball with Ryu to see where he ends up. Then repeat the same thing from the same spot with E.Ryu and notice that he only moves back one tiny square, whereas Ryu moves back the full c.MK pushback distance. (If you’re worried about their fireballs having different startup and affecting pushback differently, you can test with whiff DP instead.)
Ah I didn’t even put two and two together :/ Maybe my head was telling me you can’t “kara” through your hip, and I then attributed it to some kind of weird special delayed-then-overridden c.MK pushback(not noticing that it had already happened), yet it still didn’t feel right so from there it was the “magical special-properties cr.mk/blockstring” and I stopped using common sense/observation. And somehow forgot the relevancy of how he seemed to be firing it from up close.
I have to correct my post: at far range(roughly the range where evil ryu makes contact only because the opponent was crouching), there can be a gap in between. But was my understanding of the 1f extra block stun correct? (If it’s recovery frames + active frames -1 , then subtract frame disadvantage, then it’s usually 13 for blocked far medium attacks but 14 for evil ryu’s c.MK) And about USF4, are you saying that Ryu’s change is already confirmed? And if they do it like that, wouldn’t it sort of change the character of his c.MK xx hadoken? (‘cos it wouldn’t really create space anymore?)
(Eh again I say stupid things; outside of a cornered opponent c.MK xx hadoken would always create space)
Your math seems correct. Most medium attacks in SF4 cause 13 frames of blockstun (plus impact freeze which is usually equal for both characters). Except Evil Ryu’s c.MK looks like it causes 14 frames of blockstun, which isn’t that unusual. There are similar exceptions all over the place in SF4.
Both Ryu and E.Ryu have 13 frames listed as Hadoken startup, which i think is plenty of time to resolve the pushback from c.MK – so the fireball shouldn’t be nullfying any of it. Interestingly, E.Ryu’s c.MK is based on SF3 Shoto c.MK, which also used to move them forward when canceled. That’s why 3S Ken’s c.MK xx DP is such a reliable combo after a parry.
And yeah, this change will definitely take some adaptation for USF4 Ryu players. There are lots of situations where they’ll end up at different ranges than before, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get used to it.