First video shows some interesting stuff that I have NEVER seen before. Plinking a throw?! Double plinking? True double plinking? Truly some interesting revelations that I can’t wait to add to my game.
And the part 3 of Daigo’s interview on Capcom Unity. This part is really interesting and connected a lot to me because Daigo actually talks about very personal stuff such as dealing with the social stigma of playing Street Fighter hardcore.
What a weekend. I almost can’t put it into words, but I’m going to try.
Grand Finals, Losers Finals, and Winners Finals Videos
-Updated! Ali’s EPIC writeup of the event!!!
Pedro, Ali, Dave, Yale, Pyro, Hamada and I actually drove up to Sydney in a van. (Pedro had to leave in the middle of the weekend because of personal problems. Sorry dude.) Thanks guys for letting me come along!
It was a ten hour drive, and I have to give some props to Ali here for driving the whole way back AND forth, that’s some superhuman shit right there. We drove at night, in the middle of the rain, with Hamada in the middle…oh my god. On the other hand I got to know everyone a little better; we talked about everything from movies to the Melbourne FG scene to Wolverine and Romulus. We even went past the Fat Pizza joint on our way back! I had no idea it actually existed!
Somehow we made it there in one piece at around 4 am, and were told that we couldn’t get our rooms open until 6 am, unless we paid extra. So we huddled together in one room waiting for Brandon, and managed to get a few hours of sleep because we had to head out to register at 11 am. Not a really good way to rest up before a tournament.
We actually got a little lost on our way to the UTS building, but we eventually made our way up the stairs of the looming concrete tower. There were a lot of people already there; there were casual setups at the back, and a big audience area with chairs in front of two big projectors. I found out on the day that the event was going to be streamed, and that got me a little excited.
Evo Apac feel the hype! From spencerwu.net
I was still feeling the effects of sleep deprivation at that point; god knows how Ali and the rest were feeling. I met up with Berserk, who told me Madman were sponsoring the event, and giving some prizes like the Ong Bak box set. We talked some industry talk before I drifted off to meet more people; I saw some Melbourne people like Cactus, Plaasia and Somniac, who seemed pretty cheerful. He informed me about the Daigo casuals on Friday, and how his match went with Daigo.
I’ve been meaning to write this recap for a while, but I procrastinate a lot. But I figured I’d better do it now before I head off to Sydney tomorrow for EVO Apac qualifiers.
Report by Ali here:
http://www.shadowloo.com/?p=1458
This event was the first official Super Street Fighter IV tournament in Melbourne, and I was very excited to finally attend a Couchwarriors ranbat. To be honest, my excitement was less to do about the actual tournament, and more to do with the fact that I could play casuals all day long, level up my game, meet somemore street fighter heads, and probably go out in first round again.
So I headed down to Abbotsford convent, (which turns out to be surprisingly close to my house), and I actually bump into Tian Khoo outside the gate. I met Tian Khoo for the first time in the Fight Nights Event, and he’s been very good to me, sending me Couchwarriors facebook stuff, and smsing me before events. He even took me out for some KFC after the ranbat, where he was able to give me a long rundown of the Melbourne fighting game scene, from 3rd strike to CVS2, to the arcades closing down in the Chinatown. He was a wealth of information, so thanks man. Also, thanks to Cactus, who graciously gave us a ride to the city through some monstrous traffic.
So Tian Khoo brings me inside, and we immediately bump into some dudes dressed as zombies dancing around. I have no idea what was going on, probably some dance event, but I can’t imagine what was going through the dancers’ heads as they see multiple TVs and consoles being set up in the hall, while waves of noisy people proceed to smack away at sticks and buttons. And I assume the gamers would’ve looked back at the dancers with a few quizzical eyebrows as well.
Anyway I went ahead and reacquainted myself with some CW people, and immediately strap myself down for some casuals!
Excellent post by UltraDavid from SRK! Every Hakan player should take a look:
“Lately I’ve begun to get more comfortable with doing an oil even when I know I’ll get hit (people are calling this “blood for oil” heh). One situation where this good is where your opponent throws a fireball from far away. Against some characters you can do ex oil through the fb and not worry about getting punished, but in general an alert opponent can punish your ex oil. So how to get any benefit out of that situation? Blood for oil. To maximize the oil you trade for that blood, it’s useful to know how much time you get from your various oils, ie, if you know your oil will be interrupted, which strength of oil should you pick?
From the first post in this thread, we can see this:
—–Lk oil startup: 20 frames (everyone knows that 1 frame = 1/60 of a second, right? ok)
———-Minimum: 3 sec
———-Midway (36f): 4 sec
———-Just before full (46f): 5 sec
———-Full (52f): 6 sec
—–Mk oil startup: 20f
———-Minimum: 4 sec
———-Midway (44f): 5 sec
———-Just before full (60f): 7 sec
———-Full (72f): 9 sec
—–Rh oil startup: 20f
———-Minimum: 5 sec
———-Midway (47f): 8 sec
———-Just before full (63f): 10 sec
———-Full (86f): 12 sec
—–Ex oil startup: 20f
———-Minimum: 6 sec
———-Midway (47f): 9 sec
———-Just before full (70f): 12 sec
———-Full (86): 15 sec
So we can see that if you think you’ll only get the minimum oil, hk oil is best (and oh by the way, it builds the most meter too!). And if there’s not enough time to finish any of your oils before the projectile reaches you, let’s say 50 frames, you can see that you’re still better off doing hk oil; with lk oil you get 5 seconds, but with hk you get 8 seconds!
In fact, say you have a full second, ie 60 frames, to oil up in before the projectile reaches you. If you do lk oil, you’ll recover in time to block and have oil for 6 seconds. If you do hk oil, you’ll get hit, but you’ll have 9 seconds of oil time, a 50% increase. That’s pretty significant!
I think there are some situations where blood for oil makes a lot of sense. If you’re up against a projectile character who can keep you out well, you really need oil to scare them. Trading blood for oil could be really useful here because it can actually be your safest way to oil. If they can punish your ex oil through their projectile, then ex oil is basically still a blood for oil trade where you take MORE damage and lose MORE oil time (since the time when you’re getting comboed, are knocked down, and wake up is lost oiled time).
Keep in mind also that when oiled, you take 90% of a single move damage you’d otherwise take, so that sonic boom will deal 45 damage instead of 50.”
I played crazyandy1982’s Gen a while ago and did pretty well against him, even with my Hakan. Not getting hit by mk hands mk hands helped a bit. I felt my zoning game was pretty much on point, and obviously dping his Gen jump got a whole lot easier.
However we had a rematch a few days later and it was quickly apparent that crazyandy either was not really used to ssf4 gen, or he had leveled up a whole lot in the last few days!
The main thing about his game was he was using the wall dive kick a lot more than last time. I know a lot of people say the wall dive kick is easy to see coming, but somehow I was having a lot of difficulty with it. He was coming off the ceiling, behind me, and everytime he hit it was a free super to ultra combo for him. Which hurt. A lot.
My fireball game wasn’t working anymore; he was standing right out of footsies distance, and jumping in instantly whenever I threw a fireball. He was also whiffing a lot of wall dives on purpose, coming right down instead of coming right at me, to condition me not to dp on reaction whenever he went to the wall.
Urgh. I know wall dive is faster now, with a 7 frame startup, but it’s a testament to my mental weakness, that once I have a lot of trouble with one aspect of the matchup; the wall dives, the rest of my game crumbles. I was getting hit by crossups and throws, and losing in footsies wars. I also have a lot of trouble autocorrect dping Gen’s crossup. I only succeeded a few times, and the risk/reward wasn’t there because a connected crossup would mean clk into super/ultra for me.
I know that clk that launches is unsafe and I should punish it everytime, but the visual cue to punish it is so small! I mean Gen just lifts his foot up!
I really struggled to win a game, I tried changing styles to pure turtle and pure rushdown, but no dice. Sigh. I need a lot of work in this matchup. Or maybe crazyandy was just on fire.
But on the other hand, I witnessed a rare discernable level up after playing a tough opponent for the first time. Continue reading
I was thinking about frame traps for a while yesterday, and happened to watch this match; Valle vs Cheeseface Immortal (Claw) at Midwest Championships. Watching it was a great lesson in frame trapping.
Valle circa 1998
Some quick notes:
1st round
00:27 He starts out with a jumping roundhouse into a tick throw, getting that first conditioning for the claw to mash tech throw.
00:52 Jumping roundhouse, walk forward mp into counterhit, throw
00:58 Jumping rh, walk forward, counterhit clp chp, dizzy
2nd round
01:25 Jumping rh into walk forward mp block string. This time Claw has been conditioned not to hit anything when put into block.
01:38 Another jump rh into walk forward crouch short crouch jab string. The Claw again doesn’t mash out anything, and gets scooped up by the tick throw followup.
01:53: jump rh, walk forward counterhit srk for the win. Not sure if he was gonna fadc that one.
2nd game
Valle does leave a lot of intentional gaps in his strings to get counterhits, be it with crouching strong, or standing strong. He also does this a lot with the opponent in the corner, perhaps taking advantage of the psychological disadvantage or panic of being trapped in the corner.
03:19, gets another walk forward jab counterhit off a jump in. The Claw jumps out of the throw, but gets swept for the KO.
Final notes:
Valle seems to take every opportunity to apply frame traps, at the same time continually mixing up the conditioning and the appropriate punishment, AND at the same time always doing it with safe jump timing AND with option selects. Whoa.
While I was processing all that he was doing, one thing that occurred to me about the practicality of these setups. A lot of these counterhit setups were coming off a single jumping roundhouse on block.
Now I have pretty bad hit confirm reactions, and I tend to err on the side of safe crouch jab crouch jab hit confirms. Now Valle’s not perfect either, and sometimes tries to throw when he was hitting, and vice versa, but I’m not sure if I can react fast enough to do a walk forward cmp frame trap off a single block jump roundhouse. I suppose I just need to forcefeed it into my game, and when it’s simply a natural part of my offense, my horrible hit confirm reaction time won’t matter as much.
Another thing that I probably need to test, is whether jump roundhouse , walk forward cmp/clp combos on hit anyway. Because the hit stun of jump in attacks in SF4 is so great in comparison to games like ST, I would guess that it probably does combo anyway. So you could probably just do it all the time without worrying about hit confirming, at least on characters without easy invincible reversals anyway.
Another thing that is amazing and probably particular to Valle’s Ryu, is that he does seem to get a lot of free jump ins. Which is probably a byproduct of his unorthodox pressure style. Not to take anything away from Cheeseface, but I’ve seen the same thing happen to top players like Keno, who is known for his reaction time and the Keno Eye!
Van Damme doesn't need to hit confirm, his hits do the confirming for him
One deceptively simple question that I’ve yet to find an answer to is: where do you look at on the screen during a match?
When I was just starting out in SF4, I spent most of my time looking directly at my character on the screen. This was mainly because I was more concerned about hitting my links and such. Over time, I realised that might not be the best approach. Since I play a zoning character, shouldn’t I be eyeballing my opponent 100% of the time for a jump?
I went on to read a few more articles on this matter, and the number of different approaches to eyeballing the screen is quite interesting.
Some people argue that it should be your style that dictates where you look at most of the time. For example if you play a rushdown character like Rufus, you’re probably going to be in your opponent’s face most of the time, or least trying to. Thus, looking at your character would allow you to maintain the consistency of your combo execution, as well as keeping a close tab on your opponent.
Parabellum (a Chun Li player) has an interesting point, choosing to look at the space in between the characters. He says that scientifically, human beings react the fastest to motion just within the range of their peripheral vision. So, looking at the space in between should allow you to continually gauge footsies distance, as well as in theory, react the fastest to a jump.
Personally, I have had similar experiences to what Parabellum discussed before. Sometimes I find myself staring hard at my opponent’s character, only to react somewhat sluggishly to a jump, whereas sometimes I’m focussing more on doing fireball feints such as standing short and crouching strong, and I react almost instaneously to my opponent’s jump just out of the edge in my vision.
I’d really like to get some personal feedback on this, what do you guys think? Do you have a strict philosophy to looking at the screen, or do you guys frequently change the target of your vision within a match?
Edit: From Maj’s incredible interview of James Chen at: http://sonichurricane.com/?p=4511
Maj: What part of the screen do you watch when you play?
jchensor: Mostly the opponent. I discovered this one time while at the arcade during college. One symptom of an impending migraine headache is that the blind spot in your eye (everyone has one) grows larger for some reason. And one day I was playing Alpha 3, my Guy vs. my friend’s Cody, and literally Guy disappeared from the screen.
From what I could tell, there was only Cody until I looked over back to my character. Guy would reappear, but every time I played, Guy would disappear. That’s kinda how I found out I look at my opponent more than my own character because the blind spot is always in the peripheral area of your vision, and it was my character that would keep disappearing. Needless to say, I got a migraine about an hour later, and it hurt like a mother.
A beautiful piece by Darry, from iplaywinner.com.
Now that SF4 is done and dead, and SSF4 is here, I thought it would be good to list the many moments that made 2009 such an awesome year for the Street Fighter spectator. (I can’t play SF that well, so I watch tons of videos instead).
Warning: being a Ryu main, there’s a lot of Ryu vids here.
What?!! Lariat got nerfed? At least we have each other Edmund.....
-Bison’s ex scissors kick is -8 on block. I should be able to punish it better than just hp srk.
-Gen’s ex rolling thingie is -3 on block. I need to test whether I can consistently reversal dp it, or maybe it could be range dependent such as Balrog’s lp dash straight, which is also -3, but unpunishable with dp from certain far ranges.
-Gen’s wall dive kick is very punishable, but he can try and hit lower on your body, which reduces punish opportunity.
-Ryu’s cmk can be used to go under and punish Bison’s followup after head stomp. Instead of focusing or a risky dp, I can always cmk dp it.
-Bison’s far standing mk and hk both have 6 frames of startup. His headstomp can cross up in the corner.
-Gen’s air kicks is very punishable, however crazyandy was screwing up my punish timing quite a bit by either hanging in the air for longer or dropping straight down unexpectedly. Causing me to miss a lot of chp, srk punishes. However, straight lp srk followed by Ultra seems quite reliable, and I don’t have to worry about him dropping too fast or too slow, and I getting an air reset hit off my chp.
-Empty jump throw shenanigans work pretty well on parry heavy goukens.
– All of Zangief’s green hands save for ex, is punishable on HIT.
-Gief’s clk has been nerfed a bit; it’s now a one frame link into itself with a four frame startup. Also, it’s only +1 on block, so clk clk strings are very easy to srk out of. (Very risky to overuse srking it though).
-Cody’s fadc to ultra whiffs on crouching.
-Ken’s forward mk leaves him at -2 on block. However his cmk has 4 frames of startup, one frame faster than Ryu. This is why if you try to stick out cmk it either loses or trades. Cmp which has 4 frame startup will always beat it though.
Chuck > cmp though
-Hakan’s forward rh is not safe on block.
-Akuma’s forward rh can be ducked by Ryu on second hit, which can be an easy punish. Akuma can cancel the forward rh into Raging Demon however, and catch your limb.
-Blanka’s electricity all leave him +frames on block. For instance, his lp electricity is +5 on block. Sticking out a normal will probably get you counterhit.
-I experienced this more in SSF4 than in vanilla, when trying to counterpoke Blanka balls with Ryu cmp, instead of a air reset, oftentimes I got a grounded cmp hit which I could combo into cmp chk. Not sure why that is, but maybe it’s because of the change in ball distance. Most often occurred on lp ball to throw shenanigans.
-Balrog’s Ultra can be dped in between the hits on block.
-Hakan’s slide beats Abel’s U2.
-Balrog’s ex uppercut is -1 on block, not punishable. His ex dash straight is -2, not punishable. All the dash lows are punishable, but ex dash low is only -3, very tight punish. Ryu’s Super should always punish it though. All his armour breaking dash low uppers are punishable except ex, which is -1.
-Cammy’s and Akuma’s divekicks and Rufus’s divekicks can be blocked low. Gouken’s must be blocked high however.
-cmk hado is actually almost never safe. Rog can ex headbutt through, Cody can zonk through it. Must mix it up a bit after cmk, hadoing every single time will get me headbutted.
-Fuerte’s slide after run leaves him at negative frame advantage, but slides off a neutral stance actually leave him at positive.
-DeeJay’s ex up kicks can be safe jumped, but it’s very very very tight. 4 frame startup!
-Dan’s Ultra 1 can be focused.
-You can use a shoto to do a meaty crouching short on Rufus, and if he does ex Messiah Kick on wakeup, you will get hit initially, but the rest of the Messiah Kick will whiff, and you can then dash up and punish.
-Ex tatsu only gets two hits on Balrog on a juggle, so it’s better to use ex fireball.
-ex tatsu beats Bison’s psycho crusher on wakeup!
With most of my opponents on psn being at the intermediate level and not truly high level, (I am perhaps significantly below intermediate), I find a lot of my offense being beaten by people mashing crouch tech.
I try and do a string into an overhead, I get crouching shorted out of my overhead. I walk up for a throw and get crouch shorted. You get the point.
I always think to myself, why are these guys mashing crouch tech so much? Aren’t they afraid of frame traps, of perhaps being baited into a crouch tech that could be punished into something big like a dp fadc ultra?
Then I realised: it absolutely makes sense to mash crouch tech because nobody they play is at the level to take advantage of their mashing with good consistent frame traps, so why not mash all day! It probably is a generally solid defensive strategy at our level.
Mariodood wrote an excellent article on this:
http://shoryuken.com/entry.php?b=307
The science behind a frame trap, is that throws come in frame 3. They beat normals that become active on the same frame. If you do a crouch tech, obviously then you have to know how many frames your character’s crouching short comes out in. For instance Ryu’s crouching short comes out in 4 frames.
The bad thing about a crouch tech, is that 4 initial frames (Let’s assume we’re crouch teching with Ryu). When you tech a throw, you have ten frames in which to tech. And since throw beats normal if occurring on the same frame, if the opponent tries to throw you from frame 1-4, you will get thrown during the startup of your crouch short. It is in your best interest to do what is called a “delayed crouch tech” which is crouch teching from frame 4-10.
This can actually nullify a lot of 50-50 games. Let’s take Ken’s ex tatsu on block for example. I’m not sure of the frame data, but for the sake of our discussion, let’s assume it’s even or +0 on block. Normally, if you tech after the ex tatsu on block, you’d beat a throw from Ken, but eat a SRK. Inversely if you just block, you’d block the SRK, but eat the throw right? Well if you do a delayed crouch tech you can actually beat both. Since Ken’s fp srk has a 3 frame startup, and a throw hits on the 3rd frame as well, all you need to do is a delayed crouch tech on frame 4, and you’d block the SRK as well tech the throw. (Assuming your crouch tech has a 3 frame crouch short).
Can't touch this!
At long last, I finally worked up the courage to head down to Box Hill for one of their tournaments.
I got seventh place!
But I didn’t win a single match.
Let me explain that to you: it was their 2 on 2 team tourney on 15th of March. My teammate Turkpac basically damn near OCVed every team. I was a glorified cheerleader, pumping him up before matches when he was moaning about being bad at the viper and rufus matches. He would then proceed to beast on the team. Maybe that’s my true Street Fighter talent; cheering on people who can actually play this game well.
I got to meet new people like Cactus, and Tian Khoo came down too. The Box Hill atmosphere is something to see, with characters like Carnage polishing off duck on rice on a stool beside him before his matches, a Let’s Go Justin chant for a honda player. It was great watching Cactus’s Sim too. I like watching smart Street Fighter, I like watching the brains whirr and impeccable decision after decision.
I finally got to meet Baz’s brother Ben, a Chun player. Now I have a LOT of trouble with this matchup, so one of the first things I did was to go up to Ben and ask for advice. And boy, did he dole it out. He covered a lot of things from smp to hazanshu, to shoto low forward footsies. Ben and Baz were two of the most helpful guys I met in scene, apart from Ali and his brothers.
Of course, I ended up playing Ben! Continue reading
One of the first tournaments I ever went to was the Galactic Circus tournament held in March 2010 with a cash prize of $1000!
The writeup can be found here: http://www.shadowloo.com/?p=1237
I wasn’t planning on going for the tournament, but as fate would have it, I somehow met Chris, the organiser of the tournament, on a psn chat room. Unbeknownst to me, this player Junzt a-Belle, was Chris, the same Ken player that I met on my one and only trip at the Crown Casino SF4 machines. (He played nothing but Balrog, which confused me even further).
He beat me the majority of the games, but I felt I took a while to adapt, and I got a few wins in the end. He had some bad tendencies, such as a quick trigger finger on headbutt, which gave me a lot of free damage. Long story short, he convinced me to go the tournament. (I have a sneaky feeling that he maybe threw some games to boost my confidence).
When I got there, I found out Junz was Chris, and I watched everybody settle down for some casuals. I was still new to the Melbourne scene then, and the only people I knew was; Somniac, the beastly bison I play often on psn, and Ali and his brothers who I met at an earlier event called Fight Nights. I also scoped out some excellent cosplay from the GC staff!
As you can probably see in the pictures they had a intimidating setup there, with me being new to tournaments, the way the screens are set up right in front of the crowd was a little scary.
But I was able to put my nerves aside, and I was one of the first players up. I got a mirrormatch against a Ryu player called Onegai. At the same time, Havok’s girlfriend Celia was having her match with another female player, and I felt a little lucky that their match would probably have most of the audience’s attention. Continue reading
One thing that I feel good about my Ryu at this stage is my consistency with basic combos.
Unlike a lot of online Ryus I play, who do combos like crossup jmk, hp srk fadc ultra without hit confirming, risking punishment and wasting meter, I always try and play safe by hit confirming my combos such as crossup jmk, clk, clp, srk fadc ultra.
I feel that after playing Ryu for so long I can hit these combos reasonably consistently and in the clutch. However, I feel that my current Ryu lacks damage. While being safe and hit confirming all day is good, I need to upgrade the damage of my combos.
I have been trying to do this in a few ways.
One of the setups that I use a lot is after a crossup combo either blocked or on hit, if I can get a untechable knockdown (most of the time through a tick throw on my blocked crossup), I will try and do a fake crossup or an ambiguous crossup with jfp after the throw.
And if it hits, I do cmp, chp, hk tatsu. Why this combo? Well this does 316 damage, and a boatload of stun. (Jhp clp clp srk only does 259 damage). It also is a lot more hit confirmable than Jfp, chp, srk, and if the opponent blocks I can throw after a single cmp, or continue into a cmp cmk hado blockstring.
After I land this combo, plus the stun from my earlier crossup hopefully, and the opponent will be precipitously near dizzy. Just adding this single combo to my game makes my Ryu that more dangerous, and has allowed me to garner quite a few more clutch comebacks.
Another thing that I’m working on, is maximising crossup damage. Most of the time in training mode, I will choose Ryu/Ken as my dummy. And basically, crossup jmk, clk, clp, hk tatsu whiffs on the skinny shotos. Me, being lazy, never bothered to research crossup combos on the rest of the cast, and therefore I would just do crossup jmk, clk, clp, srk on everybody.
That’s not good enough. To be good at Street Fighter 4, I can’t just rely on universal combos that work on everybody. I need character specific combos. So I’m currently in the process of testing crossup combos on every member of the cast with Ryu.
Some interesting notes after a crossup jmk:
clk clp chp tatsu doesn’t work on Ryu and Ken but it works on Akuma!
clk clp chp tatsu also doesn’t work on cammy, balrog and sakura.
However! cmp chp tatsu works on cammy! Weird.
I’m still in the process of testing, but there are a lot of wierd instances such as cmp chp tatsu whiffing but cmp cmp chk hitting.
Hopefully I will be back with some more numbers.
As many Australian SF players are aware of, Daigo Umehara is coming down to Sydney for the Evo APAC qualifiers to try to win a ticket to Evolution. Link: http://www.ozhadou.net
As I main Ryu, it would a dream fulfilled to get to play the premier Ryu in the world once in my lifetime.
My dilemma is however, as I did not even attend the Melbourne EVO APAC qualifiers, my only chance to play Daigo would be to join the masses of people moneymatching him at Sydney.
Obviously I would get to spectate an awesome tournament, play casuals, and see the Sydney FG scene, but is it really worth it to buy a plane ticket just to MM Daigo?
Edit: After the best bison in Melb, Somniac, told me that a return flight to Sydney is around 60 bucks, I think this is an opportunity I can’t pass up. I can tell my grandkids I got triple perfected by arguably the best Street Fighter player in the world!
after Daigo plays Guile at an capcom event vs Justin Wong. Lol.
BAM8
Being a Scrub 