SNES SSF2 semi-combo movie

[Neophos]

Might as well walk the plank, I figure. I apparently got an ok from Majestros to post here, so, here goes:

I'm making a playthrough of SSF2 for SNES that I (sooner or later) intend to publish at [[url=http://tasvideos.org TASVideos]]. It will (hopefully) not be a straight-up combo movie, but it will most likely feature a fair share of 'em. Big combos do impress people, after all. I'm not all that SF2-savvy myself, having mostly only played it casually. This is more a learn-as-I-go thing.

Anyway, what lead me here was a slight problem I had, which lead to asking Majestros if he had any solution to it considering his background in Guile combos. The combo is quite simple, but apparently impossible: Three Sonic Booms back to back. With use of a simple trick (holding both left and right at the same time, you can walk to the right and still charge), I've managed to connect with the last Sonic Boom four frames too late, with no obvious way of getting it out just a few frames faster. The current formula is that the hit stun of two Sonic Booms, along with 8 frames of negative edge gain (although, if I'm reading the articles on Sonichurricane right, the charge gets nullified when the Sonic Boom is released, which I guess negates the bonus) simply isn't enough to both charge and release yet another Sonic Boom. The obvious ways to accomplish the combo would be to either get more hit stun on one of the Sonic Booms or somehow less charge time on the last one. According to my own (possibly flawed) research, counter hits and/or ducking doesn't add any hit stun (in some cases, it even seemingly removed one frame of hit stun from the blow), so no bonus to be fetched there. Charge times seem constant regardless of when I try to execute the combo, so either they removed the randomness from it stated in T. Akiba's data, or I'm either the luckiest or unluckiest guy on earth regarding them.

Well, enough digressions and nattering, here's the current state of the run: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cde3ACumAE4

Oh yeah, hello everyone, first post here, nice to meet you all, hope I'm not breaking any community rules, etc. Most likely, you won't know me from anywhere.

[Maj]

Regarding negative edge, i wasn't using it at all when testing this and i'm fairly certain that i was getting exactly the same result as you did in that Blanka clip. In fact there might even be a very slight charge cooldown period in certain situations, preventing you from charging another Sonic Boom immediately after you throw one.

Regarding charge randomness, it's also quite possible that they removed it in the SNES version. Capcom probably had a completely different team working on those console ports, especially since they were released so long after the arcade versions. It wouldn't surprise me if they standardized or simplified a ton of things. The craziest thing about the SNES/Genesis versions is how many jabs you can chain together. They seem to cause no pushback at all.

Counterhits definitely don't increase hit stun in the SF2 series. Crouching is a little bit more mysterious, but i think the general rule is that you only get a hit stun bonus when you hit a crouching opponent with an air attack. All ground attacks cause the same amount of hit stun against crouching opponents as they do against standing opponents, with the exception of overheads in ST - and it's not too surprising that overheads behave like jump attacks.

Even though that triple Sonic Boom combo doesn't work, you can definitely do LP Sonic Boom, walk forward, LP Sonic Boom, walk forward, s.HP xx Sonic Boom because the s.HP hit impact freeze will give you plenty of time to complete the charge.

[desk]

I can't help at all with the sonic boom thing but guile can do loads of cool stuff in SSF2.

welcome to the forum dude.

[Maj]

It's funny how much this triple Sonic Boom combo doesn't want to exist. I thought of using Vega's wall leap setup to push Guile ahead of an LP Sonic Boom, then have Guile hit Vega with s.HP slightly before the LP Sonic Boom connects, at the exact distance from the corner so that when Guile cancels s.HP into another LP Sonic Boom, it barely combos. This should create the same situation as above, with the added advantage of pre-charging for the third Sonic Boom during the s.HP hit impact freeze. Unfortunately, thinking about it some more, i realized that the game probably won't even accept the cancel input for the second Sonic Boom until the first has connected, which totally removes the hit impact freeze charge time bonus from the equation.

Anyway, have you tried incorporating five Sonic Booms into one combo? That's kind of the holy grail of SF2 series Guile combos. You might even be able to do it without using the F+B emulator feature, due to the way SNES SSF2 lets you string together so many jabs. Something like meaty LP Sonic Boom, whiff B+MK knee, Sonic Boom, c.LP -> s.LP xx Sonic Boom, walk forward, s.LP x3 -> c.LP xx Sonic Boom, walk forward, s.LP x3 -> c.LP xx Sonic Boom?

[Neophos]

Sadly, it seems the combo is impossible in the SNES version. By checking memory addresses, the following has been revealed to me:

- The SNES version has exactly 60 frames of charge time. This number resets when the attack starts, meaning you'll earn at most one single bloody frame by firing via buffered negative edge.
- A Sonic Boom apparently got a whooping 34 frames of hit stun. According to T. Akiba, a Sonic Boom got 10 frames of start up, and according to various sources on SRK, the second and later hits of a combo got one frame hit stun less then the first. So the grand total is 67 frames of available time, and 70 is needed for the combo.

So, yeah, it doesn't work on SNES. However, in the arcade version, the Sonic Boom requires but 54 (sometimes one more) frames of charging, and if the hit stun is the same, then the combo could perhaps be possible in the arcade version! Kinda late for that though, I guess.

Desk - Oh my, that trick is snazzy. You oughta be able to pull of some fun-looking stuff from that. Definitely worth including. Thanks for the tip!

Maj - Yeah, I tried making making one with six, but the bloody dizzy-limit always gets in the way.

[desk]

So dude, is it feasible to manipulate the AI into a situation where you could set up the floating glitch? Everything that was done by akuma in that vid can be done by guile by the way (in case that wasn't clear). It was just easier for me to record with akuma.

Is it possible that sagat has higher stun than gief for that last combo? Maybe the values differ slightly on the snes.

[Neophos]

Getting the AI to stay out of neutral would perhaps be a bit hard, but I could of course just perform the trick against "another" player and then let the other character get a combo out of it.

Re: Sagat. Since I don't know exactly how the dizzy system works (the only info I can find on it is HF's "8 point" system, and I don't know how much of it applies elsewhere), I seem to deal a lot of damage with the first dizzy-combo, resulting in him dying from the fifth Sonic boom or by the jab before the sixth Sonic boom. Guess I have to search for the memory addresses that keep track of the dizzy gauge in order to be able to set it up properly without hours of droning trial and error. Research, research, research.

[desk]

Yeah I was just thinking of the initial jumping set up (getting them to land on a sonic boom and cr. forward). Even if they dropped out of it immediately, it would still look pretty good.

[Neophos]

Oh yeah, getting them manipulated to jump like proper idiots should hopefully not be all that hard.

Finding the dizzy counter (...well, parts of it) was easier then I thought. Shame I don't have all that much experience in fighting-game-math, but anyway, as far as I can tell (and assuming that it really is a dizzy gauge and not simply a number that happens to be related):

- The gauge decreases by 1 unit every frame, and every hit increases it by a certain amount. When the gauge reaches a certain amount in total, the character is dizzied (although this seems wacky and swings wildly. Needs more research). Generally, for the first dizzy, this seems to be between 200 and 250, but if they have been hit beforehand, they can be dizzied way earlier. Obviously, there is some extra gauge that keeps track of some longer lingering effect of each hit which I'll have to find.
- After being dizzied, there is some limit regarding when you start receiving dizzy damage again. I believe a certain amount is cancelled out, with the last hits dizzy damage being rounded down to 0 regardless of how much it dealt. I.E., if it cancels out 100 dizzy, and you deal 50 + 40 + 100, it'll result in 0 dizzy damage, and the next hit will deal the usual amount of dizzy.
- When being combo'ed after a dizzy combo, you seem to first dizzy at 260+ dizzy damage, and probably upwards 300 with characters like Zangief. So there's probably a third gauge that awards "dizzy defense" after you've been dizzied.
- Each attack seems to deal a very specific amount of dizzy damage that never fluctuates as far as I've been able to tell. So I believe it's a fair guess to believe that all of the randomness from the arcade series is gone in the SNES port. No idea if that's positive or not.

Research, research, research.

[Maj]

Wow, that's the farthest anyone has gone as far as adding numbers to our ghetto understanding of how dizzy works in the SF2 series. Thank you sir.

So maybe your six-Boom combo would work if you wait longer before each jab. But that's really weird that dizzy isn't random in the SNES version. Is damage fixed too?

Regarding that float glitch, i always wondered if you could jab or Sonic Boom a floating opponent and then air throw them when they drop. It wouldn't be a combo since they could probably escape and since the air throw could only grab them if they weren't in hit stun or air reel, but i think it would look awesome in a speedrun. Especially if the air throw dizzies.

[Neophos]

It seems I spoke too early. Lack of information caused me to jump to conclusions, but I believe I have it sorted out a bit better now. Let's hope this is more correct:

- The random system is perhaps not as wacky as I first though. The first gauge I discovered is not a gauge of dizzy _damage_, it's a dizzy damage _timer_. Whenever a hit connect, it adds dizzy damage and a time limit to use it. The timer is the aforementioned gauge. Whenever the timer hits 0, all dizzy damage disappears. However, as far as I can tell, dizzy is indeed random to a degree.

An example: Connecting with a Sonic Boom on Blanka deals 7-9 (from what I've seen) dizzy damage, and puts 100 ticks on the timer. If we wait for 100 ticks (each take exactly one frame, lag frames of course not counted), the accumulated dizzy points are returned to 0. However, if we connect with another attack, let's take a jab, within those 100 ticks, it adds to the dizzy damage (it generally deals 1-4, but sometimes deals 0 as well) and also puts another 40 ticks on the timer. As long as we keep connecting with new attacks within these ticks, the dizzy gauge will keep accumulating. When the dizzy gauge reaches 31 he gets dizzied. This resets both gauges, and (speculation) fills another gauge which I haven't found yet, which ticks down, and first when it reaches 0 can you again recieve dizzy damage. Since being attacked makes you able to recieve dizzy damage earlier then just waiting, I assume that each hit also removes a certain amount from this gauge. I will keep looking to see if I can find it.

- While not as wacky, then it certainly is more random then my previous post would have it to. I've had strings of jabs dealing 0 dizzy damage to Chun Li and jabs dealing 4 each to Zangief, making him dizzy with way less attacks. They both seem to dizzy on 31, though, which strikes me as kind of odd. I'm guessing this is decided from some RNG somewhere in there, and getting to that would probably require disassembling, something I do not have enough knowledge to do. With Guile, here's some quick stats (that may be wrong):

Ground jabs: 0 - 4 damage, 40 ticks
Aerial jab: 1 - 4, 40 ticks
Ground shorts: 0 - 4, 40 ticks
Aerial shorts (both vertical and diagonal): 2 - 6, 40 ticks
Close standing roundhouse: 12 - 16, 80 ticks
Sonic Boom: 6 - 10, 100 ticks

Sonic Booms deals decent dizzy damage, but more importantly, it has a huge timer, so after a combo with a Sonic Boom or two, you have plenty of time to dizzy the opponent. I'll try to throw together a brute force-bot in Lua to test every single attack and note their dizzy damage and timer.

[Maj]

Yeah that definitely seems a lot closer to my experience. Getting hit by a projectile during matches always made me feel like i was in danger of getting dizzy for a long time - much longer than when getting hit by normal attacks.

The part about Gief and Chun having equal dizzy limits doesn't surprise me either. I've never noticed any increased dizzy resistance between opponents. If there is a difference, it's gotta be situational or insignificant because the same basic touch of death combos work consistently against the entire cast of any SF2 series game.

The most interesting finding is the fact that light attacks can cause zero dizzy damage. I've had that suspicion since making my Guile video, because it seemed like i could always add jabs after a combo without dizzying them even though i knew they were literally one breath away from falling dizzy. There were also a lot of combos in my video where i used so many jabs inbetween Sonic Booms that even if the jabs had a minimum dizzy damage of one point, there's simply no way that the opponent could have remained standing until the end.

It's also a good bet that whatever the dizzy damage range is for super moves in ST, the minimum goes all the way down to zero. How else would you explain six-hit supers at the end of identical combos dizzying on the first hit at times and sometimes not dizzying at all?

[Maj]

By the way i don't know what's up with T.Akiba's charge info, but SSF2 was much more consistent in my experience - 60 frames for a Sonic Boom every single time. There were some situations where it fluctuated by +/- 1 frame, but usually only when there was a ton of complicated stuff going on, projectile impact slowdown was in effect, etc.

You're far more likely to find randomness in the number of frames you can wait between special move command inputs - how many frames you can walk forward before doing a Flash Kick, for example. Also if i'm right about there being a cooldown period before you're allowed to recharge the same move twice in a row, i wouldn't be surprised if that period was slightly randomized as well.

Another weird case of randomness deals with hit stun. SSF2 Ken has kind of a cool three-hit corner combo against certain characters - Bison for sure, maybe Guile too. The combo is c.HP xx LP Hadoken, c.HK sweep. In order to recover in time to link c.HK, Ken has to be at the maximum distance where his FB will combo. It's only possible if the c.HP is the first hit because you'll need the extra +1 frame advantage that you get for making it the first hit in the combo, so you can't add a jump attack to the beginning. Anyway, the weird thing is that once you find that necessary optimal position, the LP FB will only combo about half the time.

One-frame links are really consistent in Street Fighter games, so it can't be as simple as there being a +/- 1 frame hit stun variance. Maybe it has to do with pushback or maybe there's some randomness in the fireball's exact starting location while Ken is being propelled backwards.

[Neophos]

Since you brought up buffers, let's see what I can find on the subject:

- Every special got it's very own private buffer. The buffers seem to range between 8 and 15 frames. Quite a gap. What's amusing, though, is that this buffer, once activated, ticks down even if you hold the direction. This means, with either a decent helping of awful luck or frame-perfect timing, you can press the next direction exactly when the previous buffer hits 0, and thus not get the special, even though your input was correct! Awesome! Here's a Snes9x movie-file as a demonstration. Just play it frame by frame to see that even with the right inputs, the dragonpunch doesn't come out. Bloody great programming.

- I've been unable to find any limit for recharging except a few quite obvious things: The charge counter resets to 60 when the startup of the move begins. I.E., you can't begin charging a new Sonic boom before releasing the previous one. You need at least 1 neutral frame between changing directions (back -> forward) for the game to accept the input. Well, that's pretty much it. Doesn't seem to be any other limits to charging.

About projectiles position: Indeed, there seems to be some weird random factor here. Testing it with Guile and Zangief sitting right beside eachother, the Sonic Boom seems unable to hit every other frame. When released (example numbers) on frame 10, it hits on frame 32. However, when released on frame 11, it hits on frame 34, and likewise on frame 12. So apparently, the Sonic Boom goes through some two-frame cycle for if its hitbox becomes active one frame sooner or not. From testing the combo you described, the same thing does indeed seem to apply to Ken. The combo doesn't work if you start it on "uneven" frames, but works all the time if you do it on "even". This game is horribly programmed. I understand how Sirlin had such problems when tweaking it.

[Maj]

Right, i was aware of most of that charge stuff. The best charge character combos are the ones which introduce subtle new tricks for bending or sidestepping the rules.

Making the buffer range so wide is one of the few choices that absolutely doesn't make sense to me. However, it's not bad programming to make the inputs expire. You don't want players to be able to hold F after doing a 360 and get a walking SPD simply by pressing P. The bottom line is that eight frames is plenty of time to move from one input to the next.

The projectile startup fluctuation is weird. I don't know know what to say about that, but it's easy enough to manipulate with tool assistance and i can't imagine it making a difference in a real match. One in a million, maybe.

None of this stuff impacts match gameplay. People love to complain about the buffer range randomness ever since it was brought up during STHD development, but no good player needs more than 2/3 of a second to pull off a DP. In fact i bet that most good players can do it in 1/6 of a second or less. Of course they should have eliminated that randomness when the opportunity arose to make changes in STHD, but that doesn't make the classic games any worse for intermediate/expert players. It sounds much worse on paper than it is in practice. The internet loves to blow things out of proportion.

[Neophos]

Oh, I totally agree with that pretty much everything I've figured out so far doesn't affect the game in any way whatsoever. With 8 frames seemingly being the lower border, there's enough of a buffer range for anything in matchesn. It's just... it must have some really odd code in there. Making everything so random must take a lot more effort then just hardcoding it, and if everything is as bizzarely coded as the random engine, then it must've been quite the mess to figure out how to fix stuff.

About the inputs: I wasn't talking about them expiring at the end or in the middle: I was talking about the beginning. If you walk forward with Ryu, the buffer starts counting down, which means that with some really lousy luck, you could miss your dragonpunch after walking forward for 7~14 frames. Walk forward, dragonpunch probably isn't the best move in the game to do, though, so it probably haven't happened all that often. Although I do think I've heard that Chun Li got a similar bug on her super as the one you've mentioned?

Well, I'd expect you to know the majority of it. I'm still quite new at trying to figure out SF, so I'd be way more surprised if I actually figured out something that you didn't know.

[Maj]

Nah, i don't believe that. Everyone has their own individual style, which is what makes combo videos interesting. Research is important so you don't end up reinventing the wheel over and over. Experience adds polish and also helps save time, but it's not an essential ingredient. If you want to make something cool, all you need is motivation and patience. Creativity will show up on its own. You can't force it anyhow.

Seriously, if i thought that nobody new could teach me anything new, i wouldn't bother talking to anybody outside of the same four people i've known since the beginning, and this forum certainly wouldn't exist either. The fact is, there are so few combo video makers out there that you can never assume someone else will publish whatever concept you have in mind. It could (and often does) take years.

Anytime you're working on a combo video, there's always that constant worry that someone out there is recording the same exact combo - that you have to hurry up and release your video before someone else beats you to the punch. But i can count on one hand the number of times that's actually happened to me. Even back when i was taping CvS2 combos on a Dreamcast pad, it was incredibly rare for me to have to abandon a combo due to the idea showing up in someone else's video. Every one of those rookie videos has three or four combos that if i hadn't recorded them, i still don't think anyone else would have done it in all this time. It's not like they were hard. It's just a style thing.

[Neophos]

Well, those are some encouraging words. I guess I'll stick to my guns and see what I can come up with.

- The SNES version suffer from not being widescreen like the arcade games. Noticeably, Blanka's crouching hitbox is much smaller in comparison, and I've been unable to get T. Hawk's crouching fierce hit twice backwards, or indeed get any backwards-facing attacks with Guile at all jumping over Blanka. A bit of a shame, but eh, I guess it won't do that much of a difference. Or maybe I just don't know the secret tricks of getting proper spacing of backwards-hitting attacks. Talking about backwards attacks, I seem to have problems getting charge attacks to fire when doing backwards attacks. If I do it at the beginning, they work just fine, but if I try to do an attack into the special, it just doesn't want to come out. Is there some odd kind of timing or trick for that?

. Amusing (but contributing even more to the "SF2 is programmed oddly as hell"-factor) thing: Chun Li's Kikoken does not demand a 1-frame break between the direction-shift in order to fire. I have no idea if this has any use at all, but it's weird that the rules for Kikoken are different then the rules for Sonic Boom.

[Maj]

That's weird, i can't seem to get Guile's backwards attack setup working against Blanka either. It works against crouching Honda - oddly enough, only when 1P Guile jumps from left to right, which is opposite the way it needs to be done in arcade versions. I guess they redrew some of the hitboxes for the SNES version. Btw, Blanka's c.MP recovery in the SNES version is ridiculous. (And you were right, i am terrible at spelling that word.)

I bet you've already seen Freediver's Re-dizzy Special, but it's definitely worth watching if you haven't. It contains a lot of good SNES SSF2 stuff that you might be able to use as filler when you need to get someone dizzy, or when the opponent doesn't have enough life to do something fancier. Of course the SNES stuff in Vid of Dreams is awesome but most of it doesn't involve Guile.

Are you considering a T.Hawk run as well?

[Neophos]

From the TASVideos forum, someone recommended me I'd go through every character instead of just using Guile, to show off as much of the game as possible. Since I don't think I'd be able to keep a Guile run fresh through all 12 opponents, I figured "why not?", and since T. Hawk got some quite cool cross up tricks, I figured I'd show them off. The run is after all made with a crowd that knows speedruns, but not necesarily Street Fighter 2, in mind.

Oh, that Freediver video was nice. Showed of lots of neat stuff. Thanks!

E Honda, eh? Shame he doesn't seem to get hit by T Hawk's double c.fierce either, though.

[Maj]

Wait, does that mean you're going to switch characters every match? You'd have to play nothing but versus matches to do that. Is that allowed?

[Neophos]

As long as the game is beaten at the end of the movie and nothing but controller input is used to ensure that, it's all allowed. The main inspiration for that is from the very entertaining Mortal Kombat 2 superplay at TASVideos. It is, after all, a fighting game run, so keeping things entertaining is much more important than simply being fast. And, well, the worst thing that can happen is that it won't be published officially at the site. For me, it's just practice and for fun, so it's not that important to succeed, but more just to learn.

[Maj]

Crazy! Yeah i agree that X.C.O.P.Y. Twelve would probably be the most entertaining character for a 3S run, but nobody else in Street Fighter is as convenient as Shang Tsung. Whether or not your speedrun gets published, i'm definitely looking forward to seeing what it ends up looking like.

[Neophos]

I haven't really worked on the video this new year, instead mostly being bugged out by the mechanics of the game.

Also, I've been having problems with some combos. I don't know if it's the port or me, but I've been unable to combo anything, even a jab, after Boxer's dashing uppercut, even though every source on the internet talks about his glorious dashing uppercut combos (including two of them in a row!). Sadly, the vast majority (or perhaps even simply _everyone_) who knows stuff about SF2 uses the arcade versions, so the amount of information on the SNES versions seem to be a bit lacking. Know anyone with lots of knowledge about whatever changes were made in the ports to SNES, Maj?

[Maj]

Haha, nice clips. Some of that stuff exists in arcade versions, like Blanka's hitbox being a lot smaller than it looks. T.Hawk's j.LP, j.LK, and j.HK can't hit crouching Blanka in the arcade version either, but the others can even though both pairs of jumping light and medium attacks look identical. It's not that unusual for different moves with recycled sprites to have completely different hitboxes in Street Fighter games.

Blanka's c.MP looks completely different in the SNES version because its actual animation got cut to save cartridge space or something. Whenever that's happened, the results are usually weird in one way or another. Whoever was responsible for making those decisions didn't know how to balance new attacks so those moves tend to be really good or really bad.

As for Balrog, the frame advantage is definitely there so it's an issue of range. I got s.LK xx LK Dash Upper, s.MK to connect against Fei Long and s.LK xx LK Dash Upper, c.MP to connect against T.Hawk in the SNES version, but it looks like c.MP isn't cancelable on SNES. Against Zangief, i got c.LK xx LK Dash Upper, c.MK but i don't think there's enough time to charge for an LP Dash Straight to link after that. I'm pretty sure it would combo though. Dash Upper has less charge time than Dash Straight, but it doesn't combo as a link at that range unfortunately. You might also want to try the other fat characters - Dhalsim, Guile, and Honda.

[Neophos]

Dhalsim, one of the most anorexic characters ever in fighting games, is considered a fat character in terms of hitboxes? Awesome, man.

There is time to charge the dashing straight if you abuse the fact that it has more charge time - By executing the low LK before the dashing straight has finished charging, you are able to still do the dashing uppercut by abusing the buffer range, but you can begin charging for the next dashing straight before the crouching LK even hits. However, in my quick test, in the crouching LK > LK dash upper, crouching MK, LP dashing straight combo against Zangief, the dashing straight connects one frame too late due to the distance it has to travel. Hopefully, this is just a spacing error by me and the combo is indeed possible.

Got any more information on those removed attacks? If all of them are as weird as Blanka's crouching MP, they sound like they could be great fun.

[Maj]

Dhalsim has to be a fat character for balance purposes. He's already hard enough to reach so he shouldn't have the added benefit of having a tiny hitbox. If you land a jump attack against him, every character should be able to make it hurt. Anyway hitboxes aren't not based on their waist sizes but rather their stance animations. Dhalsim doesn't have a compact stance (and neither does Fei Long).

As for the moves that got removed, here are a few: Honda's s.MP, Chun's close s.MP, Guile's c.LP, Guile's vertical jumping punches, Blanka's c.MP, Blanka's s.MK, and Zangief's s.MP, but i might have missed a couple. Blanka's low strong is probably the one that stands out the most. You can do bootleg dizzy combos like crossup j.HK, close s.MP, far s.MP, c.MP against fat characters. Or just kill someone with that move so he gets stuck in that recovery pose for a full second.

[desk]

I think ryu and ken's cr. strong was removed as well. I seem to remember it looking exactly like a jab.

[Maj]

Nah you're thinking of SF2WW (and SF3 as well). Actually SNES WW had a ton of moves missing, which is weird considering the fact that it only had eight full characters to worry about. Maybe they got better at sprite compression.

[desk]

damn, you're right. I assumed all of the snes versions would have been the same.