SF4 Combo Engine Investigation

[ZenFire]

I believe it does take time to go from crouching to standing and crouching to jumping in most Capcom games. However it doesn't take time to go from crouching to reversals. What happens in that Rock/Blanka example is that crouching characters are fatter than standing ones, so Blanka's bounce-off point happens further away than it would if Rock had been standing.

Thanks man, I finally get that. Last night I did some frame measurements for Cammy and then did a control run with Ryu to see if my frame data gathering method was accurate, and it was. During that time I also found that I'm wrong about the extra frame needed to jump, "there is no such frame" is my current standpoint.

Also, there's this weird thing about counter hits. In CvS2 is it was +2 for light attacks, +3 for mid and +4 for hard attacks. SF4 almost follows that same logic except there seem to be exceptions, which I wasn't expecting. So far only Cammy data, but this is what I found.

Code: Select all

	start	adv	counterhit
c.lp	3	4	+5 CH
c.lk 	3	2	+3 CH
c.mp	5	3	
c.mk	6	1	+4 CH
c.hp	6	7	+11 CH
			
lp	3	4	
mp	7		
mk	7		
			
close lp	3	4	
close lk	4	5	+5 CH
close mp	4	6	+9 CH
close mk	4		
close hp	4	3	+6 CH
			
HK spike	5		
HK drill	7		

I don't want to give you any extra work but i am kinda curious how many impact frames a lvl3 Focus Attack causes. Connect with one of those and dash early, then count the number of frames the attacker stays frozen, from initial contact to dash startup. I'd like to have an estimate of how many frames of charge time you could get out of that.

I'll try and do that tonight.

RESULTS: 32 frames from FA3 impact to first frame of dash.
Though since you can input the dash so early, you can start charging 'way' before the impact, no?

[Maj]

Yeah, i don't know. Sometimes during Challenge Mode combos i messed up a Focus Cancel and tried to dash out of it late, but it would give me the dash after the attack connected. If it turns out that you can input the dash at any point during the attack animation, that'll be a huge charge time bonus. On the other hand it might not be necessary because 32 frames is already a lot of time. If you add to that the crumple stun period, you can probably get a charge move immediately after a dash.

With Bison it's really easy to do Focus Attack -> dash, c.MK xx Psycho Crusher but i haven't been able to connect with Psycho Crusher by itself. I'd be surprised if it turned out to be impossible with a program pad.

[fullmetalross]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rRSgmaY ... annel_page

Madteaparty is a monster. I haven't messed with cammy but the double dive kicks were hot as was the cr.fp, cr.mk link.

Random combo edit: Rufus can combo off his lp snake strike on some people. so on E.Honda you can do (in corner) dp+lp, st.lk, st.hk, dp+lp, ultra. Pretty dope. I haven't tested this much but you can link a hp after the snake strike. So further away from the corner do. dp+lp, st.hp xx qcf+kk,lk, FADC dp+lp, ultra. I don't know if the ultra will juggle after that but I assume it will.

Edit again just cause no one else has posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfaPbxoH ... bscription

pretty much par for the course. Except for the first fuerte combo... that's sick. I wonder if other stuff like that works.

[Maj]

So what do you guys think of SF4's combo video future? Have we hit the final boundary or just a minor wall?

While i'm here, i think i'll babble about SF4 combo ideas for a bit.

1) Is there any chance of constructing an SF4 Cammy combo that uses a cross-under Cannon Spike to set up another Cannon Spike juggle?

2) Is there any way of interrupting the last hit of Abel's ultra to see if he can combo a normal throw or command throw? Maybe that last roundhouse kick works like SF3 Alex's Flash Chop. (Or maybe that grab at the end of Abel's ultra is actually a non-throw hit.)

[Maj]

Something kinda interesting happened today. Abel's lvl3 Focus Attack traded with Ryu's EX Hurricane Kick and it looked like Ryu was frozen there next to Abel for kind of a long time. I'm sure the same result can be obtained using almost any Focus Attack. There's gotta be someone who can turn this into an elaborate meaty juggle setup.

[error1]

well I have been practicing scripting some of the harder challenges (like Sagat's fake kick). So i'll try some of these ideas when I'm finished going through the hard trials
Talking about floating glitches, have you seen what happens if Seth is knocked out of his QCB+K move.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fE33Fe2474

[Maj]

Haha sweet. I'd love to see what happens if Seth follows that up with another attack.

Along similar lines, i found a legit setup against Gen. When his PPP stance ultra trades against an airborne opponent, it instantly grounds the opponent. So you can do stuff like trade Bison's HP Psycho Crusher then juggle with EX Psycho Crusher midscreen.

I tried trading the first hit of Ryu's EX Hurricane Kick but sadly nothing links afterwards. Tried s.LP, reversal DP, reversal EX DP, and reversal super. It would have been nice because Ryu's EX Hurricane Kick pulls inward, so there's no separation between Ryu and Gen after the trade.

Sagat's fake kick is a lot easier if you buffer it into landing animation after a non-empty jump.

[error1]

Looks like the hackers have started working on sf4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzTqDlYeWZM

So far they have figured out how to change to the alt outfits, switch around movelists, and change colors. I'm guessing Capcom underestimated them by how easy it is to do.

[Maj]

Hm, you'd think there'd be a ton of potential in that kinda thing, but it gets old surprisingly fast. I look forward to the one clever video that will eventually emerge from this mess.

[Maj]

This is kind of a dumb idea that probably belongs in a randomness video if it works. In every SF game, you can throw a fireball right as you're about to get hit by an oncoming projectile and yours will still make it through. It's actually a useful interrupt setup that you see in a lot of combovids.

Imagine this: SF4 Guile has zero life and he's halfscreen away from Ryu who has a few pixels left. Ryu throws a fierce fireball at Guile, who responds with fierce Sonic Boom canceled into FK super late enough that the Sonic Boom makes it through the Hadoken. Then Guile's super avoids the hit. The Sonic Boom kills Ryu and the FK super either whiffs or the second part connects after Ryu's knocked out.

Basically the goal was to hit Ryu with a Sonic Boom.

(Except it might not work with Guile because his fireball appears too close to him. Maybe Dan?)

[error1]

no it won't work. I tried every combination of characters. The opponent's fireball has to be way to close and there just isn't any time for input before it hits you. The same basic idea is possible with c. viper's ground pound rather then a fireball but it doesn't look as cool.

[Maj]

Aw, that sucks. Thanks for testing it so thoroughly though.

Man when is Japan gonna show up? It's been an entire year! Getting tired of waiting. Everyone's jumping on the SF4 bandwagon except the combo people.

[error1]

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4C6JQ1IF
I recorded these videos but I just decided to encode them, this was as close as I could get.

[Maj]

Whoa, what happens in that second clip? Regular Sonic Boom gets killed by Sagat's EX FB then Guile's super passes through the rest?

It's kinda difficult to tell what's going on with the hit count because SF4 doesn't freeze immediately when KO happens. It looks like Guile kills Sagat, then manages to connect a second time before the screen freezes. If that's the case then those two hits plus the two from the second somersault would account for all four total.

Nice clips though. This kind of content would make a really entertaining video. I remember people loved those grainy oldschool 3S randomness videos that came out after everyone stateside had given up on the game.

[onReload]

I remember people loved those grainy oldschool 3S randomness videos that came out after everyone stateside had given up on the game.

Still do, still want to make another one.

But yeah it's that the Sonic Boom eats one hit of the EX Tiger Shot, then the super's invincibility goes through the rest of it, hitting Sagat, leaving one lonely Tiger Shot to float away. At least that's what I think I'm seeing.

[error1]

I'm really not sure where all those hit's come in, I wasn't trying to do anything fancy

I found a fairly easy way to get the background off an image so tell me if you have a use for it
here is my test image

[ShinjiGohan]

its mugen time lol

[Maj]

Haha you could be a superstar in the mugen community. They would build shrines in your honor (out of Magneto's torso and Wolverine's arms).

Why's Ryu so small though? He looks so much bigger on my teevee.

[error1]

It's a little easier to deal with that way. I just captured it at half my normal resolution so I guess it's normal size if your playing at 640x512. 360 is a 720p for this I think, It wouldn't be much trouble to record at that resolution.

As for MUGEN that would take around 1000 frames per char I estimate. That's would be a little to much work with this method. And semi transparent things like dust would need a lot of work. As sf4 modding gets better I could see it becoming trivial to MUGEN.

[Maj]

Somehow i ended up spending an hour trying to pull off Guile's ultra after his DF+HK launcher. Why does it have so much startup? It's probably possible with a program pad but i couldn't do it on a standard Xbox 360 controller. Although i know i was getting really close when i was trading it against Ryu's j.LP and trying to do the command as slowly as possible.

While i was trying that though, i got reversal ultra to combo after an HK Flash Kick trade against Ryu's jump jab. 418 damage! (Less than a full ultra.)

[error1]

No dice, even trading vs a close jab I couldn't get a slow enough input. I think it would work if the game allowed for charge segmenting like some other capcom games but it doesn't seem to. I'm afraid Guile's HSK is not in the same class as Sagat's.

[Maj]

How far can you spread out the inputs? It's like charge DB, DF+HK, wait, DB, wait, DF, wait, U, wait, KKK right? I just figured it'd be possible since SF4 has such a huge reversal buffer window.

[error1]

I found the most I could spend between inputs and have the move still come was around 35millsec, aprox two frames. But you have to remember you have 11 frames of start up for the kick then 13 frames of hit stun. I would be surprised if you could delay the input for more then 15 frames

[Maj]

Dude that can't be right. It's somewhere around 8 frames (at least) between individual inputs for SF2 games, CvS games, SFA games, etc.

[error1]

actually looking at it I had a bigger delay then 35 due to the way I scripted it, it was closer to 70
Sleep, 35
Send, {left up}
Sleep, 35
Send, {Right doWn}

rather then

Sleep, 70
Send, {left up}{Right doWn}


that's true you can delay individual commands around 160ms but there is a limit of how much you can delay the ultra.
so this will do his ultra

Code: Select all

4:: 
Send, {left doWn}
Send, {down doWn}
Sleep, 900

Send, {left up}
sleep, 70
Send, {Right doWn}
Sleep, 70
Send, {Right up}{left doWn}
Sleep, 65
Send, {left up}{Right doWn}
Sleep, 65
Send, {doWn up}{up doWn}
Sleep, 35
Send, {v down}
Sleep, 22
Send, {Right up}
Send, {up up}
Sleep, 1
Send, {v up}
return

but this will not

Code: Select all

4:: ;boom DOUBLE FLASH
Send, {left doWn}
Send, {down doWn}
Sleep, 900

Send, {left up}
sleep, 70
Send, {Right doWn}
Sleep, 70
Send, {Right up}{left doWn}
Sleep, 65
Send, {left up}{Right doWn}
Sleep, 70
Send, {doWn up}{up doWn}
Sleep, 35
Send, {v down}
Sleep, 22
Send, {Right up}
Send, {up up}
Sleep, 1
Send, {v up}
return

but your right in that this also does his ultra

Code: Select all

1:: 
Send, {left doWn}
Send, {down doWn}
Sleep, 900

Send, {left up}{doWn up}
Send, {Right doWn}{down doWn}
Sleep, 160
Send, {Right up}{left doWn}
Sleep, 50
Send, {left up}{Right doWn}
Sleep, 45
Send, {doWn up}{up doWn}
Sleep, 35
Send, {v down}
Sleep, 22
Send, {Right up}
Send, {up up}
Sleep, 1
Send, {v up}
return

[Maj]

that's true you can delay individual commands around 160ms but there is a limit of how much you can delay the ultra.

Whoa, that's weird. And new. Makes sense though, considering how much damn leniency SF4 input strings tend to give. Guess they had to cap it somehow. I'll still bet it works if you trade with the right thing though. There's always a few attacks that cause less impact freeze for whatever reason, like Jedah's j.HP in CFJ.

[error1]

I figure it could just be for charge moves, the games sees you've been 20 frames or something since you last held back and you loose your charge.

[Maj]

So i was talking to gilley and he said he'd gotten FK super to come out after DF+HK.

if you want to use macros on the PC version, i would recommend AutoIt .... AutoHotKey is glitchy in SF4
one thing you might want to keep in mind...
i believe for supers, you have 26 frames to input the motion before you lose your charge
i figured that out by doing backdash > ultra w/ all the charge characters
honda can't backdash > ultra cause his backdash is 27 frames
guile/blanka it's really hard to backdash > ultra cause their backdash is 26 frames
forward dash > ultra is easy w/ everyone cause forward dashes are faster

All of this is new to me and i asked him to repost it here but i guess laziness won that battle, haha.

[error1]

according to the frame data I've seen df+hk takes 30 frames to complete. I didn't try the super tho just the ultra.
I'll check out autoit, I hadn't even heard of it. Autohotkey certainly has it limits but it's worked fairly well for me.

It has 11 frames start up and a jumping jab causes 11 frames hit stun so there should be a few frame window for an ultra

Edit:
on a completely unrelated note, the ground ex tatsu for both Ryu and Akuma only knocks down on the last hit.
I saw an Akuma Chun match on the seasons beatings stream where Akuma got a few hits off an ex tatsu but Chun remained grounded and it looked like Akuma could have combed out of it. I don't remember what chun was doing and haven't been able to duplicate it but It feels like a possible setup.

[Raine]

Speaking of possible setups I saw this in a match vid recently and thought it might be able to be applied to an actual combo.

3:45 on this vid -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuM60G3fyRA

I tried using AutoIt to make macros for KoF games and found it incredibly inconsistent with timing e.g. running the same simple combo script 4 times would get 4 different results. Are you guys encountering anything like this or know how to fix it?