Vampire Savior TAS

[Dammit]

Hi, this is my first post.

I have made some TASes for tasvideos and now I want to TAS Vampire Savior. I've never made a combo video, and I'm not an expert at fighting games, so I'll need advice.

Why VS? I like the series. It's got real personality, and it's not excessively popular. I like VS's characters and music more than VH, and I think whatever improvements are in VH2/VS2 aren't enough to outweigh their obscurity. I've seen keyboardmasterTKO's youtube VH vids, so I know more or less what should be possible. (Though some characters were overhauled between VH and VS.)

As you all may know, tasvideos is sort of catatonic about what they allow to be published. The game has to go from beginning to end with no game over or reset interruptions. This means that meter will have to be built up from scratch every round, and I may have to reduce damage or increase lives to prevent the opponent from getting killed too fast. Of course, AI will be set to 8, so any combos that require a cooperative opponent won't work, except for the vs. matches.

As a crazy additional goal (and crazy additional goals are a good thing) I'd like to make it so there are exactly 15 matches, with each match won by a different one of the 15 playables. For this I must use the "shadow" character, who changes to the defeated opponent every match. But the max number of matches in a single game is 9. So a second player will have to challenge and reset the progression.

In order to achieve this I need to figure out which chars I'll get beforehand. I found that the shadow lineup is fixed and depends only on the initial character. So I found the combination of two characters that yields the most variety (14). The last char will have to come from a second vs. battle. See this script for details:
http://lua.pastey.net/127588
(I'm not a programmer at all, but I picked up on Lua as a useful tool for TASing. You can run it in any Lua environment with console output, like the Gens emulator.)

Therefore, it'll look like this:

Code: Select all

|Match|Stage| Player 1 | Player 2 |
|  1  |  1  |Demitri*  |Lilith    |
|  2  |  2  |Lilith*   |Rikuo     |
|  3  |  3  |Rikuo*    |BBHood    |
|  4  |  4  |BBHood*   |Anakaris  |
|  5  |extra|Anakaris* |Bishamon  |
|  6  |  5  |Bishamon* |Hsien-ko  |
|  7  | VS  |Hsien-ko  |Morrigan* |
|  8  | VS  |Talbain*  |Hsien-ko  |
|  9  |  1  |Hsien-ko* |Felicia   |
| 10  |  2  |Felicia*  |Q-bee     |
| 11  |  3  |Q-bee*    |Victor    |
| 12  |  4  |Victor*   |Sasquatch |
| 13  |  5  |Sasquatch*|Rapter    |
| 14  |  6  |Rapter*   |Jedah     |
| 15  |  7  |Jedah*    |BBHood    |

Sadly, the extra battle and Oboro Bishamon battle are disqualified after any vs. activity at all.

So where does sh come in? I know the rules of the game, but I don't know how to make advanced combos. The last thing I want is to do something that makes the naive viewers impressed but makes veterans roll their eyes. I am going to need help on advanced techniques and criticism to make good combos better.

[Maj]

Hahaha sounds like a job for Xenozip!

There aren't too many crazy Vampire series combovids around. Skill Smith were the first to give it a real shot, i think Mem from Sai-Rec explored it at one point, and keyboardmasterTKO is probably the most recent one.

You might want to check out some matchvids too, just to see what dominates. Japan is crazy good at that game. I'm sure you can find expert level players for any given character. They probably won't get that crazy wrt combos but they'll give you some insight into how to create combo opportunities.

But yeah, there aren't very many people in the (English-speaking) fighting game community who know much about this series, me included.

[error1]

kick ass
this was the problem the xvsf tas by SDR had, impressive combos to someone who hasn't watched combo videos but as Maj said "Easily one of the ugliest fighting game videos i've ever seen." and the criticisms I gave him on tasvideos where not well received.
Personally I'm not a fan of forcing a 2nd player just so you can show all the characters, I wold prefer just 9 matches and pick the best 9 characters to showcase.
For my sfz2a tas I found picking a different theme for each round and loosely sticking to it helped, partly because restrictions help creativity and because it makes it easier for the watcher to follow. Doesn't mean you should skip a cool setup just because your theme for the round is projectiles tho.
If you really want to impress a veteran combo maker ( I not one btw ) then the most important thing is the combo setup. Even a very hard combo can be done by a very skilled player some of the time, but the 1 in a hundred shots like crossing up with a move that doesn't normally cross up or unique setups for meaty attacks isn't something you'll see in a competitive match. I think that if playing on lv 8 hurts this ability then it's not worth it, may help tho, having the opponent throw out more moves could give you more to work with.
I'm not a VS expert but I'm sure someone here is.

[Maj]

Well, one switch isn't so bad. SDR had a billion interruptions and none of them were any good. Speaking of which, that one match where you control both characters will have the most potential, therefore it'll be the most difficult to portray at its full potential. All i can say is good luck.

As far as difficulty level goes, most of the Darkstalkers characters have near-infinites and crazy high damage combos. Setting the difficulty to the maximum will probably make you do less damage which will help you do longer combos. Most of the Vampire combo videos i've seen don't have elaborate setups. Those characters can do a lot on their own.

[Maj]

Just a couple of quick links before i get out of the way:

Vampire Savior (Saturn) Combo VHS Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 by Skill Smith

(temporary link) Vampire Chronicle Combo Video Preview by Mem and Ayanami Lilith
(update: taken down on 07.15.2010 | If anyone needs me to upload it again, let me know.)

If i find the full video i'll share that too but i don't remember if they ever finished it or if i ever downloaded it.

[Dammit]

Thanks for the links, Maj. I'm studying them now. There's also this place:
http://vampire-dcc.com/
But it's hard for me to tell what's going on there...

Personally I'm not a fan of forcing a 2nd player just so you can show all the characters, I wold prefer just 9 matches and pick the best 9 characters to showcase.

I'm open to that possibility. I considered it before the all-char plan. But it's hard to pick just one lineup... Any more opinions on this?

For my sfz2a tas I found picking a different theme for each round and loosely sticking to it helped, partly because restrictions help creativity and because it makes it easier for the watcher to follow. Doesn't mean you should skip a cool setup just because your theme for the round is projectiles tho.

Hm, there's an idea. Each time the enemy loses a life, switch to a different style.

If you really want to impress a veteran combo maker ( I not one btw ) then the most important thing is the combo setup. Even a very hard combo can be done by a very skilled player some of the time, but the 1 in a hundred shots like crossing up with a move that doesn't normally cross up or unique setups for meaty attacks isn't something you'll see in a competitive match. I think that if playing on lv 8 hurts this ability then it's not worth it, may help tho, having the opponent throw out more moves could give you more to work with.
I'm not a VS expert but I'm sure someone here is.

Yeah I'm wondering how much trouble the AI will be. In this game you get guard counters, which are like alpha counters but unlimited. But they are all DP-type moves, so maybe not so good for combos. You can also guardpush, which I guess is supposed to help you recover sooner than the opp. Block damage heals in this game, so it's not a problem for getting Perfects. (However, those vids show combos that get hit midstream to speed up recovery. But it seems like only a few attacks are good for that. I guess it's good if Hsienko gets to be the dummy three times.)

[Xenozip.]

I'm really interested in this because I play VSav and I did try making a TAS for it once. But upon reviewing the first few matches my bro and I concluded that it just looked like "some one was playing normally". I honestly could not think of a way to make it interesting, so I moved to SS4 Basara, lol.

The most entertaining thing I could think of was pushblocking a full 6 hit chain against a cornered opponent and punishing with a silly link combo. And then my creativity ran dry.

Trivia: I also tried doing Bulleta's infinite and I could not. That's right, Sako's combo that only he can do, I couldn't even do it with an emulator.

[Maj]

Any news with this project? I hope it's going well. I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result.

[Dammit]

Thanks for asking.

I am currently tied up with an earlier project but in the meantime I am reading everything there is to read on SH and watching all kinds of combo videos.

Another distraction is the issues I found with fba-rr. In particular I'd like to have the movie files be more easily editable, and to get input display. (I have an idea with that last issue that could benefit SH. I'll get to that later.)

So, I'll be able to focus on this more when I get these other things dealt with.

[Maj]

Cool. Sorry that there isn't more Vampire info around here, but i bet those games have a lot of basic engine properties borrowed from Street Fighter Alpha and Marvel games. If you run into any weird glitches or occurances, maybe we can help come up with ideas to get some mileage out of it.

Good on that TAS contest too. Though looking at that thread, it seems likely that it might never get off the ground.

[Dammit]

It's been awhile and I feel obliged to make some noise.

I had the (now obvious) idea to TAS two of the games separately, with no versus interruptions, then submit them together. This way you get two shorter videos instead of one long-ass, arbitrarily extended video. And no pressure to choreograph versus matches. Plus, I can show more stuff. Between any two of VS1/VS2/VH2, all 18 chars are present and playable with the random shadow thing. And since you can have 9 matches per game, you can show them all.

Actually, no.
http://lua.pastey.net/129780

I gathered all the possible lineups in all the games, then made the script search for maximum variety. It found that no combination exists for 18, but several for 17. I'm thinking of excluding Donovan. Other choices are Lilith, Sasq, Rikuo, Talbain, or H-ko. But yeah, I don't like Donovan, and in exchange I'd get an extra Demitri. (This one would start with random H-ko in VS1 and random Victor in VH2.)

+++

Anyways, I'm still reading and studying. I'm trying to replicate Skill Smith's combos by studying the videos frame by frame. It's really embarrassing when I can't do some of them even with my tool assistance. I won't feel ready to start the actual work until I understand everything.

So I'm referring to this site: http://www.geocities.jp/shu180sx/savior/savior.html
I've figured out most of it but there's some stuff I can't get.

The rapid-firable weak attacks have something like this in the right column:
連打C時 H:+9 G:+8
I know that means you get +9 hit/+8 guard frame advantage (instead of +6/+5 for Demitri's standing jab). Uh, but how do you actually do it that way? If I search for the first frame to jab again it just links, and if I mash at 30 Hz it's no different.

Most but not all specials and EXes have a note like this:
着地のスキ：1
Sometimes the number is something else, but usually it's 1. What does it mean? Does it have something to do with juggles? Anyone have anything to say about juggles in these games?

硬直
This means something like recovery penalty, right?

It seems that air chains are not allowed in VS2/VH2. Is this true?

I don't usually like to post unless I have Results to show but I'm feeling lost here.
Though in a way it's kind of liberating that the game is a blank slate to english-speaking people.

[error1]

I can't read Kanji but I can do katakana. In 着地のスキ, スキ is suki.
In the marvel games you can cancel most normals on hit with a super jump, so gief can do his s. hk and super jump on the first hit.
Normally a suki cancel means cancel the move with a super jump and then cancel the super jump with a block. So if there is something on screen that would cause Zangief to block when he presses back. He can do this combo s. hk, super jump on first hit, press back, s. hk.
The number could be what hit you can cancel out of. Not sure how it would apply to VS or even if it's relevant. There are people here who can read Japanese much better then me.

[onReload]

I can't read Kanji but I can do katakana. In 着地のスキ, スキ is suki.
In the marvel games you can cancel most normals on hit with a super jump, so gief can do his s. hk and super jump on the first hit.
Normally a suki cancel means cancel the move with a super jump and then cancel the super jump with a block. So if there is something on screen that would cause Zangief to block when he presses back. He can do this combo s. hk, super jump on first hit, press back, s. hk.
The number could be what hit you can cancel out of. Not sure how it would apply to VS or even if it's relevant. There are people here who can read Japanese much better then me.

Really you guys should check out Rikaichan, an add-on for Firefox. That says "landing's suki" so i guess it's pretty much just a suki cancel, redundant with the word "landing" in there.

The "recovery penalty" kanji means petrification, or stiffening. I'm not sure how this applies to the game, but yeah it's probably some recovery time where you can't move.

the top part says "renda C time" meaning renda cancel time. I suppose that if you renda cancel Demitri's jab, you get better frame advantage, which makes enough sense.

One of these guys can tell you a bit more about doing renda canceling (maj has some written on sh/f classic). Renda means "barrage" but generally even english speakers just say "renda cancel."

[Maj]

You can jump-cancel normal moves in VS?

[onReload]

I know nothing about Vampire, but if he lists renda and suki, then I guess so?

SH/F needs more people from TASVideos like Dammit, who want to learn how to push a fighting game way past its limits, and then make as perfect as possible a full run of the game.

[Xenozip.]

-snip-

First, rapid-fire light attacks have different block/hit advantage if you chain them than you do with a single hit.
For example, QB's c.LP is normally +4/+3 but if you do c.LP c.LP the chained c.LP becomes +7/+6.

This is extremely important for obvious reasons. But not every light attack is like that. Some get a substantial bonus and some don't get any at all even if they are chainable.

Suki means "gap" and when dealing with frames is therefor a frame-gap. As with Demitri's DP and QB's C->R attacks there is a 1F gap when landing from these special moves and they are otherwise airborne or neutral.
Demitri's DP for example has a falling recovery like a normal DP but he is only vulnerable an on the ground for exactly one frame, making it extremely difficult to punish him with a ground combo because if you attack too soon and he'll be hit in the air (and only hit once), too late and he can block or DP again. It isn't practical to punish these moves with a ground combo due to this, but it is technically possible, which is why it's mentioned in the frame data.

The last thing you asked about "硬直" is a special property that is like Suki but it's more regarding recovery/pose on specific moves. Normally this applies to pursuits (OTG Stomps) and Dark Force activations. While characters like Morrigan have a punishable "pose" when their Dark Force mode ends, characters like Jedah do not. Likewise, some pursuits like Anakaris do not recover instantly while other pursuits like Jedah's certainly does whether it whiffs or not.

On a side note, I'm sure it's blatantly obvious by now that you can't special/super cancel after chaining normals unless it's a "command" super like a raging demon input. Therefor Lei-lei can't chain into any special or super except her TenRaiHa. And speaking of which, there are moves that can hit OTG other than pursuits such as Lei-Lei's Tenraiha, which the projectile spikeballs can hit OTG but the anvil does not. Additionally a good portion of BNBs in this game revolve around linking into specials and supers, since you can't chain into them, but you can still chain into a link and then special cancel the linked attack much like how SFIV works (it's no coincidence that Ono likes VSav and this feature ended up in SF4).

And the majority of pursuits in VSav do no "actual" damage just recoverable damage but there are some pursuits that cause actual damage (white and green). I would highly advise against using pursuits at all unless they do "actual" damage, would kill the opponent, you intentionally whiff it to get close, or some other reason other than just to do it.

This game isn't entirely a blank slate in terms of knowledge. Many of us who play it know all there is to know about the game. However, it is a blank slate in terms of videos created outside of Japan. And like I said before, my own personal reason for not completing my TAS was because it looked boring to me. There's a difference between a Speed run and an Entertaining run, if you go the straight speedrun route I don't think it's entertaining or interesting at all due to repetition and predictability. If you go the Entertainment route though it becomes somewhat problematic to find really crazy stuff worth showing and actually make it LOOK crazy. I have some character-specific posts about this game on my blog that have esoteric tidbits in it, and I can answer questions to some degree, but I don't think I can help with coming up with any sort of interesting choreography.

[onReload]

since you can't chain into them, but you can still chain into a link and then special cancel the linked attack much like how SFIV works (it's no coincidence that Ono likes VSav and this feature ended up in SF4).

I was wondering about that - what exactly are the rules for this in SF4?

[Maj]

Is there any game where you can chain into a link and not be able to cancel an otherwise cancelable move?

[Xenozip.]

I was wondering about that - what exactly are the rules for this in SF4?

Same as VSav AFAIK. Light attacks can chain into themselves, when they are chained you can't cancel them. But if you instead link them then you can cancel.

There's quite a lot of examples of this. Rose c.LP chains into itself and also links into itself because it's +3 and 3F startup. If she chains it she can't cancel into qcf+LK but if you link c.LP to c.LP then it's cancelable into qcf+LK.

Likewise with Akuma c.LP. If you chain c.LP c.LP you can't cancel the second c.LP, but if you link it then it's cancelable.

Is there any game where you can chain into a link and not be able to cancel an otherwise cancelable move?

I doubt it. Though some chains in KoF are only cancelable when they are chains, and not cancelable as stand-alone moves, if that counts, lol.

[Dammit]

Thanks, those questions were really bothering me.

That makes sense about the rapid fire attacks, but somehow I'm not doing it right.

The combo I'm trying to duplicate is at about 2:35 of part 1, Demitri vs Q bee.
ES drillkick, s.LP, s.LP, dash, dashing ES demoncradle, etc.

In my experiment, there are 12 frames between the 1st and 2nd jab hits, and another 15 frames before the dash animation starts. The DP is about 3 frames too late to combo. In Skill Smith's, the delays are 8 and 10 frames.

Similarly, I'm having trouble with the last Victor combo at ~5:35. He gets the two c.LPs (which are followed by the ES forehead) to come out faster than I can do.

Some things I noticed about the rapid fire attacks: The timing for spamming the same attack (jab, jab) is more strict than if you move down the chain (jab, short). But it's not a link since you don't have to wait until neutral state. Not hard to deal with but I wonder if it has anything to do with my problem.

+++

Turbo: What exactly do the turbo settings do? Does everything happen 1 frame faster per turbo or is it more complicated? Are there gonna be things that won't work on turbo 3?

Hitbox width: For a lot of these the dummy is Rapter with the chainsaw. The purpose of this is to make his hitbox wider. But why is that good exactly? I mean, in general what can you do with a fatter target that won't work with a skinnier target, assuming the combo has already started?

[Maj]

In basically all Capcom games, Turbo settings speed up the game by skipping frames. In the recent ones it's a fixed pattern, like every fifth frame gets skipped. In a couple of the oldschool games (aka Hyper Fighting) the pattern is random (aka hell).

It's definitely possible to come up with frame data combinations that would be completely impossible to execute under a high Turbo setting. Those kinds of combos are surprisingly rare though, because most things don't require one-frame precision. Most cancels give you a pretty big window and there are multiple ways of doing most things. But yeah, the longer your combo gets the greater the risk.

As for hitbox width, at point blank range you don't actually start at the edge of your opponent's hitbox. You start somewhere in the middle. The fatter they are, they further they span outwards. Also some relatively thin characters have fat hitstun hitboxes. For example CPS1 Balrog leans forward when he gets hit so he's effectively one of the fattest characters in the game. The same thing works in reverse too. SF2 series Blanka is a relatively fat character but he leans so far back when he gets hit that he's practically immune to conventional combos.

[Xenozip.]

-snip-

I'm not sure if this will help but you can prebuffer the ES Demon Cradle before the dash begins. Therefor s.LP s.LP forward, down, down+forward, forward, forward ~ 2P (EG. 5LP 5LP 623 66 PP).

The s.LP s.LP should be +9F on hit and the ES Demon Cradle startup is 4F (hits on 5th, so there's a 4F window there for the dash). It should combo as long as you can cancel the dash within the first couple frames by prebuffering the DP.

As for the Victor combo I think that's probably c.LP link c.LP cancel to headbutt, not c.LP chain c.LP link headbutt. His c.LP is only a +10 when chained and all versions of the headbutt are 15F startup so a link in this situation is simply impossible. However the c.LP is +7 on hit and 5F startup so linking c.LP into itself then cancelling to headbutt should be no problem. This is actually rather staple for some of Bulleta's basket combos as well, since she can't link into Basket normally but she can link a normal then cancel into Basket.

And for Zabel with chainsaw, there's a lot of things. You can chain more light attacks, link mids that would otherwise whiff, and use specials/supers that move. For example Felicia can't combo her ball roll special/super from certain distances or off certain attacks because it moves too slowly -- it takes frames to get to the opponent after initial startup. But with a wider opponent the ball hits sooner and so a few combos become possible where they would otherwise not be.

On the flipside there's certain links where you'd want a thinner character such as Lillith and Lei-Lei projectile link combos. Since, like SF4 Dan, the fireball will take a some time to reach the opponent, the frame advantage increases the more time it takes to get to the opponent. For example Lillith's Soul Flash fireball is only +2F at point blank but if it takes 5F after launch before it hits the opponent then it becomes +7F.

[Edit] Oh on a sidenote there's a particular glitch that allows Lei-Lei to do two of her blade swing moves in the air. Which, on certain characters the Tenraiha will actually pop them up into the air for a juggle instead of a splat, at which point it's possible to combo her blade swing for additional juggle hits, which can be extended by doing the glitch. Also I think it's possible to combo a qcf+MP dizzy item after her sword shockwave super (I think is called chireitou) which might mean that it's possible to juggle it after her Tenraiha or some other situation.

[Dammit]

Well I realized why all my frame comparisons are off: youtube mutilates the framerate down to 30 FPS. Maybe a better copy might be found on nicovideo or something, but considering that the source looks like an old VHS transfer, maybe not.

Buffering that demon cradle before the dash helped, but I'm still 1 frame short. I'm afraid some of my problems are coming down to pixel positioning in the setup. It wouldn't be so annoying if I could tweak the setup, then copypaste the input from the old FBM with a hex editor, but the FBM spec is currently hieroglyphics. (And with so many arcade input configurations, mz doesn't know what to about it.)

So you can still cancel from a rapid fire sequence.
For example, Zabel can do c.LK, c.LK, c.LK, f,b,PP.
Or even s.LP, s.LP, f+LP, f,b+PP.
You only forfeit cancelability when moving down the chain. Can't cancel with a dash though...

One combo I can't even get close to is the final Rapter one at ~6.55, the repeated dashing fierces. If I try dash, d.HP, repeat I'm like a dozen frames slow each iteration. I think it has something to do with the unusual format for his frame data. Most of his normals have a - with an unsigned number underneath. What's that about?

Edit: So for VH2/VS2, you can only do air chains if you use a special dark force which costs 2 meter...

[Xenozip.]

I'm not sure what you're referring to regarding Zabel. He is weird though, that's for sure.

Also VS2/VH2 sucks. Total garbage IMO.

[Battousai]

Anyone ever see/come up with anything interesting off of this glitch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mLaOrgR3c

As for that Zabel combo, any chance it's Saturn-specific? Or maybe keyboard-master/TKO on GGPO knows the trick.

[Dammit]

I'll have to look in to that later. I do suspect the Zabel dashcancel might be a home version only glitch:
http://www.geocities.jp/shu180sx/dc/dc- ... html#01-05

Some text at the top says something about the PS2 version, but I thought SKill Smith made these before, like, the PS2 existed.

edit: fixed wrong tag

[error1]

pretty sure skill smith did them on the saturn

[Dammit]

I discovered something annoying. The following data is for Demitri:

jump on frame : air normal on frame : ground normal on frame
0 : 5 : 33
1 : 6 : 34
2 : 6 : 35
3 : 8 : 36
4 : 9 : 37
5 : 9 : 38

The startup for a jump takes 3 frames in 1 out of 3 cases, and 4 frames otherwise. The duration of the jump does not vary. This means that some jump chains will only work if you wait one or two frames before starting. It also affects air specials. For example, LeiLei's u,d,db,b,P will come out higher when the jump startup is fast.

It affects dashes, and it differs by character. Talbain's jump startups and durations don't vary. His forward dash startups don't vary either, but the duration is long in 2/3 cases. Meanwhile, 1/3 of his backdashes start up slow, but the duration doesn't vary.

...actually it affects lots of things. This was on maximum Turbo. At Normal the variances disappear. This must be the frame-dropping effect you were talking about, Maj.

+++

The combo I'm trying to duplicate is at about 2:35 of part 1, Demitri vs Q bee.
ES drillkick, s.LP, s.LP, dash, dashing ES demoncradle, etc.

Finally got this, but I cheated by using a backdash, hehe. The forward dash/dragon punch inputs were interfering in a way I couldn't fully resolve.

I get the feeling there are more things I simply can't be able to reproduce. (Not that the entire thing is expected to be game-stretching combos. I'll be satisfied if I can get one outstanding combo per match.)

[Dark_Chaotix]

Is there any game where you can chain into a link and not be able to cancel an otherwise cancelable move?

I doubt it. Though some chains in KoF are only cancelable when they are chains, and not cancelable as stand-alone moves, if that counts, lol.

Yeah, thats apparent with overhead moves when used stand alone (have overhead properties but cant cancel. Then when used in combos it loses overhead properties but can cancel into specials. There are exceptions to this as there are some overheads that still be canceled when starting with the overhead.

[Xenozip.]

For example, LeiLei's u,d,db,b,P will come out higher when the jump startup is fast.

The above quoted text is all I read because I'm damn tired. And so this might not have anything to do with anything. But did you try d, db, b, then u, then P?

There is a minimum height in which you can do things, like airdash. Though this minimum does not apply to other characters like Q-B and Jedah. Everything regarding air-anything is all character specific AFAIK.