DC ST playtest @ C3 - My findings

Evo Championship Series
1

I’ve already posted this in the C3 results thread, but for the benefit of all attending EVO this year and being forced to play this horrid conversion of ST due to the “stamp of approval” from certain parties, I figured I would share.

The following in my experience with the game over this past weekend:

"okay, I know some of you have been waiting for my full story on the DC ST situation since I posted in the other thread. I playtested the game all day Saturday and also watched the majority of the tournament. here are my observations.

within 2 hours of playtesting, I knew something was wrong. that’s right, it only took me two hours as opposed to nki’s years of testing and still thinking this version is worth playing. just as a note, during this day of casuals someone was kind enough to access the dipswitch menu and supposedly turn them on. I have no way to confirm if this was done properly as nobody at this event seemed to know how to properly do it - including all the ST players that entered the tournament. so much for the whole dipswitch thing neing easy.

  1. the first thing odd that happened occurred during a match when I was fei facing ryu. ryu threw a fireball, which I predicted and jumped over early. as I was coming down, I pressed fierce punch and prepared to combo into neutral fp for a rekka combo. the jumping fp comepletely whiffed, passing through ryus body, and ryu was able to throw me. pretty sure that anyone who’s played fei can give a big wtf to that.

  2. the second and biggest problem is already known - the screen itself is stretched much taller than all other versions. I tested this for myself a few weeks back - hooked up ccc2 and DC ST to the same 32 inch tv on different inputs. ryu is almost a full inch taller on the DC. but how does this effect gameplay? well, the screen is only taller not wider - but being used to real ST, you get a sense that everything is bigger. footsies and pokes are massively affected. I continually whiffed low roundhouses while attempting to sweep-cancel into a fireball. same goes for vega slides, they don’t seem to go far enough even though they are going the normal distance. however, anti airs hit higher, jumping attacks have more vertical effectiveness, etc. think of the ST screen as a colorform - the DC stretches the screen up and down, and takes the hitboxes with it. ASS. it drastically changes gameplay and takes adjustment to get used to. I don’t know how anyone can think this is acceptable as this is the only version of ST to have the issue.

  3. playing as dictator, I did several lightkick headstomps on a cornered boxer. while coming down for the followup punch, if you attempted to cross up with it (which you can’t do b/c he’s cornered) the punch faced as if it was a crossup, but completely whiffed. dictator landed and got thrown by boxer for free. this seems quite odd but I can’t say for sure that it doesn’t happen in other versions.

these are the three things I personally noticed in the first 2 hours. now on to the tournament.

first, nobody had any idea how to fix the dipswitches whatsoever. so it was played on plain vanilla DCST. however, NKI has stated that the dipswitches only affect things such as reversal supers and not much of actual gameplay.

second, almost nobody had a DC compatible stick, and there were very few converters. people were forced to use lag-inducing converters as only 2 or 3 of the innovation converters were present. I personally know that EVO uses the laggier converters, so ST is gonna suck come Vegas.

I witnessed some vega-chun madness near finals, but at that point I was so sleep deprived that I can’t even describe it. comeback has mentioned some of this, so perhaps he can elaborate.

finally, I’d like to thank the few people who came up to me and said they agreed with me that ST is being held back b/c its a different console version every year. people like NKI love overanalyzing ST versions and talking the entire community out of them. well hopefully this 2 hour playtest by a pro is enough to convince you that its time for a second opinion. DC ST is a bunch of fucking shit. because of this, I opted to go random select for the whole event, as I knew it wouldn’t matter either way. fuck this broken ass shit.

if you agree that DC ST is crap, and that EVO should stop listening to certain parties on what is/isn’t acceptable for the ST community, I urge you to post about it in the EVO forums. time to speak up and put a stop to the bullshit rather than let it keep happening. seems to me that the vast majority of ST players still own CCC2 and not the DC version, and this tournament was proof of it."

Also, big props go to Comeback for reminding me of an absolutely insane glitch that was discovered during tournament play, as well as many other times in casuals by others:

“holy shit, I remember now. someone did a wall dive, chun jumped back and did an attack to stop him from reaching the wall. instead of hitting him, vega kind of froze for a second, and then backdropped her anyway without ever touching the wall. shag got it on camera, a true WTF moment. DC ST at its best!”

I would like the purpose of this thread to be INFORMATIVE. We all know that DC ST is not perfect, because it sucked ass back in 2004 when it was last used, and it seems nothing has changed even with the supposed dipswitch changes. PLEASE post in this thread if you have this game and are actively playtesting it. Any info at all could actually help the competitors come EVO time this year.

Also, PLEASE if you agree with me that EVO should stop being influenced by the same “certain parties” year after year, who have now led us back to this shitstain of a console version of ST, please make your voice heard. People are constantly telling me that I assume I am speaking for others, but it seemed at C3 that most of the players were also in agreement with my statements on DC ST and the fact that St players are forced to change versions every single year.

EDIT:
One other thing I forgot to mention: unless you have the Innovation converter, many joysticks simply don’t work on DC. Why? Because other converters don’t map the L1/L2 buttons. That’s right - if you have a custom PS1/PS2 stick that uses the L buttons, the vast majority of DC converters out there do not work with your stick. If it weren’t for Smoothcat donating his two Innovation converters for the tournament, it would have come to a screeching halt. Bottom line, be prepared to get ripped off on Ebay for these scarce converters, or else be prepared to have input lag or play with only 4 buttons at EVO.

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Hell yes first response. :cool:

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The problem is that every version sucks. It all comes down to what someone thinks is more important, accuracy or lag/speed consistancy/whatever. How about we just play HSF2 (capkore version – EVO can use all the Jap PS2s they’ve had for Guilty Gear :P) with Super and ST modes only? :frowning:

4

Were the dipswitches set correctly when the Vega blocked walldive throw thing happened? They should have been set to 1994/02/23 in order to be as close to the arcade as possible.

Here is NKI’s guide to them

Also did the tournament use actual copies of SSF2X for DC or the TDC Final v2 compilation disc?

5

the game is crap with out dipswitches set correctly, like you said they wernt changed. if you fix the dip switches the game is the best port to date.

i agree that the controllers thing is annoying, but somebody just donate some ps1 -> dc converters to evo so its all good. i swear i hear to many complaints about that. also i keep getting pms about if i offer dc pcbs that are hacked(no i dont) :rofl:

6

Does it really matter? Half of his post was more than just listing the differences between the DC and the arcade. The other half is all the hassle people have to go through to get it working. Dipswitches, getting compilation dics for translated menus, getting converters and sticks if they don’t have converters… Not to mention getting working DCs and copies of the game.

Or should we have NKI present at absolutely every single ST DC tournament so he can personally set each dipswitch. Since the majority of the people don’t have the game and don’t have experience setting it up.

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No, just cause it’s ST and Super characters doesn’t mean it’s ST and super gameplay.

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:rofl: This is actually exactly what happened at C3, people were like “yeah I know that dipswitches need to be set, but I don’t have a DC game save for it and I have no idea how to do it.” I guess that means we need NKI at every ST tournament to get us up and running on his awesome port of DC ST.

Also, to all the morons who still have no idea what they’re talking about, NKI has come out and said that the dipswitch settings only affect a small amount of factors - such as if some supers are allowed to be reversals or not. It should have nothing to do with the basic gameplay of ST, and therefore would not fix issues such as the wall-less Vega backdrop. Get your facts straight before you post “but the dipswitches weren’t set!”

One other thing I forgot to mention: unless you have the Innovation converter, many joysticks simply don’t work on DC. Why? Because other converters don’t map the L1/L2 buttons. That’s right - if you have a custom PS1/PS2 stick that uses the L buttons, the vast majority of DC converters out there do not work with your stick. If it weren’t for Smoothcat donating his two Innovation converters for the tournament, it would have come to a screeching halt. Bottom line, be prepared to get ripped off on Ebay for these scarce converters, or else be prepared to have input lag or play with only 4 buttons at EVO.

9

Setting the dips correct isn’t rocket science. Why the tournament directors wouldn’t look up how to do it before choosing to use the DC version is beyond me.

Why would anyone wire their stick up like that anyway? That just doesn’t make sense.

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EMS convertors also work

11

Hmm…

I set up ST with the dip switches set myself before the tournament. I had the save. We were running TDC, btw.

I wasn’t watching the ST tournament, TBH. I wound up having to run 3S (which I didn’t really plan on). If people reset the machine, or did any other stupid shit, the switches may have reset… I do apologize for that.

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err, lots of sticks are built with L1/L2 as the first buttons… ever seen a MAS stick or Hori FS? Not to mention customs…

and on topic there’s no perfect version yes? you mofo’s need to just say fuck and stick with ONE version for good. None of this random roullette for what version every year. And seing as ALL versions have there issues you might as well go with the one that has the least problems in terms of converters etc. DC version is a poor choice imo, you’ll end up driving yourselves into a corner especially as the systems become rarer and rarer.

sigh If only STHD would come out…

13

Sticks like that will work fine on converters as R1/R2 are still wired to micro switches. MAS, for example, work fine with converters (at least the ones with older PCB revisions). The problem comes when someone wires L1/L2 as fierce/roundhouse on a six button stick, which is such a bad idea, no one really does it.

The point is, DSP’s concern of people not being able to use converters due to L1/L2 doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most custom builders wire things up Capcom default.

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I was at c3, I didn’t see the Vega glitch, but i did see the pain in the ass it was to deal with DC ST. Made resetting an arcade cabinet look easy. Honestly, those are the most dreamcasts I have seen in one location (4) in about 5 years. And yes, some of the systems were reset, because sometime when you unplug your stick from the converter, the dreamcast freaks out and does not acknowledge the next stick that gets plugged in. If everyone was a Dreamcast Wizzard, computer engineer, or able to read Japanese menus, then sure, there would be no problem. Honestly, if we have to jump through all of these hoops and educate all of these people just to play “arcade perfect ST”, is it worth it anymore? We’re just trying to kill ST at this point. CvS2 on PS2 is not arcade perfect, but people just delt with it and learned that instead. One positive is that the DC version has the best vs. menu ever with a stage select, random select, and a nice menu option to choose New (normal) vs. Old (super) versions. That doesn’t offset the negatives like: how many people, other than marvel players, honestly remember where their DC is? How many still have working DC sticks? Most people have been playing PS2 games on PS2 sticks. Add in issues like the fact converters are even more rare and that not all custom builders use R1/R2 in a six button set-up (most is not ‘all’) and volla.

I couldn’t care less about Evo, since I’m not going either way (not even if I win this week’s lotto). But I do care about c3 tournaments since I intend on making every one I can between now and August. And I’m sure if Evo is sticking to DC, then so will c3 just so people can practice on the version.

Bottom Line, a good “finished” STHD can’t come soon enough. Oh yeah, and I blame both of my losses at c3 on not being used to the DC version of ST, since that has been the cool thing to do for the last 4 years :razz:

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Delay evo until sthd comes out, c’mon whos with me!11!! :slight_smile:

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Wow, ok I had no idea that this was done (the tournament suddenly started with no warning while I was out getting a pizza). If that is the case, and the Vega walldive glitch still happened, there is no question whatsoever about the differences from arcade. Although the DCs did reset a few times…so who knows. DC ST is just a pain in the ass.

Anyway, if anyone else has experienced differences from arcade, please post here so we can be prepared for EVO.

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Well this will be the last year that we’ll have to deal with different versions every year. No console version of ST will ever be arcade perfect. The release of SF:HD should put an end all of the craziness.

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That is my hope, but already there is debate about what version is going to be considered “official:” remixed or original. If it’s original, then we’re playing DC ST which we already know has issues. If we’re playing remixed, it’s a totally different game than ST. My opinion is to see if remixed isn’t horribly broken, and if not, use that from now on. I don’t think arcade St is ever going to be emulated properly, so might as well move on to something new.

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When playing ST on arcade, then moving over to DC, I have noticed NO gameplay differences, and I play this game as much or more than DSP does or any of the ST authorities out there. Though I understand DSP’s sentiments on wanting to be done with the switching of versions constantly, I cannot empathize, for there’s a reason that ST:HD remix is using the DREAMCAST program code for gameplay.

The ONLY difference between arcade ST and DC ST is the size of the characters. No hitboxes are changed, and unless you’re absolutely pathetic and just NEED an excuse to mess up on footsies, then you shouldn’t have a problem adapting to the character difference. Nothing is warped, just stretch ever-so-slightly vertically. I play Chun, Gief, Ryu, Dhalsim, and Cammy (outside of serious play, of course), and the only thing I have had the slightest problem with is the max range on Gief’s 360, which took about 4-5 tries to adapt to in either version.

We have been playing DC ST in Seattle for more than two seasons now, and we have no problems finding Dreamcasts (just find marvel players and check craigslist/ebay!), no problems with converters Look! They still sell virtually lagless converters with multiple Fierce and Roundhouse button configuration options!, and no problems setting dipswitches. Once you set it to the 1994/02/23 dipswitch auto-setting, it saves to your memory card, which loads from port 1 every time you boot up ST from that moment on.

Are you just looking for something to hate on right now? There’s no reason to be bashing DC ST unless you fail at adapting, which is something you seem sooooo insistent on. I know that I’m not dropping $400-$500 on an X-Box 360 or PS3 plus peripherals just for ST. Aside from that, did you know how hard/expensive making a custom 360 (also compatible with PS3, since sony’s awesome like that) stick? Did you know that you can’t make a 360 stick with a Perfect 360 in it? There goes the stick of choice for a great many players in the ST community.

Quit yor fucking whining and play whatever the fuck you want until HD remix comes out. Until then, just don’t come to Evo or any other tourney that uses DC ST, if you’re so against it. Maybe you can develop a better sense of logic and reason while you take a break, too.

Edit: How you can use Claw’s izuna drop (which I have never, ever seen personally, as it’s extremely hard to recreate without setting it up) to prove that DC ST is terrible is beyond me. Put a fucking patch on it come HD remix. If you want to remove other glitches like Gief’s crossed-up 720 (which exists in arcade, too), or fix the issue where jumping behind a character firing a projectile causing slowdown doesn’t allow you to throw the character (which exists in arcade, as well), then move on to a LESS BROKEN GAME.

That’s the end of my participation in this thread. I have no interest in getting into another argument with this arrogant imbecile named Phil Burnell. His posts make my eyes hurt, my soul hurt, and cause miscarriages for women within 5-mile radius of any computer displaying his posts. You’ve caused pain in the world. happy?

20

Phil, despite how you may feel, these “crusades” of yours (or more accurately, your “desperate cries for attention”) are HURTING the community by pumping the forums full of misinformation.

I don’t even know why I reply to your nonsense anymore. After I methodically and logically destroy your random baloney, you completely ignore the evidence, get all huffy, thump your chest, spew some more nonsense, then run away while shouting over your shoulder, “this will be my last post!”

I’d highly suggest that you take your own advice.

Hold ‘Y’ while going into the Options menu.
Press ‘A’.
Press down.
Press ‘A’.

We could literally train a chimpanzee to do that.

Can you reproduce this? If not, most logical people would chalk it up to “Phil mis-timed his jump-in”.

Sigh…the one thing you almost got right, and you had to blow it way out of proportion. Yeah, the Dreamcast version displays at a slightly different resolution (which has already been discussed and documented), but this is nothing to scream about. We’re talking about maybe 10 pixels, and it has no known effect on any gameplay. Unless you have some evidence to the contrary…?

It happens in the arcade version, too.

Sorry for repeating myself, but again, your statement above confuses me. You said that you felt nothing was wrong with CCC2 which has 4 frames of input lag, yet you’re worried about 1 frame of input lag from a converter…? :confused:

I’m sorry, I literally LOL’ed when I read that. Do you want to know why people take me seriously but don’t listen to you? Because I actually take the time to back up what I’m saying. Like above, when I said that in the arcade version, Dic’s headstomp vs. Boxer in the corner behaves the same way you described? I didn’t just pull that out of my ass. I tested it in the arcade version, and even made a video so that you could see for yourself. Or like when I said that the DC version outputs at a slightly different resolution? I actually took the time to snap some photos for side-by-side comparison. That way people can see just how “drastic” it is (or in this case, how drastic it isn’t).

By the way, I’m still waiting for your evidence that supers don’t come out in the PS1 version of ST.

As a Chun player, I can tell you that this does happen in the arcade version too. It’s rare, but it happens.

People just love to blame “the console” when they see something new or crazy. After seeing O.Sagat throw a Tiger shot RIGHT THROUGH Chun Li, omni put it best when he satirically said “that shit would never happen in the arcade version”. (Satire, because IT WAS the arcade version.)

So if anyone cares about real, actual, tested, documented differences, please see the ST Wiki, and ignore everything Phil says.