Improving Reaction Time

[owattjacob]

For that case don’t you set the CPU on random block/random counter hit?

It’s easy to confirm those, so it’s better to find something more difficult for finer reactions.

If you consider those easy then whats the point? If that’s the case, you’re asking for something unrealistic. This topic isn’t going nowhere.

[sarif2soon]

For that case don’t you set the CPU on random block/random counter hit?

It’s easy to confirm those, so it’s better to find something more difficult for finer reactions.

If you consider those easy then whats the point? If that’s the case, you’re asking for something unrealistic. This topic isn’t going nowhere.

Well, it isn’t limited to hit confirming and counter-hit confirming. As I mentioned before, reacting to a fireball, or even reacting to a dp xx FADC or a focus absorb, stuff you can’t replicate without another person doing them. They’re not unrealistic; just more difficult.

[crotchpuncha]

Seriously just play the damn game and learn like everyone else. Your reactions will increase with your knowledge of said fighter.

If you see a jump in coming because said player is predictable, you’ll react relatively quickly when the jump in actually comes vs reacting to a jump in that you didn’t see coming, typically you’ll AA the former while you’d play it safe and block the latter.

Same concept of hitting the button when it turns green and getting it right within .001th of a second because you went through that damn test 10 times over and over to get that score.

Besides what good is reactions in fighters when you can’t make the optimal decision within that set time? How do you make optimal decisions within a split second? It helps to think about it before hand no shit

Hell if you had crazy reactions and put no thought to how you’d react, you’d probably end up getting baited all day. There’s a reason why higher level players whiff jabs.

If there was truly another game that’ll boost your reactions towards said fighting game, it’d be called -insert fighting game title- Jeopardy. The rules being that you have to give the correct answer for a random question within a theme within a exceptionally short time.

Example:

3S MAKOTO IS FLASHING YELLOW ON YOUR WAKE UP WHAT SHOULD YOU DO? YOU HAVE ABOUT 1/6th OF A SECOND TO ANSWER CORRECTLY

A) Block high

B) Block low

C) Press buttons

D) Jump

E) Backdash

F) Down parry

G) Forward parry

H) Wake up Grab

…

Y) Hit your opponent with your Stick

Z) All of the above

TIMES UP

Of course i’m joking.

TL;DR play the damn game. Reaction tests won’t help you get better in fighting games.

I believe the correct answer in this situation is to just die…

[deadfrog]

Even if let’s say you are correct, it’s still more time efficient to jump straight to the shit you need to react to and practice that instead of other stuff.

Playing Robot Unicorn Attack improved my reactions for playing Robot Unicorn Attack.

[details=Spoiler]Dreams do come true

Dreams do come true

Dash resets the jump limiter.

Dreams do come true

Pro Tip: .Once it starts getting fast, part of the trick to listen to the audio cue of a start being born.

Dreams do come true

Advanced Strats:

You can dash in the air, which resets your double jump once.

BUT if you hold the jump button for as long as you can and then dash, you can constantly reset it.  AKA you can FLY!

Dreams do come true

Holding the jump button down causes your jump to reach higher, up to a maximum amount, at which point you will begin to arc downwards once again.

When you dash, you are commited to the dash for the first 90% of its duration, during which it is uninterruptible.  You can jump-cancel out of the last split second of the dash.  What’s interesting is the colour-blur-streak animation finishes for you anyway, though.  What’s really interesting is that when the colour animation and the speed boost ends, the dash is only about 95% complete.  The very very last split second can still destroy the star obstacles for you, even though you already appear to be moving normally again by all accounts.  After the dash has 100% completed, there is a cooldown period of about one quarter of a second before you can perform a second dash.  Note that dashing also raises your feet a hair off the ground so, unless you’re running uphill, all airborne rules (as described below) begin to apply.

Touching the ground completely resets all jumping and dashing ability.

You can either jump or dash (on flat ground, on a downhill slope, or off an edge) to get off of the ground and become airborne.

If you left the ground by dashing, you can perform a second dash in the air after waiting that base cooldown period of about a quarter of a second.
If you left the ground by jumping, you can perform a dash as soon as you wish.

If you left the ground by dashing, you can perform a midair jump as soon as the dash becomes cancellable.
If you left the ground by jumping, you can perform a second jump as soon as you wish.

(For all intents and purposes, you can treat all cases of dashing off of the ground as though it was a first midair dash, in terms of resolving how your subsequent possible actions are governed by the midair rules.)

Every time you dash in the air, it allows you to perform one midair jump anytime after that dash becomes cancellable, but before another midair dash is performed.  (That is to say, performing multiple successive dashes resets the jump-ability each time, and does not allow you to accumulate a stock of allowed successive jumps.)

Each time you perform a dash in the air beyond the first (using a dash to get off the ground does count that one as the first), the cooldown period increases before you can perform another midair dash.  Time between the first and second dash is the base time of about a quarter of a second.  Time between your second and third dash is about a half a second.  Time between your third and fourth dash is about one second.  I haven’t been able to try any more than that but I would assume it continues to double each time.

So long as you have waited that required cooldown period since your last dash, you can perform another midair dash at any time.

As alluded by PuFF, there exists a glitch (it seems to be, anyway) where holding the jump button until you perform a midair dash resets the cooldown time back to that base amount of a quarter second.  So if you jump, hold jump and dash, jump, hold jump and dash, you can approximately maintain your current height indefinitely (you do bob up and down a little bit) without needing to touch the ground.  If you stop using the glitch during this floatfloatfloat, cooldown will begin increasing from that point (starting with a half second for your next dash).  You can always redo the glitch on any later jump to reset cooldown back to a quarter second, though.  Remember, you can of course always delay your next dash for as long as you like anyway, so there is never any reason to NOT perform the reset glitch, unless you cannot afford that tiny increase in height caused by the next jump you use to re-activate it.

Some miscellaneous notes:

Scrolling speed appears to increase at the 5000 points mark, at 10000, at 15000, at 20000, and presumably continues to do so at those 5000 point intervals.

The game may run a little more smoothly in IE8 than in Firefox 3.  I’m not sure about this, though.

Hitting “ceilings” and, depending on the angle, even some stalactites will rebound you downwards.

I teleported through the floor once.  I think it happened when I tried to jump-cancel a reset-glitched dash on the same frame that it destroyed a star while I was right along the ground.  It just instantly teleported me vertically from right on top of the top surface to right underneath its bottom surface.  I have not been able to reproduce this.  It would be a pretty lame bug if you’re having a good run.

The killing height for falling down off the screen is actually about three or four horse-heights below the edge of our view.  You can actually fly under some islands and come up onto the screen again after, but I’ve been unable to gain enough height in time to avoid smacking into the front of the next island.

Dreams do come true

First butterfly is worth 10 points, second butterfly in a row is worth 20, then 30, then 40, 50, 60, 70, etc.
So if you get three in a row, you get 10+20+30=60 points.
I don’t think there are any additional levels of increment.
The points received for each additional butterfly only increase like this if they were gathered in a row, ie. if you miss a butterfly the next one you collect will only be worth 10 again.
Stars work the same way, but the first one is worth 100 points, second is worth 200, then 300, 400, 500, 600, etc.
The butterfly chains and star chains count (and reset) independently of each other.

You constantly collect more points for the time you spend alive and running, of course.  In terms of its overall effect on game scores, heed the matra of “Gallops pack wallops.”

Because the scrolling speed only increases as you break certain points totals, don’t stress too much about breaking a combo of butterflies or stars if you feel you can survive indefinitely on a given speed.  You will eventually make the points up anyway.  Only in the case of longer chains will butterfly and/or star collection account for a exceptionally large portion of your accumulated points over a given period of time, and in addition this collection is typically only feasible at lower speeds.

As such, strictly speaking, chaining butterflies and stars together only serve to quicken the progression of the game, which is good if you’re impatient.  Reaching the higher points-levels more quickly allows you to spend less time playing a game, which would theoretically allow you to preserve or delay (in points, not time) the effects of duration-induced (in time, not points) mental fatigue.  This could potentially allow you to conserve your “focus reserves” ( 2008 David Sirlin, all rights… reserved).  However, ensuring that you’re chaining butterflies and stars as much/often as possible may actually cost you a needlessly wasteful expenditure of your focus.  Thus you will have to choose anywhere between trying to chain butterflies and stars as much as possible, and ignoring them (in terms of chains) altogether.  At this time I haven’t been able to determine which extreme strategy is the more optimal one.  The key to maximizing your efficiency would be to identify and choose the balance between these two extremes.  Mostly, I do it (chaining) because it’s “fun” ( 2007 David Sirlin).  I remain aware that this non-functional (has no game or metagame purpose) enjoyment is a deviation from the pure form of “playing to win” ( 2006 David Sirlin).

More often than not, butterfly placement is such that just landing on the beginning of the next new platform will ensure you automatically make contact with the butterfly; its position lies somewhere along this “minimum airtime” arc.  It’s not always always true but I’d say it’s right at least 80% of the time, if not more.  The most common other variation is that the butterfly’s placement is slightly above the most common arc; you can often reach this on reaction with a quick tap of double-jump or one airdash.

When there is a higher and lower path, star placement (should one appear) seems to have even odds (oxymoron!) of being on the top or bottom one.  Those 50/50 chances actually tip rather substantially though when you consider that there is often (usually) only one path, the lower one.  At higher speeds, it becomes increasingly difficult/dangerous to react in time to take the higher path when the option presents itself, and at that point in time it may not even be clear yet whether or not the star will be up there or not (should one appear at all).  Sometimes you can wait that extra split-second to confirm before taking the route, but this is essentially akin to introducing lag time into your own reactions, which in many ways further increases the risk of attempting the height increase/switch.  You must be extremely confident in your reactions and execution to rely on such feats at faster paces.

Running into the giant stalactites are only a danger if you’re flying high.  You have little to no way of avoiding them on reaction, so in general it’s better to stay low for the sake of survival.

Ground contact as often as possible also keeps your air options as open-ended as possible for as much (time) as possible, should you suddenly need/want/choose to take to the air for any reason.  Preserving your mobility is of utmost importance in matters of reactivity.

You have to work really hard to fall right down a pit, so it’s not much of a concern.  Really, it’s tough to do this deliberately.  Usually you’ll just slam into the front edge of the next new platform.  This is the only constant concern involved in keeping low, and it is not a big concern at all.  This is all but effortless to manage even at faster speeds.

Dreams do come true

I thought SRKers were not fond of games with double jumps and air dashes

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[YoShadowFiend]

Definitely i agree with playing alot more. I am a seasoned player at BB, and my reactions to things are very good but I am a beginner at USF4 so i don’t have the reactions for alot of things atm. but that doesn’t stop you from reviewing your matches and finding out what you need to improve in. I am terrible at anticipating jump-ins against fireball characters or i tend to make it blatantly obvious i am going to eventually jump in. These are the simple things i hope to improve in someday.