How many frames exactly can a command for a special move be input before a character recovers from a stun animation or a reset or wakeup to get a Reversal? (Input Window of sorts)
How many frames does it take for your command for a special move to have to be continued from the opposite direction when you are crossed up.
Does this have any correlation with how long it takes for your character to turn around in a cross up situation?
Would the Reversal input window make it easier or more likely to perform an “Anti-Crossup” special move without having to continue the input from the opposite side upon being Crossed Up?
I believe the reversal window, i.e the frames prior to exiting a non neutral state where you can input the command for a special, is 6 frames.
Regards to crossing up, you just need to ensure that the correct inputs are hit relative to what side your opponent is on. As an example, an opponent jumping from the right over to your left, you can input the full DP motion to the right, hitting the punch button AFTER they’ve crossed over your central point and the reversal will execute towards your opponent.
A lot of people hate this, they call it ‘auto-flipping’ because the DP motion is input one direction but comes out the other, as if the game engine is somehow helping the player out (which, like everything is considered OMFGWTFBBQSFIVNOOB)
Understanding how the engine interprets inputs you can see this is not the case. A dragon punch motion for example is towards your opponent, down and then down-towards followed by punch, satisfy these inputs (even if your opponent switches sides mid motion) and the move will come out.
Moves will ALWAYS come out towards your opponent which may not be in the direction you input, you cannot DP away from your opponent for example. If you input a DP while being crossed up and it comes out towards the direction your opponent jumped from, that means you hit punch before they crossed over you.
Technically this is a badly timed crossup, a well timed one is hitting you on the frame it crosses over your central line, giving you a single frame to hit your button and complete the motion, hence why DP’ing a well timed crossup is very risky
This is a more information oriented question, but what’s the point of the reversal window if it’s so large? (I am trying to understand the controversy here.) Does it just mean if you do a move in a certain time frame after blocking another move a “reversal” message will appear? That’s what I always thought, coming from older SFs. But people seem to be using “reversal” more broadly nowadays. If the above frame data is correct, and reversals aren’t guaranteed to hit (they aren’t as far as I know), then I don’t see what the big deal is here because all this means is that you will get the reversal message more often but not hit your opponent. It’s not accurate, but oh well.
***But ***I remember some people griping about the reversal window being too large. Is the complaint here that people have too *much time *to execute a reversal (however many frames it actually is), thus rendering the reversal pop-up useless (because reversals won’t really hit), or are they complaining about something else like that they have *more time *to hit an opponent? I always guessed that part of the problem here was that people were thinking reversals were “easy” but perhaps were not taking into account how much block stun is reduced in this game, and thus were incorrectly interpreting the effectiveness of hitting someone still in an attack animation just as you recover from block stun as a “reversal” (especially on jump ins, where this happens all the time if you mistime your jump).
I also second Kenuran’s questions. That’s important information we need to know that we are getting conflicting answers to.
i took ‘reversal’ messages to mean that whatever move it was (DP for the sake of argument) came out the first frame out of blockstun or knockdown, ie. as soon as the game engine allows. usually this means you’d have to finish the input on that particular frame, but the reversal window leniency means that you can input it either on your first frame out of blockstun / knockdown or 9 (or whatever it is) frames beforehand.
The above poster is correct I believe. Doing reversals in SF4 is easy because of the large amount of frames you can reverse in. In HDR the amount of frames is much smaller, but in both reversals come out on the first frame.
In SF4 the reversal window isn’t global and instead appears to be coded individually per each recovery animation. It seems to be 4-5f most of the time.
Oddly, sometimes a character has a different window depending on what they got hit with or which way up they landed after being knocked down. I noticed it while trying to measure Cammy’s framedata shortly after the game was released… for some reason she has a 5f window after landing on her back, but a 4f window after landing face down.
The reason the reversal window in SF4 seems longer than it actually is is due to negative edge. When you press a button, you’re likely to hold it down for about 3-4f before releasing it. Even if you pressed it too early, you’ll probably still release it within the window and trigger a reversal.
ST allows for negative edge reversals as well, at least according to David Sirlin’s YouTube videos (when he talks about piano method for reversals.) (IIRC)
The complaint is that it becomes riskier for the aggressor to maintain pressure. In ST, the timing for a reversal is very strict so you can’t just mash your way out of block/hit stun or a knocked down state. In SFIV, then more lenient input window means that you can input an SRK as an lp puts you in blockstun, do nothing and then still get a reversal. In ST, that would never work because by the you’re out of block stun the input window is long gone. So in order to get a reversal, you have to input your move just before you exit block stun, which can be tricky. On top of that, “shortcut” motions in SFIV mean that you if you mash with certain characters you’re also extremely likely to get a reversal, even if your input is garbage. That’s because the game will look at all the commands entered during the duration of the input window and find executable moves. Because an SRK has such high priority, mashing virtually always produces one if you mash during blockstun (sometimes you get a super though).
Why this is makes it risky for an aggressor is that reversals enable you to go instantly from a non-neutral state into the startup of the move, bypassing any intermediate state. Which means that if you successfully perform a reversal into a move that has startup invincibility (many EX moves have this property), your opponent can’t touch you on wake-up (no meaties), and can’t maintain blockstring pressure. In ST, if you don’t time your reversal correctly and there’s a 1 frame gap, you will get hit by a meaty attack because that 1 frame of vulnerability is all your opponent needs to connect.
The other property that reversal specials have in SFIV is that they break armour.
This is a more information oriented question, but what’s the point of the reversal window if it’s so large? (I am trying to understand the controversy here.) Does it just mean if you do a move in a certain time frame after blocking another move a “reversal” message will appear?
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The reversal window refers to the amount of time before your character is able to move (i.e. when your character returns to a neutral state), whereby you can buffer a special move and have it come out the first frame possible. A larger window means you have much more time to perform a special move before it executes.
A reversal is a special move that becomes active on the first frame following a non-neutral state imposed by the opponent, i.e. block stun, hit stun, knockdown.
It may be the case that people are referring to special moves following any non-neutral state, including those not imposed by the opponent, i.e. srk->srk.
Reversals aren’t guaranteed to hit, but that depends on the move used and the distance between the two players. The problem is, if you are in block or hit stun, often times the opponent is still close enough to get hit. And if the opponent tries to pressure you during a knockdown, that also means they are close enough to get hit.
Yes, this is the general complaint.
Here are the issues: The Large Reversal Window
Let me give an example. Let’s say you are Ryu and you were just knocked down. Let’s pretend for argument’s sake that the reversal window was abysmally long at 2 seconds, or 120 frames. That would mean you could perform your reversal move the moment you hit the floor, sip a beer, and then your srk would automatically pop out once you get up. You could even do the motion while you were flying through the air, before you hit the ground, and you would still perform the srk the moment you got up. Of course this is exaggerated, but you can start to understand what happens as the input window gets larger.
Riskless timing
In addition, SF4 does not punish you for performing a move too early, i.e. before the reversal window. In Smash Bros, if you were in a tumble state and tried to tech a little too early before you hit the ground, you were actually punished and were not allowed to tech. This means you couldn’t mash the buttons to tech, and had to be pretty aware of the timing.
The biggest consequence is that these two mechanics create an issue where players can simply mash motions, and still perform a reversal. This is further encouraged by:
Reduced blockstun
Since blockstun is reduced in this game and there are very few true blockstrings, each of the gaps in said blockstrings provide an opportunity for a reversal to come out.
All of this essentially changes the metagame from what players were accustomed to. Blockstrings turn into baiting mind games against characters with good reversals, and meaties become unsafe against an even smaller number of characters. I personally don’t have an issue with the change in mechanics, but I’m not a fan of mashing inputs as a viable strategy.
TLDR: the large reversal window encourages mashing inputs, and changes the metagame from what people were used to in other sf games.
With the release of the PC version, this sort of data should be easy to measure.
You can setup a macro where your opponent knocks you down, and then and commands just before wakeup and record how long you have before the game forgets your inputs. That gap would essentially be the length of your input window. I’m at work now but I’ll try to set up something later when I have time.
I’m probably going to get negged to hell for this but herein lies the issue imo. I really think some people are struggling to adapt to this change, which is fair enough but I do think it clouds people’s judgement on what is/isn’t a good change for the series.
Top players in ST can execute reversals on demand anyway so what is the harm in opening this up to players lower down the execution ladder? I am genuinely interested in people’s answer to this. Reversals are always high risk/high reward moves so it’s not like this change hands out a free lunch to the unskilled.
If Capcom added a 1-button macro to perform wakeup Ultras, would people complain?
I understand that sirlin says that theres 1 frame for doing reversalsin ST. But I really think theres more. When I’m playing, sometimes on wake up I’ll do the srk a little early than usually and it still comes out. A little bit too late and it won’t come out at all. It has to be 2 or 3 frames. Furthermore, if the ST or HDremix is running at 60fps then its impossible to do a reversal. I think its running at 30fps right? I mean… even so, it can’t be 1 frame.