In order to actually hit a character with an active frame other than the first, you have a few options:
After knockdown, attack the character early so that when they wake up and are able to block, you have already expended some of the active frames of your attack.
Change the distance bewteen you and your opponent so that when your your attack hits your opponent, it is already in the active frames. This is done either by your move projecting you towards your opponent, or your opponent being projected into the attack. Examples of the former are Dictator’s cr.HK slide & Cammy’s Cannon Drill which can be spaced so as to touch the opponent at a point other than the first frame of animation.
I think what they mean is for character specific combo’s it is possible in SF4 because of the god awful reeling animations when characters are hit to hit them with mid-combo ‘meaties’. This terminology is very bad in my opinion but I’ve seen people mention it before.
Essentially in SF4 people’s hurt boxes change on different frames of their hit stun. So it is possible with different timings of a button on some combo’s to collide with later active frames of a move in some situations because their animation has them to far to get hit when the move becomes active but the opponent moves into the hitbox on a later frame in the reeling animation. E. Ryu has combo’s like this on Rufus that allows cr. FP to combo from a st. Jab I believe.
Traditionally meaty just means a move that hits on the first frame an opponent wakes up so they are forced to reversal or block. In this situation you can also hit with the later active frames giving you better frame advantage on hit & block by hitting them with the later active frames. Example would be meaty Decapre ground pound that makes it meaty or Yun crossup meaty LP shoulder making it + on block and able to link a cr. jab after it.
how do u time a button to hit on a later frame other then the first ?
because correct me if im wrong isn’t technically when u enter the active frames of a move your on the second frame because the first frame of active frames is the last frame of start up and the first frame of active frames.
There is NO way for you to guarantee that it is possible. It only works against some characters most likely at specific spacings with specific timings. How it works is very character dependent if it is even possible. Personally i’d just ignore the concept, if you can’t make Evo top 8 without those options you won’t make it with them.
This is a bit tricky to understand, but no. If you use the convention where startup includes the active frame the first active frame is duplicated in the active section so a cr. jab would be
3 startup 3 active 9 Recovery or something
The total duration of the move is 3+3+9-1 = 14
The 1st active frame is duplicated in the startup and active sections with this convention which is why for total duration you have to subtract 1. Their is no convention that includes the first frame of active in startup but does not include it under active.
I think the Bison slide example is like this - they wake up, you time the slide to hit at the tip as soon as they stand OR you time the slide to reach them before they stand up, but when they do the slide is still active and catches puts them in blockstun with the later frames of the slide giving it different data properties.
Something similar can happen when an opponent dashes into your moves, like say Rose dashes into Sagat’s far st.mk, I can link a cr.jab, but I can’t do that in any other scenario, it doesn’t link.
Active frames after you hit the opponent can be thought of as recovery frames. So since hit stun is constant no matter when you hit them, hitting with later active frames means you have more advantage on hit which is what enables you to link slower normals then you could normally.
Example Move:
3 startup 3 active 9 recovery
1st active frame
2 more active + 9 recovery = 11 frames to recover
2nd active frame
1 more active frame + 9 recovery = 10 frames to recover
3rd active frame
0 more active frames + 9 recovery 9 frames to recover
Lets say there was 15 frames of hit stun
1st active would be +4
2nd active would be +5
3rd active would be +6
This additional advantage is what enable the new links with meaty combo’s.
Change the distance bewteen you and your opponent so that when your your attack hits your opponent, it is already in the active frames.
This is done either by your move projecting you towards your opponent,
Examples of the former are Dictator’s cr.HK slide & Cammy’s Cannon Drill which can be spaced so as to touch the opponent at a point other than the first frame of animation.
so what about traveling hitboxes does the the longer the moves travels the more meaty it can hit.
Yeah it is the same effect traveling moves generally have A LOT of active frames. However, generally with people moving around it is really hard to do this randomly in neutral it is almost impossible to do with any consistency unless the window is really big (Bison EX Psycho has a big window … the ones you listed are more difficult). Most of the ways people actually do this is on wakeup so you can do it consistently. It isn’t so much about ‘distance’ and more about time traveling. In neutral those are the same thing, but not when you do it during someone’s wakeup.