*** Misconceptions of the SF4 Game System Mechanics - GREAT READ ***

[yeb]

SRK motions are definitely lenient on each input, and :r::df::r: works. It’s the only annoying “shortcut” to me, because it triggers when I hesitate between a crouching or standing poke and I don’t think it would have happened in other games. Even :uf::db::uf: counts though, since it covers all the lenient forward-down-forward inputs.

Anyway, some info on landing frames/trip guard:

-After a jump, there are 4 landing frames where you cannot walk/dash/jump again.
-If you empty jump, you can block immediately upon landing (standing or crouching, no difference), or do an attack the instant you land.
-If you attack in the air, then you cannot block for the first 2 frames when you land, and can’t attack for all 4 landing frames.
-You can always tech throws that grab you during your landing frames.
-If you attack in air and then attempt to attack during your landing frames, the attack will be buffered and performed as soon as the landing frames are over.

Important:
The landing frame buffer is particularly weird, and I think most people don’t know what effect it can have. If you try a link combo on the ground, your muscle memory is going to be based on a move taking X number of frames to hit. If you try the same link combo off a jump in though, and you press the first button during the landing frames, the attack won’t come out right away. The game still registers the attack, but it won’t be performed until AFTER the landing frames, so the attack can effectively take a couple extra frames to hit. This changes the timing for links, and can easily cause you to drop combos that you do by muscle memory. The way to avoid that problem is to manually delay your attack slightly when you land, so you don’t time it during the landing frames.

Anyway, how landing frames affect safe jumps:

-Invincible attacks that hit on the 3rd frame or faster cannot be safe jumped (your attack would whiff during their 1st startup frame and they’d hit you during your 2nd landing frame).
-Wakeups that are 4-5 frames can be safe jumped, but can’t be hit by option selects.
-Wakeups that are 6 frames or slower can be safe jumped, and then hit by your own invincible move as an option select.
-Invincible command throws cannot be safe jumped. Even though you can block, they grab you before you can do something that would actually avoid them, like jumping or DPing.

[ilitirit]

And are you sure about the leniency of the :d: of the shoryuken? I think it’s strict, because wouldn’t spamming :r: and :df: give out a shoryuken then? Last time I checked, this did not give a srk, but I can’t test it right now. But if it doesn’t, that means the :d: is a strict input. Also meaning :df: x 3 is not a shortcut for a srk

There’s a bit of ambiguity with diagonals as they pertain to shortcuts and I’m not quite sure what the rules are regarding them. But the :d: on DP’s is definitely lenient. It’s why you get teleport when you try to do Bison’s Ultra from a crouch block position and end on :df:

Wow, but the rest of your post is perfect. I always wanted to know exactly how many frames the game “remembers” the inputs. Do you happen to know a site where it lists all of these input windows for every move?

The values I got were actually recorded by noodalls using frame-accurate hardware macros, but you can examine the inputs (in hexadecimal) if you hack apart the files from the PC version. The value for the delay is coded on every input, but I’m not sure if it’s a 1:1 relationship between the actual hex value and the with the number of in-game frames. (EDIT: I checked the file and the delay values for SRK appear to be 0x08, 0x08, 0x0C, which translates into 8, 8, and 12 delay frames respectively)

Oh, and thank you for pointing out the reversal windows. And do you have your source for this also? It’s not that I don’t believe you; I just want to read up more on what that site/thread has to say. Much props to you.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=7442205&postcount=47
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=7621688&postcount=367

[Richard_Nguyen]

Ughhhhhhhhh, why is Yeb so godlike?! And it was fun playing against you. I hope you like Tiger Uppercuts even more now. :razzy: But you are even gdlk in your knowledge. Thank you.

And thanks ilitirit as well!

[a_falling_mango]

Another extremely common example is when a player tries to walk forward and immediately do a crouching forward cancelled into a hadouken. So, you’re giving the game engine the input of :r::d::df::r: + :lp:. As many of you probably know by now, if you try to do this, all you will be getting is a crouching forward cancelled into a shoryuken, NOT a hadouken. That is because a shoryuken has more move priority then a hadouken. The way to avoid the shoryuken and get the hadouken instead is to walk forward, then WAIT (have your stick anywhere except :r: or :df:), and then do the qcf+p. The reason you wait is to have the game engine “forget” that you pressed the first :r: and will not confuse your motion to become a dp.

You do not have to pause before executing :r:, :d::mk:, :qcf::lp:

:r:, :d::mk:, :d::mk:, :qcf::lp: will always give you hadou

EDIT: To clarify, double tap :mk:

[Jinrai]

I have one nitpick about your first post: light attacks cannot be plinked into one another effectively.

Consider the input display of a typical plink:

B A
A

If you timed your link properly, you will get button A and you would think that your plink was effective. However, if you timed the a frame early, A+B will come out. In effective plinks, button A is a stronger attack than button B so that A always wins out when both buttons are pressed at the same time in any other situation.

Long story short: Zangief will eventually get a whiffed throw if he attempts to plink his low Shorts.

[Lollaff]

Great stuff. Could you add something about stuns aswell? I mean how to most efficiently get out of them, if there’s a difference between stuns(birds, stars, skulls) etc.

[Richard_Nguyen]

I have one nitpick about your first post: light attacks cannot be plinked into one another effectively.

Consider the input display of a typical plink:

B A
A

If you timed your link properly, you will get button A and you would think that your plink was effective. However, if you timed the a frame early, A+B will come out. In effective plinks, button A is a stronger attack than button B so that A always wins out when both buttons are pressed at the same time in any other situation.

Long story short: Zangief will eventually get a whiffed throw if he attempts to plink his low Shorts.

But if you’re crouching, :lp:+:lk: is like a crouch tech, which gives out a short (because you cannot grab while crouching). So, standing/crouching jab and standing short cannot be plinked. Only crouching short can be plinked.

But thanks, Jinrai for the post. You’re the one I learned much about the 3s game mechanics! :china:
Oro ftw btw. :rock:

Great stuff. Could you add something about stuns aswell? I mean how to most efficiently get out of them, if there’s a difference between stuns(birds, stars, skulls) etc.

Oh yeah, I remember finding some info about this. I believe the stun animation of bird, stars, etc. is determined by the last hit that hits them and character-specific. But I’m not too sure; I’m pretty sure Jinrai would know this though. What’s the answer? :wonder:

[Jinrai]

I’m an idiot. Yeah, there’s that whole crouching thing to think about. However, CHAINED moves still cannot be plinked.

As far as dizzies go, I would imagine they act similarly to 3S in that the game randomly assigns a set number of frames for you to recover without mashing, while each button/joystick input reduces that amount by an additional frame. I doubt that there is any difference between birds, stars, and skulls like there is in ST because IIRC the arcade version only had stars.

In 3S, the move that stuns you affects the relative severity of the stun. I don’t know if that’s the case in SF4, but if it is you should be able to notice a difference if you try dizzying with a Jab, Fierce, special move, throw, or special throw several times each.

[scaryxited]

So, with Super/Ultra motions the game will remember your inputs for quite a while. So, if you mash every directional input (aka 360’s clockwise) fast enough, the game will finally register those 6 (or 5 with the shortcut) directional inputs you need for the super.
So it basically looks like this:
:d::db::l::ub::u::uf::r::df::d::db::l::ub::u::uf: :r: :df::d::db::l::ub::u::uf::r::df:
….……*…

About this. If the quick string of stick inputs contain the motions for both Goukens counter and ultra does that mean you could simply press p then 3p to get the counter to cancel into ultra? Or does the game forget the prevous inputs once a special comes out? It shouldn’t thou since you can do Roes spiral to super with only 2 qcf.

[Kich]

About this. If the quick string of stick inputs contain the motions for both Goukens counter and ultra does that mean you could simply press p then 3p to get the counter to cancel into ultra? Or does the game forget the prevous inputs once a special comes out? It shouldn’t thou since you can do Roes spiral to super with only 2 qcf.

Well given that Akuma is the only character that can cancel into their ultra…

[System_1]

About this. If the quick string of stick inputs contain the motions for both Goukens counter and ultra does that mean you could simply press p then 3p to get the counter to cancel into ultra? Or does the game forget the prevous inputs once a special comes out? It shouldn’t thou since you can do Roes spiral to super with only 2 qcf.

Well it doesn’t forget the inputs, and I think goukens counter works like this as well: Akuma can somehow cancel his shaku into another special move where the flame from the shaku comes out, and then the other special move executes over top of it. I’d like some one to explain how that one works in the SF4 engine.

All of akumas special moves can do it, including a flaming dragon punch, super/ultra. The easiest one is flaming ex tatsu = :df: :qcb: :lp:, :lp: :lk: :mk:, where the punch is plinked with the kicks.

[a_falling_mango]

snip

Could be an Akuma specific glitch or something. Just like how Ken’s CH SRK leads to full Ultra juggle.

[fegis]

I can only neutral rep too so ill rep later but big thanks from me!!! very useful and well thought and laid out guide.

People’s Elbow, i love reading about it haha.

[Theli]

Checked and couldn’t find it mentioned here already, so…

The odd properties of landing frames seem to allow a character such as ryu to do a triple option select. The 3 options are jumping attack connects/j.wiff, dp/j.wiff, block. The later two options depend on how fast the opponents invincible move can hit. (This is reproducible within training.)

The theory as I understand it suggests that a wiffed jump-in still allows trip guard. (I guess after the first 2 frames?) A fast (but slower than 3 frame) invincible move would hit the trip guard, resulting in block status. A slow invincible move, or backdash, would only come out after trip guard is ended, allowing the dp with invincibility to come out.

I’m not 100% sure about the explanation above. So I’d appreciate a myth check.

And yeah, that’s really weird about lightning legs. Perhaps it has special chainable status that’s just not reported in frame data? (Such as ryu standing lk chaining from other chainable lk/lp normals, but not being chainable itself.) There might be a whole column of data missing from what we have that’s usually redundant.

[Kich]

Checked and couldn’t find it mentioned here already, so…

But the game itself doesn’t track inputs and moves at any speed other than 30 frames per second. All the other frame data you see works on this. So the charge time would actually be just under 2 seconds. The amazing uses that charging moves are sometimes put to depends solely on how soon the player is able to start charging again after they’ve lost it.

The information you posted is slightly incorrect. 2 seconds is way, way more time than you need to charge anything.

This whole idea that the game runs at 30 frames per second, causing charge moves to require nearly 2 seconds of charge, is entirely bogus. I’m not hating on you, but just the fact that people would make that leap without actually testing it is the very reason dumbfucks still think :df::df::p: works as an SRK input.

Took me all of, literally, 15-20 seconds (the AI kept hitting me so I had to get him at a range in which he’d just sit there so I could time it properly) to debunk that claim.

Clock hit 80, I held back, just as the clock hit 79, press forward and punch, Sonic Boom. No, charging doesn’t take anywhere near 2 seconds to complete, it’s actually just under 1 second.

Well it doesn’t forget the inputs, and I think goukens counter works like this as well: Akuma can somehow cancel his shaku into another special move where the flame from the shaku comes out, and then the other special move executes over top of it. I’d like some one to explain how that one works in the SF4 engine.

All of akumas special moves can do it, including a flaming dragon punch, super/ultra. The easiest one is flaming ex tatsu = :df: :qcb: :lp:, :lp: :lk: :mk:, where the punch is plinked with the kicks.

This is, essentially, kara-cancelling a special move into another special move. As you mentioned, yes, Gouken’s counter can do so as well. I wonder what other special moves are kara-cancellable like that…

[ilitirit]

Checked and couldn’t find it mentioned here already, so…

“And since the game engine runs at 60 frames per second, it actually requires less than a second for gaining the charge.”

Technically, frame rate of the game is 60 frames per second as far as visuals are concerned.

But the game itself doesn’t track inputs and moves at any speed other than 30 frames per second. All the other frame data you see works on this. So the charge time would actually be just under 2 seconds. The amazing uses that charging moves are sometimes put to depends solely on how soon the player is able to start charging again after they’ve lost it.

This is completely wrong.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=178322

[Theli]

Hmm, fair enough. Editted.

Perhaps a note to indicate that certain information widely available is actually invalid may help this from happening in the future.

[Kich]

Hmm, fair enough. Editted.

Perhaps a note to indicate that certain information widely available is actually invalid may help this from happening in the future.

It doesn’t help, certainly, that they label it as 2 seconds pretty much everywhere. 55 frames isn’t even the universal charge time: Vega only requires 42 frames for his charges (according to SF-Wiki, which I feel is valid, given that you can df.rh > rh.st, which is pretty ridic).

[ilitirit]

I’d like some one to explain how that one works in the SF4 engine.

It’s a kara cancel, and it’s not limited to Akuma. Ken kara cancel can his air EX-Tatsu into a normal tatsu so that it maintains the arc of the EX version.

[UltraDavid]

Have you ever noticed that if the opponent uses a 2-frame (ie 1+1) super within its initial hitting range, you can block on reaction but you can’t press any buttons?

My theory is that super freezes cause button inputs to drop for 2 frames. Try it against Chun’s and Sagat’s supers, both of which are 2 framers. If you’re point blank, you can block or let go of block, but you can’t do anything that involves buttons on reaction to the super freeze. Against characters with 3 frame supers like Dhalsim, though, you can block and let go of block and also do things that involve buttons.

For some reason you CAN do buttons against Ken’s super even though the jab version is listed at 2 frames, so that’s weird. James Chen guessed that maybe that means that the frame data is wrong.