I’m doing like 130 explanation clips for his DVD. Everything so far fills up one half of a 4.7GB dvd and he wanted to have some kind of subtitle or explanation of his combos and I offered to help.
The explanation clips will be included in the DVD and hopefully people will not have an doubts to what happens in the combos.
He wants to have the DVD finished sometime in July. Not sure when.
Who knows, I might have it on me at Evo. If I do I’ll hand them out in order to save Preppy a lot of bandwidth.
Don’t worry, eidrian and i are joking. It’s going to be downloadable so you don’t have to worry about ordering it. Last i heard (from someone who heard from someone), it’s gonna be out by the end of the year. I’m sure it’ll be a big deal when it happens, and will be featured on both Preppy’s website and Magnetro’s website. So check there every few weeks and you won’t miss it.
So in order to keep Zach’s page from exploding, I think I’ll do a tiering for release. This way Zach’s page won’t get hit up all at once. Maybe a week wait between tiers. So far it’s looking like it’ll be:
1st) ComboVideo People (select few)
2nd) People who PM me on SRK. (Might be less than 100)
3rd) Premium Members (don’t really want to do this one, but it’s just another tier i guess)
4th) Regular SRK (it’ll be posted in FGD/Marvel2 Subforums/VideoGallery)
5th) Preppy’s Page (Front Page)
6th) CapcomUnity/SRK Front page (this will be the bulk of the hits)
7th MMDS.
After all the work that he and I have put into these extra videos for his DVD, I felt that it was appropriate to repost this. Translated by NKI.
I can’t speak for him personally, but I know that he started his project in late 2002. The combos in the DVD are dated, so when you watch combos from 2002-2003, think about the American side of combovideos during that time. It’s amazing how ahead of everyone he has always been. There will probably be comments by joo at the end of some of the combos he is most proud of.
He’s right about the large gap in knowledge, fortunately the DVD will have explanation videos for his combos. Even though he’s also right about there not being many Marvel2 players out there, I felt that it was right to make these videos for him because of the amount of time he put into his DVD. I also felt bad that he WANTED some kind of graph or something to show how complicated his combos are, but didn’t have the patience or time. Although after all this work, I’m pretty sure his biggest problem is time, and not patience.
Yeah. This is probably going to have to be covered in a separate video. It’s really difficult to show that once you find something special, it’s not something exclusive. Imagine copy-pasting macro commands in MvC2. Chunks and pieces of combos getting copied and pasted all over the place. The thing is though, you can’t just copy-paste parts and have them work.
For example, the a lot of the combos from Meikyousisui Volume 11 are combos from his DVD, except that they’re heavily truncated. He took some of the pieces from his DVD combo and copy-pasted them into a new combo for Meik11. There is a challenging element in doing that though, if you want to paste “A” and have it link into “C” while avoiding “B” (“B” being DVD combo chunk), you’ll have to re-program a part “B” for “A” and “C”.
What he means by this: there is a lot of combo-extending possibilities using 1-frame links. 1-Frame links allow the combo to be extended in a significant manner that leads up into another chunk. There are certain situations where you can cross the dummy up while hitting him from the same side. Usually these are resets, but often times there are 1-frame links to allow the “cross-up” to combo. Another example is the 1-Frame OTG, some characters (Sonson/Ruby come to mind) can really extend their combos by using 1-Frame OTGs. There is all sorts of stuff in the DVD that is 1-Frame only.
I think that he’s very proud of the fact that he’s come full-circle with his combos. There are only like 3 or 4 Training Mode-Only combos in the DVD. The rest are combos that can be done in regular versus mode (although some have handicap-1 because they would kill the dummy before the combo finishes). It’s a big deal for combo-video people to do combos in versus mode because they often don’t work 100% of the time. So it’s a sense of complete accomplishment.
Yeah, the 100% technique makes recording combos in versus mode possible. I’ll probably make a short video to demonstrate the average combo-programming-recording sequence that he and I have. It’s really amazing how much dedication it takes when you find something and you have no way of assuring it will work 100%. I think that if he had known about the 100% technique before embarking on his DVD project, he would have finished it in 2 or 3 years instead of 5 or 6.
Yes. I want to throw in some videos to demonstrate how hard it was to find some of the things he found. In short, the way he comes up with things is: find all the possible data to find in MvC2, look at it everyday and think of possible uses. There is very little he left out in the DVD. Each character has a combo to demonstrate their special abilities. Certain combo-heavy characters like Cyclops have many combos while others (Aming) have one, but it has everything interesting.
If we were to make a video of how we find things, it would really give everyone a better idea of how hard it is to “keep at it” when you find something and want to develop it into a combo. Again, in general it goes like:
*Think of all the possible options and combinations and moves a character has.
Find frame data for absolutely everything.
Systematically archive and organize the data so that it can be referenced in the future.
Observe the data until something sticks out. Sometimes ideas come right away, and other times it takes a lot of thinking or they just happen to spontaneously pop up. HOWEVER, since the game has been out this long, coming up with combos has become ridiculously hard because of the ceiling joo has created. So thinking and looking at the data is the only way to make technical combos.
Start programming everything in individual segments. If you have 5 ideas that you want to include in ONE COMBO, you’ll have to develop them into something so that you can piece them together (A B C D E). Please be aware that it is difficult to do all the previous steps. Amounting everything is just half of the process, putting everything together takes a lot of time because you have to program and test everything frame-by-frame. It is REALLY hard to show how much perseverance it takes to do this stuff (I can’t go more than 4 sentences without saying that. Heh).
*Once each idea is developed and can link into another, you start a new combo with everything in it. This is also very time consuming. You have to test if everything is piecing together. Often times it does, but when something doesn’t work out, it’s hard to find the spot that is messing the combo up. Again, without the 100% technique, all these things take a really long time.
Capturing the combo. This used to take hours and sometimes days because the probability of a combo working the way it was supposed to is very high. The 100% technique insures that something that took MONTHS to plan out will work on the very first try. Unless you’ve programmed combos like this, you’re not going to appreciate it. My 3 character combo from VA took 5 days (about 16 hours per day ((i got very little sleep), capturing it took 2 whole days because of the bug required and because of the probability of it working. With the 100% technique it will work on the first try so it will only take 15 minutes for days of work to be captured.
So that’s the GENERAL process. There are a lot of details that can only be showed on video. There are 56 characters. Really elastic but controlled and logical engine. Possibility of 5-6 characters on-screen at once. Air Combos. All sorts of links. When you think about all the elements in MvC2, the DVD will be very astonishing. He went out of his way to make it complete in every way possible.
Finally,
Yeah that line made me feel bad for him, so that is why I’m doing these videos. Knowing all the conditions that made doing combos hard etc. I just wanted to make his DVD as good as it can be.
So yeah, DVD MIGHT be done in December. Big MIGHT. So far we have WELL over 1000 title cards. ATM, I’m starting revision # 3 of the 130 combos and the 8 common technique videos totaling ~60 minutes. It’s really interesting what the normal working environment for us is.
We have about 12 excel sheets for Combos and Common Technique Videos. The excel sheets have the English and Japanese versions of the title cards in Premiere as well as comments and change dates. The routine is, I finish a pass --> he checks it and adds stuff --> I do another pass and send it back --> he OKs it.
About 6 Adobe Premiere Projects
An FTP account (thank you so much Zach) with like 80gbs of content (combos/explanation clip content/the excel sheets we upload/other non-dvd stuff that he might release after his DVD/bugs/CommonTechnique content/BGMS/more stuff)
Sometimes a translator comes in to help us.
Yeesh. I can’t help but think of all the new people who have absolutely no idea about any of this stuff. I hope all of you read this. Projects like this are more appreciated when you know what was put into them.
Like I told joo, “No one will ever understand these combos like you do, even me. This is because only you lived with yourself while you were researching and programming every single frame in your DVD. You will always have those memories with you and those can’t be put in explanation videos”
So the best thing is just to absorb as much as you can when it comes out.
