Video games typically run on commodity hardware. That means that, for US and Japanese games, it’s going to be an NTSC television set - nominally running at 59.94 Hz interlaced. Sirlin indicates that one ‘frame’ refers to a 60th of a second for SSF2T on the Capcom Classics Collection Volume 2 tutorial which means (at least in his book) that a ‘frame’ is one pass of the electron gun – so technically it’s a half-frame. At 60 hertz each half-frame takes about 17 milliseconds.
European televisions run at 50 hertz (PAL Standard) and more resolution. I don’t know how the home systems address that, but I would not be surprised to hear that timing is subtly different for the PAL version of a game, or that the action is occasionally jerky. (An easy method for converting between PAL and NTSC involves adding or dropping frames.) At 50 hertz each half-frame takes 20 milliseconds.
For comparison purposes, typical simple reaction times are around 180 ms and choice reactions are around 380 ms.
I don’t want to get into this digression too far, but:
NTSC (US and Japanese television) is 30 frames per second, but it’s interlaced,so:
at 0/60ths of a second, the TV starts redrawing every odd line
then at 1/60 of a second the TV starts redrawing every even line
so it takes two passes to do one frame.
A modern CRT computer monitor is going to be able to put out about
70 times the data that a TV can, but I’m guessing that most of the
benefit for a game like MvC2 is going to be in the form of flicker reduction.
I’m not sure exactly what the difference is, but DC MvC2 on a computer monitor looks gorgeous. I mean, it really is a dramatic difference. When I saw it I wondered why MvC2 players don’t use that method more often.
The dreamcast is the only console in its generation to feature real VGA quality display capability, and requires additional hardware in order to run on a VGA display. Moreover, VGA was not supported by all DC games. That means that, in order to take advantage of it, a gamer would have to aquire a speciality electronics item (IIRC it costs around $50) and, more or less and have a VGA display for playing some of the DC games, and VGA displays are typically more expensive that televisions of a similar size.
Second of all
With the frame data, can you tell which moves can be super canceled or super jump canceled? Which part of the notation would designate something like this?
That sort of information is separate from the frame counts, and is typically in its own column in the frame data tables. I’m not sure if anyone has compiled tables with super jump canceling information.
It’s worth pointing out that most of the frame data tables exclude important information like hit boxes and character movement information - both of which would have to be listed frame-by-frame.
Semi scrub question here. Can Air Throws/ Air command throws be parried? FOr instance, Chun’s Air throw and Alex’s weird Knee Drop thing. (SRK motion + Kick.)
If you parry the Aegis, and Urien throws a UOH or low LK, or whatever, into the mix… and you parry that as well, will the following hits of the Aegis be timed as before (follow the same rhythm), or will the rhythm change after you parry the non-Aegis hit?
So, the first parry of Chun’s SA.2 must be done before the flash, not after.
Strange thing though, if you’re Ibuki and do her df+MK (slide) on the first frame after the flash you can hit Chun out of the super. It’s not easy, I think it’s a just-frame (1 frame input window).
But I wonder why it is you’re able to do an attack that can avoid the first kick after the flash ends, but you can’t input a parry after the flash.
When you tech an air throw, what exactly happens? Do you get the same animation/ recovery frames, but in the air? And, if you hit the ground, do you auto recover?