[HN Gopher] Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Visualizing fighting game mechanics (2020)
Author : skadamat
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-12-14 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (janezhang.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (janezhang.ca)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I kind of noped out of the fighting game craze when they
| descended on the arcades in the 90's (?). To my eye they had
| abandoned the twitchy interactivity I had come to expect playing
| standard arcade games like Tempest, etc. Rather than a fire
| button and a spinner you had a joystick plus what amounted to a
| numpad of buttons. It seemed like maybe a game accountants or
| payroll managers would enjoy.
|
| (To this day, though I have built close to a dozen MAME cabinets,
| I have never included the numpad of buttons you would need to
| play fighting games. Besides never getting into the genre, I
| think they clutter up the console and create confusion for other
| games: Metal Slug as an example, which of these six buttons is
| the grenade button?)
|
| <rant \>
|
| Reading this article gives me a new appreciation for the fighting
| game genre. I had never thought of it as something closer to a
| fast-paced Magic, the Gathering. (Still not sure it's my kind of
| game though.)
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Maybe try something like Yomi which removes the twitchiness
| from it while trying to capture the ability to read the
| opponent.
|
| (It's a card game from a street fighter dev)
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _I had never thought of it as something closer to a fast-
| paced Magic, the Gathering_
|
| Very confused how you got that impression from this article.
| The cards are a just a way to visualize information. Fighting
| games don't play like a fast-paced card game, they are
| fundamentally different.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Hmm no they kind of do. The basic insight with most fighting
| games is that once you are competent you know everything that
| opponent can do and the list of viable options is discrete
| and small with fairly standard flowcharts.
|
| Tekken is a bit more nebulous than this.
| haste410 wrote:
| That's not something unique to fighting games. That's the
| concept of playing the metagame.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This makes no sense. For one, a large component of real-
| time games is mechanics and execution. Also, the idea of
| being able to mindlessly "flowchart" a real-time game at a
| competitive level is absurd. It assumes a non-interactive
| opponent. If it was true there would be no such thing as
| yomi.
|
| There are also a lot of other fundamental differences
| around resource management, opponent interaction, etc. They
| are only similar on the most basic level.
|
| What level have you played card games and fighting games or
| another real-time game at?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Oh please. You can absolutely flow chart fighting games.
| That is in fact the entire concept behind combos-
| sequences of moves that your opponent can't do anything
| during outside of more modern combo breaker mechanics.
|
| Yeah there's niche dynamic considerations for making
| these combos work for slightly different distances and
| weights and heights and power meters and whatever. But
| for 99% of the player base you're going to be best off
| learning a few bread and butter ideas and then executing
| on them without much variation.
| irobeth wrote:
| > That is in fact the entire concept behind combos-
| sequences of moves that your opponent can't do anything
| during outside of more modern combo breaker mechanics.
|
| You can flow chart combos, sure, but that's not the whole
| fighting game; most people who play fighting games
| competitively will tell you that knowledge of combo
| theory is maybe 20% of what makes you good at a game
|
| The rest is a dance of turn-taking, knowing when you are
| in advantage or disadvantage state and behaving
| accordingly, and 'neutral' - your behavior during the
| times where you aren't performing a combo or being
| pressured by your opponent
|
| Outside of advantage and disadvantage and neutral lies
| 'oki' - your behavior during the period where you have
| finished a combo, aimed at gaining advantage or at the
| very least, preventing disadvantage (by returning to
| neutral in a controlled form)
|
| Samurai Showdown is an example of a fighting game with
| extremely limited combo/oki mechanics and a heavy
| emphasis on neutral play -- most characters have only 2
| or 3 hit combos which anyone can perform and the entirety
| of the depth in its gameplay is inside 'neutral' - the
| spacing between characters, the choice of when to attack
| and when to defend, when to throw, when to parry, etc.
|
| Blazblue is an example of a fighting game with an
| extremely deep combo system, every character has a unique
| archetype and mechanic, and combos can last tens of
| seconds, and set-ups to turn 'lost neutral' into 'lost
| neutral again' are abundant
|
| The difference between a good combo and bad combo in
| Samurai Showdown can be like 5% of your life bar, meaning
| if you don't have 'good combos' then you might need to
| 'win neutral' 1 more time to win the match (compared to
| if you could perform good combos)
|
| The difference between a good combo and bad combo in
| Blazblue is maybe 50% damage (2500 vs 4500) meaning you
| need to 'win neutral' maybe 3 more times than if you did
| a 'good combo' every time you 'won neutral'
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _But for 99% of the player base you're going to be best
| off learning a few bread and butter ideas and then
| executing on them without much variation_
|
| Yes, this is why it's not at all interesting to talk
| about things that apply to 99% of the playerbase. Because
| mindlessly spamming one thing really, really well is an
| effective strategy against the vast majority of the
| playerbase in any game.
|
| If this is the level that you think about games at then
| yes, all games are very similar. The nuances in shape and
| feel of a game's meta are what make it different and
| interesting, but those only start coming into play at a
| pretty high level of competence relative to the rest of
| the playerbase. At least top 20%, probably more like top
| 5-10% or higher.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Shrug. Watch the finals of different game tourneys and
| see the best of the best and tell me it's not bread
| dripping with butter still.
|
| There are interesting edge cases that only the pros can
| make use of, but it's still samey.
| araes wrote:
| MtG, mentioned earlier, tournament play is very similar.
| Unless they're draft, they usually devolve into all the
| decks everyone knew about on Top8 several weeks before
| release. People can say there's very conscious strategy
| or tactics, except there's not. Because of the mass
| share, aggregate reviews, and mob think, it all
| homogenizes quickly each season.
|
| 4 of with 36 non-land, and 24 land in mid-range, means
| you're really only choosing 9 cards unless its a weird
| deck. Often the whole season devolves into something like
| "[Delver's the best/Sword Crow's the best/ect...], all
| other choices are failure." Hasbro doesn't really care
| unless sales go down. Hasbro's only motivation is selling
| cards. If humans buy, Hasbro sells.
|
| Standard Draft still tends to devolve into most pursuing
| 1st strat, 2nd strat, ect... depending on what gets
| grabbed nearby.
|
| EDH or Commander is usually viewed as the most variety,
| simply because there's far too many combinations with
| only 1 of each among 100.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You can flow chart chess games as well. It's just
| reductive to think that's all there is to it.
| datagram wrote:
| People absolutely flowchart fighting games at a high
| level. Combos are, unsurprisingly, completely non-
| interactive in most games, but there's also a term
| specifically for non-interactive offense: setplay
| https://glossary.infil.net/?t=Set%20Play
|
| The goal of an optimal strategy in fighting games is
| generally to reduce the amount that you have to read your
| opponent as much as possible, ideally to zero. Obviously
| the developers don't want this to be fully possible, but
| players generally try to get as close as they can. Even
| at the highest levels, you can have rounds that go like:
| canned opening -> combo -> setplay -> combo -> setplay ->
| combo.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> once you are competent you know everything that opponent
| can do and the list of viable options is discrete and small
| with fairly standard flowcharts_
|
| This can be applied to any high-skill competition,
| basically - from FPS to F-1.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Inevitably true on some level. Although I think card
| games and FGC share a deeper similarity on the number of
| discrete steps that one player will plan to execute ahead
| of time as a sequence.
|
| I've long imagined a fighting game where rather than
| combos, the receiving player has an array of defensive
| options that vary from trying to mitigate the damage,
| roll out, or seize the initiative back after each hit
| more like a kind fu cinema fight. Make the whole damn
| thing a constant mind gamr
| CocaKoala wrote:
| You're imagining the Guilty Gear series, which gives you
| a variety of defensive options in the system - you can
| jump, double jump, or super jump to avoid something with
| different take-off timings, jump arcs, and speeds; you
| can block, instant block, or faultless defend to change
| the amount of chip damage, block stun, and pushback in an
| effort to throw off your opponent's timing; you can dead
| angle while blocking to try and recover initiative; you
| can backdash or throw out a move that's invulnerable on
| startup in an attempt to get your opponent to whiff.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Nah. Guilty Gear is cool but I mean fundamentally a
| fighting game with no hitstun.
| irobeth wrote:
| > once you are competent you know everything that opponent
| can do
|
| This reads a little like saying "you are competent at chess
| when you know all the moves the pieces can make"
|
| In Chess, knowing your opponent's available moves might
| make the difference between an absolute beginner and a 300
| rated player
|
| Knowing some opening theory might make the difference
| between 300 rating and 1000 rating
|
| But I don't know that I'd call a 300 rated player
| 'competent', or even say that they 'know how to play'
| versus 'know the rules of Chess'
|
| It's consistency in knowing _what are good options_ and
| _what are likely choices_ that makes a competent
| /good/great player in any game (most fighting games are
| perfect information, too!)
| jncfhnb wrote:
| No, it's not like chess. Chess has much more entropy.
| Moves are made one at a time. There's much, much more
| stateful considerations to the game.
|
| In fighting games only a handful of options are
| particularly relevant at any time. often times
| characters' entire thing revolve around one move, like a
| fireball. It's not to say that spamming fireball is a
| viable strategy, but all decisions need to be made in the
| context of remembering that they have a fireball more
| than anything.
| dmonitor wrote:
| >often times characters' entire thing revolve around one
| move, like a fireball
|
| People absolutely _hate_ when a character 's entire thing
| revolves around one move. They're usually a low-tier
| character, and when they aren't low-tier they are just
| annoying to play against.
| Narishma wrote:
| Only beginners tends to complain about that. It's usually
| extremely easy to deal with people who spam a single
| move.
| irobeth wrote:
| one notable exception to this is the grappler archetype,
| where their 'close proximity command grab' is a massive
| tool which you always need to respect
|
| the mere presence of the grappler causes a pressure on
| your decision-making process, since you always have to
| respect this option from them
|
| but _even here_ , the grappler has more tools than just
| 'grab you', they have an entire neutral kit still, as
| well as specials oriented around space control and
| 'trapping you' in the range where their grab is effective
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You didn't read what I wrote
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Fencing is the same way, especially foil. I personally find
| the lower levels of olympic play the most interesting,
| because by the time you get to the semifinals and finals,
| most of the competitors have surpassed human reaction
| speed. At that point, the game boils down to a lightning
| fast game of rock-paper-scissors.
|
| Each fencer basically decides whether they're going to make
| a straight lunge, a parry-riposte, or a disengage-lunge. A
| straight attack loses to a parry, a parry loses to a
| disengage, a disengage will lose to a straight attach due
| to right-of-way.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think Tekken is 4 buttons, and Neo-Geo is 4 buttons, so I'm
| not sure your numpad rant quite applies. I've seen some Neo-Geo
| layouts with a 2x2 layout instead of the traditional swoosh, so
| I think it would be ok.
|
| Personally, I've got lots of room, so if I were a multi-cade
| person, I'd build out different machines for different layouts.
|
| Something for classic single joystick games with two buttons on
| either side (although that might not be perfect for everything,
| some games had three buttons on one side). Something for
| trackballs, hopefully a layout that's reasonable for missle
| command and two player marble madness. Something with three
| buttons each for four players (guantlet/turtles/nba jam). A
| 4-button Neo Geo layout, which might be enough for the two
| player two and three button games too; would need to try and
| see. A 6-button 2x3 layout. If I played MK, their 6-button
| layout with run, although since I don't play MK, I might put
| the pre-run games on the street fighter layout with the column
| in the middle both being block; definitely saw that in arcades.
| starkparker wrote:
| A lot of replies to this feel like they're missing that you're
| closer to the target audience for this than people already
| familiar with fighting game conventions. One of the first
| things researched to establish requirements for this project
| was compiling and categorizing questions from beginners.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I just cannot imagine investing the energy, time and resources,
| especially when you're a kid, with limited spending money, into
| these games that will just beat you down and take all of your
| money for weeks on end before you get even a moderate level of
| competitive skill.
|
| I understand the attraction of mastering a difficult challenge
| for the sake of the challenge itself, but there's just too
| strong of a pragmatic streak in me to justify that challenge
| being something that doesn't generalize into any other aspect
| of life, and is almost completely a time sink. Plus a massive
| dose of what feels like an intoxicating and gratuitous level of
| violence and aggression, which I suppose one gets desensitized
| to after a while but I'm not sure that makes it any better.
| Always baffled me to see my otherwise quiet, good natured
| friends stand in front of these machines for hours when there
| were so many other, to my mind, more curiosity- inspiring games
| available at the time. To each their own I guess.
|
| I chose to take up dance instead, and in addition to satisfying
| the need to master a difficult challenge, have greatly enjoyed
| the actual full body contact with one's erm, "sparring
| partners," that comes with it as well.
| opan wrote:
| Modern arcade controllers are pretty standardized. The 8
| buttons on the right are your four face buttons and four
| shoulder buttons. That plus your 8-directional dpad means they
| work for just about any 2D game or 3D game that doesn't need
| analog sticks or a mouse.
|
| The left half of the 8 buttons is where the four face buttons
| go, in their standard positions more or less, but rotated
| slightly. Top two are the west and north buttons, bottom two
| are south and east buttons. This means PlayStation Cross and
| Xbox A are the same button, but in Nintendo layout that button
| would be the B button (gets even more confusing when you
| consider that PS3 can use Cross or Circle for confirm depending
| on the region).
|
| For the other four you have your triggers on the bottom and
| bumpers on the top, but right is before left. You may think
| that's backwards and confusing, but I think of it as putting
| the more important action first / on the stronger finger. You
| see the same with standard pad controllers vs the mouse. Left
| click on a mouse and right trigger on a controller both tend to
| be your primary fire. With that in mind you'd probably just
| treat it like a standard xinput controller for the bindings.
|
| I've pretty much just gotten into arcade controllers this year
| thanks to the new leverless (4 buttons replace the 4-switch
| stick) arcade controller trend + accompanying DIY scene.
| They're fun for fighting games, platformers, puzzle games,
| shmups, whatever they can work for pretty much. With the modern
| firmware options you can even emulate an analog stick if
| required for a game. I've been using them for as many games as
| I can lately. They even make arcade controllers with extra
| buttons now to play Smash Bros and other platform fighters
| (e.g. Rivals of Aether).
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| One thing that's very tricky about these kind of simplified
| visual explanations of fighting game mechanics is that you don't
| capture all the strategic implications of move properties.
|
| The visualizations make simple scenarios clear, for example if
| you block a sweep point blank (or whatever a highly punishable
| tekken equivalent would be, a snake edge or a hellsweep or
| whatever), then you are at advantage and can land a strong
| punish.
|
| But many moves that are highly disadvantageous on block are not
| punishable when used at their furthest effective range, because
| the opponent does not have a far reaching & fast enough move to
| punish it.
|
| At higher levels of play, this kind of knowledge of move
| properties is actually used against you. There are characters who
| have uninterruptable block strings that ends in a disadvantageous
| move, but the string has significant pushback on block.
|
| Players will use these strings to push the opponent to a
| deliberate spacing where it looks like they can land a long range
| normal to punish the last move of the blockstring. But the string
| is designed to place the opponent just outside of the range of
| that normal, where it looks like it will connect, but it it will
| not. In this situation, the person who did the "unsafe"
| blockstring can watch their opponent's character model, visually
| confirm the startup animation of the attempted punish, and punish
| _that_ move's recovery on reaction. Tricky tricky!
| cultureswitch wrote:
| I think I follow the gist of what you're talking about and it
| doesn't sound all that advanced at all. Deliberately missing
| out getting blocked to make the opponent think they have an
| opening is not a particularly high level play in other games.
| It still baffles me that traditional 2D fighting games and
| Tekken in particular are so complex and that it is so hard to
| even pull off a specific move due to control schemes that are
| maximally unergonomic.
|
| Compare this with the simplicity of Mount & Blade Warband which
| achieves greater depth, in 3D, with a very simple and intuitive
| control scheme.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Pulling off moves is very easy. Pulling off specific
| sequences of moves is not.
| RomanAlexander wrote:
| That's not true. Geese Howard's pretzel move is very
| difficult on its own. Even high level players mess up
| EWGFs. Complicate all this even further by playing in an
| arcade with a square gate. And not to mention the extreme
| moves like pentagram input from arcana hearts 3.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Much More the exception than the norm
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Some inputs are hard but I don't see this as a problem.
| There are many characters in most FG's so I don't see a
| problem with some characters having challenging or even
| extremely challenging inputs. Some players enjoy that
| challenge, and if you don't, you don't have to play that
| character, you can play one that fits your playstyle.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| It is a simple concept, but I'm calling it "advanced" in the
| sense that people don't really do stuff like that except in
| the higher ranks of ranked play, because its effectiveness
| depends on your opponent actually being aware that they
| "should" be pushing a button in a certain situation.
|
| In lower ranks, people are more concerned with the other
| strategic aspects of the game; there is a lot of stuff going
| on all at the same time.
|
| > It still baffles me that traditional 2D fighting games and
| Tekken in particular are so complex and that it is so hard to
| even pull off a specific move due to control schemes that are
| maximally unergonomic.
|
| The mechanical difficulty of certain actions is a deliberate
| design choice. The game tests not only your strategic
| decision making, but also your ability to execute difficult
| inputs, both under pressure, all at once.
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| Motion inputs aren't arbitrarily difficult. They're
| intrinsically tied to the game's balance. Basic special
| uppercut moves like the Shoryuken use the
| forward->down->downforward motion to ensure the player cannot
| hold back to block during the motion. The player must commit
| to use their strong special uppercut move frames before
| they've actually unleashed it. Guile's Sonic Boom projectile
| requires the player to "charge" the move by holding back for
| a couple of seconds before being able to unleash it. This
| creates a risk factor, since the opponent is then
| incentivized to cross up Guile to make him lose his charge.
| However, this is where Guile's special uppercut, the Flash
| Kick, comes into play. The Flash Kick can be simultaneously
| charged along with the Sonic Boom, to disincentivize the
| opponent from attempting to jump over Guile. Mapping any of
| these moves to a single button press is a balancing
| nightmare. Street Fighter 6 has a "Modern" controls option
| that does exactly this, and it comes at the cost of a big
| chunk of the character's available movelist. Even with that
| huge tradeoff, the Modern versions of several characters are
| still considered high tier. Even then, you hardly see any
| Modern control players in the upper echelons of Ranked
| matchmaking because, ultimately, it's way easier to learn the
| motion inputs than it is to have a solid gameplan.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Street fighter isn't bad at all but some games and some
| characters are just absurd for no particular reason. Ivy in
| later Soul Calibur games is a good example, she has two
| command throws with pointlessly arcane inputs that even
| have a second, better mode when you do them frame perfect.
| So everyone who plays Ivy just grinds and grinds until they
| can do it in their sleep. There's no particular balance
| reason for that (also Soul Calibur has a block button so
| the usual balance rules don't apply), it's just a "you must
| be this tall to play this character" barrier.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Conversely, characters like Carl Clover in BlazBlue. The
| difficulty of controlling 2 characters seperately but in
| tandem is challenging but not difficult to input
| inherently.
|
| Once you get used to the input style the complexity makes
| the character and thus the game more fun and interesting.
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| You just said yourself that doing them frame perfect
| yields a better version of the move. The input is
| difficult because of the potential reward. It's like
| doing perfect EWGFs in Tekken. I played Ivy in
| SoulCalibur II, and could do the Summon Suffering input
| pretty consistently if I buffered it during another
| attack. It led to a fun mixup since the other player
| would hear my joystick switches actuating as I did the
| motion, and crouch to avoid the throw. Instead of
| finishing the input, I'd hit them with her 2 A+B overhead
| instead. God, I love SCII. It's a shame the sequels kept
| trying to reinvent the wheel with the gameplay.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Tekken never was a 2D fighting game. M&B doesn't have more
| than 5 moves with any weapon IIRC.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| This is why I always like soul calibur. The control language
| of the game is consistent across characters and when you go
| to perform a move, you generally understand what's going to
| come, only variables like range, height and speed change
| (thanks to the dynamics of the weapons). Stances play a part
| too.
|
| Probably considered "cute" to the fighting game community, I
| think it's a great option for those of us who don't care over
| the minutia of frame counting.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I played a lot of tekken 1, but never enough to join any
| tournaments (had one heard of any in the internet less early
| 90s)
|
| But what I remember being very special about tekken was how
| easy and logical the moves where.
|
| It was one button, one limb and more or less only buttons
| that controlled limbs involved in a move was used. It was
| quite easy to learn many moves without consulting the manual
| because they flowed well with the characters.
|
| This was in stark contrast to street fighter and mortal
| combat where things were as cryptic as cheat codes.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> I played a lot of tekken 1, but never enough to join any
| tournaments (had one heard of any in the internet less
| early 90s)
|
| Our local Aladdin's Castle regularly held tournaments and I
| had friends who ended up making all the way to the national
| level through those
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think the game you cite is the same type of game.
| It's even simpler to control units in Sim City, but that's
| just because the game isn't about fine-grained, high speed
| control of one character.
| reactordev wrote:
| Did you just compare Tekken to Mount & Blade Warband? Ummm,
| not even the same thing man. M&B does just basic collision
| detection, there's no combos, counters, supers, throws,
| finishers... get out of here with that nonsense. I get what
| you are saying (simple systems craft complex experiences) but
| that's not a good analogy. Use Mortal Kombat instead.
| wavemode wrote:
| "I think I follow the gist of what you're talking about and
| it doesn't sound all that advanced at all" could probably go
| down as a copypasta, perfectly emblematic of someone speaking
| confidently and dismissively about something they've never
| done, seen, or even studied very closely.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| In Mount & Blade you don't make nearly as many decisions or
| utilize raw mechanical skill, it is mostly strategy and
| preparation. Mechanical challenge is part of what makes
| fighting games, fighting games.
|
| >Compare this with the simplicity of Mount & Blade Warband
| which achieves greater depth, in 3D, with a very simple and
| intuitive control scheme.
|
| Most of M&BW depth is outside of the combat system (whereas
| fighting games are generally only comprised of a combat
| system) thus making them hard to compare directly. Simplicity
| is a not a good first principle for developing a successful
| fighting game combat systems historically. Simple = Less
| Skill Expression
| uncletaco wrote:
| Just play Dhalsim boom you can punish the block string with a
| standing low kick that closes the distance.
|
| Now laugh as they call you anti fun.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| I really would, but I could never land those TK teleports
| consistently (assuming that's still a thing in 6)
| datagram wrote:
| Teleport is now just 3 punches or 3 kicks (no motion), so
| TK teleports are actually very easy.
| taneq wrote:
| If you're interested in this, can I recommend Dave Sirlin's
| excellent "Playing To Win" series? One of the few articles that
| I've read that permanently changed the way I think about games,
| both from the player's and the designer's point of view.
|
| Edit: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win This is
| the overview but read the whole thing start to end, seriously.
| yaseer wrote:
| This is pretty interesting.
|
| I play a lot of games, but never got into fighting games.
|
| Seeing the strategy "laid out" might be a useful way to
| understand the mechanics rather than figuring them out with trial
| and error.
|
| Trial an error can be fun (e.g Zelda), but it's always been
| something that stopped me getting too far with this genre.
| coldpie wrote:
| If you want to give it a try, Street Fighter 6 is really,
| really good. Aside from just being an amazingly well thought-
| out fighting game[1], it's also got a big player base so you'll
| have plenty of other noobs to play with in the ranked
| matchmaking mode, and the networking code is perfect[2] so you
| can just hop on and start having fun.
|
| If you do decide to jump in, just remember that you will be
| terrible at the start. Everyone is. No, you don't have to
| understand frame data and have a bunch of sick combos and
| understand all of the mechanics to play online. Just hop in,
| the game will match you against players that are about at your
| level. SF6 is my first fighting game, I started at the very
| bottom of the ranked ladder (like literally, the very bottom)
| and now I've played more than 80 hours this year and I've just
| now started breaking into the "good" ranks (Platinum). In the
| lower ranks I had no combos and never used the super gauge at
| all and still won and had a great time. Don't stress too much
| about your rank, just think of it as a way to match you with
| good quality opponents.
|
| Anyway. Can't recommend it highly enough.
|
| [1] Here's a very in-depth overview:
| https://words.infil.net/w04-sf6review.html
|
| [2] They use rollback networking, which is the gold standard
| for online multiplayer games
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/explaining-how-fighti...
| lukaszkorecki wrote:
| To add to it - the frame meter in SF6 training mode is an
| equivalent of the cards presented in the article, but built
| into the game.
| grog454 wrote:
| The second article mentions delay based and rollback both of
| which seem to be appropriate for peer to peer graphs, but
| there is a third option: server authority. I created a game
| with mechanics very roughly analogous to fighting games
| (nebulous.io) where there is no client side prediction, no
| rollback, and a 20hz update loop. Clients just render what
| the server reports (with some smoothing). I never get
| complaints about fairness, and players can quickly learn to
| adapt to their latency to servers located in different
| regions. Its as well now as it did in 2015, when a
| significant portion of players used 3g or worse cellular
| connections.
| starburst wrote:
| I suggest you read again about rollback input based
| deterministic simulation, it is the superior option by far,
| especially for competitive, you have in practice "no lag".
|
| That you never got any complaints doesn't means your
| solution doesn't have plenty of issues, also 20hz is pretty
| low.
|
| There is a reason why no multiplayer fighting will even be
| considered competitive if they don't use rollback netcode
| in this day and age.
| dmonitor wrote:
| This?
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=software.simp
| l...
|
| You think this is roughly analogous to a fighting game?
| catapart wrote:
| I have no previous introduction to this kind of graphing, so I
| find this to be very very cool! I'm glad we're mapping out these
| odd, sort of "combine-able abstractions" like timing coupled with
| input and previous state, in a visual way. I don't know if this
| is actually useful for anything, but I certainly hope so! And, if
| not, it at least seems translatable to some really neat artwork.
| I'd definitely put up a poster of something that described, say,
| the hadoken, if it were well designed.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Back in the day me and my buddy spent ages playing Mortal Combat
| on a PC. I decided to learn all the combos (crazy fast keyboard
| patterns). The combos gave you disproportional damage wielding
| power.
|
| I spent hours and hours practicing it when we were playing. My
| buddy won pretty much every single game, while laughing at my
| combo attempts.
|
| Then I mastered it one day. I won every single game. Buddy said
| this combo shit wasn't fair and refused to play the game ever
| again!
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| The problem with playing competitive games casually is that the
| moment one player actually bothers to learn anything about the
| game, it immediately ruins the experience for the other player
| if they're unwilling to do the same.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Yep. Even worse when you can pay to get better, like MTG, or
| Magic The Money Gathering as I'd like to call it.
|
| Once someone in your group starts hunting down those rare
| (and expensive) cards, everyone else will have to do the same
| or give up playing.
| scubbo wrote:
| Thankfully, printer ink (just about) remains cheaper than
| Magic cards.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You don't need printer ink. You can print them in
| grayscale, or cut some index cards to fit into sleeves
| and write the name of the card you want in pencil.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I use a bag of coins I've collected, each coin represents
| whatever card I need at the time.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Just do it mentally and keep the game in your mind.
|
| "I summon the Whoore Of Babylon, 70/30 flying. You're
| finished".
| dfxm12 wrote:
| No game is perfectly balanced & no players are perfectly
| balanced either. I don't know about mortal kombat, but home
| versions of games had handicap features built in for
| situations like this. You can also do some out of game
| handicaps like "I get one free move" or "you can't use this
| special move".
|
| If nothing else, the variety keeps things interesting.
| pockybum522 wrote:
| As far as a visualization and alternate means of teaching, at
| least at a getting started level, this is awesome.
|
| As someone who has picked up many fighting games and been
| immediately overwhelmed by having no clue what's going on or even
| where to start, I just mash buttons. Even just seeing what's
| possible, how to access it, and basics of how it works is really
| neat.
|
| I guarantee you if someone was trying to teach me a fighting game
| and had this handy, it would go about twice as well as them
| saying "push these buttons to do this" which is the usual means.
|
| I love alternate visualizations and unorthodox teaching aids.
| This ticks all those boxes.
| jrmurray wrote:
| For an amazing fighting game guide/tutorial I can't recommend
| https://ki.infil.net enough. Its centered around Killer Instinct
| but describes general fighting game concepts really well. It has
| really great visuals/inline videos
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Tekken feels particularly bad to play if you don't know what
| you're doing imo. It's the least approachable.
|
| Unexpected shoutout to Thems Fighting Herds, the mlp fan spinoff
| turned OC quadruped fighting game. Regardless of your care for
| the aesthetics, the single player story was extremely good imo.
|
| Enemies were NOT just random CPUs but unique characters with
| formulaic strategies. Wolf that just does crouching attacks so
| you need to learn to block and prefer crouches. Snake that zones
| with projectiles so you need to learn to approach. Grapple bear
| so you need to learn to zone and avoid grabs. Something else with
| mixups so you need to learn to standing block sometimes.
|
| And the enemies are pretty merciless. If you button mash without
| doing a combo they punish you hard from level 1. It is
| immediately taught that you must be trying to learn the game and
| not cheese your way to victory with lucky spammy shit or random
| attacks.
|
| The bosses are cool too. Giant non standard shaped enemies with
| interesting attacks that all respect your usual defensive options
| while also being vulnerable to hit stun. A lot of fighting game
| bosses decide to crank up the bullshit rather than making them
| teaching moments.
|
| Idk, I thought it was cool
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| Compared to other 3D fighters like SoulCalibur, Dead or Alive,
| Bloody Roar, etc, Tekken is completely unintuitive for a casual
| button masher. Tekken, like Virtua Fighter, requires you to sit
| down in Training Mode for hours just to learn a single
| character's basic moveset, BnBs, and gameplan. Compare this to
| 2D fighting games, where all you gotta do is learn the basic
| Street Fighter 2 movelist, and you can quickly figure out how a
| character plays by taking one glance at their movelist. The
| funny thing about this is that Tekken hardly has any motion
| inputs, which is what most casual players are intimidated by
| when picking up fighting games.
| uncletaco wrote:
| You know I find that funny. When I want to mash in tekken I
| just remember each button corresponds to a limb. If I want to
| do the thingy that uses both legs then press the two leg
| buttons with a direction. If I want to do a left right left
| combination I press left right left punch in order. You can
| mash around with a character to see where it leads you to get
| really good basic understand imo.
| chowells wrote:
| But if you've played another fighting game before, Tekken
| feels clunky as hell. If you don't know all of your
| character's common strings, you quickly find yourself in
| situations where you're just stuck in move recovery for
| ages. There isn't a common design pattern of making every
| stopping point in the string feel natural.
|
| I think that in contrast to Soul Calibur, this happens
| because the attacks are so fast. Watching for every string
| to stop at every move makes block punishing too hard in
| Tekken, if everything in the string was around the same
| level of frame disadvantage on block. Soul Calibur, by
| contrast, has most moves enough slower that you can
| identify the string ending in time to block punish when
| possible. But as a side effect, attacks in Soul Calibur can
| recover when they look like they recover. (For the most
| part. There are always weird exceptions.) So as a result,
| even when you don't know the game, attacks feel far less
| clunky than Tekken.
|
| Combine that with Tekken's really bad movement (until you
| learn the mechanics that exploit the way input is handled),
| massive move lists, and very little input portability
| between characters, and you get a really frustrating
| experience that's mostly unique to starting to play Tekken.
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant.
| rochak wrote:
| Thanks for warning me on Tekken. I was really digging the
| character design and all in the upcoming Tekken 8 but given I
| possess dexterity of a 10 year old, I should probably skip it
| and fighting games in general.
| SliceOfWaifu wrote:
| Tekken 8 just released a free demo on PS5 (comes out on other
| platforms in a week). Try it out. You might end up liking the
| game.
| notnmeyer wrote:
| > Tekken is a Japanese fighting game that has been around since
| the late 80's.
|
| wait, what? the first tekken was released in 1994... wasn't it?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The very, _very_ late 80 's?
| firebat45 wrote:
| You mean nineteen eighty-fourteen.
| snarfy wrote:
| I don't like the flower petals to represent startup time. They
| show numbers for every other stat. They should just show 10 for a
| 10 frame jab, not two flowers.
|
| And for the uninitiated, frame data is important to know what
| beats what. If they do a move that is -12 on block and you block
| it, a 10 frame jab is a guaranteed punisher, assuming they are in
| range. Conversely if it's +12 on block there is no move you can
| do that is safe and it's best to block or duck any follow up.
| redrobein wrote:
| I'm a long time fighting game fan and recently discovered YOMI
| Hustle[1] a turn based fighting game. I think it works really
| well for teaching fighting game mechanics, strategy etc., whilst
| not having to worry about the execution of the moves itself. It's
| pretty fun, and there's an old version free on itch with
| multiplayer support. I recommend trying.
|
| [1] https://ivysly.itch.io/your-only-move-is-hustle
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-14 23:00 UTC)