ComboVid.com DAMAGE exhibition v.two

There were a lot of clips left over from v.one. They along with new content were assembled into v.two, edited by Keiko, and premiered at the Season's Beatings tourney in Colombus, Ohio.

Here are the usual overdetailed explanations of my (tool-assisted) contributions.

See also: http://combovid.com/?p=6171

0:43 | Vampire Hunter 2 | Phobos vs Victor

(Ray of Doom, Dark Force) d.MP (trade), ES Plasma Trap, c.MP, ES Plasma Trap, Final Guardian

This revolves around a glitch brought to by attention by felineki: Normally if Phobos is hit during RoD, the friends just leave and it's over. But if their lasers are coming out at the time, they'll hit many more times than normal. If Phobos actually trades instead of getting stuffed, the number of hits will be even higher. Since the robots head toward the top of the screen and take their lasers with them, there will be more hits against a tall opponent.

Victor is not a very tall dummy in vsav because he shrinks when reeling, but this was changed in vsav2/vhunt2. Plus he's the only character with a hitting taunt so he can trade with nose-picking style. Phobos dashes in with a MP because his heavy attacks are too slow and the lasers would hit before they would be able to trade.

The startup of Final Guardian is slow and the only way to combo it is to link from plasma trap. You can't cancel into it (e.g., from c.MK) because it's locked out until the plasma traps are fully gone. The heavy attacks are too slow to link from so Phobos does a c.MP. It's possible to omit this if Victor is positioned a little farther back and reels into the second mine. The Dark Force could have been activated before RoD but it would run out during the FG animation and it looked kind of anticlimactic.

Side note, in vsav2 you can control Phobos's hovering by holding up at any point in a jump, but in vhunt2 he always hovers at the peak. Also, the little kid that follows him around is only in vsav2, so in retrospect maybe I should have used that.

4:25 | Street Fighter Alpha 3 | X-Vega & Vega vs S-Vega

lvl3 Rolling Izuna Drop, lvl3 Rolling Izuna Drop, Izuna Drop, HP Sky High Claw

One of the most painful and difficult to connect moves in the game is Vega's body slam super, and Dramatic Mode can get two for the price of one. Problem is both partners can't use a full bar, even if they execute on the exact same frame. One way around this is to use a move with delayed superfreeze: if a super is input and the meter is available, it's committed to come out even if the partner expends the meter before superfreeze. In this case the freeze occurs when he dives off the wall or the fence.

Since this super animation takes so long to finish, one must be done quick (off the wall) and the other one slow (off the fence) to combo them. Therefore this must be set up on Vega's own stage, to get the fence. The amount of time Vega hangs out on the fence and how far he climbs is at least partly random, so that took some luck manipulation. Rolling izuna drop covers pretty much the whole stage, so in order to keep the combo from lingering in the corner, it had to keep changing direction. Two supers weren't enough to kill the opponent, so a regular drop was tacked on to finish the job.

In order for the opponent to drop his claw, he had to block several hits first. It's not easy to get the computer to block on the ground, so I used air-to-air normals.

4:44 | Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo | O.Zangief vs Balrog

backwards lv.1 Turnaround Punch, close MP xx punch Super,
(stun, final TAP, low LP straight, LP headbutt) c.HP xx kick Super

The goal here is to use a super twice in the same combo in ST. The difficulty is that all supers knock down (supposed to, anyway) and you can't stock more than one at a time. The first problem has an obvious solution: use a dizzy. The super meter then needs to be rebuilt during the knockdown and wakeup period.

Another set of problems is that the opponent must get dizzied after the first super and survive until the second. Zangief was chosen as the dummy because he takes the least damage of the cast. (Apparently T.Hawk isn't on the same level of endurance—that calls for further investigation.) Old Gief was picked just to not have another meter on the screen. In SSF2T, both old and new characters have the same stun limits, starting at 30 and rising after each dizzy, although in SSF2 they had a constant 31.

All turnpunch levels confer the same 12 points of stun, almost as much as a heavy normal's 13 points, but doing slightly less damage at level 1. Because of the high stun:damage ratio and the ease of linking out of a meaty TAP, lv.1 TAP is a good choice to start the combo. Zangief crosses over and reaches in from behind to neutralize the pushback. Gief has only a few moves that extend his vulnboxes before the attack box comes out; close MK was suitable here. After the crossover, there wasn't enough time to charge rightward for the super, so Balrog had to pull a charge direction switch.

The close MP (like every medium normal) does 8 stun and each punch of the super does 1, which so far adds up to 25 points. The rest have to come from the random +/-3 variance on each hit, and getting that to work took luck manipulation. For that matter, getting the two supercancels to work was strangely difficult: the button input had to arrive on one specific frame, which was often dropped by turbo speed. There are tricks to make it easier, so I don't know if I was doing it wrong or what, but I was totally at the mercy of frameskip. Finally, there's the random damage to worry about. It wasn't easy to get Gief to survive to the second to last hit. The impact of the idea behind the combo would have been lost if he died too soon. Getting the randomness lined up right took a lot of retries in the form of one-frame delays before starting the sequence.

Refilling the meter takes 48 points. Boxer's final TAP generates an eyebrow-raising 32 points. Add 6 from the low punch rush, 5 from the headbutt and the final 5 from the connected c.HP. Since low rushes don't require releasing down, you can preserve downcharge and immediately follow up with the headbutt.

It's crucial for Gief to get dizzied on the last hit of the first Crazy Buffalo to leave enough time to whiff all those moves before he gets up. It would make more sense to do the charge moves first in order to recharge for the super during the TAP, but for some reason it takes longer that way and the TAP would connect meaty. I wanted the dizzy to last longer so Gief could try to mash out (the angels don't give much time), but I was never able to generate another situation where all three specials whiffed.

Balrog's super can be executed with either a punch or kick (which keeps the super accessible while charging either TAP), and the button determines whether the first rush is a straight or upper. The rest of the rushes can be controlled, but straights have priority over uppers. In other words, holding nothing does straights, holding kick does uppers, and holding both punch and kick does straights. This means that only straights can be done while charging a PPP TAP. That stylistic restriction influenced my decision to use KKK for the the final TAP. (The first super could've also been canceled from a close, far, or crouching MK.)

5:32 | Bushido Blade | Black Lotus (rapier) vs. Katze

Black Lotus is just out of range to connect his lightning attack special, and is punished by a lethal pistol shot. The mid-range shot (button O) has the most exaggerated animation of the three. Pretty much unavoidable reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark here.

Selecting Katze in versus requires beating Slash Mode, and as you can guess, fighting against him is kind of tough.

A similar setup could be done in BB2, but both of these characters look ridiculous in that game, plus I like this stage.

Comments

[dammit]

A more sane way to get over a full bar of Dramatic Battle super is to supercancel from simultaneous normals:

http://combovid.com/?p=6192

[Maj]

That Vega/Vega/Vega combo is probably my favorite clip in the video. Love the Rog double super too. I might have to hijack that idea for my Balrog combovid if i ever get around to revising it.

[error1]

beacuse of the way the juggle system works it's actually pretty hard to find supers that complement each other. I wish ryu and ken's lv3 worked better together, shinku hadouken works well with almost everything beacuse it finishes fast enough for Ryu to follow up on the opponent.
That balrog combo was one of my favorites, but it's the sort of thing you have to watch more then once to figure out.
Clips like the Bushido Blade one are really good for this beacuse they make an impression on first view

[dammit]

The Vega combo was pretty fun to compose. I just dig izuna drops. Funny thing is I probably wouldn't have approached the overbar dramatic battle clips if I had known about the supercancel trick. There's probably a stylish way to pair something with Ryu's metsu shoryu, but it might not be with Ken.

It'd be rad to see your take on the boxer setup, Maj. I get the feeling it would be easier in the corner, which might leave more room for style.

[felineki]

Glad to see the Phobos clip made it in. With regards to the differences in his hovering that you mentioned, it's actually possible to toggle this by selecting him while holding down start. Meaning you can choose either mode in either game. A similar feature exists for Donovan in VS2/VH2 that relates to the placement of his sword when he plants it for Kill Shred (in one mode it's relative to his position, in the other it's relative to the screen). The Alpha 3 Vega Izuna-fest and ST Balrog double supers were great, too.

Sorry to go off-topic, but I have a question to ask: Do you know if it's possible to save the output of Mame's debugger console? I'd like to use the find function then save the list of addresses it comes up with.

[dammit]

Hm, I didn't know that. I don't see why anybody would want forced-floaty Phobos when there's a choice. It's like what Buttermaker pointed out about storable supers in HSF2. Silly developers, hiding perfectly good functionality.

As you know, the cheatlist or cl command prints the current memsearch hits. If you add a filename as an argument it'll dump them to the file instead, in XML format. And if you copy the contents to the cheat XML for that game, you can apply the findings as cheats to better test them.