June 16, 2010 in Shpiel
HDTV – check
PS3 – check
It’s about time I upgraded to the blu-ray club. And to start it off I have just purchased both Jet Li’s Fearless and the first Rebuild of Evangelion 1.11 blu-ray discs. Read the rest of this entry →
June 10, 2010 in Shpiel
I’ve been wanting a PS2 compatible arcade stick for a while now and if you’ve ever tried to find one yourself you probably already know that none worth buying exist and the ones that are are priced up in the frightening $150-200 range. I of course don’t want to pay all that so I’m going to do the next best thing. If you can’t buy ‘em, make ‘em.
My first idea was to create one of the surprisingly popular tupperware sticks. While they’re nice and cute, I questioned their durability and playability and scratched that idea out.
I looked through the internet a bit more and it seemed every other ghetto stick mod is made from an even worse substance. Seriously, these stick makers are amazing, shoebox sticks, pizza box sticks (srsly), Xbox 360 stic-wait a minute that guy may be onto something.
While I’m not willing to purposely RRoD my 360 just to salvage the remains into an arcade stick, I did then realize that I could use some old machine’s frame for my own arcade stick mod. And as luck would have it, a cousin of mine was throwing out a bunch of junk in his front yard while I was over and I stumbled across…
Yep. An old DVD player that was gonna be junked. The frame reminded me of the HORI VLX so I took it. It’s light, it’s durable. I opened it up and there’s a great amount of room to work with. What’s even better? It still works! Which now brings a difficult decision to my hands… do I scrap the original DVD player’s guts or not? It’d be a waste to just get rid of the working components, however if I do take out all the insides then I have much more room to work with and it’d function much better as an arcade stick.
Anyway, as you can see by what used to be a PS1 controller there, I’m performing a gamepad hack and am using the controller’s circuits and jazz to create the arcade stick. It’s a relatively simple mod and a much cheaper alternative to purchasing a factory arcade stick. I’ll begin ordering my parts and working on this project for the next few weeks and I’ll post my results when done.
Parts
[poll id="6"]
June 9, 2010 in Shpiel
My fight moneyyyyyy...!
Welcome to Fytan Gaemz 101, the one and only course that will enhance your play in fighting games! If you’re looking to acquire advance tips and techniques brought down from top players descending from humble nippon in order to become an agile and fierce God of Fighting Games then you you’re in the wrong place. But if you wish to learn select and often overlooked strategies and concepts in fighting games and you haven’t already clicked the back button, then please, continue reading… (this series will use mainly use BlazBlue for examples sry)
Well then, the first lesson we’ll cover is a simple one I call “getting your money’s worth.” No, that doesn’t mean selling your SSFIV back because you just lost 2000 BP to flowchart Ken. Getting your money’s worth is getting the most you can out of a situational, successful attack.
Concepts to Understand
Hitconfirming is the ability to confirm a seemingly random hit into a better combo on a successful hit and not if it’s blocked
ex: 3S – notorious Chun Li cr. mk xx SAII etc. combo
ex: BBCS – Litchi’s ability to turn just about any hit into a 3-5k damage combo into the corner
Getting your money’s worth requires a little bit of both of these abilities. A simple example with SSFIV Ryu would be throwing out an EX fireball or Ultra I after a trade dp on reaction or prediction of the trade. But in the more combo orientated fighters, you can take even better advantage of similar situations.
In “Guilty Gear-esque” fighters, the main use of getting your money’s worth is turning a random hit into an air combo because the opponent was already airborne when you attacked. You probably don’t train yourself to jump straight into an air combo after your first attack, and will probably go into your BnB by muscle memory reflex which will probably end up dropping the combo. This is where the ultimate goal of the lesson comes into play–turning an arbitrary hit on an airborne opponent into a full combo. While in many cases that full combo will not amount to much, in the end damage is damage and that one sliver of life may end up deciding the match.
So, how to train yourself? The first part is understanding your character’s aerial normals. In games like BlazBlue (since we’re most familiar with it), not all air normals will link ideally into another air normal due to positioning and you will have to perform some unorthodox, makeshift air combos to get it all to link.
ex: BBCT Jin – random anti-air 5B sjc j.A j.B j.C dj j.C j.D j.214C
The irregularity here is the inclusion of j.A and the super jump after 5B to be able to get two j.Cs into the combo. Many of these types of variations exist for each and every character and learning them will be required to take the most advantage you can in combos.
The next part is learning your opponent’s play style and habits and to know or at least guess when you’re opponent will jump. If you can predict when your opponent is airborne then you can turn a seemingly random air hit into a stronger combo by predicting it instead of having to react to it. There isn’t any easy way to get this down other than playing your opponent or a specific character often and learning their play style and the match up.
In the case of BlazBlue, there’s a special situation where this is all very useful, roll recoveries. After knocking down an opponent, if you successfully punish a roll they will then be put into an airborne state. This is often forgotten and usually a player then throws out a random sequence of attacks next which will ultimately drop the combo. However if you can pull out your makeshift money combos by reflex then you can just as easily force your opponent into another knocked down state.
The situation where you can get the most worth out of your money though is when landing a counter hit. While this can apply to any fighting game, counter hitting an airborne opponent in a game like Blazblue can lead to often overlooked yet great combos. Counter hit combos are used in prediction and punishment of an oncoming attack and in our case, stuffing a jump-in with an anti-air.
ex: BBCT Jin – Counter Hit Anti-Air 2C jc delay j.C land 5C 6C dc jump j.B j.C dj j.C j.D j.214D etc.
ex: BBCS Ragna – Counter Hit Anti-Air INFERUNO DIVIDAH 5B 5D dc 6A j.C j.D dj j.C BERIAL EDGEY 6D j.D jc j.C BERIAL EDGEY 5D INFERUNO DDDIVIDAH
One more thing to keep in mind are your air-airs as well. Many j.Cs in BlazBlue have more hitstun than you would assume. In several cases a {air-air j.C land 5A/j.A} link will work despite not appearing so.
The last part in getting your money’s worth is taking advantage of your opponent not teching. If you train your opponent enough they may begin to actually not tech at the end of combos to avoid a worse mixup. This is very apparent in Melty Blood where teching is often unused just to avoid the several tech traps and punishes that exist. In BlazBlue tech trap and okizeme game isn’t as stressed but still exists.
ex: BBCT Bang – 5A 5B 2B 2C 6D 6239B (opponent doesn’t tech) dash 5C 623B
In CT, players tend to not tech after eating Bang’s 623B Super Crash ender in fear of the command grab mix up coming. If they don’t tech, they have nothing really to worry about since there isn’t much of a combo option remaining at that point. Often a Bang in this situation would run in and 2A whiff to set up the command grab mix up, but that would ultimately fail if the opponent didn’t tech before it. If the opponent has already chosen not to tech, they’ll wait until Bang does 2A in which Bang can punish by instead using 5C 623B to get not much but still the max damage he can get in this situation. This will make the opponent think twice about not teching and will set up another mix up in Bang’s favor.
Review
Getting your money’s worth is getting the very most out of your seemingly random hits, mainly against airborne opponents. Learning how to do so requires hitconfirm reflexes, knowledge of all your character’s combo variations, and the ability to predict when your opponent will be airborne. Combining these three factors will strengthen your neutral and offensive game and can help keep your opponent pressured throughout the entire match. So practice your money combos and next time you land that random jab, jump and get all your fight money!
June 8, 2010 in Shpiel
After almost a year, the next update for moe doujin fighter Vanguard Princess is finally released. Make sure you download and install the patch as well. Just replace the necessary files with the new ones.
And here are the “English” versions, courtesy of Saikyou.
Not much but quite a few things as well. For one, a timer, which can be disabled for practicing purposes or whatever you like. All characters have increased life in addition to a few damage nerfs, so matches should last longer now. Assists are no longer guaranteed when you are hit, exceptions being Kanae 6D, Shiera 2D, Eko 2D, Juliet 2D.
To disable the timer if desired, open the main ヴァンガードプリンセス folder and open the “game” file in notepad. Change the value of # in “Editor.TestPlay.time=#” to 0 and then save.
Character specific-wise, there’s been various speed and damage tweaks among a most characters. Most notable changes are:
Yui
Lilith
Saki
Natalia
Keep your panties on, 1.06b is scheduled to be released later this month with a rumored new character. The Vanpri section will be updated accordingly then!
