C-Stick Movement and Crouch Dashing

[L Pag]

Before we start here, just wanna say that I've been searching around the internet and I couldn't find anything on this topic, so I figured I'd make a guide on it. Due to the fact that I couldn't really find too much information on this, forgive me if I don't know the proper name for something. Also I apologize in advanced for the poor quality of the gifs included in this post.

So, as many of you may know, you can moonwalk by holding attack, doing a half circle motion with the control stick, and flicking the c stick forward before your dash animation ends. However, you can do much more with the c stick while holding attack. Keep in mind that pretty much all of these things are done while holding attack. I personally set attack to R to make this easier. Also, I will be using Lucario in these examples just because I've been applying a lot of these to him whenever I play. Let's start with the basics:

STANDING

Most of what you can do while standing with this setup isn't very useful. Pressing the C-stick forward or backward just gives you a forward smash, pressing down crouches, and presses up does nothing. Pressing up and slightly diagonal in the opposite direction turns around. Pressing up and slightly diagonal in the direction your facing makes your character perform what I can only assume are the first few frames of their dash animation.

Spoiler

standing turn around

first few dash frames

WALKING

Still not many interesting things here. Hitting forward or back on the C-stick still gives you F smash, hitting down while walking slowly makes you crouch and exit slowly into a walk, while doing it while walking fast makes you exit the crouch much faster into a dash. Hitting up while walking fast lets you exit the walking animation straight into a dash. I've used this and the crouching method to exit walk before, but it still isn't too useful. Pressing straight up does the first few frames of the dash animation, like we saw before, but pressing up and back turns you around, but keeps you moving forward. The only use for this I found (besides taunting, of course) is to grab ledge out of walk, but this is still pretty situational.

Spoiler

slow walking crouch

fast walking crouch (cancels into dash)

fast walk to run (pressing up)

Turning around while walking

turning to grab the ledge

First few frames of dash animation out of walk

RUNNING

Now this is where things get interesting. Flicking the C-stick forward while running doesn't seem to do anything, and flicking it back turns you around. I guess you could use this to RAR, but just performing a RAR the normal way seems easier, Next, pressing up just stops you. Pressing down makes you crouch for only a few frames, and puts you immediately back into a dash. This makes crouch dashing extremely easy, and is the main reason why I made this post. Basically, because this resets your dash (and does so in only a few frames), you have the options to do anything you can out of a normal dash (dash dance, dash attack, dash grab, moonwalk, etc...). This can be used as an extended dash dance of sorts, for baiting, or to approach. When I approach with it, I generally either moonwalk or dash back and start a dash dance, to bait out whatever they were going to do as a defensive option. I've found this to be EXTREMELY helpful for Lucario (the character I've applied most of this to) as it greatly improves his neutral game.
Finally, since a moonwalk is still technically a dash, some of this still applies. This is pretty much only useful for styling, but if you moonwalk, then hit the C-stick up near the end of the animation instead of forward, your dash animation will reset, but in the opposite direction. The same can be done with down on the c stick, but you will have a few frames of crouch animation.
Also, if you hold dash and press up and back on the C stick (similar to the previously seen turn arounds), you'll turn around and keep some momentum from the dash (thanks Magus 420!). This can also be used in conjunction with Crouch Dashing as a quick way to turnaround into a standing position or can even be used to grab the ledge.

Spoiler

crouching while running

Crouch dashing

Crouch Dash to Dash Dance

Crouch Dash to Dash Dance grab

Crouch Dash to Moonwalk

Crouch Dash to Moonwalk Dash Attack

Changing direction after Moonwalk

Moonwalk Back and Forth

Dash Turnaround (thanks to Magus420 for the Gif)

Crouch Dash Turnaround Jab

Crouch Dash Turnaround Ledge Grab

tl;dr By holding attack down, you gain a variety of options of movement with C-Stick. Most of these can be done without the C-Stick, but using the C-Stick makes it much easier, depending on your button layout. Most of these techniques aren't useful and can be used for styling, but some of them are extremely useful, especially for fast characters with somewhat weak Dash Dances or good moonwalks.


Hope this guide helped you in some way! I'll edit based on suggestions of uses, proper names of techniques (if three are any, thatis) etc... as soon as I can

Edits:
12/28/14:

• Added new info for turning around out of a dash (Thanks again, Magus420!)
• Added 3 new Gifs to the guide

 

[Agi]

I knew about the moonwalking trick, but the rest of this is completely new and really cool. Makes me glad I already had L bound to attack, makes all this a lot more practical. Thanks for compiling it!

 

[SpiderMad]

So wait this wasn't TAS was it? http://fat.gfycat.com/GraciousBigCero.gif

 

[Magus420]

You can do sliding pivots by dashing+hold and tapping up/back like the walk spin thing, then letting go of the direction of the dash before the end of the turn animation. On the characters with good dash acceleration you can basically move backwards near dash speed while able to do any standing move if done right (the pivot cancels out most of the initial dash speed so it needs to build back up during the turn).

 

[Foo]

Who's down to host the first figure skating tournament for smash?

 

[Kankato]

You can do sliding pivots by dashing+hold and tapping up/back like the walk spin thing, then letting go of the direction of the dash before the end of the turn animation. On the characters with good dash acceleration you can basically move backwards near dash speed while able to do any standing move if done right (the pivot cancels out most of the initial dash speed so it needs to build back up during the turn).

I declare witchcraft. Also, our perfect pivots are longer than sm4sh.

 

[L Pag]

I knew about the moonwalking trick, but the rest of this is completely new and really cool. Makes me glad I already had L bound to attack, makes all this a lot more practical. Thanks for compiling it!

No problem, glad it helped!

So wait this wasn't TAS was it? http://fat.gfycat.com/GraciousBigCero.gif

All of the GIFs I used were recorded in Dolphin, but I did not use TAS.

You can do sliding pivots by dashing+hold and tapping up/back like the walk spin thing, then letting go of the direction of the dash before the end of the turn animation. On the characters with good dash acceleration you can basically move backwards near dash speed while able to do any standing move if done right (the pivot cancels out most of the initial dash speed so it needs to build back up during the turn).

Thanks for the info, added it to the guide! (Hope you don't mind, but I used your GIF, all credit was given)

 

[Paradoxium]

wow and people were getting so hyped for perfect pivoting in smash 4, they don't even know what movement is

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

We smash 4 now

 

[Kankato]

So are there any guesses as to which characters benefit from this the most?

 

[L Pag]

So are there any guesses as to which characters benefit from this the most?

As said in the post, I find it works wonders with lucario. Based on some test, I think I can see it being especially good with Falcon, Fox, Wolf, Sheik, Diddy, ZSS, Lucas, Pit, Meta Knight, Roy, and Sonic. Keep and mind that I don't really use these characters or know too much about their gameplan, but they seem to have pretty good Crouch Dashes coupled with thir normal DD.

 

[tauKhan]

Nice thread! I made a few threads around a year ago about various applications of c-stick moving, but it never got much attention.

There might be one useful way to utilize the walk -> c-stick crouch dash: At least in 3.0 walking pretty much cancelled previous opposing momentum. So what you could do is wd back, buffer a walk and then dash, optimally only staying 1 frame in the walk animation. This allowed you to dash with full speed out of a wd back, where as if you just dash, the remaining wd momentum is reduced from your dash speed (the slow dash is usually called cactus dashing).

You can obviously do this with only control stick, but using the c-stick method makes it a lot easier. What you can use this for is you can combine the fast dashes out of wd with cactus dashes, and it's very hard to distinguish which one you are doing from the animation, so you can mask your movement a little bit. Fast dash is also usually the fastest non committing way for you to approach your opponent after wd back, for example if you evaded his attack. This could be mostly useful with slidy characters like marth.

I don't actually know whether this still works in 3.5 since I don't really play pm anymore and don't even have a setup, but maybe someone can test it out.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Great thread, I will try to test it and see if I can do it.

@ T tauKhan Still works in 3.5, but only if you walk in the direction you face (the same as 3.02 iirc). By the way, get a setup, I always feel like I got the inspiration for most of my few discoveries when I saw something strange in the game, and playing it builds a solid base for thought experiments!

 

[Sorry:(]

These c-stick options are all so cool! I love how the c-stick has opened up smash in all versions since 64. This makes me want to hold an attack button nearly all the time, one exception being when I want to dash attack with the c-stick.

I feel like this could be smoothed out by programers. I think the c-stick could be programed to allow all these options (at least the useful ones) without the need to hold an attack button the whole time. Needing to set a shoulder to attack to use these techniques feels superfluous the way L-canceling does.

Additionally I wish c-stick in Project M could:
- do tilts if you move the c-stick half way in a given direction (or same distance as tilt threshold on control stick)
- do nairs while holding a direction on control stick by inputing diagonal c-input EVEN when the c-stick is set to smash.
- charge smash attacks by holding c-direction like sm4sh

 

[SpiderMad]

Additionally I wish c-stick in Project M could:
- do tilts if you move the c-stick half way in a given direction (or same distance as tilt threshold on control stick)
- do nairs while holding a direction on control stick by inputing diagonal c-input EVEN when the c-stick is set to smash.
- charge smash attacks by holding c-direction like sm4sh

- I wish you could do tilts if you set one of your triggers (say R) to be a modifier when held down; then when you did the C-stick it'd do tilts given R was held down
-Yeah I wish they could create a copy of C-stick set to Attack and just make it only do Nair/Jab with the diagonal and change nothing else. Beyond that though it's also got weird issues when C-stick is set to Attack that has to deal with going back to Neutral and it's long to explain.
-You mean charge by just pressing and holding the c-stick? I'd pry like an option for it, but using Z is okay enough and seems to be easier to do in PM than Melee.

 

[Agi]

The "turn around while walking" option has been dubbed the catwalk in my group.

Because, you know. They take a little turn. On the cat-I'llshowmyselfout

 

[Sorry:(]

Here is a diagram of how I wish the c-stick worked regardless of whether you hold an attack button or not:

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Here is a diagram of how I wish the c-stick worked regardless of whether you hold an attack button or not:

Spoiler

View attachment 34636

The beauty of the C-stick as it is right now is that it basically is a
- 1-frame input of attack + the given direction (unless neutral)
- that overrides control stick.
This simplicity would be taken away by your control scheme, I prefer the basic rule "simple rules leading to complex results" (as in the above definition).

I would love to have a button similar to the Z button next to L, honestly, together with an option to remap to an "Hold Attack Modifier" without actually resulting in an attack.

As it is right now though, there is a great method for using C-stick options, which can be a bit annoying at times though. Just hold attack all the time, except if you do an attack, then quickly release and press again. If you remap R to attack that is possible. It is recommended to release R a bit before so you can react more quickly if you think you might want to attack in the neyt few frames. It is a bit annoying to hold the shoulder button the entire game sometimes, especially if the profits are fairly low.

 

[Sorry:(]

This simplicity would be taken away by your control scheme, I prefer the basic rule "simple rules leading to complex results" (as in the above definition).

If you remove the diagonal and tilt options from my diagram it's basically the default c-stick we've always had, plus the options I think are useful from holding Attack.

I happen to like the idea of being able to override the control stick with tilts and neutrals as I already can with smashes and directional aerials. However, leaving out the tilts and neutral diagonals, just adding the options you get from holding A (just using the up, down, left, and right options from the diagram), would keep it more simple as I think you prefer.

Also:

The beauty of the C-stick as it is right now is that it basically is a
- 1-frame input of attack + the given direction (unless neutral)

If this is so how come the C-stick can be used for dash attacks? C-stick dash attack are useful for DACUS and dash attacking really soon, but this is a neutral-ish attack done on the c-stick.

 

[Sorry:(]

A "B" modifier to B stick when you are holding a particular button would be cool too.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

If this is so how come the C-stick can be used for dash attacks? C-stick dash attack are useful for DACUS and dash attacking really soon, but this is a neutral-ish attack done on the c-stick.

Try it with the control stick, every direction except up will give you a dash attack. There is no f-smash / d-smash out of dash/run (except for pivot->smash or crouch->smash but thats not the basic input I'm refering to) and the game does a dash attack then.
So to speak, the dash attack is the (one and only) tilt of the dash animation (wow what a bad metaphore), and the game first tries to do a smash if there is direction+attack (thats why up-C is an up-Smash) and if that is not allowed, he does the tilt of that direction. If I had to guess, if there was a character without a certain Smash the game would do the tilt of that direction when C-sticking in the specific direction.
A bit far-fetched, but helps to see the C-sticks actions are not arbitrary and neither the PMDT nor Nintendo gave specific direction/animation combinations of the C-stick a result but Nintendo instead formulated a simpler concept that the PMDT decided to keep. Giving the C-stick specific results for direction/animation combinations would be somehow ugly imo, a bit like giving individual hitstun values to moves instead of making it knockback-dependent or giving characters individual CC maxima instead of relying on a set of variables.

What I would support is to make tilts results of directions that would result in tilts with the control stick. It is also the result of direction+attack, the reason it isn't in the game is that the C-stick's neutral zone includes the entire tilt range. We have to be careful though, because it could also have other effects, like messing SDI inputs up.

That is just my opinion of the C-stick issue as a whole, back in the past I suggested a scheme that is somehow similar to yours once but since then I rethought what makes the C-stick the C-stick and now I'd actually prefer just allowing the tilts and not allowing C-stick nair or C-stick jab. I don't think there are really objective criteria to mark a best setup for the C-stick.