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Is the CPU's AI any better in 3.5?

Volt-Ikazuchi

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Just looking for someone to find irregularities, if the person doing the testing know how to play Roy can also help me fix issues the AI might be having otherwise.
Sure. I'll run some sets. Unfortunately I can't even do a full DED with Roy, so that's out of the question for me.
 

IronChar

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I may be down to AI test. We've got a long way to emulate all the top styles of play though- I just got rocked by a fellow BC snake player in a bellingham torny the other week and it's a campy yet strong pressure style of play that the current computer can't do.

theres 41 characters. I wonder what the top level of play looks for all 41? (and Ridley, once he inevitably steps in.)
 

hemisphere

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Had a few matches with that Roy test. I'm not a Roy main so I don't think I can provide anything helpful in that field, but a couple of things I noticed that happened semi-frequently in most of my matches was that Roy would sometimes jump and airdodge randomly in the air while on the stage. I'm not sure if it was trying to do a wavedash, but the airdodge was going in an upleft/upright direction.

I also noticed sometimes when it tries to edgeguard using flare blade, he'd kinda be off position, like too far back.

Don't know if this is very helpful but I'll try and report more stuff If I find it.
 
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hemisphere

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Another quick thing I noticed was if you ledgehopstall he keeps spamming fire blade making it quite easy to get back on stage.

edit: meant ledgehopstall, not ledgestall
 
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KingClubber

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Roy would sometimes jump and airdodge randomly in the air while on the stage. I'm not sure if it was trying to do a wavedash, but the airdodge was going in an upleft/upright direction.
@ H hemisphere

Would you be able to tell me how far away from roy were you then this occurred, and what stage.

Another quick thing I noticed was if you ledgestall he keeps spamming fire blade making it quite easy to get back on stage.
okay, thanks for the tip
 
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hemisphere

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I noticed it on Final Destination twice, and I think it occurred on other stages as well. I can't remember how far I was but I'm going to record a video of it happening which can hopefully help you break down the cause. I'll edit this post when it's uploaded.


EDIT: lol while I was recording, the things I mentioned almost never happened until half an hour through playing... weird

Apologies for the crappy quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZejcJNKeuc

The first six clips are what I was talking about with the airdodge and I can't figure out why. Seems to happen randomly but is most frequent on Final Destination I find. Once I had it do the airdodge three times in a row and started dash dancing around me forever but my camera ran out of batteries while filming. Didn't notice the percentages were cut off but they didn't seem to make a difference.

The next 7 seem to happen because they are reacting to my attacks such as lasers. Don't think this is what you're looking for.

The rest are just random stuff like suicides and ledgehop stall. Forgot to add the clips but it did that nair suicide a few times. Hopefully more people will test and post their findings.
 
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Volt-Ikazuchi

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Downloaded it. Gonna test it tomorrow. Any particular scenarios you want tested? Certain Stages or Matchups?
 

Binary Clone

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Okay, I'm testing against a Level 7 Roy, playing the ditto for now.

I think he's using bthrow offstage a lot, even at low percents, which I don't think he should really be doing. He just bthrew me offstage at like 14% and killed himself with his edgeguard on Yoshi's Story (SH nair offstage, recoverable, but whiffed the recovery). It's almost always better to uthrow or fthrow at low percents to start a combo or something like that instead of trying to do a low-percent edgeguard, I think. He's also recovering onstage a lot instead of to the ledge, which is super punishable given Roy's immense landing lag out of that.

He's also going for a lot of fsmashes, even at low percents and in range of dtilts that punish a lot harder. A general lack of dtilts, I think, and few followups out of them.

I like the ledgehop nairs. I figure ledgedashing might be a bit difficult given how often other CPUs SD when attempting that kind of thing, but Roy has a really good one. Sethlon does ledgedash invincible dsmash a lot. Because dsmash is so fast, if you do a perfect ledgedash you can get that out invincibly. But I haven't seen Roy do any dsmashes at all, really.

His follow up out of dtilt seems to usually be nair, but most of the time a better followup is SHFFL fair to dtilt or at higher percents FH double fair or FH fair to falling uair. In generally SHFFL uairs seems to be missing a little.

He automatically seems to Flare Blade at the ledge to edgeguard a disproportionate amount of the time - on Drac's Castle he just tried to Flare Blade edgeguard me when I barely went offstage, and he was still charging as I landed behind him and fsmashed him - he never even released his attack.

Even as I'm just holding the ledge, or ledge stalling, he'll keep trying Flare Blade, which is pretty punishable if I'm already on ledge.

Back on Battlefield: He doesn't quite seem to understand recovering yet. He dropped a pretty simple recovery just now by using his upB immediately after his double jump, making it so he got so little distance from the jump that he didn't make it where he should've easily recovered.

He seems particularly inclined to kill himself on Distant Planet - He just SD'd his first two stocks, the first trying to combo with an offstage fair (should be safe) and failing to upB to the ledge, then immediately upon respawn, running at me and using a bair after jumping offstage, again failing to upB back to the ledge. Just got him to SD again. If I ledgestall (just release down, DJ back to ledge) he runs to the edge, maybe dtilts, then SH's a fair and fastfalls to his death. He seems to accidentally use aerials offstage and not use recovery options quite fast enough.

He also seems unaware that he can stall using the first hit of DED, and that works a couple times per airtime (diminishing returns). That'd help recovery.

He also never uses anything but >>> for DED, I think. >^ is typically better, xx^ is meteors for tech chases/comboing into the 4th, and xxx> is a great killmove with xxx< being a neat mixup and xxxv being great vs shields and stuff. He also only ever seems to do it at the fastest speed.

I haven't ever seen him follow up a dtilt with anything besides a nair.

On FoD he just wavebounced his upB and killed himself instead of just riding the stage up for his recovery.

Also FoD, after recovering to ledge he just ledge dropped and uaired, killing himself.

I've never seen him use dsmash, utilt, or ftilt. Ftilt is a great poke and utilt can be fantastic for low % juggles alongside dtilt and uair.

I did just see him whiff an uair after a dtilt, so I guess it's not always nair.

Switching to Falco now.

Oh, he just used an ftilt for the first time, but whiffed (used from center plat of Lylat, I was on the next one, out of range).

He just jumped off and upB'd underneath Lylat, killing himself.

Against spacies DED will often combo >>>> all the way into the 4th hit, but he always stops after the 3rd.

On GHZ he just airdodged offstage instead of trying to do a DJ or upB and was quite far from the stage... It wasn't a missed tech, he just tried to get to the ledge that way, I think, but was much too far for that to work.

It's good that he knows to dtilt -> fsmash spacies.

He just did the airdodge offstage on PS2 as well.

He's using more ftilts in the Falco MU, I'm noticing.

Switching to GnW

On Yoshi's Story, I was trying to edgeguard him offstage, but he grabbed ledge, and as I was recovering near the ledge, he dropped from the ledge to uair me. He hit me, but SD'd.

I just saw him do a slow first two hits of DED for the first time, but only those hits. I also just saw him do the 4th hit reverse, but he was so far away from me nothing really happened. I was standing still pretty much the entire DED, on the opp. end of Skyworld.

Also on Skyworld, I just jabbed him near the edge (my back was to the edge, between him and the edge) and he immediately airdodged off the stage to his death.

I did just see him use the first DED hit to stall to recover, though, but it's the only time he's ever done that, even though it could've saved him before.

He doesn't seem to know how to combo GnW's weight. He hasn't really pulled off any real combos besides DED hits.

He is sometimes extremely confused by Norfair's platforms. If he's on one of the platforms and the enemy is below, sometimes he'll just dash dance, pivot grab, and DED seemingly at random. I saw him do all three in succession as I just stood underneath him. I noticed it more on the right platform, but I don't think it'd make much of a difference.

Switching to Captain Falcon.

Again, he just doesn't seem to be able to combo much.

He also just upB'd away from the stage off of the platform on GHZ while is was at the top of its swing, killing himself.


I'm pretty tired and I've got a midterm tomorrow. I can do more testing later for you, but I'm not exactly sure what kind of info you're wanting or needing, so let me know what parts of this are good. Hopefully this helps!
 

Volt-Ikazuchi

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Testing Roy (Lv.4) right now. He seems to forget that he can crouch. Nothing related to the down button is important to him, D-Tilts, D-Smashes, Crouch Cancel, anything.
He also overuses DED. He does the first three hits everytime I let him, even if I'm half the stage away. Cue Full Charge Shot.

Aside from that, he's doing pretty well. He's dealing with super fire missiles via mixing up rolling and clanking and he seems to have good reactions to Samus D-Smashes. He grabbed most of them.

He also managed to 2-stock me in 51 seconds. **** Science, I'm killing this dude.
 

Binary Clone

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Okay, doing some more testing on a level 9 Roy.

Played some as Roy for a bit. He wallteched the bottom of Lylat and wavebounced Blazer to recover successfully. I thought that was pretty awesome.

Switched to Falco.

Skyworld seems to give him some problems. He actually tried to Flare Blade edgeguard me on the wrong side of the stage (I was recovering from the left, he went to the right side and Flare Bladed).

He just got caught underneath Skyworld on his recovery (don't we all)

He tried to combo a dair on me, but was fastfalling and slightly offstage on Skyworld, below the right platform, so he SD'd.

He tried to hit me with an aerial offstage, double jumped, then didn't use Blazer until right before the blastzone for some reason, even though he would've had time to recover. Also Skyworld.

Dreamland he chased me offstage, low, to his death.

Now I'm pitting CPUs against him so I can watch his game play a little easier in general, since I don't need to focus on my own inputs.

9 Roy v 9 Falco. As I suspected, Roy, takes this, but it seems like that's mostly because he's just less prone to SDs than the spacies AI.

I'm noticing that Roy doesn't L-cancel anything, while the spacies AI do. That'd probably improve his ability to combo a lot, and just general speed, of course.

He pokes with DED's first hit a lot, but almost never follows up with anything. I think a follow-up Sethlon does a lot if he's only poking with the first hit is to grab immediately after the DED hit.

Though Roy does waveland, he doesn't ever seem to do much afterwards. A lot of the time he'll waveland on and just kind of stand there for a second, allowing a punish where there really shouldn't be one.

Now against Fox to see if that goes any different.

He seems to take this one too, but it's closer.

He's using dash attack a lot - but it's a very laggy option, and often dtilt is better. Dtilt is good out of dashdance or a run, but you have to cancel the run with a crouch to do it, or out of a dashdance either get into a run or wd to dtilt.

He has a pretty big tendency to roll around a lot instead of using dashdance and wavedash. I really don't see much dashdance at all. That might be a side-effect of the MU with the campy Fox AI, though, with hitboxes constantly coming out.

Mixing it up and pitting him against Ivy.

He lost this MU by 2 SDs the first time. He did a wavebounce recovery on Yoshi's Story for some reason, killing himself, and also airdodged offstage.

This MU makes Roy's edgeguarding habits very apparent - and also kind of problematic. The Flare Blade edge guard was already fairly ineffectual against human opponents who tend to mix up recovery and sweetspot more often, but it is completely useless against tether characters, meaning he almost never gets an edgeguard on Ivy.

Marth did win on FD, though.

He seems to whip out random SH bairs in neutral even at low percents for some reason? Around then fair or nair or dair is typically better to use because they can combo.

He has a habit of jumping offstage, double jumping, and then using Blazer high onto the stage. Often he'll hit his enemy by doing this, but it's a kind of strange option that's even punishable on hit a lot of the time.

He won pretty decisively on Smashville as well, so I'm thinking the loss on Yoshi's was an anomaly from SDs.


I think I'm done with testing for right now. Another thing to note is that Flare Blade is a better edgeguard when you do SH Flare Blade, since the hitbox goes a little below the horizontal when you use it in the air - but that also requires timing its use a lot more.

I like all his pivot grabs, though, those are neat. He might use those a bit of a disproportionate amount of the time, though. He doesn't tend to follow up his throws that much, through any techchases from dthrows or fthrows. I think he also doesn't know how to CG spacies or fthrow regrab other characters at low percents. There's also "The Sethlon" where you uthrow someone onto a platform, then waveland onto it and either regrab or fsmash and punish them. It doesn't seem like Roy knows how to waveland yet, though.
 

Binary Clone

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@ Binary Clone Binary Clone - What would you suggest Roy does when someone is hanging on the ledge, and/or stalling on the ledge
Probably spaced DD to try to grab them out of whatever option they return with, or poke with dtilts and ftilts to try to catch them out of invincibility. Flare Blade and fsmash will kill them but they're so high commitment he'll probably get punished for those.
 

Volt-Ikazuchi

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Well. Binary Clone said all the important stuff. There's really not much to add to it. Pretty legit Roy though, and definitely better at recovering than the spacies. Good work.
 

KingClubber

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Early Update, its going to take some time to work on the recovery stuff.
Should help clear up more problems that might have not been spotted before.

fixed Wavedash code error causing Roy to air dodge forward and up
fixed Wavedashing SD's
Changed code that made roy use fsmash frequently to do dtilt instead
Changed code that made roy use nair frequently to do fair instead
fixed spacing flareblade for edge guarding
fixed bug that made roy continue to use flareblade after enemy was already on stage
new code that make roy uthrow enemies unless they are 45%+ which then he'll fthrow instead
new code that help him deal with enemies hanging on the ledge
 

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Binary Clone

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Early Update, its going to take some time to work on the recovery stuff.
Should help clear up more problems that might have not been spotted before.

fixed Wavedash code error causing Roy to air dodge forward and up
fixed Wavedashing SD's
Changed code that made roy use fsmash frequently to do dtilt instead
Changed code that made roy use nair frequently to do fair instead
fixed spacing flareblade for edge guarding
fixed bug that made roy continue to use flareblade after enemy was already on stage
new code that make roy uthrow enemies unless they are 45%+ which then he'll fthrow instead
new code that help him deal with enemies hanging on the ledge
Awesome! I'll do some testing now, then I have to go run a tournament, so this probably won't be super extensive yet.

I'm actually gonna start with it against AI opponents this time, starting again with the spacies, both at level 7.

First is Fox.

Roy seems to fsmash in the wrong direction a lot of the time. He did it a couple of times during this game on Battlefield, which he lost, and for no apparent reason (Fox hadn't just rolled behind him or anything like that).

He also naired off the left side to his death, but that might have been a buffered jab or something, since he was hit shortly before that.

I like that I'm seeing him use utilt now.

I didn't see him use fair much this game. The dtilts that he landed he seemed to try to follow up with bair, which was weird given that Fox was at fairly low percent at that point.

That game he had a 2% L-cancel rate, which seems a bit odd to me.

On Dracula's Castle, he followed Fox very far downwards off the stage to hit him with a fair, much too low to recover from, and Fox still got back. Poor Roy.

He used fsmash to edgeguard! It's good to see more variety there.

I think his Flare Blade spacing for the edgeguard is a bit too close to the ledge, where a lot of the time hitboxes from stuff like Firefox will still hit him. He should probably space it more so that the center of his blade hits the edge of the stage instead of having him standing on the ledge.

I'm playing against him in the ditto, now.

He is making much more of an effort to combo out of dtilt with different moves now - I'm seeing him follow up using uairs and fairs, but the combos rarely extend past that. He's also just feeling like he uses a wider variety of moves now - he less heavily relies on DED and now uses that alongside dtilt and utilt more frequently.

On fsmashing in the wrong direction - he just grabbed and fthrew me on FD, and then immediately fsmashed behind me, in the opposite direction from where he threw me.

I've noticed that sometimes when I stand still, he'll just walk into me, slowly push me towards the edge of the stage for a while, and then fsmashes or DEDs or ftilts. It's kind of hilarious, but he probably shouldn't be doing that.

He uses DACUS very frequently, and will often space it so it's just short of hit opponent - I figure the spacing on that is probably good, since usually the opponent will be moving around and not standing still like I was when I noticed this. But he uses DACUS a bit too frequently, I think. Roy's is better than Marth's is, but for the most part he has better tools to use a lot of the time.

I like his use of dair to pop people up, but he can't really follow up on his combos right now because he doesn't L-cancel. He's starting a lot more combos out of dtilt, like SH fair from dtilt, but he doesn't get follow ups beyond that because he isn't fast enough from lacking SHFFLs. He also seems to want to end his combos pretty early - at low percents, he'll often dtilt -> fair, which is good, but then when he lands he'll immediately fsmash, which, even if he L-cancelled, I don't think would be as useful or as reliable as another dtilt to extend the combo. The enemy probably would have enough time to spot dodge the fsmash (not totally sure on that) and the dtilt could get more damage from comboing anyway.

I gotta go set up for my tournament, though. Hope this is a good start.
 
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KingClubber

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So a bit more touch up on the flareblade edge guard. Add the SHFFL to aerial attacks, and fix another bug or two.
The Combo System is still a Work In Progress, currently only able to add that extra percent right now. "Stack it Up" Mode is not ready. :p

Still working on his recovery, i have to figure out some trick on preventing him from getting stuck under stages. I already using DED to slow his fall either before or after double jump.
 

hemisphere

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Binary Clone said:
I've noticed that sometimes when I stand still, he'll just walk into me, slowly push me towards the edge of the stage for a while, and then fsmashes or DEDs or ftilts. It's kind of hilarious, but he probably shouldn't be doing that.
Tested on a level 9 and had this happen to me a few times as well. It was really weird. He also does that nair suicide and upair after letting go of the ledge suicide, similar to lvl 9 falco's bair suicide. But the fixes you've done are better, haven't seen them happen once yet.

Once you get Binary Clone's suggestions implemented, should be quite fun to play against.
 
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