A couple Samus questions

[Gutiger]

I have a few questions that I couldn't find any documentation on. These are all about her grapple.

1. When inputting the Z+up+down+up+Z combo to activate the extender, I know it has to be between frames 8 and 39 when she is on the ground. But I actually find that it is easier to activate the extender combo using Samus' Zair. This makes it almost feels like it's more lenient on the timing in the air. As well, in the air there's no visual cue of requiring to input the combo before the grapple comes out. Do we know for sure that the amount of time you have to activate the extender in the air is the same as on the ground?

2. When trying to do things like walljump out of grapple, or sometimes even just walljump at all, especially on Battlefield, it fails. What are the conditions for walljumping out of grapple, or even just walljumping in general on janky walls like that? Do there exist any resources that show clearly what parts of walls are walljumpable, and the requirements to do things like walljump out of grapple?

3. Basically the same question as 2, but for tumble out of grapple. I'm wondering if there are any resources out there that show what parts of the stages satisfy the "curved" criterion such that they cause samus to do a tumble out of grapple, the one where she can perform aerials still. And what determins the height of a rising grapple, and the tumbling rising grapple where you high jump because you are too close to the wall when you grapple? It seems to be fairly dependent on how soon after you airdodge you grapple, but this again seems inconsistent to me.

4. What causes Samus to sometimes detatch from her grapple after it's latched the wall? There are some instances, however rare, where Samus will grapple the wall, and then her grapple will disappear and she will be where she was before, as opposed to retracting herself onto the wall. It's like something concerning the position of Samus and her grapple causes the retraction animation to terminate, and I can't find a consistent causality.

Thank you in advance.

 

[343]

For (2), I cheat a little (aka don't do grapple walljump frame-perfectly): I reel in grapple, wait until I visibly hug the wall for at least a few frames (in practice, probably a lot of frames...) and then walljump. Schmoob's thread http://smashboards.com/threads/the-mechanics-of-up-b-walljump.425622/ says:

Walljump Requirements
To be able to use a walljump you need to meet two basic requirements. You need to have a certain amount of horizontal momentum and then come in contact with a wall. The game checks if you meet this required momentum by comparing the distance between your horizontal position in the previous two frames. If you have enough horizontal momentum and come in contact with a wall then the game will recognize that you are capable of walljumping.

Once the game recognizes this it starts a timer that counts how many frames you have been hugging a wall and have been capable of walljumping. Anytime you attempt to walljump the game checks to see if the timer is active and see how many frames it has been since you started hugging the wall and were capable of walljumping, if it is between 0-130 frames then it will let you walljump.


Pausing/Resuming Walljump Timer
It is actually possible to pause the timer and essentially have the game store the fact that you have been touching a wall and capable of walljumping for X number of frames. The timer is only active and capable of starting or continuing to count the frames when you are airborne and either jumping, falling, or in tumble after the hitstun from an attack ends.

This means you can pause the timer at any point by using an aerial, special, or airdodge. You can also pause the timer by becoming grounded by either grabbing the ledge or using one of the previous options to recover on stage. The timer will remain paused until you reenter one of the timers active airborne states (jumping, falling, tumble after hitstun). When the timer resumes it will either be set to 254 if you are not touching a wall or continue counting if you are touching a wall. Once the timer resumes you will be capable of walljumping again.

On Battlefield, you can walljump at the blue (left wall) or green (right wall) locations here: http://www.ssbwiki.com/File:BTLFD-STRUCT-SSBM.png

Here's my understanding of (3) + (4):

(A) The grapple "breaks" when some point on the grapple other than the "attachment point" intersects the stage. This puts Samus into tumble, and you can do stuff out of it.
(B) The grapple "disappears" when you grapple too close to the stage; this puts you into special fall.

Unfortunately, I don't think intersection is the _only_ thing that causes the (A) grapple break; sometimes I see a rising grapple break when it doesn't appear to intersect the stage. It might secretly be intersecting and I can't see it, or maybe it's breaking due to (a) too much velocity or (b) the grapple length exceeds the "max grapple length." (b) seems a bit more believable.

Empirically, the sooner you input grapple after airdodging, the higher you go from the resulting rising grapple. So I'm guessing your initial velocity is computed from your current velocity when you input grapple, and higher initial velocity = more height.

The height of the tumble grapple break is roughly your rising grapple speed, but probably gets reduced in weird ways by you riding up the wall...