Figuring Out RCO Lag and its Cause

[rPSIvysaur]

I believe we all know at this point what RCO Lag is. If you don't, you might want to quit the Smash Lab or start studying.
Right now, we primitively know the effects of RCO "Lag". We know that you land with extra landing lag on your aerials and regular landing. We also know that your aerial movement becomes restricted.

First off: I believe that this phenomenon is incorrectly labeled as lag. It isn't just the landing lag that is involved, but rather some sort of event that wasn't triggered. We should rename it since, it is wrong to call something like that Lag since that's only the landing lag involvement. RCO State?

Second: Does anyone else have more information about RCO and would care to enlighten this thread?

Third: We should determine the cause of RCO lag.
I already have some theories behind the cause, I'll get to that later.

 

[John12346]

Well, it seems like the "RCO lag" is caused when you fail to land on solid ground after specific moves are performed.

Most of them make sense, since most of the moves that result in "RCO lag" are moves that put you in the helpless state, although there are some discrepancies(Kirby's Hammer and Stone???)...

I remember hearing a long time ago that, after some characters perform their USpecials, a certain variable is stored in a "LA-Bit" or something(whatever it is, you can find it via PSA, and I'll have a look...)? Maybe that variable resolves when you land on the ground in the way that the game was expecting you to, and it doesn't when you grab the ledge?

 

[MK26]

^^yeah, if you ask one of the p:m guys theyll know the specifics (monkunit, paging monkunit) but the gist of it is:

a bit is set when you use specials, which causes the game to recognize that the next time you hit the ground, you should go into the special's lag
the bit is unset (is that the right word?) when a) you get ko'd or b) you land on the ground while using that special, any aerial, an airdodge, or no action (all four of which cause the lag state to be at least partially induced)
it is not unset when a) ending the special without touching the ground, b) getting hit out of the special before it ends, or c) landing while using a different special

so yes, it is the lag from the attack that's carried over, specifically from the special being used

 

[MonkUnit]

I don't know this stuff, MK26. I only know stage stuff.

I'll ask in the PMBR later today though. I also think standardtoaster would be a good addition to the smash lab, he is in the pmbr and is knowledgeable on this sort of thing.

 

[Strong Badam]

^^yeah, if you ask one of the p:m guys theyll know the specifics (monkunit, paging monkunit) but the gist of it is:

a bit is set when you use specials, which causes the game to recognize that the next time you hit the ground, you should go into the special's lag
the bit is unset (is that the right word?) when a) you get ko'd or b) you land on the ground while using that special, any aerial, an airdodge, or no action (all four of which cause the lag state to be at least partially induced)
it is not unset when a) ending the special without touching the ground, b) getting hit out of the special before it ends, or c) landing while using a different special

so yes, it is the lag from the attack that's carried over, specifically from the special being used

The correct term is "cleared"

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Do you know which bit it is?

 

[Strong Badam]

Give me some more moves it happens on & I can try to find the cause. The only one I know that it happens on is Falcon's Up-B

Btw similar happens to Marth's Forward-B in Melee. It doesn't get the upwards momentum unless you land in specific ways, it doesn't count aerial land lag as one of the ways to land to reset it.

 

[phi1ny3]

A bit of a tangent from talking directly about RCO and more of a synopsis than anything, but landing animation in general has been a more situational but still important part of some fighting games. I've recently been doing Dissidia 012, and my particular character relies a lot on whether the opponent was in the air before drawing them in for what's called the "Golden Combo" (LB -> SB -> UB -> BF -> Assist reset, for anyone that's familiar with Squall's terminology), and I think that it boils down to those animations. The characters would look otherwise very unpolished animation-wise, and although it was probably for aesthetic reasons, it's strangely become a part of these games (especially forced trajectory to cause hard landings from attacks, like meteors/spikes in smash).

I agree that there's probably a landing variable at work here, it might be for the same reasons why certain characters cannot use their upB w/ tap jump off if they've landed and haven't jumped yet.

 

[Indigo Jeans]

So would finding what bit it is be as simple as looking at what moves experience RCO lag in OSA2/PSA/w/e and comparing them to single it out? Or is it more complicated than that?

 

[Strong Badam]

It depends. It might be viewable in the character .pacs, but it could be a hard-coded error into the fitchar.rel files.

 

[Indigo Jeans]

Ohhh... well my experience with programming and code and the such is basic, so I know my way around character .pacs, but not so much fitchar.rel, or any other file type for that matter.

Though, I've never actually tried messing with those files, so maybe it's not as hard as I imagine it to be? What does one use to open fitchar.rels?

 

[standardtoaster]

You would use phantom wings module viewer 2.1 to view rel files. However, you need extensive knowledge of PPC ASM to understand any of it.

 

[Indigo Jeans]

...which I don't have :S I should probably go look around the workshop and see what I can learn. Thanks for the info though.

 

[standardtoaster]

Well, it seems like the "RCO lag" is caused when you fail to land on solid ground after specific moves are performed.

Most of them make sense, since most of the moves that result in "RCO lag" are moves that put you in the helpless state, although there are some discrepancies(Kirby's Hammer and Stone???)...

I remember hearing a long time ago that, after some characters perform their USpecials, a certain variable is stored in a "LA-Bit" or something(whatever it is, you can find it via PSA, and I'll have a look...)? Maybe that variable resolves when you land on the ground in the way that the game was expecting you to, and it doesn't when you grab the ledge?

The LA-Bit you're thinking of is LA-Bit[61]. It's only used to limit how many upBs you can do with characters that have 'special' upBs, such as snake and pit.