New to Project M, not smash. What do I need to know?

[TK Wolf]

Hey there. I've been looking around for this info but haven't really found it anywhere. Can someone explain to me what changes there are in Project M compared to Brawl/Melee?

What I know:
L-canceling is in
Directional air dodge is in
Light-shielding is not in, but I shield-tilting is

What I'm not sure of:
It seems that some A attacks can cancel into B attacks, but I can't find any solid rule as to what can cancel into what. Some characters seem not to have any cancels.
Some characters have extra/secret moves. Lucario has an A+B... are there more like this?
Anything else important?

Thanks!

 

[RedHairedGent]

This is also relevant to my interests, I myself am very familiar with melee and it's mechanics, but wanted to know some of the more subtle changes to things like wave dashing/etc, and about cancels.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Basically, to answer both your question(s):

All physics and advanced tech are carried over from melee 100% or with ever-so-slight differences that have no real effect
Some advanced tech and mechanics are carried over from brawl (RARs, B-reversals and its derivatives, glide tosses, DACUSes, running pivot grabs [different from melee pivot grabs], footstools, wallclings and crawling [specific to characters], pivot walking)

^ you can look up videos for all of these from brawl/melee, most of the melee ones carry over 100% while some of the brawl ones are worse as side-effects of physics changes/gameplay changes

There's also some new tech that results as a combination of the melee-esque engine and the brawl mechanics, such as aerial glide tossing, soft-input dash-tilt pivots (these don't really have a "proper" name I don't think, and few people even use them), perfect moonwalking [with an easy input]

Only Lucario cancels A moves into B moves, that is, normals into specials, through his On-hit magic series
Lucario actually has an A+B combination for every special, which are only possible when you have an aura charge, indicated by glowing hands: Aura ball becomes Aura Bomb, Up-b gets canceled by a pelvic thrust that cancels into any other action, down-b cancels into any normal attack just by inputting the attack during down-b, side-b gets much stronger, and if in the air, sends at a more diagonal angle as a spike.
Very few characters have "secret moves" like lucario's, although some exist that aren't secret but aren't entirely obvious unless you already know about them, such as squirtle's A attack during side-b or kirby's sideways cutter

 

[Yurya]

Also PM has an ALTERNATIVE mode called Turbo which I mention just for clarification. You both mentioned cancels and Turbo Mode allows that but only through items or special brawl.
PM's site and a list of its history/changes is below.

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Project_M
http://projectmgame.com/en/

 

[Kankato]

Fox Only, Final Destination, No Items, only Fox=90% of the cast, FD= at least 14 stages, but still no items

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Forget everything you knew and loved.

 

[TreK]

What you should know :
-P:M has all of Melee's ATs, and all of Brawl's ATs that did not require buffering to be performed. Plus aerial glide tossing. However, the way the floor is not as slidy as it is in brawl nerfes a few of Brawl's ATs like DACUSes. L cancelling manifests as a white flash to signal it's been performed succesfully.
-you can use button mapping, just like in Brawl. It makes a handful of Melee's ATs really easy to perform. (took me 5 minutes to get waveshining down perfectly lololol)
-footstooling is not performed with the jump button, but with the taunt button to avoid accidental footstools. They can also be teched now.
-tethers do not work the same way they do in melee or brawl. They target the ledge like in Brawl, but can be used if somebody is ledge hogging. In that case, instead of climbing up to the ledge, you will be forced to perform a ledge hop.
-some characters have a ctilt (crawl tilt)
-none of the three gliders perform their glide by doing the float input. They can instead be accessed via special moves (Pit's is side B, Char's is aerial down B, and MK's is still his up B). The glide itself is still pretty much the same : you can gair, or cancel. I don't remember if there's landing lag on gairs.
-Melee's veterans are pretty much intact if they were top-ish tier in that game, though you shouldn't assume that they won't ever be altered, as their design motto is that nothing is sacred (PMBR's creed haha). Melee's lower tiered characters, as well as all of Brawl's newcomers, have been redesigned in several ways.
-I heard there were a few input differences from Melee, but don't take my word for it.
-Tiers are still there, they're simply much closer together. You won't be able to just autopilot on low tiers and get away with it.
-There are a lot more legal stages, and the counterpicking process is different because of it. You get two bans.

 

[Nausicaa]

PM is basically Brawl with Roy and Mewtwo, and an added training stage.
There's also more textures to *choose from.
Ganon has no wind effect on Up-Tilt (hard-nerfed, he needed it)
Smaller chest hit-boxes on the tight-clothed version of Samus.
Also, Charizard and Bowser have their jump button moved to 'Down-B'
I'm not sure what X and Y do...

PS/Edit: Dedede is broken, don't play him or the game explodes.

Editedit: Choose, not chose.
*spelling is harder in this game, Melee was too easy.

 

[dRevan64]

if you were any good at melee it's mostly like a technically easier version of that but you might have to know more matchups since people actually play things other than galactic anthropomorphs with 1 frame moves (there are now 3 of them!)

 

[TK Wolf]

Thanks for the great feedback, everyone! It's very helpful.

 

[Nausicaa]

npnp, I'm pretty good at stuff.

 

[210stuna]

There's no tripping.

 

[2 C H i L L E D]

What do you need to know? You need to know Matchups. Like foreal...

 

[skstylez]

PM is basically Brawl with Roy and Mewtwo, and an added training stage.

Sorry, but that's a terrible description, or you're playing wrong. Love the movie though...

The game is like melee with the Brawl+Melee cast (excluding Pichu for now)
It also brings the neat tricks in Brawl to the table, what DrinkingFood mentioned.

The cancels you're talkin about are either Lucario or Turbo mode

 

[TreK]

Oh btw, I forgot to mention it, but due to aerial glide tossing, Brawl's instant tossing now behaves differently. You can wavedash an instant toss in example, or use a peanut Diddy tosses at you to recover. It's pretty swaggy.

Yup, items suck in P:M, in case you were wondering.

 

[MrSaturday]

To prevent over-explaining all the character changes, I would just pick a few at a time and visit their respective sections on these forums. If you find it easier to learn things in small bits then I recommend it.
http://smashboards.com/forums/character-discussion.327/

As a whole, Project M is faster-paced than Brawl, and is easier to transition to from Melee. I am not the most knowledgeable person with this game yet, but I suggest to simply play the game and that should explain many things for itself.