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Q&A Official FAQ and QnA Thread - Ask Your Questions Here!

DtJ Jungle

Check out my character in #GranblueFantasy
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Welcome to the Question & Answer Thread and FAQ's

This thread's purpose is to try and keep the melee discussion board from being so cluttered and give those that are new to the game or those that have just a general question about the game to come here and ask! Everyone here is willing to help you, so don't be afraid to ask even the dumbest question! As long as it goes in here, you probably won't get trolled...probably :)

Also anyone feel free to IM me about this thread and smash in general, I love talking about smash online.

A Guide About Competitive Smash by SCOTU This a really good guide made by SCOTU, some of it is brawl material, but the general concepts apply. Read it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fun stuff to read


The almighty Magus DI Thread (Credit Witchking for Compiling)

Witchking Compilation of frame data

Mew2King's SSBM Statistics List

Out of Shield options frame data by Wiseman

The Official Everything Thread - The Basics, How to Improve, Frame Data, etc

FAQ’s

What is a frame?
A frame is 1/60th of a second, so 60 frames = 1 second.

How do I L cancel?
There are three timings to L cancelling: hitting nothing, hitting an opponent, hitting multiple opponents (ice climbers, teams, hitting shy guys on YS, etc), and hitting a shield. Each three have varied timings for each aerial. The only real way to get better at l cancelling is practicing.

How do I practice L cancelling on a shield if I don’t have anyone to play?
Go grab a rubber band, and around another controller wrap the rubber band around L or R and just go play.

What is DI, SDI, and ASDI and how are they different?
DI is your directional influence. After you are hit by an attack you are sent away in a direction depending on the attack. DI affects the trajectory at which you are flying at after you are hit. The better your DI is, the higher chance you have at living at higher %. There are frames of hitlag where you are frozen right before you are sent flying by an attack. During these frames, you can move using Smash DI. If you smash the control stick in that hitlag, your character “teleports” to that direction. It isn’t a very big difference, but enough to save yourself (Sdi’ing a fox uair). Automatic smash Di, or ASDI, occurs on the 1st frame of hitlag. The game reads the position of the stick on the frame of hitlag. C stick out prioritizes the control stick in this situation. The difference between SDI and ASDI is that ASDI doesn’t send you as far as SDI.

So…what are the best ways to DI?
Well it depends on the situation. If you want to DI out of a combo, You most likely hold away along with another direction depending on the move. If you want to survive a hit, like Marth’s fmash, then you want to survival DI, which is perpendicular to the trajectory that the move is sending you. For SDI and ASDI, it depends on what you are trying to do. Sometimes people try to SDI and ASDI into the stage so that they can tech. Other times they try to avoid follow ups, like the second hit of fox’s uair. Other times we try to tech on the stage so we SDI or ASDI in towards the stage so we don’t die from an edgeguard. It’s really situational depending on what you are trying to do.

Who should I main?
We can’t tell you. It all depends on how you want to play. For example, I love playing as sheik, but I don’t think most others do. I just find her enjoyable to play as. It’s all about preference, so take time to figure it out.

What exactly is CC?
CC is crouch cancelling. When you are hit while you are crouching, your knockback is reduced and hitstun is reduced apparently. You can also crouch cancel to cancel a dash. At low percentages you don’t fall over and can react with a variety of things, but when you start getting to higher percentages you fall and you can get wrecked…or you can tech it.

What are all these grabs?
Well theres your basic standing grab, dash grab, jump cancel (jc) grab, boost grab, pivot grab, and dash dance grab. The first two are exactly what their name implies. A jump cancelled grab is a grab where you dash, jump then grab before you start the jump animation. A boost grab is where you cancel the dash attack animation with a grab. A pivot grab is when you utilize the pivot, where you dash, then dash back into the neutral position instead of dashing the opposite direction, and grab. A dash dance grab is also exactly what it sounds like. When you dash dance, then grab. Each is good in its own right. You rarely use standing and dash grab. JC grab almost always > dash grab. Boost grab is really only good for the characters that gain momentum in their dash attacks, as they speed up when they grab, giving them a slight frame advantage. Pivot grabs are good for chaingrabing characters or for spacing, and same with DD grabs.

When Can I tech?
You can tech within 20 frames of hitting the ground, and then you can’t try for another 40.

What is buffering?
Out of a shield you can buffer an attack so that it does what you are imputing as soon as possible. You can jump cancel an upsmash, roll, jump and side dodge.

My favorite question: What button should I use for *insert command*?
WHATEVER THE **** YOU WANT

I'm going to my first tournament, what should I expect??

Don’t, for the love of god, expect to win. Come expecting to give it everything you’ve got and play to win, but don’t feel disappointed if you don’t come in first, or top 15, or make it out of pools even. Some of these players have been playing this game for 4-5 years, maybe more. Even if you haven’t heard their name, it doesn’t mean they still aren’t good. But come to play, come to win, but most importantly come to have fun. Be open with the players that are there. There is seriously nothing like the melee community. You will be glad you are apart of it. But again I digress. Please never expect anyone to have a controller for you. It is your responsibility to bring a controller to play with, besides, I personally like to play with a controller I know will work and know the ins and outs of. Don’t be late, don’t be late in your games, don’t john, don’t complain unless its legit, be a good sport. As far as money, it will usually cost 5-10 dollars for teams and another 5-15 dollars for singles. Plus, you will want money for food and drink, as these tournaments last the whole day. So 45-50 dollars is more than enough. Just be ready, don’t be an ***, and be prepared to meet a ton of new people and have a lot of fun!

Read this . Help TO's out in anyway you can, even if it means just not being late to the tourney, playing your matches when your supposed to, and cleaning up after yourself.

If I missed any or more pop up let me know and I will edit this
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So for the love of all things beautiful..

USE THIS THREAD
 

Oracle

Smash Master
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Official FAQ and QnA thread.

Got a simple question? Confused about something? Just want to introduce yourself to the melee community? Post away in this thread!

This thread was created due to the recent influx of threads that didn't deserve their own threads or were questions, etc. etc. If you have to ask yourself if this deserves a thread, then post it here
 

BunBun

Smash Master
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50 Terranite? Really?
Salut! Je mappelle BunBun. J'aime Melee.

This was a good idea. This'll be better for Melee newbies to introduce themselves in than the intro forum. I don't think anyone goes there...
 

Keblerelf

Smash Ace
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Ogallala Aquifer
Once at a tournament my controller was acting weird; I couldn't light shield with L, but the entire day it was fine, it was just that one pool match.


Then ever since then it worked.


This happened only once before when I was playing at home, but after i replugged the controller it worked fine.

so...does anyone have a similar experience?
 

Geist

Smash Master
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Menswear section
Unplug the controller, then re-plug it in. Or press all of the face buttons and your controller resets.
It happens when you hold a button or direction when the gamecube turns on. Happens al the time.


Also, great thread idea. Hopefully this will help with the random question threads popping up everywhere.
 

metashinryu

Smash Ace
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Messages
632
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Republica Dominicana
i had some similar case, i was practicing and all of sudden my r button could only shield pressed off the
bottom,feels weird at the first but really helped me to not roll,then i unplug-plug it again and presto XD
 

Eaode

Smash Champion
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Jun 4, 2006
Messages
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Glen Cove/RIT, New York.
Just so everybody knows, the reset button combo on the GC controller is X + Y + Start

Hold it for like 4 seconds and your controller resets (and make sure you're not holding the trigger buttons or either of the sticks when you release it).
 

halcyon.days

Smash Journeyman
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Messages
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Location
Edmonton, Alberta
Okay for clarification, when you SDI does the control stick HAVE to be put back into neutral position?

If it does, doesn't that make it harder for Falcon to walltech, seeing as you need to be DIing towards the stage? You'd have to DI towards the stage, then right before you get hit reset to neutral and then SDI (with quarter circle DI) in order to tech correctly, right?
 

DtJ Jungle

Check out my character in #GranblueFantasy
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Yes you would have to reset to neutral. Which is why you try to hug the wall when you recover. If you are too far away they can just space the attack so that you don't even have a chance of SDI'ing. If they were really bad at spacing you could ASDI with the C-stick while di'ing with the control stick.
 

halcyon.days

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Yes you would have to reset to neutral. Which is why you try to hug the wall when you recover. If you are too far away they can just space the attack so that you don't even have a chance of SDI'ing. If they were really bad at spacing you could ASDI with the C-stick while di'ing with the control stick.
With Falcon I can tech while hugging the wall till about 200% no problem.

Thanks for the answer, just needed clarification on that one point.
 

halcyon.days

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How do you successfully L-cancel 100% of the time ?
You have to pay attention to how your attack lands.

There's slightly different timing for L-cancelling, and it depends on:

If your attack misses
If your attack hits your opponent
If your attack hits your opponent's shield

It may be difficult at the beginning, but soon enough it will become almost like muscle memory. But basically it's just practice, practice, practice.
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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^Halcyon left out a few other instances, actually.

The whole list is as follows:
Attack misses.
Hits your opponent.
Hits your opponent's shield.
Hits your opponent while invincible (from respawning or from a Star...which you probably won't be playing with, but that's a way to practice the timing).
And you need to be used to how the Ice Climbers make this whole thing way more complicated by having two of them. Double shield o_x;;
 

Kaos099

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Wow, never knew L-cancelling was so complicated. Do you just practice in practice mode? Or do you practice fighting the computer/ a person
 

halcyon.days

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For attacks that "miss", you can just do that by yourself by practicing aerials off to the side against a level 1 computer. Don't go into training mode, because you can't use the c-stick for aerials.

Also, against a level 1 computer you can practice l-cancelling on it as well. As for the shield... if you set Starmen (ie, invincibility star) to high, hitting an invincible person is ALMOST the same as hitting someone who is shielding. (I honestly thought it was the same, but I guess not)
 

JPOBS

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Correct me if im wrong on the following terms cuz im not sure if this is all right:

ASDI: direction you were holding on the control stick before being hit, so it affects your trajectory/knockback.

C-stick DI: Direction on the control stick you were holding prior to being hit, affects where the attack hits you (?) and stronly affects DI (?)

Smash DI: literaly smashing a direction within a few frames of being hit to affect knockback

so MIRITE? also, which one is best for wall teching most consistently?
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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It's not that complicated. Maybe took me a month before I had it down solid. It sounds complicated, but once you get used to it you just wait until the hits are done and then fastfall and l-cancel.

But this is the way ArcNatural taught me to practice it, and I'd like to pass on the technique:

Plug in an extra controller and set the player to Bowser. Put handicaps on and set your handicap to 1 and his to 9. Make it an infinite time match.

From here you can practice l-cancels without hitting him at all (since he won't go after you), or you can practice hitting him (he won't really move until like 250% or something, so you've got a good while). Or if you want to practice hitting his shield, grab a rubber band and have it hold down the R button on the other controller. And if you want to practice hitting him while invincible, just put Stars on as the only item and make sure he gets them.

Simple as that.

But really, once you get used to waiting a second before fastfalling, you figure out that you tend not to have to do a whole lot more than be patient before fastfalling. However, I do find that some moves like Falcon's knee or his down-air require a bit more practice to l-cancel than other moves. Like, I find that I can't just wait for the hit to end and then fastfall, but need to learn the exact timing for it. If that's the case with one of your main's moves, just practice the ones you have an issue with.

Also: A good way to see if you're l-cancelling/a good habit to get used to is to dash right after you l-cancel. You shouldn't see your character stand after the attack, he should just dash if you're getting the timing right. And once you get used to the timing of dashing after an l-cancel, you notice when you miss an l-cancel (as you won't dash on time). Also, this helps you not to stay in the same place after a SHFFL. I had that problem when I first picked it up, mainly that I just sort of SHFFLed a f-air into Arc's shield and then he'd just grab or whatever XD

But yeah, just keep getting used to l-cancelling and mix things up when you get good with it. Like (an example with Marth) SHFFL a f-air into Bowser's shield, dash right afterward past him, wavedash back and grab. Or you could dash away, dashdance back and grab. Get used to doing creative things after a SHFFL so you don't just sit around after you notice that you hit your opponent's shield. As you're learning l-cancelling, just be sure not to forget the importance of what you do AFTER you l-cancel. You l-cancel to cancel the lag so you can respond faster. If you're just going to sit there after you l-cancel, what was the point of learning it to begin with? You see what I mean?

Oh, and 1 winged @ngel, you might want to switch the title of this thread to 'Q&A' or 'Ask a simple question get a simple answer' something along those lines. Because most people aren't going to come here asking quick questions. They'll just think this is a place for n00bs to learn and most people either think they're not a n00b or that their question isn't n00bish. This should just be a quick Q&A thread, and changing the title will make people think to use this as opposed to creating other threads (like the one on whether or not you can powershield Young Link's arrows).


EDIT:

For attacks that "miss", you can just do that by yourself by practicing aerials off to the side against a level 1 computer. Don't go into training mode, because you can't use the c-stick for aerials.

Also, against a level 1 computer you can practice l-cancelling on it as well. As for the shield... if you set Starmen (ie, invincibility star) to high, hitting an invincible person is ALMOST the same as hitting someone who is shielding. (I honestly thought it was the same, but I guess not)
To practice against a shield, just do what I said earlier, just get a rubber band to hold down the R button. You'll need two controllers, but that's no big deal. And I'd recommend not practicing l-cancels on a computer just yet. Because they actually move around, at least I find that I tend to get distracted and actually play as opposed to focusing on the l-cancels.

Correct me if im wrong on the following terms cuz im not sure if this is all right:

ASDI: direction you were holding on the control stick before being hit, so it affects your trajectory/knockback.

C-stick DI: Direction on the control stick you were holding prior to being hit, affects where the attack hits you (?) and stronly affects DI (?)

Smash DI: literaly smashing a direction within a few frames of being hit to affect knockback

so MIRITE? also, which one is best for wall teching most consistently?
Hate to do this to you, but:

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=60218

This really does explain the whole thing. I'm not an expert on DI, but this mostly cleared it up for me and I'd rather not give you misinformation in the event that I don't know what I'm talking about. But from what I read, your post doesn't match up with the DI guide.
 

halcyon.days

Smash Journeyman
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You want to press L less than 20 frames before you hit the wall.
The difference between SDI and ASDI is when you hit the wall.
When You SDI, you can hit the wall, and hence tech, during the hitlag of the move you're being attacked with.
ASDI happens on the first frame after hitlag is over.


ASDI is inferior for three reasons:
1. Since you only hit the wall after hitlag has ended, the timing for pressing L is harder.
If the move's hitlag is x frames, then you would have 20-x frames to press L.
For some moves, this makes it nearly impossible to tech.

2. ASDI happens at the same time that you starting flying away out of knockback.
This means that on the first frame after hitlag has ended, your movement is the combined effect of knockback and ASDI.
If the hit is strong enough, your net movement on the first frame will be away from the edge.
Therefore, it is impossible to tech using ASDI at arbitrary percents.

3. You have to hugging the wall when you get hit, otherwise you won't be able to go far enough with ASDI to tech.


Because SDI allows you to tech during hitlag, it avoids all of these problems.
The only disadvantage is that it is slightly harder to do.


What you should generally do to tech is this:

1. Up B and hug the wall. If you're in a position where this is impossible, just make sure you're as close
2. Press L just before you get hit. The closer the better, but anything between 5-15 frames works well.

3. As you get hit, do a upwards quarter circle towards the stage.
So, if you're teching on the left edge, your control stick should start off on bottom right, and end up on the top right.
Doing a quarter circle has three advantages over just smashing the stick towards the edge.
First, it makes it easier to time, because as long as the moves hitlag overlaps with your quarter circle,
you will get at least one SDI off.
Second, It allows more than one SDI, so you can tech even if you're a little bit away from the wall.
Third, if you miss the tech, your control stick will be positioned to input the proper survival DI for most moves.

4. Hold up to walljump.

5. After you tech, you should either side b instantly to grab the edge, or wait and side b into your opponent in their lag,
depending on what move they did. Against something like peach's downsmash, wait to side b,
or you might tech one hit then get hit again right away.
Against something like Falco's dair, side b immediately, or he will be able to hit you with a different move.
If your opponent is at a high percent, and right next the edge, you can also bair after your walljump,
and hit your opponent away from the edge. I wouldn't usually recommend the last option though.
In case you have trouble thinking in "frames"; 60 frames is 1 second, so press L about 1/4 of a second before you're hit.
 

Kaos099

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 19, 2009
Messages
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Springvale VIC
Thanks proverbs, that really helps a lot. Also how come my signature doesn't show ? I ticked the
show your signature box, but there's still no sig.
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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Messages
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No problem. And as for your sig:

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=152818

Also, your signature can only be so long. I noticed you have a huge picture in your sig, and wanted to let you know that the whole thing won't fit. I'll put my signature in here so you can see the max length that it can be (I have a ton of stuff -in my signature- well below the bottom, too, so you can be sure that what you see is the maximum size that will display).

Edit: huh, I don't think mine's showing up either right now. Weird.
 

Kaos099

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 19, 2009
Messages
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Location
Springvale VIC
Ohhh, yeah i realised that it wouldn't fit completely, but I have no idea how I'm supposed
to minimize it. Since we have to get our pictures from websites. ( -___-"", I dislike google images, some medium images aren't even medium. They're FREAKING HUGE! )

*EDIT*
awesome my pic is showing, but my text, is nowhere to be found.

*DOUBLE EDIT*
Yay I got it to work!
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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Ohhh, yeah i realised that it wouldn't fit completely, but I have no idea how I'm supposed
to minimize it. Since we have to get our pictures from websites. ( -___-"", I dislike google images, some medium images aren't even medium. They're FREAKING HUGE! )

*EDIT*
awesome my pic is showing, but my text, is nowhere to be found.
That's because your signature is still too large for it to fit. It's the max size it can be right now.


Edit: Check my above post (the huge one) to see the max size a sig can be vertically. the horizontal length, I believe, is just the width of the post size.

^i.e. The length of that sentence.
 

Binx

Smash Master
Joined
Jul 19, 2006
Messages
4,038
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Portland, Oregon
Correct me if im wrong on the following terms cuz im not sure if this is all right:

ASDI: direction you were holding on the control stick before being hit, so it affects your trajectory/knockback.

C-stick DI: Direction on the control stick you were holding prior to being hit, affects where the attack hits you (?) and stronly affects DI (?)

Smash DI: literaly smashing a direction within a few frames of being hit to affect knockback

so MIRITE? also, which one is best for wall teching most consistently?
Someone already linked doraki's thread, its too good for this type of question, none of us could ever word it as well as he did.

Oh. Do you know any ways of minimizing my picture ?
Yes, you can minimize your sig pic by right clicking it and saving it to your desktop, if you have photoshop you can flat out pick the the resolution and be done with it, I don't however so I use paint's stretch/skew option and just experiment until I get the size I want, usually only takes a minute or two.

---- anyways apparently Im a noob at math, if I have to graph y as a function of x does that mean the y would go on the x axis?
 

Kaos099

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 19, 2009
Messages
16
Location
Springvale VIC
Someone already linked doraki's thread, its too good for this type of question, none of us could ever word it as well as he did.



Yes, you can minimize your sig pic by right clicking it and saving it to your desktop, if you have photoshop you can flat out pick the the resolution and be done with it, I don't however so I use paint's stretch/skew option and just experiment until I get the size I want, usually only takes a minute or two.

---- anyways apparently Im a noob at math, if I have to graph y as a function of x does that mean the y would go on the x axis?

But then it wouldn't be a HTML, how am i supposed to upload it ?
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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Messages
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^Upload it to imageshack. That's what I do. Signing up is free and you don't get crazy spam e-mails.


And as for graphing: I'm not sure about the language of it, but I'll tell you what I know.

In a function, an equation might exist such as y=x+5.

Now, you don't just put y on the x-axis, but make y a function of x as in it is reliant on what x is. So, if x is 3, y is 8. So you graph (3, 8) as a point on the graph. Or, if y=x, then yes, the x and y values would be identical.

Does that help? I'm not sure how else I could explain it...
 

DtJ Jungle

Check out my character in #GranblueFantasy
BRoomer
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yeah i do.

type in Jungle Fever vs SCOTU or Jungle Fever vs Okiyama.

I'm posting more later.
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
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Messages
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Seattle, WA
Uh...I have a really hilarious video of me playing that should NEVER be taken seriously at all, does that count?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfECf7a-WUk&feature=channel_page

I made this when I had no clue how to play Falcon, so please...don't judge me based on that one XD I've gotten a lot better since, especially with Falcon. It was just when I was too tired to play seriously. So, again, it's mostly for hilarity's sake.

EDIT: Also, I main Marth. It's only been recently that I've picked up Falcon as a secondary.
 

Proverbs

Smash Lord
Joined
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Messages
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Seattle, WA
Look up the conversion online. I'm sure you can figure it out. Refer to the spoiler if you really can't figure it out on your own...

Tf = (9/5)*Tc+32; Tc = temperature in degrees Celsius, Tf = temperature in degrees Fahrenheit
 
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