Questions about Brawl/Brawl+ "stats" - Momentum, Gravity, BKB, KGB, stun, etc.

[Doval]

I've mean meaning to make this thread for a while. I love having a thorough understanding of the mechanics of any game I play; so reading all this stuff in the Brawl+ changelists regarding how certain attributes about a character have been modified certainly piqued my interest immediately. I just read Paprika Killer's article on hitboxes over at Brawlplus.net, and it certainly cleared certain things qualitatively, but I'd like to understand things at a quantitative level as well, if possible. Besides that, I had a few questions that didn't directly pertain to the things PK mentioned in his article; so I figured making a new thread would be appropriate.

tl;dr I'm looking for an infodump.

1) Is there a code that permits viewing a character's hit boxes? I couldn't help but notice the GIF in Paprika's article, but I couldn't tell if that was Melee's Debug mode or Brawl.

2) How do Base Knockback, the hitbox's Damage, and Knockback growth add up together to determine the total knockback that will be dealt at a certain %? I ask because this statement caught my attention: "Whenever you see a move with raised damage and lowered KBG, you know this move has gotten a dmg buff, but keeps the same overall growth." Do you guys just wing it and test to make sure the new Damage/KBG values don't change the knockback, or is there a mathematical relationship you guys know?

3) What determines the shield stun of a move (besides the reduction multiplier in the codes)? Is it an arbitrary value, or is it related to other statistics such as damage? Likewise, what about shield knockback (naturally traction comes into playhere, but what else), and hit stun?

4) Can someone give me a thorough explanation about what the different types of Gravity are and what they affect? I see the terms Up and Down Gravity in the Code Agenda thread; I see Down Gravity and Normal Gravity in the official codeset v4.1B changelist; and I see the terms Down Gravity and Full Gravity in the BrawlPlus.net changelist. Besides the confusion due to the various terms used, I haven't been able to find in-depth descriptions of these stats' effects.

5) Can I assume that the numbers for character-specific physics changes in the Changelist are percentages? E.g. "Short Hop: 0.90" means that his short hop height is 90% of the default/vBrawl values and "Downwards Gravity: 1.175" means the character has 17.5% more Down Gravity than in vBrawl? Likewise, does "Ground to Air Momentum: 92.5%" mean that Mario retains 92.5% of his running speed when doing a grounded jump?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but my curiosity is killing me, and it would probably benefit the community plenty to have a thorough understanding of these concepts so they can fully grasp the changes that are being documented in the changelists. Thank you in advance.

 

[timothyung]

1. Not in Brawl yet, Melee debug.
2. Mathematical relationship. Ex. Marth's DS was nerfed to 10% dmg. Before it was 13%. Thus the new KBG is 10/13 = ~77% of the old one.
3. IDK, IDK, The launch speed of the move. The game checks the launch speed of the move, multiply it by 0.48 (changed in Brawl+ to 0.4865), and divide it by a character specific constant. Then we get the number of frames of the hitstun.
4. Up: Upwards movement height.. Down: All things other than upwards movement height. Full: Up+Down
5. You should be correct

 

[CountKaiser]

1. No, we cannot make hitboxes visible yet. Don't know if we ever will.

2.

L = g*d*p*w + 30*b + A

L is launch speed seen on the end of game results screen, g is the growth of the move, d is the damage the move deals, p is the percent the target is at after the hit, w is the target's weight (or launch resistance, really), b is the base of the move, and A has something to do with a combination of the angle the move launches at and the character's fall speed acceleration (moves that launch downward have a negative A value).

The A value unfortunately has not been very carefully looked into. It's only applied to moves that send into the tumble, which creates a sort of "hole" in a graph of the launch speed of a move as it moves from a non-tumble percent to a tumble percent. You can find out the launch speed a move tumbles by dividing 1020 by the hitstun multiplier constant (in brawl+, this is .4865, whereas it was .40 in vbrawl). In vbrawl, the tumble line was drawn at 2550, but in brawl+, it is 2097. Most moves tend to have an A of around 100 against mario (when an attack is used against characters with greater fall speed acceleration the A value is larger, and against those with less fall speed acceleration it is smaller). Moves that send straight up or close to it (such as nesss's uthrow, luigi's upB, or jiggs' old rest) have around a 160 or so A value against mario. Admittedly, when I perform calculations to determine a move's launch speed at an arbitrary percent, I take a guess at about what the A value will be based on its angle, so while my calculations may be very close to correct most of the time, they are frequently off by a small amount due to insufficient data, and thus usually require a little fine-tuning after testing.

Straight from leaf's mouth. The true growth a move has is the damage done times the KBG.

3. Shield stun has something to do with the overall KB of the move. There is no exact formula for it, however. Shield KB is due to, I assume a combination of the KB of the move and the shielder's friction.

Almas is almost correct. Hitstun is calculated by the formula:

h = m*l / d

H is hitstun in frames. M is the hitstun multiplier constant (the brawl default is .4, and we're using .484 right now). L is the launch speed of the move (you can see max launch speed in the end game results screen). D is a character specific division constant, which can be any of the whole numbers 32, 33, 34, 35, or 36 (faster fallers have higher values and therefore suffer less hitstun).

As you can see, hitstun is linear. However, knockback is nonlinear. You start off going a distance equal to your launch speed, and then travel a progressively smaller value each frame. The rate of decay is believed to be a constant value (this is currently unverified), so moves with only slightly higher launch speeds will cause a drastically larger knockback at higher values. In regular brawl, most moves KOed players off the top of the screen when they reached a launch speed of 6200 to 6300.

This is why it's harder to combo at higher percentages. It's not that they're going too far away. It's that they're going too far away with a stun time that is proportionally smaller to that of when they stayed close.

That's hitstun, once again thanks to leafgreen.

4. Timothy explained it rather well. Upgrav affects upwards, momentum-based movement. This is why it affects moves such as Snake's up b, sonic's up b, And Link's up b. They are momentum based in that they use a large, single upward thrust, rather than move a set distance.

5. You are correct except for momentum. Momentum % is the % of how much momentum that character normally carries from a running jump. This is different from everyone. By default, C. Falcon gains more momentum from his jump than, say, Sonic, even though Sonic has a faster dash speed. So in the set, Sonic has 1.75 times more momentum from a jump than he normally gets.

This, however, leads to the interesting glitch where people can get momentum from walking when their momentum % is above 100%.

Hope this answers your questions.

 

[Doval]

Awesome answers! Equations are precisely what I was hoping to get. (Hint hint: if there are any other equations that've been figured out, I'd like to know those to!) I still have more questions though; I'm not totally grasping this Gravity thing.

1) Why is it that Up Gravity never shows up in the Brawl+ Changelist?
2) Does Up Gravity affect certain special moves like Up-B's, or does it affect other things as well?
3) Likewise, does Down Gravity only affect freefall speed? And, does increasing a character's fall speed decrease the amount of time it takes the character to reach the peak of his jump?
4) How does the game handle fastfalling? Does it store a fastfall speed for each character, or is it just a multiplier of their normal falling speed? That is, if you were to increase a character's fall speed, would its fastfall speed increase proportionately as well?
5) What determines a character's falling acceleration? In Melee, Falco had a higher fall speed than Fox, but Fox accelerated faster.
6) Full Gravity still eludes me completely on a conceptual level. What does it mean that it's the sum of Up and Down Gravity? What does it mean when, for example, a character's Down Gravity is increased but its Full Gravity is decreased (e.g. Bowser?) Can you give examples of what part of character movements Full Gravity affects? And is Normal Gravity just another name for Full Gravity?

Finally, regarding momentum: Does that mean, for example, that since Fox runs 1.175 times faster in Brawl+, but his Ground To Air Momentum is 0.925 times vBrawl's, his running short hops are 1.175 x 0.925 = ~1.087 times faster than vBrawl? Because he seems to jump forward a lot better in Brawl+ than vBrawl despite the reduced Ground to Air Momementum and Short Hop Height stats.

 

[Deleted member]

1) since we don't use it?
2) some yes, but it isn't used.
3) downgrav affect any moment you aren't jumping/raiding etc.
4) seperate speed, if you set normal fallspeed on 0, the FF speed is unaffected
5) unsure, maybe someone else knoes this better
6) no. it is a seperate value that is acctive all the time, while up and down only on certain moments

 

[GPDP]

1) Why is it that Up Gravity never shows up in the Brawl+ Changelist?

Up gravity is modified through the Full gravity setting.

2) Does Up Gravity affect certain special moves like Up-B's, or does it affect other things as well?

Yes, Up gravity does mess with some Up Bs, as well as a few other specials such as Luigi's Down B or the ICs' Side B, which is why many of these characters with specials affected negatively by Up gravity (and I've documented who these characters are elsewhere) do not have their Full gravity settings tweaked. That will change once the new gravity codes come out, which will allow us to modify the gravity of specials affected by gravity.

3) Likewise, does Down Gravity only affect freefall speed? And, does increasing a character's fall speed decrease the amount of time it takes the character to reach the peak of his jump?

Down gravity also affects weight and hitstun, which is why an individual character hitstun code will be released soon to deal with this (and I have argued a weight modifier code should follow as well). As for the second question, I'm not sure.

4) How does the game handle fastfalling? Does it store a fastfall speed for each character, or is it just a multiplier of their normal falling speed? That is, if you were to increase a character's fall speed, would its fastfall speed increase proportionately as well?

Yes, fast fall speed is dependent on Down gravity, but ONLY when Down gravity is increased by increasing Full gravity. The separate Down gravity variable in the gravity code was coded so as to not multiply with fast fall speed.

5) What determines a character's falling acceleration? In Melee, Falco had a higher fall speed than Fox, but Fox accelerated faster.

Not sure.

6) Full Gravity still eludes me completely on a conceptual level. What does it mean that it's the sum of Up and Down Gravity? What does it mean when, for example, a character's Down Gravity is increased but its Full Gravity is decreased (e.g. Bowser?) Can you give examples of what part of character movements Full Gravity affects? And is Normal Gravity just another name for Full Gravity?

Full gravity is increased in order to increase both Up gravity and Down gravity at the same rate. So when you increase a character's Full gravity by 1.25, what you're doing is increasing both Up and Down gravity by 1.25 for that character. The separate Down gravity setting is there in order to be able to tweak a character's falling speed (and consequently weight and hitstun) without messing with Up gravity or fast fall speed.

Finally, regarding momentum: Does that mean, for example, that since Fox runs 1.175 times faster in Brawl+, but his Ground To Air Momentum is 0.925 times vBrawl's, his running short hops are 1.175 x 0.925 = ~1.087 times faster than vBrawl? Because he seems to jump forward a lot better in Brawl+ than vBrawl despite the reduced Ground to Air Momementum and Short Hop Height stats.

Thing is, vBrawl had no concept of running momentum. No matter what, characters always jump forward at the same speed, whether you're running or walking before jumping. Just try it with Captain Falcon. He gets no more distance from a running jump than he does from a walking jump.

However, we eventually got a code that DOES allow characters to obtain momentum from running. From the looks of it, it looks as if characters DID have an inherent momentum variable, so to speak, which allows them to gain a greater distance from running, but something was put in the game code that locked this variable out, and made characters always jump as if they were just walking. And it seems it does not really depend much on running speed, as Sonic got almost no increase (hence the code that gives him a 170% momentum increase), but Captain Falcon got more momentum than anyone else in the game.

In any case, the WBR felt a limiter was needed, because with the new code, characters were going much too far. Hence the 92.5% limiter currently in place for most characters. So you see, the limit is not based on vBrawl, but on the momentum code's original momentum gains.

 

[leafgreen386]

1) Is there a code that permits viewing a character's hit boxes? I couldn't help but notice the GIF in Paprika's article, but I couldn't tell if that was Melee's Debug mode or Brawl.

No.

2) How do Base Knockback, the hitbox's Damage, and Knockback growth add up together to determine the total knockback that will be dealt at a certain %? I ask because this statement caught my attention: "Whenever you see a move with raised damage and lowered KBG, you know this move has gotten a dmg buff, but keeps the same overall growth." Do you guys just wing it and test to make sure the new Damage/KBG values don't change the knockback, or is there a mathematical relationship you guys know?

Although someone already quoted another post of mine on this, I have actually since revised the formula with more testing. The base of a move is multiplied by 32.2, not 30, as I originally had stated.

3) What determines the shield stun of a move (besides the reduction multiplier in the codes)? Is it an arbitrary value, or is it related to other statistics such as damage? Likewise, what about shield knockback (naturally traction comes into playhere, but what else), and hit stun?

You actually hit the nail on the head with this one. It is indeed damage. In fact, damage governs all properties of an attack when it hits a shield. Higher damage = more shield damage, more shieldstun, and more shield pushback.

4) Can someone give me a thorough explanation about what the different types of Gravity are and what they affect? I see the terms Up and Down Gravity in the Code Agenda thread; I see Down Gravity and Normal Gravity in the official codeset v4.1B changelist; and I see the terms Down Gravity and Full Gravity in the BrawlPlus.net changelist. Besides the confusion due to the various terms used, I haven't been able to find in-depth descriptions of these stats' effects.

Dgrav affects a character anytime that they are not propelling themselves upwards. This means jumping and using a momentum altering move (typically a special, although certain moves also give a small upwards boost) are the only ways to leave dgrav. When you propel yourself upward, you are then under the effects of Ugrav. If you're hit by an attack, you will still be under the effects of dgrav, though, so dgrav is what determines how badly a character gets ***** by combos.

Fgrav raises both Ugrav and Dgrav at the same time, and is what the game uses when determining your FF. Fgrav and Dgrav multiply together to give you your true Dgrav when you're falling normally (or if you're hit), however, Dgrav is ignored and only Fgrav and the FF value matter when you perform a FF. Brawl+ does not modify Ugrav individually since anything you can accomplish with it you can also accomplish with a combination of Dgrav and Fgrav, and the FF value.

Fall speed acceleration and top fall speed are both magnified by the gravity codes, although it's not understood exactly how. It appears to directly affect fall speed acceleration, although I'm not sure exactly what the effect is on top fall speed besides it being higher now. This is complete speculation, but I believe that characters have a natural "air resistance" which doesn't change regardless of the gravity, which is what determines when they reach their max fall speed, whereas "gravity" is the actual fall speed acceleration.

5) Can I assume that the numbers for character-specific physics changes in the Changelist are percentages? E.g. "Short Hop: 0.90" means that his short hop height is 90% of the default/vBrawl values and "Downwards Gravity: 1.175" means the character has 17.5% more Down Gravity than in vBrawl? Likewise, does "Ground to Air Momentum: 92.5%" mean that Mario retains 92.5% of his running speed when doing a grounded jump?

Due to properties we don't really understand, some characters get an incredible amount of momentum from their jump, whereas others barely get any, regardless of their actual run speed. ZSS and sonic barely get any momentum on the default setting, whereas falcon and ganon do. Clearly, then, the percentages given could not possibly relate to how much momentum they take directly from their run, if this is how characters act on 100%. The percentages given are simply a percent of how much momentum they gained from the code to begin with.

Down gravity also affects weight and hitstun, which is why an individual character hitstun code will be released soon to deal with this (and I have argued a weight modifier code should follow as well). As for the second question, I'm not sure.

WRONG! Dgrav doesn't have any effect on "weight." Weight =/= fall speed. Samus is heavy but falls slowly. Fox is light but falls fast. It also doesn't have any effect on hitstun, or at least doesn't seem to. That's actually the reason we need a char spec hitstun modifier, because hitstun doesn't scale with grav.

 

[Dark Sonic]

WRONG! Dgrav doesn't have any effect on "weight." Weight =/= fall speed. Samus is heavy but falls slowly. Fox is light but falls fast. It also doesn't have any effect on hitstun, or at least doesn't seem to. That's actually the reason we need a char spec hitstun modifier, because hitstun doesn't scale with grav.

To clarify for those of you going "wait WHUT!!"

Dgrav has no direct effect on hitstun. However, it does lower the DISTANCE your character is sent (vertically at least) at any given launch speed. Characters with higher dgrav amounts travel less distance but suffer the same amount of hitstun (not factoring in character division constants of course). So the reason fast fallers are easier to combo is because they're simply not sent as far as their floaty counterparts, not because of them having more hitstun from the same attacks.

 

[Doval]

To be clear: does more Up/Full Gravity mean *less* recovery? That is, characters with increased Full Gravity had their recovery height decreased in addition to falling faster? Or is it that less Up Grav means less recovery?

Thanks again, you've all been very patient with me. I know I'm asking a lot here.

 

[GPDP]

Thanks for the corrections, guys.

Any detrimental effects to recovery can be compensated by increasing full jump height, as well as using the upcoming special gravity code to decrease gravity on specials. Well, I'm not sure if the code will decrease gravity on the specials or if it will increase their launch power to compensate for increase gravity, but either way, it will be compensated.

 

[timothyung]

To be clear: does more Up/Full Gravity mean *less* recovery? That is, characters with increased Full Gravity had their recovery height decreased in addition to falling faster? Or is it that less Up Grav means less recovery?

Thanks again, you've all been very patient with me. I know I'm asking a lot here.

Higher any gravity means less recovery. Higher up and full gravity means your jumps/rising specials gain less height. Higher down gravity means you fall faster so you have less recovery, too. Basically up gravity is the gravity when you jump/use rising specials.

 

[Doval]

I meant Up B/Specials when I meant recoveries. Should've been clearer. That answers the question either way though, so thanks!

 

[Dark Sonic]

I meant Up B/Specials when I meant recoveries. Should've been clearer. That answers the question either way though, so thanks!

It only affects recoveries that are not a set distance, but rather an applied force (Sonic's up B for example). Quite a few characters have such up Bs, which is why we stray away from up/full grav.

 

[GPDP]

Here are the characters with specials affected by gravity:

Link (Up B does not go as far in the air)
Samus (Up B, but only in the air, as doing it on the ground makes it gain the same distance as usual)
Luigi (down B when pressed repeatedly is nerfed, on both the ground and air)
Sonic (Up B, ground and air, as we all know)
Diddy (Up B distance is nerfed, ground and air)
Sheik (slightly, as the little bit of distance you gain when first performing her Up B is reduced)
Pit (his Up B is harder to control, and cannot go up as much)
Yoshi (slightly nerfs the distance gained from his Up B, but his double jump is unaffected)
Ice Climbers (both Side B and Up B are nerfed)
Dedede (Up B is nerfed on the ground and air)
Bowser (Up B gains less upward distance)
Toon Link (Same as Link, though obviously not to the same extent)

 

[leafgreen386]

To clarify for those of you going "wait WHUT!!"

Dgrav has no direct effect on hitstun. However, it does lower the DISTANCE your character is sent (vertically at least) at any given launch speed. Characters with higher dgrav amounts travel less distance but suffer the same amount of hitstun (not factoring in character division constants of course). So the reason fast fallers are easier to combo is because they're simply not sent as far as their floaty counterparts, not because of them having more hitstun from the same attacks.

Actually, according to the latest work veril has been doing, the "character specific division constants" may not exist at all. What appears to be actually happening is simply that characters with higher fall speeds have a higher LS (launch speed) due to the mysterious third term of the LS equation (the one that uses fall speed acceleration and the angle of the attack). However, this term isn't taken into account when calculating hitstun, so it gives the appearance that faster fallers receive less hitstun. Well, they do, but not for the same reasons we originally thought.

This research is still in progress, so hopefully soon we'll have a complete answer on how this works.

 

[Dark Sonic]

Actually, according to the latest work veril has been doing, the "character specific division constants" may not exist at all. What appears to be actually happening is simply that characters with higher fall speeds have a higher LS (launch speed) due to the mysterious third term of the LS equation (the one that uses fall speed acceleration and the angle of the attack). However, this term isn't taken into account when calculating hitstun, so it gives the appearance that faster fallers receive less hitstun. Well, they do, but not for the same reasons we originally thought.

This research is still in progress, so hopefully soon we'll have a complete answer on how this works.

....


This is what I get for going away for 2 weeks (GENESIS!!) <_<

 

[Doval]

I would be very interested in hearing what the final conclusion on the hit stun issue is. Also, could you guys post the character weight values here? Or link me, if they're already posted somewhere.