I'll go look for the guide and edit it in if I can find it after, but here's some general tips:
- DI and SDI are actually completely separate concepts. Their only connections are that they are done with the control stick, and they help you control your character while you are being hit.
DI
- DI is done by holding the stick in a direction as you get launched from an attack. This means you usually have to know you were going to get hit, but you can also just hold the stick the way you want to DI in cases where you are unsure.
- DI changes the angle that an attack sends you at, but not the power at which it hits you (in terms of how far it will send you). If it sends you straight up normally, DIing directly left or right will maximise your DI (note: perpendicular angles give you the most DI)
- You can use DI to help get out of combos (DI away from them so they can't reach you as easily) and help you survive strong attacks (DI so that you go towards a corner of the screen)
SDI
- You know that moment when you are frozen in some animation after getting hit? You especially notice it with things like Falcon's knee and Ganon's stomp. This is called hit lag (in case you didn't know).
- During hit lag, if you move the stick from neutral to a direction, you will SDI in that direction. Your character will literally kind of teleport in that direction. You can see examples of this with level 9 CPUs, since they SDI every attack.
- Instead of going from neutral to a direction, if you rotate the stick a certain amount (a quarter circle), you get another SDI input. This is where quarter-circle DI comes from.
Learning DI is WAAAAY more important to learn in earlier stages of the game. SDI is difficult and the results are not as obvious, and neither are the applications of it.
I hope this helps out a bit. Gonna go look for the super extensive guide.
EDIT:
Huzzah! Here it is:
http://smashboards.com/threads/a-gu...-teching-and-crouch-cancelling-updated.60218/
