Something about ledges in brawl is fishy

[Supermodel From Paris]

Quick warning: long, potentially useless tech nerd crap ahead.

So as a lot of people might know (particularly those who follow Project M's development) the landing detection in Brawl is a little different than it was in Melee. In order to land on the stage in melee, your character's "feet" needed to go through the ground. Landing started at about the character's knee. Due to this, you could start aerials pretty late. In Brawl, this was adjusted and now characters land on their feet. This created a "barrier" of sorts: you can't start aerials very close to the stage. Once your dude is close enough to the ground, he or she "snaps" to the ground and starts their landing animation.

Recently I was messing around a little bit with the ledges on Smashville and Battlefield (and other stages) and found a few interesting things.

Simply put, brawl's landing detection is confused about what to do on ledges. You can start your aerials very close to the ground when you're on top of the ledge, which means that moves start, but either never come out, or a variety of other weird effects.

In the case of ZSS' back air, her entire model changes configuration. If you start her back air just before she reaches the top of the stage during her second jump animation starts and DI toward the stage, her model will attempt to reset, but the game doesn't know what to do, so it just auto-cancels and she appears on the stage in neutral.

There's video of this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2obhVmcZwM

On first glance this seems pretty obvious: the animation for the move can't continue because you're too close to the ground. But there seems to be more to it than that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC8JL1XZPic

In this video I'm starting the back air over top of the stage where I should actually be unable to start it. This seems to happen because there's a small area "between" the stage and the ledge where landing detection isn't in effect. If you perform aerials that would displace your character's model, you can force an instant landing when coming back onto the stage.

This glitch seems to cause other effects on other characters. For example, if you use an aerial as Meta Knight near this very small area, he will perform a "jump" that isn't taken away from his jump count (giving him an additional small hop).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQJwH1pUWJA

In this video, I'm attempting to perform the same trick with MK that I did with ZSS, only MK refuses to land on the stage: it basically ejects him. After messing around with a variety of characters I can only hypothesize that if you start an aerial in a position where you're close enough to the ground that you could also land on it, the game doesn't know how to handle this scenario and just does a variety of things depending on which character you're playing and how their aerials behave.

 

[DeLux]

Very interesting

 

[thrillagorilla]

Your hypothosis makes sense, and would help to explain why the space animal's side-b moves behave stranglely when coming back to the stage low.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Your hypothosis makes sense, and would help to explain why the space animal's side-b moves behave stranglely when coming back to the stage low.

It also explains pikachu's upb probably

If you want a very easy way to see this in action, pick Sheik and perform the trick with her back air. You can actually see her leg go inside the stage, it's wacky.

 

[Grimmz]

This is interesting

 

[#HBC | Joker]

What you're describing is Lightstepping and Telestepping. I dunno how many characters can actually do it consistently, but Wolf players do this on purpose all the time.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

What you're describing is Lightstepping and Telestepping. I dunno how many characters can actually do it consistently, but Wolf players do this on purpose all the time.

Of course, the important thing is that I might have an explanation for why it happens which might allow us to find other techniques across the cast.

I'm pretty sure the MK ledgehop (however worthless) is news for example.

 

[Naridax]

Do you think this is what happens here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewL6n5cAHZk?

 

[#HBC | Joker]

Do you think this is what happens here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewL6n5cAHZk?

That's a Telestep, yes.

 

[teluoborg]

I wonder if this could be related to ledge canceling where you can cancel things like Marth's up B on the ledge, gain your jump back but don't grab the ledge.

Very very interesting.

 

[Alberto1866]

This is interesting, though is there any landing lag and does the hit box come out on zss' bair?

 

[Kink-Link5]

Your idea of how landing detection works is a little wonky, but it still would fit into describing how this phenomenon happens.

Basically, in Brawl the TopN Bone (The one responsible for stage collision detection) does not translate when doing animations, where it does translate relative to your character's animation changes in Melee. The end result is that when upside down or with legs pushed out horizontally, as in most neutral aerials or ZSS's bair, your character will seem to teleport to the ground. The ever obvious example used to show this is Link's Nair in 1/4th speed. He will snap to the ground a good half-body length at least when he executes the move.

So this does sound like something related to how the TopN bone interacts with the stage when coming up from under it. I believe a similar thing causes the "autolanding on a moving platform" glitch in Brawl

 

[moomoomamoo]

Could you do this with snake's nair if you land it near the ledge? I feel like this is something not too many players abuse.