Teaching a class on Melee, need help

[mers]

I go to Oberlin College, which has this amazing program called ExCo, short for Experimental College. Basically, students teach classes that anyone can take for a small number of credits. As you can imagine, anything and everything gets taught. I have personally taken one on community radio and also SexCo, which I'm sure you can figure out. There are dancing ExCos, martial arts ExCos, video game ExCos, UFO ExCos, knitting ExCos, anything you can think of. There is an oversight board, which has to approve each class to make sure its not just a bunch of students ****ing around and wasting time for credit. However, they're fairly lenient, and as long as you can prove that the class isn't pointless, they should approve.

I am going to teach SmashCo. It was taught many years ago, but has been dead for a long time. I'm currently working on the logistics (finding enough game systems, Melee discs, controllers, memory cards, and TVs), but I also need help planning the class. This is where you guys come in.

What are some things that a class like this should go over? Just throw out any ideas that you can. The goal of this class is to get students involved in the competitive Melee scene, so I'm going for a mix of learning how to play the game and learning about the community and environment around competitive Melee.

Some ideas I have so far:

- History of competitive Melee (KishPrime's write-up would be super helpful)
- Making students watch videos of competitive play
- Having regular smashfests for students in the class
- Taking students to a major tourney, hopefully in May
- Organizing a campus-wide tournament with a cash prize at the end of the class

What else? Any thoughts whatsoever are appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

 

[CloneHat]

They definitely have to be taught character attributes/matchups, along with knowing your options in various situations. Mindset lessons also would help.

 

[UltimateHaxor123]

lol now i want to go to that college. The first thing you shoudl do is show an amazing match to get them interested. after that, you can go into the history and introduce them to the community. Do all this before letting them play b/c it'll create hype and the mindset will be better

 

[LLDL]

How good at melee are you yourself Reverend? The class will only go so far as the limit of the teacher unless they go out of their way to practice and surpass you. And would they be able to do that by the end of the class. It took me 3 years to get where I am today in Melee, but I had to teach myself everything. With a smash teacher, you can learn many things in no time, but make sure you're up there so that they feel that there is a lot they have to do to surpass you. I can understand if bringing them to a major tournament will be your way of showing them the highest levels of skill.

Anyway these should be required
-Testing them on learning the basic advanced techniques

They have to know not to learn too many things at once, new players like to try to be shffling and wavedashing in their match, and they concentrate so much on it that they are not thinking, and at this short stage in their development they are actually worse than they were before.

-Don't let them slack on the advanced techniques either. Regardless of what anyone says on this forum, melee doesn't have a steep learning curve. My brother was 8 years old when i first found out how to wavedash, shffl, all the basics. I taught it to him as I learned it, and he learned everything in a couple of hours, he could fluently an deaisily shffl and wavedash. Further than that, my older brother who is 27, and has not played any video games since super nintendo, was intrigued by melee and wanted to know how to play. All i did was tell him to "okay lightly press on the jump, then press down, okay do an attack before landing then press L." He started shffling 5 minutes, then for wavedashing i told him to jump and press R slanted to the ground, okay now do it more closely to the ground. He fluently wavedashed shffled in 10 minutes. He forgot everything i told him the next time he came over but the point is that he learned it like it was nothing in 10 minutes. He never played gamecube in his life, yet he could have been tournament ready in a couple weeks with my teaching him. This all will depend on you as a teacher, teach in a way that that have to understand, these techniques aren't complicated button combinations, they are 1 2 3

-After they can fluently move and are on their thinking game, teach them about the metagame
and specific character matchups from the character specific section.

Make sure they never play against the computer, if they are going to play, match people up with each other, this can be counted as group activity for the class.

-Make sure if they watch old competitive smash videos, explain that their playstyle might be obsolete to base themselves off of. Some old falcos and marths juts own cut it anymore. Do explain that they would get ***** if they tried to play against even that level after all they've learned, but against the current metagame that still isn't enough.

-If they ask about or say that they play brawl, ignore and tell them that this isn't a class bout brawl it's about melee. But if they persist let them know how it is, but don't seem biased. A lot of my friends like brawl better, but they ALL know and now appreciate, via me, that melee's engine is tight and allows for freedom of movement at any time, allowing your speed and technique to be limited only by yourself, meaning that the metagamn is currently and always evolving and getting faster. People are learning new techniques in melee every tournament (every weekend) whereas in brawl, has a similar engine but is very loose, and you can't do anything until the persons animation resets completely and there is waiting duration after that, which means that even if you wanted to do something at a very specific point in time ,you couldn't, limiting the gameplay.

 

[PB&J]

wow.this sounds amazing

after you go through the history of smash with them included with ken on survivor/m2k success/etc

vids will help

but you must break the game down to them

In my eyes..smash is 40 percent fighting, 40percent edge guarding, and 20 percent recovery

of course you can break down differnt levels of fighting(offensive,defensive,campy,baiting,etc)

once they understand the key elements on winning you can give them the famous

" Mango Tips of Getting ****"

1. space
2. dont mess up tech skill
3. read/react

some of these things to certain people will seem simple but some will seem hard but im sure the vids will help.

Have them watch interviews from way back -present mlgbach on youtube has all the good stuff from the mlg days
http://www.youtube.com/user/MLGBACH
and i have alot of footage from my page from the last 2 years..http://www.youtube.com/user/pbnj2323

there are so many ways you can go at this..you can teach them frames and such if your college would like that( which might be a bonus for you)

there are many threads in the character specific threads that help out with that

but i guess the first thing would be have them sighn up on the boards

hope that helped and pm if you need any other help with something

ps- teach them teams..i think you learn at a faster rate once you understand the concept of teams

 

[ranmaru]

How about for a project, that they help Stratocaster with his gif project for hitboxes.

Also, maybe you should teach them the basics of playing smash before advanced techniques, so that they can get a base of fundamentals first before they get the "PASSION" of wavedashing and the like.

Hmmm, now maybe you can teach them about the top characters? (I'm not sure if you'd have time to teach them about all of them)

Also have them pick a character they'd like to play, of course.

Play them, but don't use advanced techniques, but you won't need to. You might get someone good at melee (not as good as anyone competitive, but good as a beginner, the one who always stays in when others have to give up the controller in FFA)

YES! Play FFA. No items of course. I don't think you'll have time for singles... Also, in FFA one can tell who is better and not (usually the one who always has to give up) and they will probably want to get better, (to be able to have as much fun as the others) so then they'd be hooked to play. (that's how I got into smash)

Of course like PB&J said, teams as well. Play FFA, then teams. Always have teams alternate though.

 

[mers]

In all honesty, I'm only mediocre. I've never been to a tourney, but I do play against someone who has been to several and is better than me regularly.

However, I don't think this matters. In the space of one semester at a challenging college like this one, nobody is going to get all that good. The important part is getting them involved in the game and the community, so they can improve on their own. To that end, I just have to make the game fun, and make improving fun.

Ideally, I'd like the class to meet twice a week (most ExCos meet once, so I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to meet twice). The first meeting would be ideally 2 hours long, though I expect to only be allowed 1. At this one, we would simply play Melee. People would play each other, switch partners all the time, and get into the groove of the game. The second meeting would be 1 hour, and would be in a regular class format. Homework would be extremely minimal, mostly just practicing Smash and watching videos.

I'd definitely like the first week to just go over the game, an extremely basic history, the tourney ruleset, and the very basics. The second would introduce the most basic ATs (wavedashing, L-canceling, JC grabs). After that, I'm open to suggestions.

Additionally, I don't suppose there's going to be a big national tourney anytime around May? Taking them to one early on would just scare them away, but at the end of the class it could be great, especially if attendees knew we were coming and could make a special effort to welcome everyone.

 

[ranmaru]

Wow, that would be awesome for them. I mean, they could learn SOOO much from a big tourny AFTER finishing that smashCO. : D

 

[Stratocaster]

How about for a project, that they help Stratocaster with his gif project for hitboxes.

I love you

no homo

CrappyCaptureDevice on youtube has a series of smash history videos

You may want to have them all pick a top-mid, and low-bottom main, and have them work on both
I guess I say that cause I do that and I wish there were more low-tier tourneys if just for fun

Tech skill competitions give people something to practice and makes people have an immediate reason to get good at tech skill, since at first when you suck at wavedashing all it does is make you vulnerable. Something like, who can do the most wavedashes in a row without messing up, and the nair per minute challenge

It also helps if you can destroy them to show them you can teach them, maybe start the class first day by having a class tournament and win it, if you lose cancel the class (lol)

 

[Signia]

Go in-depth with spacing/zoning, it's very important. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBuAo_Bfvw --> this video outlines the basics of what I'd want to do, which is show new players the threat-range of characters in various situations. I'd draw diagrams showing ways the opponent can hit you within reaction time. That is to say, ways they can hit you before you can react. For reference, average reaction time is about .2 seconds in simple situations such as clicking a button when it turns green, but it's much longer when you are reacting to more than one thing, or when you have to do different things for each.

So, wherever your opponent can land an attack within reaction time would be colored based on how dangerous the attack is. Diagrams like these would show new players what situations are dangerous, how to threaten with an solid offense, and how to take advantage of bad spacing. For example, you could show them that approaching by full hopping is not very smart because you threaten and control in a small area.

Using these diagrams you'd be able to explain why it's important to WD/WL, DD, SH, and basically anything else you might teach them to do.

 

[Stev]

If you're gonna show them videos, use stuff with Husband / Wife commentary to begin with. They do a great job explaining match-ups and what's going on to people who aren't used to the game. KDJ vs M2K from MLG Long Island 07 and KDJ vs PC Chris from MLG Vegas 06 are great examples. Wife's commentary at pound 4 was also amazing, but the metagame then was significantly evolved from the MLG days

 

[Phoenix~Lament]

I'm gonna give you some different advice than everyone else, and I hope you listen to me lol.

As you stated, someone from smashboards hosted a smash class for a couple years at your college a few years ago. If you don't already know how it went and how it worked, you should look it up - the teacher explained everything he did and how the classes went, they should be somewhere in the archives. Learn from his mistakes and make your class better than his. For example, he created a curriculum targeted towards new players who didn't know anything about smash, but discovered on his first day of class that the students were already proficient in that stuff. Just be smart about it. Hope it goes well.

 

[ranmaru]

Oh yeah true.

Well, have a quiz set up for the first day, of course no grade, just to see what they do know.

 

[Violence]

I think, the first thing you should do, is get a feel for how much experience everyone has with the game.

The first thing you should show is the How to Play video, and then mention a bit of history about the game.

If everyone doesn't have a main, they should try and get one within the first week as you cover the very basic prinicples of the attacks and physics of the game.

From there, I think you can start with basic advanced techniques(I think introducing these in the second week is a good place) and encourage the students to learn these. From there, you can move on to the matchups, and dynamics of combat, such as momentum, off the edge combat, combos, tech chases, etc.

 

[Stev]

It'd probably be good to mention the pros and cons of the characters so that people can make educated decisions on who to play before they get stuck to them.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

ASK many questions for you and them. Do sure you can easily tell why for anything that by come up like why can't I go go to this stage? or why shouldn't I main gannon he's got great combos , good range, heavy like a tank, and can easy smash their face in.
Point out how to play/think/react/ adapt/use for everything/mindgames/tournment info/metagame/why you can't mindlessly spam moves in our rule set and etc.

stage info is mad inportant also you MUST pase yourself i'd start with them messing around after to firmly explain tournment rules. let them pick a main and etc.

 

[Juggleguy]

Just make sure from Day 1 the students know they're learning about fundamental Smash skill rather than memorizing how to unlock characters in 1-P mode or some **** like that. Otherwise you'll have dropouts in no time.

 

[Frame Perfect]

grab a pencil, take notes....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx9izaT7KBI

 

[AXE 09]

What about for those people who have never played Melee before wanting to learn about a new video game? It would be so confusing to start teaching everyone about advanced techniques before they even know the basics. At the same time, if some others come into the class already knowing the basics, they probably would not want to sit through a few months of learning how to recover, roll, bock, attack, etc.

Anyways, when you get to the advanced stuff, I think the AHTP videos will help you out a lot for teaching, as they have helped me when I first started getting advanced:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n4s5yB7ZkE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiZLs2doK8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFmGIOcWdsM

I've always dreamed of being able to take a college course on Melee lol. I really hope that you pull through with this!

 

[Jim Morrison]

Don't go for the history of smash, it's interesting if you like smash but it's piss-boring when you just get into it.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

You should have some sort of a discussion about all of the controversial aspects of Smash. Item play, stage legality, tier lists, etc...

 

[MCSR]

At the start of the class, show a recording of two complete and total scrubs that don't even know ATs (Or two people pretending to be total scrubs) having a match. Have that fade into a tournament match, with M2K or Mango. They should notice the difference. Explain what's going on in the tourney match, the ATs, etc. Then just work them into it.

 

[CTL17]

Haha reviving the old Melee class. I guess you could ask the three that originally taught it and how they did it.

Rice also had a Melee class and its description was:

This course exposes students to the culture of competitive fighting games, with focus on Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Nintendo GameCube. Students will learn about the rich history of the underground fighting game scene, as well as techniques and strategies in Smash. Through Smash, students will be able to experience what it means to play a video game competitively. Classes will include instructional lectures focused on gameplay techniques and theory, as well as class discussions regarding the culture and history of competitive fighting games and the competitive mentality. By the end of the course, students will gain an appreciation for the "scene", as well as understand the skills and techniques required to play Smash competitively and be able to apply the "playing to win" mentality to all aspects of life.

I'm trying to do the same over in UMD College Park, but we don't have any sort of program that easily allows us to do so.

 

[KishPrime]

This is a really cool thing.

Don't have much to add other than that the history of competitive Smash would indeed be pretty boring to a newcomer. More interesting would be the evolution of styles over time.

 

[mers]

By history, I really just mean the basics, like how Smash was intended to be a simple party game, but it became much much more. Players figured out ATs and became much better than the developers could have predicted.

That kinda stuff.

I've been in contact with one of the previous teachers for months now. He's promised to send me the old syllabus, so I'm just waiting on that. I'll probably post it up here when I get it so everyone can help me make changes.

I'll definitely use the Advanced How to Play videos, as well as Lucien's tutorials. Does anyone have any other suggestions for super helpful videos?

 

[Jim Morrison]

Flashy combo videos and "It takes guts to be amazing" to trick them into thinking melee is all flash and coolness.

 

[Zodiac]

Hmm Im a pretty firm beleiver in learning mind games first and tech skill second. how long does the class last? Smash has a lot to teach.

 

[Jeapie]

start with teaching them the basics and show them the how to play tutorial
followed by some selfdone examples with the basics
then let them try it out blabla
next day teach something new, show a cmobo vid or something
and by the way this idea is
SUPA COOL o_0
Good luck -)

 

[Jonas]

Hmm Im a pretty firm beleiver in learning mind games first and tech skill second. how long does the class last? Smash has a lot to teach.

How exactly do you go on about that? Is there somewhere in the learning process where you go "well, my mindgames are as good as they get now, time to learn how to l-cancel"?
How are you going to teach "mindgames" anyway?

One who attempts to get good at this game should practice combos and technical skill while alone and apply his techniques in matches when he has someone to play with. Playing with human opponents is also about experimentation, and you try to see what works and what doesn't work and notice what kind of traps players fall into etc.

 

[DJRome]

did not read thread, but fly in dr peepee cause he is the prof of smash

 

[PB&J]

teach them how to be evasive and mind games will develop from there..and if u have time , tell them to read " playing to win" by david sirlin..best book about competitive gaming

 

[Brookman]

I hope that you get good gamers in your class, cause this sounds like a major chore to me u.u

 

[run and tell that homeboy]

teaching brawl would be better, everyone needs to keep up to date with technology rather than falling behind.

 

[CloneHat]

teaching brawl would be better, everyone needs to keep up to date with technology rather than falling behind.

Yes I'm so bored of watching football, they play it EVERY YEAR.

Why can't they make something new instead?

 

[run and tell that homeboy]

cuz black people do it.

 

[stunhax]

Mers, is this class still offered at Oberlin?

 

[Comatose]

People may not have cubes/wiis to play smash on in their free time. A big part of learning smash (for me) was just playing a game or two when I had a second of free time, and trying to implement techniques I had learned while practicing beforehand (I'd learn the technique when I had an hour or two to spare, then if I had a spare 5mins I'd fight a lvl5 and try to put the techniques I had just learned in)

Maybe some sort of system where each student is issued a cube + disc + controller if you can get enough? Or if there's a cube and disc shortage a sign out system? Where one student can sign out the setup for a day to practice.

Also, maybe have them (later on in the class) watch a video, you pause it at some point, and then ask about the different options each player has in the situation on screen

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Make sure you take the first few weeks slow. While i'm sure most people in your class will have played the game once at least, you dont want to alienate the newer players. Also, introducing strategies and game theory before the students are ready for it could be bad.

Also, how do you plan on grading the students? Perhaps record a few videos of them at different intervals and grade their progress. Or give them open ended questions to answer ("What is the importance of stage positioning? Use at least one example.") to show what they've learned.

Lectures to include:

1. Overview of "Play to Win" - http://www.sirlin.net/ptw
2. Proper controller functioning and controller maintenance
3. Tech Chasing and Comboing (use Sheik for this)
4. Stage positioning (emphasis on king of the hill elements)
5. Recovery (Maximizing Distance and Mixups)
6. Edgeguarding (Methodologies, Mixups and Gimps)
7. Stage positioning pt. 2 (Trading Resources)
8. Patience, Mindset and Nerves (IMO Wobbles is a great example to use here)

I dont recommend doing a lecture on "advanced techniques". Introduce Lcanceling during Combos and wavedashing during Stage Positioning. Wall jumping, Short hopping, shffling, and pretty much every other other named technique is really unnecessary to mention; I think most people learn these intuitively during "sparring" or watching others play. Throwing them all at your students at once will either bore them or confuse them.

Once you are done with lectures, talk to them about specific scenarios. In Power Point, play a short clip of the scenario then have slides of the important frames after it. For example, its hard to learn how to methodically edgeguard unless you do it yourself thousands of times. But if you could show them all the permutations in a short time, it could be possible to teach them the methodology much faster than the standard way. Similar things could be done to teach Option Selects (such as edge teching) or Smash DI and ASDI.

Also, consider making copies of important frame data for the students to reference.

And of course, give them plenty of time to play the game and enjoy themselves. Thats the most important thing.

 

[Arcadia157]

dat 3 year bump

 

[Prince_Abu]

take a field trip to osu and come get spanked