The Smash Lab: What is it?

[ph00tbag]

Also, note that when I say "hitstun," I mean the full length of hitstun, and not the point you can aerial/airdodge out of it at.

I think we're discussing different meanings of the word hitstun. I've always been under the impression that when you regain control of your character, you are no longer in hitstun. There's a point where knockback ends and the sprite will simply begin to fall in normal gravity as well, but you can regain control before that point. Is that point the same in norma gravity asit is in 0 gravity?

 

[Pr0phetic]

I think we're discussing different meanings of the word hitstun. I've always been under the impression that when you regain control of your character, you are no longer in hitstun.

That is the right impression.

There's a point where knockback ends and the sprite will simply begin to fall in normal gravity as well, but you can regain control before that point. Is that point the same in normal gravity as it is in 0 gravity?

Well LeafGreen will probably definite this, but I think its the same since hitstun is measured in frames and not distance.

 

[leafgreen386]

I think we're discussing different meanings of the word hitstun. I've always been under the impression that when you regain control of your character, you are no longer in hitstun. There's a point where knockback ends and the sprite will simply begin to fall in normal gravity as well, but you can regain control before that point. Is that point the same in norma gravity asit is in 0 gravity?

Don't worry. We're on the same page. The point when hitstun ends is indeed the moment you regain control of your character, but it is also the point at which you begin going into the tumble. Some of my data wasn't properly controlled for, though, so I ended up drawing some false conclusions. I'm looking more closely into knockback atm, and will hopefully have some answers after I get to view this frame by frame. The point at which both knockback and hitstun end in both regular and zero gravity should be completely identical. You just go further in zero gravity since there's no force pulling you down.

Anyway, after some short testing with the hitstun constant at 5x its normal value, I've been able to determine that knockback is at the very least unrelated to hitstun. Not that I really expected it would be, though. Obviously, as we all know, these calculations are based on launch speed, so even if there is a point further on at which a force is applied counter parallel to the knockback, it would be based on launch speed and not directly on hitstun. Although it was kinda funny watching pit get utilted by snake and just freezing in the air for half a second after knockback ended, then all of a sudden start spinning.

I should be able to examine stuff frame by frame later tonight, which will be particularly interesting.

 

[phi1ny3]

No offense to you LeafGreen, but maybe paint or some picture creating device would help illustrate things when ppl get "lost". You have a lot of good stuff to say, but quite a few ppl are going "lolwut?" (I did too at one point).
Just wondering.
Edit: Oh yeah, and the whole Snake Grenade manipulation (or nade stalling)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWS13QunVTU
from 1:54-2:12, you'll see what I mean, it's more player input than anything else, but I'm wondering if grenades would halt both x and y in "no gravity".

 

[Swordplay]

We allowed to ask questions to researches yet?

I have 1 tough question that I would like to be answered.

 

[Pr0phetic]

Ask ahead, no one's official until next week.

 

[Swordplay]

I'm interested in DAC frame data.

I run a Q&A session over and the Link boards. Unlike some charactres like Snake, Link is a character whose DAC has a noticeable difference in distance. There are some frames where you get a full DAC and some frames where you get a half DAC.

I'm interested in the frame data for this difference.

If you want, feel free to include DAC frame data for other characters as well. It can only help.

 

[Pr0phetic]

I think I noticed this with Link aswell, but I have no way of obtaining frame data, I guess someone else will help you.

Obviously it about timing, a full DAC is proably iniated faster then the half DAC, which is probably the product of mistiming.

 

[phi1ny3]

I bet this also explains "Shell shifting" cancelled usmash for squirtle, and half cancel.

 

[Pr0phetic]

Yea I'd suppose so.

 

[Mmac]

One of the primary factors that determines the Speed of the slide of the DACUS the Acceleration of the Dash Attack. I am not sure of what other factors are included, but my guess is the Traction, Shield, and the Usmash are the others. Dash Grab might even be a factor too...

Anyways, the reason it goes faster when you DACUS sooner is because Link's Dash Attack acceleration diminishes more quickly, where as someone like Snake or Falco, it remains constant until the end of the Attack. So if you do it at the peak of his acceleration, the value is multiplied by more, therefore get more speed and slide out of it

 

[M.K]

It really depends on the type of dash attack. Even though Luigi has some of the worst traction (which would make for a good DAC) his Dash Attack can't be cancelled too easily.

 

[Napilopez]

I do not know if this has been mentioned already, and there are too many pages for me to look through, but I think it would be a good idea to make a list for characters' survivability with perfect momentum cancelling. I know this would be difficult because it depends on what diection they are sent exactly, but an idea would be nice. For example, Sonic has great momentum cancelling horizontally(fair+sideB cancels virtually all horizontal momentum), which allows him to survive better horizontally than one might expect. Same with other characters which awesome momentum cancelling.

 

[M.K]

I do not know if this has been mentioned already, and there are too many pages for me to look through, but I think it would be a good idea to make a list for characters' survivability with perfect momentum cancelling. I know this would be difficult because it depends on what diection they are sent exactly, but an idea would be nice. For example, Sonic has great momentum cancelling horizontally(fair+sideB cancels virtually all horizontal momentum), which allows him to survive better horizontally than one might expect. Same with other characters which awesome momentum cancelling.

Right now, the list consists of:

-Game and Watch-
-Yoshi-
-Donkey Kong-

 

[infomon]

I do not know if this has been mentioned already, and there are too many pages for me to look through, but I think it would be a good idea to make a list for characters' survivability with perfect momentum cancelling. I know this would be difficult because it depends on what diection they are sent exactly, but an idea would be nice. For example, Sonic has great momentum cancelling horizontally(fair+sideB cancels virtually all horizontal momentum), which allows him to survive better horizontally than one might expect. Same with other characters which awesome momentum cancelling.

Hmmmmm, that would be a job for me

But making such a list would be very difficult, and subjective. A main problem is, do you want to pick some particular attack, and determine the highest % at which the characters can survive? That's extremely subjective, because two characters will have varying ranges of %s at which they will be better or worse. For vertical KOs and Link vs. G&W, Link will survive to higher % when close to the ceiling, but G&W will survive to higher % when far away. When you start considering crazy things like Yoshi using Uair > Jump > side-B (to avoid both killzones and allow room for the egg drop to recover to the stage)..... vs. some characters having discrepancies between their weights vs. their fastfall speed (I think, and I don't know of any fallspeed vs. fastfall-speed comparison list)..... it gets tricky.

A better approach may be to pick a set number of knockback units to send the character, from a different (but standardized) set of trajectories/distances-to-killzone, and see how each of the characters' momentum-cancelling strategies help. This would be to eliminate weight from consideration, which makes better science, but distances our results from the usefulness of their interpretation; that is, our results wouldn't really reflect how things pan out in actual matches, where character weight does matter.

So like... iunno. The easiest thing for me to do, would be to subjectively rank characters based on how well their momentum-cancelling options seem to help them out.
ex. G&W is amazing
DK and Yoshi are second, except they're pretty doomed afterwards
Pikachu, Yoshi, Sonic, Squirtle, Diddy all have really good momentum-cancellers
Fox, Falco are fastfallers with useful momentum-cancelling jumps
Bowser, Link survive ok from their weight/fastfall speed, and can jump to cancel a bit of horizontal knockback
ROB has no options at all (not even his jump helps, lol), but at least he's kinda heavy
Kirby and Jiggs are doomed

something like that?

 

[Swordplay]

One of the primary factors that determines the Speed of the slide of the DACUS the Acceleration of the Dash Attack. I am not sure of what other factors are included, but my guess is the Traction, Shield, and the Usmash are the others. Dash Grab might even be a factor too...

Anyways, the reason it goes faster when you DACUS sooner is because Link's Dash Attack acceleration diminishes more quickly, where as someone like Snake or Falco, it remains constant until the end of the Attack. So if you do it at the peak of his acceleration, the value is multiplied by more, therefore get more speed and slide out of it

I kind of knew that already. But I was more interested in fame data.

I mean with all characters, not just link, there are only certain frames where you can execute the DAC. Sometimes if you do it too soon, you get a grab (assuming you use z and z is set to grab) Sometimes if you do it too late, you get the Dash Attack as you failed to input the command.

I think it would be really interesting to know the frames of the inputs.

 

[SCOTU]

I've always had this intuitive feeling that the window for a boostsmash was the same for a stutter step, but that's just to support one guess as to how they could've implemented the input buffering. Althernatively, it might also be that character's jump window.

 

[ph00tbag]

I've always had this intuitive feeling that the window for a boostsmash was the same for a stutter step, but that's just to support one guess as to how they could've implemented the input buffering. Althernatively, it might also be that character's jump window.

That's been my intuition, as well. I'm just curious as to what kind of input error the DACUS circumvents, and why it only happens to some dash attacks.

 

[Browny]

So would these smash researchers also look at stuff like hitboxes? this is some of the stuff ive done on the sonic boards as of late, i figure eventually, this is the sort of stuff SR members will compile

So i got some new stuff i feel like working on...
Determining hitboxes of attacks (I am aware i have no life, btw)

This might take a while, but since it doesnt look like a debug mode is going to be found, ill just work with screenshots instead. By finding the absolute maximum possible range on each attack such that they spark, I took the screenshot to find each attacks hitbox from in front, behind, above and below. hopefully enough to draw a boundary around the entire thing. A lot more work went into this than you may realise :O

Heres a few examples of what i mean. ive taken all the pics i need, but overlapping them etc will take some time.

Bairs hitbox, behind sonic (not sourspot, the full knockback version as the sourspot is a result of the lingering attack, not the range)

You know how the final hit of fair has a lot of knockback, but it acts like a tipper? this is its range (taken like, 1 frame before the sandbag took the hit lol)

so yeah this is what happens when you put the images over the top of each other... I still need a new way to highlight it though, maybe ill make it a lighter region :/

original stuff http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=190101&page=11

maybe some people here have other ideas i could use to go about figureing out hitboxes.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Only 14 people so far have been sent the initial PMs. More may be sent out in the next few days, and hopefully in about a week or so we'll have the second major wave of entries sent out.

I've intentionally kept the first wave very small, because I'd like to avoid this spiraling out of control by accepting too many people at once.

 

[MuBa]

Awesome stuff Panda. Thanks for the invite.

 

[victra♥]

Only 14 people so far have been sent the initial PMs. More may be sent out in the next few days, and hopefully in about a week or so we'll have the second major wave of entries sent out.

I've intentionally kept the first wave very small, because I'd like to avoid this spiraling out of control by accepting too many people at once.

Interesting. I'm curious to see who made it.

 

[SCOTU]

Is there actually anywhere we can find the whole list of people in a given group, or no?

 

[Steel]

Is there actually anywhere we can find the whole list of people in a given group, or no?

In the pm sent to you it showed everyone who was invited, other than that I don't believe so.

 

[Hylian]

Only 14 people so far have been sent the initial PMs. More may be sent out in the next few days, and hopefully in about a week or so we'll have the second major wave of entries sent out.

I've intentionally kept the first wave very small, because I'd like to avoid this spiraling out of control by accepting too many people at once.

A very good idea .

Is there actually anywhere we can find the whole list of people in a given group, or no?

The only way to do this if you are a group leader. For example I can see everyone who is in the SBR and SP can see everyone in the Smash Lab on a list.

 

[MuBa]

So would these smash researchers also look at stuff like hitboxes? this is some of the stuff ive done on the sonic boards as of late, i figure eventually, this is the sort of stuff SR members will compile





original stuff http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=190101&page=11

maybe some people here have other ideas i could use to go about figureing out hitboxes.

That's a great hypothesis with what the hitboxes may look like but from what I've seen in Melee's Debug menu the hitboxes are always circular, and I'm pretty sure the same formula has been used in Brawl. So I would say try making the hitboxes more circular rather than rectangle so that way we can get a much more accurate reading of how big/disjointed an attack is.

 

[Browny]

I've always had this intuitive feeling that the window for a boostsmash was the same for a stutter step, but that's just to support one guess as to how they could've implemented the input buffering. Althernatively, it might also be that character's jump window.

its called the 'Dash-Attack'CUS, so isnt the frame window merely the frames before a dash attack comes out? makes perfect sense to me, since sonic and sheiks DA comes out in 4 frames (according to my frame data anyway) which are the fastest DA's in the game, no surprise they are also the hardest to DACUS consistently, while very slow dash attacks with link, and snake as the slowest, are extremely easy to pull off

... unless boostsmash is something different :/

and SamuraiPanda will you at least allow us to write applications of sorts for the 2nd wave... my hitbox testing is just another case of smash-researchy stuff ive done that no one except people on the sonic boards know about, at least I think its the sort of thing that qualifies but it doesnt help my case when no one knows about it >_<

 

[M.K]

and SamuraiPanda will you at least allow us to write applications of sorts for the 2nd wave... my hitbox testing is just another case of smash-researchy stuff ive done that no one except people on the sonic boards know about, at least I think its the sort of thing that qualifies but it doesnt help my case when no one knows about it >_<

Agreed. I assembled a very helpful diagram for those who are not so ""inclined" on all the terms and concepts of the competitive world.
My post was earlier in this thread, maybe 3-4 pages back.
I hope to enter through the second wave, but if you would like some reasons for why I would be a good candidate, I will furnish them upon request! ^^
In other words, I definetly think there were people more deserving of me to be accepted during the first wave, but I seriously hope to achieve 2nd wave status.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

Hm.... I'll consider making an application for the general public to fill out, but that would likely be after the second wave, and only if I think a third wave is necessary at the time.

 

[M.K]

Hm.... I'll consider making an application for the general public to fill out, but that would likely be after the second wave, and only if I think a third wave is necessary at the time.

Alright, sounds good. I'm assuming you already have a good idea about who will be accepted through the second wave?

 

[gunterrsmash01]

As some of you may have noticed, there is a new sub-board in the General Brawl Discussion called "The Smash Lab."

I still can't find this, lol.

 

[Adapt]

The board has since been made invisible to those who are not smash researchers

 

[Xiivi]

Hm.... I'll consider making an application for the general public to fill out, but that would likely be after the second wave, and only if I think a third wave is necessary at the time.

I think a second wave would be plenty, don't want too many people admitted while it's still all falling together.

 

[infomon]

The board has since been made invisible to those who are not smash researchers

Can someone fix this bug plz?

 

[MuBa]

It's not a bug. That place is pretty much off limits to everyone except for the researcher. Once we finish a particular project then we present it in public.

Kinda like the Back Room.

 

[infomon]

Yeah, I think it's a problem. I see no reason for the discussions to be private, at least for viewing. I think the worry that n00bs will read incomplete theories and spread them as false information, is way overrated, compared to the problems the privacy causes.

I see two main problems:
1. Think about my position... I'm an "independent researcher". For example, I studied the momentum-cancelling system in depth, even made some discoveries, and shared that with the larger community. But before I spent a lot of time tediously testing stuff, I looked for previous work first.

If I'd thought there was some Smash Lab that might be working on all that stuff in private, I wouldn't have bothered with any of my research. I would've just assumed that these researchers, smarter ppl than I, already knew the intricate details, and would've just awaited their results. Which might never have come.

2. That elitism-of-thought mentality is already pretty rampant. Many ppl just assume that the SBR knows more about this game than the general competitive scene, because they're allowed in on private discussions about the high-level metagame and strategies.

It's not that important what conversations are actually going on behind closed doors, it's that everyone else will naturally assume that even more stuff is going on, which will always be out of our reach. It alienates the larger community.

The SBR has some valid reasons why their discussions should be private. I don't see any for the Lab, though.

At the very least, I want the Smash Lab to give updates about which projects they are discussing, so us independents know when we should stop working on them ourselves and just await the Lab's findings. But then, why not just let us all see the discussion, so we know for sure when our own theories are disproven or aren't being researched? (For example, bucket-braking blew up some of my own claims about momentum-cancelling..... but then, I quickly found two other moves with the same exceptional behaviour).

 

[Jim Morrison]

Yeah, I think it's a problem. I see no reason for the discussions to be private, at least for viewing. I think the worry that n00bs will read incomplete theories and spread them as false information, is way overrated, compared to the problems the privacy causes.

I see two main problems:
1. Think about my position... I'm an "independent researcher". For example, I studied the momentum-cancelling system in depth, even made some discoveries, and shared that with the larger community. But before I spent a lot of time tediously testing stuff, I looked for previous work first.

If I'd thought there was some Smash Lab that might be working on all that stuff in private, I wouldn't have bothered with any of my research. I would've just assumed that these researchers, smarter ppl than I, already knew the intricate details, and would've just awaited their results. Which might never have come.

2. That elitism-of-thought mentality is already pretty rampant. Many ppl just assume that the SBR knows more about this game than the general competitive scene, because they're allowed in on private discussions about the high-level metagame and strategies.

It's not that important what conversations are actually going on behind closed doors, it's that everyone else will naturally assume that even more stuff is going on, which will always be out of our reach. It alienates the larger community.

The SBR has some valid reasons why their discussions should be private. I don't see any for the Lab, though.

At the very least, I want the Smash Lab to give updates about which projects they are discussing, so us independents know when we should stop working on them ourselves and just await the Lab's findings. But then, why not just let us all see the discussion, so we know for sure when our own theories are disproven or aren't being researched? (For example, bucket-braking blew up some of my own claims about momentum-cancelling..... but then, I quickly found two other moves with the same exceptional behaviour).

QFT, but Smash Lab was found by SBR, and probably the researchers will be mainly SBR members too. So I don't get why you just don't include this to SBR.

 

[SCOTU]

*the following has no bearing on my personal opinion, I'm merely representing an unrepresented side, so that both sides are presented, regardless of what may actually be the case*

You must admit that having the smash lab be private, and having the threads made public when complete also offers benefits over the always public method. Having discussion publicly viewable before a conclusion/consensus is found could add confusion to the community. Furthermore, only the complete results really matter to the general audience, so keeping discussion publicly viewable the entire doesn't add much to the community.

*keep in mind that this post is purely for arguments sake, and that I don't care one way or the other which way it ends up being*

oh, and btw, most of the members of the smash lab are not in the sbr, just some of them.

 

[cutter]

I don't get why the Smash Lab has to be private. What's the point of keeping things secret? I thought the goal of the Lab was to further Smash knowledge. If that's the case, I see no reason in trying to keep it under lock and key when we as a community can all better ourselves with the findings researchers get.

Just make it read-only.

 

[Adapt]

I see this Infzy's way

Even if I don't get in the Smash Researchers I will still be testing stuff so I will also be an independent researcher. And to give an example of what he is talking about:

I looked at Mr. Silver's knockback formula and realized that it was incorrect, It doesn't work when a move has no knockback growth. I started trying to come up with a true knockback formula, but unknown to me... Scotu and another couple people were working on the same thing. This is frustrating to have done a lot of work for nothing.

Also, the main researchers will probably not be the SBR. The SBR are many of the best players of the game and they have an intuitive understanding of how to put everything about a character together to fight well. They mostly do not try to understand how these things work, only how to use what works.

Comparing the SBR and the Smash Researchers is like comparing athletes and physicists.