May 25th I took part in what was the third ranking battle held by RRV in Dordrecht. There weren't as many players present as there were people that signed up. Though some were disappointed by it, I was happy to play anyone at 3S that would give me good opposition.

In the end I placed 3rd and was satisfied with the way I had played in the quarterfinals. I did not mind losing to the person that would eventually win the thing, but I did mind losing such a close match. I've noticed that I truly suck at winning clutch situations.

I played Chun-Li which was a change. I hadn't practiced at all, let alone Chun. So this was a bit of a last minute decision that I took because I wasn't confident I would do well. I thought I might as well play a second choice character that could make it fun even though I lose. Well, I ended up not having much fun losing in the group phase. I made it through winning only twice and then playing and winning a tie-break match. I found that I got better the more I played. It culminated in a very intense quarter-final match that I feel I could have gone either way.

One thing is clear, if an amateur Chun player like me can put up a show like that, it really proves how good of a character it is. Another thing is also clear: I can't, for the life of me, adapt on the fly. Not even between matches, I need like a whole 24 hours to process what happened and see how I can improve. Combined with the fact that I play at the most once or twice a month, this means my progression is extremely slow. You have got to read your opponent to SOME extent to be any good, and this is probably one of my great weaknesses. I can see things happening but in my mind I'm still trying to accomplish a specific task, as opposed to trying to predict and counter what my opponent is trying to do in the current situation.

I'm gonna have to expand on my "Getting in with Makoto" game, because it seems like I'm becoming predictable and her slow walking speed is really starting to piss me off.

Why oh why has it come to this? Anyone would think that the news of a Capcom fighting game would be music to my ears, but they would be wrong. I've decided my entry for today is going to be about why SF4 is ugly.

There is no valid reason why a game, announced later than SF4, having LESS to do with the SF universe and being a crossover game should look better than the CORE game that Street Fighter 4 should be. Unfortunately though, that seems to be the case in my humble opinion. The game we've been made to drool over is in fact a disservice (viusually) to the franchise we all adore. Street Fighter is in essence a very flexible concept. You can do many things with Street Fighter and it would still be Street Fighter in the eyes of fans. SF4 IS Street Fighter, but it's more on the outskirts of the cloud that I call "Street Fighter" than the recently announced Tatsunoko vs Capcom. I have yet to play SF4, obviously, so any judgement on gameplay will be reserved until that time. So, if all I have to go on are the videos and screenshots, why do I claim SF4 to be less SF than TvC? I'll tell you why, because of the character models.

Huge muscles are fine. Huge muscles on everyone but the girls, not so much. The thighs underneath Ken and Ryu's gi pants are bulging and their arms are more disproprtionate than my old wrestling action figures. Wide shoulders on Bison, right on. Equally wide shoulders on Dhalsim, no thanks. Ryu looks mentally handicapped, and this is not a joke. He looks not so intelligent and this is due to his eyes. They are too clsoe together. He looks VERY VERY little like his counterparts in other games so far. In the short cinematic animation before his fireball super he opens up his mouth and it looks like it's being pulled straight down rather than rotating around a joint. Shoto hurricanes look strange because they look like a mathmatical rotation rather than an effort to swing around a leg or a physical force moving them across the screen. Obviously that is harder to do in 3D, because math is so unforgivingly perfect. Now let's not get into why Crimson Viper is a an SNK character, because they hit us in the back of the head with that Rufus monstrocity. Really now, was that necessary? Do we need such disgustingly ugly creatures in what was up to now a graceful cast of conceivably competent fighters? My words and my tone say "No".

I really respect the designer, but everyone makes mistakes and I believe he made a long series of mistakes in SF4. I can't help but feel like they want to make a game that appeals to the American audience while failing to realise that what most American fans like the Japanese nature of Street Fighter's game design.

So what's all this then? I haven't made an entry in ages and I'm not really sure why I'm making one now... Other than the fact I'm looking for a distraction at the moment. I've started using Google Reader yesterday and I've been adding many blog RSS feeds to it to keep me informed about stuff. That has also played a part in why I'm giving my blog some attention today.

First of all I'd like to say that I'm no longer an unemployed bum playing FFXI all day. My new job's got me studying for certifications so I can claim to be this great web developper that I'm really not. A side-effect of all this studying is that I can't spend as much time on fighting games as I'd like to, nor can I organise any tournaments. The latter isn't that big an issue for me personally, because it's more of a headache than anything. On the other hand, I'd hate to see the few people that still ply FG's in Holland lose interest.

So what else is going on, you ask? A whole lotta nothing. My job's been taking up most of my time. However, there are things to look forward to: Evolution Europe. That's right, EVO is letting some folks in the UK organise a qualifier tournament. Top prize for each game is a paid trip to Vegas for the finals! Holy crap, yes?

Another thing that might become relevant soon due to an influx of money which I previously lacked (bumming). A trip to Japan.

I haven't posted in too long so I'll talk abotu something I (think I) know a lot about. Makoto gets a lot of flack for being random. I think that goes a long way in itself to show that Makoto can make people feel like they can't THINK their way out of her offense. That is in part true for every mixup, but because Makoto can get a lot out of a single mixup it feels like this perpetual loop. One of the things that seems to help my play is to think of everything as a mixup.

In the previous Makoto strategy post I talked about getting in. It was a piece of text I had written a long time before I posted it and I don't know how much has changed exactly. Looking at the options I put down you can look at dashing in as a mixup with a lot of outcomes. You're 'mixing up' a dash with a delayed dash or with a Hayate. The same goes for jumping in, guess ony our opponent's most likely reaction and choose the option that counters it. That's all I'll say about getting close for now.

A strong point of Makoto's mixups is that many of them lead to another mixup. Landing an EX Oroshi and you can mix up again. For a regular Hayate, same deal. For an EX Hayate there's some character specific followups that again lead to another mixup. Instant EX Tsurugi, more knockdown action.

Makoto has many places where you can turn your failed guess around into more win. For example by parrying after your Oroshi gets blocked. More frame neutral situations like this happen all the time. If someone jumps out of your tick > Karakusa, depending on the tick and the strength of the Karakusa you will recover to parry any jump-in they might attampt (character specific).

Some tactics I'd like to share today are the following: When you're playing SA2 you want to be on your side of the screen to land the super combo. After an EX Oroshi or EX Tsurugi, you have enough time to jump over your opponent and have them all of hte sudden be on 'your' side of the screen. Yun and Yang stand up rather quickly in which case you'll have to be quick about it. The nice thing about this is also that people buffering a DP will have to wait longer and so players that suck at adapting will have a hard time doing so. Another tactic would be to use a crouching LP at the end of your dash as a tick to shorten the recovery of the dash. Nothing special? True, a ton of Makoto players do this, but I say specifically a CROUCHING jab because you can input a Karakusa by doing DF, D, DB, B+K. So sticking the stick in the diagonal down helps this form of execution. I prefer it over the standing jab and F+jab. Against Chun parrying low (then buffering Karakusa or what have you) after a connected Hayate is a strong miuxup option due to how many Chun players try to beat your followup with a crouching jab (2-framer). Against Ken this can be useful in three scenarios where either he tries to low jab/short you, does jab DP, does fierce DP without super canceling. In the last case the second and third hit will hit but not knock down.

Against Yun I have found that dashing is not as risky because of how confident Yun players are that they don't need to stop it. Dashing into a shoulder or croushing strong spam looks like it should deter you from dashing, but it's not as bad as all that. Sure, try to not dive into a 90% meter Yun, but when he's building meter and playing coy, have at him. If he jumps and divekicks as you dash it will be shallow and he won't be able to combo after it unless you don't block.

Another offensive tool I'd like to mention: Blocking. Yes, that's correct. Block at impasses where you are expected to keep attacking to observe your opponent. Not only will this give you information. But you can get lucky and block a reversal super, a DP or just sit there as they do a neutral jump which you can then easily AA.

Not to be too misleading, this is just another way to get progressive ~60FPS captures from a ~30FPS interlaced source. It does NOT involve dinterlacing. Much like the other method I came up with before, this method actuall acquires both odd and even lines of the original frame.

Well actually there are two methods, the second one would (possibly) work for any game you can pause. Both require machine assistance. The first one applies to CvS2. When the game is paused video keeps being sent but because nothing's moving you ge the perfect progressive frame as it lies in the PS2's video memory. So, what you do is you basically pause the game every frame, choose "Window off" from the training mode menu and you get the frame like that. The second way actually is simpler and you might as well do it this way since you're using some kind of tool anyway. Basically you pause the game and unpause it an odd number of frames later (depending how you count) meaning you get odd field of frame you're pausing, next set of fields contains part of the pause menu, wait another in-game frame, unpause and next field should contain the even lines of the pause frame. That "should" work. These methods, unlike the one I demo'd before, avoid having to record something twice, however now you have to write a pretty complex script to get only those frames you want. As the smileys sorta indicate, it's not exactly practical. I, for one, definitely can't do it, because I don't have the tools (p-pad) and I'm not sure if there's one that operates at a perfect speed (synched to the game's speed) to accomplish this.