There are hardly any accurate visual guides for Melee. To learn about the game, one has to crawl through hundreds of pages on random threads on smashboards where PPMD occasionally drops great insight on game strategy, Magus420 on game mechanics or other guys on random useful stuff.
This won’t do. New players are frustrated by this inaccessibility, and sadly most of the top, pro and semi-pro players hesitate about sharing their knowledge and techniques as they don’t want others to profit from it.
While I am not a high-level competitor (at best decent), I do know quite a lot about Melee’s technical details. Thus, my approach is to first go to the details and explain frame data, and slowly transition from microscopical to macroscopical.
I decided to use videos instead of articles / blog entries because of the richer visual options. The only downside is that the timing is (mostly) beyond the user’s control, but imho that’s acceptable.
The first two videos (“Introduction” and “Knockback and hitstun”) have rather poor timing – I never did video creation and Avisynth scripting before this project so there are still some technical difficulties.
Currently, the first three of ~11 main line videos are finished. After these 11, I will move to more advanced stuff and game plans / what to look for in certain match situations.
The next topics are, in this order:
A4. Tumble, knockdown, teching and advanced DI A5. Shield and powershield A6. Movement options A7. Grab mechanics A8. Tech chasing and jab resets A9. Meteor canceling A10. Priority A11. Character attributes
Is there something you miss or didn’t get from the first three videos you’d like to see incorporated into the followup videos? Or is there something (illustrations like I did in A2 and A3 mostly) you’d like to see for A4-A11?
Kudos to you for embarking on this effort - there's a lot to be said for clear, concise, well-explained tutorials on how to advance your skill and technical knowledge of SSBM (or any game for that matter).
pro and semi-pro players hesitate about sharing their knowledge and techniques as they don’t want others to profit from it.
I REALLY hope this isn't true - I get pissed off just thinking about it. What - the pros are afraid of losing their top spots if other people learn how to play the game well? IMHO, you're not really a pro if you rely on others' lack of knowledge to establish your "pro"-ness. This kind of attitude only ensures that the game progresses at a slower rate, than it would if people freely shared their knowledge and expertise. Ideally you want everyone to improve as quickly as possible because this drives the level of the game up quicker and produces a more overall impressive skillbase...and you, my friend, are helping that happen by making these videos available to all...big thanks for this .
Again, I really hope the pros aren't "hiding their secrets", like you suggested...but either way, you're helping to squelch this type of thinking/behavior with your videos. Thanks again!
On July 08 2014 09:48 skypig wrote: Kudos to you for embarking on this effort - there's a lot to be said for clear, concise, well-explained tutorials on how to advance your skill and technical knowledge of SSBM (or any game for that matter).
pro and semi-pro players hesitate about sharing their knowledge and techniques as they don’t want others to profit from it.
I REALLY hope this isn't true - I get pissed off just thinking about it. What - the pros are afraid of losing their top spots if other people learn how to play the game well? IMHO, you're not really a pro if you rely on others' lack of knowledge to establish your "pro"-ness. This kind of attitude only ensures that the game progresses at a slower rate, than it would if people freely shared their knowledge and expertise. Ideally you want everyone to improve as quickly as possible because this drives the level of the game up quicker and produces a more overall impressive skillbase...and you, my friend, are helping that happen by making these videos available to all...big thanks for this .
Again, I really hope the pros aren't "hiding their secrets", like you suggested...but either way, you're helping to squelch this type of thinking/behavior with your videos. Thanks again!
Actually a lot of it is because only the top 1~1.5% of the players would understand what the nuance is, the scenario, and possess the tech skill to even capitalize off of it.
And the they'll just understand it by watching tournament videos anyway.
Under today’s circumstances, I understand how competition can instill fear / clutching in people. If I had to rely on my tournament winnings for paying my rent, I might keep my op strats for myself as well, for example.
Anyway, I had personal contact with two of the top 10 players (they mostly asked me about optimal choices in specific situations) and they did express that they’d rather have this knowledge hidden from the public. So yes, it is true. Mew2king wrote that in the first few years of his career, he shared everything he discovered in tedious testing, but when he found out everyone else only took from him and didn’t disclose his own finding to him or the public, he stopped doing so in order to not feel exploited.
I‘ve discovered some tricks nobody else in the world seems to have made use of yet. When I watched MLG, I saw many situations that ended in a stock loss for a high-top level player and would have been prevented by its use.
I will cover all of it eventually, but I want to start with the more basic stuff so every player who’s seriously interested is taken in on the process.
Huh? A lot of pros share their knowledge a tooooooonn. Sure you don't get everyone dropping knowledge bombs, though some actually do (PP, KK), and some will keep secret but many willing to tell you the basics/option etc. Mango talked a bunch before getting banned from Smashboards the first time and did several match analysis post Evo.
Many pros are also involved in their own character threads. Not everyone does this, but to say most of them refuse to share info is a huge stretch. And if you are only semi-pro their probably isn't much that you know that isn't already out there. Matches were getting dissected by character specific boards very quickly after a big tourney. What you shouldn't expect is any type of info beyond that, they aren't going to reveal what they know about other players because that's situational anyways.
Maybe include move staling in A4? Especially with how it works with eg. Falco's shine where it doesn't tumble (I'm actually not certain this has to do with staling).
edit: ledge mechanics? invincibility (and refreshing it), hogging, rolling, doraki instant walljump, getting battlefielded, holding away vs. down for ledgedrop... pretty basic stuff I guess but there's a good amount to cover if you wanted to.
I always remember there are two different getup attacks falco can do when hes knocked down and it didn't depend on %age (noticed when jab resetting them). Anyone know how that works?
And yeah so far the guide looks amazing man, thanks for this kind of stuff
I'm a huge stickler for frame data so it's very useful (seems to be very much a marth and sheik thing? Never see spacies care about their frame data because it's all so freakin positive anyway lol)
On July 08 2014 14:08 Kadano wrote: I‘ve discovered some tricks nobody else in the world seems to have made use of yet. When I watched MLG, I saw many situations that ended in a stock loss for a high-top level player and would have been prevented by its use.
I will cover all of it eventually, but I want to start with the more basic stuff so every player who’s seriously interested is taken in on the process.
But if everyone knows everything, we will never experience those "oh shit, what was that"-moments when players actually use those tricks for the first time.
On July 09 2014 06:21 Kadano wrote: @Kyuukyuu: Thanks for the input! I took notes.
@BrTarolg: It depends whether you lie on the ground with your face up or down.
@Xeofreestyler: Thank you!
Also perhaps an odd question - i know sheik can duck under one of marths one, or is it both of them? Useful for techchasing marth in pal as jab reset is no good vs him most of the time
Also what decides whether you are facing up or down when knocked?
"pro and semi-pro players hesitate about sharing their knowledge and techniques as they don’t want others to profit from it."
That is not true on any level. Not even close. Knowledge and "techniques" mean very, very little in how good you are compared to your spacing, consistent flowchart-following and technical ability past a very basic level, and telling that information to anybody will make zero difference, because anybody who needed you to tell them won't beat you anyways, and anybody who could beat you wouldn't need you to tell them.
oh I have a request! how does sticky walking work? (I guess I just don't know this at all, so I'll look it up, but it would be interesting to include "what happens when you fail dashdances" and such in your videos)
So powersheilding both projectiles and normal hits - afaik other than reflecting the projectile, the sheildstun is still the same, the only difference is that you can "drop" your shield immediately (as opposed to x?? number of frames it usually takes to drop your shield?)
Is this how it works? So something like powersheild grab or powersheild nair are essentially no-advantage options, but powersheild dsmash is?