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GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FRAME DATA
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v1.0
Schooling the public as of 11/23/03
By Buktooth88
>:B
This guide is meant to be viewed in Notepad. It's readable in other programs
but the lines will look all funky.
Unpublished work Copyright 2003 Campbell Tran
This document is protected by US Copyright Law, and the Berne Copyright
Convention of 1976. It is for private and personal use only--it cannot
be reprinted in part or in whole, or reproduced in any way or in any
form (written or otherwise). It is a free document that cannot be used
in any sort of commercial transaction, including selling it or giving
it away as a gift. This FAQ cannot be referenced, altered, or used by
anybody (including webmasters, publishers, and magazine staff) without
my express written permission. This FAQ was created and is owned by
me, Campbell Tran. It can be found exclusively at (www.GameFAQs.com and
www.video-opera.com). All copyrights and trademarks are acknowledged and
respected that are not specifically mentioned herein.
Plagiarism is a crime and is punishable by law. I'll git you sucka!
The CvS series and all of its characters are (c) Capcom of Japan and
(c) SNK/Playmore of Japan. The Tekken series and all of its characters
are (c) Namco of Japan. The Virtua Fighter series and all of its characters
are (c) Sega of Japan.
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NOTE:
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This guide is intended for advanced level play. If anything here is unclear
because of my terminology or notation, ask somebody on the forums at
www.shoryuken.com. It's country's largest Street Fighter site; somebody can
help you there. Do NOT e-mail with inane questions!!
The use of frame data in guides has been an increasing trend in fighting games
as of late. A guide with complete frame data listings can be an incredibly
convenient tool to the experienced gamer, as they can tell at a glance what or
what isn't possible: possible link combos, which moves are punishable after
blocking them, and even formulate strategies around exploiting a move's frame
advantage/disadvantage.
Disturbingly, there is also an equally increasing trend of gamers misreading
the information given to them in these guides. This often causes them to come
to false conclusions, which they spread to the general fighting game public.
In turn, the public takes this new "information" and promptly starts forming
strategies around inaccurate assumptions, resulting in tactics that don't even
work.
To help prevent such misuse of information (and also because I'm getting
increasingly tired of answering mundane frame data questions on AIM and on
forums), I've whipped together a quick little guide on the basics of frame
data.
An important point to remember, this guide is NOT game-specific. The
information and even general strategies contained within on using frame data
applies to pretty much every major fighting game I can think of. However, since
I happen to specialize in CvS2, most of my examples will be from that
particular game. I did try to throw in an odd reference to a different game
here and there, though.
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2. WHAT IS A FRAME?
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A frame is a unit of time that is used in video games, among other things. Most
modern fighting games run at 60 frames a second. If you do the math, then 1
frame is the same as 1/60th of a second.
A good guide will break down almost everything possible in a fighting game into
quantifyable frame data that you can use. However, the bulk of most any
guide that contains frame data will be dedicated to one thing: attacks.
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3. ATTACKS
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An attack is divided up into 3 portions, which I call start-up, impact and
recovery.
START-UP: How long it takes the move to hit the opponent. A move with a
start-up time of 10 frames will never hit before 10 frames have passed. Less
start-up time is generally better, since less start-up time means a faster
move. Faster generally means more priority as long as the move makes contact
with the opponent's body. Put CvS2's Kyosuke right next to the lovable Sagat,
have Kyosuke do a low short, and at the exact same time have Sagat do a low
fierce. Kyosuke's low short executes in 3 frames, Sagat's dreaded low fierce
executes in 7. Kyosuke wins every single time, guaranteed, as Sagat never even
gets the chance to fully stick his fist out.
IMPACT: How long the move has an active hitbox for. In other words, how meaty
the move can be. Don't know what meaty means? As an exaggerated example, CvS2's
Bison can knock you down, then do a low roundhouse slide really early over the
opponent's body. When the opponent gets up, they still have to block the tail
end of the slide because its impact time is tremendously long. An important
thing to remember is that whatever impact time is remaining after the move
makes contact with the opponent is instantly converted to recovery time for
single-hit moves. To use Bison's slide as another example: the slide has an
impact time of 35 frames. If Bison were to slide right next to a blocking
opponent he would hit on the first possible impact frame. Since the slide is a
single hit move and it that one hit is now used up, the remaining 34 impact
frames of the slide get converted into recovery time in addition to the normal
recovery time of the move.
RECOVERY: Once the impact portion of the move is over, how long the move takes
to put you back into a neutral state where you're able to move again. The
recovery time of the move, if you will. Remember, once the move makes contact
with the opponent, whatever impact time is remaining gets added to the recovery
time. Recovery time by itself is generally a meaningless number unless the
move is whiffed. You could have a million recovery frames, but if the move
gives a +10 frame advantage, you'll still recover 10 frames before your
opponent. If you whiff the move entirely, however, your opponent now has a full
million frames to punish you.
To put it all together, let's take Bison's jab Psycho Crusher as an example.
The point where Bison crouches a little and chambers his hand before flying out
is his start-up time. The whole portion of the move where he's spinning and on
fire is the impact time. The portion where he's coming down and lands on the
ground is the recovery time.
Frame advantage is the amount of frames you recover before your opponent after
making them block/get hit by a move. If you make your opponent block a move
that has a +5 frame advantage, you recover from your move 5 frames before your
opponent gets out of guard stun. "Link" combos can be figured out simply by
finding a move with frame advantage, then finding another move with a shorter
execution time than the frame advantage. For example, CvS2's Chun Li has a low
jab which gives +6 on hit or block. Her low strong has an execution time of 4
frames, 2 frames less than the 6 frame advantage. From this, we can surmise
that Chun's low strong can hit the opponent 2 frames before the opponent
recovers from the hit stun of the initial low jab, making a possible link combo
with a 2 frame window of error, frequently referred to as a "two frame link".
There are a huge number of other things you can do with the ability to move
before your opponent (hence, frame ADVANTAGE), but that goes beyond the
scope of this guide.
Frame disadvantage is, you guessed it, how many frames you recover AFTER your
opponent after making them block a move. A small frame disadvantage simply
gives your opponent initiative on the next move. A large enough frame
disadvantage makes the move unsafe. How large the frame disadvantage needs to
be to make the move unsafe varies from game to game. In CvS2, moves that give
-3 are usually punishable by jabs and certain uppercuts if the opponent is
close enough. In 3S, a meager -2 is enough for Ken to super you, -3 is enough
for Chun Li to super you. Namco games usually need around -9~11 to make a move
unsafe, and so on.
Something to remember, frame advantage/disadvantage is always calculated
assuming a move hit on its first frame of impact time. While that is indeed the
case the vast majority of the time, meaty moves affect frame
advantage/disadvantage in the attacker's favor. To use Bison's slide as an
example again:
Bison's slide executes in 6 frames, has a whopping 35 frames of impact time,
and has 18 frames of recovery. The frame disadvantage is at -29. Ouch. Of
course, this is assuming Bison hits with the very first frame of impact of the
slide. What if he hits with the LAST frame of the slide? This would cut off
a sizable 34 frames of recovery on the move. The -29 frame disadvantage would
get +34 added to it, bringing Bison to a +5 frame ADVANTAGE. Of course,
the timing to get Bison's slide to hit consistently at the last frame of
impact is inhumanly difficult, so not many even attempt to try it in a real
match.
Certain games have a number of frame advantage/disadvantage modifiers:
conditions that affect the frame advantage/disadvantage of a move (usually in a
positive way). Most games have a positive modifier for counter hits, the Street
Fighter 3 series and the Virtua Fighter series have positive modifiers for
moves that hit while the opponent is crouching. Some even have different
modifiers for "minor" and "major" counter hits. The end result of the frame
advantage/disadvantage after the modifier should be listed in a seperate
category of the game's respective guide, or at least a formula for you to
follow to figure it out yourself. You should always keep these modifiers in
mind when looking over your frame data, though, since they'll often open up
lots of opportunities for guaranteed link combos not possible otherwise.
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5. WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR FRAME DATA
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The obvious things:
-Find possible link combos
-Find possible link combos involving a frame advantage modifier (counter hit
combos, crouching character combos, etc.)
-Create attack patterns with a few holes as possible
-Formulate counter hit/throw set ups
-Create true 50/50 mix ups
-Find ways to cover up a frame disadvantaged move
..possibly a more in-depth write-up coming soon. A lot of ways to exploit
frame advantage/disadvantage overlaps with basic footsie concepts in 2D
fighters, and that might possibly deserve a guide in itself. In 3D fighters, it
should be fairly self explanatory how you can use frame advantage/disadvantage
to your umm... advantage.
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6. WHAT *NOT* TO DO WITH YOUR FRAME DATA
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The basic cardinal rule (that I just made up about 3 seconds ago) of using
frame data is NOT TO LET THE FRAME DATA DO ALL THE THINKING FOR YOU. I can't
stress this enough. I've seen discussions for both 2D and 3D fighters where
some people would say: "Don't ever use (insert move here). It's got (insert
slow execution time or frame disadvantage here)." I've seen people even go as
far as to criticize the usefulness of a move because it carried a -1
frame disadvantage. MINUS FREAKIN ONE.
A move is much more than the sum of its numbers. Sometimes its uses are
clearly evident, such as having long range or moving your body forward (Ryu's
hop kick in CvS2). More often than not, a move has to experimented with
extensively to determine its true potential. Maybe it beats a really
problematic move cleanly. Maybe it has really funky hitboxes that you can use
to your advantage. Maybe it's an ideal set up for something else. This holds
true more often in 3D fighters than their 2D brethren, but still is applicable
to most any fighting game. Did you know that in CvS2 Rugal's low strong not
only works great as an anti-air against most characters, but as an anti-cross
up also? Did you know that Julia and Michelle from Tekken can use their
incredibly slow uf+3+4 jumping stomp to cross up opponents?
Guides with frame data are supposed to encourage creativity, not stifle it.
