SF4 - Ireland Online - Evaluation Tread

RopeDrink

Right, so I watched almost the entire WCWarzone via the supplied Stream and it kicked arse, enough to make me want to crack out SF4 and punch people in the head.

Had a few matches then I notice Leimrod on Friends list with an open PvP session so I joined in and we started beating the crap into eachother on a sexy & consistant 5-bar completely lagless connection.

Anytime I'm in a fight, I'm recording via FRAPS - Not because I'm hoping to capture something worthwhile, but because I can't actually play SF4 when I don't have lowered FPS via FRAPS (Weird, innit) so when I mentioned to Liem that I had recorded the fights we had, it turns out we both would liked to have re-watched them for evaluation and note taking, so I'm currently uploading 3-out-of-8 of them as we speak.

This led me to a very VERY simple idea - It seems that any SF4 related forum I go to there are ALWAYS people asking for recorded matches for evaluation, so I figure why not start an Irish Evaluation thread and see if we can get players to hook up with eachother online and just have some casual / friendly matches for recording and note-taking as well as allowing the Irish SF4 community to pitch in their own tips and helpful comments so that we can all get some feedback on our styles and help eachother out.

I learned quite a lot from our games tonight as I'm sure Leim probably will when he sees them - So whaddya say, folks?

Anyone up for this?
All it'd take is for willing participants (some of which hopefully have recording devices or use FRAPS) to hook up with other Irish players and just have some casual fun, experiment or just try to beat everyone up, then if you want it evaluated, pop it into this thread and see if any of the community can offer up any advice or tips on the matchup, mistakes etc

Kirby

This is a great idea.

Capcom are bleeding idiots for not including an ingame recording feature. The problem is, fraps can have a negative impact on fps. Having said that, Im probably going to try and record my next few matches with Azza.

Kirby

Leimrod, that ultra you did in the second match was quality. Enjoyed that one:p

RopeDrink wrote: »

Any tips, by the way? :P

Well I'm no ballrog expert...so take from my advice what you will. I think you should bulldog more. Take a few steps forward, then block. Few steps forward, then block. You were doing this well in match 06. A good bit more than the other 2.

If you do it right you can close the distance without risking being hit. It seemed to be that the only way you were closing in was to jump in on him or TAP him. They are both fine and both work, but if thats all you do you will get figured out and your opponent will know it is coming, and punish.

L31mr0d

eh... I think I'm the one that needs the advice here. I have no Balrog game. I don't want to play a run away game, but even from reading on the srk forums it seems to be the recommended approach to this matchup.

Basically for Akuma they recommend
1. Use TP through Balrog to break his charge
2. Consistantly use FADC at full screen to lock down Balrogs single hit charge windows
3. Fireballs, lots and lots of fireballs

Now I'm sure this works, but like the Gief matchup, it's incredibly boring. But I really have no ranged game against Balrog. Pretty much everything goes under airfireballs, that sweep punch :mad:

Any kind of jump in can be met with a headbutt, and if Balrog has even 1 bar I can't attempt any meaty as his EX headbutt will beat it out and open up a window to land the Ultra.

Should I just be staying at full screen against Balrog?

Azza

Good idea. But rather than have 2 separate replay threads I'll merge this with the regular replay thread and if you want evaluation from the community simply put evaluation above the replay in bold.

I won't merge the threads for a while. Let people become aware of the concept by reading this thread and then merge it in a couple of days.

Leimr0d wrote:

Now I'm sure this works, but like the Gief matchup, it's incredibly boring. But I really have no ranged game against Balrog. Pretty much everything goes under airfireballs, that sweep punch

Lower to the ground airfireballs. Don't do them till your near landing from a jump rather than at the jumps apex. He can't dash under them but he can ex.through them. EX.Airfireball should stuff his ex.dashes though.

Cross Balrog up on knockdown with j.mk, his buffalo headbutt is rubbish on wake up, whiffs alot of cross ups. Look to bait it on wake up. Rog's wake up options are poor.

FA his regular dash punches.
If he full screen EX.Dash Punches through a regular fireball you might have time to FA the second hit, his ex.dash punch will have lost one hit of its move so won't be armour breaking.
Redfireball and ex.fireball wil stuff EX.Punches.
His dash punches can be stuffed with your roundhouse kick if you time it right.
Close starting dash punches can be thrown, even the ex ones.
No fireballs at close range when he has charge. He can headbutt or tap through em
TAP should be safe at level 1. Anything after that should be punishable.
Tick throwing is not great against Balrog jump to his machine gun light jab.

chopperbyrne

Just from those three matches I'd say you should neutral jump those full screen fireballs more, especially when you have a life lead.

Akuma has to get in on you when he's losing and Balrog has great defensive options in TAP, Headbutt and his many good normals.

You kept forward jumping fireballs which gave him an opportunity to do damage.

bush

Isnt akumas stupid fast heavy kick really good against balrog?

L31mr0d

RopeDrink wrote: »

Leim often sweeps the split-second I went for this on a string of occasions (most likely random sweeps, unless of course he adapted to it), which wasn't fortunate for me >.<

I've found people have like an internal 3 second countdown timer. After 3 seconds they'll attempt something, so I sweep. It's not safe and I've got to get out of that habit, as Azza tends to have more patience than me and will punish my whiffed sweep with that goddam scissor kick combo. :pac:

Retr0gamer

Great idea.

I know I'm pretty crap but there is one piece of advise I have to give. I did a whole lot better last saturday I thought because I improved my wake up game. I didn't even practice once since the last meet up I just watched dave sirlin's videos on super turbo and took pointers off it and tried them out on saturday and it helped immensely.

When you get a knock down you's should really try and get close because you have a huge advantage. You can bait a shoryuken or headbutt, mix up crouching jabs with overheads or cross up on wake up or bait a throw. Akuma especially has a really good wake up game and has the tools to get back to safety if it's successfully blocked.

It's really improved my game and I find it far more helpful than learning combos (which I still can't get most of the time ) and I think you's should watch the video and learn your overheads and cross ups.

L31mr0d

bush wrote: »

Isnt akumas stupid fast heavy kick really good against balrog?

If it whiffs you are leaving yourself wide open. All Balrog needs is a window for a jab to set up the headbutt into ultra.

Placebo

good idea, not sure how i can tape

i play on my pc monitor, i can also play via my video card on pc but im paranoid about any sort of extra lag

Azza

If any move whiffs it leave you wide open Leimr0d. Akumas roundhouse sets him up for a high damge combo.

K.O.Kiki

You mean online?

FoamyMushroom

What I recommend for a Akuma v Balrog match up, is;

Bate with firballs, if Rog does his punch threw the fireball, Srk at the right time always works!
you dont wana get to close to rog, or stay far away, for obvious reason... The Akuma player should stay with in a hard kick's lenth or rog!

Rog hasnt got much of an air defence, but what he does have is an air-ultra defence which kinda sucks. But before Rog has an ultra bar try demon flips when he least expects it, and thry a combo.. Keep him under presure! Its a non stop presure game in all fairness!!

Plus im well up for recording matchs on the 360 if anyone is up for it, or if someone wants to record ya know where to find me

This is me playing some decent games...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43bKEPkgK5A

L31mr0d

FoamyMushroom wrote: »

Bate with firballs, if Rog does his punch threw the fireball, Srk at the right time always works!

It's good to know about the srk. Will have to go into training and get a dummy to do a number of rogs dashes to get the timing down.

Creature

No don't do that it wont work. Don't listen to him, he's stupid.

bush

FoamyMushroom wrote: »

Rog hasnt got much of an air defence,

I dunno about that, hes got his uppercut and standing mp along with the headbutt.

Creature

Yeah standing mp is pretty good but it usually trades for me and does feck all damage anyway. Crouching hp is bollocks. Never comes out in time, you have to be psychic to get it to hit

Sagat06

Creature wrote: »

Crouching hp is bollocks. Never comes out in time, you have to be psychic to get it to hit

I'm a sucker for this I get caught all the time!!

bush

Sagat06 wrote: »

I'm a sucker for this I get caught all the time!!

Ye, I think its a great anti air.

A-Trak

Sagat06 wrote: »

I'm a sucker for this I get caught all the time!!

Me too, every time. A couple of jump ins met with CR HP and few pokes and your dizzied!
Don't know why I keep trying to jump in despite getting hit by it, like the thick that I am.

Placebo

pfffft rog's alright what about


tiger [blocked]
tiger [blocked]
tiger [duck]
tiger [jump up]
tiger [Focus]
tiger [block]

***** sake*

JUMP IN

tiger uppercut !

FAIL

joconnell

FoamyMushroom wrote: »

What I recommend for a Akuma v Balrog match up, is;

This is me playing some decent games...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43bKEPkgK5A

Must say I ****ing hate blankas as a shoto.

Sagat06

joconnell wrote: »

Must say I ****ing hate blankas as a shoto.

:D Beast slide for the win :D

Xinkai

Creature wrote: »

No don't do that it wont work. Don't listen to him, he's stupid.

Agreed

Dreddybajs

balrog cr.hp is imo best antiair normal in SF4

Azza

What tool do you use to record again RopeDrink?

bush

RopeDrink wrote: »

y need tips on as Boxer are BLANKA (They say this match doesn't favour Blanka, but I'll be damned if I can see it, though that maybe just because I suck)

Its balrogs easiest match and probably blankas hardest. Basically all you have to do is hold down back, uppercut or headbutt if he jumps in, jab him out of balls and rush punch if you block a ball. If he tries to hit you with rainbow roll just focus and punish it. Don't bother trying to attack him, its boring but it works.

bush

RopeDrink wrote: »

Well thanks for that - I often don't try to jab the balls as it often trades or I end up eating the attack

Just mash it, its impossible for the ball to get through mashing jabs and I dont think ive ever seen it trade.
Ya do need patience alright. I think ive only played 1 balrog that knew how to play this matchup properly and its almost impossible to win. The majority of balrogs have no idea how to play it.

Azza

Tried fraps before but I could not get any sound with it. Xfires record feature seemed good but sound went out of sync with videos I recorded with that.

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

Currently using registered FRAPS.
It's solid and easily configurable though unless you've a beast-machine the FPS is going to suffer by at least 10-15 frames (A non-issue for comps that can run SF4 beyond 60).

Whenever I use FRAPS, my in game FPS display stays at a constant 60, but what's actually displayed is around 20-30. Anyone know of any better software?

Azza

Try Xfires inbuilt recorded. Seems less of a resource hog and the games should be playable with it running, but for me sound went out of sync in all my recordings. Could be a sound card issue for me.

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

Possibly a display codec issue? What do you watch the files in? Considering the filesize of recordings I won't be shocked if some players are incapable of playing them back at the recorded FPS. If what you record is steady at 60 during gameplay, that is most definately what you should get when viewing them.

I proof-watch them via good ole Windows Media player without problem - DivX player is alright but that player bugs the hell out of me and can be damn awkward at times. I'm going to assume that if you're recording at 60FPS solid then you're probably the type who has a beast of a comp with max GFX settings and a HUGE resolution to boot... The bigger the res the bigger the filesize and if the filesize (which is going to be well over 4gigs per 2-3mins) then this might be causing your player to struggle a bit?

What I record plays back at 60, but during recording the game runs at around 20 FPS. This would seem normal, except that the in game FPS display still says that the game is running at 60 FPS.
Maybe it's just the FPS display bugging out, but I'm fairly certain my PC should be able to record without losing as many frames as it does.

RopeDrink wrote: »

Just a thought - (You're Ryu Red, aye? Sorry I didn't get to play you today - After the games With Neptune, Azza and a bloke off the Gootecks forums I pretty much had to stop as I was getting a headache from mass-smoking cigs thanks to Azza beating on me... Yeah, thats right, imma blame you for EVERYTHING! :P)

No worries, played a good few games with Neptune instead, and yea, I play Ryu, though since getting my stick I've been mostly using Chun. Good to finally get off the bandwagon

Azza wrote: »

Try Xfires inbuilt recorded. Seems less of a resource hog and the games should be playable with it running, but for me sound went out of sync in all my recordings. Could be a sound card issue for me.

Cheers, I'll give that a shot tomorrow.

Dreddybajs

Would lowering SF4's resolution help?

L31mr0d

Dreddybajs wrote: »

Would lowering SF4's resolution help?

It helps with the in game stuttering for me. But it doesn't decrease the size of the files for some reason. I think when it records at half resolution, it records at half your desktops resolution and not half the in game resolution.

I'd like to be able to just turn on recording when I start up SFIV then forget about it. But it's eating up about 4GB's every 3 minutes. If I play for 2 hours that's 160GB's of video that I'll then have to cut up into matches and compress. I'll be getting 2 more TB drives at the end of the month, but right now, even though I've got around 6TB's of storage currently I'm sitting on less than 20% of that being free

It would half the file size if it would allow me to record at 30fps but for some reason that caps my in game FPS at 30fps.

I wish someone would hack the in game facility to record matches. Then I could playback the matches and look at my inputs also.

K.O.Kiki

Again: why the fvck didn't Capcom use a simple keystroke recorder?

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

Have you set FRAPS to record at 60 FPS?

L31mr0d wrote: »

It would half the file size if it would allow me to record at 30fps but for some reason that caps my in game FPS at 30fps.

Well that would explain it, I hadn't realised that the fps you recorded at was the fps the game played at.
Recording at 60 causes way to much slowdown though, the highest resolution I managed without slowdown was 800x600, and that's with fraps recording at half-size. Think it's time to buy a video camera.

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

The game will slow down to whatever FPS you set it at, hence the best method is to get an idea of your current FPS without recording, take away in arounds 5-15 FPS in advance then set that as the FPS level for FRAPS. If you have 60 FPS normally then it's probably best to set FRAPS to record at 50. Any lower and it'll force the game down, too high and it'll try to push it up, which wont work and risks problems.

FRAPS used to be very unstable for me on older computers but since my new one has a spare External Drive, getting FRAPS to save recorded footage to it has solved so many previous FRAPS problems and was a recommended solution on mostly every FRAPS site that attempted to give help and tips on smooth recording... Not exactly a help to those with one drive, but it's common these days to have more, so if you do have a spare drive connected, be sure to get the programme to save the recordings there, and NOT on the main drive.

I tried the spare drive trick, didn't make a huge difference, though I think that's because it's my GPU that's bottlenecking.

Playing at anything other than 60 fps would probably throw my timing off, so for now I think I'll leave FRAPS be, cheers for the help though. Anyway, I think I've steered this thread a bit too far off course

Red350

RopeDrink wrote: »

Either way I've seen your Finals Replay vs a Boxer and you seem like a patient Ryu. Same deal applies - If you honestly think it'll be of any benefit to have forum members see you in action more than the replay, we could get some recordings sometime, though I'd like to think there'll be more than me with an itchy-FRAPS finger, especially as my FPS and GFX settings suck - Would love to see how some of my fights are in 60FPS with sexy GFX settings - The one of me and Azza drops down to 5-10 FPS at times

Yea I've actually gotten messages off complete strangers suggesting I play more aggressively, I find it very hard to do with Ryu though. I'm up for playing some matches with you recording, message me next time you're on.

On a quick side not, does anyone have any suggestions for a good, but not too expensive, video camera?

L31mr0d

Some matches I had against a Gen player. He won far more than I did for the majority.

If anyone has any tips against Gen I'd appreciate it.

Main thing I know I need to work a lot on is hit confirming before pulling out the HP srk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB6uodjWpv4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11fr80j8DB4

bush

The majority of the gens online are **** and revolve their whole game around crossups. If you can stop them doing that they have no idea what to do.

Azza

Leimr0d, as I said a few times before I reckon you should work on cross up combos, cross up block string/tick throw mix ups and learning to block cross ups, block strings and tech throws. I think your over reliance on teleport has developed a weakness in your game.
I think it would really help your game overall regardless of the match up if you just worked on that. Forget about teleport for a while (not against Gief of course) and even if your loose a few more matches just work on your defense.

Also I recommend less of the aimless demon flips and better use of the airfireball. Work on throwing out fireballs near the ground on your way down as opposed to the air fireballs from the apex of your jump which leaves you more open.

Take time in training to master Akuma's standard combo's, Particularly the one FoamyMushroom uses to such great effect.

L31mr0d

Azza wrote: »

Take time in training to master Akuma's standard combo's, Particularly the one FoamyMushroom uses to such great effect.

Yeah I've made contact with a few Akumas from SRK who have been meeting with me online to let me know my weaknesses.

Crossups are a problem. Thing is I'm getting pretty good at them in training, but online, people seem to always AA me out of them. The crossup tatsu is also an absolute pain to land consistantly. The spacing and time it's pulled out has to be exact.

joconnell

This guy's savage:

I'm still stuck relearning with a stick, after that it's on to links

L31mr0d

joconnell wrote: »

This guy's savage:

yeah I'm already subscribed to him on youtube. I've gotten some advice off him on SRK as well. His other video is my bible for learning Akuma:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCfuEXzJ_d0

Dreddybajs

Why not do j.hp > c.mp xx headbutt > ultra if you know the j.hp connects? Surely the ultra does a lot more damage then?

Dreddybajs

Well why even make the thread really if you don't take it seriously and aren't focused on improving? I mean I think you're a decent boxer but it really seems self-contradictory. :pac:

Dreddybajs

Yeah, that's fair enough man, but I mean it doesn't mean you have to be aiming to be a super pro player to go for the best combo in a situation is all!

L31mr0d

hmm had some really difficult matches against this Guile. Think I won 1 out of like 20. He kept doing the same thing over and over: double c.HK, Sonic Boom, s.HP, c.HK... repeat. I couldn't figure out how I could counter this. I was able to block it but nothing seemed to work. On wakeup he'd just sonic boom then continue like usual with a c.HK. When I'd try to sweep before the sonic boom he'd almost always instinctively flash kick it.

Any advice?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsw93pgN7_g

Sagat06

When you knocked him down you backed up everytime. Most of the guiles I've come up against love you to be half screen away. I like to get in close and cross up for pressure.

L31mr0d

Sagat06 wrote: »

When you knocked him down you backed up everytime. Most of the guiles I've come up against love you to be half screen away. I like to get in close and cross up for pressure.

Yeah but this Guile didn't. He wanted to be up close so he could do his c.HK, sonic boom cycle. In some of the earlier matches I'd try to bait a flash kick, but he'd, without fail, go right into his c.HK on wakeup, and as I couldn't figure out how to counter it, I'd get stuck in a blocking loop that I'd have to TP out of.

These videos are from the end. Even on wakeup I had no options, his sonic boom would always mean whatever I tried would trade, always in his favour.