SF2Pal - Street Fighter 2 palette editor

I've been working on a bunch of Street Fighter 2 stuff in relation to ROM hacking, and one of the tools I was after was an easier way of editing palettes. I know there's the PALMOD tool, but it doesn't output raw ROM data like I want it to - so I wrote one myself with HTML5 canvas.

If you've ever wanted to play around with SF2 palettes, give it a whirl. I've tested it in Safari and Chrome.

I've been converting across all the colours from ST, but it's taking a little while - I'll get there in the end.

Send me any cool palettes you come up with!

SF2Pal - Street Fighter 2 palette editor

Street Fighter 2 World Warrior Guile glitches guide

A Street Fighter 2: World Warrior Guile fan’s guide to Guile’s many glitches

Many, many years ago, I had access to a World Warrior machine, and it spurred me to finally learn the Guile glitches which were so awesome during WW’s heyday. There were a couple of articles on the net even back then, but they didn’t seem comprehensive enough for me. I wrote my own half assed guide, but found it was indeed pretty hard getting the explanations out usefully.

Recently I decided to completely redo my guide, and since there are considerably more tools for macros/scripting in emulators, I thought I’d nail down the details on some of the glitches I thought I knew how to do. I learnt a few things! I also decided I’d make a frame-by-frame instructional video on the inputs needed to perform these glitches. Hopefully it’s in-depth enough and clear enough that any person familiar with Guile should be able to do these glitches in no time.

Here’s the lua macros and instructions for reproducing the glitches automatically, if you’re interested.

1. Install mame-rr
2. Unzip macrolua into your mame-rr directory
3. Unzip nzism-guile-glitches-mamerr.zip into your mame-rr directory
4. Obtain the sf2 rom, drop it in your mame roms dir.
5. Edit the file in your mame-rr directory called macrolua.options and change the playbackfile property to read playbackfile = "wwguile.mis"
6. Open mame-rr and run sf2.
7. Press Control-L to open the lua panel
8. Browse to the macro.lua file within your mame-rr directory
9. Click Run
10. Now edit the file in your mame-rr directory under the macro directory, called wwguile.mis
11. Uncomment (remove the # in front of) whichever line you’d like to play
12. Press The “Play Macro” hotkey (Control-1) to play the macro

Repeat the last two steps until you are satisfied! You can pause the emulator by pausing (usually p) at any time, and step through frame by frame with Frame Advance (which I set to \).

So, without further ado, here’s the video transcription and some additional technical notes.

Free Sonic Boom 01:05

Guile throws a Sonic Boom without needing to hold back to charge.

Perform a Strong throw, then continue holding the same direction and press any Punch button just after recovering from the throw.

You can walk forward a little and still get a Sonic Boom out.

While this isn’t particularly useful on its own, it can be combined with some other glitches.

Extra notes:
It seems that the first two frames of recovery after the throw do NOT give you the auto Sonic Boom, only a normal punch. But the 10 or so frames after that DO. Perhaps the ‘start of free sonic boom charge’ glitch starts slightly into the strong throw animation, so enough charge is only built up 2 frames after the throw recovery? Regardless, you can get a jab out as well as a Sonic Boom in the time period.
Also, using Jab seems to allow for a later sonic boom than Strong does. As all the Sonic Booms have the same frame data, regardless of punch button used, I’m not quite sure why this is.

Stance 01:28

Guile becomes stuck on a recovery frame of his upside-down kick.

While having most of a charge for a Sonic Boom, press Back+Roundhouse while near an opponent to perform the upside-down kick. DURING the animation, press towards and any Punch for a sonic boom, and Guile will freeze near the end of the animation.

While Guile can be hit out of stance, this frame of animation has no low hurtbox, so is invulnerable to most low attacks.

Escape Stance at any time by performing a flash kick. If time runs out or you KO the opponent into Stance, the game won’t continue until you escape Stance.

Stance looks cool but is not generally useful, but is a requirement for other glitches.

Some Computer opponents will react to Stance in certain ways, which can allow for good setups into other glitches. e.g.

• Zangief – may Lariat just out of range repeatedly in front of you, or sometimes just spams various punches
• Claw – Can uselessly slide at you repeatedly
• Ken – Usually whiffs a dragon punch
• Dictator – Often slide once, which won’t hit
• 
  

Extra notes:
The upside down roundhouse takes nearly 50 frames of animation, but cancelling it into special moves (such as Sonic Boom) before the 5th frame results in that special move successfully coming out. So as long as you have charge for a Sonic Boom anywhere from frame 5 to 49 of the kick, you can perform this glitch. A Sonic Boom requires roughly 59 frames of charge.

Magic Throw 02:37

Guile throws the opponent without touching them.

For a Magic Throw away from you, while in range for the Upside-down kick, charge a Sonic Boom then walk forward slightly, then press Roundhouse followed by Fierce or Strong one frame afterwards. The button presses are exactly like Plinking in Street Fighter 4.

I do this by hitting Roundhouse with my third finger followed by my middle finger on Fierce.

For a Magic Throw towards you, while in range for the upside-down kick, charge a Sonic Boom then quickly tap forward then back on the stick, then press Roundhouse followed by Fierce or Strong one frame afterwards.

The towards magic throw has slightly less range due to not walking forward before the button presses, but as the opponent is brought towards you, follow ups are more possible.

Regardless of whether you use Strong or Fierce, the Magic Throw is a Strong throw, and the Free Sonic Boom glitch works after it just like a normal Strong throw. And since Magic Throw is possible off a Sonic Boom charge, you can use the free charge for subsequent Magic Throws too. As long as they are still in range, you can keep magic throwing until they are dead!

For repeated Magic Throws away from you, perform the initial magic throw then simply hold forward and tap Roundhouse,Fierce at the right time.

For repeated Magic Throws towards you, perform the initial magic throw towards and continue holding back, then tap forward, back, roundhouse,fierce at the right time. If the opponent crosses your body then you just have to switch direction as they cross, then press Roundhouse, Fierce.

Extra tricks with magic throw:

• As a throw, once the magic throw has started it is completely invincible, and nothing the opponent can do can escape it – not jumping away, not dragon punching, nothing!
• Anti air Flash kick often leaves the opponent near enough for a magic throw or three
• Ticks into magic throws are very nasty
• Claw can be magic thrown off his cage
• Blanka can be magic thrown out of horizontal ball
  And much more!

Magic throw from Stance 05:06

Magic throwing from Stance requires a slightly modified motion incorporating a flash kick. Charge downback, then roll the stick to forwards then up forwards as in the tiger knee motion, hold it there a little then press and hold RH then FP or strong as you would for a normal magic throw.

For a towards magic throw from stance, charge downback, then roll the stick quickly to forwards, then up forwards, then up, then press and hold RH~FP.

Note: In the video, I mistakenly assert you need to finish at upback, this is infact not the case. Finishing at up is sufficient (although up-back is probably easier).

Basically, do the normal magic throw motions but make sure to hit the diagonals.

Magic throwing from stance can be useful on its own, but is also part of other glitches.

Extra Info:
I believe the necessity of the modified motion is because you need to do a Flash Kick to escape Stance. The modified motion incorporates a Flash Kick and presumably cancels it into a Magic Throw.

Handcuffs 05:47

Guile throws the opponent, who then becomes frozen and stuck to Guile.

Charge down for a flash kick, perform a Strong throw then interrupt it with a flash kick. A practical way is to roll the stick from down to up-back and then flick your fingers quickly downwards over Strong punch then Forward kick.

The direction of throw you perform only changes the animation, the effect is identical.

Handcuffs is useful for wasting time, and for practicing other glitches.

The only way to escape Handcuffs is with a Magic Throw.

Note that if time runs out while you have the opponent in Handcuffs, you will be unable to escape and the machine will have to be physically restarted.

Handcuffs from Stance 06:30

Entering Handcuffs from Stance is a little different, simply do a Flash kick with Strong punch and Forward kick at the exact same time.

Extra notes:
How this motion performs a throw is a mystery to me, but I believe being in the Stance state must modify the inputs somehow (since it also requires an altered motion for the Magic Throw). Perhaps one of the L/R directions gets stuck on during it. Of course it could be argued that the animation doesn’t really show a throw being performed, so maybe it actually doesn’t.

Reset 06:42

The machine resets!

Charge down for a flash kick, perform a Fierce throw then interrupt it with a flash kick. One method is to flick your fingers downwards across Fierce and then Roundhouse. Just like handcuffs, but with Fierce/Roundhouse instead.

There’s no particularly good reason to do this, unless you want to quit in style.

Free Flash kick 06:58

Guile has a stored Flash kick which is unleashable with the simple press of a kick.

Perform a Strong throw then instantly begin charging down. Just before Guile recovers, press Up and any Kick. Guile’s animation looks like he walks backwards for a frame.

Do a normal kick.

You now have a flash kick charge stored for about 3 seconds.

Press any kick button while grounded to do a flash kick. This includes after jumping or walking forward, while crouching, in a combo, basically whenever you could normally do a flash kick. You can even use this free flash kick to perform the Handcuffs or Reset glitches – simply do a strong throw and then press any kick for Handcuffs, or do a fierce throw and then press any kick to reset the machine.

Extra notes:
It’s possible this bug affects World Warrior’s “random special move” seed, or maybe it really is just storing a charge for you. However, a charge runs out in about 10 frames, and this one lasts considerably longer.

Fake Magic Throw 07:43

Guile Magic Throws the opponent, but the opponent is unaffected.

Perform a Magic Throw from Stance, except let go of the buttons as soon as possible. Holding the buttons for longer than 3 frames will perform a normal magic throw. Technically it’s the Roundhouse button being held which determines this.

Fake Magic Throw from Handcuffs actually shows the animation throwing the opponent, but they reenter handcuffs.

Usually just for showing off, although it is essential for the final glitch.

Extra notes:
There must be a second input check being performed for some reason, though I can’t think what it’d be for.

Invincibility 08:13

Guile becomes frozen in place, but is totally invincible!

The “Useless” Invincibility is entered by performing Handcuffs, holding the direction of the throw you are doing, and then pressing the opposite direction then punch for a sonic boom just before recovering.

So if you enter handcuffs holding up-back, continue holding back, then press forward and punch.

This invincibility is pretty useless because while you are invincible, the opponent is also stuck in handcuffs. But it’s good for practicing the timing for the real invincibility.

The PROPER invincibility is achieved by entering stance then performing a Fake Magic throw when the opponent is within upside-down kick rangem Continue
holding the direction of the throw, then perform a sonic boom in the other direction just before recovery as in the other invincibility.

Guile is now completely invincible. No attacks or projectiles will affect him, and he is also unthrowable. In fact, the ONLY thing which can hurt him is another Guile’s magic throw – however since you can’t pick the same character in World Warrior, Guile vs Guile requires hacks.

Invincibility is considered the same as Stance in every way, so you can do the same tricks and glitches from it, and escape from it with Flash Kick, even after the round ends.

Extra notes:
The sheer number of layers of glitches that go together to make Invinciblity is quite remarkable! There’s clearly some pretty broken stuff with Strong throw and cancelling moves with Sonic Booms :)

Now you have a comprehensive repetoire of Guile Glitches in SF2:WW. Try them out, none are actually all that difficult. And try them in combinations! It’s a lot of fun :)

Evo 2k11 highlights

I’ve been watching the Evolution series for years now, and I have to say, it just keeps getting better and better. 2k11 was incredible. I watched pretty much all of all three days (including quite a bit of the after hours streams), and usually that long a stretch makes me incredibly tired, but I simply feel like I want to watch more! More! MOREE!!!

Here are a few of the highlights that stick in my mind, I highly recommend you track them down:

• Mike Ross’s completely unwarranted win vs a very impressive Deadpool comeback in MvC3 pools
• Valle vs Daigo, the rematch – this time Ryu vs Yun. Always great matches between these two.
• Juicebox looking incredibly strong with both his Abel and Juri, just missing out on top 8
• Noel Brown making Sanford eat his words to get into top 8 MvC3
• MK9 finals in general were very entertaining, JOP’s Johnny Cage, 16bit’s Kitana
• Reo’s immensely impressive Mileena in MK9
• Xray in MvC3 – it takes a lot to make me impressed by a Dante/Amaterasu/Magneto, but he did it
• Justin’s amazing LEGIT Akuma comebacks vs Richard Nguyen in MvC3
• PR Balrog in general in MvC3 top eight! Perfecting Justin Wong to eliminate him!
• PR Balrog’s unbelievable Tron lvl3 vs Viscant’s Dark Phoenix in grand finals
• Viscant! Viscant!!!
• Poongko making Daigo look absolutely free in SSF4AE winners bracket of top 8
• Latif’s incredible run in SSF4AE top 8, eliminating Tokido, then Daigo, and then Poongko
• Fuudo making both the above look fairly silly, easily beating them both!

Big kudos to Viscant in particular, great to see him win the biggest major of them all. And to Latif for taking out such big names, pity he couldn’t pull off the final but no-one could ask for more, really!

Thanks to the organisers for yet again hitting it out of the park, all the commentators, and of course the streaming team – this year it was damn near flawless. Good work Spooky!

Team Tournament formats for fighting games

Sometimes team tournament formats can be unfamiliar, or for tournament organisers the advantages and disadvantages of each aren’t easily comparable. Here’s a little guide to the common formats for players, spectators, and TOs alike.

There’s a lot of team-building strategy which can go into any of these formats, especially with some of the extra stipulations.

All examples will use Team A versus Team B and players within the team are denoted by the number.

Variations are possible for each, depending on format or number of games per match, eg:

Fixed character – where once you have chosen a character, you MUST keep using that character. 
Fixed character, loser can switch options – As above, but the loser may change ultra/super
Loser may change character – But winner must stay same character and options
Loser may change character, winner can change options – Winner may switch super/ultra/etc in response to the Loser’s character switch

Additionally, there may be a restriction that only one of each character is allowed per team, just to up the variation. Or that each player may be allowed to pick between one of two characters they have preselected (to help against bad matchups).

And of course these rules just relate to a single matchup between teams. The overall tournament format can still be Single Elim, Double Elim, Round Robin, etc.

Round Robin

Each player on each team plays every player on the other team, then the total wins for each player/team are added up.

A1 vs B1, B2, B3, …
A2 vs B1, B2, B3, …
etc

A variation is when both players change, which is much more confusing to follow but doesn’t allow any one player to get too comfortable (or fatigued!) by playing multiple matches in a row.

Advantages: Every matchup is seen.
Disadvantages: Maximum possible time used. n^2^ number of matches.

Mikado

Players pair off and both leave after each game. After all pairs of players have played, the earliest winners of each team face off until all of one team is defeated.

A1 vs B1 (A1 wins)
A2 vs B2 (B2 wins)
A3 vs B3 (B3 wins)
A4 vs B4 (B4 wins)
A5 vs B5 (A5 wins)
…
then winners pair off eg
A1 vs B2
A5 vs B3

Advantages: Each player seen at least once
Disadvantages: Some matchups missed.

Pokemon

Players pair off and the winner stays on until one team is completely defeated.

A1 vs B1 (A1 wins)
A1 vs B2 (A1 wins)
A1 vs B3 (B3 wins)
A2 vs B3
etc

Advantages: Least time used possible
Disadvantages: Not guaranteed to see every player – if A1 beats all the players in team B, that’s it!

Conclusion

My personal opinion is that Mikado format is a great compromise in general. Round robin can drag on a little long both for the TOs and the spectators, but I certainly get annoyed when “Exhibition” tournaments use the Pokemon format and then you don’t even get to SEE half the players. As always though, time may dictate what you have to choose.

NZism current status

First off, I apologise profusely for my lack of posts, there are several reasons:

1) The current content I’m working on is taking WAY more time & effort than I had expected
2) I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I’d have liked, random things keep popping up
3) I’ve been sick the past week so have been pretty limited to what I’ve been able to do in general. This includes not being able to attend the Southern Cross-up event that was on last weekend :/

Rest assured, I am working on stuff and do still have a big list of topics I’ve been wanting to post about.

Also, I’ve kind of re-opened the NZism forum, but it’s not really the forum you remember. People are welcome to use it, but it’s never going to be pushed as a forum ‘for the community’ again. All your old logins will work though. Any problems, just pm me on the forum or email me.

Fav Vids: #3 - 3s: 5 on 5 teams final, Co-op cup #1

Game: Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Date: 2002
Location: Japan
Players: Boss (Yang), Hitotsume (Ken), Ryo-chin (Remy), J (Makoto), KO (Yun) vs JOE (Ken), Nuki (Chun), Match (Akuma), Tokido (Urien), Xiao (Ibuki)
Source: Co-op cup 1 DVD

2002 was a good year for fighting games. In fact, so far every one of these favourite vids have been from 2002! It used to take a good couple of years after a game’s release for people to really break down the engine and work out some nasty tricks, and 2002 was about that period after the release of the last few fighting games before the ‘dark years’ which lasted until the release of Street Fighter 4.

I believe this video surfaced after the Evo 2k2 video I posted previously, but either way it reaffirmed Tokido as true master status and also Urien as one hell of an awesome character. The top tier was already set in 3s, but Urien and Makoto were beginning to shine, with people like Tokido and J showing off the potential of these characters. It was a very exciting time for 3s.

Although the gameplay may look a little clunky by today’s 3s standards, you’d better believe this was still lightyears ahead of anything in the US at the time, since the US didn’t think much of 3s for a long time. In fact, this video was one which really helped to invigorate the US 3s scene.

It’s also worth thinking about how primitive video sharing on the internet was back in 2002 – I downloaded this 20-odd minute video (with the between-match footage included) on a dial up modem from an FTP site! You actually had to have some contacts to see video like this. The excitement of seeing ANY footage from Japan was tangible. It was hard enough to get any from the US!

This video also popularised the “Ei! Ei! Ei!” chant during Yun’s Genei Jin super, for better or for worse.

Highlights:

00:49 For Euan!
02:42 The good ol’ double shoryu in the corner. Even this was hot stuff back then!
04:19 A very tense Ken battle!
08:22 Good ol’ jab reset dash under grab
10:07 Low parry can win you games…
10:42 I find knees scary too.
11:18 Good start to the round by Gouki, yeah?
12:20 The first midscreen unblockable I’d seen – even as ghetto as it is
13:03 Here it is! Eiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!
13:15 I’m sure this looks way nastier than it is, but it’s still cool.
14:38 NO FEAR!

For more videos from this team tournament, check out the coop cup playlist

Fav Vids: #2 - MvC2: NEC3 Team Tournament finals

Game: Marvel vs Capcom 2
Date: December 2002
Location: University Pinball, Philadelphia
Players: Ricky Ortiz, Xecutioner, Justin Wong vs Bryheem, Josh Wong, Sanford
Source: NEC3 DVD

Have a think how long ago this was, how early it is in MvC2’s lifespan. This is back when off axis (tape!) camera positioning and scrolling black bars were the norm in match vids. When having the atmosphere and in-arcade commentary captured was unusual (although just as NSFW as you’d expect!). When successfully mashing out of hypergrav-tempest was worthy of note. Storm air combo, Lightning StormDHC into Hyper Sentinel Force etc wasn’t discovered yet. Justin Wong was only just the king of the heap but evidently very beatable, not yet the dominator of MvC2 that he became.

Clearly the top tiers of MvC2 were already well developed by this time however – Sent, Cable, Commando, Magneto, Storm, Psylocke, and Doom are the only chars to appear. Oh all right, there’s Blackheart in there too. MvC2 definitely continued evolving after this vid, but the sheer entertainment displayed here is hard to beat. Bryheem’s outbursts in particular are hilarious.

I also love the gameplay. The simplicity (but effectiveness) of Ricky Ortiz’s Storm combos. The first time I really saw Sentinel fast fly combos in a match. The aforementioned mashing out of hypergrav tempest. Sure there are mistakes and dropped combos, but take into account the age of the video. Magneto’s five fierce combo hadn’t even been discovered yet. No-one had Sentinel-only infinites. Even with the mistakes, back in the day the stuff in this video was godlike. This was one of those videos that forced me into training mode to try and emulate various plays within it.

Highlights:
00:52 Stop Beastin’
04:44 Bryheem would quite like Storm to enter the match
06:20 Hypergrav-tempest? No thanks.
07:18 Unmashable doom
12:20 Assist death (imagine it taking this long in MvC3!)
12:55 The first fast fly combo I had seen (and tried to replicate)
13:36 This Magneto combo blew my mind, took me quite a while to work out how to do it.
18:28 Sanford’s own fast fly combo. Look at the damage!!!
21:35 Stomping with Sentinel
23:30 The famous “everybody gets fucken shot”
29:00 The classic “Don’t fall for his gimmicks!”