------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ======================================= GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FRAME DATA ======================================= 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 Unpublished work Copyright 2003 Campbell Tran This document is protected by US Copyright Law, and the Berne Copyright Convention of 1976.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. ----- NOTE: ----- 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!! Anyway, on with the guide! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ==========

1. PREFACE ========== 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. =================== 2. WHAT IS A FRAME? =================== 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. ========== 3. ATTACKS ========== 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. ================================ 4. FRAME ADVANTAGE/DISADVANTAGE: ================================ 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. ================================== 5. WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR FRAME DATA ================================== 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. ======================================== 6. WHAT *NOT* TO DO WITH YOUR FRAME DATA ======================================== 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.