Fighting Game Psychology 101: Button Mashing

Because cats.

Alright, let me start off with an important statement. Button mashing is not OK. Sure, it can be fun to sit back and watch your character flail around with varied degrees of success. Unfortunately, mindless button mashing results in random, mindless gameplay and an overall passive experience.

Allow me to elaborate.

In a fighting game, every attack a character possesses is a tool appropriate for a certain given situation. Let's look at Ryu (everyone's favourite protagonist) as an example.

Ryu has 3 basic special moves in pretty much every version of Street Fighter. They are:

Hadouken: A projectile attack used to threaten foes from a distance and pressure them to jump, leaving them open to an anti-air attack.

Shoryuken: A very fast rising uppercut with invincible startup. This move is great for anti-air and cutting through an opponent's pressure. However this move has a long recovery time when blocked or dodged, leaving Ryu wide open for punishment after a poorly calculated shoryuken.

Tatsumaki-Senpuu-Kyaku (Hurricane kick): A horizontal moving spin kick, which travels through certain projectiles.

Ryu also has around 20 normal moves, each with their own appropriate uses, but for simplicity's sake I won't go into detail about these.

A good Ryu player will always know when and where to execute each attack. They throw fireballs at safe ranges, anti-air accordingly, and use the correct normal moves at their ideal distances. A player who mashes will execute a random attack, at a random time, in a random place. Not only is this experience not fulfilling for the button masher, but it is equally useless for his opponent. In a fighting game, being able to read your opponents moves and tendencies is paramount. However, if your opponent's actions are unconscious, it becomes virtually impossible to read them. If you don't know what move you're going to do, how the hell should I?

When players choose to mash instead of making conscious decisions, they are choosing to ignore all aspects (timing, spacing, risk/reward) of the meta game.

And you know what, if that's fun for you then I guess that's ok. But against any half decent player, you're going to get bopped. That being said, fighting games are certainly not for everyone. The execution barrier can  often be an obstacle that prevents new players from understanding and enjoying a game. But we'll talk about that at a later date.

TLDR: If you want to be good at fighting games (or any games for that matter) stop mashing.

A Brief Analysis of animation in Persona 4 Arena

image http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/230750-a.jpg

Arc System Works' Persona 4 Arena is a 2D Fighting game based off of the cult classic JRPG, Persona 4. The game has a gorgeous Anime art style and happens to be my latest gaming addiction. Here are some of my observations about the animation techniques used by the developers to make the game such a treat to watch.

- Overview:

The game uses 2D sprites for the characters, which are placed on top of layered, 3D Rendered backgrounds. When the camera pans around the stages, objects in the foreground move more dramatically than those in the back. This gives the visuals a nice sense of parallax. The game also makes use of particle systems for dust clouds on running characters, and hit sparks during combat.

- The Arcsys Sprite Process:

Arc System Works is known for creating fighting games with some of the most detailed, fluid, high resolution 2D sprite work in business. In order to achieve this, the developer uses a unique process to ensure quality and timely completion.

Each character is made up of around 1000 unique frames of animation. In a game with 13 characters, creating this much art is no easy task. For this reason, Arcsys uses Toshimichi Mori's  trademark 3D Rotoscoping method.

Step 1: Characters start as 2D concepts and each pose is drawn by hand.

Step 2: A 3D model of the character is made and posed according to the concept drawings.

Step 3: 2D Line-art is generated based on the 3D model. This is used as a guideline for the final sprite.

Step 4: Colour, light, shadow and additional details are applied to each frame.

Step 5: Each frame is converted into a dot image (the sprite itself).

image: http://cdn.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/image4.jpg

- Animation Style (With Respect to the 12 Principles of Animation):

Persona 4 Arena's visuals exemplify all aspects of the 12 basic animation principles. The characters all have unique appeal, and their designs are very much rooted in solid drawing thanks to the use of 3D models. Anticipation can be seen in the characters as they prepare to jump, and their bodies stretch as they reach the height of their jump (this helps portray a sense of height). All attacks are very exaggerated and most of them follow very blatant arcs. Every animation contains some sort of subtle secondary action, for example: clothing/hair movement or changes in facial expression. Finally, heavy attacks feel weighty due to their long follow-through.

-The importance and influence of good animation in a fighting game:

In a fighting game, any move performed by a character can be broken up into 3 phases.

- Startup: The time it takes for the move to become active.

- Active Frames: The duration of the attack that is harmful to opponents.

- Recovery: The time it takes the character to return to neutral after the move's active frames end.

When a character is touched by an attack they enter one of two phases:

- Blockstun: If the attack is blocked, the defending character is stuck in a blocking animation for a set number of frames, then returns to neutral

- Hitstun: If the attack connects, the player getting hit is stuck in a recoiling animation for a set number of frames.

Why is this important?

Let's say character A hits character B with a heavy attack and character B blocks. If the blockstun caused by said heavy attack lasts less time than the attack's recovery, character B can punish character A for doing the unsafe attack as long as his attack is fast enough. Conversely, if character A's heavy attack causes blockstun that lasts longer than his attack's recovery, he can follow it up safely with another attack.

Similarly, If character A's attack connects with character B (and is not blocked) and it causes hitstun lasting longer than the attack's recovery, character A can follow up the attack and produce a combo. A combo is a series of attacks which if performed consecutively after the first hit lands, cannot be blocked. This is a cornerstone of almost every modern fighting game and is 100% dependant on numbers of animation frames. In high level fighting game competition, this is referred to as the study of Frame Data.

In competitive play, it is often best to opt for the safest (least punishable) attack unless a hit is guaranteed. A move's frame data is responsible for determining how safe or unsafe it is. In addition to damage, hitbox size, and unique properties, frame data is directly responsible for how strong any given move is and is instrumental in balancing a fighting game.

All un-labeled images were captured by myself. If you'd like to see Persona 4 Arena in motion, check out one of my match videos. Warning: May contain a bit of NSFW language. This tends to happen during heated fighting game sessions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWSbwv1uFao&feature=relmfu

PS: I'm the guy with the Katana.