3S-o-S

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[3sos-blog]

Upcoming events

Capcom Fight Club - 20th August http://neoempire.com/forum/showthread.php?p=401861#post401861

Capcom promotional event with 3s:oe previews, aswell as SFxTekken and others.

Take All Comers 9th - 11th September https://forms.enfield.gov.uk/peo/

North London, 3 Day event, All games

Red Fight District 22nd - 23rd October http://www.redfightdistrict.com/home.htm

Amsterdam, First main event, All games

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SVB 20-XI 3rd Strike Quarter Final 011y(Ry) v Tome(Ma)

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I love this response from producer of 3S:OE Derek Neal on rebalancing of third strike. I could point to this every time someone trys to suggest rebalancing is needed. Yes I know I've done this quote the wrong way round.

LegendaryTrigger: Street Fighter III is a legendary game, and fans have been waiting for nearly a decade to play it online. However, the game is notoriously unbalanced, with Chun-Li in particular being overpowered. Is there any chance of a balance patch in the future?

TopHaZZard: Can you explain some of the reasoning behind not re-balancing the game?

DN: No, we aren't going to rebalance the game, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that this is kind of a piece of Capcom lore -- it's a piece of history at this point. Even of you think a modern artist can do a much better job, you don't repaint the Mona Lisa. And to Capcom this is really our Mona Lisa -- something that we really feel strongly about getting right. We think we did a really good job with it and while we recognize that some characters are more powerful than others, that's true of almost any fighting game that you can name. The other thing is the fans that love this game; they really love it. It would really disappoint them to see the game that they may have been playing for 10 years turned into something else. So, for that reason we didn't want to disappoint our fans and we want to standby one of the best products we ever put out.

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Gunfight(DU) v Tome(MA) - Casuals

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The Groups

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Shin Susan Boyle

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5th Best Player In The World

At this moment I am technically the 5th best player in the world.

Video later...

Obviously this is hilarious, but it was a major international tournament so it sort of counts or something.

but no not really, anyway I made it to the quarter finals before getting beat by Tome.

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All sprites and backgrounds captured.

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011y(Q) v Beardo(Go)

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miss parry(KE) v nigel(CH)

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http://www.b15sdmdesigns.com/

Amazing custom sticks.

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Leo's stick build

I asked Leo to do a write-up on his stick build, which he has done. I said I'd proof read it for him but I can't be bothered right now so I'm just going to put it up.

    This is my first stick and as such, there was a certain amount of trial and error involved. Overall though,  it was a great learning experience. What you see here is a tupperware box casing, used mainly due to impatience. I have a wooden box prepared for the case but lacked the required drill bit for the buttons. This time next week I'll have a decent case!

  Anyway, I'll do a little write up regarding the "tupperware method" as well as what I did with the circuit. Maybe it'll help someone else attempting their own stick.

  Materials

  Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT Joystick

Sanwa OBSF-30 snap-in pushbuttons x 6

Sanwa OBSF-24 snap-in pushbuttons x 2 (coin, start)

Cheap USB gamepad (As this was my first stick I didn't want to risk killing an expensive PCB)

Female spade, crimp terminals - Red 2.8mm x 16 (These aren't necessary, but if you plan on swapping out your buttons easily I would recommend crimping rather than soldering)

Wire (I used the wire out of an old Dreamcast scart cable so I'm not sure of the actual size. I'd guess around 0.3mm.)

A strong, flat Tupperware box

  Tools

  Soldering Iron (The lower the wattage the better. My lowest wattage iron is 25W but if I could I would have used a 15W iron.)

Solder (preferably rosin core)

Sharp knife/wire strippers

Crimping tool

Hot glue gun (The smaller the better)

Rounded file

Cable ties

Steady hands!

  Electronics

  I started by opening up the gamepad and extracting the PCB. I then desoldered the rumble motors because they're incredibly annoying and pulled off the plastic analog sticks. Next it was time to map the PCB and see what goes where. The first thing to look for is if the board shares a common ground. Luckily all of the buttons shared a common ground, however the directional inputs did not. If you're using a sanwa stick this means a minor modification to the stick due to the fact that the Sanwa sticks have an intergrated PCB that grounds all of the directions. For this pad with its unique grounds for each direction I had to bypass this PCB. How ? Well, all you need to do is start by removing the restrictor gate which is held on by some plastic clips. After you have removed the gate, the PCB should slide out. There are various methods for bypassing this PCB floating around the internet, mostly telling you where to scratch away the tracing on the board. Rather than wreck the board, you can just desolder the microswitches and get rid of the PCB entirely. This gives you the option of reattaching the microswitches to the PCB if you need to. The stick's height is not altered in any way if you remove the PCB. Reassemble the stick and there you go.

  After mapping the PCB I prepared the wire I was going to be using to ground all of the buttons. I daisy-chained 8 lengths of wire with 8 crimp terminals, one for each button, with a longer length of wire on one end to solder to the ground on the PCB. I'd recommend measuring how much wire you need according to your case and button layout, remembering to leave a bit of slack so you can open the case easily without ripping your connections. Next I measured, stripped and tinned one end of 8 lengths of wire for the signal of each button. The other end of each of these wires was crimped. I arranged the wires according to where their contacts were on the PCB. The wires connected to the four buttons on the front of the board were all kept together with a piece of insulation that came from the old Dreamcast scart cable taped around the wires. This keeps the wires together and allows you to tape or attach the insulation to the case while still allowing the wires within to move freely. I did the same thing with the two wires for the right shoulder buttons. These are my six main buttons. For the coin and start button I decided to connect them to the left shoulder button as opposed to the start and select contacts in the centre of the board. I decided to do it this way simply due to the layout I had in mind for the start and coin buttons. It's fine for using on PC as you generally map your own buttons, but for a 360 or PS3 pad it's obviously better to match each button to its contact.

  After preparing the wires it was time to solder. Now, if I had a rotary tool with a small enough drill bit I would have drilled through the board and soldered for stronger connections. As I lacked this tool I simply soldered to the contacts and strengthened the connections with hot glue. This is where the steady hands come into play. You want to tin the contacts on the PCB with a tiny amount of solder. Make sure you don't splash any solder onto any other contacts or tracing. A desoldering pump is useful if you do mess up (If you don't have one, a makeshift pump can be made out of a washing up liquid bottle and a tube of some sort - preferably something that won't melt easily!). With your contacts tinned it's time to solder your wires to the contacts. Simply hold the tinned ends of the wires onto the tinned contacts, hold the soldering iron over the two for a couple seconds until they bind together and voila. Make sure that you test each button/direction after soldering. If the connection is strong and working, hot glue the joint for added strength. Even if you hot glued before testing and realised that you need to redo the joint, hot glue can be peeled off quite easily once it's dried. Repeat for each button. The stick was done in the same way except each direction needed to be grounded for this particular PCB. The microswitches on the Sanwa stick are labeled thusly - NO (normally open) and COM (common ground). NO is your signal and COM is your ground. Solder to the appropriate contacts, making sure to test each direction. If all went well you should have 8 buttons and your joystick connected and working. Half way there!

  Casing

  I'm an impatient man, so while waiting for the appropriate drill bit to arrive I decided to make a temporary case out of a tupperware box. I started by deciding which layout I was going to use and drawing it out on a piece of paper. Just google "fight stick template" and find something that suits your hand and your play style. I then taped the paper to the underside of the lid and scratched out the holes with a craft knife. Because I was doing this by hand I deliberately marked out the holes 1mm smaller then they needed to be to compensate for human error. I then used a soldering iron to cut out the majority of the holes. I wouldn't recommend using a knife to cut out the holes as it's quite likely that you'll crack the plastic. The tip I used on the iron was a long, thin metal tip designed for cutting through thin plastic and polystyrene. If you don't have a tip like this a fine, pointed tip will do, although it will be messier so you might want to leave yourself more room for error. After the majority of the holes had been cut out, I filed down the holes to accomodate the buttons. I started by filing an oval shape so that the snap-in clips could fit. I then filed down the other sides to fit the button. This way there's less chance of you filing a hole too large for the buttons as you're filing it to fit, not just filing out a circle by eye.

  After all of the holes had been cut and filed, including the hole for the stick, I felt that the lid could do with some strengthening. I decided to paper mache the underside of the lid, mainly due to the ease and availability of the materials. I used a mixture of flour, water and PVA glue. I must say that it strengthed it a lot more than I expected, although I kind of wish I'd had the foresight to paint the underside of the lid first... Next I attached a block of wood to the button of the box to both give it some weight and for something to mount the PCB on. I did this by cutting some holes in the bottom of the box, again with my soldering iron, and attaching the wood with some cable ties. Make sure you really pull those cable ties tight. You don't want your PCB sliding around inside the case. Most PCBs have holes drilled through them where the case screws together, so I used these holes to attach the PCB to the wood. With the PCB secure and in place all that remained was to connect the crimp terminals to the buttons and to connect the joystick. If you had to bypass the PCB on the Sanwa stick, you'll actually have to solder to the microswitches on the stick. This should probably be done after you've mounted your stick, although it depends on the case you're using.

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Parrying the Air

I'm going to write a few things on parrying. I want to do ground parries but I feel like I should do this one first. I'm not going to do projectiles as you obviously parry just before it hits you. Remember the window for a parry is wider if you tap towards and then let the stick fall back into neutral. You can refer to the parry frame data. Every parry is a risk, there is a small time frame after making a parry attempt where you must stand vunerable and not touch any buttons, if you do the attempt will be nullified so you must have faith in your parry attempts or they won't work at all. Also don't try to do multiple parries too quickly as you'll end up dashing which is usually very bad.

Anti-air Parry

After projectiles I think anti-air parrying is the easiest to learn. There is only a small window where the opponent can attack and connect so you don't have too many options for when to make the attempt. Your opponent will try and hit you in the head, body or legs. It's likely they'll go for the body first because it will lead into bigger combos like the legs and is easy to hit. Once you parry these they'll mix up the timing of the attacks. If they hit you in the head they might not be able to combo off it but they will have frame advantage when they land. The real issue with anti-air parries are the empty jump mix-ups and option selects so be ready to hit throw or do something if your opponent doesn't attack.

Air Parries

The window for air parrying is quite wide because of the array of anti-air techniques across the cast. Everything from an EX Shoryuken to a standing jab is a viable anti-air option. Luckily you can make multiple parry attempts when in the air as you won't end up dashing like you do on the ground. There are really just 3 options for parrying in the air.

Early - Beats psychic anti-airs. Also used well with jumping backwards against jump ins. You pretty much want to tap jump and then tap towards a split second after.

Mid - Beats typical anti-air moves like dragon punches and standing roundhouses. If your opponent doesn't attack you could gamble and hope their not looking for the parry. You'll be looking for this around the peak of your jump if you expecting a fast anti-air attack otherwise you might want to do it just as your on your way down.

Late - This will be used to fight anti-air techniques such as multiple standing jabs or meaty attacks. If you have enough time to attack it will probably lead into a high damaging combo, if not it would be a good idea to learn your best option selects for that situation.

Once your opponent knows what kind of player you are they'll start mixing up the timing of their attacks or try something that nullifies the parry attempts. You have to move the cycle along and switch up to something that beats it.

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These combos need a lot of meter or a certain setup but can be used in genuine matches.

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smbf:

anyone who’s ever played against a hugo player in 3s will know about hugo’s notorious clap move. it is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous and formiddable tools for pressure and mixup in the entire game but is also critically flawed.

what distinguishes a great hugo from an average or worse hugo...

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Leo's first custom made stick.

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23-07-2011 Highlights