http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
Go there and watch that video before you read.
Anyhow, the video is a meant to be a test/demonstration of selective attention. That is, in a given situation, our minds often ignore and completely blot out things that they do not expect to see, especially when our attention is focused elsewhere. About 50% of people do not actually see the gorilla in the video. It doesn't have anything to do with profession, peripheral vision, or anything like that; people just sometimes don't see it.
I brought that up because this basic thing happens all the time in Smash, particularly in doubles. Things that you do not expect to see will completely blindside you, to the point that you might not even realize they happened at all until it's too late to deal with them. Ever lose your jump and fall all the way to the bottom of the level before you realize it? You hit jump, nothing happens, and instead of anything else registering in your brain, you just watch yourself fall? Or maybe you thought you would grab on to the edge of the stage, so you just watched the edge. Somebody else got it first though, and you just stared while you plummeted off-screen. Technically, you were looking right at your character, but you never even saw it happen.
A fun example from playing with one of my friends: the very first time I used a Captain Jack grab with Mario (you know, canceling a dash attack with grab so that you hear the "Wa-hah!") he literally stopped playing. He was grabbed. But his brain was trying to tell him, from the sound cue, that he had been dash-attacked. He did not realize that he was being held, and just kept trying to see where the dash-attack was. (Afterwards, he thought this was so funny that all I had to do to beat him with Mario was send him into laughing fits by CJ grabbing)
Selective Attention--and more specifically, any inherent expectation you have regarding the match--is a liability. Like any liability in a multiplayer game, you can use it as a weapon. The most commonly used form of it that I know is the empty jump.
Tournament players learn to SHFFL aerials. It's just a thing that you learn unless you're playing one of like, three characters that don't really utilize it. Peach, Samus, and... Yoshi. I don't know.
Point is, you learn SHFFLing. You come to believe that anytime somebody is in the air, especially if they're against your shield, that they're going to do an aerial. So you watch for it, so you can shieldgrab, or roll away, or up+b out of shield, or whatever. And you watch. And after awhile, you become so conditioned to seeing the aerial that you won't realize it if the other guy doesn't do an aerial at all. You'll just keep waiting. By this point, he's landed and grabbed you. At this point, you might finally notice, but odds are you won't even DI the throw. Or, in the ICs case, mash out before I infinite you.
Another example: using the ICs d-throw d-air on Fox is kind of risky, because he can smash DI and then buffer a roll to get away. It's escapable, and can be a waste of a grab if the other guy knows how to get out.
But what if you know they're going to roll? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGq7X37ypEA#t=1m05s
In this case, Forward SDI's away and down, then rolls like you're supposed to, and I take a big risk in just dashing towards his landing spot. I d-smash him, and he DIs with it. Note the percent; grab at 30 percent, dead at 61% because he can't recover.
Forward's a good player with pretty decent reaction time. What makes somebody like that DI badly? I'm willing to bet that, because after a d-throw d-air, Popo is *supposed* to go for a grab, he didn't even realize that I hadn't done it until it was too late. He may not have even really seen me dashing towards him, or at any rate he didn't process it. The only way you can get a very good player to make errors like that is by doing things you shouldn't, and being where you aren't supposed to be. Wavelands are very useful for this for the same reason an empty jump works; you're supposed to do something in the air, and you're certainly not supposed to slide all over the place.
When does this sort of thing not work? If the other guy has a plan of action that counters your trick *as well as* the thing he expects, he might just go ahead and do it anyhow, and have it work out. An empty short hop doesn't work against somebody who uses up+b out of shield anytime you get close, because... well, he'll just up+b.
Kind of a short post, but it was something I thought of today when I read about that video and test.
Peace, folks.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
What It's Like To Play the Best Player in the World
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been hunting for a job by day and playing League of Legends by night, and on top of that haven't had much to talk about.
Recently though (especially with Nice Shot Hugo coming up, which I'd like to attend if possible) I was thinking a bit about Smash and something I'd like to talk about.
Not too long ago, I went to a Cali tournament and actually took second. I beat Lucky for the first time in two years, beat Zhu in tournament for the first time, and made it to Grand Finals against Mango where I even managed to win a round. Hats off to the TOs for letting me infinite, because I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt.
In fact, having it legal helped in more than one way. Obviously, I got to KO all my opponents off grabs, and that was certainly useful. More importantly though, it put massive pressure on my opponents not to mess up and not to give me grabs. This meant they were playing very safe, cautious, and kind of campy (which isn't an indictment, I support camping wholeheartedly provided it actually wins you the match).
I like playing against cautious players. First, I have relatively poor reflexes, so I don't handle rushdown very well. Second, because they take their time attacking me, I can take my time to figure them out, and come up with plans and tricks. When very technical Foxes and Falcos and Falcons rush in on me and don't give me room, I tend to panic and make dumb mistakes, both technical and mental.
The fear aura generated by the infinite gives me a big boost. It kept Lucky and Zhu from shield pressuring me into the ground. It gave me breathing space, and like most people, I enjoy breathing.
But not Mango. Mango has a few characteristics that are integral to making him the best player. The first one is that he's very aggressive, but he's not stupid about it. The poker term would probably be "tight aggressive." If he has an advantage, he pushes it. If he doesn't, he waits until he does. What distinguishes him, however, is that he pushes almost EVERY advantage he gets, regardless of how subtle or intangible it is.
Second, Mango is utterly confident in his play. He doesn't get shaken up. He rushes me down knowing he's not going to miss an L-cancel or space badly, and so he can continue to attack without giving in to the fear aura of an infinite.
Third, Mango is efficient. If there's a way to KO you, he does it. Right there. No messing around, no middle-man, pure destruction factory direct to you. At least, most of the time since fourth, he has a sense of humor and likes trying weird stuff, which is part of what makes him innovative and hard to read.
Fifth, he's hard to read. Sixth, he reads most players like a book. This is what interested me the most; Mango can combine technical rushdown with mind-games to a level no other Smasher can. Ken was not particularly technical in his time, and while M2K was incredibly technical, fast, and precise, most players agree that he tended to follow plans and formulas over adaptations. PC Chris was the most Mango-like of the three, in my opinion.
My strong suit, as a player, is my ability to read people. I tend to guess right a lot more than I guess wrong, and I play a character where a good guess can yield a stock, so that kind of covers the efficiency aspect too. What's better is not many IC tricks require a lot of tech skill (contrary to popular belief). Which isn't to say I don't mess up; my tech skill is terribly inconsistent even doing the most basic stuff.
Mango is really, really, really, really hard to read. Based on the people I've played, Mango is in the toppest of top tiers, mentally speaking. In the arena of reading people and being hard to predict, the only player I would place close to Mango is Chu Dat (right now, I know a lot of people would clamor for Armada, but this is based on who I have played. I would totally believe it though).
Anyhow, playing against somebody that smart, fast, and efficient is... very unusual. I think against Mango I played some of my best Smash ever, because at times (very few times mind you) I felt like I was keeping up. I was linking as directly as I could into the mind of my opponent trying to see his intentions and his patterns, and most of the time I came up blank. Nothing. I didn't even have the faintest idea of what he wanted to do, or when he planned to do it. Every now and then though, something clicked, and it landed me a grab.
Not much else to say, really. I could have had a second game from him, but I botched a ledge CG that would have linked to an infinite and earned the last stock. After that though, it was more or less over. I really hope I get the opportunity to play him against at NSH this month, assuming I go.
Recently though (especially with Nice Shot Hugo coming up, which I'd like to attend if possible) I was thinking a bit about Smash and something I'd like to talk about.
Not too long ago, I went to a Cali tournament and actually took second. I beat Lucky for the first time in two years, beat Zhu in tournament for the first time, and made it to Grand Finals against Mango where I even managed to win a round. Hats off to the TOs for letting me infinite, because I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt.
In fact, having it legal helped in more than one way. Obviously, I got to KO all my opponents off grabs, and that was certainly useful. More importantly though, it put massive pressure on my opponents not to mess up and not to give me grabs. This meant they were playing very safe, cautious, and kind of campy (which isn't an indictment, I support camping wholeheartedly provided it actually wins you the match).
I like playing against cautious players. First, I have relatively poor reflexes, so I don't handle rushdown very well. Second, because they take their time attacking me, I can take my time to figure them out, and come up with plans and tricks. When very technical Foxes and Falcos and Falcons rush in on me and don't give me room, I tend to panic and make dumb mistakes, both technical and mental.
The fear aura generated by the infinite gives me a big boost. It kept Lucky and Zhu from shield pressuring me into the ground. It gave me breathing space, and like most people, I enjoy breathing.
But not Mango. Mango has a few characteristics that are integral to making him the best player. The first one is that he's very aggressive, but he's not stupid about it. The poker term would probably be "tight aggressive." If he has an advantage, he pushes it. If he doesn't, he waits until he does. What distinguishes him, however, is that he pushes almost EVERY advantage he gets, regardless of how subtle or intangible it is.
Second, Mango is utterly confident in his play. He doesn't get shaken up. He rushes me down knowing he's not going to miss an L-cancel or space badly, and so he can continue to attack without giving in to the fear aura of an infinite.
Third, Mango is efficient. If there's a way to KO you, he does it. Right there. No messing around, no middle-man, pure destruction factory direct to you. At least, most of the time since fourth, he has a sense of humor and likes trying weird stuff, which is part of what makes him innovative and hard to read.
Fifth, he's hard to read. Sixth, he reads most players like a book. This is what interested me the most; Mango can combine technical rushdown with mind-games to a level no other Smasher can. Ken was not particularly technical in his time, and while M2K was incredibly technical, fast, and precise, most players agree that he tended to follow plans and formulas over adaptations. PC Chris was the most Mango-like of the three, in my opinion.
My strong suit, as a player, is my ability to read people. I tend to guess right a lot more than I guess wrong, and I play a character where a good guess can yield a stock, so that kind of covers the efficiency aspect too. What's better is not many IC tricks require a lot of tech skill (contrary to popular belief). Which isn't to say I don't mess up; my tech skill is terribly inconsistent even doing the most basic stuff.
Mango is really, really, really, really hard to read. Based on the people I've played, Mango is in the toppest of top tiers, mentally speaking. In the arena of reading people and being hard to predict, the only player I would place close to Mango is Chu Dat (right now, I know a lot of people would clamor for Armada, but this is based on who I have played. I would totally believe it though).
Anyhow, playing against somebody that smart, fast, and efficient is... very unusual. I think against Mango I played some of my best Smash ever, because at times (very few times mind you) I felt like I was keeping up. I was linking as directly as I could into the mind of my opponent trying to see his intentions and his patterns, and most of the time I came up blank. Nothing. I didn't even have the faintest idea of what he wanted to do, or when he planned to do it. Every now and then though, something clicked, and it landed me a grab.
Not much else to say, really. I could have had a second game from him, but I botched a ledge CG that would have linked to an infinite and earned the last stock. After that though, it was more or less over. I really hope I get the opportunity to play him against at NSH this month, assuming I go.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
VVVVVV, speedruns, and being the best (bonus section included)
(This article includes a special bonus section at the bottom!)
Recently released was the beta for a flash-based game called VVVVVV. That's 6 V's. You can learn a bit more about it at distractionware.com/blog. Its designer is a gentleman by the name of Terry Cavanagh.
The final version will be released January 10th and if it stays like the beta, then I can assure you this game is unbelievably terrific in many, many ways.
Two related factors; one, it's very hard, and the music is terrific. Why are these related? Because you're going to die a lot and, consequently, you'll be listening to the same tracks looping over and over again, so the music HAS to be good. And it is.
The gameplay is simple. You can move left or right, and you can flip gravity. Hit V, and you flip up to the ceiling. Hit it again, and you start falling back down. You can't flip until you've hit a surface, so you can't just mash V and hover in place. You travel around a large world going from room to room, collecting shiny trinkets and rescuing your shipmates. It's old-school in presentation, style, and--of course--difficulty. This includes going into rooms that kill you unless you already know what is in them. I typically find this to be a design flaw, but you repeatedly run into little respawn checkpoints so you almost never lose any substantial progress from dying, and the game demands precise platforming skills so even when you know where things are you tend to die anyhow. It's just damn hard. I liked this game way more than I think I should have. I liked it so much, in fact, that I'm doing a speedrun for it, even though it isn't technically finished yet.
This is where the game's magnificent design becomes apparent to me. Almost every room seems capable of being cleared at full speed, provided you have frame perfect timing, you understand the physics engine, and you know where everything is. Some rooms you clear at ALMOST full speed by knowing just where to slow down and how to enter each room. The game is basically a giant puzzle waiting to be solved. It's a lot of fun, I recommend you check it out if you've got the $15 dollars to do so once it's released.
So this brings us to the second point; how you go about creating a speedrun. This game is rather easy on you as far as designing the speedrun goes. You never get any powers and you can't skip over levels because--in order to do a full 100 percent speedrun, collecting the trinkets scattered throughout--you simply have to go through the stages as normal. In a Megaman game, for instance, you have to pick a path for beating all the robot masters so that you can use the powers to defeat the masters and zip yourself through stages as quickly as possible. The order you do things in matters.
Not so in VVVVVV. You don't get any abilities, and rescuing one crewmate won't really affect how you rescue the others (with one tiny exception that will save you one or two seconds overall). So figuring out your path isn't that difficult.
Figuring out each room is where the real fun is. I went through the first dangerous room somewhat slowly. Over one enemy, under another, and then wait for the last one to drop so I could go over it. After a bit of experimenting, I found you can--with perfect timing--jump UNDER the last enemy on its way up. So this speeds up the room by about 1/2 a second.
Not much, really. But with hundreds of rooms in the game, those halves would add up. And if I didn't do each level as fast as I knew how to do, somebody might imitate my run EXCEPT for this one room, and beat me by a second and take my record. If you want to have the best speedrun, you have to think like that. Somebody just might care a tiny bit more than you, and practice a little bit harder, and get that half-second.
For instance, I remember reading on a board dedicated to Melee HRC and BTT a thread somebody made saying he had the new world record for the Game and Watch HRC. He had topped the other record by something miniscule, like .2 feet. All he did--I'm guessing--is inch the bag forward slightly while doing his bat-drop combos, and otherwise mimic the world record exactly. But you know what? He had the new record. .01 seconds can mean the difference between a gold and silver in the Olympics. I'm pretty damn sure an Olympic level athlete would NOT say "one hundredth of a second? Eh, whatever, I didn't want the gold that badly. What's the difference, really?"
The difference between winning and losing a close Smash match can be one more hit than the other guy. It can be hitting each other at the same time, but you were a little closer to the blast zone than he was. It can happen in the finals of a tournament. Does it matter? Yes. Absolutely. It will not be a trivial difference when it's the difference between having a record--or victory--and not having that record or victory. So yes, mastering this stupidly hard jump to save 1/2 a second really does matter.
Then I learned that you can go through this first room with the right timing so you reach the third enemy fast enough to go over him without waiting at all, and you don't have to jump under him either. I didn't know you could do that. It's actually *easier*, and saves another 1/4 of a second. That's a bit of a relief.
Next room leads you to your first trinket. There's a checkpoint in here, so when you trigger it, if you die you will return to that checkpoint. Trigger the checkpoint, drop into the room with the trinket, and then... there's another checkpoint and a lot of spikes. Reach the trinket, leave the room. Right?
Wrong. If you do the room just right, you skip the checkpoint. Get the trinket, kill yourself, warp one room back, save a second or two. And so on.
Just about EVERY room in this game has a trick like this. If you time a jump right, enter the room at the right angle, go as FAST as possible, you can blitz through this game. And kill yourself a lot in the process because the timing is NOT forgiving. Hell, the game's bad enough to do normally, let alone charging through at full speed.
But if you want to speedrun, there are a few basic tenets. One is that it doesn't matter if something is hard. If it's faster, you must attempt it, because somebody else will. Second is that there is, very often, a faster way than what you have, and it's waiting for you to discover it. You have to be willing to question what you believe is possible. "I can't make this jump." Actually, maybe you can, and you're just not doing it right. And almost all the time, your movements can be just a little sharper, you can cut each corner just a little more closely or jump just a little earlier, and save yourself that tiny bit of time. And through an entire game, it all adds up.
However... bear in mind that in a single segment run--a run where you start the game and beat it in one sitting with no saves--you are probably going to mess up, especially on very difficult games, and especially towards the end. My record for beating this game is currently clocked at 19:14 by the game's timer. The first five minutes or so, I won't tolerate anything but superficial errors. By the end, however, I will begin to accept mistakes, because otherwise I'm wasting the run and the opportunity to practice other parts of the game.
As the run goes on, I will tolerate bigger and bigger errors because the third tenet is accepting your human limits. I am GOING to make an error in the time it takes to complete this game, especially when I attempt frame perfect jumps after a long period of nonstop focus. And if I'm recording, it may still be the best speedrun I've done, even with a few dumb mistakes in it. It may be the best anybody's done, and I'm not going to sneeze at that.
And nobody says I can't replace my own run! So I can choose to do an "inferior" run this time, skipping over a few of the harder tricks in favor of safer, more consistent methods, particularly towards the end when I don't want to waste an otherwise good run. I can keep that as my current record, then I'll have something good to beat. And if nobody else does it in the meantime, I hold the record.
If you've played Mario Kart and done the time attacks (or saw the Speed Racer movie :P), you know that when you try to do a time-trial on a given level, the game races you against the "ghost" of that previous record. When speedrunning, I feel like I'm racing against the ghost of a person who does my run just a little better than me. I make a mistake, and I imagine that some invisible competitor has, until that moment, done everything exactly like me... except without that mistake. So I'm losing, and I have to step my game up.
Because this is not a blog about Speed Racer, Mario Kart, or VVVVVV, and it is a Smash blog, I should be talking about how this relates to Smash. But I think the parallels should be obvious. If you don't dedicate yourself to mastery, somebody with a little more dedication will do what you do, but better, and you will lose. You can decide NOT to practice your Fox ditto chaingrabs, but then you will play somebody who goes pretty even with you, except for those chaingrabs, which he does better. And that could be what clinches the match. Little things add up. Somebody who is just a little sharper, or faster, or a little more consistent will beat you out.
Then again, nobody is saying you have to be the best at anything. That's a personal goal that you set for yourself. But if you want to be better, you can't ignore things and say "it's too hard" or "it's not worth it." Obviously you want to pick things that give you the biggest improvement margins. I can spend my time practicing a frame perfect jump that saves me 1/2 a second in my speedrun, or I can use that time to find a path that saves me a full minute over the course of the game. If I can add a fourth speedrunning tenet, it's that solid overall play trumps highly specialized tricks. Practicing the toughest tricks that only save a tiny bit of time should be secondary to the ones that save you lots of time. In VVVVVV, there's a trick that saves a good eight seconds if you do it right, but can cost you twenty seconds if you mess it up--if you do, you might as well start the run over. When choosing between learning that trick, and one that's stupidly hard and saves me only one second, guess which one I pick. If I had to draw a Melee comparison, it would be the difference between learning to wavedash consistently and learning how to shine b-air people with Fox.
As time goes on though, if you want to continue to have the best record, you have to make your record *better*, because other people will try to improve on it. So you'll need to optimize and improve in places you didn't know were actually possible, and constantly reinvent your own speedrun. You may need to take tactics from other people, which is totally legitimate. It's not about inventing tricks, it's about having the fastest run. Developing a new method for playing the game can *help* you get the best time, but if you adopt somebody's technique and do it better, more power to you. I don't care if my speedrun looks just like everybody else's, provided it's the fastest.
*
Bonus section! So, I also promised on the IC boards to write something special just for IC players. Here it is! Some of it's going to be a little obvious, some of it less so.
Your Guide to Not Letting Nana Get You Killed
Nana is great. She's your best friend, the source of half your damage and probably more than half your KOs. There's a problem though.
Nana's dumb. Very, very dumb. And like somebody who is dumb, she does dumb things. I've become very acquainted with just how dumb she can be. So any time you're going to try and interact with her, remember: she is stupid and will try to get you killed. So here's a list of things that you should keep in mind while trying NOT to let her kill you.
1) You cannot save Nana while she is tumbling. If Nana has lost her double jump and goes into a tumble, she's gone. Forget about her. Killing me won't bring her back.
Okay, that was stupid. Point is, you can't save her from a tumble, so don't try. One important If she gets shined by Fox however, that breaks her out of her tumble, meaning you can belay and teleport her to you. The problem is that there's a Fox right near the edge and belaying leaves you open, but then again, going SoPo against Fox is eighty kinds of annoying, so the risk might be worth it.
Nana cannot break herself out of tumbles except with her double jump. She double jumps the moment her character model becomes level with the main surface of the stage (except on Yoshi's Story, where she will jump towards either the platforms or cloud, depending). If you practice in training mode against another ICs and just hit them off the level, you will soon learn the exact timing for when she jumps. The moment she uses her double jump, you can belay or forward+b, so keep that in mind.
2) When Nana is in hit stun, she will not belay or forward+b with you. Even if she is not sent into a tumble, she won't come to your aid. If you were to up+b at the exact frame she gets hit by the weakspot of Luigi's up+b, she would not teleport to you. Don't rely on her to belay and save you if she's about to get hit. That said, if you can snatch her away from getting hit by using your up+b, it could be worth your while to do so.
3) Nana will not do anything for you while she is teetering on the edge of the stage. She will not up+b with you, she will not forward+b with you. I think you can force her to act if you hit the c-stick but that's it.
4) Sometimes it's best to let her die. If Nana is really far out there and the opponent has a free edgeguard situation, don't bother helping her. It will get the both of you hit. I'm sometimes criticized for not helping my Nana enough, but the problem is that most of the time, belay will leave the both of you wide open. Either she'll die, or you'll eat something really deadly. And it's super tough to aim her so she'll grab the edge, so half the time she won't even make it on her own.
This is where the up+b ledge-cancel comes in handy. It lets you save her when she's kind of close to the stage without putting yourself at a significant positional disadvantage. She becomes invincible above the level, and you get edge invincibility too. Even if she gets hit by the opponent, you're in a prime position to punish them for it, so at least you get a trade. Remember, you lose a stock when Popo dies, not Nana. It feels like the stock is over without her, but you can still attack, deal damage, land stupid d-smashes, and chaingrab a bunch of characters with SoPo.
5) Nana has a special platform AI. When she is on a platform or above it, she goes into a different AI pattern than normal. You cannot up+b and collect her if she is in this mode, even if you are close to her. Try falling through a platform then up+b'ing immediately; she won't join you. If she's stuck above a platform for whatever reason while you're trying to recover, do NOT try and belay because she won't do anything to help you. If you want an example of this, stand on a platform, drop down and immediately use your up+b. Popo will belay, Nana will do nothing. If you wait for a few frames, THEN you belay, she will go with you.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading!
Recently released was the beta for a flash-based game called VVVVVV. That's 6 V's. You can learn a bit more about it at distractionware.com/blog. Its designer is a gentleman by the name of Terry Cavanagh.
The final version will be released January 10th and if it stays like the beta, then I can assure you this game is unbelievably terrific in many, many ways.
Two related factors; one, it's very hard, and the music is terrific. Why are these related? Because you're going to die a lot and, consequently, you'll be listening to the same tracks looping over and over again, so the music HAS to be good. And it is.
The gameplay is simple. You can move left or right, and you can flip gravity. Hit V, and you flip up to the ceiling. Hit it again, and you start falling back down. You can't flip until you've hit a surface, so you can't just mash V and hover in place. You travel around a large world going from room to room, collecting shiny trinkets and rescuing your shipmates. It's old-school in presentation, style, and--of course--difficulty. This includes going into rooms that kill you unless you already know what is in them. I typically find this to be a design flaw, but you repeatedly run into little respawn checkpoints so you almost never lose any substantial progress from dying, and the game demands precise platforming skills so even when you know where things are you tend to die anyhow. It's just damn hard. I liked this game way more than I think I should have. I liked it so much, in fact, that I'm doing a speedrun for it, even though it isn't technically finished yet.
This is where the game's magnificent design becomes apparent to me. Almost every room seems capable of being cleared at full speed, provided you have frame perfect timing, you understand the physics engine, and you know where everything is. Some rooms you clear at ALMOST full speed by knowing just where to slow down and how to enter each room. The game is basically a giant puzzle waiting to be solved. It's a lot of fun, I recommend you check it out if you've got the $15 dollars to do so once it's released.
So this brings us to the second point; how you go about creating a speedrun. This game is rather easy on you as far as designing the speedrun goes. You never get any powers and you can't skip over levels because--in order to do a full 100 percent speedrun, collecting the trinkets scattered throughout--you simply have to go through the stages as normal. In a Megaman game, for instance, you have to pick a path for beating all the robot masters so that you can use the powers to defeat the masters and zip yourself through stages as quickly as possible. The order you do things in matters.
Not so in VVVVVV. You don't get any abilities, and rescuing one crewmate won't really affect how you rescue the others (with one tiny exception that will save you one or two seconds overall). So figuring out your path isn't that difficult.
Figuring out each room is where the real fun is. I went through the first dangerous room somewhat slowly. Over one enemy, under another, and then wait for the last one to drop so I could go over it. After a bit of experimenting, I found you can--with perfect timing--jump UNDER the last enemy on its way up. So this speeds up the room by about 1/2 a second.
Not much, really. But with hundreds of rooms in the game, those halves would add up. And if I didn't do each level as fast as I knew how to do, somebody might imitate my run EXCEPT for this one room, and beat me by a second and take my record. If you want to have the best speedrun, you have to think like that. Somebody just might care a tiny bit more than you, and practice a little bit harder, and get that half-second.
For instance, I remember reading on a board dedicated to Melee HRC and BTT a thread somebody made saying he had the new world record for the Game and Watch HRC. He had topped the other record by something miniscule, like .2 feet. All he did--I'm guessing--is inch the bag forward slightly while doing his bat-drop combos, and otherwise mimic the world record exactly. But you know what? He had the new record. .01 seconds can mean the difference between a gold and silver in the Olympics. I'm pretty damn sure an Olympic level athlete would NOT say "one hundredth of a second? Eh, whatever, I didn't want the gold that badly. What's the difference, really?"
The difference between winning and losing a close Smash match can be one more hit than the other guy. It can be hitting each other at the same time, but you were a little closer to the blast zone than he was. It can happen in the finals of a tournament. Does it matter? Yes. Absolutely. It will not be a trivial difference when it's the difference between having a record--or victory--and not having that record or victory. So yes, mastering this stupidly hard jump to save 1/2 a second really does matter.
Then I learned that you can go through this first room with the right timing so you reach the third enemy fast enough to go over him without waiting at all, and you don't have to jump under him either. I didn't know you could do that. It's actually *easier*, and saves another 1/4 of a second. That's a bit of a relief.
Next room leads you to your first trinket. There's a checkpoint in here, so when you trigger it, if you die you will return to that checkpoint. Trigger the checkpoint, drop into the room with the trinket, and then... there's another checkpoint and a lot of spikes. Reach the trinket, leave the room. Right?
Wrong. If you do the room just right, you skip the checkpoint. Get the trinket, kill yourself, warp one room back, save a second or two. And so on.
Just about EVERY room in this game has a trick like this. If you time a jump right, enter the room at the right angle, go as FAST as possible, you can blitz through this game. And kill yourself a lot in the process because the timing is NOT forgiving. Hell, the game's bad enough to do normally, let alone charging through at full speed.
But if you want to speedrun, there are a few basic tenets. One is that it doesn't matter if something is hard. If it's faster, you must attempt it, because somebody else will. Second is that there is, very often, a faster way than what you have, and it's waiting for you to discover it. You have to be willing to question what you believe is possible. "I can't make this jump." Actually, maybe you can, and you're just not doing it right. And almost all the time, your movements can be just a little sharper, you can cut each corner just a little more closely or jump just a little earlier, and save yourself that tiny bit of time. And through an entire game, it all adds up.
However... bear in mind that in a single segment run--a run where you start the game and beat it in one sitting with no saves--you are probably going to mess up, especially on very difficult games, and especially towards the end. My record for beating this game is currently clocked at 19:14 by the game's timer. The first five minutes or so, I won't tolerate anything but superficial errors. By the end, however, I will begin to accept mistakes, because otherwise I'm wasting the run and the opportunity to practice other parts of the game.
As the run goes on, I will tolerate bigger and bigger errors because the third tenet is accepting your human limits. I am GOING to make an error in the time it takes to complete this game, especially when I attempt frame perfect jumps after a long period of nonstop focus. And if I'm recording, it may still be the best speedrun I've done, even with a few dumb mistakes in it. It may be the best anybody's done, and I'm not going to sneeze at that.
And nobody says I can't replace my own run! So I can choose to do an "inferior" run this time, skipping over a few of the harder tricks in favor of safer, more consistent methods, particularly towards the end when I don't want to waste an otherwise good run. I can keep that as my current record, then I'll have something good to beat. And if nobody else does it in the meantime, I hold the record.
If you've played Mario Kart and done the time attacks (or saw the Speed Racer movie :P), you know that when you try to do a time-trial on a given level, the game races you against the "ghost" of that previous record. When speedrunning, I feel like I'm racing against the ghost of a person who does my run just a little better than me. I make a mistake, and I imagine that some invisible competitor has, until that moment, done everything exactly like me... except without that mistake. So I'm losing, and I have to step my game up.
Because this is not a blog about Speed Racer, Mario Kart, or VVVVVV, and it is a Smash blog, I should be talking about how this relates to Smash. But I think the parallels should be obvious. If you don't dedicate yourself to mastery, somebody with a little more dedication will do what you do, but better, and you will lose. You can decide NOT to practice your Fox ditto chaingrabs, but then you will play somebody who goes pretty even with you, except for those chaingrabs, which he does better. And that could be what clinches the match. Little things add up. Somebody who is just a little sharper, or faster, or a little more consistent will beat you out.
Then again, nobody is saying you have to be the best at anything. That's a personal goal that you set for yourself. But if you want to be better, you can't ignore things and say "it's too hard" or "it's not worth it." Obviously you want to pick things that give you the biggest improvement margins. I can spend my time practicing a frame perfect jump that saves me 1/2 a second in my speedrun, or I can use that time to find a path that saves me a full minute over the course of the game. If I can add a fourth speedrunning tenet, it's that solid overall play trumps highly specialized tricks. Practicing the toughest tricks that only save a tiny bit of time should be secondary to the ones that save you lots of time. In VVVVVV, there's a trick that saves a good eight seconds if you do it right, but can cost you twenty seconds if you mess it up--if you do, you might as well start the run over. When choosing between learning that trick, and one that's stupidly hard and saves me only one second, guess which one I pick. If I had to draw a Melee comparison, it would be the difference between learning to wavedash consistently and learning how to shine b-air people with Fox.
As time goes on though, if you want to continue to have the best record, you have to make your record *better*, because other people will try to improve on it. So you'll need to optimize and improve in places you didn't know were actually possible, and constantly reinvent your own speedrun. You may need to take tactics from other people, which is totally legitimate. It's not about inventing tricks, it's about having the fastest run. Developing a new method for playing the game can *help* you get the best time, but if you adopt somebody's technique and do it better, more power to you. I don't care if my speedrun looks just like everybody else's, provided it's the fastest.
*
Bonus section! So, I also promised on the IC boards to write something special just for IC players. Here it is! Some of it's going to be a little obvious, some of it less so.
Your Guide to Not Letting Nana Get You Killed
Nana is great. She's your best friend, the source of half your damage and probably more than half your KOs. There's a problem though.
Nana's dumb. Very, very dumb. And like somebody who is dumb, she does dumb things. I've become very acquainted with just how dumb she can be. So any time you're going to try and interact with her, remember: she is stupid and will try to get you killed. So here's a list of things that you should keep in mind while trying NOT to let her kill you.
1) You cannot save Nana while she is tumbling. If Nana has lost her double jump and goes into a tumble, she's gone. Forget about her. Killing me won't bring her back.
Okay, that was stupid. Point is, you can't save her from a tumble, so don't try. One important If she gets shined by Fox however, that breaks her out of her tumble, meaning you can belay and teleport her to you. The problem is that there's a Fox right near the edge and belaying leaves you open, but then again, going SoPo against Fox is eighty kinds of annoying, so the risk might be worth it.
Nana cannot break herself out of tumbles except with her double jump. She double jumps the moment her character model becomes level with the main surface of the stage (except on Yoshi's Story, where she will jump towards either the platforms or cloud, depending). If you practice in training mode against another ICs and just hit them off the level, you will soon learn the exact timing for when she jumps. The moment she uses her double jump, you can belay or forward+b, so keep that in mind.
2) When Nana is in hit stun, she will not belay or forward+b with you. Even if she is not sent into a tumble, she won't come to your aid. If you were to up+b at the exact frame she gets hit by the weakspot of Luigi's up+b, she would not teleport to you. Don't rely on her to belay and save you if she's about to get hit. That said, if you can snatch her away from getting hit by using your up+b, it could be worth your while to do so.
3) Nana will not do anything for you while she is teetering on the edge of the stage. She will not up+b with you, she will not forward+b with you. I think you can force her to act if you hit the c-stick but that's it.
4) Sometimes it's best to let her die. If Nana is really far out there and the opponent has a free edgeguard situation, don't bother helping her. It will get the both of you hit. I'm sometimes criticized for not helping my Nana enough, but the problem is that most of the time, belay will leave the both of you wide open. Either she'll die, or you'll eat something really deadly. And it's super tough to aim her so she'll grab the edge, so half the time she won't even make it on her own.
This is where the up+b ledge-cancel comes in handy. It lets you save her when she's kind of close to the stage without putting yourself at a significant positional disadvantage. She becomes invincible above the level, and you get edge invincibility too. Even if she gets hit by the opponent, you're in a prime position to punish them for it, so at least you get a trade. Remember, you lose a stock when Popo dies, not Nana. It feels like the stock is over without her, but you can still attack, deal damage, land stupid d-smashes, and chaingrab a bunch of characters with SoPo.
5) Nana has a special platform AI. When she is on a platform or above it, she goes into a different AI pattern than normal. You cannot up+b and collect her if she is in this mode, even if you are close to her. Try falling through a platform then up+b'ing immediately; she won't join you. If she's stuck above a platform for whatever reason while you're trying to recover, do NOT try and belay because she won't do anything to help you. If you want an example of this, stand on a platform, drop down and immediately use your up+b. Popo will belay, Nana will do nothing. If you wait for a few frames, THEN you belay, she will go with you.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Oh boy, 2010
Welcome to the new year, Smashers. 2009 was an interesting year for Smash, and I'm looking forward to what happens in 2010.
To start, a moment of respect for NES N00b; it's bad enough the Smash community lost a rising Falcon, but a family lots a loving son and the world lost somebody with a bright future ahead of him. This kind of tragedy happens all the time, all over the world, to the point where we forget it's a tragedy; it's not until it strikes close to us in some way that we get reminded of it. I felt it and I never even met him. He was somebody behind a controller in a bunch of YouTube videos, and hiding behind a wall of text on SWF, and I felt it. I will never get the privilege of playing his Falcon, or get the privilege of meeting somebody with a reputation for being a very cool guy. So... farewell, NES n00b.
What does 2010 have in store for us? Pound 4 is almost here, for starters. I wish I could be there, instead of not there (which is where I'll be instead). But I will be cheering from the sidelines for nobody in particular, hoping only that every interesting match gets recorded and I get to watch them all. If there's a livestream, I'll try and tune in as well.
2010 may also yield the finishing of Bipolar, my video, which will shake the very foundations of all you believe to be true about this world and the universe. If I can get my recording equipment back, that is. On the bright side, I've actually pulled off enough cool stuff in tournament that I may just cobble it together from footage out of tourney videos.
Some insight into how I am determining what goes in the video. After a recording session, I go back and comb through the footage, taking notes of combo times. Then I rate each combo from 1-5. 1s and 2s aren't going in the video unless I absolutely NEED them. They're either little or boring, or an otherwise decent string of gameplay that takes too long to do. Not very entertaining, only to be included out of necessity. 3s aren't half-bad, but I'd prefer not to have them in. The majority of the combo video will be 4s, hopefully; these are solid combos that would provoke a decent reaction from a crowd if I pulled them off in tourney.
A 5 is pure gold. Zero to death, unbelievable, audacious, never before seen gold. As you can imagine, this rating is given sparingly. It's not THAT hard to zero to death somebody with ICs, but it's hard to do it in a way that looks interesting. So there may be one or two classics in there, but I'm trying to be creative and do stuff most people haven't seen, including other IC players.
Some combos have a .5 appended to them as an afterthought. "This is like a four, but just a bit better." (Why didn't I just rate the combos from 1-10 then? Because shut up, that's why.) If I ever land something that deserves a 5.5, I'll probably quit Smash right there and devote my life to God or something. After finishing the video, obviously. Additionally, certain clips are rated based on how funny or catastrophic they are. These will go in the credits or worm their way into the video proper.
This is one of the songs that has a 90% chance of being in the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnZtn1a9bM
If it doesn't sound very... icey, that's because it's not supposed to. The video will be segmented based on combos that are mostly out of grabs and combos that are mostly out of ordinary hits. This song is intended to be in the faster-paced, non-grab section. The slower, more grab oriented stuff with consequently have a slower, more relaxed song.
So apart from Pound 4 and my video, there will be tons of tournaments and lots of Melee and probably some Brawl too. And, of course, I'll be writing stuff down. Check back tomorrow for something new.
Peace, and welcome to the new year.
To start, a moment of respect for NES N00b; it's bad enough the Smash community lost a rising Falcon, but a family lots a loving son and the world lost somebody with a bright future ahead of him. This kind of tragedy happens all the time, all over the world, to the point where we forget it's a tragedy; it's not until it strikes close to us in some way that we get reminded of it. I felt it and I never even met him. He was somebody behind a controller in a bunch of YouTube videos, and hiding behind a wall of text on SWF, and I felt it. I will never get the privilege of playing his Falcon, or get the privilege of meeting somebody with a reputation for being a very cool guy. So... farewell, NES n00b.
What does 2010 have in store for us? Pound 4 is almost here, for starters. I wish I could be there, instead of not there (which is where I'll be instead). But I will be cheering from the sidelines for nobody in particular, hoping only that every interesting match gets recorded and I get to watch them all. If there's a livestream, I'll try and tune in as well.
2010 may also yield the finishing of Bipolar, my video, which will shake the very foundations of all you believe to be true about this world and the universe. If I can get my recording equipment back, that is. On the bright side, I've actually pulled off enough cool stuff in tournament that I may just cobble it together from footage out of tourney videos.
Some insight into how I am determining what goes in the video. After a recording session, I go back and comb through the footage, taking notes of combo times. Then I rate each combo from 1-5. 1s and 2s aren't going in the video unless I absolutely NEED them. They're either little or boring, or an otherwise decent string of gameplay that takes too long to do. Not very entertaining, only to be included out of necessity. 3s aren't half-bad, but I'd prefer not to have them in. The majority of the combo video will be 4s, hopefully; these are solid combos that would provoke a decent reaction from a crowd if I pulled them off in tourney.
A 5 is pure gold. Zero to death, unbelievable, audacious, never before seen gold. As you can imagine, this rating is given sparingly. It's not THAT hard to zero to death somebody with ICs, but it's hard to do it in a way that looks interesting. So there may be one or two classics in there, but I'm trying to be creative and do stuff most people haven't seen, including other IC players.
Some combos have a .5 appended to them as an afterthought. "This is like a four, but just a bit better." (Why didn't I just rate the combos from 1-10 then? Because shut up, that's why.) If I ever land something that deserves a 5.5, I'll probably quit Smash right there and devote my life to God or something. After finishing the video, obviously. Additionally, certain clips are rated based on how funny or catastrophic they are. These will go in the credits or worm their way into the video proper.
This is one of the songs that has a 90% chance of being in the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRnZtn1a9bM
If it doesn't sound very... icey, that's because it's not supposed to. The video will be segmented based on combos that are mostly out of grabs and combos that are mostly out of ordinary hits. This song is intended to be in the faster-paced, non-grab section. The slower, more grab oriented stuff with consequently have a slower, more relaxed song.
So apart from Pound 4 and my video, there will be tons of tournaments and lots of Melee and probably some Brawl too. And, of course, I'll be writing stuff down. Check back tomorrow for something new.
Peace, and welcome to the new year.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
In-game resources and concentration
Mleh, this one's kind of rambling, but I hope it proves interesting.
What are the things that your character "has" during a match? You have stock and percent. The match itself has time, which can affect how you play strategically. In the case of the ICs, you have a Nana. As a Peach, sometimes you have a projectile. As a recovering Link or Samus, you may or may not have your grapple available.
Playing well is determined by how these resources are used and expended. Obviously you don't want to lose stocks or gain percent, but sometimes strategically expending those resources is smart. Crouch-canceling comes to mind; SD'ing in a 2v2 match can get you back into the fight faster to help a teammate. Or having your teammate take a stock may cost you resources but give you an immediate advantage in its place.
In one of David Sirlin's articles (can't find it at the moment) he mentions that in Starcraft there are minerals, gas and units as your resources. However, there is another resource that players have, which is attention.
Where you put your attention is incredibly important. There are times where you have to be focusing on different aspects of the match, otherwise you screw up. You have to pay attention to executing this combo, then you have to pay attention to guessing this tech-chase, and so on.
You can also think of your attention placement as a strategic decision. It takes a lot of concentration to execute difficult technical maneuvers; if you believe your opponent to be weak against technical rushdown, it might be a good idea to stop thinking and start hammering him with relentless shield pressure. I try not to be extra technical so that I can instead pay attention to guessing what my opponent will do. However, one of my friends was also a mentally focused player, but had trouble dealing with really fast players. When I needed to beat him, I stopped worrying about what he would do and focused instead on having an extremely fast and tight aggressive game so he wouldn't have time to think at all.
Now for a different story! I recently started learning some Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and my friend was showing me basic combos and giving me some idea about the flow of a typical round. So, having learned only one or two useful combos, I tried playing against a different friend named Joe who was only a little better than me.
I had no idea where to put my attention. It didn't matter if I could guess when Joe was going to throw out his assist, because I didn't know what to do. I also couldn't focus on what I wanted to do, because then I was just attacking blindly and running into his stuff. It took a lot of rounds before I didn't have to consciously remember some of the game's most basic mechanics, but afterwards I immediately started landing punishes with significantly more efficiency. Of course, I'm still terrible :)
I bring that up to demonstrate a few things. First, unless you completely understand something, you will use extra attention on it. Second, because you only have so much attention to pay, if you aren't spending it in the appropriate area at the appropriate time, you will get distracted and screw up.
So let's recap. Performing unusually challenging technical stuff takes up your attention (though this differs from player to player). Trying to watch for a specific approach, or look for a particular opening takes up your attention. Figuring out what move you want to use at any moment takes up your attention. If you know exactly what the opponent will do next, and your technical game is 100% ingrained into your hands, and you always automatically know what move works best, then you don't have to pay attention at all to win. It would actually be accurate to say that you aren't paying attention to more things than other people; instead, you don't need to pay attention because you perceive those things automatically.
Assuming your brain doesn't instantly and perfectly process every detail of the match, you will have to swap your focus around a lot. It's not enough to say "I need to concentrate better," but you have to know what to concentrate on at a given point. You have to focus on watching the opening, then you swap your focus to tracking DI for your grab combo. Then you swap again to see if he'll land on a platform or bounce off, then you move over into calling his tech. However, if you know that he always techs left when he lands on the right platform of Battlefield, you can focus on spacing your tech-chase knee perfectly instead. Then you'll be paying attention to how many taunts you can get away with before they respawn.
In order to make use of this knowledge, it's incredibly important to understand your own capabilities. You need to know what you can do automatically and with great consistency, and make that the foundation of your game.
There's more though. Being able to shift your opponent's attention during a match is a valuable skill, and an important part of this game's mental battle. If your approaches are weird and unorthodox, your opponent must make a choice. They will either start putting attention on trying to understand your playstyle and mentality--which increases the likelihood that they make other mistakes--or they will ignore it, which increases the odds they will make bad decisions.
If you mix up your rhythm, the opponent can become distracted while trying to figure out your erratic movement patterns. If you alternate between rapid-fire technical rushdown and patient, turtle style defensiveness, the other guy will become preoccupied trying to figure out what on earth you're about to do next, which can make him impulsive and less attentive to things like smart positioning, good mix-ups, or even the right timing for a shffl'd n-air.
There are a million things that can shift your attention; good focus is based on knowing when, where, and why it happens and being in control of it. The first step is shutting out ALL external factors, because those have nothing to do with whether you should be shield pressuring with drill-shines or spacing cross-up back-airs. After that, it's up to you and understanding your own skillset. Know what you can do with minimal focus, and put that attention elsewhere.
I'm sorry that rambled so much, but I hope it proved interesting nonetheless. Peace.
Edit: I was really out of it when I posted this and left a few random sentences unfinished. I apologize to anybody confused by my spaced-out silliness.
What are the things that your character "has" during a match? You have stock and percent. The match itself has time, which can affect how you play strategically. In the case of the ICs, you have a Nana. As a Peach, sometimes you have a projectile. As a recovering Link or Samus, you may or may not have your grapple available.
Playing well is determined by how these resources are used and expended. Obviously you don't want to lose stocks or gain percent, but sometimes strategically expending those resources is smart. Crouch-canceling comes to mind; SD'ing in a 2v2 match can get you back into the fight faster to help a teammate. Or having your teammate take a stock may cost you resources but give you an immediate advantage in its place.
In one of David Sirlin's articles (can't find it at the moment) he mentions that in Starcraft there are minerals, gas and units as your resources. However, there is another resource that players have, which is attention.
Where you put your attention is incredibly important. There are times where you have to be focusing on different aspects of the match, otherwise you screw up. You have to pay attention to executing this combo, then you have to pay attention to guessing this tech-chase, and so on.
You can also think of your attention placement as a strategic decision. It takes a lot of concentration to execute difficult technical maneuvers; if you believe your opponent to be weak against technical rushdown, it might be a good idea to stop thinking and start hammering him with relentless shield pressure. I try not to be extra technical so that I can instead pay attention to guessing what my opponent will do. However, one of my friends was also a mentally focused player, but had trouble dealing with really fast players. When I needed to beat him, I stopped worrying about what he would do and focused instead on having an extremely fast and tight aggressive game so he wouldn't have time to think at all.
Now for a different story! I recently started learning some Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and my friend was showing me basic combos and giving me some idea about the flow of a typical round. So, having learned only one or two useful combos, I tried playing against a different friend named Joe who was only a little better than me.
I had no idea where to put my attention. It didn't matter if I could guess when Joe was going to throw out his assist, because I didn't know what to do. I also couldn't focus on what I wanted to do, because then I was just attacking blindly and running into his stuff. It took a lot of rounds before I didn't have to consciously remember some of the game's most basic mechanics, but afterwards I immediately started landing punishes with significantly more efficiency. Of course, I'm still terrible :)
I bring that up to demonstrate a few things. First, unless you completely understand something, you will use extra attention on it. Second, because you only have so much attention to pay, if you aren't spending it in the appropriate area at the appropriate time, you will get distracted and screw up.
So let's recap. Performing unusually challenging technical stuff takes up your attention (though this differs from player to player). Trying to watch for a specific approach, or look for a particular opening takes up your attention. Figuring out what move you want to use at any moment takes up your attention. If you know exactly what the opponent will do next, and your technical game is 100% ingrained into your hands, and you always automatically know what move works best, then you don't have to pay attention at all to win. It would actually be accurate to say that you aren't paying attention to more things than other people; instead, you don't need to pay attention because you perceive those things automatically.
Assuming your brain doesn't instantly and perfectly process every detail of the match, you will have to swap your focus around a lot. It's not enough to say "I need to concentrate better," but you have to know what to concentrate on at a given point. You have to focus on watching the opening, then you swap your focus to tracking DI for your grab combo. Then you swap again to see if he'll land on a platform or bounce off, then you move over into calling his tech. However, if you know that he always techs left when he lands on the right platform of Battlefield, you can focus on spacing your tech-chase knee perfectly instead. Then you'll be paying attention to how many taunts you can get away with before they respawn.
In order to make use of this knowledge, it's incredibly important to understand your own capabilities. You need to know what you can do automatically and with great consistency, and make that the foundation of your game.
There's more though. Being able to shift your opponent's attention during a match is a valuable skill, and an important part of this game's mental battle. If your approaches are weird and unorthodox, your opponent must make a choice. They will either start putting attention on trying to understand your playstyle and mentality--which increases the likelihood that they make other mistakes--or they will ignore it, which increases the odds they will make bad decisions.
If you mix up your rhythm, the opponent can become distracted while trying to figure out your erratic movement patterns. If you alternate between rapid-fire technical rushdown and patient, turtle style defensiveness, the other guy will become preoccupied trying to figure out what on earth you're about to do next, which can make him impulsive and less attentive to things like smart positioning, good mix-ups, or even the right timing for a shffl'd n-air.
There are a million things that can shift your attention; good focus is based on knowing when, where, and why it happens and being in control of it. The first step is shutting out ALL external factors, because those have nothing to do with whether you should be shield pressuring with drill-shines or spacing cross-up back-airs. After that, it's up to you and understanding your own skillset. Know what you can do with minimal focus, and put that attention elsewhere.
I'm sorry that rambled so much, but I hope it proved interesting nonetheless. Peace.
Edit: I was really out of it when I posted this and left a few random sentences unfinished. I apologize to anybody confused by my spaced-out silliness.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Blech
So my computer, a five year-old Dell laptop with enough cracks in it to be classified literally as "falling apart," and also containing all my articles-in-progress, has died.
I lost quite a bit of work in there, so that bites. Just wanted to update and say that because I haven't updated lately at all, and didn't want anyone to think I'd forgotten. I've just been working on several things that have all now vanished.
In the words of a great philosopher, "wah." But I'll have some stuff soon anyhow. Promise.
Peace.
I lost quite a bit of work in there, so that bites. Just wanted to update and say that because I haven't updated lately at all, and didn't want anyone to think I'd forgotten. I've just been working on several things that have all now vanished.
In the words of a great philosopher, "wah." But I'll have some stuff soon anyhow. Promise.
Peace.
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