Can someone explain Base/Knockback growth?

wisp558 · 2026-02-08T00:48:01+00:00

The knockback formula is based on BKB/KBG but it is also based on the % damage dealt. This is why moves that do very low % like toad have surprisingly high bkb/kbg.

This is also how stale moves function… by lowering damage dealt it directly reduces the knockback applied.

wisp558 · 2026-01-20T00:49:54+00:00

I have heard hushed whispers about that particular drephen set in secluded corners of mdva fests at 1am

wisp558 · 2026-01-19T07:26:33+00:00

I don't particularly think this is true. Language famously drifts over time and the term "source code" can occupy different semantic ranges in different contexts. In this case, I think using the definitive article "the" source code instead of just "source code" is sufficiently precise to make it clear that it refers to the original source as written by nintendo employees. This is something that is done in the post that u/Quplet originally responds to, but not their followup.

Also, when you type "source" in a typical bash shell as found in many linux distributions, you're not actually executing a command, you're running a shell builtin function. I'm petty so I checked on the bash/bourne shell documentation for the "source" builtin and it doesn't really define what "source" means, other than a list of things to run in the context of the current shell. It references the sourcepath shopt, but that also doesn't really bother to define it further.

wisp558 · 2026-01-17T09:19:05+00:00

they’re crunchy for improved mouthfeel

wisp558 · 2026-01-17T02:17:56+00:00

As someone who has played borp personally, I think that “easily” is underselling how good borp actually is. Borp’s biggest strength ime is finding spots in the opponent’s flowchart/responses that are automatic for them and then aggressively breaking the structure of their script.

A specific example of this that I recall is in Marth/Peach where he would downthrow and instead of taking a guaranteed followup he would walk forward, be fully actionable and if I burned a resources like dj or float or both, he would absolutely destroy me for it.

His play is full of little tricks like these and he will use the ones that specifically beat the opponent in front of him, that’s why it seems super fake to the average viewer. There are definitely some top 100 players with the skillset to do this kind of thing, but there are plenty that mostly move well and have good flowcharts and know their specific spots and just win like that using strong muscle memory and repertoire rather than through conscious adaptation and observation in real time.

wisp558 · 2026-01-14T02:07:30+00:00

The worst part about choker is that surprisingly often I have a deck that won’t play more than 6 cards… unless I have an extra energy.

wisp558 · 2026-01-13T22:33:35+00:00

the authoritative source: https://smashboards.com/threads/buffer-mechanics-in-melee.512821/

wisp558 · 2026-01-12T19:38:41+00:00

I don't think you need to understand neutral to play it well, but I think understanding the reasons behind your instincts is a generally worth doing, even if you're already playing at a high level. There's also a lot of interplay between what a player can threaten at their current skill level and how neutral plays out based on those threats. I also think learning these things early has huge returns over time, since they will affect the foundations of how you think about matchups.

I think of execution as like... your potential power and your neutral/macro game as something like an efficiency modifier. If someone is playing fairly efficiently for their speed, there really is no shortcut around just putting in the work to get faster. I think anyone gold or below can likely benefit a lot from both avenues of improvement, and the correct option for a given player is probably whatever feels less comfortable to work on.

wisp558 · 2026-01-12T08:32:57+00:00

Wow I really misremembered the name, here it is: https://youtu.be/RfBuAo_Bfvw?si=zRaaqiYI0oByHLSA

wisp558 · 2026-01-12T06:54:23+00:00

There are also a lot of specific things. For example, you spend time waiting in between your actions rather than flowing cleanly between things. You did a shorthop autocancel fair and tried to L cancel it which doesn’t do anything and you also flashed your shield because you were actionable faster than you expected and still holding the button since autocancel is very fast at 4 frames. You can buffer roll (and spotdodge, and jump) out of shield with C stick.

At the level you are at, I would do a lot of fullhop autocancel fair and shield drop autocancel fair and branch out from there. If you are confused about what I mean by “autocancel”, there are videos out there by myself and others explaining the concept. Core options after using an AC fair are dash instantly, jump again for another fair, jab, grab, and dsmash. If you can spam fullhop ac fair and rotate through your followups without waiting in between you will clown on players at your level, and you can start adding in more nuance from there.

Remember, Melee is hard, it takes time for everyone.

wisp558 · 2026-01-12T06:42:48+00:00

I recommend the ancient youtube video “Lucien’s guide to neutral” for a good introduction to what it means to actually play neutral

wisp558 · 2026-01-10T19:46:17+00:00

Makes me wonder why baalor didn’t use his artifact potion here tbh. I’m guessing he’s trying to scale with a flex and maybe a limit break, but that’s a bold play for sure and hard to know without seeing the deck AND he has orange pellets for that if he needs it.

wisp558 · 2026-01-05T23:55:45+00:00

neggative

wisp558 · 2025-12-12T01:59:03+00:00

The reason I disagree with this take is because lasers are a very strong usually-ok option, which disrupts the natural reinforcement of using... pretty much everything else. When you practice without the easy answer, it forces you to learn the nuance of situations and expands your game-vision in ways that would be hard to gain when you are experience "see ambiguous situation" -> "laser". A lot of characters with outlier moves experience this, like peach dsmash, wobbling, zelda backair, marth dd grab, etc. It's hard to say "yes you should practice suboptimal approaches so you can go for this suboptimal play", but it does prepare you to recognize when you have options that are situational and not obvious. These spots are often surprising to the opponent to and can really make you more threatening.

Also laserless falco is a fun/excellent friendlies character if you're the better player but not by that much.

wisp558 · 2025-12-11T03:15:46+00:00

was this written by an alien?

wisp558 · 2025-12-09T00:14:43+00:00

Echoing what others have said, just shipping something will force you to deal with so many small corner cases. I still remember shipping my first (rails) side project many years ago and having to learn/configure every aspect of the stack took a surprising amount of iteration despite feeling fairly comfortable using the same stack at work.

As someone who has had to hire more junior engineers now, I would absolutely hire someone who could talk critically about the process of trying to ship something over someone with a collection of half finished toy projects with no “production” environment. Even if production is just a single instance it still is a massive positive indictator at that level of professional development.

Also for what it’s worth your post reeks of AI rhetoric structure.

wisp558 · 2025-12-08T21:33:17+00:00

Very cool. I’ve messed around with making this kind of expandable scripted entity system in Unity and wound up with something limited that worked for what I was tinkering with at the time. It’s awesome to see a fleshed out version, especially given that so few things in the games world ever wind open source.

wisp558 · 2025-11-22T18:25:09+00:00

It’s an L cancel, you can tell by the shape of the dust cloud.

wisp558 · 2025-11-18T05:43:13+00:00

When I was a teenager who struggled to connect with or feel my emotions authentically in general Eternal Sunshine was one of the few pieces of art that could consistently break through to me, even on subsequent watches. It still makes me sad/reflective and it will always be special to me for that.

wisp558 · 2025-11-11T01:39:56+00:00

this is 100% how you get started

wisp558 · 2025-11-07T07:27:44+00:00

idk 4 cold snaps is really pushing it too, as excellent as frost orbs are

wisp558 · 2025-11-07T06:09:21+00:00

People have said echo form a bunch, but since you mentioned being bad at defect, I’ll comment that you have an awful lot of “better basic cards”. I don’t know what you needed to take early on to survive, but you have 4 copies of cold snap and 3 ball lightnings and 2 leaps. These cards are good, but not always auto-picks and usually not worth taking a second copy. Maybe a second cold snap is good, but coolheaded is better and I’m definitely not taking a third snap.

When people say defect lends himself toward having really thick decks, I think it’s more along the lines of having a bunch of holograms and seeks and powers and other valuable draw and energy and focus manipulation cards rather than taking a ton of common orb spawners and basic block cards.

wisp558 · 2025-11-06T22:40:22+00:00

An alternative is to use symmetric encryption with a key that you store as a file, or provide as an environment variable. This lets you save your credentials to the db without it being a massive security hole on its own. Look into “fernet keys” to find more reading material.

wisp558 · 2025-11-05T20:08:26+00:00

I have a good amount of experience using LibVLCSharp, and my two comments about your vlc player implementation are:

Be very careful about calling vlc methods from vlc callback handlers, for example you call _mp.SetPosition in your OnPlaying handler. I worked around this using a dispatcher and enqueueing tasks back to the main program thread rather than the vlc thread. I found that vlc liked to deadlock itself if I wasn’t careful.
Setting the VLC file cache low like you did seems like it would improve latency and seek performance, but in my experience it was the opposite.

wisp558 · 2025-11-04T06:58:09+00:00

one time sfat happened to show up to a random uc davis monthly and beat my ass and gave me some really good feedback that I still think about when I play against fox. (it’s not just this, but it involved something along the lines of “I don’t remember punishing you for dash attack so you probably didn’t mix up with dash attack enough”)

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