Identy theft... and new updates

Long time no see dear fellowers. Seems like every post starts with "long time no see :p"
I'm a lazy person, sorry about that :D

Well, many things happened during the last couple of months.
WGC 2010! World gaming championship. Which was in Emirates mall.. And which was won by me :p
The SF4 tournament that is. With the money I won, I bought couple of computer monitors for my eyefinity set up :)

In the competition many players participated.. The organization ... Was not really organized. People losing and are removed from the competition.. Get back because they give a lame excuse.. Or because they lost on their first match against last year's Champ (me).. So they get back because the organizers say.. "It was cruel for them to have their first match with me"... Really?
Anyways, I'll just beat them again.. But still this isn't reaaly the point.
In the end, 3 were left for the finals, so we played against each other so only two are selected for the finals. The three were me, the guy I won first round, and an awesome ken player.
Me and ken kicked the hell out of the 3rd guy "Rufus". Then my game with ken, I lost 1-2, viper-ken match up is fairly close 5-5. But it looked like he had good experience with viper. His safe jumps were perfect so were his kara grabs and combos. Once I understood him it was already too late. But I got the last round "2-1", so now that both of us have went to the finals, my plan for now was to keep my distance, and never quick stand, this seems to have confused the hell out of him. Beside it looked like he couldn't handle tech grabs that well. So I won him 3-0 and won the competition :)

Aside from that, my PS3 got the yellow light of death. And I did not bother fixing it yet. So today, a friend of mine phoned me and asked if I have a psn called "mewtwo" I asked him no, why? He told me this guy plays viper and claims that he is me, he told my friend that he is "SedoSan".. Was kind of interesting for me really. Made me feel famous :p, for this reason, I decided to fix my ps3 and meet my imposter in a friendly game.
As for now, I'm currently in a conference listening to some guy discussing couple of stuff about energy saving. And writing this while I'm sitting.. Might edit more once I get home, add some photos and links. In two hours is my turn to present in front of many oil companies CEOs and GMs and many Professors and doctors.. Not a big deal, really.. :p
Peace.

more DRAMA! lol

Long time ago, when I first started getting good in SFIV, I was playing online, normally, then suddenly a Rodoth0 guy joins my room, it was laggy, he won 6-5, then he sends me a message saying that I suck and whatever, the usual trolling. I tell him that it is lag but he just keeps trolling, I then knew from a friend that he is only a kid. The next day he changes his comment to "SedoSan Can't beat me", or something like that. I wouldn't care less. But again he joins my room the following day. There was no lag this time, so I decided to video record the matches. and so I do. I win like 7-2 I can't remember, but now he spams me with rage and hate mail, so I made this little compilation of the matches we had and uploaded it online on youtube.



As you can see, I take it pretty hard on this kid. But he had it coming anyways. So he started getting all mad and emo about it. So why am I saying this?

Couple of days ago, I played with this guy "Saamsoom", he added me to my friendlist, i had no idea who this was. I win 4 matches, then he finally win the 5th and suddenly leaves, he sent me a msg saying "I gtg". couple of days later this guy on youtube "Ward_Royal" tells me to check a video uploaded by saamsoom vs me, So I did, guess what, Saamsoom is Rodoth0, lol. Then he writes "Thats Sedosan you talk about" something like this. I guess kids forget their ass whopping lessons. but then he comments, this is to show how childish you are showing videos of you playing SSFIV.

Now really, am I being a child for uploading my videos? Then I guess everyone with their videos uploaded are childish, then you are also a child?, well, u already are a kid~ so meh, lol... I'm not sure why he is pissed. I mean you can see the 4 wins next to my name in the vid. I will post a link below. whats funny also, I barely wrote a comment, then he replies "Why are you upset?" I think this guys knows me better than I know myself!, he knows that I am Upset! lol. you guys might think why am I writing this post? am I really upset? well, I am bored. and this is kinda funny. I tried being nice with him with my comments, but he just deletes them. lol, so why not write about it here? some guys can get a laugh out of this.

This is the link for the comment page, check it out.

If you check his channel, you'd notice that his favorite book is... Twilight. Great..
also from the comments you can see that he gathered his friends and asked them to comment, lol. funny replies, sedo nedo, i cracked at this one, another one, i didnt think you are noob sedo!, i also rofl'd at this one, so I am guessing if you win 4 times, then lose once, you are a noob. thats new, but ok~ i guess :D you can also see some deleted replies.

I just mentioned this in my last post. About why am I uploading vids to youtube, you can check my last post, if you wanna know why :P!

YouTube Videos!

Hello Followers!!
long time no see~
nothing new, same old stupid drama, some old hate mail. lol..
not worth mentioning.

BUT!
I finally got a good HD recorder from a friend!
the HD-PVR, really really good. but saves to stupid formats that I can't work with unless i convert again -_-.

Anyways, I've uploaded a number of my SSFIV matches into my youtube channel and here is the link:

SedoSan youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8CAB1925207FA084

I wanted to upload a lot more, but dealing with 200MB+ files and a very bad connection (20 minutes disconnection rate).. it was kinda hard.

once I get a more stabilized connection I will upload a bunch more.
Some might think I only upload matches that I win in. First of all I upload matches where I think I performed good at. Because no one wants to look at a boring match where nothing interesting is happening. Even if I win but it was not interesting I do not upload. Secondly. I win most of the time, so it is hard to find interesting matches that I lost at, in a matter of fact, I have couple of matches that I lost in, and I wanted to upload them, but the other guy, who is my friend, does not want his videos to be online. So I did not post them yet, once I get an editing program I will take off the opponent names and I will upload more vids!

I hope you would enjoy.

Nice people around the globe

Hello followers!
Been sometime since I wrote something interesting. Between my study and my dentist appointments, there is rarely enough time to spend blogging :(

On my way to the dentist today I took a cab since my car was not available. Relatively cool drive. I've reached my destination but the problem was that the driver did not have a change. So he tells me its on the house. Well it is practically his fault for not having change. But I felt sorry for him. I really did not want to leave without paying him. But there was no other way. So I just walked away.

Guys, if you see a cab plate AD3335 please give him 5 dirhams extra. He deserves it. Of course you are not obligated but it would be nice. Maybe remind him of me. It will bring him joy. Well, time for some SSFIV :p.

Peace out.

Disturbed people, further talk

You guys probably have got bored now from all my posts about weird, trolls and strange people online. Well, as I have chosen to ignore these type of gamers. Some of them still amaze me with their behavior.

uaesuperman. a friend of a friend of mine. I found him online and engage in a battle with him. I won him six to nothing. I leave because I had some business in real life to do. He sends me a message of lots of hatred. I chose not to reply. The next day he sends a message of apology and I accept. Some other day later, I enter a room with multiple people. uaesuperman is one of them. I get flawless 20ish wins and leave. He sends me a message saying "F#%@, you never lose? get a life" or something like that. I chose to ignore. Finally yesterday I find him in a room and we played against each other. He picks viper and so did I. He won the first round with a lucky Ultra. The second round it gets really laggy and I got kicked from the PS network. He sends a message saying "????", by this time I really got bothered with people sending such messages. Don't you realize by now if the game starts lagging a lot then the participant left it means that he got disconnected? Anyways I try to rush signing in again to rejoin the room to show that it was not intentional. So after a couple of matches my turn finally came and I played against this guy again. This time I pick Balrog against his new viper. I totally annihilated him the first round. the second round as he was getting disparate he did an Ultra and he disconnected. I thought PSN has kicked me out as it said "Lost connection to playstation netowkr" message.

So anyways, I decide to just leave because it is too troublesome to keep getting disconnected. But guess what. This guy sends me a message saying "You piece of shit I was winning you with viper and you disconnected. And I did the same thing when you chose balrog, I disconnected so you wont take that win. I worked very hard with viper and I got all her challenges done". After this message I realize how narrow minded he was and what type of people he is. I replied something like this, first of all you saw all the lag in the second round prior to my D/C, I got kicked from PSN, I did not just disconnect. I do not run from my battles. And I would be more than happy to play Viper vs Viper again later. Then I talked about how he was wrong about thinking that he was winning. Viper vs Viper matches are way too random to decide which are the better one. One week of playing viper constantly does not mean that he will win with her. This is the main reason I picked balrog. I almost won both rounds perfect. Then I tell him that he has a very short temper and that he should not use that kind of words, specially to people older than him.

He replies with something like "It is not my problem that you got D/C, and I have short temper because I am from Baniyas."

Well, I don't know how its my problem that I got disconnected from PSN. And you can't use the excuse for short temper. Anyways I thought I could befriend him. But I was wrong. I added him to my block list. End of story.

Second guy is Mistgun1, I remember having a problem with this guy from SF4 and him deleting me for some reason I forgot. Anyways I finally find him again in SSF4 and join his room. He kicks me. I joined again to just get kicked again. So I made a new account with a different name and joined his game. He did not kick this time. I played with him and got a shattering win. Of course I recorded it. It felt good. LoL.

Hopefully I will write more useful posts next time. But this was just to take it out of my system.

Serious training ahead.

Hello my beloved readers :P

anyways, lately, I discovered that I suck :P, well, compared to the real top tier players up there.

While my play style is unique and I have created lots of set ups for my game play. There is still one issue. Missing up inputs!

In the pro world, e.g. the Japanese league. Do you see anyone missing up his combo or whatever move their doing? In these high level games everyone is supposed to have mastered their inputs! You'd never see a Zangief jump with a punch coming out because he meant to do his grab but missed up. You'd never see a Ryu doing a SRK instead of an Ultra after a SRK FADC. Well, you might see, but I do not believe it would go above 5% error.

If you have your style and technique mastered. Imagine now added to that never missing a single combo? As I said above, in the pro league, everyone is expected to have mastered their inputs. The difference on who's gonna win is who knows the match up better. knowing the match up includes fast reaction to moves as well. Also some mix-ups and mind games. But if you know your match up, these two wont be as bothersome.

Now what have I done? I admit I dont spend enough time in training room. In real matches I keep missing some important combos and I eat ultras because of that. My accuracy is around 50% which is absolutely unacceptable. While it is true that my accuracy is around 50% I try to stick to easy combos and go for the mix-ups that viper has. But If I have like maybe even 80% accuracy on her more advanced moves I'd be even more annoying to play against :P.

I started working on my performance yesterday by first creating a table of tasks. These tasks are the moves that are most important to my character "Viper". I tried each task for a number of times and I would check my accuracy with that move. The moves I have most trouble with I would practice them more and repeat them daily for an undecided amount of times.



As we can see from the table, I've created my tasks which are around 16 moves. I gave each a bar for difficulty to pull out out of 5 and the importance of the move for me. Then an "out of" bar which shows how many times I have to do it to check my performance. Then as we can see under the 2nd of June which was yesterday there is the total which shows how many times I have successfully managed to pull out the move out of the limit number. I have 2 different percentages. The first one shows the normal percentage for all tasks, while the 2nd one applies the difficulty into it. because if I perform an easy move with 50% and a very hard move with 10% the normal average should be around 30% but the real average should be somewhere around 15~20% So as seen sadly my viper is around 50% only on success rate. (Advanced technique though).

now in the second table down is the daily repetition table. I haven't really decide what the formula for it should be. I simply used (1-%)*3*Importance*Difficulty+10
the less % I have the more repetitions I will do. 3 is a fixed number that I found reliably convenient, and finally the more difficult and important the move is the more I think I should repeat it. The final +10 is a fixed value in order if I perfected a move, I should still practice it so I wont get rusty :P

I might change the formula depending on how things go. So, now I test my performance everyday and depending on that I get a new table for the number of repetitions for the next day.

Some of the tasks have 1 and 2 in them, these are for the sides I'm on. 1 for being on the left side, 2 is for the right side.

Hmmm, I thought this post would've been a lil longer.. but oh well, I hope my method would help any of you guys if you think your performance is not up top notch. And if any has his/her own method please do share!

Well what am I doing here! time to go to training room!! :D

How to deal with scrubs!

You meet lots of scrubs online that are irritating to play against. So how do you deal with them? Playing against average players to a higher level have different strategies and tactics than those of lower levels, AKA Scrubs.

I am writing this for a friend who had a rough time with scrubs when he tried to play with a new character.

First I will show you what characters scrubs mostly use.
*Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Zangief, Sagat, Akuma*
The ones that they rarely choose.
*Cammy, Guile*
And from the new characters.
*Adon, Juri*

Before discussing character match up against scrubs let me explain what scrubs mostly do....

SHORYUUUUUUUUKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

Well, we get different types of scrubs, but I will come back to that later, one thing they all have in common, the spam.

Usually scrubs have no patience. They have to use the only moves they know, which most of the time is the shoryuken. Now as I said above, some tactics will not work against scrubs, those tactics are the overheads. overhead attacks will NEVER work on a scrub, overhead usually takes more time than other normals. and since scrubs have no patience whatsoever, you will see an EX-Shoryuken Struck up your... face. Never use an overhead against a scrub.

Mix-up tech throw wont work as well, the same reason as the above, they will spam special up your face. Try your best not to mess up your combo, 1 miss and you will eat a shoryuken. If in doubt, stick to B&B moves.

Since they mash all the time, you can take that to your advantage. After a block string, stop attack and just stay guarding, you will see a shoryuken coming. punish it. Keep doing that, scrubs never learn, if they do, they wont be called scrubs.

A very lovely way to bait scrubs is the back dash. After a special that puts both players almost in the same recovery time, try to backdash, you will see your opponent flying in air with fire on their arms but with no opponents in air with them. put your evil laugh on, and PUNISH.

I would say the worst type of scrubs is the one that knows how to throw, this person will be almost random to you. You won't be able to anticipate their next move. For this type of people, you might wanna practice on Option Selecting. I wrote a previous post about OS if you wanna check it out. Basically if you are in doubt, guard down and press jab + short, if they try to throw, you will tech it. Else if they shoryuken, you will stay down guarding.

Now for the most annoying type of scrubs, is the type that does not know that there is a forward or up direction, they just jump backwards, the whole game they're on air. throwing hadoukens or kunais, land do a projectile, then repeat. This type is hard to hit because of their backward jump, they have some form of defense that you can't approach them, so you have to figure a way to hit them. If you get close enough to them, they will sweep. for me playing viper, I try to seismo their ground as soon as they land, and its working pretty well. If you have more health than them, then just don't bother following them, let them fly in their own world in the end of the TV corner. Taunt or do whatever. Since this type jumps a lot, you can almost anticipate any jump coming in, so you can counter with a jumping fierce or jumping roundhouse depending on your character. Careful though if they have an anti-air they will mash it instead. *Sometimes*.

Moving to character specific, I'd say "Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Sagat" are in the same category. The shoryuken spammers. Mostly ken is the most notorious for being a shoryuken spammer. Just bait these shoryukens and you're fine. careful on an ex-srk Ultra I can pop out and you'd eat it if you wont time your punishment correctly. I know I ate it once when I tried to do Fuerte's RSF. For Ryu, his tatsumaki might be spammed, your anti-air normal is ftw here, when he's just above you, use it. For Akuma, he's going to jump a lot. so you can use that to your advantage. You can try to anticipate an air hadouken and dash underneath to punish. Akuma's ultra one can pop out just like a shoryuken. though some scrubs will make it so obvious that they will use the ultra. As for Sagat, thank god he got nurfed, a lucky scrub ex-srk eats 1/3 your bar. The same goes to him as ken's, though tiger knee might pop up instead. and from far, fire balls.

Scrub Zangief is not to be feared! the Lariat spammer! a very easy way to break that. jump upwards and hit with a normal that has priority over Zangief's lariat. I wrote a post about the upward jump, check it out. Zangief's green hand is very punishable, even on hit. so use it to your advantage. A scruby gief wont know mix ups, so you wont have to worry about a random grab.

Scrub Blanka is a pain. Some characters can't punish his ball on block, so it might be a bit difficult. but for some character, like fuerte can run -> slide to punish his blocked ball. Jumping ins on Blanka might not work as they tend to use his electricity. Though sometimes a jump in would break it if you time it correctly.
Blanka's ball can be interrupted by a jab or strong just before he hits you. so you can try that. Blanka's other ball where he goes up and lands on you can be Focus Attacked. So when you see that coming, start charging your Focus Attack and once he land release it. Then punish as desired.

as for Cammy, her srk has insane priority. you will see it a lot, try to anticipate it and punish. her screw move is punishable on block, but try to act fast because mostly a srk will come out after it. Lastly her move where she spins in the air to grab you can be dashed under to avoid it.

I haven't seen many scrubs who would pick guile, but I found someone and he's was so annoying, I wrote about him in my last post. seezar, just jumps backward and sonic boom, if you get close, he would sweep.
For guile, his sweep hits twice, you can try and punish between his two kicks. Mainly for charge characters, you can try and change positions from left to right or right to left to screw your opponent's charging.

for the new characters, Juri is annoying, her air move where she slides on you breaks your FA! I think it's too nooby friendly. You can just block and punish if they do the whole animation. Her legs fan move has too many hits so you can't FA that. usually Juri gonna pick Ultra II, so you can bait that out of them when they get it.

finally for Adon, they will spam his wall dive kick followed by his srk. You can actually punish his wall dive as he's getting to you, or you can wait for them to srk afterwards and punish.

Some other characters scrubs might pick are Balrog (Boxer), they will spam headbutt. If you anticipate it you can hit low followed by any special, headbutt can be easily broken by a low hit. Or you can just wait for it then punish but the punishing window is short.
Vega (Clas), they will keep spamming wall jumps, Focus Attack it and punish accordingly.

If you want to get better you should play against good players. but sometimes only scrubs are available online at a given time. So, yeah..
Enjoy.

Haters, Part II

I finally finished my projects last week and entered 3 different competitions with these projects. Won IEEE 1st place in "Made in UAE" category, Won IEEE 2nd place in "Common Design" category, and Won 2nd place and Best Idea in "ESREC'2010". It was a week full of awards ^_^!

So now that I'm done from these stuff, I finally entered the online world of SSFIV! I liked the lobby system and how you can spectate matches. But one thing I did not like... THIS MAKES HATERS EVEN HATE MORE! lol.

I'm so gonna sound arrogant in this post. So guys bare with me on this one.

Back in the days, when you beat someone up badly, they would have the idea that their big bro or their pro friend would come and kick my ass later on. But now that SSFIV supports multiple player. This guy watches his beloved ones die and suffer in pain by the same hands that took away his life. Suddenly you see your mail box being spammed by hate mail. lately I've became to a realization. IGNORE THESE MESSAGES. they're too annoying to reply. Don't even bother opening them. That's what I started to do.

around 4 days ago, I joined this room that was almost full, I finally get my turn and I kept my position at top for around 25 matches. one of the players namely "seezar" is a scruby Guile, "Sonic boom, Sweep, Jump Backwards, Sweep, Repeat". I'm not sure if he knows that Guile has another special move. Anyways, I win this guy like with 4 perfects, until now everything is going smooth, then my friend joins this lobby, we had a very close game, he won eventually. So I see a message from seezar, it was like this "You NOOB! you spammer!, this guy won you with effort!!" and something like that. Well, if playing viper and using her FFF/SJFADC/SJC-Seismo is being noobish, then I guess I am a Noob.

Next round when I reached on top again it was against my friend also, so when the round started, this seezar guy started spamming empty messages to me hoping that I would lose. Well, I did not lose, so, let him burn more! I blocked this guy afterwards.

Next day, I join a game, I find the same guy in the lobby, my guess is this time he's with his friends in the lobby, suddenly a random guy that i never met sends me a message saying "Fight like a man", I thought probably this seezar told his friends that I dont play like a man? >.>, well whatever, I beat everyone in the room and leave. I started then to get swamped by message, so I blocked them all.

Later I join another room, I got kicked instantly. I send the host "Trable-Boss" a message asking him if he was afraid? he said he aint afraid of kids that post videos of their matches on youtube. So I thought maybe he does not want to have losing vids of him on youtube? but the "kid" part was funny, I ask him how old are you?, he replies with something that has totally nothing about answering. He starts saying dont you have school to go to and homeworks to do? I cracked a bit, asked him again, ok how old are you?, again he does not answer, instead he kept swamping me with curses and hatred. Then one friend of mine tells me that he's a high school kid. So I leave him be and left.

I again join another room to get kicked instantly. What's happening. A friend told me this is the tax of being famous~ lol. And just moments ago, I join a room with low level players and started winning them. I leave to go eat lunch, I come back to find at least 20 messages of the same people inviting me back to the room, namely "hadif001" and "night-madness", so night tells me my bro will kick your ass, come to the room. Well, if his bro is any good, I would accept a good match, the problem is I could not join the room again, not sure why, kept trying, restarting but with no hope. So I decided to just ditch the game. So both of them kept saying I chickened out, I already joined another room while they were swamping me with mail. So I could not reply them. And while I was playing in the other room, I realized that I dont really have to answer these mails and that its just a waste of time and energy.

I dont understand some people. Just because they lose they start hating. Some people would use that to improve and become better, which what all people should do. But just hating on is stupid. you lose because you don't practice enough. You should at least respect the effort put on training by the other player when you lose constantly. Then you should ask yourself why do you keep losing and work on improving yourself.

I've played around 500 matches up to now in SSFIV, and I got a win rate of 83% So to all of you haters who think that I am some 'noob' , stop hating and get better instead.

SSFIV Trial completed, and thoughts!

DAMN COLLEGE PROJECTS!!!!!!!

ok.. now that out of the way, I have not been able to write up here regarding new updates for SSFIV :(, but I managed to fight couple of minutes to write this post.

I got SSFIV finally only 1 minute after it reached the shop in AbuDhabi at around 8:30pm for around 190dh, not that bad really.

Went back home and tested it out. So far loving it. The online mode was even more fun, though there was some problems with people unable to join our rooms.

I've later tried the Trial mode and finally finished them all around 2 days ago and I'll mention some of the stuff about trial that are worth mentioning.



I'll be discussing them in order.

Ryu: Lv.24, 3 links and strick timing, took me a while
Ken: Much easier than SF4, nothing was too hard.
Chun-Li: nothing too anoying
E.Honda: There was 1 annoying one but I cant recall which one.
Blanka: was actually easy!, 15 minutes maximum
Zangief: The last level with the 4 links was stupid.
Guile: Nothing to mention
Dhalsim: Had some tricky trials, but nothing too hard
Balrog: OMG, Trial 22, spent over an hour, the rest are easy.

Vega: had 1 stupid link trial, more of luck really for that one.
Sagat: nothing too hard
M.Bison: nothing too hard
C. Viper: almost the same as SF4, nothing too hard for a viper player
Rufus: couple of stupid link combos, but rest are easy
El Fuerte: Trial 23 BLOWS, took me a little over 30 minutes
Abel: nothing too hard.
Seth: Quite easy
Akuma: nothing too hard

Gouken: nothing to mention
Cammy: nothing to mention
Fei Long: Lv.19 took me about 10 minutes, annoying. rest are not hard
Sakura: long combos but not hard to link really.
Rose: nothing too hard, nice combos with her ultra 2
Gen: lv.24 was much easier than SF4 Hard trial 5, but still took me around ~15 min because of his "Aweeewa"
Dan: lv.23 or 24 took some time due to stupid timing for the air ex-senpu kyaku.
T.Hawk: Probably the easiest.
Dee Jay: nothing to mention

Guy: nothing to mention
Cody: nothing to mention
Ibuki: Lv.24 took me some time, but because its almost as viper's SJC to ultra, I didnt struggle much, probable around 20 minutes to get used to the link.
Makoto: Lv.24 had a new idea, loved it, took me some time.
Dudley: nothing too hard
Adon: Annoying.. (As a character, lol), nothing too hard
Hakan: Lv.19 was tricky, but figured it out, nothing else was too hard
Juri: Loved the Lv.24 idea, sweat combo ideas. nothing too hard


I've been loving Makoto lately and practicing her, hopefully I'll be able to play online once i finish my stupid projects. Till next post' ;)

Over 1900 hours of gameplay!

So, I have been playing STREET FIGHTER IV for quite a while, for over a year that is. And here is a Screenie of my record.



I just reached 1900 hours of game play "On my console" not to mention playing in friends' house, playing in cafe, or playing STREET FIGHTER IV on my laptop, So I am guessing over 2000 hours of game play.

I got all Titles and Icons which was fun. I didn't really do much in ranked matches because I enjoyed friendly matches way more, and also the "Lag Factor" if you go to my older entries.

The 7666 is the rounds I played totally online (Excluding offline), with 70% winning rate, I somehow blame the lag :P, but it does not matter now that Super is coming out and me upgrading to a better internet speed. I will be aiming for at least 80%+ in Super!

As for the winning streak I am not sure how that works, I don't remember how I got the 41, but hopefully again in Super I will make it higher.



These are the medals that I got, I had 536 "CHEAP" wins, hahaha. 489 Perfects~

Now I will start showing my Character Record from lowest played to most.


25) Rose: Only 10 rounds online, Rose is a good character, I did not give her her chance probably, but I enjoy playing other characters.



24) Dan: I think everyone has the same thing, Dan is a Joke character, we play him when we feel like kidding around.. OYAJIIIII~

23) Vega: This is a good character, but I didn't try him that much I guess.

22) Gen: Probably I didn't play Gen because he might die any moment in the match? though he is fun to play with if you know how to do his mk hands combo.

21) Fei long: "NOT MY TYPE"...

20) Blanka: I might as well hate characters that lack combos. For some reason, I don't like Blanka :(

19) Sakura: She's fun to play with, and has nice long combos, but has little options once cornered or pressured, not that good with serious matches.

18) Cammy: to say the truth, I HATE PLAYING AGAINST CAMMY, maybe thats why I dont pick her a lot, but lately I started playing her and she's quite fun to honestly.

17) Sagat: "CHEAP" enough said, lol, I dislike playing him. I might give him a shot in Super because he's gonna be better



16) Rufus: I probably picked him to try couple of combos online, I dont enjoy playing him though.

15) Gouken: Fun character.

14) E. Honda: I love this character, he got some nice moves and tricks.

13) Ken: Probably I chose Ken so I show those many scrubs online how to actually use him, none the less, I don't like Ken myself.

12) El Fuerte: A good character to ANNOY THE HELL out of your opponent, I played him mostly to do the RSF online.

11) Abel: Very good mix-up game, fun to play.

10) Seth: Really fun to play, best zoner in the game.

9) Zangief: Lately I started enjoying playing Gief, I DO NOT SPAM LARIETS! :P, I love his normals, and his grabs, I like these type of characters, T.Hawk gonna be one of my mains in Super!



8) Chun Li: was my second main after I bought the game, though I left her later.

7) M. Bison: I love this guy, his pokes are TOO GOOD, although he didnt have many ultra set-ups.

6) Dhalsim: Probably I fell in love with this guy after Iyo has won Japan's national SFIV tournament 2008, he got many tricks and long long pokes o.o

5) Akuma: Very interesting character, WAY TOO MANY WAKE UP SETUPS, amazing combos. all in one character, though not many ultra setups to speak of.

4) Guile: My 3rd main after Chun Li, I played him quite a while before finally switching off. he has really great normals.

3) Ryu: My first main when I bought the game. Come on, who didn't choose him when he bought the game? :P, Though I started hating him when I realized he had way too many options with easy setups and combos.

2) Balrog: I won Dubai World Championship with him last year. He is a fearsome straight forward IN YOUR FACE character. I stopped playing him now though, I got rusty with him!

1) C.Viper: 3000 online rounds with her! Almost as double as the rounds I played with Balrog, my ex-main. Yet I am having trouble playing against Balrogs online with viper. I love this character, Very hard to master, but the reward is really great. she's a very tricky character with all her feints and cross ups. With her new Ultra in Super and increased hit points by 50, and with Sagat/Zangief being nerfed, Viper will definitely be more noticeable now.

I did not show my Arcade Stick that I got in my Arcade Stick Entry, so, here are some pics :P

Dubai Gamerz Tournament

This thursday Dubai gamerz tournament launched for both SFIV and some other game, football i think, whatever that game name is, I dont give a damn :P

It was group system for people who came before ~5pm, and elimination for people who came after 5 but before 6.

Each group had 8 people, and only 3 from each group qualifies, everyone fights everyone in the group, 1 set, 3 rounds. There was 6 groups, For me, I came in late, So i joined the elimination rounds, 1 set, 2 rounds. My first round was against a good chun-li, I won 2-0, my second one was with an average Boxer, I guess he had no experience whatsoever against C.Viper, as Balrog can destroy viper easily. So after my win I went to semi finals!

If i recall correctly those are the people who qualified from each group:

Group 1: Ryu, Sagat, Zangief
Group 2: Zangief, Chun Li, Akuma
Group 3: Dhalsim, Zangief, Chun Li
Group 4: Blanka, Zangief, Ryu
Group 5: Gen, El Fuerte, Chun-Li
Group 6: Guile, Ken, Rufus
*From Elimination* : C.Viper(me), Ryu

As you can see there were 4 Zangiefs.. (lol).. though only 1 Sagat, which was kind of nice..

I've seen many great rounds from these group fights. one of them was an El Fuerte player (Akashwan) from group 5 that won 7/7 matches, he destroyed everyone in his group which was great because fuerte is an almost forgotten player. Another player Ken (Tan_UAE) has showed a very fearsome Ken. Also a Chun Li (Dukefleeed) from group 5 was playing in a really interesting way, not to mention Guile player (Booom300) who destroyed a good boxer in his group and showed really good matches. Also a very scary Gen player (UAE4HAMAD) who showed no mercy for his opponents though he is too old and going to die at any second now (Gen..) lol.
Rufus (Mho-J) from group 6 was also performing a great job.
I haven't been able to see group 1-2-3 matches, so I'm not sure how those worked out.

2 guys came from Kuwait specially for this event. One was Ryu and the other was Chun Li. The Semi-Finals has finally started. I cant remember the order of the fights, but I'll write what I remember.
First the order has been decided by drawing the names, the last name was El-Fuerte who has been qualified by chance.

Gen has faced a Gief in his first semi-final round, as though this Gen was very good, he had a bad match-up against Zangief, so naturally he lost, but he had a great performance to speak though~

A friend of mine Chun Li (Dukefleeed) has faced the Kuwaiti Chun Li, First the Kuwaiti Chun was winning, but Duke has done a great comeback and won in the end, it was an interesting mirror match.

Guile (Booom300) "Who won last UAE tournament" had this minor injury in his thumb, so he did not perform that well, though he did qualify to semi-finals regarding the pain he had :P . He faced a Sagat (Ammar_) who was also one of the Organizers of the tournament. They both did a great job but Sagat won in the end. Hard luck to our friend Guile :)

Then comes my game, I, C.viper(SedoSan) Faced a Zangief(alain599)!!, My luck! :P, last tournament in the semi-finals I met a Zangief as well, (lol)... But this time I had much better concentration than last time. I did not screw up my combos this time at least. I lost my first round though I was leading, I won my second round, Lost my third then won my fourth, the last round we both had less than 5% hit points left. I know Zangief was going to jump on me. AND HE DID JUMP! A flash came across my mind that I won.. I used my Ultra!!!, Usually my ultra will punish jump-in attacks. The thing is, My ultra did not come out! *Bummer* and I got kicked in the face :P and So, I lost and was disqualified.

I cant recall what happened between the Blanka(SoulEliminator) and the Kuwaiti Ryu (Najeebi)sp? As there was a strong battle going on the other screen between Ken(TAN_UAE) and Zangief(RMT)sp?
The Ryu has won in that round against Blanka. But in the other battle, Ken was leading and DOMINATING in the first couple of rounds, he totally annihilated Gief, though I dont know what happened to him in the 3rd round. Looks like Gief has casted a Spell in his heart and GAVE HIM FEAR. Ken was almost paralyzed, he kept defending, RMT has totally changed the outcome of that fight and finally won 3-2. btw this ken has won 2nd place in last UAE tournament, but he was playing Akuma that time.

I dont recall Dhalsim's round, but he lost, The other Chun-Li has lost to the Kuwaiti Ryu If I recall correctly.

Rufus won an average Ryu in his first round. Then Rufus has met Zangief(Alain599) and won him, I dont recall who took out Akuma, but that akuma was an average player.

Then there was Fuerte's Match against Sagat who took out Guile. First round Sagat won, Second round Fuerte has done a great come back. Third round Fuerte has baited sagat to tiger shot and used his ultra! Everyone clapped once the Ultra animation went off, but what shocked everyone is that Fuerte did not land on Sagat, though he was close!! Then we realized something was wrong with the controller, but Fuerte couldnt do anything about it, and under frustration he lost his 3rd round as well.. But lesson learned from this is "Bring your own controller next time" :P

Sagat then Faced Rufus, and it ended with Rufus winning. This Sagat was an average+ Sagat though.

Kuwaiti Ryu has lost to RMT's Zangief. Al though this Ryu was a great one, it looked like he had no experience against Gief fights, he kept falling for his grab traps and his wake up cross ups.

Sagat has faced the Kuwaiti Ryu to decide who would be ranked 3rd, it ended with Sagat winning.

In the final battle, Rufus(Mho-J) has faced Zangief(RMT), this is the youtube link. As you can see, Zangief has won the tournament, From the video you will notice TOO MUCH NOISE coming from cheering :P, Those guys were cheering insanely. Some of the "Sentences" that came out were:

Show him that the Kitchen is his place! (Fuerte vs Sagat)
Let the Russian teach this Beautiful girl that fighting is not what she should do (Viper vs Gief)
This Indian Guy came in without a VISA! (Dhalsim vs *I cant remember*)
And lots of their comments were like: "Come on, you dont have to fight, you will lose 3 rounds perfect, Just sign him Victory!!" Usually saying this to people against their friends in fights.

Some were funny, Some were just annoying and uncalled for.

Over all, the tournament was good, great players, had lots of fun, though i wish i won :P

There was a Draw in the end for the guests and viewers. 5 prizes, They drew the first name "Name 1 here", a little kid comes and pick up his PSP. The second name was "Name 1 here" again! they said wow, really lucky, but they didnt give him the 2nd prize, a third name was drawn and it was "Name 2 here", so another kid "Kid 1's friend" comes and take the prize, a PSP. The 4th name was "Name 2 here" AGAIN!!!, people started doubting. They checked the names in the box. almost 50+ of them were both of these kids name. THERE WAS MANIPULATION! These prizes were revoked from these kids and justice has been received! *MUWAHAHAHA*...
So what they did is they took the name tags from the participants and did the draw from it later. and everything worked normally then.

After the match lots of people stayed and played against each other. It was great. In the end, everyone left :P Duh..

So.. Tournament finished.. There is another tournament in 3 weeks in AbuDhabi. But SSFIV would've been out already by then.

Thoughts about changing to Arcade stick.

So, I've finally gotten myself a Sweet SFIV MadCatz TE arcade stick. These things feel smooth and pretty!

This is my second day trying out the arcade stick...
IT IS HORRIBLE! LOL.. no not really. I used to play with an arcade stick back in the arcade shops in the city, (Happy Land and Wahda Mall) and in the old days where Action Zone existed and KOF was still there. So, in other words, I do not totally suck in Arcade sticks!

My wrist begun to swallow from the stick wrist handle? I am not sure if it is because of their design, or my hands.. but I might just get used to it eventually.

I am happy about placing the stick on my lap while playing, It does not slide nor affect my input. I like the buttons and how smooth they are, they are (Sanwa) parts, a very good if not the best company that produces arcade equip.

Now for gameplay.........
......
.....
It was sad.. lol
....

Well, I started my very first character with the stick with Cammy, her instant cannon strike was much much easier to perform on the stick. I'm used to this move input because I used it a lot with C.Viper for her instant burning kick. It is the same motion.

I was able to perform FADC to either forward or back dash with no problems. I perform ultra no problem, but not as fast as the joystick.

I found myself to keep getting confused over which is a punch and which is a kick. I kept trying to do a canon spike with a punch button!

I found myself not being able to perform option select inputs with the arcade as easy.

Viper's Free FADC is much harder to do on the stick (for now). Also lots of viper tricks is harder for me to do (now) on the stick, instant SJ BK, Ex-Seismo xx Ex-Seismo. SJC-Ultra, and lots of other stuff, I have to work hard on them all again now :(

Though, Viper's FFF is much easier to do in the stick, and chances I'll screw and get super or ultra is much less now.

I still use 3 buttons to perform EX move instead of 2 buttons, this troubles me when a 3 buttons is used for characters for different moves such as akuma's teleport, and akuma's EX-Shoryuken. Also, sometimes an Ultra will come out instead of the EX because I press all 3 buttons, I have to get used to 2 buttons only.

Seems I still have some execution problems when trying to perform a qcb motion. a SRK comes out!! its ridiculous, I go from down to left on the stick, and a SRK comes out, I try to do viper's thunder knuckle, yet a seismo comes out! how sick is that? I have no idea why that happens, but it happened to me in the arcade shop as well, so I guess I am doing something wrong.. I have to work on this.

Piano input works BEAUTIFULLY, i am very happy with this. I am doing Honda's hands out of his jab everytime. its crazy! I have not tried blanka/gen/etc yet. I tried Chun-li's ex legs, but did not spend long time on it. Seemed kinda tricky.

Trying to press up alone seemed also tricky, Pressing down alone is way easier coz of how your hand is shaped, you can push your 4 fingers down to go down, but to go up, you have to push the stick with your thumb, and it has to be exactly up, I found myself sometimes go up right or up left, so I try to be extra careful when trying to press up, but when I do that, i almost left my hand off the stick and causes some trouble so I have to work on that as well.

I've tried Double tapping and P-linking, Its very hard to get adjusted to them at first, But I hope this gets better with time. I found it much easier to link 2+ frame links with double tapping, but its hard to adjust to that in the middle of a combo, as my mind will focus on double tapping and forget to continue, so that I have to work with.
I found it easier to link 1 frame link with the traditional on the spot press, but that's probably because I got good timing, I'd get 7+/10, but if with priority I can increase that, I would go for it, but from what i've seen now, p-linking is somehow difficult, and as I said above, I have to adjust to it when in a middle of a combo.

Guile and Vega's Ultra are much easier to land with the stick. I'd say 90% to 65% on the joystick.

Basically, Stuff your muscle brain memorized with the joystick wont help you here. The timing only might help you, but the places of the buttons wont.
I'm used to punish some moves that get a little range with viper's cr.mk to m.TK, I found myself never doing this on the arcade stick, I have to rebuild my muscle memory all over again.

Well, I hope this is going to be worth it. But starting today, I will only use the arcade stick!.. well, there is a tournament next week, so I might use the joystick one last time before completely converting to the Arcade Stick. Till then, Have fun ;)

I need an Arcade Stick!

Ok, I don't know where to start..
I have not written in a while.. So many news, SSF4 and stuff.. I didn't know what I should include or what I should not, so I just did not write anything!

Anyways, This week was full of surprises.. I found out there is still A LOT to learn in SF!

I will be talking about 2 new methods I learned this week, and why I need an arcade stick :P

First of all, the Option Select method. I knew this for quite a while, but I never really used it because I used to win without it, not until I met better players, aside than that. Some situations, an Option Select would be really helpful to use. For those who don't know what Option Select is. It is when you input more than 1 command at the same time.

1 very very good example if for example lets choose Akuma, Go to training, and set the recording dummy for akuma. Move to the opponent and Sweep him, walk to him, as soon as he stands, press:
c.Lp + c.Lk -> c.Hk -> c.Lp -> whatever combo you like (Keep guarding while crouching)

if you input the command successfully what akuma will do is first he will sweep, then he will move forward and when opponent stands, he will do a crouching low kick into a crouching low punch into whatever combo you did. The crouching kick at the beginning came out because of priority, The second Sweep will not come out if you did it correctly, so why did we do this?
Now set the Akuma to Playback and let him Sweep you the first time.

Lets see the different scenarios when you stand up:
1- if you keep guarding:
Akuma will block string you
2- if you try grabbing:
Akuma will tick grab you.
3- if you try to back dash to escape:
Akuma will sweep you out of it and knock you down.
4- if you try to counter with lets say a shoryuken:
Akuma will guard

Scenario 1 is obvious.

Scenario 2, why would he tick grab you? lets see the input again, we pressed crouching low punch + low kick, thats a grab, but because you're crouching, a kick comes out instead, but if you're being tried to be grabbed, the grab will come out instead and tick him. Sweet huh?

Scenario 3, why did the sweep come out now but it didnt come out before? its because of the block stun. if the opponent guards the low kick, a period of time will pass by where you wont be able to Sweep because of the start up frames of it. but since he back dashes, the low kick whiffs, thus there will not be any block stun. so its easier to start the sweep.

Scenario 4, Because you're already blocking while crouching, Akuma will continue blocking if he got hit.

See? 4 different outcomes in 1 single command. This is pretty useful. And there are plenty of other examples and useful cases.

For me, I started using this mostly when I cross up. sometimes my cross up whiffs and i find myself being grabbed. so now when i cross up, i always grab few frames later, thus if i whiff my cross up, i will grab my opponent or tick him. but if my cross up does not whiff.. I continue normally. This helped me a lot, and left my opponents puzzled :P quite amusing.

So basically an Option select is where you input multiple commands, and depending on the situation, the best option will come out.


The second thing I learned is the Double-tapping/P-linking, basically this is where you make a hard 1-frame link into a 2 frame link, or a 2 frame link into 4 frame link, you're making the chance of it working a 200%!, how this works is first, double tapping is where you press the same button twice using your index and middle finger instantly after each other starting with the middle finger first. Of course this is done using an arcade, because with a joystick, you probably are using your thumb and it would be really hard to double tap this way.

when using double tapping, you first press the button, you release, then press again. so in here, you enter 3 commands but 2 hits (Press, Release, Press), thus this takes up 3 frames. This works best for 2-frame links or more
..++ (This is the 2 frame link)
+-+ (You're -2 frames earlier, but you still managed to link!)
.+-+ (You're -1 frame earlier, but your second input worked)
..+-+ (Your first input had already worked)
...+-+(You're +1 frames late but it doesn't matter. it worked)


lets see this for a 1 frame link:

..+ (This is your 1 frame link)
+-+ (You're -2 frames earlier, but you managed to link)
.+-+ (You're -1 frames earlier, but the link was in your release!)
..+-+ (You're exactly on time, so it hits)

as you can see with double tapping for 2 frame links, you can hit it with 4 frames
but with 1 frame link, you have 3 frames, but 1 of them will miss. somehow making it still a 1 frame link.

The other one is the P-linking, or the Priority linking. instead of pressing the same button twice after each other, in here, your press 2 different buttons but with one faster than the other. If you go to training and show inputs, then press MP and instantly press LP while still pressing MP, you will see the first frame will show the MP, then the second frame will show you LP+MP, in here we had 2 presses, and 2 hits. the reason its called Priority linking, is because when you press LP+MP, the MP will come out because it has higher priority.
Priority buttons are as followed from lowest to highest:
LP, LK, MP, MK, HP, HK.

now lets see the two situations again in here

..++ (This is the 2 frame link)
.++ (You're -1 frames earlier, but you still managed to link!)
..++ (You're on time)
...++ (You're +1 frames late but it doesn't matter, you linked.)

*in here you have only 3 frames where in double tapping you get 4 frames.

..+ (This is your 1 frame link)
.++ (You're -1 frames earlier, but you managed to link)
..++ (You're on time)

*in here you can see both of them worked so you have 2 frames in this method, the difference between this and double tapping is that here it is consequent, So you will not have to worry about the "Release" being placed in the Frame Link.

Now after learning about this, I understand why people laugh at pad users :P
I personally did not have that much of trouble linking with a pad, because I practice a lot, but with an arcade stick, I will be able to rise my consistency higher!

Another thing I wanted from an Arcade Stick is the mashing specials, Which is called the Piano input, it is the moves where you mash buttons to work, like Blanka's Electricity, Honda's hands, etc, its called Piano because you press buttons as if you're playing on a piano. One way of doing it in example for Honda:
lp > mp > hp > mp > hp, this will start with the jab, then his hands special will come out. Though you have to do it presciently else the EX version will come out.

I wanted to practice Gen's hands combo, but there is no way it would be done with a joystick. (Actually it can work, but its very inconvenient)

Tourney... fail.

So, the tournament finished... 8 groups, 4 players each. 2 from each group go on to 2nd round..
I reached to the 2nd rounds. Top 16.. Now the new list is generated randomly.. And I get the only zangief player in the whole group..

Viper has a major weakness against gief, she can NOT cross up with him coz he'll spam lariet. So my tactic was to spam seismos on him and keep going away. Me, being in the tournament.. I was kind of nervous, my seismos were not being executed perfectly and I find myself jumping towards gief just to get my face lariet'd.. I ended up losing eventually.. And it was game over for me..
It was pretty sad. As the people who've earned the 1st, 2nd and 3rd are on my same level.. I had a high chance. Another thing is that, I've been practicing viper for a pretty long time and I wanted to show the UAE that viper has good stuff.. But against gief viper is pretty limited.. I could read what's going with the viewers minds.. "Why is he playing Viper? He sucks at her.." Which kinda sucks but anyways.

Don't expect much from my video that would be uploaded to youtube.. It was disastrous. But check the other videos, they were diff. Better than mine..

Tournament... Fail.
LoL

See ya at next journey.

TOURNAMENT TODAY

Yes, today is Feb 26th.. I am getting goosebumps xD
I can't say I've really been practicing hard for this tourny. As I had many other stuff to do like projects in college.. But I did spend some more time in SFIV during the last couple of months.

As I heard you can only choose 1 character during the whole tournament which kinda sucks. But its ok. Since today is the tourney I dont see why should I keep the character I will choose a secret. I will be playing Viper. Yes, CRIMSON VIPER. though, she's not high in the Tier list, but she's one tricky character. with very hard techniques and moves, but if you master her, it would be will worth it.

As might know that my Main character used to be Balrog. And I did win last tournament with Balrog. But nah, I wanna try viper out. If i win, thats great. If i Don't. Then gratz to whomever won me :P

I will post again after the tourney.. *putting his game face on*

Japanese writing system.

All I have been talking about in the past posts were about games.. Well, about Street Fighter IV to be exact.. But I think it is time to start a little about the Japanese language.

I thought I would start with their writing system. In Japanese there are 3 different writing systems. Though you might ask which one they use?, They use them all in their daily life reading/writing. These three systems are "Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji".

Now for some history, Japanese did not have a written language of their own, books imported from China was written in Chinese, so the Japanese decided to use their characters in their writings, those characters are now known as the kanji (漢字) which means "Han Characters". These characters are all drawings of things. Around 5,000 characters were imported. The Japanese later decided that these characters are too hard, specially for the children when they first started learning them so what they did is that they created alphabets.

The Hiragana and Katakana are the alphabets of Japanese. Just like the "A, B, C, ..." in English. The same pronunciation of characters in Hiragana are in Katakana but they look different. Hiragana have smoother lines while Katakana have more sharper edges.

Hiragana is used for words that are originally Japanese. They are also used for particles and connectors. While on the other hand, Katakana is used for words that are not originally Japanese, for example an American name will be written in Katakana instead of Hiragana.

There are no real consonants in Japanese. There are 5 Vowels though which are in order "A, I, U, E, O", while for their consonants, their first letter is "K". Now there is no "K" alone in Japanese, there are 5 letters that got K in them. "Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke and Ko" (Which are the combination with the 5 vowels) The same goes for the rest of the consonants.

For their pronunciations:
A as in "cAt"
I as in "Eel"
U as in "whO"
E as in "nEt"
O as in "hOt"

Here are a list of the Japanese Hiragana and Katakana

Hiragana:


Katakana:


The consonants in order are K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W, N as you can see in the list above. You might wonder if those are the only letters. No they are not the only letters, if you add 2 dashes above a letter it changes to another letter, while in 1 letter case if u add a circle above it it also changes to a new letter

If you add the 2 dashes to the following letters they change as follow:
K -> G
か(ka) -> が(ga)
S -> Z
T -> D
H -> B
while if you add the circle the letter changes as follow:
H -> P
は(ha)-> ぱ(pa)

You also will notice an N alone in the list. That is the only letter that can be stopped at in the end of the word.

There are some different combination's that can be done with these letters but I might cover it in another post.

Now to move to the last writing system, which is the Kanji. There are around 5,000 use in Japan. But the good news is that you only need to learn 2,000 to be able to read almost anything in Japan. Isn't that great! only 2,000.... The government had a rule that Japanese newspapers are not allowed to use any character other than those 2,000 characters, But if they had to. They have to put the "Furigana" reading on top of the new Kanji. "Furigana" is basically Hiragana written on top of the Kanji so you would know how it is pronounced.

Now since these characters were imported from China, they were not originally Japanese, not to mention Japanese and Chinese spoken language is far from close. This created some problems upon importing the characters. First the Japanese tried to use Kanji that their Chinese sounded close to a Japanese word. after couple of hundred of years they found this to be impractical so they decided to give the meaning of the kanji to the Japanese word. Though they still kept its Chinese pronunciation. But they also gave it the pronunciation of its Japanese meaning.

Now almost every Kanji has 2 different pronunciation. A Chinese one that's called (On'yomi) and the Japanese pronunciation (Kun'yomi). Al though the Chinese reading was rendered to sound more of a Japanese word. I will give you an Example.
The word "Tokyo" has the 2 Kanji 東京 which means "Eastern capital". It is written Tokyo in English, but it is actually written "Tou Kyou" in Japanese. Tou means East, but Tou is the Chinese reading (On'yomi), The Japanese word for East is "Higashi" 東 As you can see they both have the same Kanji, but are pronounced differently.

Now you might say, when do I read it On'yomi and when I read it Kun'yomi? Basically, when the Kanji is combined with another Kanji to form a new word, you would read the On'yomi for both Kanji, but if the Kanji alone and is not combined, You would read the Kun'yomi instead. though there are situations when this does not work. As for example, Japanese Names usually combine 2~3 Kanji in a name. But they use the "Kun'yomi" for all of the Kanji.

So now, instead of just needing to memorize 2000 Kanji, you need to memorize their On and Kun readings as well.. Isn't that fun?

UAE SF4 Tournment

I have not written here for a while now, I've been busy with the new semester at college. Hopefully I'll have more time for my blog soon.

Couple of days ago a friend of mine told me about this upcoming SF4 tournament in the UAE. 32 participants of good players from the UAE, I managed to get in it.
From the rules I heard so far, there are going to be 8 groups, 4 in each, each group member going to play with the rest of the members and only 1 qualifies. In the end 8 remain and fight their way to the top.

The organizers want to try and record all the matches to upload them to youtube, so our UAE play can be recognized internationally. This is going to be a good opportunity for us I think.

Well, until then, I have to go practice more :p

Arcade scores...

You go to the arcades, pick your favorite character.. win almost perfect all your rounds. Fight the additional secret boss, Gouki/Gouken. Then you realize you're not even in the top 50!

You wait a while to check the arcade high scores.. and there it pop up, ken, ken, ken, ken, gouki, gouki, gouki, gouki, gouki...

You start thinking.. why those?
I will tell you why.. ULTRAS!

Ken's Ultra deals 17 hit combo while Gouki's deal 27 hit combo..
And apparently the machine give them a combo bonus based on that number.

Now, I am not sure, but I think the programmers should've done a better job coding this. People did not do all of these combo in the Ultra, they just started it.

In other words. A person won a perfect round and got a 10,000 bonus points for doing so, and another person could not win perfect and took damage to build the ultra, then used his ultra for 27 hits combo and got (33400) points..
Really? Is this fair?

I hope they fix this in the next SSF4, I think it would be better if they calculate the bonus for each normal and special as being 1 hit each.. though it would be ok if they display the total number of hits.

SFIV - The Upward Jump

Just like the title says it. Jumping upward. Just jumping up from your same position and landing where you were originally.
Newcomers might think it is a silly move. Why jump in your place? Why not jump forward and attack your opponent!! Well, actually jumping upwards has plenty of benifits. What I have observed is that many players start the round by jumping upwards. One of the main advantages is that in most cases you would be able to cleanly hit an opponent jumping towards you. Second of all jumping upwards would save you from opponents anti-air moves. As when people notice you jumping, they react to an anti-air move but you caught them by jumping upwards instead and have them wide open for an attack in your landing.

Jumping upwards is also not only for far ranges. Even if you both are just next to each other, jumping upwards might be a very good idea. First of all you might escape a throw and land while they are still recovering "if your character has low jump such as Gen". Another thing is most players defend crouching, so a hit while jumping will catch them ungaurded unless they react fast and stand to gaurd.

Some poeple use fireballs to zone. They might trick you to jumping towards them to counter you with something, so don't do that, instead jump upwards. But be careful as well, Ryu can cancel his hadouken into his super while you are still in the air. Though if you can jump towards the opponent as soon as they use a fireball, you can punish them.

One thing to note, against people that grab in the air, specially Guile. Jumping as a whole might be a bad idea. Pick your cards right and play them thoughtfully.

Haters!

Since the dawn of humanity, haters have been always around. There are always a number of people who would dedicate their life just to ... I don't really know.
Just yesterday someone added me on psn. His psn was "SedoSanNoop". And sends me a message saying "let's sf4". My simple reply was. Log on from your real account then we might play. And I just deleted him..
Why? Why would someone bother to create an account with my nick and add some rubbish with it.. Do you hate me that much? What have I done to you?
People, stuff like this is so childish. And has no reason to be done whatsoever.

He did add me again but I just added him to block list. There is absolutly no reason to bother myself with such people. If you bother with everyone of these people, you won't live in peace. They will just come from every corner. Just ignore them.
Let them burn in their hate by simply ignoring them. And continue your life playing with your real friends happily :)

SFIV - The Lag Factor...

Every once in a while you might get yourself into a laggy match. By laggy, I mean commands that you input are not executed at the same time. That is if they did get executed in the first place.
There are three different levels of lag:

Lag free, which you always want to have.
Light Lag, You will not notice a lag but for tight inputs it is going to be crucial. This one is not as bad if you play with easy combo characters.
Heavy Lag, You will not want to continue this match. It is just as irritating as irritation... IT IS ANNOYING. the game will completely stops every 1 to 2 seconds for 1 to 2 seconds! You will hate your life.

Typically you want to join rooms that has full connectivity ratio. AKA, Green Bar.
Though even if you do join a Green Bar room, you might still face lag. If there was lag, it is because either side is using the net for other purposes, such as downloading educational movies, streaming a YouTube video or you name it.

When you get yourself a connection for your PS3, try and make it exclusive for the PS3. If you can't. Beat everyone else in the zone that uses the net and tell them you're using the net! Or.... you can ask them politely.

Now that that point is done. Most Green Bars are people around your area. I think it can range from 0~500ish KM. But what happen when you find someone who's even further away?

I've noticed that 3, 4 and 5 bars are in the Lag Free Zone. while 2 and 3 bars are in the light zone. 3 Bars can sometimes be either. 1 Bar being the lowest is either in the Heavy Lag, or Light Lag zone, but mostly the Heavy Lag.

Usually if you live in the US or in Japan you would not complain about this much, since there are thousands of people playing the game around you. But not for us.
We in the Gulf Countries do not have the thousands around us that play this game. We even wish if they are in the hundreds sometimes..
What happens is that the greater the distance is, the more lag there is. If you think about it. Commands take time to get online, pass through the cables, go all the way to the host, then go back all the way to your PS3 to show you the execution.

This alone has cut off a big chunk of possible great players that we can play against. That is not the only problem though.

There are couple of modes on network challenges in SFIV. The old one which was the Rank matches. and the new mode which is the Championship mode. I don't think Rank matches is played as much nowadays since Championship mode has been introduced.

In CM (Champion Mode) the more you win, the higher your rank goes up and so is your title. But how do you challenge people in this mode? You have to search for them and select from a list which one you want to challenge. The list shows you the PSN and the connectivity bar. Now here it is. All of them have 1 Bar Connectivity!
1 Bar, 1 Bar, 1 Bar. You would literally spend 10 minutes until you find someone with 2 Bars. And if you were able to enter his room, there is a big chance that you will get kicked from it. This is going to get into you and starts getting you frustrated.

I've been playing for a long time and I did like the CM, I've reached G2-B Rank but that's it. I can't take it anymore. It's way too annoying to complete.
G2-B is around 8000 points. Now for almost every 4 players you win in a row that's 1 championship for you and 100 points.
Now imagine you have 60,000 points. How many 4 matches you have to win in a row.. Now imagine each of them is in HEAVY LAG. That's suicide.

Aside from heavy laggy matches that causes you to lose points and just gets you frustrated. There are the Player matches that does not involve any points at all. They are just friendly matches either between you and a friend, or a random guy.
The same way here. You select from a List. And guess what? 1 BAR, 1 BAR, 1 BAR. *Starts pulling hair off* in 1 hour I'd be lucky if I find a local player and I hope he's a good player as well, You do find lots of new players that would spam shoryukens on you. *With lag, it's on their favor*

That was one reason for me to hate the game at certain points. LAG, LAG, and more LAG.

There are lots of great players in the GCC but its unfortunate we can't show these skills to the world. All what we can do is play against each other and enjoy our time with some local fame and that's it.

SFIV improvment!

So, I'm getting into the point. STREET FIGHTER IV. I've been playing it way too much. And I got to say IT IS ADDICTIVE..
When I get back home I just have to switch on my PS3 and play it.

Now that I started this Blog, I have lots and lots to talk about. So I'm not sure which I should start with, So I will just put what i have on the table post after post.

I figured I will start with what i think is an "Improvement".
I've been practicing a lot. Learning lots of new tactics. Watching Pros playing. And playing against Lots of awesome guys.
To state out. I've started this game last March. So, it is almost a year since I started playing it. Though I did have a background in Fighting games such as KOF (King Of Fighters).

Lately I've noticed a great improvement in my game play. I used to have fairly equal matches with the following people. but lately according to the screen shots I will show you now. You can see what I meant by an improvement.


In the Last shot, The guy had a connection lose but you can see in top right I had 11 wins in a row.

I think my gameplay has greatly improved as you can see I've had flawless victories over all of these players. And they all are good players btw.
I had their names scratched just for the sensitivity. They're good players, I don't want people to dis them.

Al though there is a particular guy that I have lots of problems playing against. He's in an absolute another level. I might talk about him in a later post.

Playing everyday and spending hours in the training room is NOT enough. If you want to really get good you need to do lots of study!, Yes, Study for a video game! how awesome is that?

Currently I have a winning rate of 70%, one sad factor is the lag factor. No matter how good you are you do have an equal chance to lose as your opponent, though you have a greater chance of losing if you're playing a scruby player because they will mash everything and with the lag it will hit you!!

Hopefully I will get my winning rate up with time. So, a final word. Do lots of studies, study certain match-ups, read your character frame data. Check some videos of great players on youtube and learn from them. Try to learn new techniques. Improve your offense as well as your defense. I think the most important point is to play against a better player, you will learn a lot this way. Don't let losing get you down. Take is as a challenge to encourage yourself to become better.

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello All and welcome to my Blog.

I'll start with a little introduction about myself then give a brief idea what this blog will be about mainly.

I am SedoSan. If you did not notice this already, the -San is a Japanese suffix which means Mr. So, I am Mr. Sedo... I guess you already know I have some interest in the Japanese culture.
Sedo is my own trademark nickname and I did not copy it based on a character or any sort of that matter.
I am 22 years old studying Electrical Engineering.

I have lots and lots of interests and hobbies which I do think I have to cut down. But I just can't!
I love computer stuff & Video Games. Though, you can't say I am a hardcore gamer because I do not participate in them all. I'm pretty much into specific games that I just stay around. Currently I'm still playing Street Fighter IV, and I already finished Final Fantasy 13.

I used to do sports but I became lazy again. I love Basket Ball and Skating on the Ice. I might return to playing Basket Ball again soon.

As I mentioned above I am into Japanese culture. So, naturally I know a bit of the language. Ok I lied. I know more than a bit and I thought I might share some of what I know in this Blog.
You can't be into Japanese culture without being into it's Anime and Manga! Though, I'm more into Anime - I think its more thrilling anyways - I might discuss couple of stuff about it here as well.

Now that I talked a little bit about myself, I'll summarize what this Blog will be mainly about.
This Blog will mainly be about Street Fighter IV, then a little about the Japanese language. And finally I might talk about Anime, Sports or any random thing that comes to mind.