A quick point, this guide will be a pretty basic level explanation of inputs and notation, and thus will not likely help anyone but players new to the genre. As TFH will be an extremely good starting place for people who haven't played fighting games seriously before, I figure it is a perfect time to start to get those people caught up to speed.
Alright, I've seen a bit of confusion about some input notation, as well as some types of fighting game inputs recently on the forums. These are very common to see with people that aren't as familiar with the different notation styles as well as different naming schemes for inputs themselves, so I figured I could put together a little cheat-sheet type thing so people can figure out what it is someone has said to them without putting their lack of knowledge out in the open and possibly be mocked over.
Let's start somewhere simple. Notation.
I said simple, and I lied right to your face. I really did. The issue here is that different types of games will use different types of notation writing styles, and different players will write their notation out differently from others as well. Let's break them down into two categories here really quickly to give the easiest look at it all.
Street Fighter style notation vs Anime style notation.
The biggest and most important difference you are going to see is the type of notation used for your directional inputs (read: The movement of your character on screen).
Street Fighter style notation will use something like this:
This is pretty easily understandable just because of how the words relate to the direction. Nothing too difficult to grasp, but becomes a bit of a chore to use with the abbreviations of some directions mixed with close, far, and any command normals.
Anime inputs use something called "Numpad Notation" and looks like this:
Now, this one may be a bit more difficult to understand where it is coming from, but I assure you it is much more simple than first glance may give away. If you're sitting at a computer right now and look down at the numerical pad on the end of your keyboard that you likely have, you'll notice that those numbers directly correlate to the ones on your numpad. It's very simple to just think of 5 as "neutral" where you aren't moving in any given direction and everything moving around it in the outer 8 buttons.
With both forms of directional notation, when written (unless specified by the writer) all notation is written from the perspective of the Player 1 side, facing from left to right. As most players put themselves as player 1 in training mode, this is just to simplify without going against natural thought processes.
Now, I'm going to do something a bit unfair to you all right here. I want you to mainly focus on the Anime numpad notation if you are really only interested in TFH currently, as that is the notation we plan on using in the game and on most official stuff ourselves. It's going to make the rest of this easier for me to write out for all of you since I'm going to go into directional inputs for specials and supers, and all kinds of things to explain the words that have been common in the FGC for many a year.
Next up is button notation. This one is not as cut and dry, as it varies based on what game you are speaking about. Very contextual. Street Fighter style games (Skullgirls included) have buttons for specific punches and kicks, whereas Blazblue (an Anime game) uses buttons A, B, C, and D going from lowest strength to highest.
That's not true for all anime games, however, as some add in an E button as well (Arcana Heart and Nitro+ to name a couple) and some go a completely different direction all together. The biggest offender of this would be Guilty Gear. Everyone loves Guilty Gear, and it has some of the strangest button inputs a beginner could possibly see, with P, K, S, HS and D. Respectively, those are Punch, Kick, Slash, Heavy Slash, and Dust. Simple when you get used to it, no real understandable reasoning to it until you do. Fun times.
For the sake of TFH stuff, we're going to be using the ABCD method, where D will be our Magic button. The reason I'm using D instead of M for Magic is quite simply to avoid confusion. M can also be seen as medium, which would be where our B would be, and that could just be a mess. Messes aren't fun when so many layers of notation styles are around.
Right, here comes the actual notations.
236 - QCF - Quarter Circle Forward: Your standard fireball input. Not always a fireball, but usually is. Learn this. Learn this right now if you don't know it. Then practice it constantly until you don't drop it.
214 - QCB - Quarter Circle Back: The same thing as above, just backwards. What it actually does will vary by character, as will most everything that isn't a QCF or a DP. And with that said...
623 - DP/SRK - Dragon Punch/Shoryuken: If you've ever seen Street Fighter, this is Ryu's big uppercut move. Any form of invincible reversal type of move will almost always be referred to as "a DP" so get used to seeing that everywhere.
421 - RDP - Reverse Dragon Punch: Again, same as above, but backwards. Will vary on character/game as to what it does. Not seen as often as the other short inputs.
Okay boys and girls, time for the fun ones.
41236 - HCF - Half Circle Forward: Just what it says on the tin. 180 degrees of something powerful (usually) and potentially full of counterhit goodness.
63214 - HCB - Half Circle Back: Backwards version of the above, usually some kind of command grab, but not always.
Now, the next two will be needing some explanation.
6248(63214789) - 360 - It... it's a 360: This is the typical Street Fighter grappler move. Zangief's Spinning Piledriver uses this input.
62486248(6321478963214789) - 720 - Right okay I better just explain this now. The 720 is used for super moves mostly for grapplers, and it a bit of a pain.
Now the reason I'm listing two different numpad inputs for these is due to one simple fact: Games usually
only need the four cardinal directions (Forward, Down, Backward, Up) in order to trigger the 360/720 input, with the 720 needing them twice in succession. This is one of those scenarios that doesn't look like it would favor numpad notation, as just saying "360" has numbers and conflicts with normal numpad notation by having a 0, but is always going to be by itself so there's less chance for confusion. Just use 360C or 720B or whatever to make everyone's life easier. It's harder to read than to do.
You will also have inputs with multiple button presses, sometimes they will need to be two or three specific buttons, but more often than not it's just a combination of any attacking buttons that will get you what you want. These vary by game as well.
Now I want to quickly cover charge moves, as when I got into fighting games while I knew what the move was supposed to be, I didn't understand the minute details behind them.
[4]6 - This is a charge back to forward input. You hold back for a set amount of frames (varies per game) and then press forward and the attacking button that you choose. Notable for being Guile's Sonic Boom input.
[2]8 - Charge down to up input. Hold down for a set amount of frames, and then press up and the attacking button of your choice again. Flash Kick. Almost always called a Flash Kick. The charge character's version of a DP.
Important things to note about charge moves. You don't need to be walking backwards to charge backwards. All of your backwards inputs work. That means 7, 4 and 1 are all acceptable charging positions for a [4]6 input, and 1, 2 and 3 are all acceptable for a [2]8 input. That means that in order to hold your ground but continue charging, you are able to just hold 1 and crouch instead of walking backwards.
[4]646 - Sonic Hurricane. The standard charge character super input. Charge back, then hit forward, back, forward and your attack button.
[1]319 - The triangle charge input. Very rarely seen, and when it IS seen, it isn't fun to do. Guile's Flash Explosion input in the SF4 series. Generally an irrelevant input.
Charge moves aside, if a super in a Street Fighter game needs to be done, it will usually be one of the inputs above, but done twice. That means 236236 or 214214 and in some special cases 4123641236 and 6321463214. You will almost never see a double DP input, and you would be wise to avoid that if you ever see it. These are all written abbreviated simply with D for Double in front of the earlier abbreviations, so DQCF, DQCB, DHCF and DHCB.
There are, however, other super inputs that would never be caught dead in a Street Fighter game. The most prominent would be the Guilty Gear/Blazblue super input.
632146 - Half Circle Back, and then to forward. Also seen in Melty Blood, and many other anime game. A staple input.
Now the craziest input your likely to come accross while playing... respectable fighting games is probably...
1632143 - The Pretzel. Down back, half circle back, down forward. Not for the faint of heart. Sometimes can be shortcutted with a 720 input (Yes that is actually easier for some people than just doing the pretzel, it's not fun).
Now for the fun part. I'm going to give you an extremely short tidbit of an Arizona combo and then break it down for you. Ready?
2A>2B>5C>236A>236B>5D-5A>5B>5C>236A>236C>2D
Seems pretty complicated at first, but lets break it down into some manageable chunks.
2A>2B>5C
A simple string of normals, going from weakest to strongest. Remember your numpad notation. 2A and 2B are done while crouching, as noted by the "2". The 5C is done standing, as 5 is a neutral, standing state.
236A>236B
This is where we get character specific. These are Ari's headbutts that I'm sure you're all rather familiar with at this point. They can be done twice in succession from the A version to either the B version or the C version, as seen later. Do the input once and hit A, then do it again and hit B this time. Simple things.
5D
Magic! This is Ari's neutral, horizontal rope attack. It catches the opponent, brings them to her, and leaves them in a stagger state ready to be beaten some more. Also fills one of Ari's magic stocks.
5A>5B>5C
Normals again, but this time for simplicity's sake everything is a standing normal.
236A>236C
Instead of the B version, we're going into the heavier C version afterwards which causes a tumbling animation.
2D
More magic! Ari's low rope attack will catch them as they tumble if you are quick on the draw, and it will swing them around to your opposite side and leave them in a knockdown state for you to pressure as they get back up.
Put that all together, and you've got a nice little combo that pretty easily nets you two magic stocks!
Disclaimer, all inputs, combos, and even normals are subject to change as the game is in a constant state of flux. Nothing is true, everything is permitted, etc. These are all here as a simple guideline for anyone to use in a learning process.
That will be all for now on my end, if anyone has any questions relating to this please feel free to post here and I'll do what I can to help and update with questions that have been covered.
As a bit of reading for anyone who would like to go that extra mile, I'd recommend this nice little FG player's guide that Keet(MPK) has been working on. A bit rough around the edges, but a fantastic place to start from.
Fighting Game Beginner's Guide
There's even some great glossaries on some of the pages in that guide that will help with a lot of jargon, as that tends to be a bit of an issue for new players as well. The FGC uses some pretty interesting terminology after all, including a lot of words originally stolen from the Japanese.
Alright, I've seen a bit of confusion about some input notation, as well as some types of fighting game inputs recently on the forums. These are very common to see with people that aren't as familiar with the different notation styles as well as different naming schemes for inputs themselves, so I figured I could put together a little cheat-sheet type thing so people can figure out what it is someone has said to them without putting their lack of knowledge out in the open and possibly be mocked over.
Let's start somewhere simple. Notation.
I said simple, and I lied right to your face. I really did. The issue here is that different types of games will use different types of notation writing styles, and different players will write their notation out differently from others as well. Let's break them down into two categories here really quickly to give the easiest look at it all.
Street Fighter style notation vs Anime style notation.
The biggest and most important difference you are going to see is the type of notation used for your directional inputs (read: The movement of your character on screen).
Street Fighter style notation will use something like this:
This is pretty easily understandable just because of how the words relate to the direction. Nothing too difficult to grasp, but becomes a bit of a chore to use with the abbreviations of some directions mixed with close, far, and any command normals.
Anime inputs use something called "Numpad Notation" and looks like this:
Now, this one may be a bit more difficult to understand where it is coming from, but I assure you it is much more simple than first glance may give away. If you're sitting at a computer right now and look down at the numerical pad on the end of your keyboard that you likely have, you'll notice that those numbers directly correlate to the ones on your numpad. It's very simple to just think of 5 as "neutral" where you aren't moving in any given direction and everything moving around it in the outer 8 buttons.
With both forms of directional notation, when written (unless specified by the writer) all notation is written from the perspective of the Player 1 side, facing from left to right. As most players put themselves as player 1 in training mode, this is just to simplify without going against natural thought processes.
Now, I'm going to do something a bit unfair to you all right here. I want you to mainly focus on the Anime numpad notation if you are really only interested in TFH currently, as that is the notation we plan on using in the game and on most official stuff ourselves. It's going to make the rest of this easier for me to write out for all of you since I'm going to go into directional inputs for specials and supers, and all kinds of things to explain the words that have been common in the FGC for many a year.
Next up is button notation. This one is not as cut and dry, as it varies based on what game you are speaking about. Very contextual. Street Fighter style games (Skullgirls included) have buttons for specific punches and kicks, whereas Blazblue (an Anime game) uses buttons A, B, C, and D going from lowest strength to highest.
That's not true for all anime games, however, as some add in an E button as well (Arcana Heart and Nitro+ to name a couple) and some go a completely different direction all together. The biggest offender of this would be Guilty Gear. Everyone loves Guilty Gear, and it has some of the strangest button inputs a beginner could possibly see, with P, K, S, HS and D. Respectively, those are Punch, Kick, Slash, Heavy Slash, and Dust. Simple when you get used to it, no real understandable reasoning to it until you do. Fun times.
For the sake of TFH stuff, we're going to be using the ABCD method, where D will be our Magic button. The reason I'm using D instead of M for Magic is quite simply to avoid confusion. M can also be seen as medium, which would be where our B would be, and that could just be a mess. Messes aren't fun when so many layers of notation styles are around.
Right, here comes the actual notations.
236 - QCF - Quarter Circle Forward: Your standard fireball input. Not always a fireball, but usually is. Learn this. Learn this right now if you don't know it. Then practice it constantly until you don't drop it.
214 - QCB - Quarter Circle Back: The same thing as above, just backwards. What it actually does will vary by character, as will most everything that isn't a QCF or a DP. And with that said...
623 - DP/SRK - Dragon Punch/Shoryuken: If you've ever seen Street Fighter, this is Ryu's big uppercut move. Any form of invincible reversal type of move will almost always be referred to as "a DP" so get used to seeing that everywhere.
421 - RDP - Reverse Dragon Punch: Again, same as above, but backwards. Will vary on character/game as to what it does. Not seen as often as the other short inputs.
Okay boys and girls, time for the fun ones.
41236 - HCF - Half Circle Forward: Just what it says on the tin. 180 degrees of something powerful (usually) and potentially full of counterhit goodness.
63214 - HCB - Half Circle Back: Backwards version of the above, usually some kind of command grab, but not always.
Now, the next two will be needing some explanation.
6248(63214789) - 360 - It... it's a 360: This is the typical Street Fighter grappler move. Zangief's Spinning Piledriver uses this input.
62486248(6321478963214789) - 720 - Right okay I better just explain this now. The 720 is used for super moves mostly for grapplers, and it a bit of a pain.
Now the reason I'm listing two different numpad inputs for these is due to one simple fact: Games usually
only need the four cardinal directions (Forward, Down, Backward, Up) in order to trigger the 360/720 input, with the 720 needing them twice in succession. This is one of those scenarios that doesn't look like it would favor numpad notation, as just saying "360" has numbers and conflicts with normal numpad notation by having a 0, but is always going to be by itself so there's less chance for confusion. Just use 360C or 720B or whatever to make everyone's life easier. It's harder to read than to do.
You will also have inputs with multiple button presses, sometimes they will need to be two or three specific buttons, but more often than not it's just a combination of any attacking buttons that will get you what you want. These vary by game as well.
Now I want to quickly cover charge moves, as when I got into fighting games while I knew what the move was supposed to be, I didn't understand the minute details behind them.
[4]6 - This is a charge back to forward input. You hold back for a set amount of frames (varies per game) and then press forward and the attacking button that you choose. Notable for being Guile's Sonic Boom input.
[2]8 - Charge down to up input. Hold down for a set amount of frames, and then press up and the attacking button of your choice again. Flash Kick. Almost always called a Flash Kick. The charge character's version of a DP.
Important things to note about charge moves. You don't need to be walking backwards to charge backwards. All of your backwards inputs work. That means 7, 4 and 1 are all acceptable charging positions for a [4]6 input, and 1, 2 and 3 are all acceptable for a [2]8 input. That means that in order to hold your ground but continue charging, you are able to just hold 1 and crouch instead of walking backwards.
[4]646 - Sonic Hurricane. The standard charge character super input. Charge back, then hit forward, back, forward and your attack button.
[1]319 - The triangle charge input. Very rarely seen, and when it IS seen, it isn't fun to do. Guile's Flash Explosion input in the SF4 series. Generally an irrelevant input.
Charge moves aside, if a super in a Street Fighter game needs to be done, it will usually be one of the inputs above, but done twice. That means 236236 or 214214 and in some special cases 4123641236 and 6321463214. You will almost never see a double DP input, and you would be wise to avoid that if you ever see it. These are all written abbreviated simply with D for Double in front of the earlier abbreviations, so DQCF, DQCB, DHCF and DHCB.
There are, however, other super inputs that would never be caught dead in a Street Fighter game. The most prominent would be the Guilty Gear/Blazblue super input.
632146 - Half Circle Back, and then to forward. Also seen in Melty Blood, and many other anime game. A staple input.
Now the craziest input your likely to come accross while playing... respectable fighting games is probably...
1632143 - The Pretzel. Down back, half circle back, down forward. Not for the faint of heart. Sometimes can be shortcutted with a 720 input (Yes that is actually easier for some people than just doing the pretzel, it's not fun).
Now for the fun part. I'm going to give you an extremely short tidbit of an Arizona combo and then break it down for you. Ready?
2A>2B>5C>236A>236B>5D-5A>5B>5C>236A>236C>2D
Seems pretty complicated at first, but lets break it down into some manageable chunks.
2A>2B>5C
A simple string of normals, going from weakest to strongest. Remember your numpad notation. 2A and 2B are done while crouching, as noted by the "2". The 5C is done standing, as 5 is a neutral, standing state.
236A>236B
This is where we get character specific. These are Ari's headbutts that I'm sure you're all rather familiar with at this point. They can be done twice in succession from the A version to either the B version or the C version, as seen later. Do the input once and hit A, then do it again and hit B this time. Simple things.
5D
Magic! This is Ari's neutral, horizontal rope attack. It catches the opponent, brings them to her, and leaves them in a stagger state ready to be beaten some more. Also fills one of Ari's magic stocks.
5A>5B>5C
Normals again, but this time for simplicity's sake everything is a standing normal.
236A>236C
Instead of the B version, we're going into the heavier C version afterwards which causes a tumbling animation.
2D
More magic! Ari's low rope attack will catch them as they tumble if you are quick on the draw, and it will swing them around to your opposite side and leave them in a knockdown state for you to pressure as they get back up.
Put that all together, and you've got a nice little combo that pretty easily nets you two magic stocks!
Disclaimer, all inputs, combos, and even normals are subject to change as the game is in a constant state of flux. Nothing is true, everything is permitted, etc. These are all here as a simple guideline for anyone to use in a learning process.
That will be all for now on my end, if anyone has any questions relating to this please feel free to post here and I'll do what I can to help and update with questions that have been covered.
As a bit of reading for anyone who would like to go that extra mile, I'd recommend this nice little FG player's guide that Keet(MPK) has been working on. A bit rough around the edges, but a fantastic place to start from.
Fighting Game Beginner's Guide
There's even some great glossaries on some of the pages in that guide that will help with a lot of jargon, as that tends to be a bit of an issue for new players as well. The FGC uses some pretty interesting terminology after all, including a lot of words originally stolen from the Japanese.
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