What's new

How to Read, Understand and Calculate Frame Data in MKX

@Eddy Wang What does it mean when a move has negative recovery frames? For example, Sorcerer Quan Chi's spells all have -500 something recovery frames. The one with the least recovery frames also just happens to be the only one that can be consistently combo'd with after a trance, but I don't understand how recovery frames can be negative. Wouldn't that just be the equivalent of having fewer startup frames?
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
@Eddy Wang What does it mean when a move has negative recovery frames? For example, Sorcerer Quan Chi's spells all have -500 something recovery frames. The one with the least recovery frames also just happens to be the only one that can be consistently combo'd with after a trance, but I don't understand how recovery frames can be negative. Wouldn't that just be the equivalent of having fewer startup frames?
its the time an animation is playing until you get to control him after you start activating the spell, so basically the game is telling you that doing spells without a good room for it it might put you in disadvantage instead of just recovery state.
Scorpion's teleport cancel is -24, because that is the extra time he gets to stay without playing until he return to the state zero since you just canceled an attack that would put him on -21 on block.

But i really doubt is -500, since trance is +80 on hit and deep trance is +89, i believe the real recovery frames can be around -83 or something in that order, from what we all know, frame data is about 80% correct now, but a real frame counter for recovery could do the job, if you record the footage in 30fps you will have to multipy the final result by 2 to get the result in 60fps so you will know the real recovery.
 
its the time an animation is playing until you get to control him after you start activating the spell, so basically the game is telling you that doing spells without a good room for it it might put you in disadvantage instead of just recovery state.
Scorpion's teleport cancel is -24, because that is the extra time he gets to stay without playing until he return to the state zero since you just canceled an attack that would put him on -21 on block.

But i really doubt is -500, since trance is +80 on hit and deep trance is +89, i believe the real recovery frames can be around -83 or something in that order, from what we all know, frame data is about 80% correct now, but a real frame counter for recovery could do the job, if you record the footage in 30fps you will have to multipy the final result by 2 to get the result in 60fps so you will know the real recovery.
I'm still having trouble understanding. When you say "So basically the game is telling you that doing spells without a good room for it might put you in disadvantage instead of just recovery state" what do you mean by "good room"? I mean, let's say one of these spells had zero recovery frames instead of negative 583 recovery frames, what would the difference be in the move's activation? They all have about 45 startup frames by the way.
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
I'm still having trouble understanding. When you say "So basically the game is telling you that doing spells without a good room for it might put you in disadvantage instead of just recovery state" what do you mean by "good room"? I mean, let's say one of these spells had zero recovery frames instead of negative 583 recovery frames, what would the difference be in the move's activation? They all have about 45 startup frames by the way.
A good room means, if you do the spell without checking your range or your opponent recover just, you're putting yourself at risk of being punished if he runs straight into it. basically you're in disadvantage, there isn't a difference in between negative recovery frames and regular ones aside of working has a warning sign that while recovering from a said move you're likely to be punished before you get the control of the character if you miss use it.

For example, Kotal Kahn cannnot use god ray to heal himself without a good range and knockdown advantage, most of the time he has to sacrifice damage to have the ray up without being reversal punished by characters like scorpion.

Scorpion can't just random teleport cancel without avoiding an attack in like a projectile to recovery much earlier to get a throw in the minimum
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
@Goat-City-II @Eddy Wang

Wake up guys, negative recovery frames make no fucking sense. Unless you live in some place where time can flow backwards for one thing and not the other, it's just common idiocy on NRS' part when it comes to written frame data.
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
@Goat-City-II @Eddy Wang

Wake up guys, negative recovery frames make no fucking sense. Unless you live in some place where time can flow backwards for one thing and not the other, it's just common idiocy on NRS' part when it comes to written frame data.
Like i said, its just a "warning sign" that you might get punished while you're recovery without a good setup and knockdown advantage, in truth is as you said, there isn't really Negative recovery frames.
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Like i said, its just a "warning sign" that you might get punished while you're recovery without a good setup and knockdown advantage, in truth is as you said, there isn't really Negative recovery frames.
It's not a warning sign, it's a fuckup. Actual time of recovery would be, but not this.

Besides, if you think about it, negative recovery would mean that you will be like +400 on any cancel into this move, how it's a warning sign of unsafety instead of the opposite? :D
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
It's not a warning sign, it's a fuckup. Actual time of recovery would be, but not this.

Besides, if you think about it, negative recovery would mean that you will be like +400 on any cancel into this move, how it's a warning sign of unsafety instead of the opposite? :D
Are the Quan spells special cancelable?
 

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Are the Quan spells special cancelable?
To be honest, I'm not sure. I may or may not seen some setups with them that don't involve 141.

I was just illustrating the absurdity of that number in case the notion of "negative time interval" doesn't do that already :D

What's up with you, TYM, and doubleposting?
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
To be honest, I'm not sure. I may or may not seen some setups with them that don't involve 141.

I was just illustrating the absurdity of that number in case the notion of "negative time interval" doesn't do that already :D

What's up with you, TYM, and doubleposting?
Connection issues, when my internet is running slow, it tricks the website so my posts comes out in double with a single click under the same time:D

I delete them often, mods usually notice that and help too, but its not letting me do that since yesterday, and i believe my allies haven't noticed that yet.
 
Guys, I figured it out. The negative recovery frames actually do make sense, at least on Quan's spells. Sorcerer's spells take about 1.5-2 seconds to become active after inputting them. Once they become active, they stay active for around 10 seconds. Quan doesn't begin the recovery frames until the spells stop being active. So since it takes about 10 seconds for the spells to stop being active, and -580 frames of recovery equate to around -8 seconds, they make it so Quan recovers 8 seconds before the spell stops being active, or in other words, almost right after the spell has become active. If the spells had 0 recovery frames, Quan wouldn't recover from using them until the moment they are no longer active, which would leave Quan vulnerable for a whopping 10 seconds.

@Eddy Wang @Barrogh
 
Last edited:

Barrogh

Meta saltmine
Nice observation. That's one way to convey it, perhaps, but this is definitely unconventional usage of terminology. Although...

If the spells had 0 recovery frames, Quan wouldn't recover from using them until the moment they are no longer active, which would leave Quan vulnerable for a whopping 10 seconds.
See, spell still does have natural number of recovery frames. You can take animation sequence of Quan recovering after dropping a spell, break it down into frames and count them. It won't be negative, obviously.

NRS apparently decided that instead of posting startup (frames before circle appears), recovery (frames of animation after circle appears, but before Quan can do something else) and putting circle duration into notes separately, they'd rather just incorporate them into data.

Well, I guess they saved some space :p

Or maybe it's mkxframedata guys and not NRS, I'm not sure if numbers are the same in-game. They have same stuff applied to projectiles, but I don't remember that in-game.

Oh well.
 

Xzyj

Noob
@Eddy Wang
Does this math work for FBC calculations ?

Scorpion's F4 by math seem to have 22 hit advantage with cancel, startup of FBC is 18 (right?) it means you have only 4 plus frames after perfect cancel, but you can actually connect 214 if you do the perfect cancel, which means his advantage should be 28?
Where am i wrong? :coffee:
 
Last edited:

darklightjg1

Lost Street Fighter Player
Is there a formula to calculate the advantage of a move cancelled into a special that doesn't hit (is either dash/run cancelled or something like Mileena's EX Fade), but obviously leaves the character at more frame advantage afterward? For example: Mileena's F3 is 33f startup, 4f active and 25f recovery, +2 on block and is cancellable on frame 44.

But if I cancel that F3 into EX DD2 (Ethereal), then I can actually get it to be +15 on block and use F2 afterward for a true blockstring. The thing I'm confused about is how does this work mathematically?

Plugging her F3 move into the formula I've been seeing is: 33 + 4 + 25 + 2 - 44 = 20f cancel advantage

... but then the special move (EX DD2) is 12f startup, 2f active and 0f recovery, so that's 14f used.

20 - 14 is not 15 frames, so how am I able to do this blockstring? Am I missing something?
 

Gofer_MK_

Banned
If you're new into the world of advancing gaming, this might be a good way to start, also if everyone is to start fresh in MKX with no hidden or unfair advantage, this is something that everyone should know so they can know what to look for when they get their hands in the game.

Be wary that frame data is not 100% correct at this point in the game, but that doesn't mean that the principle will not apply after the day 1 patch, on the contrary it will, more so when the data get corrected.

Of course top players will take a huge advantage over this, but will help new guys to understand what's going on before start crying to nerf something.

Without further delays, MKX runs at 60 frames per second, meaning that at ever 1 second in real time, 60 frames will run in the game.

State 0, or Neutral state = Its a technical term in M.U.G.E.N or fighting games to define all stances from a fighting game, during the state 0 the character is free from any draw backs, it means the Player has the control over the character at that exact moment and he can block, attack move at any moment. So when the fight word fades, both characters starts at State 0.


This is what you will see on the frame data screen:


The MKX only gives you 6 options of Frame Data statistics so before i go any further into this i will explain first what each one of this statistic means, then i will explain something else that MK9 veterans might have noticed at this point.

Start-Up: Means the time (in frames), the first active frame from an executed move (in other words the time it takes for the opponent to get hit by your normal, or special move instants after your press the button) takes to activate.
  • In MKX, the fastest normals are 5 frames startup, not 6 like in MK9
Active: It means the time that move will remain active until it fades or hits anything that can be hit by it. (in other words, by this time you can't touch that move until the active frames fades, but armored moves will still beat regular active frames)
  • In MKX normals remain active from 1 to 13 depending of how powerfull they are, generally normals with longer active frames are also really unsafe on block or whiff.
Recover: Its the time a normal special, even throws will take to return to the state 0, also known as the stance mode, so for this period of time that a move is recovering from being used, the one recovering can't block, or cancel it.
  • In MKX moves on whiff have a good chunk of recovery frames, be aware of what you put in the screen.
Block advantage: Block advantage defines the time the defender has to stay on a blockstun, block advantage goes two ways, it can either be positive (+) which is advantage for the attacker, or it can be negative (-) which means advantage to the defender.
  • So if P1 string is -10 on block, it means that P1 is vulnerable for 10 frames at the instant his blockstun fades away, in this period of time P2 can input a 9f moves or lower to catch P1 before he has time to recover from this attack. This action is called Punish.
  • In MKX, there is a new propriety that allows any character to block on the last negative frame, so startup attacking frames that matches the same number of blockstun won't punish it, so 10f moves won't punish -10f of disadvantage.
Hit Advantage: It the time P2 will take to return to the state 0 after getting hit.
Cancel: Its the advantage given to the attacker when he cancels his move with another move.

Now that we got all this out of the way let me explain this into a more deeper way.

Some of you may or not have noticed that MKX doesn't offer Cancel advantage on Hit and Cancel advantage on block, but those are crucial if you want to understand the frametraps and links your opponent can or cannot do to you, that its not weird, it means that now you have to do some equations to find out cancel on hit and cancel on block.

So how do you do that?

Startup + active + recovery - Cancel
This will give you the correct cancel that you can either sum it up to your hit stun, or block stun to have the correct cancel advantage. @huh
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=428638611&insideModal=1

Cancel advantage is one of the most important datas in the game, it can tell you if P1 strings is indeed a blockstring or just a frame trap.

So what is a blockstring?
Blockstring is when a move canceled into another move doesn't leave any gap between the cancel and startup frames, forcing you to block the whole thing during the process.

How to find out if my opponent is doing a blockstring on me?

The frame data for the combo section corresponds to each hit in the combo. It was also like this in Injustice.

For example, Scorpion 123 string will initially be broken down into 12, and then it'll have 123 under it.

For the 12 string, it'll say 6f startup, and is referring to the 2. For the 123 string it'll say 8f startup, and is referring to the 3.

If you go on Injustice and look up Nightwing's 1F2 string, it'll say 15f startup. This is referring to the F2 in the string. Standing 1 is 11f startup so the whole string has a startup of 26f. @HeroesNZ

In MKX almost all strings and normals can be canceled, and there are some that can't be canceled, lets look at the new Scorpion gravedigger (1,2,3) dial string:



It used to be a 2 hits string (2, 1+2), now its a 3 hits string in MKX:
Each one of part of this string has startup, active frames, recovery, block adv, hit adv and cancel adv. You want to find out if there is a gap on this string or if its a true blockstring, this is how you do it:

Startup + Active + Recovery - Cancel
Then you sum the result with the blockstun and compare with the next attack startup in line.

The same principle can be applied into normals or strings canceled into specials or run cancels, if you know how long it takes to start and cancel a run, or special, and their next attack in line, you will be able to determinate the blockstun find the gap and defend yourself accordingly.

Start MKX big, like an educated player.

Can you tell my why for example Kano's kombos 11 has 8 on Start Up and 112 has 14 on Start Up, even thou it starts with the same punch? Why the Start Up is different?
 

Lokheit

Noob
Is there a formula to calculate the advantage of a move cancelled into a special that doesn't hit (is either dash/run cancelled or something like Mileena's EX Fade), but obviously leaves the character at more frame advantage afterward? For example: Mileena's F3 is 33f startup, 4f active and 25f recovery, +2 on block and is cancellable on frame 44.

But if I cancel that F3 into EX DD2 (Ethereal), then I can actually get it to be +15 on block and use F2 afterward for a true blockstring. The thing I'm confused about is how does this work mathematically?

Plugging her F3 move into the formula I've been seeing is: 33 + 4 + 25 + 2 - 44 = 20f cancel advantage

... but then the special move (EX DD2) is 12f startup, 2f active and 0f recovery, so that's 14f used.

20 - 14 is not 15 frames, so how am I able to do this blockstring? Am I missing something?
I think the simple answer might be that some data might be wrong. For example Sub-Zero's F4 can cancel into literally anything on block without gaps and with some non-hitting even jail, yet the frame data won't tell that.

That, or there is something about block advantage that we're reading wrong as both examples are for jailing combos.
 

n0rv1s

EXiLE_n0rv1s
Hi all,

Is it true, if l have standing 1 cancel'd, l will get +5 cancel adv, and it would give me a frame trap opportunity? when the frame data for standing 1 is:

8 / 4 / 12
2 / 7 / 19



or l should count it by cancel's frame data?