This is part eleven in an extended series of articles from David Sirlin, detailing the changes we’ve made to the rebalanced mode of the new Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix project. The previous articles can be found here.

This week we revisit the enigma wrapped inside a mystery that is T. Hawk, the world’s biggest Native American (who is apparently from Mexico). Hawk has spent a lot of time in the rebalancing lab, and Sirlin walks you through the dizzying highs and devastating lows of trying to get him juuuust right.

Part 11: The T.Hawk Chronicles

T.Hawk has been one of the hardest characters to balance (along with Fei Long and Honda). On the one hand, he has an extremely damaging command throw, a great Dragon Punch-type move, and an aerial dive. These moves could conspire to make him terrifying, so I understand why the original SF2 developers were so careful to keep him check. Hit the jump to get the full story…

Now that we have the benefit of 14 years of SSF2T history to look at, we know that they kept him a little too much in check (he’s considered a bottom tier character), but their decisions at the time are certainly understandable.

The thing that makes him especially hard to balance now is his all-or-nothing game plan. The “nothing” part happens when you spend the entire round trying to get in on your opponent and never do. I’d like to explain the “all” part for the uninitiated though. His devastating sequence is:

Safe jump jab -> low jab -> button-up command throw -> repeat.

That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s sort it out. I covered the concept of safe jumps in the advanced section of my SSF2T tutorial videos. The idea is that you jump at your knocked-down opponent as he gets up. You time your jump so that you land just a couple frames after the opponent is completely standing up. If the opponent chooses to do a reversal attack (such as Ryu’s Dragon Punch or Guile’s Flash Kick) then it actually won’t hit you. Those reversal attacks have a few frames at the beginning where you can’t hit them, but they can’t hit you either. So your jumping jab will pass through the opponent, then you’ll land (and block), then their reversal attack will start to hit—but you’ll be safe. Yes it’s hard to time this, but experts can do it.

If the opponent tries to do a reversal attack in this situation, you’ll just land, block it, and then be able to retaliate with a command throw. If the opponent decides to block, then your jab will touch him, forcing him to block. If blocks the jumping jab, he will be forced to block your subsequent ducking jab. At this point, you can perform the 360 on the joystick, then release a punch button. In Street Fighter, releasing a button (as opposed to pressing it) does count for doing a special move, but it does not cause you to do a normal move. So after the opponent blocks your low jab, if he does a move that makes him unthrowable (such as a Dragon Punch), then your throw will fail. In ST, T.Hawk does not have a throw whiff animation, so usually if you miss a throw, you get a normal punch instead. But if you tried to do the command throw by releasing a punch button (rather than pressing it) you don’t even get a punch if you fail to throw—you just get nothing, and you can block.

So after the opponent blocks your low jab, he will either get thrown or you will safely block his reversal attack (and then throw him anyway). At this point, you can safe jump jab to repeat the entire sequence if you are in the corner.

The bottom line is that although this loop is very difficult to execute properly, if you land it and you can execute it, you basically win. It also means there is a “perfect T.Hawk algorithm” once you get in the right situation. No real strategy is involved, it’s just a very difficult test of your ability to execute precisely. You could say that T.Hawk “needs” something this powerful, because even with it, he’s still bottom tier. But when we buff him up, it’s probably a bad idea to let him keep this. Because getting in is easier now (safe Hawk Dive), the reward should not be so great, and more importantly, the strategy should not be completely replaced by a dexterity test once you do get in.

Now check out my current change log for T.Hawk, starting AFTER the last T.Hawk article:

• Hawk Dive no longer knocks down. The reward for hitting was simply too great, allowing for crossup splash (fierce), stand short, command throw.
• Hawk Dive now falls slower after hit/block so that on block, T.Hawk does not recover before the opponent anymore.
• Hawk Dive now falls even slower after hit/block to prevent Hawk Dive -> low short or forward combo that was possible at a very certain height/distance. Difficult to perform, but too powerful.
• After command throw and super, T.Hawk now bounces farther away, and falls slower during the bounce. This prevents safe jump jab in the corner after a command throw, but still barely allows walk up low jab after a command throw (remember, the victim can hit your low jab with a reversal, but not the safe jump jab).
• Hawk Dive damage reduced.
• Hawk Dive startup time increased 4 frames.
• Alternate Hawk Dive added. New dive has incredibly fast startup, knocks down on hit, but is unsafe on block against many characters. Purpose is to allow T.Hawk to deal block damage to defensive characters such as Guile and also to give him back his knockdown dive if he’s willing to do the unsafe version.
• Both hits of low roundhouse given the ability to deal block damage (mostly to help vs. Honda).
• Change reverted: block damage removed on low roundhouse.
• Change reverted: Alternate Hawk Dive removed, the ultra fast startup wasn’t quite game-breaking in tests, but I can imagine it would be once released into the wild.
• Change reverted: Hawk Dive’s startup time reduced 4 frames, now matching original game.
• Change reverted: Hawk Dive’s damage set back to original game’s, entirely because block damage turns out to be linked to hit damage. Reducing the damage in an earlier change had the unintended effect of reducing the block damage also, so change reverted because he needs a way to deal some blocked damage.
• Throw whiff added when T.Hawk attempts the command throw, but fails to connect. Acts similarly to Zangief’s whiff throw.

As you can see, that was a lot of experimenting, and it didn’t all go well. You might argue that T.Hawk is even worse now than the original game because the deadly throw loop has been removed (can’t safe jump jab after a command throw and also addition of throw whiff prevents completely safe attempts at the command throw). But the flipside is that T.Hawk doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing anymore. He can mostly get in with the new dive, so getting in doesn’t need to lead to instant checkmate. He does have trouble against defensive characters like Guile and Honda, but I’ve managed to find at least some effective strategies in those matches, so hopefully he won’t be too bad off there. In other matches, he’s more well-rounded. His gameplay is more “interactive” now and less based on perfectly executing a throw loop, so this makes fighting him more fun. And when all is said and done, I hope players will find him more effective than he was in ST, just not game-breakingly so.

Although it took more tries with T.Hawk than any other character, I think he finally settled down into a reasonably balanced state. And every time T.Hawk wins a match by a lot or loses a match by a lot, I already know people will lean over to me and say “you think that’s reasonably balanced, eh?” Time will tell!

–Sirlin

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Developer Blog, Capcom Digital, Behind-the-scenes, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Street Fighter®. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.