Theory on aerial hits and forced hard landing lag

[A2ZOMG]

Brawl has a number of combos in this game that depend on the fact that characters who are hit into the air go into hard landing lag animations after the actual stun has ended.

Luigi's Jab cancels are not only well researched, they are a perfect example combos that depend on forced hard landlag to be unblockable.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=199907bo

So anyhow, I was looking at universal animations on BrawlBox, and there were a few that stood out.

DamageAir1: Total = 12
DamageAir2: Total = 24
DamageAir3: Total = 30

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen, you're supposed to subtract 1 frame from BrawlBox numbers to get the number of frames an animation is active.

So if you look at the Jab cancel data for Luigi, Jiggs happens to be the one character in the game who is cappable of not going into forced hard landing after being Jabbed if she ASDIs up. This causes her to be in the air for exactly 23 frames.

Now this is basically what I suspect.

If
DamageAir(X) > Stun Time >= DamageAir(X - 1)
Then
Animation chosen = DamageAir(X).

And if you do not interrupt or complete the stun animation with any other action before you hit the ground, you are forced into hard landing lag. Notice how the lowest stun time for Luigi's Jab happens to be 11 frames, which according to my theory would reach the minimum threshold for triggering DamageAir2 which lasts for 23 frames.

It also appears that there are more different types of low damage animations, labeled Hi, Lw, N which have the same numbers as the ones listed for DamageAir. Except DamageLw3 for some reason is listed as lasting 42 BrawlBox frames.

Just something I observed. Dunno who wants to do testing on something as minor as this, but I thought this was a good start for explaining how some combos work.

 

[phi1ny3]

This has been something I've wanted to be researched for the longest time. I always found it so weird that certain things work because of the assumed minor difference in lag when landing.

Then of course there's upB phantom lag abuse

 

[Stealth Raptor]

me and noid have noticed something similar with samus actually. a combo i like doing is dash attack -> reverse jab -> dsmash. it seems to work every time if the jab hits the opponent at the right height and then hit the ground. i intend to do some hard testing of this combo