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Testing out different HAR's to figure out as close as I can get to complete list of combo chains.

In the simplest definition, a combo is any 2 or more hits that hits the enemy while they're still in hit-stun, thus is not in control of their bot.

The game shows this by giving a “2 hit combo” bonus points.

Now to go into more details:

• Most of this is going to be based on Frames, frame-data and some animation cancels.
• Some attacks force the enemy into hit-stun long enough to let you activate another attack right after. This will create a combo.
• Most attacks have the ability to cancel out some of its later frames in order to start a new attack faster. We call this “combo links”. This is not enough by itself to create combos.
• Most common combos thus use a combination of those two. An animation cancel from the start attack, and into another attack that has a fast enough startup to hit before hit-stun runs out.
• Air juggling is a completely different thing, and should be discussed separately.
• The SPEED stat does not by itself enable or allow combos. The SPEED stat only changes how fast the bot actually moves and not the actual Frames of Attacks, thus can not affect combos.
• It is possible however to use SPEED to move close enough between moves to get another hit in while the opponent is still in hit-stun, example Electra's 3K is fast enough to make that possible.

Example: Jaguar 2K

• Links into: 1P, 4P, 4K, 4P, JagLeap, ConCannon
• This means that 2K can go straight into these attacks during it's recovery frames where it tries to pull it's leg back to itself after hitting. Thus negating several frames of “dead time”.
• Combos into 4K, 5P and JagLeap, because they have 1-2 frames startup.
• Does not combo into 1P, 4P or ConCannon, because these have 3+ frames startup.

I'll use Jaguar as example again:

The animation string has tags that can link to moves of type: High, Medium or Low. Here's a list of which type each of Jaguar's moves counts as:

• High: 1P, 4P, 4K, 5P, JL, CC
• Medium: 2P, 3P, 5K
• Low: 1K, 2K, 3K

There's also a own tag to link to a specific move, in the case of Jaguar this is often used to link to ConCannon, but it's still so slow to start that it usually doesn't combo either way.

So to continue to use the example from before, Jaguar's 2K:

sp7sf-3l33s5A2-B3-cpC4-jhnB3-jhnA3

This is the base_string, that we'll use for this. First of all lets remove some bits we don't really need:

sp7sf-3l33s5

This bit is just a bunch of settings for starting sounds, volume and pitch. So we don't need to think about it for this example.

A2-B3-cpC4-jhnB3-jhnA3

So this becomes the actual move/frame string that we care about.

A2, B3, C4, B3, A3 refers to the different animations, basically how far the Jag is sticking its leg out, and then later pulling it back. The numbers are the number of frames each animation takes before moving to the next.

The interesting tag here is “jh” which says that at this frame you can cancel the animation into any “high” move. This means you can cancel out off Jaguars 2K after it's first 9 frames doing the attack, to skip the last 6 frames where it's in “recovery” trying to pull its leg back. As long as it is into one of the attacks listed as High. This by itself won't be enough to get a combo, as the attack you link into also needs to be fast enough to hit while the opponent is still in hit stun from the previous attack.

Notes:

• Tournament mode changes this somewhat, because each arm/leg speed upgrade has its own animation string, with shorter frames. Thus they can vary a lot from normal. They might become so fast that they don't need cancels to combo etc.
• The lowest levels of upgrades in tournament are even lower than the default 1/2player bots. Thus they can fail to do standard combos.

Further reading for Animation Strings:

• https://www.omf2097.com/wiki/doku.php?id=openomf:animation_string

Basically when attack A hits and puts the opponent in hit stun long enough that you can start another attack B that is fast enough to hit the opponent before they recover.

Example: Jaguar 3P → 4K

• 3P has links to Low attacks but not High, so it won't cancel parts of its animation.
• 3P is able to put enemies in a couple of extra frames of hit-stun, which makes it easier to combo into another attack.
• 4K is very fast and only has 1 frame startup, before it starts doing damage.
• 4K has very slow recovery though, so you probably won't be able to combo further.

Notes:

• This is most predominant in Tournament mode with lots of Arm/Leg Speed upgrades, as more and more attacks can do this.

WIP

Especially with new findings about the animation strings, I'll have to redo these, and test things further. Though they still work as a general guide to combos as is.

Animation String Links:

Tested combos:

Animation String:

Tested combos:

Manually tested, not data confirmed.

• Not tested specials
• Not tested all height variations on JK
• Not tested juggling options