Original Post
Updated Hits & Boomhits Tutorial
Reviewed and spellchecked by Larfen. Thank you Larfen.
Sorry for possible poor english.
Also big images ahead.
This is a singleplayer related tutorial, what you read here may/may not be applicable in multiplayer.
Sorry for possible poor english.
Also big images ahead.
This is a singleplayer related tutorial, what you read here may/may not be applicable in multiplayer.
The tutorial is illustrated with pictures (almost all from myself, because I'm a great role model 
), and they are essential to this tutorial, so be sure that you are able to see them and tell me if any of them does not work.
When I first started writing this, it was a boomhit tutorial, but it later evolved into just a general hits tutorial. So, hitting Uke tutorial.
), and they are essential to this tutorial, so be sure that you are able to see them and tell me if any of them does not work.When I first started writing this, it was a boomhit tutorial, but it later evolved into just a general hits tutorial. So, hitting Uke tutorial.
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As you probably already know, a boomhit is a hit that deals 3 or more dismemberments in one frame, or during a period of frames that varies if you ask different people (the general consensus is 5 frames, though I wouldn’t generalize it like that). You can hit with any body part you wish, though the most common boom is done with your legs or arms. Booms are usually done by dismembering chest or crotch joints, since you have multiple joints close to eachother in those locations.
We start with fundamentals, things you should know beforehand. These should help you a lot, not only with booms but with replaymaking in general. Let us start with ghosting.
Ghosting/Penetration
Because Toribash runs on frames, every time you skip a single frame with Shift+P or Shift+Spacebar, Tori and Uke move a significant distance without any physical contact registering. They just teleport to a position calculated by the game. This is why ghosting is possible (besides the biceps/thighs ghosting glitch, where you can move your arms through your legs), and it is possibly the most important thing in making boomhits. This allows you to make your bodyparts reach/”teleport” inside Uke and hit more joints at the same time.
That is a difference of 1 frame. As you see, my foot just teleported inside Uke, ignoring his joints in the theoretical time period inbetween frames.
So as you may have concluded, the trick to getting a lot of penetration is simple: when attempting a hit, get your leg/hand/whatever part you are hitting with as close as possible to Uke, but without touching him. If you touch him, the hit will register and your bodypart will bounce back and probably only hit 1 joint. However, if you succeed in doing it, you will get very close to Uke without having the hit register, and, in the next frame, the game will teleport your bodypart to the next position that it is supposed to be in (according to your speed and direction), which hopefully will be inside Uke, and in physical contact with more joints.
Here is an example of how you should not do it:
As you see, in the first frame, my foot is pretty far from Uke, but still close enough so that in the next frame it will hit his glutes. It just hits the surface of one joint, as you can see on the second picture, and in this case it didn’t give me any dismemberments.
The command /sm 1 brings up the speedometer, which measures the speed of your (or Uke's) fastest bodypart in toriunits (I don’t know what that is either), and it is a useful tool when you are trying to edit a specific frame and trying to go slightly faster. Speed is complementary to ghosting, if you are unable to reach decent speeds, you will have trouble with ghosting. The distance that your bodypart moves in between frames (like I explained above) can obviously be incremented with higher speeds, which brings me to the next subject:
Speed
You can’t come up with huge booms if you don’t go fast. Shook already covers speed pretty well in his booms tutorial, but I will try to add new things.
This is very essential, as I already covered in the ghosting section, so I’ll talk about a bit more specific situations.
Imagine you want to make a kick just like that, and you are already in the position shown in the picture, except your left hip is too contracted. Looks like you are out of luck, should have fixed it earlier. The logical way to fix it would probably be to edit the replay like 10ish frames before the kick lands, and slow down your movement, so that the hip has more time to go to the desired position. I imagine some might have found themselves in this situation and tried to extend the hip as hard as possible, which would make sense. However, relaxing the hip could work better in the right situation. If you are going at a reasonable speed, you will find that often if you relax your hip and contract your knee, your leg will move behind you faster than if you extended the hip.
Another peculiar thing about relaxed joints is that sometimes relaxing a glute, while kicking, will make your kick seem wider than if you extended the glute. It doesn’t actually reach any wider than if you extended it, but it reaches that maximum extended position faster.
This “trick” works like the elbows and wrists trick (extend wrists and contract elbows to contract your elbows instantly, contract wrists and extend elbows to extend your elbows instantly, which is another very useful trick), as in it allows you to reach a certain position faster than you would if you simply tried to do it by setting up the joint states instinctively. You should always take into account that speed and momentum sometimes make your joints move very fast on their own, without any extending or contracting. While trying to do a head throw to make a skeet with lots of dms, I found that when I swung my arm to throw my own head at Uke (by raising my shoulder), if I relaxed the shoulder joint mid-swing, it would actually achieve higher speeds in the next few frames than if I continued raising it. This is due to the fact that the head is a very heavy body part and allowed me to create insane momentum in the beginning of the swing. A relaxed joint moves where the momentum pulls it, and sometimes the momentum is stronger than your joints. Like a car clutch, when you're contracting or extending a joint, it moves your bodyparts at approximately a set speed, as if you're in gear, while relaxing "loosens" that joint so it moves accordingly to any forces (like momentum) that it's subject to.
Speaking of relaxed joints, the use of a relaxed ankle. Relaxing your ankle is a popular trick to get more penetration easily during a simple kick. What actually happens is that, when you ankle is relaxed, the knee extension makes the ankle extend really fast, like so:
As you can see, the ankle is progressively extending (extending faster than it would if it was actually extended, which confirms what I discussed above). Reasons why relaxing your ankle works well:
As you probably already know, a boomhit is a hit that deals 3 or more dismemberments in one frame, or during a period of frames that varies if you ask different people (the general consensus is 5 frames, though I wouldn’t generalize it like that). You can hit with any body part you wish, though the most common boom is done with your legs or arms. Booms are usually done by dismembering chest or crotch joints, since you have multiple joints close to eachother in those locations.
We start with fundamentals, things you should know beforehand. These should help you a lot, not only with booms but with replaymaking in general. Let us start with ghosting.
Ghosting/Penetration
Because Toribash runs on frames, every time you skip a single frame with Shift+P or Shift+Spacebar, Tori and Uke move a significant distance without any physical contact registering. They just teleport to a position calculated by the game. This is why ghosting is possible (besides the biceps/thighs ghosting glitch, where you can move your arms through your legs), and it is possibly the most important thing in making boomhits. This allows you to make your bodyparts reach/”teleport” inside Uke and hit more joints at the same time.
That is a difference of 1 frame. As you see, my foot just teleported inside Uke, ignoring his joints in the theoretical time period inbetween frames.
So as you may have concluded, the trick to getting a lot of penetration is simple: when attempting a hit, get your leg/hand/whatever part you are hitting with as close as possible to Uke, but without touching him. If you touch him, the hit will register and your bodypart will bounce back and probably only hit 1 joint. However, if you succeed in doing it, you will get very close to Uke without having the hit register, and, in the next frame, the game will teleport your bodypart to the next position that it is supposed to be in (according to your speed and direction), which hopefully will be inside Uke, and in physical contact with more joints.
Here is an example of how you should not do it:
As you see, in the first frame, my foot is pretty far from Uke, but still close enough so that in the next frame it will hit his glutes. It just hits the surface of one joint, as you can see on the second picture, and in this case it didn’t give me any dismemberments.
The command /sm 1 brings up the speedometer, which measures the speed of your (or Uke's) fastest bodypart in toriunits (I don’t know what that is either), and it is a useful tool when you are trying to edit a specific frame and trying to go slightly faster. Speed is complementary to ghosting, if you are unable to reach decent speeds, you will have trouble with ghosting. The distance that your bodypart moves in between frames (like I explained above) can obviously be incremented with higher speeds, which brings me to the next subject:
Speed
You can’t come up with huge booms if you don’t go fast. Shook already covers speed pretty well in his booms tutorial, but I will try to add new things.
This is very essential, as I already covered in the ghosting section, so I’ll talk about a bit more specific situations.
Relaxed joints can go very fast. This is great to know when you want to make a hit, but are in a position that is not favorable. The most common situation I can think of is when you want to make a hook kick. Picture of a hook kick for reference:
(This is a kick where the force comes from contracting the knee and extending the hip, for the most part)
(This is a kick where the force comes from contracting the knee and extending the hip, for the most part)
Imagine you want to make a kick just like that, and you are already in the position shown in the picture, except your left hip is too contracted. Looks like you are out of luck, should have fixed it earlier. The logical way to fix it would probably be to edit the replay like 10ish frames before the kick lands, and slow down your movement, so that the hip has more time to go to the desired position. I imagine some might have found themselves in this situation and tried to extend the hip as hard as possible, which would make sense. However, relaxing the hip could work better in the right situation. If you are going at a reasonable speed, you will find that often if you relax your hip and contract your knee, your leg will move behind you faster than if you extended the hip.
Another peculiar thing about relaxed joints is that sometimes relaxing a glute, while kicking, will make your kick seem wider than if you extended the glute. It doesn’t actually reach any wider than if you extended it, but it reaches that maximum extended position faster.
This “trick” works like the elbows and wrists trick (extend wrists and contract elbows to contract your elbows instantly, contract wrists and extend elbows to extend your elbows instantly, which is another very useful trick), as in it allows you to reach a certain position faster than you would if you simply tried to do it by setting up the joint states instinctively. You should always take into account that speed and momentum sometimes make your joints move very fast on their own, without any extending or contracting. While trying to do a head throw to make a skeet with lots of dms, I found that when I swung my arm to throw my own head at Uke (by raising my shoulder), if I relaxed the shoulder joint mid-swing, it would actually achieve higher speeds in the next few frames than if I continued raising it. This is due to the fact that the head is a very heavy body part and allowed me to create insane momentum in the beginning of the swing. A relaxed joint moves where the momentum pulls it, and sometimes the momentum is stronger than your joints. Like a car clutch, when you're contracting or extending a joint, it moves your bodyparts at approximately a set speed, as if you're in gear, while relaxing "loosens" that joint so it moves accordingly to any forces (like momentum) that it's subject to.
Speaking of relaxed joints, the use of a relaxed ankle. Relaxing your ankle is a popular trick to get more penetration easily during a simple kick. What actually happens is that, when you ankle is relaxed, the knee extension makes the ankle extend really fast, like so:
As you can see, the ankle is progressively extending (extending faster than it would if it was actually extended, which confirms what I discussed above). Reasons why relaxing your ankle works well:
1.
A relaxed ankle gathers more speed than any other state. Bring up the speedometer (/sm 1), and measure the speed of the few frames before a kick in your replay (a kick where you didn’t use relaxed ankle). Now relax the ankle and measure the speed again, you will probably observe a more intense acceleration. This happens because as you extend your knee, your foot extends naturally, so until it's completely extended it's as if you're extending a leg that has no foot (and therefore less weight). In theory it shouldn't give you much of a benefit, because when the ankle reaches its fully extended position the accumulated power is transferred to it, but having your leg extend faster allows the rest of the body to move accordingly faster too during that tiny window, which is enough to have an effect.
The downside is the inability to control the position that your ankle acquires during the moments before the kick, which is usually flat like in the pictures above. That means that if you want to make your ankle look contracted, but still gather more speed by relaxing it, you will have a hard time.
A relaxed ankle gathers more speed than any other state. Bring up the speedometer (/sm 1), and measure the speed of the few frames before a kick in your replay (a kick where you didn’t use relaxed ankle). Now relax the ankle and measure the speed again, you will probably observe a more intense acceleration. This happens because as you extend your knee, your foot extends naturally, so until it's completely extended it's as if you're extending a leg that has no foot (and therefore less weight). In theory it shouldn't give you much of a benefit, because when the ankle reaches its fully extended position the accumulated power is transferred to it, but having your leg extend faster allows the rest of the body to move accordingly faster too during that tiny window, which is enough to have an effect.
The downside is the inability to control the position that your ankle acquires during the moments before the kick, which is usually flat like in the pictures above. That means that if you want to make your ankle look contracted, but still gather more speed by relaxing it, you will have a hard time.
2.
The ankle acquires a flat position relative to the lower part of the leg.
The ankle acquires a flat position relative to the lower part of the leg.
When your kick gets close to Uke, your foot will not get in the way of the rest of the leg, which allows the shin to participate in the destruction:
If the ankle was contracted, the tip of the foot would have been the only thing to hit Uke:
Obviously I am not hitting as many joints as in the first picture.
Beware though, that an overly extended ankle can also be prejudicial if the shin is the only thing that hits Uke and the foot doesn’t do anything.
That's all about speed on a small scale, I know getting your whole body moving fast is a topic of interest as well. The most common way is to kick the ground. The best possible opener (in a practical point of view) is to fall to the ground and get in a position where you can push yourself off it and towards Uke. The most popular opener that works like this is relaxing all and extending both glutes. I also find that holding joints like pecs and the chest during a spin conserves momentum much better than if I extended/contracted them. I believe you can get better info on this from a tricker though.
Physics, timing, synchronising movements
Open toribash, hold all, lower both arms and press space. Tori jumps up slightly, reaches a certain height and is then brought down by gravity. As your body pushes your arms down, your arms push your body up. When you contract your pecs, your whole body moves back because as you push your arms forward they push your body back; action reaction.
This is very simple and we all certainly use it in the most basic of movements even if we're not conscious of it, so what exactly can be taken from this? Once you consider that Tori's joints only have so much range of motion and can't move past a certain point, you realise that it's really important to synchronise your movements in order to have as much power as possible for your hit, reason being:
Picture once again the scenario of Tori holding all and contracting both pecs, sending his arms forward and body backward. Once the pecs are fully contracted and cannot contract any more, the arms stop moving forward. As such, the body stops moving backward aswell. After the arms and body are done pushing eachother in opposite directions, they pull eachother back into themselves and cancel eachother's movement out (you stop moving). Lets picture a simple scenario:
In this situation I am about to kick what I'm grabbing with my left leg, using my right arm to pull it towards the foot as I extend my left knee and contract the left hip. By contracting my right pec and right elbow, I push Uke inward (to the left), which causes my whole body to rotate to the right, making my kick more powerful. As long as I am performing the action, I can take benefit from the reaction. This is where synchronising and timing movements is important; if you're doing a kick like this and your right pec is fully contracted before the kick lands, you've already lost a huge amount of power.
It's very common to see people kick just like in the picture above, while having the left arm fully extended and pointing up. The idea is to throw the arm back so your body can lunge forward to increase the power of your kick, but it doesn't work if your arm is completely behind you and totally extended by the time the kick actually lands.
Same thing with contracting the neck for a small boost of power during a kick, ideally you do it right before the kick lands so that your neck doesn't finish contracting before the hit and jolts your body back into place, undoing all of the boost you wanted.
Short version, when you use parts of your body to help with a hit such as throwing your arms back to lunge forward for more power, you want to time it so that the limbs/joints you're moving don't fully extend/contract before the hit lands, because if that happens, once they reach the limit and can't extend further, they'll just pull back in the opposite direction and undo the boost.
Grabs
Situations in which grabs are poorly placed:
As you see in the second picture, the only thing that my foot hits is the neck. My goal is to hit all the other joints that I am grabbing, the chest and the pec aswell. In this situation, you can replace the grab. You want your grab to be placed in a way so that it does not block your kick, and that it places the uke joints at a good distance. In this case, the optimal option would be to grab the chest piece by its bottom, like so:
This allows your leg to reach the other joints.
This also works the other way around. If the piece you are grabbing is too close to your shin or knee, grab with a part of the hand that is farther away from the wrist.
Alternative fix. In a spoiler as to not interrupt the subject of grabbing
Grab placement is something that is often neglected and causes people trouble. I’ve witnessed a few people say that they are having trouble with kicking Uke despite having edited the replay tonnes of times, when their problem was their grab placement. A good grab will make your life much easier during the editing of the rest of the hit.
How do I want to place my grab?
Grabbing, when not used for aesthetical purposes, is a tool. Tools should make your goal easier. When you want to kick something that you are grabbing, the grab should NOT be placed in the following ways:
1
This is obvious. You are just going to kick your hand instead of the torso piece you are grabbing.
And no dms happened that day
2
1
This is obvious. You are just going to kick your hand instead of the torso piece you are grabbing.
And no dms happened that day
2
Another situation
In this situation, my chest is rotating right and I am going to attempt to kick the torso piece with my right leg. Once again, it’s obvious that to hit that torso piece, I would have to ghost through my own arm, and even that would be difficult because it requires a lot of glute extension. The grab should be placed in the opposite side of the piece, so that your leg would be able to reach it.
Abs
It's not uncommon of people to find themselves in the awkward situation of fully extending their glutes during a kick, yet the leg flies right under the piece they're grabbing. It’s a funny thing that happens when you are kicking with your glutes almost completely extended, yet it seems that your leg just can’t reach the part you are grabbing.
This is mostly because of abs (and hip) movement.
The abs is a very important joint that many people just contract all the way through hits. Contracting it makes you bend forward, while extending it makes you bend back. This is very useful for kicks, as everyone knows, but it is a joint that is still not used enough, as it is very useful for aiming awkward kicks.
^this image is somewhat inaccurate, but you can get the idea of how the abs works in kicks. Hopefully after fully understanding abs you will have the ability to use the abs to make your legs cover larger distances.
Someone who uses their abs to its full potential are able to move their legs within the yellow area seamlessly and make kicks from any doable position.
Practical Example: Use an extended abs in a situation where I have a grab in a poor position:
You can see here that my arm is still too raised, and that contracting my hip would make my leg swing under Uke’s head, missing his body completely. I could fix that, but I could also try to kick as is. If I tried to turn this into a regular front kick, by contracting the left pec a bit so that I could kick the torso in front of my body, I would lose a lot of power.
This kick is characterized by extending the hip you are using to kick, contracting the opposite hip, bringing your grabbing arm behind you and extending the abs. The abs extension here is crucial.
I have attached the replay of this picture as “nice kick”.
In this case, I am using the leg from the same side as the arm I am using to grab. The following example is a kick like this while grabbing with the opposite arm. It is very strange but our friend abs will help us.
The power comes from the knee extending, just like a regular front kick. The abs here is, once again, extended, to increase the reach of my leg vertically. This position is achieved very specifically. I had to grab Uke’s hand, and make sure that his torso stayed behind my back, by contracting my elbow and wrist. Whatever I am grabbing in this situation had to be really big or long, so that I could grab it in front of my right pec and be able to kick it behind my back from the opposite side. But nonetheless, the abs here allows me to reach something that was too high for a contracted abs to reach.
This kick is characterized by extending the hip you are using to kick, contracting the opposite hip, bringing your grabbing arm behind you and extending the abs. The abs extension here is crucial.
I have attached the replay of this picture as “nice kick”.
In this case, I am using the leg from the same side as the arm I am using to grab. The following example is a kick like this while grabbing with the opposite arm. It is very strange but our friend abs will help us.
The power comes from the knee extending, just like a regular front kick. The abs here is, once again, extended, to increase the reach of my leg vertically. This position is achieved very specifically. I had to grab Uke’s hand, and make sure that his torso stayed behind my back, by contracting my elbow and wrist. Whatever I am grabbing in this situation had to be really big or long, so that I could grab it in front of my right pec and be able to kick it behind my back from the opposite side. But nonetheless, the abs here allows me to reach something that was too high for a contracted abs to reach.
I have attached the replay from the picture above named “weird kick”.
These are not particularly common situations that happen very often, this is simply to exemplify what kind of work the abs can do in aiming kicks. Most of these situations involve grabs, but they can be applied to no grab kicks aswell. No grab kicks is the next subject.
Kicks (without using grab)
Not using a grab to get your kick is often seen as a positive, because it is more difficult. You don’t have the help of a grab, you have the risk of kicking Uke’s body away from you, and it is more difficult to keep moving afterwards.
Kicks (without using grab)
Not using a grab to get your kick is often seen as a positive, because it is more difficult. You don’t have the help of a grab, you have the risk of kicking Uke’s body away from you, and it is more difficult to keep moving afterwards.
How should one approach kicking without grabbing?
You should already be moving fast when you start the kick. Because you are not grabbing, you cannot push or pull Uke towards your foot, so you must already have some power in your hit, and you cannot do that standing still. I already talked about this above near the speed section, but there are also other issues you might encounter even if you already have speed.
When you kick Uke, your power transfers to him. You will be slowed down significantly, maybe even to a dead stop. If you do not want this to happen, you want to try:
When you kick Uke, your power transfers to him. You will be slowed down significantly, maybe even to a dead stop. If you do not want this to happen, you want to try:
1.
Ghosting your foot through Uke completely, to the point of phasing your leg through him and continuing the movement with almost all the momentum you had before. This is difficult, because it requires a significant speed (or just really good ghosting). This is easier to do when you are trying to dm a joint that is not close to another joint or close to a big bodypart. A good example would be the knee. Since Uke and Tori have spaghetti legs, it is not difficult to ghost through them without having the game register a collision.
2.
Scraping the joint you want to dm. This is not recommended if the hit you want to make is a boomhit, obviously. This works well if you hit the joint with the foot’s corner/vertex.
Continuing the replay after a no grab kick is also an issue. This is very situational, but you should always have your other leg (that you are not using) ready to help you stand up or kick the ground to avoid flying away from Uke. Foresight is a big deal for easily transitioning between different parts of a replay. I like to keep the leg in front of me, and sometimes the knee contracted if I am close to the ground.
Okay, I left punching for last. During the whole tutorial, I’ve only been typing “kicks”, and haven’t referred to punching so much. Arms don’t work exactly the same way as legs, mostly because the wrists, in contrast with the ankles, are bitchy joints that break with minimal damage.
Punching
Punching
A “real” punch
One where the power comes from the elbow extending. Although I’ve called it a real punch, it doesn’t necessarily have to look real. It’s just a punch where you have your elbow contracted, and then extend it while contracting the pec.
Punching like this is notorious for breaking your wrist very often. For that reason, I do not recommend that you have your wrist completely extended. Contract it for a frame or two and then hold it. When joints are completely extended or contracted, they are easier to break.
You can even try to extend the wrist during the frame right before the hit happens to slightly increase the power of the punch if you have your wrist like this.
It is common sense to contract your respective pec if you are punching like this. You can get more power if you contract the other pec aswell, even though it brings the other arm closer to your chest and might make you do a clap instead of a punch.
For the elbow extension, I frequently have trouble extending it exactly when I want. I’m sure you have once tried to extend your completely contracted elbow, and it took a few frames before it started moving. You can solve this by using the contracted wrist trick (contract your wrist while you extend the elbow, and after the elbow starts moving put the wrist back in the position it was before), or by not contracting your elbow completely when preparing the punch. I always find it easier to contract or extend joints that are held or relaxed, instead of contracted or extended. Another trick you can do is holding the elbow joint for a frame before extending it; joints tend to "bounce" outwards when you hold them, and holding your elbow extends it ever so slightly, just enough to get it out of that completely contracted, locked position. This also works with legs, hold your knee for a frame and in the next frame you should be able to extend it with no problem.
The elbow extension should be timed correctly so that your elbow reaches maximum extension right when your fist collides with whatever you are punching. It is ok if it is not completely extended when you hit, but it should never extend 100% before your punch hits Uke.
Remember that you can also try relaxing the elbow, as established, relaxed joints have great speed potential, so if you have a lot of momentum relaxing the elbow might do more good than extending it. Try to have a combination of relaxing and extending at the right time if you have enough speed.
The big downside is that the more power you have in your punch, the more likely your wrist is to break aswell.
Since punching like that is awkward to edit, many people grab with the other arm to help their punch. Using the grab for a punch is not much different from punching without the grab. Use the grab to push Uke’s joints in the direction of your fist, which is often achieved by contracting pecs and the elbow of the arm that is grabbing.
You can also introduce extra power by having one shoulder raised and the other lowered, and then reverse the movement, doing a scissor-like movement with both arms. It’s not done often as it's difficult to perform graciously.
Since both of these punches seem lame, most people resort to something more effective, like slapping.
Slap/Backhand
A slap is exactly what it sounds like. You contract your elbow and hit Uke with the inside part of your hand. In contrast with a real punch, the power here comes from contracting the elbow, instead of extending it.
Very much like in a real punch, contracting the opposite pec helps a lot.
However, there is still a big risk of having your wrist break if it is completely extended, which sucks, because like ankles, relaxed wrists achieved higher speeds, and relaxing a wrist will make it extend naturally.
But there is one advantage to doing a slap, which is the ability to toggle grab. When you turn grab mode on, your hand gets smaller, which allows you to pretty much instantly modify the distance between your hand and Uke.
So I am slapping Uke’s butt right here.
Let’s see what happens next frame.
By this point, my hand is already colliding with Uke. If I pressed space as it is, the hit would register and I would get maybe 1 dismemberment. But if I toggle grip mode, my hand gets so small that it is not touching the glute anymore.
Now, my hand shall continue to move until it is inside Uke. Once it ghosts through the glutes, I am able to ungrab and deal a lot of damage.
Slaps are cool and effective.
A backhand is pretty much the opposite of a slap. You extend the elbow and hit Uke with the back of your hand.
From what I’ve experienced, hitting with your wrist too contracted will warrant you a wrist dm, and so will doing it with a completely extended wrist. What I would do would be the same that I do for “real” punches. Contract the wrist slightly, and then hold it. Maybe extend it in the frame before the impact, but not if the wrist is very bruised.
It is pretty difficult to punch if your elbow or/and wrist are bruised, it is easier to break them like that.
If you find trouble extending the elbow at the right time or controlling how fast it is extending, you'll probably want to mess with the wrist and holding the elbow for a frame, which is a bit more difficult with this kind of hit since you risk hitting with your wrist joint. You can also try to relax the correpondent pec to aid the aiming, but it sacrifices power.
Using grab to achieve ghosting works very much like it does in a slap. The problem that is encountered is that the wrist joint is protruding in comparison to the rest of the hand, which did not happen in the slap.
This makes it harder to use grab for ghosting, since the wrist does not shrink in size. If the wrist is already touching in the previous frame, using grab will only make you grab Uke’s bodypart with your wrist, which is an excellent way to break the wrist. This makes backhands require control of the speed of your arm to increase ghosting, you can’t easily use ghosting to cheat it.
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Please post questions if you think that I missed something important. Also something to consider:
Toribash is very situational, I guarantee you'll find examples of replays where any of what I said does not apply. Although I talked about specific situations, you are to use your big juicy brain to analyse them and understand how the game works more fundamentally, that's what should be taken from this tutorial. It’s good to have experience with familiar situations, practice so that you can gather experiences and study those experiences so you can learn to adapt.
Punching like this is notorious for breaking your wrist very often. For that reason, I do not recommend that you have your wrist completely extended. Contract it for a frame or two and then hold it. When joints are completely extended or contracted, they are easier to break.
You can even try to extend the wrist during the frame right before the hit happens to slightly increase the power of the punch if you have your wrist like this.
It is common sense to contract your respective pec if you are punching like this. You can get more power if you contract the other pec aswell, even though it brings the other arm closer to your chest and might make you do a clap instead of a punch.
For the elbow extension, I frequently have trouble extending it exactly when I want. I’m sure you have once tried to extend your completely contracted elbow, and it took a few frames before it started moving. You can solve this by using the contracted wrist trick (contract your wrist while you extend the elbow, and after the elbow starts moving put the wrist back in the position it was before), or by not contracting your elbow completely when preparing the punch. I always find it easier to contract or extend joints that are held or relaxed, instead of contracted or extended. Another trick you can do is holding the elbow joint for a frame before extending it; joints tend to "bounce" outwards when you hold them, and holding your elbow extends it ever so slightly, just enough to get it out of that completely contracted, locked position. This also works with legs, hold your knee for a frame and in the next frame you should be able to extend it with no problem.
The elbow extension should be timed correctly so that your elbow reaches maximum extension right when your fist collides with whatever you are punching. It is ok if it is not completely extended when you hit, but it should never extend 100% before your punch hits Uke.
Remember that you can also try relaxing the elbow, as established, relaxed joints have great speed potential, so if you have a lot of momentum relaxing the elbow might do more good than extending it. Try to have a combination of relaxing and extending at the right time if you have enough speed.
The big downside is that the more power you have in your punch, the more likely your wrist is to break aswell.
Since punching like that is awkward to edit, many people grab with the other arm to help their punch. Using the grab for a punch is not much different from punching without the grab. Use the grab to push Uke’s joints in the direction of your fist, which is often achieved by contracting pecs and the elbow of the arm that is grabbing.
You can also introduce extra power by having one shoulder raised and the other lowered, and then reverse the movement, doing a scissor-like movement with both arms. It’s not done often as it's difficult to perform graciously.
Since both of these punches seem lame, most people resort to something more effective, like slapping.
Slap/Backhand
A slap is exactly what it sounds like. You contract your elbow and hit Uke with the inside part of your hand. In contrast with a real punch, the power here comes from contracting the elbow, instead of extending it.
Very much like in a real punch, contracting the opposite pec helps a lot.
However, there is still a big risk of having your wrist break if it is completely extended, which sucks, because like ankles, relaxed wrists achieved higher speeds, and relaxing a wrist will make it extend naturally.
But there is one advantage to doing a slap, which is the ability to toggle grab. When you turn grab mode on, your hand gets smaller, which allows you to pretty much instantly modify the distance between your hand and Uke.
So I am slapping Uke’s butt right here.
Let’s see what happens next frame.
By this point, my hand is already colliding with Uke. If I pressed space as it is, the hit would register and I would get maybe 1 dismemberment. But if I toggle grip mode, my hand gets so small that it is not touching the glute anymore.
Now, my hand shall continue to move until it is inside Uke. Once it ghosts through the glutes, I am able to ungrab and deal a lot of damage.
Slaps are cool and effective.
A backhand is pretty much the opposite of a slap. You extend the elbow and hit Uke with the back of your hand.
From what I’ve experienced, hitting with your wrist too contracted will warrant you a wrist dm, and so will doing it with a completely extended wrist. What I would do would be the same that I do for “real” punches. Contract the wrist slightly, and then hold it. Maybe extend it in the frame before the impact, but not if the wrist is very bruised.
It is pretty difficult to punch if your elbow or/and wrist are bruised, it is easier to break them like that.
If you find trouble extending the elbow at the right time or controlling how fast it is extending, you'll probably want to mess with the wrist and holding the elbow for a frame, which is a bit more difficult with this kind of hit since you risk hitting with your wrist joint. You can also try to relax the correpondent pec to aid the aiming, but it sacrifices power.
Using grab to achieve ghosting works very much like it does in a slap. The problem that is encountered is that the wrist joint is protruding in comparison to the rest of the hand, which did not happen in the slap.
This makes it harder to use grab for ghosting, since the wrist does not shrink in size. If the wrist is already touching in the previous frame, using grab will only make you grab Uke’s bodypart with your wrist, which is an excellent way to break the wrist. This makes backhands require control of the speed of your arm to increase ghosting, you can’t easily use ghosting to cheat it.
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Please post questions if you think that I missed something important. Also something to consider:
Toribash is very situational, I guarantee you'll find examples of replays where any of what I said does not apply. Although I talked about specific situations, you are to use your big juicy brain to analyse them and understand how the game works more fundamentally, that's what should be taken from this tutorial. It’s good to have experience with familiar situations, practice so that you can gather experiences and study those experiences so you can learn to adapt.
Last edited by pusga; Jun 20, 2021 at 10:53 PM.
oh yeah
I know I edited the thing, but I just want to say this is one of the most in-depth tutorials on any aspect of replaymaking I've ever seen posted to the forums. Hell, I learned a thing or two from reading it.
A real treat from the (objectively!) greatest boomhit maker of all time.
A real treat from the (objectively!) greatest boomhit maker of all time.
Last edited by Larfen; Dec 29, 2014 at 12:37 AM.
[12:00] <fudgiebalz> toribash SUCKS
Check my ~~~Dank Replays~~~
Check my ~~~Dank Replays~~~
I know I'm not really that relevant anymore, but as a replay maker who basically only did things to make uke explode I'd have to say that this is a really great guide and I'm highly impressed
[T] ~~~~~> [Tigma] <~~~~~ [Sigma]
You should totally join my fanclub.
You should totally join my fanclub.
Could you please put pics in spoiler?
Also amazing tutorial! It kinda gives me a green light to make the advanced running tutorial I always wanted.
Also amazing tutorial! It kinda gives me a green light to make the advanced running tutorial I always wanted.
Parkour like you've never seen before:
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=423045
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=423045
Originally Posted by xlr84life
Could you please put pics in spoiler?
i thought it would be bothersome to be constantly clicking the Show button to show and hide the pictures, since it is really picture heavy. i added a link on the beggining of the post though, it links to a version where the pictures are all in a spoiler. here it is: http://forum.toribash.com/showpost.p...&postcount=323
additionally, i've just fixed a few mistakes and formatting fallacies in the op
thanks for feedback
Last edited by pusga; Dec 29, 2014 at 01:55 PM.
oh yeah
