Blog Entry Two

This week, I researched a video game I happen to play quite frequently, Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend. What prompted this research was the need to acquire new and effective combos that would help better the character I play. To begin with, the game itself is a fighting game with a lot of specific nuances that are niche even to fighting game fans. Before research can even begin, I have to study positioning, which is the places on the screen where the character can move easily, and also how many frames I can delay and ability and for how long, and also the follow up abilities.

A lot of the notations for the moves are researched on this website dustloop.com, which has a plethora of information for anyone interested in the game, or need help picking a character. The first thing I do is check out the frame data. Frame data is a spreadsheet of abilities for specific characters detailed into things like damage, heat gain, and start-up, active, and recovery frames. The damage isn't as important as the start-up and active frames because during a match I will need to recognize the abilities in a block string so that I can retaliate. The majority of the time, I researching other characters, not the character I play. For my own character I look up optimal combos that gives me the advantage in a match-up.

There are a lot of things that are necessary and needed to research on this particular game. For instance, 6A, noted by moving the analog stick forward and pressing A simultaneously, causing an anti-air ability to occur, which is useful information if your opponent is attacking from the air and you need to know the positioned required and how to effectively defeat the opponent.

The way I acquired my sources for my annotated bibliography was that I searched on imdb.com for the films I wanted to use in my genre presentation. The films I chose were Toy Story and Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, each source was valuable and useful for me to include into my PowerPoint presentation. The sources also gave insight on various film media that have been used for CG films.

Each method I used for my daily life and academy research are similar. I found what I was looking for, tested to see if the knowledge gained was useful, and put it into practice. The only difference being that my academic research delves deeper into something I may not have known at the time, whereas self-directed research I already have an interest in the idea and can continue on from there.