Falcon movement is an extremely masterful topic, and fascinates me endlessly. Inside of our movement options lies the secret to success. The subtleties inherent within a character of his build allow for the most complex of options.



I have already given you guys the optimized tech chase, but today's thread is not about being optimal. This time, the focus is on understanding your character fully. Movement, for me, is the ultimate expression of self. There is never a right or wrong, an optimal or suboptimal. There is only what you can do, and whether you can do it. Anyways, let's get started. I'm not exactly sure how I want to format this, so I'll start with all the fundamentals and attempt to tie them together.



One last warning! I recently temporarily lost access to my debug mode. I can't fact check ANY of this until I get it back, so all these facts are off the top of my head. However, I'm extremely confident that I'm right anyways. I will fact check soon! Also, any part where I wrote sleepyk will eventually have some gifs attached, so just be patient if it's hard to visualize.



DASHES



The most basic of all, dashes are quite literally the most fundamental building block of falcon. Despite this, I feel that people don't understand the actual rules of our dashes, so here they are.



There exists separate time limitations on falcons dash. They are all represented by different animations. The first one that I will discuss is the one everyone should be familiar with, and that is the limitation that separates DASH from RUN.



As soon as you enter a certain threshold on your control stick (which is NOT, by the way, related to the deadzone) you will begin to dash. The only way that this is foiled is if you are too slow moving your control stick, and you will instead walk. Now, the character animation shows falcon essentially gaining speed and breaking into a full sprint. On the 15th frame of dash, his animation will show him in a full sprint. If you continue to hold your stick forward from frame 1-16, falcon will enter run. Sleepyk* I want to focus heavily on that time frame before entering run, and the implications there of. Let me start by listing the unique options that are available in either state. Most other options, such as dash jump, is actually mutually available in both states.



Dash:

Pivot

Shield stop (if a character is in dash animation before they shield, they will immediately stop momentum in one frame. If the character is in run before hitting shield, they will keep their momentum for 3 frames before coming to a stop!) Sleepyk*



Run:

Crouch

Teeter cancel (a teeter cancel is when you stop running right before hitting a ledge, you character teeters to a stop which gives you full control back.)



This may seem like a small or inconsequential list, but it absolutely is not. Turning around is what separates the boys from the men. Now, you CAN turn around, or restart a dash, from the crouch animation. The crouch animation itself lasts for 7 frames. During these 7 frames you can not dash in either direction. After you fully have entered your crouch, you can dash again in either direction. HOWEVER, in order to dash backwards from the crouch animation you must go from holding down to holding backwards in one frame or less! The crouch animation is immediately cancelable with smashes and tilts though (probably more but I have to test.)



Now, let's expand more on the options that are available out of dash!



First and foremost, you have what I like to call "empty pivot."Sleepyk* This is a very simple option! You simply turn your character around and stop in place. There are two main methods to do this! There's the stupid way, which is done by flicking your stick in a dash backwards motion and then releasing it to neutral as fast as possible. This is for stupid idiots because it depends on the tightness of your control stick almost entirely, and you can not be so precise about the amount of time your stick is in "dashing the other way" range.



The second way to do an empty pivot is to do a quarter circle, similar to in street fighter. You simply dash backwards and begin to rotate your stick to downwards. Ideally, you would be transitioning from backwards to downwards exactly one frame after transitioning from neutral to backwards. Be controlled about your movement instead of being frantic! In my experience, a firm and constant speed is best.



Now, once you have committed to an empty pivot, you have a few limitations on your options! Mainly, you can not turn around, crouch, or start another dash for 11 frames!Sleepyk* This is a very powerful option regardless. Compare this to wavedash down, which serves the same purpose while completely eliminating all options for 14 frames!



There's a way to exploit one of these limitation that I have found. Since you can't turn around for 11 frames, if you start holding backwards immediately after empty pivot (essentially turning quarter circle into a half circle,) you can press a with no fear of doing a ftilt! This means that pivot jab is EXTREMELY easy with this method. The game completely can not read the directional input, so it will be a jab no matter what. Another exploit is simply to hold backwards after an empty pivot so that you "buffer" a turnaround, strictly for orientation purposes!



Moving on! The next major option to discuss are pivot actions! These are different than pivot stops because they are based entirely on timing between two button presses, instead of being a control stick motion. This is very simple to understand and difficult to execute. All you need to do is dash backwards. As close to exactly one frame later as possible, input one of the possible pivot actions! Off the top of my head, the relevant pivot actions are grab, smashes, tilts, and most importantly, jump. Now, in order to be disciplined with this action, I like to continue to hold my dash back input as I input the second action! Sleepyk*



For example, let's say I want to pivot grab. I'm dashing forward, and I move my control stick through the center and start holding backwards. One frame later I want to press z for the grab! By never letting go of my control stick, I'm ensuring that I timed my grab correctly, and I'm not cheating myself by doing something like empty pivot---->grab.



As far as shield goes, I think, beyond its obvious use, shield has two uses out of dash. You can use the sudden stop in momentum to perfectly space a jump, or to perfectly space a grab. This is where the technology I like to call "shield stop buffered jumps" comes in. The idea behind this is that if you're dashing, and you flick your c stick upwards right before hitting shield, you will buffer a jump out of shield. This ensures that you get the exact minimal amount of time wasted while still exploiting the movement to the highest level. Remember, in order to avoid a full hop, the c stick must not be help up by the time you leave jumpsquat! Sleepyk*



The most important thing that you need to take from what I've said so far is this: the jump that falcon does from a standing position "neutral jump" is accessible from dash in EXACTLY TWO WAYS, and both these ways only add one extra frame of lag if performed correctly. NEUTRAL JUMP IS EXTREMELY POWERFUL, but I'll get to that later.



There is one more limitation to add to the initial dash of falcon! If falcon dashes from a stand still, he can not dash backwards for 4 frames! I don't know why, but it's true. However, once he's established constant dashing this restriction is gone.



So now I have shown you how to exactly access all of your options out of dash, let me even further expand your options by saying that you can dash at different speeds! The ultimate sorcery of falcon is that not only does he have the best dash dance, but he can mimic the dash dances of other characters as well by purposefully slowing his dash. If you start by holding your control stick slightly above the "halfway down" notch, you'll see what is essentially falcons slowest initial dash speed. All the limitations that I've already gone over still apply exactly to a lesser speed dash. Sleepyk*



FOXTROT



So I feel as if the foxtrot mechanic has never been explained fully. The foxtrot is a 28 frame animation always! It's almost exactly twice the time of a normal dash, as you can see. There are some unique factors of a foxtrot that separate it from a normal dash. The first is that a foxtrot will always finish itself regardless of the time spent dashing, and the speed/distance of the foxtrot is dependent on the speed of your dash. For example, if you hold dash for only one frame and then release, falcon will spend 27 frames finishing out the foxtrot animation. Sleepyk* Of course, at any point in a foxtrot you are technically dashing, and your options reflect that.



On the exact other end of the spectrum, if you dash for the full 15 frames, and then release to neutral, falcon will finish the foxtrot by executing another 13 frames of dash! I think of this as a max distance foxtrot, and it is very significantly longer than the normal 15 frame dash! Sleepyk*



Now, if you begin to hold forward again at any point from frame 16-20 of a foxtrot, you WILL enter run immediately. That generally sucks.

However, from that point on in the foxtrot, you have the option to renew a dash in the direction you're already going. No momentum rules transfer to this mechanic... Your character will immediately start a dash as if he was standing still. Sleepyk*



That's basically all there is to cover on foxtrotting, but I would like to go over the implications of it. First and foremost, the max distance foxtrot is absolutely the fastest way to travel forward while maintaining your dash options. I tested this by doing two max distance foxtrots in a row (which totals to 56 frames) and marking the distance. I compared it to multiple other forms of dashing forward that took 56 frames, and I was never able to reach the same distance.



Secondly, the time you have to access your amazing options is nearly doubled. You must realize, however, that for all the time you spend to choose foxtrotting without holding forward, the muscle memory for all your tech skill needs to be slightly different. The origin of your control stick motion must change from fully forwards to fully neutral. This is incredibly important!



TURNING AROUND



This is a short section, but is incredibly important to master. Technically, pivoting and turning around are the same thing, but I'm stressing this because there are different situations in which falcons fail at this. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO HANDLE THE TURN AROUND. It is always adding one simple frame to your motions, and it can not be ignored. This is most noticeable when trying to dash backwards from a standing position. You must intellectually acknowledge that the amount of time you need to hold your control stick is exactly double the amount of time you need to dash forwards! Another good exercise to practice is sequencing an immediate turn around jump into your normal actions. For example, after an l cancel, practice jumping again as soon as possible without missing the turn around. After trying this, think of another action you could sequence it together with. Master this! Orientation is an incredible mechanic.



This is all there is to be written about the dash mechanics of falcon. A true master of the character would subconsciously internalize all of these mechanics. Your rhythm is completely under your control. Now on to the second and last section I'm going to cover.



JUMPS



Jumps are analog. That statement singlehandedly encompasses an incomprehensible amount of control that can be had. This is the true "20XX" of falcon. It is a tech skill that is hard to see, but the effects are easy to feel. No one will freak out when you master this, because it doesn't involve pressing buttons as fast as possible. Despite that, the amount of control you gain from this will make you win, and keep winning.



The mechanics of an analog jump apply to both the neutral jump and the dash jump, with minor differences. There are two major aspects to be considered in an analog jump. They are INITIAL VELOCITY (IV) and aerial mobility.



Let me focus first on the IV. IV is determined solely by the second to last frame of a characters velocity. Imagine the control stick as representing a scale from 0-10, including all non integers. The exact center of the stick is 0, and the furthest right is 10. Absolutely any number that you hold on this scale during the second to last frame of jumpsquat will exactly determine your IV. There is no deadzone for this mechanic. Of course, you can also hold backwards varying amounts, but thinking of 0-10 helps for simplification.





I want to stress that the last paragraph is quite likely the most important of all. I suggest re-reading it and trying to understand it fully.





Since this concept alone encompassed a ridiculous amount of options, I'll show my point by only showing 4 options. These are dash jumps with 4 different IVs (-10, 0, 5, 10) Sleepyk*





Anyways, aerial mobility works by either adding to or counteracting your IV. Thus, your IV and aerial mobility are meant to work together in harmony to achieve your goal. Using them together in a masterful way, falcon can jump into many different ranges with many different angles. As far as I can tell, all airborne frames contain the same potential for aerial mobility. Thus, there is one critical frame before being airborne that determines IV, and the rest of the frames before you land are simply used to add to or work against that IV.





The major difference between neutral jump and dash jump is that if you dash jump with maximum IV, aerial mobility in the direction you jumped does nothing. You are already traveling at max velocity, so you simply can not hold forward and travel further. Falcon will not slow down if your control stick is resting at 0 while airborne. Acting against your velocity will have a drastic effect, of course. Furthermore, if your IV was equal to a random number below 10, such as 5, you would indeed be able to hold forward after your jump. Falcon will approach max velocity once more, but never surpass it.





In a neutral jump, falcon will lose velocity of his own accord. If your IV is 10 and you hold 0 while airborne, your jump goes about half distance. You must continue to hold 10 the whole time while airborne if you wish to reach the maximum distance. Overall, neutral jump gives you significantly more control over your velocity than dash jump. This is why I think it's usually better to use as an attack when you're already within that range.





It's time for me to wrap this up, but let me finish by saying that the number one most important thing is that you can flexibly and perfectly combine any and all of the concepts that I've covered in this. Some of them are EXTREMELY technically demanding (Dash 15 frames, release to neutral until frame 21-28, shield stop buffer jump forward Sleepyk*) but it is your job to think of and master all possibilities that I have laid out for you. I will return to this thread and cover more aspects of movement, as well as check my work, but these are WITHOUT A DOUBT the most fundamental and important things to learn.





Get to work, there's much to be done.