Rivals of Aether

Rivals of Aether

Charizard
Opengunner 1 Oct, 2024 @ 1:03am
Opengunner Patch Notes
These are my patch notes that overhauled the character for balance and game feel for the patch on 9/30/24. Thanks to the original dev for incorporating my patch to the character.

Patch by Opengunner

Weight Base Stats
Weight stats: Normalized to Kragg Weight. Charizard isn't super heavy in smash but Kragg is a good baseline for a heavy in rivals.
Knockback Adjust (weight) .8 -> .9
Air Friction -> .05 -> .04
Hitstun Gravity .4 -> .53

Ground Base Stats
Normalized base stats to Kragg Grounded stats. Charizard is pretty slow in smash while not dashing and Kragg's grounded stats would be a good comparison. Making his dash speed super high is a big deal in rivals cause you can act out of dash in much more capacity than in smash.
Walk: 3.5 -> 3
Walk Accel: .4 -> .25
Walk turn time -> 7 -> 6
Init Dash Time: 5 -> 12
Initial Dash Speed: 8 -> 6.25
Dash Speed: 9 -> 5.75
Ground Friction: .2 -> .5
Wave Friction: .12 -> .1
Waveland ADJ: 1.3 -> 1.2
Air dodge speed 3.5 -> 7.5 (This was massively altering his wavedash to be unusable)
Roll Speed -> 7 to 9

Air Base Stats
Normalized Air stats to Mollo Air Stats since he has a comparable 2 double jumps but isn't super floaty like air characters. Charizard's airspeed is also not super high in smash and it's a good baseline
Leave ground max: 6 - > 5
Max Jump HSP 6 -> 5
Air max speed: no change, good at 4
Air accel: no change, good at 4
Pratfall Accel: No change
Fall Speed: No change
Fast Fall: No change
Gravity: .38 -> .5
Full Hop 11 -> 10
Short Hop: 6 -> 7
Djump Speed: 10 -> 9.5
Wall Jump HSP: 4 -> 6
Wall Jump VSP: No Change

Animation
- Altered Dash start to have part of the dash frames in it so it looks way more nautral.
- Altered Movement hurtbox to be Kragg's cause it was simply too large.
- Altered Crouch hurtbox to be Sylv's cause it was simply too large.
- Deleted some extra frames from moves because the inbetweens detracted from some of the snappiness of the moves.

Sound Design
- Reworked a lot of swipe sounds and hit sounds to be more accurate to rivals. I tried to include charizard sounds that you had in the file to layer on top of the sounds.

Misc Code:
- Disabled phone index in attack files, not sure why it's there without the rest of the muno phone but it's throwing errors if not disabled.

Attack Changes:
Jab 1
Jab 1 Start up: 8 -> 6
Jab 1 Active time: 3 -> 2
Jab 1 Endlag without cancel: 12 -> 14 frames.
Changed swipe sound effect and blow sound effects
Added Small VSP speed boost like Zetter on active window
Edited frames so that hitbox is only active on 1 animation cel like a normal jab
Fixed cancel frame from 12 to 6, it wasn't possible to cancel this into jab 2 or tilts
Hitbox Changes
Active time: 3 -> 2
Angle: 180 -> 361
Hitpause: 6 -> 4
Adjusted size to bring it more in line with normal base cast jabs

Jab 2
Jab 2 hitbox was on the wrong window, changed it to be window 5 instead of window 4 (which is the start up window).
Changed swipe sound effect and blow sound effects
- Fixed cancel frame from 12 to 6, it wasn't possible to cancel this into jab 3 or tilts
Hitbox Changes:
Angle 180 -> 361
Hitpause 6-> 5

Jab 3
Jab 3 hitbox was on the wrong window, changed it to be window 8 instead of window 7 (which is the start up window).
Removed the last frame from the animation as it was wildly different than the idle pose and looked a little rough.
Removed Cancel window that was not possible to access normally.
Changed swipe sound effect and blow sound effects
Hitbox Changes:
Damage 8 -> 6
Hitpause changed (6/0) -> (12/.7)
Kb changed (7/0) -> (8/.5)

Dtilt
- This sorta functions like Hodan Dtilt, which sends more away than most base cast Dtilts. Adjusting the angle to be similar to it.
- Readjusted animation cels in the windows, they were set up so that the active frame had 2 cels.
- Doing this also fixed whifflag and endlag since the active window timing was incorrect
- Lowered Endlag from 15 -> 12 to bring it in line with most base cast Dtilt endlag.
Hitbox:
- Adjusted hitbox to be more in his body as this was a very large move that hit pretty far. As the move got mostly buffed, this needed to be toned back.
- The hurtbox during this frame needs to be fixed a bit to not make it negatively disjointed.
- Angle Adjusted 50 -> 55

Utilt
- This move sorta resembles Forsburn Utilt, but there isn't really a direct comparison in base cast, so I will make it close to forsburn and go from there.
- Hitbox on this adjusted to match the visuals better but also made it so that it has a blind spot under him (most characters can now crouch this move). Also made sure it could not hit Blazing hideout plat (even though the visual looks like it can)
- Nerfed Start up 8 - > 11
- Buffed Active time 2 -> 3
Hitbox
Angle - 70 -> 90

Ftilt
- This whole move needed a rework, as it was basically Charizard tail tipper along the whole move. Now it resembles Charizard's ftilt with a tipper.
- Reworked a lot of the frame data and hitbox sizes, Too much to really list.

Dash Attack
- This move most resembles Sylv's Dash Attack, so using that as a reference, I retooled a lot of the move and gave it an early hit / late hit and made the hitboxes match the visual better. Too many changes to list in normal format.

Fstrong
- This move resembles Kragg Fstrong in application, so I retooled the move to be very similar to Kragg. A lot of changes, too much to list. Made it skip some frames in the strip because they were making the animation lack impact due to not holding key frames.

Dstrong
- This move resembles Kragg Dstrong in application, but is even larger. I retooled the move to be similar to Kragg. There's a lot of changes. The move is faster but weaker in general.It's a good idea to use it if Fstrong would be too slow.

Ustrong
- This move resembles Etalus Ustrong vaguely, so I am basing a lot of the stats of this off of that move. Mostly different use cases. but this move is huge, so whiffing it should incur a lot of lag. This move could probably do with editing the sprites but I don't want to have this patch take a long time.

Nair
- I had to change everything about this move, it was too strong in its current state and didn't really act like Charizard's. Now it had tippers and covers a good area but is much more contestible.Will probably still need adjustments down the line but it should be in a much healthier state.

Fair
- Retooled this move to resemble Zetter Fair functionally, but slowed it down a bit since it's bigger than Zetter Fair. Toned down the size of the hitbox and skipped some active frames.This move now has a sweet spot and a sour spot (to emulate how charizard does it in smash).

Uair
- Retooled this move to resemble Eliana Uair, as it's the closest move functionally. Added hitboxes for better coverage and removed some frames that lacked impact.

Bair
- Retooled Bair to have a sour spot / sweet spot hitbox now. Adjusted the timing on the move so it had proper whiff lag. and punish window. Also made the hitboxes much smaller cause they were too large.

Nspecial
- Reworked this move to allow canceling it by releasing B like Charizard in smash. It's not a perfect implementation, but it's close enough for a quick patch.
- Added a 45 frame cool down to this move to prevent spamming.
- Retuned damage and angle numbers so it's a bit fairer.

Uspecial
- Retuned the move to feel more like it does with Charizard in smash, where it's a quick burst of speed that loses momentum towards the end and then he goes into pratfall. Also removed invulnerablilty, cause even though it makes sense in smash, it's a bit busted in rivals. The move is decently strong, but won't be killing at low percents. It's a good upward kill move, which works well with his uair, which isn't really a kill move in its current state.

Fspecial
- This move was wildy strong to the point it could galaxy opponents at ledge at 10%. I have severely toned it down in many aspects. I also changed the self damage, it does 10 to Charizard now instead of the damage over time during the move and the 16 percent on hit.
- Changed momentum to fly straight, better matching smash bros, but limited the distance. I figure you made him climb because he was crashing into the ground cause the move wasn't coded to go off ledge
- Removed ability to fast fall during the move, as you could input fastfall and do the move diagonally.
- Added in sprite direction multipler to hsp on hit cause he was flying left during recoil always, no matter which way the hit connected.

Dspecial
- This move sorta lacked a point to use in its current form, it may have been the worst move on the kit. Now it's a decent burst option with some disjoint in front, but has notable endlag so it can be whiffed punished.
- Added Force Flinch on the 1st hitbox

Known issues post patch:
- Dstrong hurtbox is not exported at correct size and is showing small sprites. It worked on my build, this was probably the dev trying to adjust hurtboxes and forgetting the change the export to 2x.
- Fspecial is invuln during active portion of the move due to a missing hurtbox. I failed to notice this while doing my patch.
- Fspecial could probably still use more endlag