(Part 3) Top products from r/SSBM

Ah yeah, you’re in a tough part of the melee journey. Serious enough to be invested in results, not good enough to get a ton of positive feedback. Good enough to identify weaknesses, but you don’t quite yet have a framework to solve these problems. Good enough to have others put expectations on you / talk about your play style but not quite good enough to refute haters or have your point of view heard. You’ve been playing long enough that you can see how far you’ve come but you also start to realize just how far you really are from the top.

It’s easy to get discouraged from here, especially with what seems like a decently large skillgap between you and the next guy up and what seems to be a fairly toxic community wherever you are. At your skill level it seems like you can grind out tech skill and still see a million errors in your play. You can improve a bunch and not really see progress in how far you place in bracket. Even if you do really want to put in the effort to improve it doesn’t seem clear where exactly you should focus these efforts.

My advice is to start to really appreciate the journey every step of the way. Yes, this is a tough part of it, but learning to overcome this spot you’re at both skill wise and what you have to admit has become a bit of a mental barrier will provide tremendous benefit to you. Learn to focus your effort to be more productive, to see benefit in your training in ways other than counting how many times you SD in a match. Hard work pays off. Not always in the most obvious ways, but trust me when I say that if it feels like you aren’t benefiting from practice you need to either re-evaluate how you practice or re-evaluate how you measure progress. Enjoy the process of practice, finding things to work on, improving those things and repeating the process. Enjoy the journey of self improvement that this provides you.

I can tell you that you have nothing to worry about in terms of “learning the game backwards,” I’ve personally always been a proponent of focusing on tech skill first before neutral game but at the end of the day there is no roadmap to getting good and there is no easy way to reach the next step. The only universal truth is that you get out of it what you put into it.

And don’t worry about people calling you lame. “Playstyle” is something people obsess a lot that isn’t a very useful thing to think about when gauging your improvement. When I was quite a bit worse than I am I was called campy, reliant on lasers, I used to be called the backwards facing Falco cause I “only use Bair / Utilt.” People like to assume that your playstyle in a certain way because that’s how you intend for it to be but in reality these are all just steps on your way to having a more robust style. There are a LOT of things to learn about this game and if you’re getting pretty good at a certain style that they like to call lame then feel free to take pride that you’ve got understanding in one part of the game but remain humble in that you know there are many other parts of the game to learn. Not because they’re “less lame” but because you need to expand your knowledge base to improve. Next time you get called lame just say "that's ok I'm just trying to get better." Honestly style is overrated at low levels cause realistically nothing is cool at low levels, just get good then you can shut em up later.

Lastly I can’t overstate how helpful these two books are relating to this type of stuff. If you’re dedicated to sticking to it and seeing how far you can go / what you can get out of melee then I highly suggest you read both of them!

Good luck dude.

Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

Online pdf:

http://www.tinapse.ro/home/coltul-indrumatorului-coach/resurse-materiale-instrumente/W.%20Timothy%20Gallwey%20-%20The%20Inner%20Game%20Of%20Tennis.pdf

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-Game-Tennis-Performance-ebook/dp/B003T0G9E4

Art of Learning by Joshua Waitzkin

Online pdf:

http://www.nordiccentre.org/downloads/The_art_of_learning_waitzkin__josh.pdf

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Learning-Journey-Performance/dp/0743277465

Anyone got any interesting setups/tv's? Idk why i'm writing this but here are the things I bring to tourneys.


Album link


My Tv Is by far the most eye catching thing. I bought 350 Fortune cookies and have been just taping them on there whenever I finish one. I am pretty much out of them so I have quite a bit all over the TV. The air fresheners were to bring some nice smells to any tournament I went to.


Standard Gamecube: 1.02 melee with newest 20xx TE and vanilla melee memory cards. This is the video cable IOnebring. It has s video + regular composite so I don't have to bring a powered splitter. Explaining more below.



Recording/Streaming setup: This consists of a Webcam which also records player/crowd audio (also a 16 ft extension). An Elgato with 16ft extension. Then I have 2 non-powered composite splitters. I plug in the composite video from the game cube directly into my TV and the S video into the elgato. The result isn't actually too bad (if someone knows how to deinterlace for better video hmu).

The last thing is My Controller: Someone on etsy painted it for me right before big house and so far it's a great purchase. It is of a Palestinian flag and has my tag on it. it doesn't feel any different from any other game cube controller which is great.

Edit: forgot about my headphone setup. I have sennheiser Momentums I bring with my headphone amp and plug that into the tv's audio with one of These. This has a pass through meaning other people can listen through the TV and I can adjust the volume with my amp. I also bring another headphone splitter so people can listen with their headphones.

Squid and Dr. PP both recommend the art of learning, and the inner game of tennis and they're both godlike so I'd take their advice. Flow is really good too.

Something cool you could do is get into chess. I only played chess seriously for a few months really, but I feel like it gave me another angle to think about tactics and strategy in. Chess is really fun and it'll give you that same competitive brain feeling melee does without killing your hands.

/r/chess has lots of guides about how to get into the game and stuff. There's lots of cool websites now like www.chesstempo.com where you can do tons of tactics training puzzles that are really fun and make the learning curve for beginners a lot less steep than it was back in the day when chess books were the only option(which are great, but it's really hard as an absolute beginner to sit down with a chess book and actually make it through it).

If you're already like 2100 fide rated or some shit then just ignore this lol.

That sounds cool and all but I don't think you're really getting to bottom of what's happening when you say stuff like "on-the-fly adaptation can become one and whole as part of the subconscious flux." The act of adapting during a match, a verb, becomes part of what, now? A subconscious flux, what is that? "Flow" is a state of mind, we are trying to understand, describe, and be able to reproduce this "optimal experience."

Galeway and even Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi the guy that popularized the concept fell short, as Flow reads like a self-help book.

Anyway, cognizance is directly opposed to subconsciousness. They cannot "become one," since by definition subconsciousness is not being conscious or cognizant.

You are also not going to have "cognizance" at the speed of subconsciousness. Conscious thought takes time, and that slows you down. Speed of decision-making is directly tied to the consciousness of an action. Action is a part of a complete reaction, and quick, effortless reactions gives you that thrilling feeling.

On the one hand, you need reasoning, conscious thought, to solve complex problems, but on the other, you need reaction speed and fine motor control. But, you can't have both. So, the only way "self 1 and 2" working together makes sense is if you are constantly switching between them. Or, if you are riding back and forth along the sliding scale between thinking a lot and thinking next to nothing if that is the subconscious/conscious dichotomy's true nature.

This "self 1 and 2 switching" is different from both Galeway's "inner game" and Csikszentmihalyi's "flow" paradigms, as they focus on primarily on activities where you need to consciously adapt very little. Because in reality, that breaks flow. But in Melee and many other competitive games, conscious adaptation is necessary. If you're in the zone and you're fucking LOSING, do you really want to stay in that mind state? No. You want to identify the problem, solve it, and get back in the zone as quickly as possible.

If you want a spiritual-sciencey metaphor summary, you want to relieve the inertia that resists your atemporal transit. You want graceful hardware and software interrupts. You want to be able to repeatedly jump in the lazy river, adapt to the current, and jump back out, walk to another point of the river, and jump back in without it, like, feeling weird, or something. I don't know.

The most common high quality capture card you can use would be the the Elgato Game Capture HD. You would want 2 component cables, at least 5 splitters, and a component connection to a Wii. There is free software called OBS that you can use to stream and record and there are a number of options if you are looking to just record (there is even software that Elgato offers) but most like to use VirtualDub. This of course can be very expensive. If you are looking for cheaper options there are cheaper capture cards available such as the Dazzle and the Diamond. Both work fine but you won't achieve as crisp as a picture. These are the cards that I have had experience with but I have also heard good things from the Avermedia.

Okay you basically have two good options on that budget. You can get a GV-USB2 for about $30 and have a really easy setup with your wii (plug the S video in to the capture card and the yellow cable in to the TV, split the audio, and you're done), or you can get a black magic intensity shuttle which allows you to capture 480p video and will get you way better capture quality and is a little more complicated to set up.

Composite capture card example

BMI Shuttle example

This stuff is complicated so feel free to ask me more questions.

I second using open or semi-open headphones. Originally I had these for reasons unrelated to Melee / gaming but I use these Superlux HD 668B headphones I got a couple years ago. At $50 they won't break the bank, and I've read that for the sound quality you're getting for the money they're quite nice.

Edit: I dunno anything about them but maybe the $40 semi-open Superlux HD 681 might be even better?

Join the Melee Stats Podcast Discord server to discuss Melee: https://discord.gg/eDNE9HC

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Want to read up on the history of Melee's competitive life? Check out EdwinBudding's new book The Book of Melee (now 54% off!) at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SMBDLF5

No $200 laptop will be good. However, for $150 more you can find good deals like this laptop. It's got the latest i3 processor, a backlight keyboard, and can upgrade the RAM up to 32 GB. It's not even the best deal you can find, but if you want a cheap laptop that can be decent for mid-range gaming then this should be fine.

I'll give you a pass because your probably not an FGC player but it infuriates me that the Smash community cannot tell the difference between an analog stick and a digital stick.

The stick in this video is a DIGITAL stick. Likely a Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT stick used in most modern arcade sticks because its cheap ~$20 bucks and works well. It is functionally identical to flattening out 4 digital buttons like the Smashbox has. https://www.amazon.com/Sanwa-JLF-TP-8YT-SK-Adjustable-Tournament-Compatible/dp/B005BIC9QE

Analog sticks are typically very rare and expensive. They cost anywhere from $100 for the modern Seimitsu LS-64 to $200-250 dollars for a really nice vintage Sega Analog joystick. I believe this videos creator BlackHombre recently made a stick with the analog Seimitsu which probably cost an arm and a leg for the whole setup.
https://na.suzohapp.com/products/joysticks/50-2876-00

That's why you see those Frankenstein controllers that have a gamecube controller cut in half. Replacing the analog joystick on the gamecube is really hard and expensive.
http://imgur.com/gallery/oIP7E/new

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=bkadamos_test04-20&linkId=8440181d1290fef7d94e1a1645fc0bea

anything that can play league of legends will run smash fine. check out /r/suggestalaptop

If you want to lubricate your stickbox, I only recommend using this:

https://www.amazon.com/08897-Silicone-Lubricant-Dry-Type/dp/B000PJED72

Does anybody know how to record from a CRT T.V with a Manhattan Video Grabber?https://www.amazon.com/Manhattan-161336-Hi-Speed-Audio-Grabber/dp/B004S5VWSW It's this thing, I can connect the cables straight from the Wii into it, but in doing so I no longer have a display on the T.V obviously, because it is going straight to my computer.

Yes there are Wii RGB cables http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Wii-RGB-Cable/dp/B000JJRV8Q

The one I use is https://www.amazon.com/BW-3-5-Inch-Monitor-Automobile/dp/B0045IIZKU. It says it takes 12v but it works fine with 7.4v. For audio I have an adapter so I can plug my headphones into the av cable audio from the system.

Tagged that you will eat something

What type of monitor would be required to get minimal amounts of lag with a sewell converter? Would either of these two monitors be viable for tournament play?
http://www.amazon.com/BenQ-GL2460HM-24-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B00IKDFL4O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453238828&sr=8-2&keywords=2ms+monitor

http://www.amazon.com/VS247H-P-1920x1080-DVI-D-Back-lit-Monitor/dp/B005BZNDS0/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1453238828&sr=8-5&keywords=2ms+monitor

Check out Meditations, it helped me out a lot.

https://www.amazon.com/Super-Smash-Bros-Melee-Official/dp/0761537902/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518794639&sr=8-3

I've heard nothing but good things about the 2008 white controllers. You could also take a gamble on the ones they sell on amazon, like this one. I bought one of these and it was in damn near mint condition, not sure of the seller tho.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B004T8KZCM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This thing just arrived after I bought it looking for a splitter to use with my easycap to record some melee. Did I fuck up, because I don't think this is what I wanted. If so, any recommendations for cheap splitters from amazon.ca?