Glitching Attacks and Inconsistent Behaviour (Long Post)

Eistee

Resident of Colony 9
(This thread requires knowledge of the "accuracy glitch" in PSO.)

After seeing a few videos of an ES Twin in action, I just tested a Berserk Twin (again). The test subject was a solo mode Epsilon on a max ATA FOmar without Red Ring, so it is a nice, stationary target / hitbox. The goal was to "SN-glitch" the 2nd hit of the 1st attack by inputting the 2nd N-attack as fast as possible.

Let's assume that in order to glitch an ES Twin, you have to input the 2nd N attack frame-perfectly. PSO runs at 30 FPS, which means that I have 1/30 of a second to hit the 2nd N attack in order to glitch the Twin. Let's also assume that I am bad at pressing buttons and I only hit the "perfect frame" 25% of the time. This should still give me a glitched attack 25% of the time, if all that's needed in order to glitch a Twin is a frame-perfect button press.

My testing shows that it seems very like that it is not possible to consistently glitch the first Special attack (2nd hit of S1, of course) of a Twin. Sometimes I got two or three glitched hits in a row, sometimes none for a long time, but my success rate was way below 25%. Also, the distance did not really seem to matter. Sometimes, I got a glitched hit when I was right in the face of the Epsilon, sometimes I got it when I was relatively far away. Weird.

I also tested the Twin on Zol Gibbons, and I was not able to glitch the Twin even once in at least 100 tries - this means that manual evasion might also play a factor, however, the Epsilon was completely stationary.

Now, you might know that fighting games (or games in general) do not have consistent input lag, but rather the input lag varies a bit. Part of the reason for this is that a frame is not created "all at once", but rather from the top of your screen. This means that you can make a button input during the process of the game creating a full frame.

If this also applies to PSO... then it could be possible that the game is sometimes getting your inputs when it is not actually reading an input, which might explain "inconsistencies" like this.

So my theory is the following:

On each frame the game does many things. The rate at which the game checks this stuff might not even be consistent with the frame rate (check Super Smash Bros. Melee for an example where the game reads button inputs at a rate different from the frame rate, resulting in "input lag frames" that you cannot avoid - it's pure chance).

For simplicity's sake, let's say it is like this in PSO:
1st third of a frame: Check button input
2nd third of a frame: Calculate stuff
3rd third of a frame: Give feedback

So for button imput that was "poorly timed" (just unlucky) it would look like this...

NEW FRAME
Check button input (Nothing)
>I press the "special attack" button here, AFTER the 1st third
Calculate stuff (NOTHING)
Give feedback (NOTHING)

NEW FRAME
Check button input (SPECIAL ATTACK PRESSED)
Calculate stuff (DOES IT HIT?)
Give feedback (DOES NOT HIT)

This means that if you press the button during a time where the game does not read your inputs, you get an additional frame of "input lag", just like how it happens in fighting games.
This means that it might be possible to get a "unlucky press", which makes the game calculate your ATA "one frame later", making frame-perfect glitch attacks (like a Twin) miss without you doing anything wrong.

Is this possible? Is there another reason for this inconsistency?

Or are you able to glitch your ES Twin 100% of the time (on an enemy where the chance would be 0% if unglitched)? If so, I'd love to see a video of it.
 
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