Hellfromabove

FYI guys, people were supposed to be paid Tuesday but still haven't been. Also, the head of AG was supposed to do a live stream apology and answer questions on Tuesday which still hasn't happened. -Tha Hindu

Any news on when you guys are getting BBCS? Also, when you get it please be open all night that day and all weekend as I will be there playing and streaming. -Tha Hindu

I like how there were only 2 people talking in this thread for the entire first page. Too hype. -Tha Hindu

Wow, so where to begin. Ah yes, the beginning. So I decided to help out for this event for the hell of it seeing as making something smooth running like this tournament was going to be good for the community and as already said by Active Gamers LA that this was for the community. Also, they had a good amount of sponsors that I wanted to meet so just marketing myself out there. I go ahead and ask about a week in advance if we were going to be setting up the night before and was then told that everything would be setup but there was a party on that night and I should come. I was hesitant since gas prices are raping me right now but I thought it would be good to go to see who I was working with the next day and to see some friends. I arrive and am told that we will be doing final setup at around 7am the next day. I arrive at 7am only to wait until 8am for someone to arrive. I am the first person inside the building and see that the only things "setup" are 3 fold-away tables on each end of the room and 3 small bleachers to sit and watch the main matches. No setups nothing. I started to wonder to myself how this was supposed to start at 9am or 10am as promised. Finally when some stuff arrived we started to setup. It seemed that the person in charge was busy and I was being hounded by this old guy who was a sponsor with some comic book store for his 6 tables and such. I decided to take initiative and start setting things up and letting people know where shit had to go. We had a dire lack of consoles to start off and more 360s than PS3s which didn't seem too big of an issue. There were however a bunch of 360 consoles that had component only and no HDMI support. For this they just moved them over to the BB setups. Kind of sucks since BB always gets shafted. We only had 360 setups for BB until some of my friends brought their PS3s for the tourney. So while setting up I am lead to think that it's just hook shit up, get power from the wall, and connect and we should be good, right? Wrong. Turns out that they were very limited on the supplies they bought. They kept running back and forth from the store bringing back power strips, extension cords, etc. At this point I'm thinking to myself that this shit should have been done waaaay before hand. At this point it's 9:30am and people are all standing outside in the cold. I ask them if we should let them in but they don't want to until everything has been setup. After I setup what I can I ask if there will be more monitors since we didn't have that many. They start to unpackage some brand new monitors that they bought (brand escapes me) so I start to setup on them only to find out that there are only VGA and DVI inputs, no HDMI at all. I go ahead and ask them if we had any dvi to hdmi converters since that would be the only logical explanation why they would have bought these. They assure me that the monitors have HDMI inputs in them. I send them over to check telling them that they are not on the monitors. After realizing that they didn't have any they pack them up and put them aside. I ask them when we would be getting more monitors and they just shrugged. We never got more monitors than what were shown there. At this point the time is around a little after 11am and things are getting very hectic outside with people waiting for hours just to play something or just be out of the damn cold. I bring in a couple people including my friends that have consoles to let them borrow and try to get them wrist bands to be in the venue. Now, as listed on the tourney posting, if you brought a console then venue fee is comped. The guy giving out the wrist bands though would not comprehend this though and I had to explain it to him about 6 or 7 different times. He was very adamant to get them to pay even though it was comped. Also, no, they were not entering any tourneys, just spectating. I find out after this incident that they even tried to charge the people from Aksys Games entry fee even though the BB tourney portion was sponsored by them!!! I then go to the consoles, what they had was setup and some more consoles finally came in around 11:20am (better late than never). Of course people are still waiting outside. I count how many of what games we need for each console and go to tell them so we can have everything setup and finally let people in. They go ahead and tell me to not worry and they would take care of it. Instead they put me on duty of the opposite side of the venue guarding a door to make sure no one without a wrist band gets in and to tell them to go around. I go ahead and sit down in front of this door eventually passing out (I had an hour of sleep the night before). I wake up over an hour later and hear some music from the DJ that was there. I think to myself that they have finally let people in and people are playing. I go back to the area where shit is setup and NOTHING HAD CHANGED!!! People were still outside waiting while they let 1 or 2 people in at a time and many setups still had no games in them. Finally people started to get let in at around 1pm. Only thing is, apparently someone forgot to take all the preregistered applicants and put them in the computer and get them ready for their tournies. So everyone that came in first went to the middle island to give their name and register. Now this doesn't sound too bad until it came to my attention that there was a person at the door that was collecting venue and fee for games. Now anyone who came in was just as easily able to tell them that they wanted to enter this tourney and they would have added their name. Half of SFIV contestants didn't pay venue or price to get in. At this point I was sick and tired of all the bullshit that was going on and told them that if they needed anymore help to not ask me as they were way too unorganized. Hell, they didn't even know who was supposed to run the BB tourney. We had to just go ahead and start it ourselves and not worry about anything else. Oh yes, also the side tournies for Brawl, 3s, and HD:R never took place. People that paid for them never got their money back either. Apparently, they were supposed to take place on the upper floor but it was taken up the whole time. From what I remember since I was the first there they told me that the upper floor was being used for a dance room but only until 2pm. Since we let people in at 1pm and tournies didn't start until a while after that this shouldn't have been an issue. I think this was just their scape goat since it didn't seem like they had enough monitors. Okay, the best part of it all. So, BB is the first tourney to end. I go up to the guy running the whole shebang and ask him for the money. I am then told that the main guy (owner of Active Gamers) has the money and he would be there soon. This is told to me a little before 7pm. We wanted the money so we could go out and eat and just leave since everyone was fed up with the tourney already. An hour rolls by, they assure me they are trying to contact him but he is not picking up his phone. We start to get more irritated since we're really hungry. They finally pull us out at around a little before 10pm and tell us that they don't have the entire amount of money for ANY of the games. What was supposed to be $2200 was only $1580 per game. They said they would mail us a check or something later in the week. Of course people are pissed since we were told cash up front. I ask them why and they tell me that the amount of money from the entrance fees for the pot doesn't add up to $2200. I stop them right there. I tell them that I was told by Aksys that they put in the straight amount of money for BB itself and they should have the full amount for us now. They then switch their story and tell me that it's in the bank mixed with other funds and they can't retrieve the money now. Of course all the players that were supposed to get money were pissed. SFIV players wanted to take monitors as collateral in case they didn't get paid. Who can blame them, with all the times the fighting community has been shafted. Also, I finally learn that people were charged for parking when this was not supposed to be. Also, when the amount of spots were filled for parking they did not try to fit more cars in, they just told people that they weren't allowed to enter. There was no place to park on the streets either so people just ended up not being able to attend. Pretty sure this covered it. I know many many people were, and still are, pissed including myself. I try and do a nice thing by helping out just to see the minimum or less being done. I wash my hands of this tournament. They had too many people with no knowledge on how to run a tourney. They should have definitely trained everyone in this before sending them to hold a gathering of this proportion. If there is anything I left out please add it in. -Tha Hindu

Thanks, much appreciated. -Tha Hindu

NP. GOOD LUCK SOLDIER!!! -Tha Hindu

Alright, so I am really glad you had me try this out. It seemed in the beginning that Arakune's Astral Finish was just really crappy and would never be able to hit anyone until now. After seeing all that it is able to do it seems that it is most likely the best non-comboable Astral in the game. First off if you have not seen the Astral Finish here it is below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkPIMjnvWzA#t=3m40s Basically Arakune turns into a Huge blob ball with a huge eye and the user can control him to shoot straight forward two different times, appear and bounce doing a V shape three different times, just fall straight down three times, or jump down and bounce three times trying to finish the opponent off. Arakune will attempt the Astral 3 times each time reappearing on the opposite side. The Astral is "blockable and "Barrierable" also however but not the whole time. Here is the list of things that happens to the opponent if they are touched by the Astral: Confirmed Hit: Death Barrier: Kills Barrier Gauge for opponent and they are sent into Danger Mode Block: Guard Crush Insta-Block: Guard Crush Now don't think that every time this Astral hits the opponent it does multiple hits. It does one clean hit/ touch to make the above happen so it's not like the opponent will lose partial barrier and such. On to the fun stuff If the opponent is cursed before the Astral goes into affect Arakune is still able to summon bugs as normal. This is very good to lock chars down and makes hitting them with the Astral all the easier but that's not all. It seems that if you do 236B before going into Astral that the Astral is COMPLETELY INVISIBLE!!! Now, I don't mean invisible like Arakune usually is when he activates 236B because in his normal form he still has the aura smoke around him which helps the opponent know where he is. In Astral form there is no aura, no nothing. Also, the background turns black for most the time being which makes locating the outline of the invisible Arakune even harder so opponents won't know if they should duck, block, or just stay stationary. Dealing with the invisibility and the bugs at the same time will make them want to . Where's your messiah now? Hope this helped. -Tha Hindu

Yeah, tried them out and it seems where they are most effective is in the corner mainly. 2A version is for pressure while the other is just a fast mix up game. Of course 6D is very very slow and no one is going to let you keep pressuring them until it hits so corner trap would be the best solution here. Maybe that's why we haven't seen these in any videos . -Tha Hindu

I also found some nice high low mixups with Arakune and some new combos such as a 9 dragon combo . I will be adding this in my combo/ strat vid I am making. -Tha Hindu

So I found out 2 days ago that Arakune does not have 1 but 2 unblockables. Unblockables: 1. Summon a hat (6D). Hat must be blocked high so you can do 2A. If they block low you get a curse, if they block high you get a hit. 2. Summon a hat (6D). At the right moment do a j.5D. Either way they block they get cursed. Corner trap game just became a heck of a lot better . -Tha Hindu

Ah okay, cool. Thanks for clearing those up for me. Also, I had asked about how you were able to mount the plexi without the use of screws because it of course looks much better without them. Thanks for the info. -Tha Hindu

Nice work, did you use just the plexi for the top of it? It doesn't look like there is anything under the plexi other than the art, that's why I'm asking. Also, where's the home button at? One last thing, how far did you route into the top of the wood for the mounting plate? -Tha Hindu