Kuroko Project

Putting it Together

I've been gradually escalating you through the complexity in the Virtual On gameplay, but I still haven't justified the use of dual sticks. To explain the last piece of complexity, I'll return to an almost invisible pillar of the game. To illustrate, here are two tricks that have nothing to do with dashing. The basic of these is the “machinegun”: several VRs have a gun-type weapon with a relatively long animation for a single shot. By wiggling a single stick while pressing the trigger, the VOOT animation system cancels the remaining animation frames, leading to more shots being fired. Another trick in the animation system for other VRs is to “row”: holding one stick in the direction you want to go and wiggling the other in the same direction will greatly speed up your VR.

The reason for these tricks, and the main reason that two sticks are vital, is a little known rule that has been around since the original Virtual On: both sticks' input are always sampled. One stick is enough to move, for example, but two sticks in the same direction will move your VR slightly faster. “Rowing” works because one stick initiates movement, and the wiggling-motion of the other stick tricks the animation system from playing your VR's recovery frames during walking.

For a more consistent example, take the dashing close-combat attack(referred to as a “Swallow's Tail”, after Sasaki Kojiro's signature technique). Dashing CC attacks may be used at any time during a dash by pushing a stick opposite to your movement and pressing the trigger: your VR will dramatically sweep its weapon and stop its dash at the same time.

While this is a neat maneuver, it doesn't seem like it's terribly useful unless your opponent is foolish enough to stand still long enough for you to set them up. However, most beginners assume they need to use the same stick for both initiating the dash and triggering the attack. Instead, you can use one stick to dash forward, and pull back on the other one. This can result in dash-CC attacks executed at almost point-blank range by a skilled player. The seeming redundancy in the control input leads into easier ways to enter complicated chords that are much harder to execute in a physical sense. Much like how a real arcade joystick can spread the physical work over your arm and wrist compared to your thumb, using the second stick to chord your next maneuver is a big advantage to having a second directional input.

Hopefully the more observant of you have also been noticing a repeating requirement: a minuscule dead-zone for your input. For most vectoring methods you must return the input to a neutral state before pressing a different direction, and since the dash or jump only lasts for a few seconds, you want as little lag-time as possible. Already we've hit a limitation if we replace the digital stick with an analog stick: the extra second it takes to precisely return it to neutral and press it in a different direction has cost us a good chunk of the dash. Worse, as VOOT allows dashes in the eight cardinal directions, you may not be exact in the direction you tap the analog stick in. Instead of dashing just to the left of the building in your way, you've accidentally pressed up against it for the remainder of the dash. Whoops.

The use of digital sticks comes out of a brilliant piece of engineering on the part of the original VO team. While the Twin Sticks have nice clicky microswitches, the extra length and a sturdy base also provide excellent leverage for quick tapping. At higher levels of VOOT play, going from a jump to a jump-cancel, and them immediately dashing left into a forward Watari-dash attack is just a matter of flicking your wrists. Try rapidly moving a pair of analog sticks to their extents and back, independently and precisely in all eight directions, and see how long before your hands cramp up. Keep in mind that in the highest-level play, you'll need to be keeping up with this level of speed.

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