While newer players often consider frame data an advanced topic. It involves a bunch of numbers and calculations, but you’ll see its much simpler than it sounds. I think understand frame data is one of the most important things to learn about in fighting games, despite it being known by casual players as something only professionals use.
To talk about Frame Data you’ll need to understand what a frame is. If you’re really into other video games you probably already know what a frame is. One frame is a unit of time, and nearly every fighting game runs at 60 frames per second. If you’re familiar with still image movies Fighting Games, and all video games work in a similar way. Each frame can be considered a separate “picture” and together it makes a video.
Now why is this important? Because we have frames as a unit of time, we can count events in that unit of time. You can say “This attack will hit you in 20 frames”. As you play more fighting games more, you’ll understand roughly how long 20 frames is. Because the game runs at 60 frames per second, this means that the attack will hit you after 1/3 of a second.
As you can see above. We can use frames to count how long an attack will take, and how long someone is stunned for too.
Once you press the “Light Punch” button Ryu will start his light punch. He takes one frame to wind up his punch, and on the second frame it will actually hit! We say that Light Punch has a startup of 2 Frames.
In the above image you can see the red and green boxes. The red box is known as a “hitbox”, and the green one is known as a “hurtbox”. These boxes are normally invisible, but they are still there while you fight. If Ryu’s punch hitbox overlaps with the green hurtbox of his opponent then this means the attack will hit. It doesn’t matter if Ryu actually touches his enemy! The only thing that matters is if the boxes overlap.
You can see that the red hitbox is on screen for two frames. The move will only ever hit once, however if the hitbox does not touch the opponents hurtbox on the first frame it appears, it can hit on the second frame! Because the move can hit you on either of those two frames this means the move has 5 active frames.
Often times people will talk about advantage and disadvantage. This can be described in terms frame data as well.
Going back to the example with Ryu (it’s a really good example) You can see that after Ryu on the left throws his punch he takes some time to recoil from his strike. This time is recovery time, and Ryu here has 2 frames of Recovery. The other Ryu is stunned by this punch, and is in 7 frames of hitstun.
Because the Ryu on the right is in hitstun for a long time. The Ryu on the left can act first. He is able to act 4 frames before the Ryu on the right. We say that the Ryu on the left is “Plus 4”. We can describe Ryu’s punch as being “plus 4 on hit”. Whenever Ryu uses the move and it hits he is always plus 4.
Moves can be plus on hit, minus on hit.
We can describe them based on the advantage they give on block too. A move might be plus on hit, but very minus on block.
Try not to use attacks that are too minus to avoid being punished.
Fighter Fundamentals 