1. How do I start my Ukebash replay? What gamerules should I use?

You ever watch fred's fantastic splitcap stock replay and think "wow I wanna try that" and then you're met with this screen and have no idea what to do:


This is one of the most common hurdles you can experience when even attempting ukebash. You'd think just leaving the gamerules at complete default would be easier, but contrary to popular belief default engage distance ukebash is among the most challenging. It requires a specific skill set working with an enclosed space to generate enough momentum for a stylish opener, without just slamming into uke.

150-300 is generally the sweet spot for making a good replay, the further away you are the more time you have to rack up epic style points B) but what about gravity?

Gravity depends on what kind of background you have as a Toribash player, and also what kind of ukebasher you wish to become. If you're interested in an avant-garde style like mine I can recommend default gravity. If you want to try out a more modern spinny style like Rajen, Dezrai or mused, I can recommend anywhere between 15-25 depending on what kind of replay it is, and if you come from a realism background -30* or above is suitable.

Even with this said, experimenting with other gravities is still a very important part of growth. I make a lot of replays on -30 myself.
* please note that -30 ukebash can be quite overwhelming to learn due to how fast Uke will fall, keep this in mind when practicing

You have to figure out where you find it most comfortable to operate before you start making your best replays, so don't be discouraged if you feel sluggish or underprepared at the beginning.

1.1. How do I create my Ukebash opener?

If you wish to create an effective opener, here are some pointers;

• Pick a side to face and aim to set up some kind of "launch" to start spinning in that direction.
• Aim for a more traditional area of Uke to strike first, one where he won't fall too fast and become too difficult to attack.
• Don't overwhelm yourself by spinning around too much, long replays tend to become frustrating to edit.

Here is an example of a position you can try, it is very simple to use:

This is one of the most common positions found in ukebash replays, as it is one of the most simple for generating rotational momentum without moving around too much, this position and its variants are what you'll likely be using for most of your early career, and as such it's important to get comfortable with it, it's extremely versatile.

The logic is pretty simple, just kick off the floor with one leg, hook off of it with the other, and reverse your arms. boom, we spinnin. Feel free to desync your arms and legs, counter-rotate your chest halfway through the movement or whatever else to add on some perceived flair, once you understand the logic of this extremely basic movement you can do a lot with it.

A lot of players end up with an overreliance on this extremely basic technique. It's important to try and move on from it as fast as possible once you have it down.

Once you've become comfortable with that position, and these "rules" you should begin to experiment more with your Tori and hone your style. Create habits and find things you like. If you can find an avenue where practicing ukebash is the most fun for you.

Most importantly, consuming a lot of ukebash content, especially from players you find appealing will skyrocket your own abilities by proxy, and you'll subconsciously notice and pick up on a lot of "instinctual" techniques. You'll start to emulate the good parts of their decision-making, while subconsciously omitting the bad parts. You have an abundance of players to learn from, and taking advantage of that is ideal.

Here are a couple examples I whipped up in SP in about 5 minutes:


And since we were talking about it earlier, here's a brief example of how to approach the 100 ED ukebash problem I was talking about:


My openers personally take minutes to make, seconds even. I just mash x and z, hit space and go from there. I'm a fan of improvisation and I can work with pretty much anything because I just want to get the replay started. I find enjoyment more in optimizing weird movement. You don't have to copy my process for making openers, not at all, but these should serve as some pointers. Pretty much just do shit you think looks cool, that's a good opener.


2. First dismemberment

More often than not, the first dismemberment can make or break a replay, as some are far, far easier to continue from for their own reasons, here's my little graph depicting them in order:


Elbows, wrists, head, knees and ankles are your bread and butter, usually. With the exception of the head and maybe the wrists, you'll pretty much always be in a totally fine position to continue your replay with no issues. Wrists and head depend more on your setup, but you should be fine.

The torso and hip area is a little more tricky, at this point you'll be separating Uke in two, making it challenging to focus on both halves while still looking good. On higher gravities these types of DMs can be somewhat tedious, as Uke will fall quite quickly making the replay a bit boring if he's left lying on the ground for long periods. For the hips specifically, while they're easy, it does remove the potential for a crotch boomhit later as well as the knee DMs in most cases, so it can cause problems later.

Pecs and shoulders I generally don't recommend starting with, as you'd lose out on DMs (if the arm goes flying from a pec dm, you just lost 3 potential DMs you could have gone for later) however, if you're going for a boomhit as a starter none of this is an issue, it's up to you.

2.1. General dismemberments

Okay okay, I hear you. All this rambling and you still have no fucking clue how to just simply break a joint and move on. I got you. Let's say you're currently spinning and really want a simple dismemberment. Your first instinct, obviously, is to kick and punch at whatever joint(s) you're trying to break as hard as you physically can. You might succeed in getting the dismemberment, but you'll quickly find the replay hard to continue due to all of your momentum being sucked up by a single pec DM and you're forced to wait for a good position.

Does this sound familiar? Have a look at this:


Here are both good and bad examples of a hit. One of them is conservatively getting the required dismemberment and still keeping plenty of speed and not interfering with uke very much, and the other is a literal slam to the chest, and with uke already being relaxed a hit like that is actually woefully inefficient, and this is due to the fact that when uke is relaxed he can also bend in ways the joints are comfortable with, so the rotational limits of joints are a double-edged sword in a way.

Think of the frontal edges of your hands and feet like knives, and try running them along uke's joints as precisely as you can. Aim for the seams of smaller joints and on bigger joints more apt ghosting will obviously be required (or just a lot of fucking speed). Doing it this way will allow you to chip off less important dismemberments without compromising the whole replay. For feet specifically, relaxing your ankle while holding your knee will cause the foot to whip forward pretty hard, and this can be great for chipping motions.

Transitioning out of hits is a different question entirely. It's not always optimal to fully extend the limbs you're striking with because it may actually diffuse a lot of momentum into the joints you're breaking. If you find this happening, try experimenting with holding the joint or relaxing the joint just after the strike and allowing the dismembered piece to pass, and then extending it in post to create the illusion of a powerful strike.

2.2. Boomhits

Read pusga's guide, I ain't got much else to teach you that isn't already there. All I will say is that more DMs is not always better and sometimes sacrificing a boomhit to keep more of uke closer to you is going to produce a better replay in the long term, but also counter-rotating most of your body can juice up the perceived momentum quite substantially. If you ask me, certain boomhits simply don't matter if they aren't visually appealing or they completely compromise the replay.

I will show a brief example of how simple movement can help make boomhits look genuinely explosive:


You almost forget this is like, only 4 DMs just cause everything goes FLYING, like shrapnel. It doesn't look like I just dismembered uke, it looks like I actually set off an explosion inside him and all his shit went flying, if you want your hits to look explosive like this, try kicking THROUGH uke, not into him, and throw stuff all over the place. Kill this dude.


3. Makin' movement gooder

The best advice I can give here is to truly understand the relax function, it's your best friend. Relax is the key to achieving huge amounts of speed, and also the key to being lazy and creating "smooth" movement without trying too much. Of course, certainly don't use this as an excuse to not care about movement, but the relaxed joint's natural motion is often the tori's natural movement.

Try to take note of the movements you've already made and make sure your whole pattern makes sense, instead of looking at specific situations, if you already kicked off the floor a few frames ago, doing it again would understandably look horrendous. Try and employ some kind of variety in your replays.

Most of ukebash is improvisation, but it's important to go back and refine the decisions you make to make them look intentional. Let's say you want to push off of the ground, but your arm isn't exactly in a position to do so and you're required to abruptly lower it to get it in position, take a look at this:


This movement rocks, and it doesn't necessarily detract from it a lot, but if the player went and lowered the shoulder slightly in advance this move could be done a whole lot cleaner, especially if they also avoided their head bumping into the floor.

Keeping fairly close to your center of gravity and conserving your momentum will make your movement a whole lot more efficient. Try not to dump all of your momentum into individual launches and spins and try to keep it consistent.

Absolutely do not underrate the abs joint. In my opinion it is one of the most important joints on the tori in terms of effectively dictating the moves you want to do, it can sometimes completely change how certain moves turn out. An extended abs joint with an extended hip, to a contracted abs joint with a contracted hip is a TON of range of motion you can take advantage of. Some people make the mistake of restricting themselves to a held or contract abs joint, which they rarely touch unless a hit requires them to.

I know I'm promoting the relax function a lot, but I also want to highlight the hold function very strongly. Using them in conjunction can help you create "whipping" motions with your body parts as well as avoiding self dismemberments from moving too fast or from the whipping movements.

3.1. Form

Please take note of your form, "form" in ukebash is a little different from form in other areas, such as tricking. While form is typically restricted to realism, form in ukebash is less about creating realistic moves and just specifically about keeping your tori in sync, optimized and aligned for optimal speed/power/aesthetics. You can have good form while being unrealistic - if you've seen any of my replays, you might have noticed that despite my abnormal movement style I pay relatively close attention to keeping my lumbar and other joints aligned, and this results in me moving at an overall very fast rate. It's important to edit earlier than you'd expect to sync up some of your movements better.

In a short sentence, style is what you want to do subjectively, form is objectively HOW it is done.

There is a common misconception that "form" merely refers to your lumbar being straightened, and this is an oversimplification of what form actually means, take a look here:


So yes, while the move is technically completed, not without severely underoptimized movement. These may seem like nitpicks, and they technically are in a sense, but it takes very little time to clean these things up and it's a good habit to get into. Lets look at another example from the same replay:


Worthy of note here, it's not necessarily that the lumbar is actively negatively impacting the movement at the start, but it's straight up NOT necessary for it to be positioned like that at all. In fact I'd argue that having the lumbar more in line would've made it easier to avoid the thigh bruise and also minimize the lumbar crushing caused by the toe launch. Form is a little more complicated than just being inefficient, hopefully this highlights that.

Just to go a tiny bit further on form as a concept, I've included my reply to Larfen down below in this OP:


Basically, if you take a look at your movement and see some errors in your form, ask yourself "is this error necessary for what I'm trying to do?" if not, then you should refine the movement to get rid of that error. It's a fairly difficult thing to articulate, just play enough and you'll "get" it.

Now that I've gone over generals, let's go over some specifics:


3.2. Grabs

Grabs are one of your most valuable tools, abuse them, and use them creatively. They can be used for anything between boomhits and setups, or just for some good ol' Rajen grab-switching. The grab hand itself has a completely different hitbox to the regular hand. It is thinner, and longer. This can be used to do movements that are otherwise not possible with the regular hand. You can use the thin hand for ghosting or tightly dodging contact with uke, and you can use the slightly longer hand to extend your reach slightly if you plan on touching the ground or something like that.


It's fairly difficult to convey with a simple set of screenshots, but here I fully rotate uke both horizontally 180 and a half flip vertically with nothing but a grab and some movement. Think of grabbing uke like he is a really heavy extension of your grabbed limb, and really work on trying to fling him. Afterwards I relax my shoulder and pec and let the weight of uke dictate where my arm goes, creating the illusion of a much smoother throw.

It's also important to mention that how you position your grabs when setting up hits is arguably more important than the hit itself. I like to think of it as your "hit" being a gate, your grab being one side and your striking limb being another. Your grab can pretty much influence every joint on its respective side of the strike, and the opposite applies to your striking limb of course. Syncing this up in tandem can create huge boomhits.


4. Manipulations

While there's a manipulation guide made by Larfen(feel free to check it out), I think it's fairly outdated and a little bit of the advice I straight-up disagree with, so let's talk about manips.

4.1. Gamerules

Now, gamerules don't hugely matter these days but I still wouldn't strongly recommend -30 manips. It's not that they're impossible, but keeping him afloat and rotating without him touching the ground will usually require you to compromise your movement in some way. Once you're a little more versed, I think you can try it, but I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into -30.

4.2. Lift

I don't think images are specifically necessary here. There are multiple ways you can start a manipulation, and I'll list some of the most obvious;

• Under a select armpit is the most popular means of lifting uke, it results in immediate height and some rotational momentum too. For more momentum, aim closer to the elbow.
• Shins. Kicking uke's shins back will cause him to bounce up and start tilting forward, which you can then link with a strike to his sides to create immediate rotation. Underrated.
• Crotch lift. Wouldn't recommend it, because it's so wasteful and not very rewarding, but it can technically lead to uke spinning towards you which can be interesting. It can get a whole lot of height but uke can be quite heavy and it results in continuing from there being shaky at best.
• Grabs. Seen as a cop-out means of lifting uke by some older players, I actually find it to be among the most interesting forms of lift. One grab to the stomach in the middle of a jump and you can simultaneously send uke up and you down to the ground, very situational though.

4.3. Rotation

It may seem difficult at first, but after some exposure to the concept of manipulations it's actually an extremely simple skill to pick up. Putting it simply, hit stuff furthest away from uke's center of gravity (shins, forearms, etc) in the direction that he's spinning (you can also try forcing a multi-axis manipulation too).

More often than not, using two limbs to push uke is pretty much the meta for 90% of manip situations, usually referred to a scissor-kick or scissor-SOMETHING? Anyway, take a look at this shit:


Keep in mind these definitions are mostly self-defined, might not align with what other replaymakers call these movements but I hope it makes it clear enough.

When striking uke to make him rotate, you should always be thinking about the next strike you want to do, and setting those up in advance is key. If you have to commit too much to one of these options and it compromises the manipulation entirely, then it's not the option you should go for.

4.4. Filler

Nothing crazy to say here, just know that it's okay to touch uke if only for your own balance or to slow him down or keep him afloat. It doesn't necessarily have to contribute to the overall rotation. It's in areas like these that grabs are usually frowned upon.

I do think it's worth adding here that as soon as uke touches the ground in any capacity, even via a scrape, the manip is pretty much "over", because continuing it after that just looks extremely unpolished. Try to work on keeping him close to you and the ground without directly touching it and you have a pretty killer manipulation replay! You can try to incorporate his ground contact into the manip, but if you don't, it just signifies laziness.

4.5. Ending a manip

Alright you've done your manip, now you'll probably be struggling with how the hell you stop this train. It's fairly simple actually, just by using pretty much any of the techniques we previously talked about you can quite easily begin a chain of dismemberments. You can start off by chipping off a wrist joint or something, or fully clip your foot inside his hand and stretch his entire arm off, etc. You can also go directly into a boomhit if you want, which will be made easier by uke's rotation.

As long as you're kicking against uke's general momentum it will amplify the hits you go for and make tearing him apart feel like child's play. Just try not to grab him to set up to your first dismemberment because it's considered a cop-out, unless you can do something unique with the grab of course. After your first dismemberment on uke I think him touching the ground is pretty much fair game, even better if you can actively work the ground impact into the dismemberments.

Here's a quick example of what I did in the manip replay just shown, though the drawing is a tad schizo:


5. Bruising

While this is technically a subcategory of movement or manipulations, I think having a category of its own is pretty fair. Bruising is pretty important in ukebash. Keeping track of how you're getting bruised and where will help you clean up your movement and avoid making unnecessary contact. No unnecessary contact means you don't waste as much momentum.

Bruising is a generally good measurement of effort when it comes to ukebash replays and there's a reason that "flawless" replays (0 points) are so highly regarded, especially in manipulation replays. The parts of your body that do not give points are hands, feet, elbows, and knees, so if you aim to make a flawless replay keep this in mind.

Bruising joints makes them easier to break, this is a universal truth for both uke and tori, so if you don't want your replays to become hellish to edit, particularly manips, I advise you work on your spacing to minimize the amount of damage you take.

Above all else, I think it is paramount that no matter what you absolutely avoid bruising your head on anything unless a movement you are doing specifically requires you to (such as headbutts). Such carelessness regarding bruising is just laziness and your refinement will improve when you focus on it. It's just a good habit to get into really. You'll get better at dodging needless damage and, in turn, subconsciously improve at spacing.


6. Spacing

I plan on expanding this category further, as spacing is pretty much the most important aspect of ukebash replays which is very easy to overlook when coming from different genres, and is often the sole negative factor. It influences EVERYTHING, from hits, to manips, setups, positioning, grabs.

But to give some palatable, temporary advice; try to pretty much stay in this "goldilocks" zone from uke, you don't want to be so close that he's constantly slamming into you, but you don't want to be so far away that you can't reach him. You pretty much want your strikes to be about 95% extended by the time they ghost into him, and you want to dodge him whenever he's about to bump into you, like for example, if you were doing a manip replay and he punches you straight in the gut, you'd want to edit sooner and avoid that from happening entirely.

Basically, manage your space well and it becomes a whole lot easier. It's tough to explain, the more you play the more you'll start to feel where your comfortable range is.


7. Visual Touches

There are some additional notes I'd like to give that can help optimise the visual appeal of your replays. This is partially subjective, but I think there are some aspects of objectivity in here too. I'm basically looking to teach you how to make stuff look and feel sick. You don't just wanna be a killing machine badass, you want everyone to know it too.

7.1 Timing

Timing is often a pretty overlooked aspect of replays in pretty much all genres, not just ukebash. Obviously, it's your natural instinct to want to optimise your movement to go as fast as possible, but when you move fast ALL the time, things that are "supposed" to be fast end up looking slow, and they lack the punch that you were probably intending. It can become extremely bland when you don't pay attention to this aspect of replaymaking.

Whenever you have an idea, it makes sense to want to do that idea as soon as another idea ends, but when you do that replays will look frantic and unpolished, and it can be very easy to miss all the little things you added to your replay. That sucks, so it's important to try to highlight them, here's an example for you:


It's important to make what you do seem very deliberate, right here you can see I am deliberately looking at where I want to throw the foot, winding it up, throwing it, and allowing my arm to complete the throwing motion like you would in real life. I don't have to complete the motion, it serves almost no mechanical purpose, but it serves a very strong visual one. I could've actually thrown this skeet earlier in the replay, let me show you the position where that was possible:


But this was mere moments after a 5 DM punch boomhit, and if I went into this skeet so soon it would be pretty much lost in the crossfire of that boomhit and you'd fail to notice this skeet until you rewatch the replay a few times and slow it down. Timing is a basic principle of animation, concepts like "easing" you should seek to employ in your replays. This game DOES allow you to move at a constant, linear rate, but you shouldn't always do that if you want things to look real, and awesome.

7.2 Range of motion

Range of motion is also very overlooked in replaymaking, and especially in ukebash. When going for something in this game, also think of it like animation. Think of the starting position, the main "event" of the movement, and the ending position. You want to exaggerate all 3 and fluidly move between all three states to make what you want to do look as cool as possible, here is an example using the same replay, the 5 DM boomhit punch I was talking about:


Pretty much, just make things look wide, sweeping, and awesome, and doing this also leads to a ton of power anyway. You want people to KNOW you were setting this hit up, and the payoff is huge, I mean look at that, it's an explosive 5 DM boomhit!

7.3 Symmetry

I'm not sure if too many people care about this type of thing, but I sure do. It's a small thing, but when going for certain boomhits/hits in general, I think you should seek to make them look as symmetrical as you can, because it just looks much cleaner and more refined as a result.

Picture two boomhits, one of them is a hip, glute, and abs joint. The other is both glutes, and the abs joint. Which one would you say is actually a cleaner hit? The latter requires more aiming and precision, it removes the groin block, and it separates both legs. That particular hit is not only visually more destructive, but much cleaner too.

Moreover, if you were to aim towards the center of that particular area, your hit would cover more joints in total, resulting in a potentially better boomhit.

If your replay ends with only one hit, it should be the BEST hit you can get, not the first. I encourage you to seek symmetry in that scenario specifically.


8. Posing

Often a very overlooked part of ukebash, striking unique poses that you can flow into naturally can really make or break a replay's overall result. Replays look much more polished when you've put time and effort into making a cool pose. Of course you don't always have to, you can always do some silly replayhacking stuff or relax all (just don't explode all your joints that is super boring).

I absolutely hate that this replay is in stock and I wish I could unmake it but this pose is hard as fuck:


To give further examples on poses, I will show you some that I've done in my replays as well as explain the motions leading up to them - a common theme you will notice is that they are almost directly influenced by what happened exactly prior to the pose, and I believe that is how you can transition to the poses as cleanly as possible:


Basically, what I'm effectively trying to get at is your replays will look much faster and cleaner if you go straight into a pose from your last motion that contributed to the replay. Obviously, there's exceptions to that rule though.

This is bewilderingly well done, Good shit Tabby

Amazing attention to detail, something to learn for ukebashers at every level. Love to see it tabby, great job

Really enjoyed reading this! I appreciate the update to the manip guide because I've felt that there's a lot of stuff I disagree with in there as well now, especially in regards to grabbing.

I would be interested to hear more about your concept of "form", as it's a term that I'm not at all familiar with. It may be a well understood term these days, I wouldn't know. I get the concept of planning your moves and pre-moving joints to get them in optimal positions, but I actually never really thought about aligning my core as something to aim for when I make replays. Is this a utilitarian method for getting the most speed/power? I assume form can be compromised for the purposes of style?


The video example for this section is very cool and is the kind of thing I wished more people thought about back in my day, so I'm glad that it's part of the conversation nowadays!

Hi Larfen, thanks for the post


Form simply put is just maximizing both aesthetics and efficiency; when we say good form we typically mean your tori's current position is cohesive and effective. Nice symmetry/alignment (just for example having your glutes be symmetrical, or having your pecs and chest be synchronised and oriented in the same way) and your body not being locked in certain areas during moves are common signs of 'good' form. Also noteworthy that just because something doesn't necessarily abide by one principle or idea does not make it inherently have bad form. It's okay for certain choices you make to negatively impact your form if it is necessary for that movement to do so, but refining the areas where it could be objectively cleaner is important for the long-term quality of your replays. It's going to help you move faster, get the boomhits you want easier, and not be too susceptible to self-dismemberments while doing it.

It's somewhat of a borrowed term from the realism side of things, so you might want to look there if you want a more concrete, objective definition. I'm just loosely connotating it to ukebash because I personally feel that the concept of form is an important fundamental to grasp. The difference here is that in realism content there is a direct frame of reference usually, but in ukebash you're often going to be performing movements that are completely impossible in real life (and so no direct frame of reference), and your goal from that point is to employ concepts such as symmetry and synchronisation to perform the movements you have in mind as easily as possible.

Regarding whether or not form can be compromised for the purpose of style, I personally believe that form would rather be the most efficient and well-executed version of the intended style. The sloppily-made videos are good examples of this, the intended movements are being made while compromising on form even though it isn't necessary to do so, and refining the movement in the areas that I highlighted can make the intended movements easier/faster/more aesthetically pleasing.