After reading through the coplete movelists of Kasumi and Ryu one
question keeped bothering me and I couldn't understand it. Can
someone please describe to me what exactly a frame is? and how
long it is? :hmm:

frames refer to animation frames. iirc, DOA4 runs at 60 frames per second.

in movelists, the frame #s indicate how many frames of animation each part of the move takes. again a lot of this is from memory, but in the DOA movelists the three numbers correspond to execution/hit detection/recovery if i remember right.

as an example...looking at Kasumi's DOA3 frame data (as posted at DOATEC.com), her P is listed as 9/2/13. so you would read this as:

9 frame execution - it takes this move 9 animation frames to activate. think of this as a sort of 'wind up' period.

2 frame hit detection - the move is active for 2 animation frames. this period is when the move actually connects and will hit your opponent.

13 recovery - for 13 frames after the move is finished, Kasumi is in recovery and can't do anything (...i think. someone correct me if that's not the case.)

DOACentral has a lot of frame data & explanations. just run a search in their game system section. i haven't been there for awhile but their resources are very good and go into a lot of detail.

:shocked:
How is someone supose to counter that?

Also, the damage numbers. lets say 20 damage takes away 20 points. :hmm:
But how many points is a health bar supose to begin with?

The health bar is 300pts and frame data can be found at www.deadoralive.jp choose japenese or american site and go to your desired character once the page loads and see the frame data :)