Melee Shield-Tilt Explorer

Made entirely with AI. Claude (Anthropic's AI model), running in Claude Code, did all of it: the research into the game's code, the solver, the Dolphin testing, and this page. technospider only directed it, doesn't claim it as their own work, and is sharing it only for people who are curious. The numbers were checked against Dolphin, but treat them as AI-produced and verify anything that matters to you.

Where each character's shield bubble sits for any stick position the game can read, with the hurtboxes in that tilted pose, and how much of the body is left outside the shield (open to shield pokes). Side view in game units, facing right (x = forward, y = up).

Computed from vanilla NTSC 1.02 game data and the decompiled engine logic. Every character's bubble position was checked against Dolphin, with a maximum error under 0.00001 units. Nana is identical to Popo.

Character

Stick

Drag the pad or type integer stick units. It snaps to what the game registers: the stick is pulled back to the circle of radius 80 (truncating), and an axis reads 0 when it is within ±22 (the shaded cross). The hollow dot is your input, the filled dot what the game reads.
Game reads Settled angle Strength
0° = forward, 90° = up, 180° = back, 270° = down. Strength 0 = untilted, 1 = full tilt.
With UCF, a stick pushed 80+ units along one axis with the other axis within ±6 reads exactly 1.0 (full strength). In vanilla the rim clamp truncates those inputs to 0.9875.
Guard frame
The tilt eases toward the stick every frame, just as in game, so the stick's path matters. Held straight forward (or at neutral), the shield rests at 0° (frame 10) after a fresh shield or when you come from above, and at 360° (frame 370) when you sweep in from below. Most characters look identical either way; Donkey Kong, Young Link and Link don't. Re-shielding starts again from frame 10.

Shield size

Right end = hard press (digital, or analog all the way in). Left end = lightest analog shield, which is larger. Radius = size × (0.15 + 0.85 × health/60 × (1 − 0.5 × press)).
  • Tilted bubble
  • Untilted bubble
  • Reachable edge (dots: straight up/down/forward/back)
  • Out of reach: the stick snaps onto the axis
  • Centre path, current strength
  • Hurtbox (blue inside → orange outside)
  • Part outside the bubble

Outside the shield

–
of total hurtbox volume sits outside the bubble (measured in 3D)
–
furthest any hurtbox sticks out past the bubble surface
Bubble radius · hurtboxes partly outside
HurtboxOutside%Sticks out

Hurtboxes are coloured from blue (fully inside the bubble) to orange (fully outside). Orange dots mark the parts outside the bubble, seen from the side; because they are measured in 3D, a dot can appear over the bubble when that part sticks out towards or away from the camera. Everything is computed live in your browser from the game data by a JavaScript port of the solver, which matches it to within 0.00001 units for every stick value. Kirby's and Jigglypuff's bubbles are slightly oval in game; here they are drawn as spheres of the average radius. Hurtboxes marked ≈ sit on physics-driven bones and use the rest pose, so they are approximate. Yoshi's shield neither tilts nor changes size.