Stella Vanity V0.2 & 0.21

[shoryusatsu999]

Some interesting little tidbits I've found about this game:

[*]If you have the SHOOT MODE setting in the Controller options menu set to something other than SHOT AND SLOW(LASER) (aka Touhou-style controls), you can use the autofire/fullauto button to fire shot while focused.

[*]In Type-C only, any bullets that are on screen when a boss is about to appear are subject to boss rules when hit with Discharge: only a cancel wave made by a fully charged Discharge can cancel bullets. Anything else still makes items from the bullets, but the bullets will not be cleared.

[*]There's actually two ways to manually end D-Shift. Doing so by hitting the D-Shift button again will take away half the remaining meter as a penalty. Using a bomb also ends D-Shift prematurely, but you'll keep all of the D-Shift meter you have when the bomb activates.

[*]Like in Touhou, you can use deathbombs to save your bacon if you get hit. Autoguard must be turned off, though, and it'll burn two bombs instead of one if you have enough to spare.

[Shepardus]

[*]If you have the SHOOT MODE setting in the Controller options menu set to something other than SHOT AND SLOW(LASER) (aka Touhou-style controls), you can use the autofire/fullauto button to fire shot while focused.

Funnily enough, though, Azerlete's shot still narrows, but does not become a laser, if you use shot while focused. So there's shot, focused shot, and laser.

Are the coins and gems created from using Discharge (Type-C) dependent on the amount of charge in the meter? Does the amount of overkill matter (i.e. are you supposed to bring the enemy down as low as possible before finishing them off with a Discharge)?

[Despatche]

Seems both players and the developer have been talking about this recently. Did anyone catch that ridiculous 90% off sale?

Developer, uh, deleted their Twitter, and tried to restart their site, expressing dissatisfaction over Japanese developers using Twitter more than actual websites these days.

Said they're still working on the StellaVanity sequel, and it's gonna be a slow burn. In the meantime they're working on a "simpler" game currently called Shinen no Qliphoth, hopefully to be released within the year.

[Shepardus]

Did anyone catch that ridiculous 90% off sale?

*raises hand*

Wasn't actually planning on buying it, but since I was buying Cambria Sword (more on that later) for something like 20x the price it seemed ridiculous not to give it a try. I've been having more fun with the game than I thought I would, Type-S still hasn't really clicked with me (I understand the basics in theory but can't apply them effectively yet), but Type-C is quite satisfying and much easier to pick up. Pretty impressive how widely the difficulty can vary in this game, not just the six difficulty levels but also the rank levels within each difficulty. Even Easy gets crazy if you're going for the TLB, but it's very easy if you're going for a simple ALL and have autoguard turned on (I cleared Normal on my second attempt that way).

[Despatche]

Yeah, this game has an awful lot of effort put into it. Two totally different modes, six difficulties, a bunch of sub-difficulties, a pretty long game with a lot of stages/bosses, all the wacky upgrade stuff, the possibility of there being even more before the dev got burned out/angry at pirates, none of what's actually in the game is particularly broken or poorly designed (cough Teneisenki cough), etc. I'm not at all surprised the dev got so upset about the piracy problem, and I do not blame them in the slightest. Whoever's working on this thing is operating on a much higher level than most developers, and they should be recognized and rewarded for it.

If they haven't already been posted, here's the blog where the dev posts things, and here's the actual SV site if anyone wants to check it out. The original main site's kinda broken right now and just links to the other sites anyway (and requires Shift-JIS if anyone dares).

[shoryusatsu999]

Seems both players and the developer have been talking about this recently. Did anyone catch that ridiculous 90% off sale?

Not me. I got it at full price a while back. Didn't realize that there even was a sale until it was already over. If I had known sooner, I probably would have gone after Cambria Sword and Battle Traverse.

Are the coins and gems created from using Discharge (Type-C) dependent on the amount of charge in the meter? Does the amount of overkill matter (i.e. are you supposed to bring the enemy down as low as possible before finishing them off with a Discharge)?

If the Google translation of the web manual is any indication, then both the overkill and the charge influence the gems that are created. I've gotten colored coins in certain cases, but I don't quite know of they're different from the regular yellow coins. If you're in Accel Drive, though, more coins will drop from destroyed enemies and bullets hit by Discharges turn into gems instead of coins.

[Shepardus]

Not me. I got it at full price a while back. Didn't realize that there even was a sale until it was already over. If I had known sooner, I probably would have gone after Cambria Sword and Battle Traverse.

Only select things were on sale, Cambria Sword and Battle Traverse weren't.

If the Google translation of the web manual is any indication, then both the overkill and the charge influence the gems that are created. I've gotten colored coins in certain cases, but I don't quite know of they're different from the regular yellow coins. If you're in Accel Drive, though, more coins will drop from destroyed enemies and bullets hit by Discharges turn into gems instead of coins.

Thanks, I also Google-translated the web manual but wasn't sure if anything was lost in translation.

[shoryusatsu999]

If you haven't gotten StellaVanity yet, it looks like the game's 50% off until noon on September 25 in Japan. And no, that end date is not a typo; it's gonna be on sale for the better part of two months.

[Zaarock]

I finally found a way to fix the framerate issues when playing Stellavanity fullscreen on windows 10/8 machines (for vsync off etc.). Essentially just do a basic dgVoodoo2 installation. I put up an easy to install patch here, let me know how it works.
I haven't heard that many people talking about this issue, personally it kept me from getting back into the game for years. All other modes add quite a bit of input lag compared to most shmups and it used to work fine on an old PC.

The game was on a big sale on dlsite last month and developer is still working on a sequel.

[Lethe]

Wow, it really is that easy to fix. Makes a difference too, game is definitely more responsive. I was just putting up with it.

Is there an easy way to practice the fake TLBs? They don't show up in stage practice no matter what I do. There are a bunch of items at the end of the system shop which I haven't unlocked yet; maybe they have something to do with it. I hope the game doesn't expect me to beat them first. (or if it does, that credit mashing is good enough )

[bcass]

I just spotted this on ShmupSlam 4 and immediately bought it from DLsite (currently on sale). Many thanks to Zaarock for posting that framerate fix.