Crimzon Clover

[Barvok]

Just a heads up.

http://www.vector.co.jp/soft/dl/winnt/g ... 81428.html

Here's a video (via Gwyrgyn Blood): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoSeIl2EH98

Very impressive.

Yours truly,

Barvok.

[Observer]

FUCK YES! I've been waiting for months for this thing.

I'll be back later. NOW BREAKING.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

YES! YES! FUCK ME SIDEWAYS! Im off to play it right away

[Observer]

I'm getting a black screen when I execute the game. You can only hear music. Is anyone having the same issues?

Damn, I wanted to check this thing so much.

[BIL]

I was getting that too; are you using an Nvidia Geforce card? I'd rolled my drivers back to play RefleX. Updating to the newest official ones and restarting seemed to fix everything.

Very cool game, judging from the demo.

[Observer]

I tried the game on another computer so, yep, it's my old GeForce7300GT. Gotta retire that poor thing already.

Now, back to Crimzon Clover, HOLY SHIT. This is just amazing. And the guy still apologised the graphics need to be polished a bit more. So many pretty numbers everywhere, explosions, manly (I hope people don't take me too seriously, it's just a joke towards all the recent loli-drama) KETUI-like ambience, robots, choppers, EVAC and such but with more vibrant colours, less purple and freaking lock-on guided laser missiles! And I played it with the keyboard, heh.

Absolutely looking forward for this thing when it comes out!

edit: and seems the game comes packed with options and a shop. Interesting.

[Barvok]

Is this happening in windowed mode (the first option on the pre-game set-up screen)?

I have problems trying to run it in full-screen mode (the second option on the set-up screen), but no problems in windowed mode.

In full-screen, I see a flickering loading screen, then I can hear music, and often see a tiny bit of something at the top of the screen, with the rest of the screen enveloped in black. However if move the mouse about, (and I cannot even speculate why), the screen seems to clear up, with some black flickering remaining. It seemed that by the time I arrived at the playable section the game had settled down completely. After some experimentation I now just have to move the mouse straight up, and everything clears up.

I was having a similar black-screen problem with Eden's Aegis 1.00. In this case moving the mouse up (or holding space) clears the black screen, but freezes the game entirely. So I don't know what is happening.

I'm running a laptop with some horrid integrated graphics card, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm not even sure if I can update the drivers on this thing.

[Observer]

Barvok> The other computer I tried the game in also has an integrated graphics card (an Intel...) and it suffers the same issues in full screen, flickering included. Runs like a charm in windowed, although it's a little evil on the eyes.

I'll try the latest Nvidia drivers on the other comp and see what happens. But I'll eventually have to roll back again to play Raycrisis, G-Darius and a couple more that need older drivers.

edit: I updated my drivers, the game now works and is fantastic. It's almost like Cave for PC with the level of exaggeration in the numbers.

[SFKhoa]

This game is fucking amazing.
@Barvok: How did you get the music to run? Everything works flawlessly for me except the music won't play at all. :/

[Observer]

Ok, some more impressions:

The game gets fucking brutal. There is some sort of artistic slowdown but it's never as gross or notorious... so it makes things more complicated. You can start some sort of slowdown fest though, if you manage to BREAK (in caps) stuff fast and efficiently to the point the pretty numbers cover the entire screen.

Bullets look pretty and colourful, not Touhou colourful but damn vibrant and certainly ages better than the purple hell. I think there is an option to modify the bullet colour or something similar too. If it isn't, someone should mail the guy because he could probably include it.

You DON'T have continues. You have to BUY them in the shop and once you use one, you have to BUY them again. And they aren't cheap so you have to combo and break enemies like mad. First one costs you 10k stars and it goes up from there. Talk about balance and discouraging credit feeding. Although I get the feeling that the "Unlimited" option unlocks free continues. Either way, I guess it's a wise move because you get a Stage Practice mode anyway.

You can bomb in case the break meter isn't full and you still want to shake the screen like crazy.

The music seems composed of freebies, but nice ones though. Eden's Aegis 1.00 stage 1 theme makes me cringe in pain. Much preferred the older though, it was super punchi-punchi. The menu theme song was the Stage 2 theme in the earlier C76 version.

Bosses are mean, big, evil machines that rain death upon thee while shouting "EVAC" and invoking stadium robots. Please, I just hope the guy won't ruin it with some small little girl as the TLB.

So, keep breaking everything in break mode. The lock-on laser missiles are incredibly useful to take out some big enemies that might run off screen while you are busy dealing with the other 200x ships in front of you.

[Barvok]

SFKhoa: I didn't have any problems with the music, so I'm afraid I can't really help you there. Does the 16/32 bit option in the set-up have anything to do with the music?

I'm interested to know the precise nature of the scoring system. One of the text documents seems to have some explanation, but it’s somewhat hard to puzzle out from an automatic translation. Anyone else want to have a go?

[ncp]

Although I get the feeling that the "Unlimited" option unlocks free continues. Either way, I guess it's a wise move because you get a Stage Practice mode anyway.

I get the distinct feeling that the "Unlimited mode open" option unlocks Unlimited mode, to be honest.

[worstplayer]

HOLY FUCK! This must be some kind of mass hallucination. This game is just TOO good to be real.

[Observer]

Although I get the feeling that the "Unlimited" option unlocks free continues. Either way, I guess it's a wise move because you get a Stage Practice mode anyway.

I get the distinct feeling that the "Unlimited mode open" option unlocks Unlimited mode, to be honest.

haha, yeah! I'm just too tired, suffering summer down under and unable to believe the trial is out for real. But "Unlimited mode" has all the feeling of a "credit feed mode". Someone hurry and unlock that thing to see what's the deal with it.

The ship is clearly a tribute to the Ray series, along with the lock-on mechanic, but the rest is... plain brutal pew pew.

[Barvok]

Do we know how many levels are in the trial? How far has everyone got?

[SFKhoa]

I just ALL'd it (3 Stages). The final boss fight ends prematurely after the 2nd form is destroyed, due to it being a demo and all.
I currently have 160k stars, Halfway there until I unlock Unlimited Mode.

[Ravid]

I have some horrible controller lag making the game nigh impossible. I remember experiencing this with some older Touhou games until I downloaded a patch to deal with such issues; something to do with vsync iirc. Anyone else experience this?

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

I've only tried the windowed mode so far and as soon as a couple of enemies are on screen, the fps rate drops to 10 or so. My laptop is a couple of years old but surely not that slow...? Anyone else having that problem?

[SFKhoa]

I've opened up a hiscore table for the hell of it.
@Ravid: I thought it was me at first but I thought it was too miniscule to make a big deal out of it.

[emphatic]

Wow, what an awesome game. I need to get a computer in my cab ASAP.

[emphatic]

I have some horrible controller lag making the game nigh impossible. I remember experiencing this with some older Touhou games until I downloaded a patch to deal with such issues; something to do with vsync iirc. Anyone else experience this?

I have pretty heavy lag. I'm curious about this "unlimited mode". I don't know if anyone else has realized that you can use the BREAK button for small bursts instead of bombing if the meter just fills those smaller thresholds in it.

[Ravid]

I've opened up a hiscore table for the hell of it.
@Ravid: I thought it was me at first but I thought it was too miniscule to make a big deal out of it.

Perhaps I have more lag than you... or perhaps I'm just being too fussy. I just find it ruins the experience when you can tap a direction and release it before your ship moves anywhere.

Seems like a great game otherwise, though.

[SFKhoa]

Theoretically, I think the input lag is 1~2frames at most? Unless you have much more than that then I don't know.

[emphatic]

Theoretically, I think the input lag is 1~2frames at most? Unless you have much more than that then I don't know.

The ship kinda "jumps" almost (especially when in BREAK mode). That second boss gets very tricky because of this, when those tall blue shots starts to rain on you.

[linko9]

I can't get the game to start at all. No matter if I choose windowed, fullscreen, or the third option, the game window pops up for less than a second, and then disappears. I've got a nvidia quaddro nvs140, and have tried multiple drivers, but to no avail. I tried Applocale, but it just refuses to run the exe. Any suggestions?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just had to turn off my firewall, and everything's fine. Sweet game, though I'm still learning the basics. Is it wise to use your hypers pretty much as soon as you get them, or is there some benefit to not going into break mode?

[SFKhoa]

I just got Unlimited Mode, and all I have to say is this:
WHAT THE FUCK. You know it's going to be hard when you're presented a red GUI with a red ocean background. This almost feels like Daifukkatsu, except without any goddamn Hyper cancelling involved.
I love it to death.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I still havnt had chance to play this yet due to been so buzy. And i have to download it again since the 1st rar i got was corrupted, 12% and 50 mins left on the clock.

Now i have the free time im counting the seconds until i can play it, tick, tick

BTW with the beta only numbered at 0.20 it would suggest that we might have a while to wait untill ver 1.00.

[Momijitsuki]

Spectacular.

[Ravid]

I discovered an amusing bug: at the start, when the ship was still blasting off, I moved right over to the left side of the screen near the top. When the level proper began, I couldn't move away from the edge, even when I died and respawned.
PS. Unlimited mode is ridiculous

[Udderdude]

Pros:

Amazing production value, this could easily be a Type-X arcade game or similar commercial game.

Great level design and nice enemy/boss patterns.

If you like mastering scoring systems and seeing huge numbers all over the damn place, you will love this game. It appears lots of big number fetishists are drooling already.

Eat it, credit feeders. Eat it.

Meh:

Music is decent but nothing amazing. Sound effects are pretty underwhelming.

Unlimited mode is Futari Ultra mode hard. I got raped in like two seconds.

Cons:

The menus and transitions are so .. fucking .. slow. Restarting a game takes 40 seconds. It's completely intolerable. Where's my "Restart" menu option? I feel like quitting the game instead of restarting when I make a mistake on level 1.

May be a little too flashy for it's own good. It's like powerup fetish porn or something. Not even DFK went this overboard. And the numbers everywhere, we don't need that many numbers on the screen. At least you can tone down the alpha transparency on the overload of stars.

When you're in break mode, you're ridiculously overpowered. Nothing stands a chance in hell. When not, you feel pretty weak. There needs to be a better balance between the two IMO.

It feels like the risk/reward system is flipped on it's head. If you don't play the game "correctly", it gets way harder than it should be. It feels like if you actually are seeing bullets on the screen (Aside from boss/midboss) it means you fucked up.

Lock-on being the slowdown button annoys me for some reason. That, and the player ship is ridiculously fast when not slowed down. It's easy to accidentally go careening into a bullet.

Lol:

The level 1 boss will keep firing it's big blue laser even as it's exploding. I didn't try running into it to see if it would still kill me.