Dotonpachi (and Gustav's Other Scary Games)

[BPzeBanshee]

DAI
MA
OH

Can't get it to work. Not in JP mode but I don't want to do that (I probably will). Doesn't work with AppLocale at all. Removing the kanji displays the splash and a game window pops up but then I get "Unexpected error."

I got this on my Uni computer today as well. It's something to do with how it's externalising the pictures I think (I believe its made in Game Maker). Get the Low-Quality version of the EXE from the website, that should run but you'll get no fancy backgrounds.

Does anyone know if this guy speaks English or if there's a way to contact him in a way he can understand? I'm seriously considering just reverse-engineering his game to make it run properly across the board.

[mjclark]

Does anyone know if this guy speaks English or if there's a way to contact him in a way he can understand? I'm seriously considering just reverse-engineering his game to make it run properly across the board.

His YouTube name is Eveliouse and I've been messaging him there. He speaks English, is aware of this thread and is more than happy to communicate

[BPzeBanshee]

Does anyone know if this guy speaks English or if there's a way to contact him in a way he can understand? I'm seriously considering just reverse-engineering his game to make it run properly across the board.

His YouTube name is Eveliouse and I've been messaging him there. He speaks English, is aware of this thread and is more than happy to communicate

Cool. It's just that:

- Something he's doing in the externalisation of pictures is making the normal Dotonpachi EXE come up with "Unexpected Error occurred when running the game"
- Due to using Game Maker's internal MP3 support none of the music plays on my computer for some reason. I've yet to have found a fix on my end and he's better off using Supersound and converting them all to OGGs anyway.
- No set aspect ratio when fullscreen, cant tell whether its deliberate or not
- No healthbar display in LQ version?
- What's the go with the secret buttons going to stages at various apparent difficulty levels?

I'm certain given time and thorough looking at the code I'd be able to fix all of that myself but it'd be much easier if the author knew so that he could fix the issues himself. No one knows a game better than the developer.

[mjclark]

- Something he's doing in the externalisation of pictures is making the normal Dotonpachi EXE come up with "Unexpected Error occurred when running the game"
- Due to using Game Maker's internal MP3 support none of the music plays on my computer for some reason. I've yet to have found a fix on my end and he's better off using Supersound and converting them all to OGGs anyway.
- No set aspect ratio when fullscreen, cant tell whether its deliberate or not
- No healthbar display in LQ version?
- What's the go with the secret buttons going to stages at various apparent difficulty levels?
I'm certain given time and thorough looking at the code I'd be able to fix all of that myself but it'd be much easier if the author knew so that he could fix the issues himself. No one knows a game better than the developer.

Definitely worth getting in touch with him then. Unlike all that Gwangedash drama, this guy is pleased we're enjoying his game!
There's something on his blog today about bugfixes but again not sure what it means.
I havn't had any time to play this yet- what are these secret buttons of which you speak?

[BPzeBanshee]

Buttons from T to P act as Stage Select through the three stages in two separate forms of difficulty.

I'll try and PM him via YouTube with these issues and see what he says. Tomorrow while I'm at Uni.

[mjclark]

Buttons from T to P act as Stage Select through the three stages in two separate forms of difficulty.

I'll try and PM him via YouTube with these issues and see what he says. Tomorrow while I'm at Uni.

Kool and the gang

STOP PRESS: Just got a message from Eveliouse and he says: "Thank you for enjoying my game! And you can find a big fixed new version here:
http://marhite.tistory.com/224 "
Hooray! And he's posted this on his blog lol:
Unfortunately I'm still getting the "unexpected error..." with the new .exe though, so he'd probably still appreciate some input

[BLU]

The newest patch resolves many issues and game breaking bugs, notably the "not being able to save your score unless you beat the game" thing that pissed me off to no end D:

Score distributions have also been balanced out, reducing the amount of score acquired in stages 2 and 3. (Not too happy with this one - he basically just fiddled with the scoring equation so that the base multiplier is different for every stage)

A new patch will be out soon, fixing issues with the score counter (and hopefully the "unexpected error"). Do give Gustav some feedback, and stay tuned!

[BPzeBanshee]

Well I've sent a message to Eveliouse on YouTube, I'll let you guys know how he replies.

I'm not really sure how good his English is so I've tried to cut down the long sentences here and there but this is what I came up with:

Hi there. I understand you're the developer for Dotonpachi. Great project!

There are however some problems with your game. I have them listed here as I've posted prior on the Shmups forums thread for this game. Hopefully you can fix these issues, I can help somewhat if necessary since I'm experienced with coding in Game Maker.

- On some computers, normal Dotonpachi 1.5 shows message "Unexpected Error Occurred when running the game". I think you know about this one but in my experience this is due to improper externalisation of images. Did you do it any differently from Odd Mobs (with Ghandi)?

- Due to using Game Maker's poor internal MP3 support none of the music plays on some computers. There is no solution for this besides using an alternate sound DLL. Better off using Supersound and converting all the music to OGGs anyway, this will guarantee playing of music across all computers.

- No set aspect ratio when fullscreen, cant tell whether its deliberate or not

- No healthbar display for bosses in LQ version.

- What's the go with the secret buttons going to stages at various apparent difficulty levels?

Besides this, all is well. ^_^

I tried the 1.5 versions today and the issues I initially posted are still there. The music is an easy fix by loading them as OGGs using Supersound like he did for most of the music in the Ghandi game. I'm not sure exactly where his normal EXE is going wrong with the externalisation of images but I'm confident that the issue is something to do with exactly that. The LQ version and the Ghandi game still use some externalisation of images but they work just fine, so I'm curious as to what he's doing with the other pictures that's different.

Now that I think about it, Alluro had an issue a long time ago with early versions of XF-R when he started externalising images. His error handling is considerably different from this guy so no errors popped up in XFR, but the culprit was loading images larger in resolution than 512 pixels due to some integrated graphics cards not being able to handle this. I wonder if this has anything to do with what he's doing in Dotonpachi.

[mjclark]

On some computers, normal Dotonpachi 1.5 shows message "Unexpected Error Occurred when running the game". I think you know about this one but in my experience this is due to improper externalisation of images. Did you do it any differently from Odd Mobs (with Ghandi)

I was wondering how to anglicise the name of that first gandhi game.
It's called "小怪奇" and google translate gives that as "Odd Mobs" in Chinese, but in Japanese it comes out as "Small Mystery".
"Odd Mobs" fits really well with the general weirdness though eh?

[BPzeBanshee]

On some computers, normal Dotonpachi 1.5 shows message "Unexpected Error Occurred when running the game". I think you know about this one but in my experience this is due to improper externalisation of images. Did you do it any differently from Odd Mobs (with Ghandi)

I was wondering how to anglicise the name of that first gandhi game.
It's called "小怪奇" and google translate gives that as "Odd Mobs" in Chinese, but in Japanese it comes out as "Small Mystery".
"Odd Mobs" fits really well with the general weirdness though eh?

Google Translate autodetected it as Chinese and gave me Odd Mobs, so that's what I've called it. I probably should've gotten the Japanese syllables for the message to the developer, he might have no idea what game I'm talking about but hopefully my mention of Ghandi will help him understand if he doesn't already.

[AMI]

The word '小怪奇' itself means 'a small mysterious thing (or story)'.
But since this is a Korean word, you can read it like 'so-gö-gi' (gö is like goe, you can figure it out if you know about German Umlaut).
And there's a Korean word 'so-go-gi' or 'sö-go-gi', both means beef.

It's just a pun.

[BPzeBanshee]

The man himself got back to me:

First of all, thanks for your feedback, BPzeBanshee. The report on importing external images was especially helpful. I'll try to resolve these problems as fast as I can. The "secret buttons" you mentioned were for debugging purposes - but you can have fun with them for training!
My english isn't all that great, so it takes quite some time to send messages. I'm getting help from people here and there, so I'd appreciate it if you'll be patient. Thanks!

I got quite the helpful impression from that! Way better than the GwangeDash dev that's for sure.

[mjclark]

The man himself got back to me:

First of all, thanks for your feedback, BPzeBanshee. The report on importing external images was especially helpful. I'll try to resolve these problems as fast as I can. The "secret buttons" you mentioned were for debugging purposes - but you can have fun with them for training!
My english isn't all that great, so it takes quite some time to send messages. I'm getting help from people here and there, so I'd appreciate it if you'll be patient. Thanks!

I got quite the helpful impression from that! Way better than the GwangeDash dev that's for sure.

Brilliant! It's like that whole GwangeDash drama (which was loadsa fun after all) set the scene for this.
And I only became aware of Dotonpachi (or should it be DTP DMO?) cos Eveliouse (or Gustav) posted a YouTube vid of GwangeDash so I subscribed to his channel.
I know that Observer is rapping with that Under The Lotus guy and this whole idea of a dialogue between shmups forum and doujin devs is really exciting and could be very mutually beneficial as is already being shown.
Can't find a contact for that Kiwami Shooting guy though. There's a new version out on his webpage but maybe it's all being developed from inside an asylum lol.

[BLU]

1.51 is up. This solves most, if not all issued mentioned above. http://marhite.tistory.com/224

[mjclark]

Well 1.51 normal .exe runs for me now but crashes at the end of Stage 1 every time with this:

___________________________________________
"ERROR in
action number 1
of Alarm Event for alarm 3
for object obj_Line:

File does not exist."
Aaaargh!

Then when I try to exit I get this:

___________________________________________
"ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_Menu:

Error in code at line 1:
if b=0 {
^
at position 4: Unknown variable b"
Double aargh!!

[BPzeBanshee]

The second error is probably a result of the first. I'll take a look when I can get on a PC. You sure you're not missing files on your end?

EDIT:
This guy's sense of humor is excellent!


I'm downloading 1.51 now, if I can replicate the error I'll take another look at his blog and see what the go is, and then maybe figure out the source of the error myself if he's adamant about it being the "FINAL REAL FINAL" release.

EDIT2:
Didn't get the error on my Mac, which now plays music and runs Dotonpachi perfectly with the exception of one strange happening that occurred when I exited the game and couldnt replicate (I think I pressed ESC at the wrong time or something else on my end).
My deaths at some points in the game has me curious as to how he's handling the hitbox though, so I'm gonna check that out and then maybe make a highscore/ST thread for it.

[mjclark]

The second error is probably a result of the first. I'll take a look when I can get on a PC. You sure you're not missing files on your end?
I'm downloading 1.51 now, if I can replicate the error I'll take another look at his blog and see what the go is, and then maybe figure out the source of the error myself if he's adamant about it being the "FINAL REAL FINAL release.
...My deaths at some points in the game has me curious as to how he's handling the hitbox though, so I'm gonna check that out and then maybe make a highscore/ST thread for it.

Well I notified Gustav of my bug and in response he's brought out a fixed FINAL REAL FINAL release in the past few hours and that's working just fine for me so maybe that's the version you've downloaded.
And yes- a hi score thread's a greeeeattt idea

[BPzeBanshee]

I was going to make a highscore thread just now but then it occurred to me that remembering ship/shot types when the game doesnt list it in the highscores can be a pain. I might do it tomorrow unless you want to be the highscore host?

EDIT: You dont have MSN or anything like that do you by any chance?

[mjclark]

I was going to make a highscore thread just now but then it occurred to me that remembering ship/shot types when the game doesnt list it in the highscores can be a pain. I might do it tomorrow unless you want to be the highscore host?

EDIT: You dont have MSN or anything like that do you by any chance?

I'm at home today so I've got time to make that hi score thread (just up here!) and incorporated scores for
小怪奇 (Odd Mobs)


and 小怪奇 Rainbow Rabel - eXtra


MENTAL!!

Don't got no MSN but I'll PM you some other contacts

[Observer]

Korea ftw! Man, that's some sense of humor, this guy is awesome. Now some japanese people need to learn from this, ne?

I'll be trying the games soon. Great find, guys!

[neorichieb1971]

Looks like DOJ crossed with Ikaragu and Under defeat.

[AntiFritz]

Korea ftw! Man, that's some sense of humor, this guy is awesome. Now some japanese people need to learn from this, ne?

I'll be trying the games soon. Great find, guys!

Most of the humour in this is taken from a japanese niconico douga meme about billy herrington (guy at the top of that oddmobs pic above).

[Tyjet]

what did I just play? I press bomb and billy herrington pops up.

[BPzeBanshee]

If anyone else is playing the latest version (1.53) of Odd Mobs Rainbow Label eXtra and finding that Be Violence Mode spits out errors at the beginning of a new stage and doesn't play background music from Stage 1 onwards, or if the config settings aren't being saved properly, I've reported it to the developer.

[mjclark]

If anyone else is playing the latest version (1.53) of Odd Mobs Rainbow Label eXtra and finding that Be Violence Mode spits out errors at the beginning of a new stage and doesn't play background music from Stage 1 onwards, or if the config settings aren't being saved properly, I've reported it to the developer.

Will check that out later- Gustav fixed the bugs real quick in DTP so maybe he'll do the same with RRe.
All three games are excellent and I'm enjoying Rainbow Rabel eXtra the most at the moment. Especially the bit where the cheering leopards appear when you pick up a hyper

[Nazgulpasta]

If anyone else is playing the latest version (1.53) of Odd Mobs Rainbow Label eXtra and finding that Be Violence Mode spits out errors at the beginning of a new stage and doesn't play background music from Stage 1 onwards, or if the config settings aren't being saved properly, I've reported it to the developer.

Will check that out later- Gustav fixed the bugs real quick in DTP so maybe he'll do the same with RRe.
All three games are excellent and I'm enjoying Rainbow Rabel eXtra the most at the moment. Especially the bit where the cheering leopards appear when you pick up a hyper

Gustav patched 小怪奇 and 小怪奇 Rainbow label extra. maybe bugs are fixed (memory leaks not fixed. maybe)

and Gustav starts on dtp dmo's another version. maybe that game's name is 'dotonpachi daimao darkslategray rabel'...what?

according to video. that parodys ddp doj bl extra. what a long loading...

[mjclark]

Gustav patched 小怪奇 and 小怪奇 Rainbow label extra. maybe bugs are fixed (memory leaks not fixed. maybe)
and Gustav starts on dtp dmo's another version. maybe that game's name is 'dotonpachi daimao darkslategray rabel'...what?
according to video. that parodys ddp doj bl extra. what a long loading...

Wow that's fast work! But unfortunately the new "fixed" version of 小怪奇 gives me error messages if I press the bomb key when I have 0 bomb stock and also gives me error messages if I press any key at the Game Over screen.
And darkslategray rabel yeah!!!! (but the video's not loading...)

[BLU]

I'm somehow convinced Gustav's version of GM has a "No Foreigners" policy...

[BPzeBanshee]

Gustav patched 小怪奇 and 小怪奇 Rainbow label extra. maybe bugs are fixed (memory leaks not fixed. maybe)
and Gustav starts on dtp dmo's another version. maybe that game's name is 'dotonpachi daimao darkslategray rabel'...what?
according to video. that parodys ddp doj bl extra. what a long loading...

Wow that's fast work! But unfortunately the new "fixed" version of 小怪奇 gives me error messages if I press the bomb key when I have 0 bomb stock and also gives me error messages if I press any key at the Game Over screen.
And darkslategray rabel yeah!!!! (but the video's not loading...)

Dunno about this Darkslategrey Label game nor video, but I got two links from the author on YouTube to Mediafire downloads of fixed Odd Mobs and both have been removed. I think he's been faster than I am at finding bugs. Rainbow Label eXtra on the other hand was a valid link and that works perfectly on my Mac now, Be Violence mode included. I doubt the elusive boss health glitch will have been solved though.

I'm somehow convinced Gustav's version of GM has a "No Foreigners" policy...

The GM might, but Gustav himself is A-OK with foriegners. If you're having issues running the game take out any East Asian (or square) letters in its folder and EXE filename.

[mjclark]

Dunno about this Darkslategrey Label game nor video, but I got two links from the author on YouTube to Mediafire downloads of fixed Odd Mobs and both have been removed. I think he's been faster than I am at finding bugs. Rainbow Label eXtra on the other hand was a valid link and that works perfectly on my Mac now, Be Violence mode included. I doubt the elusive boss health glitch will have been solved though.

I'm somehow convinced Gustav's version of GM has a "No Foreigners" policy...

The GM might, but Gustav himself is A-OK with foriegners. If you're having issues running the game take out any East Asian (or square) letters in its folder and EXE filename.

Yeah- Gustav's right on the case with this stuff and it's a pleasure to communicate with him.
I told him about my new errors and he's now brought out a "Real Real Final" version of Odd Mobs. The bomb errors fixed but I still get an error on the Game Over screen if I press a button too quickly. This doesn't make the game unplayable though as the error can be ignored, and I daresay Gustav will want to be focusing more on his new projects now.
He says that he will be making"Radiant Silver Bullet" (the first scary screenshot in this thread) eventually too