The BIG thread of Shmup grievances.

[Bananamatic]

And then there are those things that shouldn't be risky at all but you manage to screw it up anyway.

those are the things you can't solve by bombing because those mistakes aren't something you can reasonably predict and react to

[Sumez]

I appreciate the theory, but the thing is I know I should do all this, but I rarely do.
Still though, I absolutely prefer having bombs to games that don't.

[Bananamatic]

feels like deciding if you should dodge or bomb just makes your attention focus on two things at once and making you shit at both, not to mention more nervous
if you know you want to try and dodge, ignore your bomb stock and focus entirely on dodging
if you know you have to bomb, trying to dodge is just a bad decision
you can always go hero mode if you have 0 bombs left, I think people tend to dodge best with no bombs left for a reason

outside of touhou where you can bomb for a certain time after getting hit and where patterns tend to be way more random, bombing on reaction feels like an overrated skill rather than an important one, especially in games like dodonpachi where you don't want to bomb at all for high scores

[Squire Grooktook]

It's the best skill in Twinkle Star Sprites though.

(not really that's counters but still)

[Shepardus]

Just play games with shields (or *gasp* health bars).

[Stevens]

Somewhere deep within the code of Cave titles is a line of code. This line of code makes sure that you can't get your first clear until you die when the final boss has zero health.

[Jonst]

^ Are we still talking espgaluda 2 BL?... (you would have cleared ak ages ago if youd have stuck with it a bit longer! ) also, what happened to your progear practise, weren't you close on that as well?

Oh yeah, check the "I did it" thread...

[Stevens]

Yeah BL.

Avoiding a stupid death on one of Seseri's patterns I usually clear with ease would have put me over the top.

On the plus side the first time I was close (after some practice) I was reaching the final boss with five lives (have to suicide to avoid TLB) and really had no idea how to deal. Last night I reached it on my last life and lasted till the final pattern.

Don't need to - I'll guess and say you cleared Ibara? Nice:D I will join you soon.

And yeah I was close on both AK and Progear. I'll get back there one day.

[Jonst]

Balls! What chatacter are you using and have you watched the
1sissy replay? ... you know about the safe spots at certain points?... BL is my favourite version of esp2 but I still can't quite get into it and stay motivated. It will be awesome when you get this, sounds close now!

Indeed! ... I hope So!

They will all come no doubt!

[Despatche]

Multiple hits per life + some minor "deathbomb" whenever you take a hit (except you actually take the hit) = problem solved? Maybe?

[xxx1993]

The Weapon System in Strania is ASS. Every time I try to pick up something, I end up replacing a useful weapon I already had. Einhander didn't have problems like that.

[Shepardus]

Yes, that is what happens when you have limited weapon slots and you try to pick up another weapon, something has to get replaced. Unless you're saying you should be able to carry all the weapons at once...

[M.Knight]

Having to switch your weapon configuration in the heat of battle and grab the weapon pod from the correct side is a pain, though. If he is talking about how annoying it is to have one of your good weapons be replaced by something less useful because your were more focused on not getting killed or because you didn't press the change weapon config button enough times, I can agree.

I wonder what Strania would feel like if you could carry all weapons at all times, as I remember the weapon system being quite clunky and infuriating when I played it.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Yeah, I found the positional weapon pick-up thing to be a bit odd at times, myself.

[xxx1993]

...And it turns out the weapon changes depends on which side you pick it up from. No wonder why I haven't gotten the weapons right.

[LichbannMejolaro]

I got really close to 1cc'ing Donpachi but I fucked up on the last stage.

The first 4 stages were impeccable, and I ended stage 4 with only one death (which could be easily avoided).

On stage 5, though, everything went to shit. For starters, I died close to the beginning with a full bomb stock (7 bombs going away at this point is really painful).

After that, I was psychologically fucked. Started making ridiculous mistakes and didn't got even close to the final boss.

It was my best run yet, but it feels bad because I could have done so much more:




At least I'm hopeful to get the 1CC shortly. And considering I've been practicing for just two days (approximately 6 hours total), I think I can improve a lot.

[Shepardus]

At least that means you're getting there, you should be able to get runs like that more and more often as you practice.

By the way, pressing F12 (by default) in MAME captures a screenshot, so you don't have that mouse cursor in the shot.

[LichbannMejolaro]

At least that means you're getting there, you should be able to get runs like that more and more often as you practice.

By the way, pressing F12 (by default) in MAME captures a screenshot, so you don't have that mouse cursor in the shot.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll definitely use that!

I tried using Mame to record a replay as well but when I did my fps went down, so I'll try using OBS.

[Shepardus]

Recording a video through MAME (I assume that's what you were doing) can be laggy because MAME records uncompressed video, which takes up a lot of space, so you're typically bottlenecked by hard drive speed. I generally record an input file (using the -rec flag), then when I get a run I want to render to video, I play back the input file while recording a video from that (-pb and -aviwrite, respectively). The framerate may slow down while recording the video, but the output video will be as if it was running at full speed (emulated slowdown will still be preserved). I use FFmpeg to scale and encode the video before uploading to YouTube.

Some games (such as Battle Bakraid with the score-saving dipswitch on) have RNG that's dependent on the state of the saved nvram, in such cases you should either back up your nvram each time you record, or reset it between runs by deleting it or loading a save state. In rare occasions input playback just desyncs for seemingly no reason at all (looking at you, Sand Scorpion). For most games, however, simply recording an input file and playing it back works with little fuss.

For streaming to Twitch, I use OBS.

[LichbannMejolaro]

Recording a video through MAME (I assume that's what you were doing) can be laggy because MAME records uncompressed video, which takes up a lot of space, so you're typically bottlenecked by hard drive speed. I generally record an input file (using the -rec flag), then when I get a run I want to render to video, I play back the input file while recording a video from that (-pb and -aviwrite, respectively). The framerate may slow down while recording the video, but the output video will be as if it was running at full speed (emulated slowdown will still be preserved). I use FFmpeg to scale and encode the video before uploading to YouTube.

Some games (such as Battle Bakraid with the score-saving dipswitch on) have RNG that's dependent on the state of the saved nvram, in such cases you should either back up your nvram each time you record, or reset it between runs by deleting it or loading a save state. In rare occasions input playback just desyncs for seemingly no reason at all (looking at you, Sand Scorpion). For most games, however, simply recording an input file and playing it back works with little fuss.

For streaming to Twitch, I use OBS.

I'm gonna be honest here and say that if I understood 10% of what you said, it was too much. If I understood something, the tips you gave (-rec, -pb) are for running Mame through command line right? I have no idea how this works, though.


But anyway, I just did it! Got the 1CC and recorded on OBS, gonna be posting on the 1CC thread!

Thanks for the help!

[Shepardus]

I'm gonna be honest here and say that if I understood 10% of what you said, it was too much. If I understood something, the tips you gave (-rec, -pb) are for running Mame through command line right? I have no idea how this works, though.

Yes, it's admittedly a bit intimidating for people who have never worked with the command line before but I prefer it over any GUI frontend for MAME (though I do use the stock GUI for some things). FFmpeg is likewise a command-line tool for video processing, among other things.

[xxx1993]

When you play Otomedius Excellent on Expert Mode with Anoa, you get her Hyper form for the true final stage... But the game has the balls to have you gather all your power ups all over again, making it almost impossible to 1CC the game.

[LordHypnos]

TFW you forget about the fact that you were recording a mame replay to avi because you were too distracted playing Wisp Lisp Array of List for like an hour and you end up literally filling up an entire hard drive partition with a video that is probably mostly the attract sequence of R-Type after your run ended.

[XoPachi]

A few.

I tend to not like when half of my ship can be obscured by the bottom HUD in a game. Blue Revolver does this. Feels a bit awkward to dodge when I get pushed back.

Not a big fan of those old PC shooters. Stuff like Tyrian and DemonStar. Just always felt sort of mindless and slippery to me. Never liked the style of those games. They are nostalgic though.

The existence of Otomedius.

And how hard it is to see bullets in some games sometimes. Its been getting harder for me to see lately. Bullets tend to blend into backgrounds in specific instances. Like anytime bullets pass over white in Raiden Fighters.

[Blinge]

Necro-complain-bump

Fucking hell Taito.
You know it's not a super widescreen game anymore, right? There's no fucking room!

Darius Gaiden is so claustrophobic.
Also trying to learn all up Z. is this easier than down Z?

Fatty Glutton's blue scale is so fucking annoying in his first phase if all you have is green wave.
Fuck

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I have that stupid "with some luck I can juuuuust push through here" mindset that I seem to be unable to let go of.

This is pretty normal as you get better at shmups - you stop being GOTTA BOMB GOTTA BOMB on everything and it becomes a "I think I can get through this!" and then you start to hoard bombs as you attempt to get good at stuff you normally can only safely get through 10% of the time.

But eventually you get over that hump and then you really up how reliably you can get through what are normally trouble spots.

[mamboFoxtrot]

And how hard it is to see bullets in some games sometimes. Its been getting harder for me to see lately.

my eyes can't seem to focus on shit anymore
last few times i played any shmubs, 90% of my deaths are just moving sideways into a bullet that i thought had already passed me bc i'm just absent-mindedly staring at the middle of the screen i guess
guess i have to resign myself to just playing DADSHMUPS like tiger heli or some shit
nah fuck tiger heli

[LordHypnos]

This is actually a grievance from like a week ago, but WTF Raiden Fighters Jet Simulation Level 30? It's super hard to see enemies! It's also pretty hard to see bullets, but I think not being able to see enemies is almost worse. At least in Simulation Level 35 you know where the bullets are going to be based on where the enemies are. It doesn't seem like any of the other stages are quite as bad, so I'm probably just going to suicide in Level 15 so that I can do Level 20 instead.

[BIL]

Seibu, and tbh a lot of otherwise first-rate STG devs, really can be surprisingly awful about bullet/enemy visibility. Often in games whose visibility is 90% fine otherwise... Trigon's desert stage and P47's sunset stage come to mind. It's technically preferable, but somehow more jarring than games where the designers blatantly didn't give a shit Stuff like Taito's truly tragic The Tin Star, a game that screams for a "red ball" Arrange/ROMhack if there ever was one.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I know there's a lot of people who claim to be sick of games with pink/purple bullets, but the reality is I really appreciate high-contrast design where the designer clearly used limited palettes to ensure maximum bullet visibility and contrast. Like, by restricting player shots to a specific palette, enemy shots to a distinct palette, and then making sure those weren't prevalent in enemy or background design.

Seibu is definitely bad about this at times. Not just because bullets tend to be speedy, but because their bright yellow is difficult to see against sand, bright orangey yellow explosions, etc.