Fair competitive practice and shoot'em ups

[Ghegs]

I fully understand the appraisal of official ports. It's because they are just that, official, the word does carry some meaning. It has the developer's seal of approval on it. That counts for a lot in many a shmupper's book, including my own. I'd much rather play an official port over MAME, as long as the port isn't wildly inaccurate.

Console ports also bring with them one great thing: the game's consistency between players. You can be absolutely 100% sure all the players using that same port are playing the exact same game with all the same slowdown, bugs, inaccuracies and so forth. There is no question at all about whether all the players have a slightly different experience due to using a different version of MAME, a different ROM, whether someone's computer isn't quite up to the task and runs the game slightly slower than it should, whether this guy's anti-virus software decided to start a scheduled scan at an inopportune moment that caused some frames to drop, etc. etc.

And I remember reading somewhere on the forums that even PCBs of the same game can act very slightly differently from each other. So, and I'm just playing the devil's advocate here, to ensure every player plays the exact same game, only scores made with official ports should be accepted. Can't even fake INPs on those.

EDIT: emphatic beat me to it, took too long writing the post.

[cstle]

I don't know man, every single port that came out people have pointed out speed differences that they could notice just by playing. Ketsui in XBOX is that way, even I can feel it compared to PCB even though I know so little about it.

Yes, but when people point these things out they also point out whether the speed difference makes a difference for scoring/survival or not. Ketsui for instance has quite a bit of framedropping slowdown from pushing the PCB hardware that's noticeable when missing in the port but not important to playing the game.

Plus, with the good ports the programmers actively put effort into replicating the slowdown as it was on the PCB as much as possible. Of course they miss a few spots, but compared to MAME where slowdown inaccuracies are caused by inadequate emulation, I think there's a less accurate recreation all around going on, if that makes sense.

What is the advantage of a good port now ? You need a controller suitable for that particular system (when most controllers are usable on PC), you don't get save states, you get replays but you can't get a hold of the file itself, speed inaccuracies, harder to record a video from.. The only thing that I can think of that is cool about the ports is the online leaderboards, that's pretty cool. Now to say that "the advantages of the good ports outweigh anything MAME offers" ? What do you even mean ?

Controllers are unfortunate, especially for me since I can't use a stick due to my disability and the Saturn pad is basically the only viable pad, but there are plenty of people that make and sell lagless converters of all sorts.

I find training modes a better alternative to save states, personally. Juggling state slots is a pain. Recording a video is more troublesome but capture cards aren't that difficult to use, plus all replays are saved in one neat place for every game.

I guess, generally speaking, the big plus of the ports is that they are a largely static version of the game. Every copy of the port plays the same on every console for everyone. Everyone can download a good replay from the leaderboard and play it back without having to fumble around with MAME romset/program versions or forks to view it. You don't have to worry about updating MAME or your romsets or worrying if your old replays/specific savestates will work or not, and so on. There are small automatically downloaded patches but nothing too major aside from the DOJBLEX 360 case. It's just the game and its features. And yes, online leaderboards and easily downloadable+watchable replays are great too.

Plus, there are ways in which the ports are objectively superior such as high-res visuals (sans the ones where the hi-res mode had inaccuracies from the arcade version that affected play, Deathsmiles iirc), and audio. And the aforementioned input lag... ShmupMAME may be lagless itself, but you still have to factor in any lag that your OS and other processes could be causing.

I've seen people accuse Prom of doing all this because he's "defending his high score achievements that were done on a PC with a keyboard". Didn't these people catch the DOJBL 2-ALL and the 1.7b he got in an arcade while in Japan? Oh, wait, of course not - the shmup Amish barely ever visit the hiscore boards, of course.

Who are "people" and what does this even have to do at all with the discussion currently at hand in this thread?

Not once did I (or anyone else in this thread) try to diminish his accomplishments or skill. Rather, I was contesting the condemnation of something as harmless as pausing by pointing out other things that could also be easily viewed as cheating too.

The rest is just port quality, platform preference, and accuracy discussion where nothing of that sort came up either. Save your strawman for another time.

[ebarrett]

I played Batsugun Special version in MAME and thought I did well, but it wasn't running 100%, so when I got to play the PCB, I was shocked at the speed difference.

That's probably more a case of you being stupid/malicious and unable/unwilling to check if things are running properly since you PCB amish have this habit of deliberately doing things wrong when it comes to emulation so you can have your cute confirmation bias.

I've seen people accuse Prom of doing all this because he's "defending his high score achievements that were done on a PC with a keyboard". Didn't these people catch the DOJBL 2-ALL and the 1.7b he got in an arcade while in Japan? Oh, wait, of course not - the shmup Amish barely ever visit the hiscore boards, of course.

Who are "people" and what does this even have to do at all with the discussion currently at hand in this thread?

Not once did I (or anyone else in this thread) try to diminish his accomplishments.

I'm not posting logs from elsewhere or pointing fingers since the general feeling exists ever since people started getting good scores outside of arcades, but that one is a word-for-word quote from someone who has posted in this very thread. If he wants to admit to being an ass elsewhere too, that's ok, but I'm not going to single out one person when the feeling is widespread (and is contaminating the discussion no matter how much you want to deny it).

[cstle]

I'm not posting logs from elsewhere or pointing fingers since the general feeling exists ever since people started getting good scores outside of arcades, but that one is a word-for-word quote from someone who has posted in this very thread. If he wants to admit to being an ass elsewhere too, that's ok, but I'm not going to single out one person when the feeling is widespread (and is contaminating the discussion no matter how much you want to deny it).

This is what I got from your posts:
"people say things and I'll make posts about them but I won't say who or where also these beliefs held by these probably imaginary phantom people are held by lots of people and you can't deny it, I'm not going to give an actual argument or solid factual backing to this so you'll just have to take my word for it"

This is not good.

[ebarrett]

cstle, I sent you a pm, now stop being an ass, ok?

[Ganelon]

Sorry for the shift away from ports vs. emulation vs. arcade PCBs vs. fake PCBs vs. kitchen sink...

We're not playing a professional sport or anything but this sort of thing is so obviously not in the spirit of a genre that's all about dodging and reflexes that it should be clear why it's regarded as cheating, so I fail to see why you would defend it. What next, are you going to argue that pulling this BS off in MAME isn't cheating just because it has pausing as a convenience too?

I'm not sure what the "it" is I'm defending. I think the only thing I suggested for defense is that folks here should be more civil when there's no obvious evidence of cheating based on the rules of the game and the rules of the competition. A respectful "The Shmups community must regretfully inform you that we can't accept your score. Although it wasn't listed in the rules before, we've decided that pausing for purposes other than taking a bathroom break is not allowed. We've updated the rules accordingly but hope that you'll try again." would've been enough.

The only spirit I follow is the spirit of winning. I trust rules to govern play just as we all trust laws to govern our behavior in the real world. When they miss something, then the rules are the only thing to blame, not the people who followed them in an unexpected way. It sucks when criminals get let out because of a loophole, like a recent guy around my area who threatened to kill people and was found with a room full of weapons but nevertheless only received a misdemeanor phone misuse charge because there were no major laws against him in those circumstances. There was plenty of outrage that the rules couldn't do anything but that's the only fair way to approach things in a civil society.

If somebody in one of my tourneys found something that broke the game but didn't break the rules, then good for him. We'll decide what to do about it next time around. I can guarantee that's how most fighting game tourney organizers would respond. That's why in an infamous early Dead or Alive 4 tourney held in Japan, a player spammed his way to victory with a single move he discovered that had huge advantage with particular timing/distance and was allowed to do so. He won the grand prize and received significant backlash afterward, but rules are rules. I commend that player for finding and abusing the technique before anyone else did. As I said, the high score boards here are in a different situation with permanent placements so rules should be changed when necessary to prevent entries abusing tactics that were forgetfully omitted but that's no reason to lash out against people submitting scores that follow the letter of the rules.

You don't know the exact purpose of pausing so why assume it's just for interruptions and not to give console players an easier time reacting to the game? I could assume it's just there to help players past areas that don't slow down properly as in the arcade version.

As for pausing in emulators, anything in MAME outside the game itself is illegal because it's an external modification. That already includes pausing, save states, emulator-based slow motion, etc. Again, if anybody else can think of something in the game itself that should be "clearly" illegal, then please let everyone know.

And by slow motion, I was referring to a turbo Start button. I don't care about the effect that it creates, only that turbo is an external addition not built into the game. If players had an external device that slowed down the rate of fire, I'd consider that to be illegal as well. To be safe, since some officially licensed controllers do include turbo and slow motion, just mention that turbo is illegal. I suppose in high score boards that allow for external turbo, then I would say that slow motion should be considered legit as well unless expressly forbidden. After all, slow motion in console games is just another form of autofire. If that's a problem, then make it clear now.

My bottom line is: if you're going to take something seriously, why not mention everything you can? In your railroad sign example, what if someone recently moved from Somalia (a country without railroads) to the US and had no clue what the tracks on the ground were, all because you thought we shouldn't treat everyone like imbeciles? Pointing out more rules at worst hurts nothing and only speaks to the organizer's level of detail, and at best avoids situations such as this one. If you enter any serious competition with a lot on the line, then you expect to have all the rules you can. A legitimate question is whether these high score boards are casual affairs or serious competitions but from the tone of most folks in this topic, that should be obvious.

[PROMETHEUS]

I've seen people accuse Prom of doing all this because he's "defending his high score achievements that were done on a PC with a keyboard". Didn't these people catch the DOJBL 2-ALL and the 1.7b he got in an arcade while in Japan? Oh, wait, of course not - the shmup Amish barely ever visit the hiscore boards, of course.

Thanks man, but actually what I'm really doing isn't defending my scores, I think by now people who are interested in what I do with DDP/DOJ know what it's worth. I'm really fighting because I know this community has a of potential, and what plagues this potential and keeps it from developping further is the "official hardware/software" religion (= consumerism), and the "casual hardcore" mentality (I think it also has to do with consumerism).

Many guys here are talking and behaving the same way that the mainstream casual gamers who are into accumulating achievement points on a plethora of easy games : 1CC lists, low understanding of competitive play and organization, criticism of MAME, collecting over playing, etc. And of course, like the mainstream casual gamers, you sometimes find this belief that we are the hardcore shit.

I'm not talking about anyone in particular here, it is just some general remnants of this mentality that I still see scattered on these boards. And I want to say this : I really love this place and all of you guys, it's always a great experience meeting up anywhere around the freaking world and geeking it up on some crazy danmakus. But I can't stay passive when I see some of the reactions when we talk about score verification or the value of MAME, ports, competition, replays, practicing with save states, etc. I'm giving you some tough love here by fighting your opinions because what I really want to do is to make you change your minds.

And don't take me wrong, you guys teach me tons of things as well.
I'm getting kind of tired arguing about this stuff again, but I felt it needed to be done anyway.
I guess, I respect those of you who don't think the same way, I just think if you made an effort, we could accomplish bigger things. Maybe later.

[brokenhalo]

the pcb vs. console vs. mame arguments don't really need to happen. whenever a new version of a game comes out the community as a whole dissects the shit out of it and decides whether the games and thus the scoring are comparable. if they aren't, the scoreboards are kept separate and even if they are the same we still keep track of version used for posterity. that's already policed extremely well by the community.
the discrepancies between mame versions is maybe something that needs to be discussed more. that i have no first hand experience with.

as far as practice methods go, why does it matter? if someone wants to practice using save states while running the game at 25% speed it doesn't matter. as long as the run they submit for scoring purposes is a legit run i don't care how they got there.

as far as pausing i can see the arguments for no pausing ever, as nerves do come into play. but if a person needs to pause between stages (not before bosses/hard parts, and sure as hell not whatever vixy was doing) i wouldn't disqualify that run. my personal thoughts on this are that you'd probably do worse pausing between stages because it would take you out of the zone. but there's good arguments both ways.

the issue of score verification i think has already been solved. just add another column in the scoreboards for links to replays/.inps for the runs that submit them. requiring a replay for top 3 is a good idea, but might just be an expense that some people just don't want to have. i think we should still accept high scores based on picture verification, but recordings should be very strongly encouraged. personally, if i was that good i'd want to show off, and a lot of the really good players here already post runs. no need to be militant about it, or else it will turn into twin galaxies and everyone will hate it.

[PROMETHEUS]

I fully understand the appraisal of official ports. It's because they are just that, official, the word does carry some meaning. It has the developer's seal of approval on it. That counts for a lot in many a shmupper's book, including my own. I'd much rather play an official port over MAME, as long as the port isn't wildly inaccurate.

Well man, I really wish you didn't. I mean, I'm sure you know the way companies work. In the case of Cave, it's not like they're professionnal shmuppers or anything, they're good at making the game, but then I don't think they're the best when it comes to providing players with the best playing experience. Why is there no PCB with a save states mode for practicing ? Why is there no online leaderboards in the arcades ? Why did it take so long to ship the freaking games overseas ?

Official doesn't actually mean anything. It just means, it's legal, it's branded. In some ways, most of the time, you can call it a scam. It's like those very expensive clothing brands that sell you scarves for $1000. A PCB ain't worth much more than $50. Of course, the point is that's the price they sell them to arcades who make money out of them, but you know what I'm talking about. They've played this game with the Cave goodies as well, etc.

And like I said earlier, unofficial is often better. It is the case with MAME, it is the case with other games, people make tools, they make it all for free, it often works better, or even creates tools that the developper would never think of making.

I refer you to the modding community of Minecraft, for a very good example of that.

[emphatic]

A PCB ain't worth much more than $50.

This is pure crazy talk. So they don't need to pay the programmers and other staff then, the development costs nothing only the actual hardware?

[PROMETHEUS]

A PCB ain't worth much more than $50.

This is pure crazy talk. So they don't need to pay the programmers and other staff then, the development costs nothing only the actual hardware?

It's a business all right, what I mean is what a company does is make the biggest profit they can. Sure, they do good things in the process, but in the end whatever official support ends up released isn't necessarily any better than unofficial.

[Ghegs]

I think you misunderstand, I'm not anti-MAME. I use MAME for testing out games and for save state-practicing, if the game doesn't offer anything similar itself. But for full, legit runs I use either the PCB or the port, in that order of preference. Because official does mean something. It means anybody can easily figure out the metadata of my run, instead of wondering about MAME versions and all that other stuff I mentioned. We're not talking about scarves with a D&G logo on them.

Of course, since I'm not much of a score-player you're free to ignore all this.

(Also, there are some games in the arcades with the equivalent of online leaderboards. Just not shmups, probably.)

[cstle]

Well man, I really wish you didn't. I mean, I'm sure you know the way companies work. In the case of Cave, it's not like they're professionnal shmuppers or anything, they're good at making the game, but then I don't think they're the best when it comes to providing players with the best playing experience.

I think this is selling Cave's efforts on ports short, considering that they've gotten top players and such to help them test their ports before, it's obvious they care. And most of their output shows.

And, while not a Cave employee, he's a figure behind Cave ports... let's not forget to mention Mihara -- refusing to release Ketsui on PS2 because he couldn't get the stage 5 reverse scrolling section to function perfectly on PS2 while everything else in the port was already finished and perfect, working an extremely long time on a disastrously messy codebase that was illegally reverse engineered from his own (virtually perfect at that) DOJ PS2 port to deliver fans a DOJBLEX 360 patch (not to mention this version of the game was out of print since the reverse engineering fiasco was revealed and still has not received another print, so there's no way that there was profit motives behind this), assisting 5pb to make sure Ketsui 360 to make sure it would turn out great (and it did), the extremely high quality of his PS2 ports, etc. I don't see how you could say Cave/people behind Cave ports aren't at least quite good at bringing the players the best experience.

Why is there no PCB with a save states mode for practicing ?

Because PCBs, aside from the special versions sold in the Cave shop not too long ago, are intended for public exhibition in arcades, not home use. The port is the home use version. Plus a special PCB was made once for practicing and it didn't sit well with the Japanese STG community as previously mentioned in this thread.

Official doesn't actually mean anything. It just means, it's legal, it's branded. In some ways, most of the time, you can call it a scam. It's like those very expensive clothing brands that sell you scarves for $1000. A PCB ain't worth much more than $50. Of course, the point is that's the price they sell them to arcades who make money out of them, but you know what I'm talking about.

False equivalency. Cave's PCBs are appropriately priced as they are priced for customers who intend to use them for public exhibition and profit. A scarf is not. The only exceptions to this were the previously mentioned special version PCBs sold on the Cave shop.

Think of a PCB like a film print for theatres -- which also cost theater owners exponentially more than consumer versions of movies.

And like I said earlier, unofficial is often better. It is the case with MAME

Again, debatable.

[PROMETHEUS]

I don't know what you're doing cstle, it's like you are defending every single Cave releases and actions. I'm not saying all of what they do is shit, in many ways it's good and I'm glad it's there. However, MAME is there too, and I am demonstrating its value there, which is obviously underestimated. You said things like "oh yeah Ketsui has missing slowdown everyone notices on 360" and that's "not important to playing the game", and then you go to MAME and say "well, we can't really notice any slowdown difference, but there has to be just a little bit because it couldn't be perfect, and then that has to be bad because it's emulation..". Are you trying to justify you're playing on official systems only ?

(and the reason there is no PCB for practicing, I think that's either because Cave hasn't figured it out, or because they'd rather have players put more 100Yen coins practicing unefficiently, of course. It would be very easy for them to ship boards with a level select mode. Like, play 3 stages of your choice for 100Y)

(I wasn't making an equivalency between PCB and scarves, rather pointing out businesses are businesses, what they do is not try to satisfy their customers to the max, rather make a maximum profit, which I'm sure you already know don't exactly come hand in hand, and is why embracing the unofficial is such a good idea)

[trap15]

Really, this discussion is getting quite dumb.

[PROMETHEUS]

lol that one cracked me up

[RNGmaster]

I'm not sure what the "it" is I'm defending. I think the only thing I suggested for defense is that folks here should be more civil when there's no obvious evidence of cheating based on the rules of the game and the rules of the competition. A respectful "The Shmups community must regretfully inform you that we can't accept your score. Although it wasn't listed in the rules before, we've decided that pausing for purposes other than taking a bathroom break is not allowed. We've updated the rules accordingly but hope that you'll try again." would've been enough.

Whether or not VN used pause buffering is irrelevant. The point is that she had very little experience with the game's bullet patterns and was using a method that allowed her to play through the game without dying despite an utter lack of skill (sorry, you didn't get to see the play, I'm confident it would have changed your mind). If we are going to have nay pretensions to legitimacy, we ought to declare scores like these false even if we don't know what method they used to cheat and even if our Ten Commandments don't explicitly forbid it. If we view ourselves as competitive gamers, we shouldn't accept cases of blatant cheating.

If somebody in one of my tourneys found something that broke the game but didn't break the rules, then good for him.

What exactly constitutes cheating is admittedly a grey area. (I wonder what the Japanese scoreplayer reaction to the SDOJ integer overflow glitch was?) I don't think that abusing the hardware counts as "breaking the game but not breaking the rules" - having an unfair advantage over other submitted scores is just that, unfair.

But if I had to take a guess, I think folks will just put a band-aid on this one trick and keep competing until the next scoring scandal occurs.

I don't claim to have all the answers here, and I don't think that any reaction to this scoring scandal is going to stop would-be cheaters, no matter how stringent we are about providing proof. Any unusually high score from nowhere is going to be viewed with suspicion, and it may well be that one or two of those scores were produced using less-than-legitimate methods. The best we can do is take each suspected cheat score on a case-by-case basis, and in this case the score did not hold up whatsoever under clear scrutiny.

Just as an off-note, I'm sorry to Ed Oscuro about demanding mandatory replays from everyone. I do think that requesting replays to verify a top 10 score would be a good gesture and something the community could benefit from, though.

[trap15]

(I wonder what the Japanese scoreplayer reaction to the SDOJ integer overflow glitch was?)

A score using it is in Arcadia, so I'd imagine it's considered legit and acceptable. The players probably hate it, but there's nothing that can be done about it now.

[NeoStrayCat]

lol, seriously, WTF is up with this thread, I thought we we're talking about Vixy claiming to be legit or not, and then this topic went seriously f'n haywire. Even though I can't tell that replay is legit or not, but at least the Irony (and truth) is I played co-op with her on Strania recently, and she can't handle her own there...~_~

tl;dr: C'mon V.N., where's the same skill you did Mushi, its not working towards Strania (and other titles you're working on).

[Op Intensify]

We've created our very own Neo-Geo.com Aero Fighters 3/Power Spikes II proto drama thread, just with less real money involved.

I hope everyone's proud of themselves.

Really don't know what to make of Vixy now. I'd like to believe it was just an innocent lack of knowledge of our standards for scoring legitimacy, but she was well aware of this community before doing that run and fielded advice from expert players.

You guys should know that she previously posted Deathsmiles 1CC videos played on Level 1, so I don't think we're dealing with anyone who possesses a whole lot of actual skill. I think she should be allowed to stay, but not without a stern warning and plenty of scrutiny on any future score submissions.

[chempop]

Official doesn't actually mean anything. It just means, it's legal, it's branded. In some ways, most of the time, you can call it a scam. It's like those very expensive clothing brands that sell you scarves for $1000.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you don't know much about scarves.
I'm actually 100% certain that more time and energy goes into a single one of these than any cave game.
Maybe not the best comparison

[Op Intensify]

I could make the top right one with a rag and some orange paint.

Also, here's some incredibly embarrassing treats from the desk of VixyNyan, and enough proof for me that she isn't a trap. I was actually the one who advised her to delete the link from her signature, but I think she deserves it now for thinking she could fool the community. http://vixynyan.deviantart.com/gallery/

[CptRansom]

This fucking thread. Oh man.

[RNGmaster]

I could make the top right one with a rag and some orange paint.

Also, here's some incredibly embarrassing treats from the desk of VixyNyan, and enough proof for me that she isn't a trap. I was actually the one who advised her to delete the link from her signature, but I think she deserves it now for thinking she could fool the community. http://vixynyan.deviantart.com/gallery/

I was going to comment on the furry/breast inflation stuff in "her" faves but I thought it would be a low blow :V

I still maintain it's a dude, you can draw pictures of your purple-haired persona all you want but if you have such a small amount of knowledge about how breasts work your femininity is in grave doubt.

[chempop]

I could make the top right one with a rag and some orange paint.

Haha, thats what I thought at first too, but there are actually a dozen horses hidden in the design.

http://vixynyan.deviantart.com/gallery/

Did not want to see that.

[Aliquantic]

Also, here's some incredibly embarrassing treats from the desk of VixyNyan, and enough proof for me that she isn't a trap. I was actually the one who advised her to delete the link from her signature, but I think she deserves it now for thinking she could fool the community. http://vixynyan.deviantart.com/gallery/

How exactly is that news when it's in a signature and a Google search away? Obviously there's no secrecy involved there, and anyone who's curious saw that already.

I'm not sure we want to sink so low as to do character assassination in public, though... the replay was material enough, and all that's relevant to a high score discussion.

[VgameT]

you probably don't need to internet detective people after they delete their stuff and disappear
but yes sure let's all be creeps because the person in question might be a girl

[nZero]

I'm not sure we want to sink so low as to do character assassination in public, though... the replay was material enough, and all that's relevant to a high score discussion.

I want to underscore this. The discussion was moved to Shmups Chat for a reason, let's keep it shmup related.

[Op Intensify]

I still maintain it's a dude, you can draw pictures of your purple-haired persona all you want but if you have such a small amount of knowledge about how breasts work your femininity is in grave doubt.

I'd like to see how good you are at drawing realistic dicks.

And I didn't post any links that Vixy herself hadn't already posted here before. I didn't go internet stalking her to come up with that DA page.

[RNGmaster]

Sorry, character assassination is kind of low. I'll quit it.

About VN "disappearing" though, she's been posting on the SDOJ thread like nothing happened. I don't think it got to her, and despite my indignation at her cheating I really hope we didn't scare her off.