Darius Gaiden auto fire cheat. What evidence says its right?

[nZero]

despite not being full default

I thought that was the factory default? It resets to off if you treat the NVRAM as initialized to all 0s but I'm not sure that's correct for those games.

[Drake]

But this forum isn't a Japanese arcade.

I also have other STG friends in Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Czech, Russia, the Philippines, and Australia, among others. Clearly all of these other countries have different arcade standards for STG play, I mean why would they ever bother using the same rules and criteria; they're all in different countries and have different scenes, after all. Woe is me that I cannot compare my scores to all of them!

[CStarFlare]

despite not being full default

I thought that was the factory default? It resets to off if you treat the NVRAM as initialized to all 0s but I'm not sure that's correct for those games.

I assumed that initializing the settings would be factory defaults, but maybe I'm offbase with that.

EDIT:

it’s also as shameless a quarter muncher as you’re likely to encounter, with a rank system that’s frustratingly eager to leave you high and dry (it never lightens up once raised, no matter how many times you die/power down), certain bullet patterns that are nearly impossible to get through without a bomb or shield, and boss fights that take an eternity to end, even when tackled with a pumped-up autofire cheat (which most “serious” shmuppers refuse to go without when playing this).

I read this and thought "wow, it's like reading a blurb about Sine Mora."

[Ed Oscuro]

But this forum isn't a Japanese arcade.

I also have other STG friends in Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Czech, Russia, the Philippines, and Australia, among others. Clearly all of these other countries have different arcade standards for STG play, I mean why would they ever bother using the same rules and criteria; they're all in different countries and have different scenes, after all. Woe is me that I cannot compare my scores to all of them!

exactly.

not seeing the irony in wanting to be a special snowflake AND also having everybody else do things according to a standard = "why can't everybody do things the way I want to"

well a good way to start might be not dismissing the current state of things out of hand. Also, the "problem" isn't as severe as it's being portrayed here.

[MathU]

From now on I’ll have to make sure to wear a kimono and act like my favorite anime character while playing glorious Nipponese STGs (that’s ShooTing Game for you ignorant gaijins). You stupid bakas just wouldn’t understand that it’s the proper way to play them.

[Ed Oscuro]

Because we uh... want to? What the fuck kind of question is that.

But why do you want to? Are you a Japanese arcade-goer with fellow Japanese arcade-going friends?

Who should we compete with?

Uh, each other?

Yes, you can do that too, and nobody is saying (in fact we are explicitly NOT saying) that we should just unthinkingly adopt standards because Japanese arcades have them.

We're just saying that to play the game to those standards you have to pay a fee. If you want to create tons of different standards, don't be surprised when thread maintainers push back because it makes the scores less compatible. (Pride > Joy, duh)

[MathU]

nobody is saying (in fact we are explicitly NOT saying) that we should just unthinkingly adopt standards because Japanese arcades have them.

Well maybe I'm missing something here because that's exactly what it sounds like to me. It's textbook bandwagoning: "I should do something this way because other people do it too." The logical reasons for competing without rapidfire have been laid out and are plentiful but people just brush them entirely aside because "Japan does it like this." Why can't we compete in a different, more interesting way? Why do you feel the need to measure yourself up to these particular people who play the game in a particularly less interesting, dumbed-down manner?

I think someone else made a good point here: if the roles were reversed and Twin Galaxies were the ones with the arbitrary rapidfire standard for competition, it would just be more fuel for making them the butt of jokes.

[Acid King]

Instead our efforts should be focused on completing a thorough ST that can help people learn this difficult game without autofire, along with detailed explanation of the auto-off scoring systems. We also need to make some high level videos that don"t use auto for reference. Then we make a highscore thread for it, and us "bark chewing manly men" get in there and keep the competition raging to attract newcomers. Seems a lot more productive to me than what's going on in this thread.

Your Darius Love is misguided. Organize community service, not a crusade

Why would anyone do that? Lord knows if I had a bunch of no auto clears under my belt and a half dozen high level video demonstrations on my youtube channel, I'd probably spend my time productively grousing about how autofire breaks the game instead of writing an ST guide or starting a fresh high score thread.

[Ed Oscuro]

nobody is saying (in fact we are explicitly NOT saying) that we should just unthinkingly adopt standards because Japanese arcades have them.

Well maybe I'm missing something here because that's exactly what it sounds like to me.

Look at trap15's response: "because we want to." If you don't want to include yourself in that "we," knock yourself out; it's your right. But good grief, enough already!

Your argument seems to have two prongs, both bad (so please clear them up if you think I've understood you wrong):

"It's stupid to want to play with autofire" No, that's a preference, i.e. an opinion, which many of us honestly do not share. See trap15's "what the fuck kind of question is that" response, again. Just because somebody honestly shares an opinion with somebody else doesn't mean you get to denigrate them and scream "bandwagoning bushwhacker" when they honestly defend playing a game the way they want to (what has the world come to?). Personally, I don't pretend to be perfect and sometimes I can get on a bandwagon, but at least I can say that right now what I am saying is not at all related to that, if I was earlier.

"Everybody else should do what we want" This isn't rocket science; all you need to do is lobby thread maintainers to add an option, or maybe (in an extreme case) to split up the threads. Done. Whenever I've had score threads, I've typically had a game with an "autofire on/off" entry and I have tried to insist that people are using it, so your comments are extra silly in light of my own campaign to try to promote non-autofire scores by insisting people put the information right in the entry. It's not meant to make people who use it look bad, though. It just is a different way of playing.

I've tried - tried - playing some of the Toaplan shmups with autofire off. It's fun for a while. (Any of my scores that are up with an "autofire off" designation were played without it, as you might expect.) But there's no real problem here - you can just play Flying Shark or Twin Cobra with it on, or off, as you like, and nobody will bat an eye. Personally I try to keep my autofire rate to something reasonable, i.e. 5 or 6, whatever the MAME default rate is if it's 5 or 6 and not 3 (which can be a bit too fast). I personally do not think many people at this forum are so naive that they believe Darius Gaiden autofire vs. non-autofire scores are directly comparable - personally my preference is for a non-autofire score (or at least a score with a slow fixed autofire rate), and besides, who cares what uneducated people think about the scores?

What this really looks like is the anti-autofire crowd is trying to erase the autofire-using scores (and players) from the board. You wanna rumble? This is a community, buddy, not your private place where you can set your own house rules.

Please disabuse yourself of any pigheaded ideas that you deserve hugs and kisses for telling other people they are stupid and need to change what they are doing, if you do harbor them.

[MathU]

Oh please, I’ve made abundantly clear that I have no problem with people making up their own arbitrary rules for competition. I’ve given people the information on what they miss out on with turbo rapidfire and it’s up to them to decide whether they want to get more out of the game without it or not. As a big fan of the game it just frustrates when people don’t give the default firing rate a chance and miss out on all the excitement and depth of playing the game how it was intended--that Racketboy article is a perfect example. I’m just trying to keep people honest with themselves here.

Why the obsession with Japanese arcades? Do you think their scoring standards are somehow infallible? In this particular case, they manifestly aren’t. Why is there such a strong urge to compare your scores to this particular set of people?

[trap15]

Because they are generally the best players. You want real competition, you play by their rules.

[Drake]

[Acid King]

Why the obsession with Japanese arcades? Do you think their scoring standards are somehow infallible? In this particular case, they manifestly aren’t.

I don't think you can make that claim unless you're absolutely certain that there's no difference between autofire and standard in scoring potential.

[abcabcabc339]

Your moms a japanese arcade. I put my stiff Seimitsu stick into her coin slot HUEHUEHUE

[MathU]

I don't think you can make that claim unless you're absolutely certain that there's no difference between autofire and standard in scoring potential.

Uh, what? Why not? The reasons for why have already been outlined several times. You can obviously get more points with inhuman rapidfire so that’s not the issue.

[Acid King]

I say that because players will gravitate toward whatever version offers more scoring potential over the limited one. If the game's peak score can't be reached without autofire, as you concede, then wouldn't you say it's a strike against the whole "the game wasn't designed for it" argument? Was Taito unaware that arcade gamers used autofire circuits on the earlier games or did they put in tricks, enemy configurations, and milkable boss debris that are impossible to do without autofire on purpose? Do you really believe that peak scoring with autofire is less technical, requires less skill, and less understanding of the games depth than without it, even though it potentially requires doing more, not less, including shit you can't pull off normally? I dunno, man, that sounds like a lot to assume. Even if autofire trivializes survival play during bosses and sections of stage doesn't mean that optimal score paths don't become just as tricky, if not much more so than, as playing at default rate, since it allows you to do more, not less, including milking bosses through all the patterns it would normally allow you to avoid.

[Zerst]

AFAIK autofire only makes it possible to get more points from leeching golden ogre. Everywhere else it just makes it significantly easier/trival to get the most points out of stuff.

[MathU]

If the game's peak score can't be reached without autofire, as you concede, then wouldn't you say it's a strike against the whole "the game wasn't designed for it" argument? Was Taito unaware that arcade gamers used autofire circuits on the earlier games or did they put in tricks, enemy configurations, and milkable boss debris that are impossible to do without autofire on purpose? Do you really believe that peak scoring with autofire is less technical, requires less skill, and less understanding of the games depth than without it, even though it potentially requires doing more, not less, including shit you can't pull off normally? I dunno, man, that sounds like a lot to assume. Even if autofire trivializes survival play during bosses and sections of stage doesn't mean that optimal score paths don't become just as tricky, if not much more so than, as playing at default rate, since it allows you to do more, not less, including milking bosses through all the patterns it would normally allow you to avoid.

They’re not assumptions though, when I say this it comes from a deep understanding of the finer nuances of the game. There are basically only two major things in the game that the turbo rapidfire allows you to do over the standard autofire: milk Great Thing’s drills and capture the final zone miniboss when the adaptive difficulty gets real high. Because of the total trivialization of the adaptive difficulty system as well as making general survival, optimal enemy wave handling, and blowing up boss body parts much easier, I would absolutely say that optimal scoring with the turbo rapidfire is less tricky than optimal scoring with the default autofire. In this particular instance, getting more points does not equal putting more effort in and shows how comparing purely points as a metric of skill can be a faulty assumption. In fact it means doing much less.

[ProcoTaito]

This topic got real stupid along time ago.
You all should just play whatever firing mode you like and have fun, please.