Why don't you try hard?

[qmish]

Obscura's words could be taken seriously if he didnt insist on statement that all "new" shmups are nothing.

[Squire Grooktook]

"Kill every enemy" and "bonus points for clearing levels fast!" dates back to the absolute earliest arcade games.

Gradius rewards you for killing every enemy, Hishouzame does too. Not seeing how its "less progressive" then them, on that front. Basically it does everything they do (minus background interaction) and more.

The system is also more complex because of how it awards you multiplies progressively for not letting enemies escape. That's a big difference. You're essentially building up a chain, with risk/reward weights to various situations (ie situations where clusters of enemies can escape in one swoop vs places where it's harder to catch them whilst surviving, etc.). Can't say that's anything like space invaders.

the lack of interaction with the scrolling plane aside from that (read: no ground enemies) combined with the short "wave-based" levels and no hori-style obstacles marks it as being a more "old-school" game than nearly any scrolling shooter you care to name.

The small hitbox, dense bullet patterns, shield mechanic, perspective changes, bosses, and various enemy types mark it as the product of two decades of progression in the genre though. You'd be hard pressed to find anything equivalent to the boss fights or denser patterns in fucking Defender.

Since you're entire basis for declaring it "less progressive then Tiger Heli" seems to be based around the fact that you don't interact with the background, I guess Touhou is also in the same boat, having no background interaction and being based entirely on waves of flying enemies.

At the end of the day, the argument falls flat by the simple common sense that Eschatos has more stuff in it then Tiger Heli. More scoring elements, more weapon mechanics, more enemy types, more complex enemy formations, more types of bullet patterns, more bosses, etc. "Less progressive then Tiger Heli" objectively, provably wrong, since it has everything that game has (dodging and shooting) and more.

It embraces oldschool fundamentals, but it does so progressively rather then regressively (ie fusing that oldschool style with denster patterns, a gimmicky weapon system to distinguish the game, and a scoring system that provides a greater skill ceiling and differentiation of player performances then in those old shmups) .

[Giest118]

All shmups are oldschool and stagnant because all of them just involve moving a ship and having that ship do stuff. This genre sucks.

[Illyrian]

All shmups are oldschool and stagnant because all of them just involve moving a ship and having that ship do stuff. This genre sucks.

Your mum sucks.

[Obscura]

The small hitbox, dense bullet patterns, shield mechanic, perspective changes, bosses, and various enemy types mark it as the product of two decades of progression in the genre though. You'd be hard pressed to find anything equivalent to the boss fights or denser patterns in fucking Defender.

Fun fact -- depending on the console switch settings, the Atari 2600 version of Defender had a (nearly unplayable) mode with absolutely fucking absurd enemy density and aggression, almost Recca-ish.

Since you're entire basis for declaring it "less progressive then Tiger Heli" seems to be based around the fact that you don't interact with the background, I guess Touhou is also in the same boat, having no background interaction and being based entirely on waves of flying enemies.

You know, I had never thought about this before, but you're right. Touhou is a bit further along the "Galaga -> Toaplan games named after predators -> 'modern structure'" continuum based on speedkilling midbosses occasionally giving you more waves, and for the overall structure being slightly more modern (look at the progression from the single-screen games' short waves to the Toaplan "predatory animal" games having roughly 50 areas that could be grouped into 5 or so long stages to the modern "5-7 long stages" -- Eschatos sits somewhere in-between the single-screen games and Toaplan's "carnivore" games, whereas Touhou pretty unambiguously sits at the fully modern end here), but in other aspects, it's downright stone-age. Neat observation.

(Oh, and before you ask, I actually *am* drinking now. It's Friday evening. I doubt I'll change my mind on this after I'm sober.)

[Squire Grooktook]

The only thing that could be called stone age is the lack of environmental interaction. But that's not primitive, it's a design and pacing choice that effects the flow of the game. Perhaps this is merely an argument over semantics, but "less progressive", "stone age", etc. implies the game is primitive, regressive, and lacking in the features that made more advanced oldschool shmups like Toaplan or Taito or whatever what they were. Eschatos is anything but. It's a nuanced game that takes a lot of the fundamentals of bullet hell shooters (dense patterns, multiplier and risk/reward scoring system that can massively differentiate performances, small hitbox, etc.) and manages to revive a lot of the appeals of older shooters (emphasis on shooting, fast movement, funky zako movement) without compromising either and adding some gimmicks of its own to the mix (shot/shield). I'd say that makes it one of the most progressive and innovative shmups made in years.

[CWM]

Fun fact: Some of the PC-98 Touhou games actually had ground enemies. ZUN forever trolling.

[Squire Grooktook]

I really wish he had stuck to fm synth over farty trumpets

[Obscura]

The only thing that could be called stone age is the lack of environmental interaction. But that's not primitive, it's a design and pacing choice that effects the flow of the game. Perhaps this is merely an argument over semantics, but "less progressive", "stone age", etc. implies the game is primitive, regressive, and lacking in the features that made more advanced oldschool shmups like Toaplan or Taito or whatever what they were. Eschatos is anything but. It's a nuanced game that takes a lot of the fundamentals of bullet hell shooters (dense patterns, multiplier and risk/reward scoring system that can massively differentiate performances, small hitbox, etc.) and manages to revive a lot of the appeals of older shooters (emphasis on shooting, fast movement, funky zako movement) without compromising either and adding some gimmicks of its own to the mix (shot/shield). I'd say that makes it one of the most progressive and innovative shmups made in years.

Small hitboxes are hardly new -- they date back to at least R-Type, possibly older. Shield gimmicks also aren't (hell, shields date all the way back to Space Invaders, and "activateable shields" date back to at least Asteroids's Atari 2600 port!).

Chain-style multipliers are new, but they're also a perfect example of the kind of things new games do that are actively terrible, and are built to engineer obsession among the "competitive" types rather than actually make the game more fun to play. Think about it in terms of DDP -- which costs more, breaking the chain on the second enemy of the level before chaining the rest perfectly, or breaking the chain in the middle of the stage? One mistake was made either way, but the impact is hugely disproportionate -- and this sort of thing is entirely intentional, since the idea is to pull in people by making them go for that one run where the mistakes are the least costly. It's the "Angry Birds" school of videogame design. Fuck that kind of retarded nonsense -- if *that's* the best thing about modern shmups, then it's time to re-enact the ending of Old Yeller and put the genre out of its misery.

[Squire Grooktook]

Small hitboxes are hardly new -- they date back to at least R-Type, possibly older.

R-Type may have a pixel sized hitbox, but it's completely mitigated and doesn't really count due to the vastly overdrawn (to the point of going beyond their sprites) hazard hitboxes. It's more in line with an alternate way of programming/scripting hitboxes. It plays indistinguishably from a game that uses "normal" large hitboxes for player sprites.

There's also the issue of context: Eschatos's small hitbox exists within the same context of modern danmaku small hitboxes: it exists to allow you leniency and possibility of maneuvering through patterns who's gaps are smaller then the player characters sprite/model during dense, complex bullet patterns.

Shield gimmicks also aren't (hell, shields date all the way back to Space Invaders, and "activateable shields" date back to at least Asteroids's Atari 2600 port!).

The point is, saying that it's less advanced/progressive then Tiger Heli when it actively differentiates itself with a mechanic beyond "dodge and shoot" is nonsense. It doesn't matter if that mechanic has been done before: the point is the game isn't just a bare bones single screen game you originally made it out to be. It has mechanics that Tiger Heli doesn't, and which in some ways place it in line with the "gimmicks" of games like R-Type and Gradius.

Chain-style multipliers are new, but they're also a perfect example of the kind of things new games do that are actively terrible, and are built to engineer obsession among the "competitive" types rather than actually make the game more fun to play. Think about it in terms of DDP -- which costs more, breaking the chain on the second enemy of the level before chaining the rest perfectly, or breaking the chain in the middle of the stage? One mistake was made either way, but the impact is hugely disproportionate -- and this sort of thing is entirely intentional, since the idea is to pull in people by making them go for that one run where the mistakes are the least costly. It's the "Angry Birds" school of videogame design. Fuck that kind of retarded nonsense -- if *that's* the best thing about modern shmups, then it's time to re-enact the ending of Old Yeller and put the genre out of its misery.

Eschatos multipliers and general scoring is nothing like Dodonpachi though. Scoring mistakes are weighted based on their severity. You're not going to completely ruin your run because you were off by a frame midway through a stage. Otherwise the system exists to raise the skill ceiling, and doesn't interfere with the game in any way if you choose to ignore it. Eschatos would probably still be one of my favorite shmups if the scoring systems were completely excised.

[Shepardus]

R-Type had a one-pixel player hitbox but oversized environment hitboxes, saying it had a small player hitbox before more "modern" shmups is technically correct but not really the point. I don't know about you but when I play a modern shmup it definitely feels a lot different from playing an "old-school" shmup, even ignoring the scoring system (unless said modern shmup is deliberately emulating "old-school" gameplay of course). It's not any one single feature that never existed in any older game, but rather a combination of factors that gives modern shmups a different feel that I personally haven't seen in any game older than Batsugun.

And besides, weren't we talking about how shmups are dead because all new shmups suck? I don't think it's fair to eliminate Eschatos from the list of contenders for "recent shmup that doesn't suck" because it feels old-school to you, it was released in 2011 and is relatively new in my book, regardless of how it plays. Might as well just say you're looking for good new shmups except for the ones that don't suck if you're going to filter out stuff like that.

[Obscura]

Re: R-Type hitboxes, yes, the environment hitboxes are oversized, but as we all know, you can go "into" the terrain a bit without dying in that game in a way that you can't in, say, Gradius. Sure, it's not as though it's a fully one-pixel hitbox (Cave hitboxes aren't even *that* small), but it's still quite forgiving.

Eschatos multipliers and general scoring is nothing like Dodonpachi though. Scoring mistakes are weighted based on their severity. You're not going to completely ruin your run because you were off by a frame midway through a stage. Otherwise the system exists to raise the skill ceiling, and doesn't interfere with the game in any way if you choose to ignore it. Eschatos would probably still be one of my favorite shmups if the scoring systems were completely excised.

No, the way Eschatos's multiplier works, it fucks you for screwing up at the start of a level instead. Yay for restart-itis!

And "it doesn't interfere with the game in any way if you choose to ignore it"... yeah, that's not a good thing, either. Again, why are modern shmup developers unable to understand what arcade developers before I was even born were able to figure out?

[Squire Grooktook]

Re: R-Type hitboxes, yes, the environment hitboxes are oversized, but as we all know, you can go "into" the terrain a bit without dying in that game in a way that you can't in, say, Gradius.

I've played enough Gradius to know that you can do the same there, as the hitbox for the ship is located more in the "engine" or middle of the ship. That's just a case of the hitbox locations not being equivalent to full sprite vulnerability.

No, the way Eschatos's multiplier works, it fucks you for screwing up at the start of a level instead. Yay for restart-itis!

What are you talking about? If you miss a wave at the start, that's -1 multiplier you could have had. If you miss a wave at the end, that's -1 multiplier you could have had. You can end the stage with max multiplier -1 regardless of which one happens.

And "it doesn't interfere with the game in any way if you choose to ignore it"... yeah, that's not a good thing, either.

Actually come to think of it, I can't remember how extends work in this...

I'm sorry, but you've gone completely off the deep end here. You're essentially declaring that games "suck" because they can be played in a way that raises the skill ceiling for those interested. My main complaint about modern shmups is that they don't bother with the "gimmicks" that diferentiated older Irem titles or whatever (X-Multiply tentacles <3). But a system that enhances the experience for some and doesn't detriment the experience for others who aren't interested is only a good thing.

In other words: your opinion = "stop liking what I don't like!"

[Obscura]

What are you talking about? If you miss a wave at the start, that's -1 multiplier you could have had. If you miss a wave at the end, that's -1 multiplier you could have had.

Multiplier count is not equal to points.

If you miss one at the start, you get -1 to the multiplier that's used against every wave for the entire stage. If you miss one at the end, that's -1 multiplier on the last wave.

Actually come to think of it, I can't remember how extends work in this...

They're fixed. Always dropped by the same enemies.

But a system that enhances the experience for some and doesn't detriment the experience for others who aren't interested is only a good thing.

A system that many of a game's players have no real reason to interface with is nothing but cruft.

[Shepardus]

Sure, it's not as though it's a fully one-pixel hitbox (Cave hitboxes aren't even *that* small), but it's still quite forgiving.

Actually I've read that it is literally a one-pixel hitbox, because it's easier to do point-rectangle collisions than rectangle-rectangle collisions.

People have reason to interface with the scoring system because they find it fun to play the game in a different way. If you don't, then so be it. If your scoring system doesn't encourage you to play the game differently then that's the real cruft, as there is no way to interact with it that you weren't doing already. Why bother dodging the bullets? I have no real reason to deal with that mechanic, I could just go play a different game.

As much as I like scoring systems where the value of actions corresponds pretty closely to their perceived significance (Garegga comes to mind), that doesn't make chaining systems bad in my opinion, it just means you have to interpret scores differently. A score that's double another score isn't necessarily twice as good performance, but if you understand the game and its mechanics you can interpret what is a significant difference in score.

[Obscura]

Pretty sure that's wrong in the case of Cave games. Most of the "tiny" ones are still 2x2 or larger.

[Squire Grooktook]

Multiplier count is not equal to points.

Fair enough, but early chains are easier anyway. Risk vs reward.

A system that many of a game's players have no real reason to interface with is nothing but cruft.

And someone not being able to understand or accept that people find something tense or fun that he doesn't like, is called "a lack of empathy".

[Shepardus]

Pretty sure that's wrong in the case of Cave games. Most of the "tiny" ones are still 2x2 or larger.

I was talking about R-Type's hitbox, in CAVE games yes they are larger than 1x1.

[Obscura]

Pretty sure that's wrong in the case of Cave games. Most of the "tiny" ones are still 2x2 or larger.

I was talking about R-Type's hitbox, in CAVE games yes they are larger than 1x1.

The R-Type hitbox is one pixel, yes.

Fair enough, but early chains are easier anyway. Risk vs reward.

I can only speak for stage 1, since it's the only stage I try to chain, but the hardest chains there are the missiles at the start.

[Squire Grooktook]

IMO the hardest chain is the boss. The dropping crystals + all sides of the ufo are a pain. The missiles are more of a beginner hazard, just stand in the middle with wide shot and tap slightly if one is headed straight for you. The higher up you are on the screen, the better.

[Obscura]

That technique for the missiles only works on Normal; on Hard, which is the "intended" difficulty according to M-Kai, you can't just just tap to catch something that's on the edge quickly, since you'll have to make a dodge through a line of aimed shots.

[Squire Grooktook]

That technique for the missiles only works on Normal; on Hard, which is the "intended" difficulty according to M-Kai, you can't just just tap to catch something that's on the edge quickly, since you'll have to make a dodge through a line of aimed shots.

That's why you stay as close to the top of the screen as possible, so you can kill them before they can fire (or fire too much). I default to hard and it's pretty consistent there.

[Special World]

Kind of amazing how one can play the Galaga throwback section of Eschatos and then blindly pretend that's the entire game.

You can keep arguing all you want Obscura, but I can tell you flat out that the only person you're convincing is yourself.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Also, technically Eschatos does have one ground enemy.

Look at the additional enemies at the stage 2 midboss lol.

[Bonus!]

Pretty sure that's wrong in the case of Cave games. Most of the "tiny" ones are still 2x2 or larger.

I was talking about R-Type's hitbox, in CAVE games yes they are larger than 1x1.

The R-Type hitbox is one pixel, yes.

Come on now! The R-Type hitbox is one pixel, but the hitboxes of every obstacle in the game is oversized and extend their graphical representation, which has the effect that the ship has effectively a huge hitbox, for all practical purposes.