Am Noob, have questions: help, terms, Daioh, MAME, etc

[komatik]

Backstory:
I recently spent a lot of time getting a RetroArch setup going with all the usual suspects for home consoles and classic games. In thinking back to stuff I used to play I remembered an arcade called Daioh that my local pizza parlor had running in the corner for years so I've been messing with that. I'm not a "shmup person" really, I have effectively no experience with the genre outside of Daioh, but I feel like it has potential to be something I'm into so I wanted to get more involved.

This thread:
I have a bunch of semi-related questions about noob help, terms, technical/emulation stuff, stuff specific to Daioh itself, and looking for recommendations. I'm not sure what the etiquette is on this forum though for this sort of thing- should I try and keep it all to one huge thread or should I break each question into its own thread, etc? They're all kinda-sorta connected and all spring from my experience with Daioh in one way or another, but they're also kinda separate topics too. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

[komatik]

(also: sorry for the double-post, fixed)

[MrJBRPG]

Backstory:
I recently spent a lot of time getting a RetroArch setup going with all the usual suspects for home consoles and classic games. In thinking back to stuff I used to play I remembered an arcade called Daioh that my local pizza parlor had running in the corner for years so I've been messing with that. I'm not a "shmup person" really, I have effectively no experience with the genre outside of Daioh, but I feel like it has potential to be something I'm into so I wanted to get more involved.

This thread:
I have a bunch of semi-related questions about noob help, terms, technical/emulation stuff, stuff specific to Daioh itself, and looking for recommendations. I'm not sure what the etiquette is on this forum though for this sort of thing- should I try and keep it all to one huge thread or should I break each question into its own thread, etc? They're all kinda-sorta connected and all spring from my experience with Daioh in one way or another, but they're also kinda separate topics too. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

I recommend posting on the thread titled "Questions that do not deserve a thread" and there are arcade enthusiasts who are willing to help.

[komatik]

Well so that's the thing, I'm not really sure if they deserve their own thread or not since some of them might be kinda longish.

[komatik]

It occurs to me that without knowing what my questions are nobody can really answer where they should go. Here's a summarized list, maybe this can help people tell me what I'm supposed to be doing.




- Although I've played Daioh a bunch, I'm pretty bad at it. I feel like there's a set of standard tactics and strategies that shmup players are expected to know which I'm unfamiliar with. It's entirely possible I'm just playing wrong. Is there a good "baby's guide to playing shmups" out there I can look over, or anyone who can give me a walkthrough of the basics?

- Regarding Daioh gameplay specifically: I'm still having trouble figuring out what half the powerups do, what stuff on the screen means, and which weapons are better to use when. I'd like to ask a bunch of questions of people who are familiar with the game.

- Regarding Daioh emulation specifically: I'm having issues dealing with MAME implementations. It appears my setup(s) may have a high number of "lag frames", or at least higher than what other people say it's supposed to be. I'm seeing conflicting info on this though, possibly because I might be confused about what 'lag frames' are and how you measure them. Technical terms like these don't seem to be mentioned in the master glossary thread. I'm also trying to get a better handle on how this ties into vsync/buffering, and trying to figure out why the high scores list keeps resetting every time I quit, etc.

- I'm not sure if Daioh is necessarily even the right game I should be playing, especially for someone just starting out. Looking around at any "Top XYZ shmups" lists, Daioh is never even acknowledged much less rated highly. There are a few threads on this forum that mention it and it seems to have mixed reviews, but it also seems that the reasons I like it are the reasons most others hate it. I want to start a mini discussion where I can talk about my feelings for the game and have other people recommend stuff based on that, but most forums have strict rules about that sort of thing so I'm not sure if it's allowed here.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

While I can't talk with any knowledge about Daioh, as far as general shmup skills goes, Prometheus wrote a guide which is generally considered an excellent place to start for beginners. Link – http://goo.gl/Fi2zE

As regards your emulation, lag is basically the amount of time between you hitting a button or moving your stick, and that action happening on screen. Often measured in frames. How frames work and how they are measured in reference to lag is a bigger topic than I have to go into right now. But the chances are that if you're relatively new to the genre, learning the basic skills will be a better use of your time than worrying about lag (unless it's really noticeable).

Hope that helps a bit!

[OmegaFlareX]

STG Weekly just did an episode on Daioh, see here. Featured is a no-miss 2-all run. The player is present as a guest and talks a lot about mechanics and whatnot.

I don't recommend RetroArch for MAME usage, even with its great input lag reduction systems. It's been a couple years but the last time I tried it I simply could not get the audio to run at the proper speed - it was stuck at 60hz and played too fast for any game that runs at 50-something (a LOT of them, including Daioh). Just use standalone MAME, in full screen mode, and turn off vsync and triple buffering to get the best input latency. It won't be as responsive as say, a NES game in RA with run-ahead, but it will be playable after getting used to it. You'll also have to deal with screen-tearing.

There's also a RA FinalBurnAlpha core, which some here would point you towards (please read SWZ and Testuya79's posts about some additional settings that Mark doesn't cover), but FBA is pretty wonky and it may not support stuff on Seta hardware like Daioh.

You may be right in that Daioh might not be the best AC shmup for beginners, since it has fairly punishing rank mechanics. In terms of raw difficulty, the easiest AC shmups I've played are Toaplan's Vimana and Irem's Fire Barrel/Air Assault, both with autofire enabled. Give those a try and go for more challenging stuff once you can 1CC them. I will also add that 8 and 16-bit console shmups, whether originals (like Star Parodia on PC-Engine) or arcade ports (like Fire Shark on Mega Drive), are generally much easier than arcade games, and RetroArch is ideal for emulating those.

[sikraiken]

Feel free to ask me anything about Daioh, either in this thread or by PM. I can't say I would really recommend Daioh if you're looking for something to one credit clear quickly without being too familiar with shooting games. Of course, play the game if you're just enjoying it anyway!


viewtopic.php?f=1&t=59651
Perikles made a thread where he ranked games he has beaten in order of difficulty. In that thread is also a link to a Japanese page that has a similar kind of list. Neither are comprehensive, and some might argue about the rankings, but I think it's a good place to start if you're looking to get an idea of what's easy/difficult to clear. Play some different games and hopefully you'll find ones you have fun with.

[komatik]

While I can't talk with any knowledge about Daioh, as far as general shmup skills goes, Prometheus wrote a guide which is generally considered an excellent place to start for beginners. Link – http://goo.gl/Fi2zE

Wow 44 pages. That's way more info than I was expecting for a beginners guide. I'll definitely spend some time reading through this, thanks!

As regards your emulation, lag is basically the amount of time between you hitting a button or moving your stick,

No, so, there's a subtle difference (I think) between normal 'lag' and 'lag frames'. What I'm referring to is when you pause the game, press fire or whatever, then step forward one frame at a time and count how many frames there are until the animation for your action starts. In RetroArch for Daioh this is always exactly 5, whereas in standalone MAME (when I can get it to work; see below) it seems to depend on the phase of the moon and is like 3-5. Three frames is acceptable for me (that's what a real physical SNES had) but five is getting to the point where I have trouble reacting fast enough to dodge stuff, especially in the mid levels where enemy shots start getting faster. Other threads on this site indicate that Daioh is supposed to be 2 (which would be very nice), so I'm not sure what's going on.

I don't recommend RetroArch for MAME usage,

I know that MAME under RetroArch is a 3rd-class citizen at best but my experience seems to be the opposite of yours: RA actually works flawless for Daioh outside of the 'lag frames' issue whereas standalone MAME is a mess. I'm ok playing a game slightly too fast or slow (within reason, like a couple %) but can't handle playing games without vsync. However turning vsync on in MAME gives me massive sprite flicker problems. If I try to mess with the game speed or syncrefresh options then that sorta fixes the flicker but the audio starts crackling like crazy. The only way to get anything acceptable is if I go back to before v0154 using the old Daioh set when it was mistakenly declared as a 60hz game, but even then the audio is still weird. And this is on top of all the other weird video scaling and joystick support problems. In contrast to this, RetroArch plays the current Daioh set smooth as butter with no flicker or audio issues hardly ever. I have no idea how it does this, but I suspect some kind of multi-layer buffering and that's why it has higher 'lag frames'. Unfortunately none of the half dozen MAME cores in RA support the fancy runahead option or else I'd just turn that on and be happy as a clam. I'm assuming a large part of these problems is probably due to my retro gaming/media machine being a Mac, but there's not a lot I can do about that.

There's also a RA FinalBurnAlpha core,

Oh interesting, thank you for pointing out that this core exists, I'll definitely have to check this out. If it actually supports Daioh and runahead like it says it does this may be the answer to my problem. (And yeah I'm already aware of all the frame delay and hardGPUsync etc stuff in Retroarch. I spent a lot of time researching all that and spent many hours tuning my settings for this machine).

STG Weekly just did an episode on Daioh, see here. Featured is a no-miss 2-all run. The player is present as a guest and talks a lot about mechanics and whatnot.

Oh neat, thanks. I'll watch that later tonight.

I can't say I would really recommend Daioh if you're looking for something to one credit clear

1CC is a discussion for another day faaaaaaaaaaar in the future. Right now all I'm aiming for is "be able to get even halfway through the damn game without constant coin spamming". I set the dip switch settings to 'easy' + '5 lives per credit' + '1 coin = 3 credits' and I still struggle to even make it to stage 5. (Not that I'm a great twitch-reaction gamer anyway though, I have a bad habit of misjudging angles and dodging into shots when I would've been fine if I'd just not moved).

[komatik]

Feel free to ask me anything about Daioh, either in this thread or by PM.

It's mostly super basic stuff (I think):

- I'm assuming the triangles in the upper left are your lives? At least, they go away one by one when you die. I'm used to 'lives' being an icon of your player character or ship or something so a simple triangle is kinda ambiguous to me.

- I don't get the relationship between the red P powerups and the state of your ship. Sometimes picking them up gives you better weapons, sometimes they don't appear to do anything. Sometimes you get some P icons under the triangles, and sometimes the powerup makes the Ps go away. To be fair I'm having trouble paying attention to this while also not dying every 10 seconds.

- I'm not sure what the blue S does. I'm assuming it's a speed powerup but I don't really feel any faster after getting one.

- I cannot for the life of me figure out what the yellow eye powerups do.

- The weapon balance is odd. The homing lightning is pretty OP in the beginning but doesn't seem to scale up well. The blasters are near worthless until they get massively upgraded, assuming you can keep hold of the upgrades. The missiles..... I dunno what's up with them. They're really slow and don't seem to hit any harder than the other two. I don't know when I'm supposed to use them.

- Some bosses seem weak to certain bomb types, others mostly shrug off everything. Is there any rhyme or reason to this that I'm missing? Does the nuke-bomb have some kind of scaling? it seems to do less damage than the laser-bomb and isn't very useful.

(Some of these might be answered in that YT video OmegaFlareX linked, I haven't watched it yet).

[sikraiken]

I can't say I would really recommend Daioh if you're looking for something to one credit clear

1CC is a discussion for another day faaaaaaaaaaar in the future. Right now all I'm aiming for is "be able to get even halfway through the damn game without constant coin spamming". I set the dip switch settings to 'easy' + '5 lives per credit' + '1 coin = 3 credits' and I still struggle to even make it to stage 5. (Not that I'm a great twitch-reaction gamer anyway though, I have a bad habit of misjudging angles and dodging into shots when I would've been fine if I'd just not moved).

An important part of understanding shooting games is to understand when you actually need to dodge. There are times when instead of letting the bullets control you, you should control the bullets. In Daioh, you are often able to control the direction of the bullets. Many of the shots or patterns are aimed at you. You can move in such a way that just continuing to move or tapping (depending on the situation) will allow you to avoid the bullets. Learning which enemies do what will help you be better prepared for how to approach different sections of the game.

- I'm assuming the triangles in the upper left are your lives? At least, they go away one by one when you die. I'm used to 'lives' being an icon of your player character or ship or something so a simple triangle is kinda ambiguous to me.

Yeah, those are your lives. You get an extra life through score at every x,500,000 (500,000, 1,500,000, 2,500,000, etc). Stage 5 (in both loops) can also give you a 1up item if you destroy the mid boss with the springy arms. It's also possible to get 1up/2up items randomly through the game. You can force one to come out in stage 1 every time by timing when you put a credit in. After that, you cannot control when they come out. You also cannot ever control whether you get a 1up or a 2up from these.

- I don't get the relationship between the red P powerups and the state of your ship. Sometimes picking them up gives you better weapons, sometimes they don't appear to do anything. Sometimes you get some P icons under the triangles, and sometimes the powerup makes the Ps go away. To be fair I'm having trouble paying attention to this while also not dying every 10 seconds.

When you start the game, you start at power level 0. This goes up to power level 3. For power level 1, you need to grab 1 P. For power level 2, you need to grab 2 more Ps (total of 3 so far). For level 3, you need to grab 3 more Ps (total of 6). You're able to grab 3 more Ps after this until you start getting 5,000 point bonuses for grabbing additional Ps, but those three additional Ps once you are already at level 3 don't seem to make your shot any stronger.

- I'm not sure what the blue S does. I'm assuming it's a speed powerup but I don't really feel any faster after getting one.

Yes, those will increase your speed. You start at speed level 0, and each speedup item you grab increases it by one. The max level is 3. Grabbing additional speedup
items will give you 5000 points. I notice a difference, but perhaps the difference between the lowest and highest speed isn't as noticeable as something like Gradius.

- I cannot for the life of me figure out what the yellow eye powerups do.

In the Japanese version (which you can change to via the DIP switch settings), you only have two buttons to use. This "yellow eye" item normally allows you to change between the three different shot/bomb types. It's blue, yellow, or red in the Japanese version. In the US version, it just gives you 5,000 points. In the Japanese version, grabbing the same color item as the type you already have will give you 5,000 points.

- The weapon balance is odd. The homing lightning is pretty OP in the beginning but doesn't seem to scale up well. The blasters are near worthless until they get massively upgraded, assuming you can keep hold of the upgrades. The missiles..... I dunno what's up with them. They're really slow and don't seem to hit any harder than the other two. I don't know when I'm supposed to use them.

Lightning is quite useful in sections where enemies don't have a lot of HP. When enemies have more HP (such as bosses), I prefer to use the normal shot. It's important to try to get close to the enemy when you're using the normal shot because there's a limitation to how many of your own bullets can be on screen at once. Missiles aren't too useful, in my opinion...

- Some bosses seem weak to certain bomb types, others mostly shrug off everything. Is there any rhyme or reason to this that I'm missing? Does the nuke-bomb have some kind of scaling? it seems to do less damage than the laser-bomb and isn't very useful.

Bombs don't really deal much damage, so they're kind of useless for bosses in that regard. They're better used to clear the screen of bullets, or allow you to get close to enemies/bosses so you can point blank them better with the regular shot.

(Some of these might be answered in that YT video OmegaFlareX linked, I haven't watched it yet).

The replay in the video OmegaFlareX linked to is mine. I don't cover all of these specific things, unfortunately. It's certainly something to think about if I ever have the opportunity to do something similar again...


Don't grab items that will give you 5,000 points. Also, don't grab the flashing P if you ever see it. These items increase the game's rank - this mechanism makes the game more difficult. Having those items drop off screen usually reduces the rank a bit. Letting the flashing P drop off the screen will usually reduce the rank a lot.

[komatik]

it's a good place to start if you're looking to get an idea of what's easy/difficult to clear.

Honestly I don't care that much whether a game is easy to clear or not, I care if it's fun to play (although I recognize that that's super subjective). Like, I heard that "Strike Gunner" for the SNES was made by the same group as Daioh so I checked that out but it was total crap: trivially easy, incredibly repetitive, 7-second background music loop, etc.

Many of the shots or patterns are aimed at you. You can move in such a way that just continuing to move or tapping (depending on the situation) will allow you to avoid the bullets.

Yeah I picked up on that but I'm abysmal at it. I can handle it for a couple enemies but as soon as you get swarms of tanks or those SIMON-looking round moving turret things it all goes to shit.

lives/speed/powerups

OK, thanks. So I'm assuming then that when you get the extra P icons up top under your lives that just tells you how many you have saved up and thus how close you are to getting the next upgrade?

Stage 5 (in both loops) can also give you a 1up item if you destroy the mid boss with the springy arms.

Oh, that guy. I've gotten to him by coin-spamming a few times. He's stupidly un-threatening for that late in the game, you just hang down low and hold the lightning button.

In the US version, it just gives you 5,000 points.

That explains it then. I exclusively run in US mode because I really prefer the six button playstyle.

It's important to try to get close to the enemy when you're using the normal shot because there's a limitation to how many of your own bullets can be on screen at once.

Yeah I know that much from ye olden days. Even still that only really helps for slow moving bosses, if I try to use that tactic on anyone else I get murked.

Bombs don't really deal much damage, so they're kind of useless for bosses in that regard.

Really? For the stage 2 boss (the three-headed train and the flying red brain), I've noticed that the flying brain part is super weak to the laser bomb, like it knocks off over 95% of it's health.

These items increase the game's rank - this mechanism makes the game more difficult.

Honestly man, it makes no difference for me. By the time I get to stage three or four I'm dying before I can even get to those things to pick them up in the first place.

[Xyga]

Putting the question of lag aside even if it's related, no matter what on a 60Hz-fixed system we don't get games like Daioh that run at well off-60Hz rates to play smoothly and at their correct speed both at the same time.
All available settings related to sync and speed, no matter the emulator build/core or frontend like RA, each are a 'solution-with-a-sacrifice', and there are no magical combinations.
If you want non-60Hz games to play right in every aspect you'll always need a display that can run all refresh rates natively, could be a CRT, a FreeSync or G-Sync compatible PC setup, or one of the few LCDs out there that aren't bound to 60Hz and can do anything between 50-60 and more like many ViewSonic.
And afaik there are no working solutions for real variable refresh on Macs, probably you can do multi-rates instead using a limited list of custom fixed modes, but that'd still require one of these flexible monitors anyway. Or alternatively you could play everything with no sync at doubled rates with a 120/144Hz monitor, which minimizes tearing to some extent.

[komatik]

When you start the game, you start at power level 0. This goes up to power level 3. For power level 1, you need to grab 1 P. For power level 2, you need to grab 2 more Ps (total of 3 so far). For level 3, you need to grab 3 more Ps (total of 6). You're able to grab 3 more Ps after this until you start getting 5,000 point bonuses for grabbing additional Ps, but those three additional Ps once you are already at level 3 don't seem to make your shot any stronger.

Ok... wait.... this isn't true for me. The blaster on my version of Daioh has like at least eight different upgrade stages. There's like three or four different spread widths, at least two speed increases, and the twin fireballs addon.

[komatik]

and at their correct speed both at the same time.

Yeah well like I said, I'm much more sensitive to tearing and jerkyness than overall speedup/slowdown. Assuming RetroArch is doing its magic by speed-scaling the game, and assuming the numbers coming out of RA and standalone MAME are to be believed, Daioh under RA on this machine is only running 4% faster than normal which is below my threshold of perception. (And honestly, even if I could perceive it I'd still probably prefer it).

[Xyga]

No magic from either you simply get smooth scrolling by forced sync on the monitor's, indeed speeding up the games by a certain %. All emulators have had this setting for decades.
I use the term magic because there are still a lot of people who believe some settings combinations kinda fix everything. ^^

Indeed, limited by a single-refresh mode setup you have a choice between (settings named more or less differently depending on the emulator/frontend but with same results):
- no sync (correct speed but w/ tearing)
- sync to monitor's refresh (smooth but game sped up)
- sync at game's original refresh (correct speed but either rejected by monitor or showing intermittent marked judder)
- triple buffering (correct speed but micro-jerkyness)

Knowingly or not most people use either the first or second, few use the third which is either pointless or they 'cancel' it by forcing to monitor or buffer along anyway, and very little go for the fourth alone.
Extremely few go for a capable setup that can run native refreshes and eliminate all the issues.


Sorry for the over-detailed intrusive posting, I'm OCD on being more informative on the topic than what people ask or have the patience to take.

[sikraiken]

In this post are some tables and my more detailed comments. If you just want a short summary, you can find one at the bottom.

When you start the game, you start at power level 0. This goes up to power level 3. For power level 1, you need to grab 1 P. For power level 2, you need to grab 2 more Ps (total of 3 so far). For level 3, you need to grab 3 more Ps (total of 6). You're able to grab 3 more Ps after this until you start getting 5,000 point bonuses for grabbing additional Ps, but those three additional Ps once you are already at level 3 don't seem to make your shot any stronger.

Ok... wait.... this isn't true for me. The blaster on my version of Daioh has like at least eight different upgrade stages. There's like three or four different spread widths, at least two speed increases, and the twin fireballs addon.

Only the power level matters. The strength of your shot does not change when you have a total of 3 Ps and then you have a total of 4 Ps, for example. Your regular shot (ion) does "change" each time you pick up a P (except for the 9th one), but it's only an aesthetic change until the next power level. Laser and missile don't change in how they look at all until the next power level. Here's a table of what the different types look at their different power stages:

Code: Select all

POWER LEVEL  TOTAL Ps   APPEARANCE

ION

     0          0       two single shots
     1          1       four single shots
     1          2       four double shots
     2          3       six single shots
     2          4       six double shots
     2          5       six triple shots
     3          6       six single shots with two fireballs
     3          7       six double shots with two fireballs
     3          8       six triple shots with two fireballs
     3          9       six triple shots with two fireballs

LASER

     0          0       one laser
     1          1       two lasers
     1          2       two lasers
     2          3       three lasers
     2          4       three lasers
     2          5       three lasers
     3          6       four lasers
     3          7       four lasers
     3          8       four lasers
     3          9       four lasers

MISSILE

     0          0       two missiles
     1          1       three missiles
     1          2       three missiles
     2          3       three missiles with six homing missiles
     2          4       three missiles with six homing missiles
     2          5       three missiles with six homing missiles
     3          6       four missiles with ten homing missiles
     3          7       four missiles with ten homing missiles
     3          8       four missiles with ten homing missiles
     3          9       four missiles with ten homing missiles

Bombs don't really deal much damage, so they're kind of useless for bosses in that regard.

Really? For the stage 2 boss (the three-headed train and the flying red brain), I've noticed that the flying brain part is super weak to the laser bomb, like it knocks off over 95% of it's health.

I suppose I should have went into more for this (and looked into it more in the first place). Here's all of the boss HP data (same for both loops):

Code: Select all

                     HP
STAGE 1		
Head                4096

STAGE 2	
1st Form
Side Head	        1000
Main Head	        2000
Side Head	        1000

2nd Form
Head                2000
Side (7 total)      1000

STAGE 3
Head                4864
	
STAGE 4		
Side                 992
Head                4000
Side                 992

STAGE 5	
Arm                  900
Shoulder            1500
Shoulder Turret        # (weak)
Mandible            2000
Head                1600
Mandible            2000
Shoulder Turret        # (weak)
Shoulder            1500
Arm                  900

STAGE 6
Shoulder            3000	
Front Turret        1000
Head                5000
Front Turret        1000
Shoulder            3000		
		
STAGE 7	
Arm (invulnerable)     ∞
Shoulder            3072
Head                6144
Shoulder            3072
Arm (invulnerable)     ∞

Some bosses require you to kill some other parts before they die or before their head can be hit. Here's a table of the cumulative minimum damage you need to deal to each boss:

Code: Select all

                                 MIN. DAMAGE
STAGE 1 (head)                         4096
STAGE 2 1st Form (all heads)           4000
STAGE 2 2nd Form                       2000
STAGE 3 (head)                         4864
STAGE 4 (head)                         4000
STAGE 5 (mandibles+head)               5600
STAGE 6 (head)                         5000
STAGE 6 (in reality, turrets+head)     7000
STAGE 7 (head)                         6144
STAGE 7 (in reality, shoulders+head)  12288

I added "in reality" for stages 6 and 7 because while it's not absolutely required, the way I fight those bosses is by destroying additional parts (at least in the JP version).

As you can see, the 2nd form of the stage 2 boss is the weakest boss you encounter by far. I also use the laser bomb on this boss in the 2nd loop when I have the laser weapon. You will only see the HP of the 2nd form of the stage 2 boss decrease when it has fully descended from the top of the screen. Until then, while you can still hit it for points, it is invulnerable.

Here's a table for the maximum damage that each bomb type (A is ion, B is laser, and C is missile) will deal:

Code: Select all

                       BOMB MAX. DAMAGE
                       A       B       C 
STAGE 1
Head                  352     800     660
			
STAGE 2
1st Form		
Side Head             440     944     660
Main Head             416     928     660
Side Head             440     944     660

2nd Form		
Head                  345     912     660
Side (7 total)          #       #       #
			
STAGE 3		
Head                  351     912     660
			
STAGE 4		
Side                  341     928     660
Head                  358     944     660
Side                  341     928     660
			
STAGE 5	
Arm                     #       #     660
Shoulder                #       #     660
Shoulder Turret         #       #       #
Mandible                #       #     660
Head                  293     816     660
Mandible                #       #     660
Shoulder Turret         #       #       #
Shoulder                #       #     660
Arm                     #       #     660
			
ST6			
Shoulder              361    1136      30
Shoulder (unextended) 216     752      30
Front Turret          210     240      40
Head                   80     208      40
Front Turret          210     240      40
Shoulder              361    1136      30
Shoulder (unextended) 216     752      30
			
ST7			
Arm (invulnerable)      0       0       0	
Shoulder               16      32      10
Head                   16      48      10
Shoulder               16      32      10
Arm (invulnerable)      0       0       0

Stage 5 has a lot of blanks because I got tired of finding specific data, but it's similar to what you normally see from prior bosses. These numbers aren't what you can consistently expect to get, especially with the ion bomb since it deals damage per flame (16 flames are released when you bomb). Point blanking with the ion bomb isn't really ideal since you're likely to get hit. The laser bomb causes the most damage when you can get all three lasers to hit your target, which isn't always easy. The missile bomb is easiest to get the most consistent damage with. Not that it matters, but the missile bomb on boss 7 will only do damage to one part of the boss for the duration of that single bomb drop. It won't damage the other two parts it didn't hit during that time. That doesn't happen on other bosses.

Anyway, the real puroose of me gathering this bomb data was mostly to see if there were any major differences between the bosses in regards to bomb damage. As you can see, the damage done doesn't change too much until bosses 6 and 7. All bomb types are quite weakened for the front turrets and head of boss 6, especially the missile bomb. All bomb types are greatly weakened for all parts of boss 7.


Summary:
Only the real power level (0, 1, 2, 3) matters for shot damage output, not the power stages in between that.

The 2nd form of the stage 2 boss has low HP (2000), so using a bomb along with additional damage from your shot will destroy it quickly. In general, bombs can do some damage, and perhaps it's something you can lean on more in the US version since you can combine different shots and bombs, but I personally like to use bombs to be able to point blank damage the bosses more easily. On boss 6, and especially on boss 7, bombing for damage becomes nearly worthless.

[komatik]

There's also a RA FinalBurnAlpha core

Holy shit, thank you sooooooooooooooooo much for pointing me to this. Getting a core with runahead working at least doubled my skill level. I can now easily dodge shot swarms I thought were hopeless before and I can make it to the stage 3 octo boss in 4-5 lives whereas before it would take me like 8-10. FBA has a couple very minor graphics and sound glitches on Daioh and it doesn't report its rotation correctly on vertical games so some CRT shaders go haywire, but the combination of working runahead and rewind (as well as native support for savestates and a sane control config) easily makes it the stand out choice here.

[komatik]

In this post are some tables and my more detailed comments.

Oh jesus wow, I totally didn't mean for you to go through this much effort for this. Thanks.

but it's only an aesthetic change

That actually makes some sense then. I noticed that the flying gundam mini-bosses in stage 1 seem to die in roughly the same amount of time even with upgraded guns, but I assumed that was due to the game's difficulty scaling.

As you can see, the 2nd form of the stage 2 boss is the weakest boss you encounter by far.

Right. Weakest boss + strongest bomb. Here I was thinking the game was complex enough to have strength/weakness chart for damage types. Oh well.

each bomb type (A is ion, B is laser, and C is missile)

Wait, there may be a communication gap here. When I said 'laser bomb' I meant the one with the three blue beams. I've never yet played in JP mode so I don't know what bombs go with what guns. Based on some other stuff you wrote here, I'm assuming the "ion bomb" is the flame spread, the "laser bomb" is the three blue beams, and the "missile bomb" is the nuke thing?

Code: Select all

Head                   16      48      10

This goes a long way to explaining why bombing this guy seemed next to worthless the few times I've coin-spammed to get to him.

The laser bomb causes the most damage when you can get all three lasers to hit your target

Mildly curious; is the damage simply divided across the three (like each beam does ~300) or is it some funky scaling algorithm?

The missile bomb is easiest to get the most consistent damage with.

Is this its only strong point? My assumption on how it worked was that it did significantly more damage than the other bombs but only had a small area of effect the size of its explosion graphic, however looking at your numbers my assumption was obviously incorrect. Excluding the final boss, does it just damage everything on screen at a flat rate?

In general, bombs can do some damage, and perhaps it's something you can lean more in the US version

At the risk of making you write up another sheet of numbers, how do they compare to the guns/missiles? In my experience playing US ver, the bombs clear out stuff SIGNIFICANTLY faster than pummeling them with missiles or whatnot, but you seem to be implying in a few places that they're not really worth much.

[OmegaFlareX]

There's also a RA FinalBurnAlpha core

Holy shit, thank you sooooooooooooooooo much for pointing me to this. Getting a core with runahead working at least doubled my skill level. I can now easily dodge shot swarms I thought were hopeless before and I can make it to the stage 3 octo boss in 4-5 lives whereas before it would take me like 8-10. FBA has a couple very minor graphics and sound glitches on Daioh and it doesn't report its rotation correctly on vertical games so some CRT shaders go haywire, but the combination of working runahead and rewind (as well as native support for savestates and a sane control config) easily makes it the stand out choice here.

Good to hear it runs Daioh acceptably. I've never tried the FBA core, apparently you need to create your own romsets for it using clrmamepro (source: github readme)? That sounds like a pain in the ass. At least FBA seems to support a lot more stuff than I remember. I think the last time I used it, it was NeoGeo and CPS-only.

[komatik]

apparently you need to create your own romsets for it using clrmamepro

I can't speak for other games yet, but Daioh worked out of the box in that I just used the normal vanilla MAME version and it booted right up without a complaint. But then again Daioh seems to be one of the more compatible shmups out there... its apparently been emulated correctly for over 15 years and its romset doesn't have any dependencies, so I'm less surprised that it's supported cleanly.

At least FBA seems to support a lot more stuff than I remember. I think the last time I used it, it was NeoGeo and CPS-only.

Not everything unfortunately, still no Radiant Silvergun (would like to try that game some day). The RetroArch buildbot library has separate FBA cores for neo and cps.