Item-based shmup scoring systems

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christianbelchior
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Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by christianbelchior »

Can you give me good examples of item-based shmup scoring systems?
Don't bring up something like Espgaluda 1 and 2, they're cancel-based scoring systems.
Mixed-type scoring systems that have item-based scoring systems into the mix fortunately do count.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by guigui »

Garegga ?

If rail shooters count, then Sin & Punishment 2 is definitely item-based, since most of the score come from those medals, which have to be released by everything at the cost of a lot of efforts.
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LordHypnos
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by LordHypnos »

Does something like Mars Matrix or Giga Wing count? Some enemies drop gold, when bullets are reflected and hit objects they turn into gold.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Ixmucane2 »

Poor little Dodonpachi II gives a large number of high value hexagonal and bee medals for killing just about any major enemy, so many that collecting all is difficult or impossible. There are also some "secret" spots that can be shot to milk bees.

Quantitatively, I've seen about 5-10% of my current total total score in medals for a single boss, probably more.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by davyK »

Gunbird 2 has its coins with the combo for timing their pickup. Also the hidden gem heads.

Raiden's medal pickups that earn an end of level bonus if you haven't lost a life since their pickup.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by christianbelchior »

LordHypnos wrote:Does something like Mars Matrix or Giga Wing count? Some enemies drop gold, when bullets are reflected and hit objects they turn into gold.
Both do count, since it's a mix of a item-based and a exponential scoring system.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Jeneki »

Raiden DX is similar to the Psikyo flashing medal system but a bit more extreme, giving exactly one chance to collect at max value before dropping to minimal points permanently. Quite brutal if someone wants to learn it.

Viper Phase 1 also trows a wrench into medal collection, only giving the most medals if you destroy the carriers after a certain point. Very brutal as it's so hard to avoid killing them too early with all the other action going on. Seibu really had some difficult medal systems back in the day.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by LordHypnos »

Raiden Fighters Jet has a Raizing-style medalling system. Of course, because it's RFJ you have to do some convoluted stuff to unlock it. RFJ has many different dimensions to scoring, but it seems like the medalling is a big component.

Recca/Garegga/Batrider/Bakraid all have Raizing-style medalling systems, needless to say. I'm not sure how important medalling is compared to other aspects of the scoring, though. Particularly in Bakraid, which has an enemy-chaining system.

Guwange is a bit weird. It has a Giga Wing-type medalling system, but in order to keep your medal value from resetting you need to chain enemies. It's a bit border-line because in some cases the medals get sucked into your player character (like in ESPgaluda), but in other cases they just drop from enemies or get picked up off the ground (like in Garegga). It's kind of interesting that they came up with this when they tried to mix GW-style medalling with chaining (or so I would guess they were trying to do), rather than the somewhat more straightforward Mars Matrix medal chaining.

For a more obscure example, there's Hatenkou (1998 X68000 doujin). This game essentially has a cancel-based system with bullets being canceled into medals when you get hit or when you defeat a boss enemy (I don't think this happens with the smaller enemies). You get a recharging shield, however, and if you get hit while that's active you won't die. The recharge time is a bit high for my taste. It also has bomb/life bonuses and such, so it's not all about picking up the medals. Note that, unlike ESPgaluda, you don't suck up the medals, you have to actually fly around to pick them up.

Finally, for another obscure, and somewhat opaque, example, there's Ring⁻²⁷. This one has a lot of influence from ESPgaluda, and you do suck up the gems and "gold" (it's red) if you're close to it, but there are also medals (also red but larger than the "gold"). It has a system where you can anchor to enemies (and steal their shot type). While anchored, defeated enemies will drop the medals, and you won't suck those up. I'm not sure exactly how scores are calculated, but it seems like the medals are more important than the "gold." To make things even more complicated, there are two modes. In Anchor mode, you have a button that lets you anchor to enemies, while in "Bomb" mode the button cancels bullets (into gold) and you will anchor to an enemy that's near the canceled bullets (usually the source). In Anchor mode you can also cancel bullets by pressing the anchor button again (which will also disconnect you from enemies). I think defeating enemies will also cancel their bullets. In anchor mode, as long as you're anchored to an enemy it will consume your gems, and if you run out of gems the rank starts to increase (the main way to reduce rank is dying, IIRC). In Bomb mode, initiating a cancel will consume gems, but staying anchored to an enemy will not, so rank usually ends up being less of an issue, however, also in bomb mode, enemies shoot revenge bullets when you kill them (this can be good for setting up juicy cancels).
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by christianbelchior »

[Mentions of a NSFW game in post!]
Yakouga Taiken 4 puts a focus in chaining medals. The medal rank increases by 1 every medal collected, thus they're slightly rare. Though the main point of the scoring system is- to be exact- grazing and bullet cancelling. (Note: Just in case you don't want to see HGCs and nude bosses, set the third option down in the settigs screen to ALL. The game will still be NSFW though.)
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by SPM »

That one who must not be named (Sine Mora) puts a special emphasis on picking up items that reach 100k points each (x the multiplier) after several consecutive pickups and drop to 1k if you miss one. That was pretty fun.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Shatterhand »

Why people shouldn't name Sine Mora?

-

The game I'm working on, Sophstar, has a scoring system that's based on collecting bonus items. Every enemy you kill drops an item worth 1000 points, but its value drops the longer you stay on screen up until the item dissapear.

There's also some limited enemy chaining which is geared more towards keeping it at the max value before destroying bigger enemies (Multiplier never goes beyond x9 on the main scoring mode, though there's an alternate mode where chaining is limitless). A fair amount of your score comes from picking up the items.

Still not released though, there's a Demo on Steam. Does it count? :)
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by SPM »

I was just joking because that game gets a lot of backlash around here hehe

Btw, I took a look at your game: I love the theme you used (I put the trailer 3 times in a row just for the music alone)
Also, nice touch limiting the multiplier to x9! That way a mistake doesn't ruin the entire run (although admittedly getting a huge multiplier and score is also satisfying)
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by ACSeraph »

Bullet Soul Infinite Burst is all about medal chaining and making sure none of the score items leave the screen. It's the crack cocaine of item based scoring. Really satisfying and criminally underrated game. Don't judge it based on the quality of Vanilla Bullet Soul. Aside from Cave's stuff and maybe Eschatos Infinite Burst is probably my favorite shmup on the 360.

Another (obscure) game I like with item based scoring is Delta Zeal. It's simplistic but satisfying.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Shatterhand »

SPM wrote:I was just joking because that game gets a lot of backlash around here hehe

Btw, I took a look at your game: I love the theme you used (I put the trailer 3 times in a row just for the music alone)
Also, nice touch limiting the multiplier to x9! That way a mistake doesn't ruin the entire run (although admittedly getting a huge multiplier and score is also satisfying)
Thank you, I'll let our musician know :)

Yeah, we wanted a scoring system that wouldn't make you reset the game because of a single mistake :)

And about Sine Mora.. it makes sense, that game kinda sucks, heh.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by LordHypnos »

I suppose Trizeal also has a Raizing-style medalling system. This is actually a super common type of scoring system. I also feel like there should probably be a better term for this than Raizing-style. I don't even think the Raizing games, or even Recca, were the first example. I seem to remember some NMK game or games having this, and some Toaplan systems (such as Vimana) are similar.

There's also Dangun Feveron. You collect discomen that fall from defeated enemies, but you need to collect them before they leave the screen (of course there's more going on here, such as bonus enemies). Pretty fun system. I'm not actually sure how score is calculated from discomen, though. I think Parsec 47 and Noiz2sa work the same or similarly. Heaven is here inside my soul!

EDIT: Night Raid is an interesting one (albeit very frustrating). It's a medal chaining system not unlike Mars Matrix, but rather than the chain affecting only the medal value, it directly impacts the multiplier, and when medals fall off the screen it subtracts from your multiplier. This means a few things. For one thing you can actually get a negative score (indeed you can intentionally play to try to get your score as low as possible by trying to dodge all the medals). It also means that when you can end up in a situation where killing enemies is subtracting from your score (or adding to it if you're trying to go negative). This is unfortunately really easy to have happen regardless of which way you're playing it, hence why it's so frustrating. The Hug Launcher is also surely one of the most bizarre shmup mechanics ever conceived of.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by OmegaFlareX »

You can get massive end-of-stage bonuses in Same³ (Fire Shark) from the stage medals collected without dying x 1000(?) x number of bombs remaining. On the later stages, if played expertly (meaning all medals collected + NMNB + full bomb stock [10]), you can get several score-based extends from a single bonus (only loop 1 because score extends stop after that). I haven't done any math, but aside from the huge end-of-LOOP bonuses, it seems like this is where most of the game's score comes from.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Lethe »

LordHypnos wrote:There's also Dangun Feveron. You collect discomen that fall from defeated enemies, but you need to collect them before they leave the screen (of course there's more going on here, such as bonus enemies). Pretty fun system. I'm not actually sure how score is calculated from discomen, though.
More information than you could possibly want:
- The value of everything in the game is equal to the chain count.
- Picking up a discoman increments the chain by 1 and then gives you the points. Picking up a powerup/bomb at full capacity is the same as picking up 5 discomen consecutively.
- The chain caps at 999. The game also keeps an independent count of your total discomen for the stage, which caps at 999.
- The stage end bonus is [current chain * stage discoman count] meaning the highest possible bonus is 999^2 = 998,001typoed. Because this is a huge number, getting a 999 chain on stages 2-5 is the immediate hurdle. If you time out the boss, you won't get a stage bonus.
- The number of discomen dropped by enemies scales down the longer you take to kill them. Zako often won't drop anything if you leave them alive longer than a second, and some medium-size enemies can lose half their discomen in the same time. This also applies to bosses.
- Discomen drift in a predictable left-right pattern, but start at a random point in the movement sequence. They also spawn in random positions in the enemy's sprite (probably its collision area). Discomen too close to the edge of the screen will always drift away from it.
- There's a limit on the number of discomen that can exist simultaneously. It takes about a second for picked up discomen to stop counting against the limit, so this needs to be played around when it's relevant.
Last edited by Lethe on Sat Jun 26, 2021 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by LordHypnos »

Lethe wrote: More information than you could possibly want:
- The value of everything in the game is equal to the chain count.
- Picking up a discoman increments the chain by 1 and then gives you the points. Picking up a powerup/bomb at full capacity is the same as picking up 5 discomen consecutively.
- The chain caps at 999. The game also keeps an independent count of your total discomen for the stage, which caps at 999.
- The stage end bonus is [current chain * stage discoman count] meaning the highest possible bonus is 999^2 = 988,001. Because this is a huge number, getting a 999 chain on stages 2-5 is the immediate hurdle. If you time out the boss, you won't get a stage bonus.
- The number of discomen dropped by enemies scales down the longer you take to kill them. Zako often won't drop anything if you leave them alive longer than a second, and some medium-size enemies can lose half their discomen in the same time. This also applies to bosses.
- Discomen drift in a predictable left-right pattern, but start at a random point in the movement sequence. They also spawn in random positions in the enemy's sprite (probably its collision area). Discomen too close to the edge of the screen will always drift away from it.
- There's a limit on the number of discomen that can exist simultaneously. It takes about a second for picked up discomen to stop counting against the limit, so this needs to be played around when it's relevant.
Hey thanks! Question, though: is there any punishment for letting one of the discomen escape? other than the missed opportunity to get your value higher, and possibly preventing other discomen from spawning, anyway? The visual messaging makes it seem bad, hahaha.

Jaleco's Game Tengoku has timed chaining of items (I believe they are eggplants for some reason (???)). IIRC you want to grab as many as possible in quick succession, each one will have a higher value than the last. Rather than falling down the screen, they just stay in place when revealed. They start at 1000 and max out at 10000. Looks like the big eggplants are worth more than the small eggplants as well. In some ways this is a variant on a Raizing-style system, but it's also a timed chaining system
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2) Make it a multiplier for your actual score
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Re: Item-based shmup scoring systems

Post by Lethe »

LordHypnos wrote:Hey thanks! Question, though: is there any punishment for letting one of the discomen escape? other than the missed opportunity to get your value higher, and possibly preventing other discomen from spawning, anyway? The visual messaging makes it seem bad, hahaha.
Oh right, that's important. :lol: You lose the entire chain and the value goes back to 1. Missing one man and losing your 999 chain just before the boss will cut the stage bonus by 90% or more. The main challenge in playing is consistently grabbing every single one of them while going as fast as possible. It's worth it to delay killing enemies if it means keeping the chain safe, although of course it's far from ideal. This is the main difference in Parsec47's approach; in that game, it's quick to rebuild your value from scratch after missing an item, so occasional breaks don't matter that much, but in Feveron you basically get only one chance per stage.

If you fail to pick up a discoman, your options are either 1. chase it, which will probably screw up your timings and possibly kill you, or 2. bomb, which will freeze it, but will stop any more from appearing for the duration. Besides the loss of new discomen, the cost of bombing is minimal, so you absolutely should bomb aggressively when discomen are irrelevant e.g. to get past bosses more easily or to survive a turret section. It's always worth bombing to save the chain or your life.
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