Ray'z Arcade Chronology [Taito x M2] - PS4/Switch [2023]

[Steven]

It's worth patching anyway since it fixes the crashing bug and crashing sucks. Now that I think about it, I played this on PCB at Mikado a few months ago and I remember thinking how dark the game looked on the PCB, but for all I know Mikado didn't have the monitor calibrated properly, which wouldn't really surprise me that much. Last time I was there they had two monitors with partial vertical collapse. One of them was on their triple screen Darius cabinet, which made interacting with that third of the screen super awkward.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Thanks for the patch suggestion, Steven. I'll go with the latest patch avaible then to avoid the crashing bug associated with the original version shipped from the factory. Sounds good.

I'll be in for a treat for sure alrighty.

Perhaps you can tell the fine folks whom run Mikado to finely calibrate the CRT monitor so that it'd look at it's best showing off Rayforce (and easier on the eyes as well as eye candy), Steven. It's not that hard to do it anyways. Anything less than a uncalibrated arcade monitor is doing a disservice to the paying game center customer/patron with their hard-earned yen coins.

Back to the OT at hand.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Rastan78]

Looking forward to trying the patch. I was noticing some audio and visual stutter on Raystorm and Raycrisis especially playing Switch undocked. On RC the audio skipping was pretty terrible at a few points. I never get too worried about an M2 game as they have such a strong track record with fixing this stuff.

@Steven, they did something similar with Darius Gaiden which also runs on Taito F3 like Rayforce. The unpatched original Switch release has a slightly washed out look. With a later patch that came at the time of the PS4 release it was changed to have noticably darker and more contrasty colors. Maybe this was due to player feedback or comparison to the original hardware?

To my eye Rayforce on this collection looked a bit washed out, more like the OG Gaiden release. It isn't as dark as the City Connection Saturn port of Rayforce on the same monitor and settings for sure.

Maybe it's worth comparing Rayforce at the arcade to some of the other F3 hardware stuff available to see if maybe it's a characteristic of the proper look of the PCBs?

[Jonpachi]

Probably dumb question: Are the HD versions of the games the exact same game, just bumped up in fidelity? Have any balance changes been discovered?

[pulsemod]

as far as I can tell they're the exact same with higher 3D rendering resolution. actually, I noticed many parts where seams in the background became visible due to the resolution in the HD version, which is pretty unsightly, so I tend to just choose the originals which look great even when crispy low res.

[Rastan78]

Here's a comparison of how the brightness and/or gamma curve changed in Rayforce after the patch. Very similar to what they did with Darius Gaiden. Like I said, to my eye it looked washed out at release. But did they go too dark? Tough to say without comparing to the PCB on a well calibrated monitor I guess.

Ray'z collection prepatch:

Spoiler

Ray'z collection after patch:

Spoiler

City Connection S tribute. Looks somewhere in between the two:

Spoiler

Also you can notice how City Connection stretched to a true 3:4 aspect. M2 maintains native pixel ratio. Therefore the screen looks a bit too narrow, although shimmering is eliminated and round or square art looks correct. Notice the shape of the round turret base is stretched on the CC port as it would be on an original arcade setup.

[Steven]

I ran Gunlock on MAME since I couldn't find a RayForce ROM and MAME has it way closer to pre-patch or City Connection.

[Rastan78]

Yeah mame looks lighter on DG as well and I'd assume the rest of the F3 stuff. Pretty sure mame is too bright.

[davyK]

My copy of Rayz on Switch hasn't patched itself. Is this limited to certain versions? I have the physical cartridge. (In Europe)

[Rastan78]

Have you tried manually starting the update? (Hit start on the main menu icon) Also could it have stealth updated when you weren't aware. If you're patched it should say Ver. 1.2.0

[davyK]

Says 1.2.0 so has been patched. Thanks!

[Jonpachi]

I really prefer the higher contrast of the post-patch version. Makes me wonder if they tuned the originals to be extra bright to be more visible/readable in an arcade setting with varying lighting levels.

[davyK]

The game was originally a CRT display game so maybe the contrast has been adjusted to recreate that as close as possible. Hard to say really. All depends on how original cabinets were adjusted re brightness, contrast etc.

[EmperorIng]

I have played a bit of raystorm, usually not getting past stage 4, in the last night or so and haven't run into any more crashes (so far). I assume no one else has, either, which is encouraging.

[EmperorIng]

I finally got to stage 6 for the first time in RayStorm, which I suppose is a nice achievement.

The amount of RNG/randomness in the game is pretty insane by any standard - it certainly is not there in RayForce (or at least to such a degree). The spinning "disco ball" enemies in stage 5, right before the boss, spawn AT RANDOM, and fire loooong lasers AT RANDOM, which means that it is very easy to find yourself in an unwinnable situation, unless you panic bomb or literally get lucky. And the stage 5 boss, Genseric, picks his attacks AT RANDOM, meaning you can get a nice shotgun blast, point blank and without warning, if you try to get close to do lock-on attacks (which you definitely want to do do disable some of his yellow laser cannons).

Stage 6 is very simple by comparison, despite being difficult. The boss, Alaric, is incredibly hard and will kill you if you are one millimeter off of your route, but at least he does the same set of attacks every single time. There is just 0 room for error or flailing.

Switch only has 12 savestates per game which feels so paltry for what you need to memorize. Apparently there are more on PS4? It's such a ripoff if true.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Here's a comparison of how the brightness and/or gamma curve changed in Rayforce after the patch. Very similar to what they did with Darius Gaiden. Like I said, to my eye it looked washed out at release. But did they go too dark? Tough to say without comparing to the PCB on a well calibrated monitor I guess.

I was actually fortunate to play this a PCB at a meet recently, as well as having played it a fair bit before in MAME. I was running it on a New Net City with a nice monitor, with the brightness and contrast turned up fairly high. I'd say it was somewhere between pre-patch and post patch, looked very much like the City Connection version. MAME is bright, but you actually come close to that on a newer monitor with the brightness turned up. I didn't note any unusual colour or brightness differences compared to MAME when I was playing. However, the darker post-patch look is probably what you'd encounter in an arcade with an older monitor, or one where the brightness is turned down a bit to keep the monitor from wearing out as quickly (assuming that's even a thing).

[Aceskies]

didn´t realize this game is out already. I preordered the physical which is not released yet. but perhaps I should cancel it, is it that bad?

[EmperorIng]

I can only give my sympathy to people who will wait for ages for the SLG versions. I pre-ordered my physical copy off of play-asia and it came like a week after release.

[dmk1198]

didn´t realize this game is out already. I preordered the physical which is not released yet. but perhaps I should cancel it, is it that bad?

Who's sayin it's bad?

[Rastan78]

Yeah what made you feel like canceling? Any major issues seem to be patched and I'm sure it will get even better with more updates. Training mode and just maybe console versions will probably come eventually judging by the pattern established by the other Taito/M2 stuff.

@Roo thanks for the impressions based on playing the PCB. The noticably darker/contrasty look of the Ray'z version as it stands now has really grown on me.

[CRP]

I can only give my sympathy to people who will wait for ages for the SLG versions. I pre-ordered my physical copy off of play-asia and it came like a week after release.

Shipping starts June 2023

Only 1-2 months left for slg, and fully patched.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The noticably darker/contrasty look of the Ray'z version as it stands now has really grown on me.

Yeah, I think both look good in their own ways. As davyK says, a game could really different depending on how the CRT is adjusted. It wouldn't surprise me if the devs at the time designed the game with the intention that it should look good even on a variety of brightness/contrast conditions, since I'd imagine CRT hardware wasn't quite as standardized as LCD screens now are, especially ones with analog adjustment knobs.

[BIL]

While battling the customary shit hurricane of moving house, and hauling in the jib (before it can get covered in shit!), I fired up me PS4 and noticed Ray's BBQ Sauce ~ III Flavours Of Bendy TaitoLazorHell Fo Yo Mahfuckin Ass had downloaded a hefty update. Iunno WTF it did/do, I basically only played RS and it ran great 4 me but still, M2 keepin that beast wood flying full mast as expected.

[EmperorIng]

the more I play RayStorm the more I find it interesting in how little freedom there is in the game. Despite what some flail-posts and flail-boasts in this thread have you believe, the only way to clear the game is to do things in an exactly precise way, and that's just to survive. Of course the first 3-4 stages are pretty relaxed and "free" (especially if you are playing as the RGray01), but from stage 4 on, you more or less lose your ability to panic bomb and move around the screen, and you have to route very strictly in order to have a chance... until you get to one of the big RNG filters where you have to either hope and get lucky, or muscle through.

e.g. the stage 5 spinning laser balls are the obvious candidate. Where they spawn in the final part of stage 5 is random, and where they fire is random - and soon there are so many of them on screen at once that you cannot kill them all before they start firing in tandem. The solution here, again, is to either get lucky or bomb, which makes you lose out on a safety bomb during the boss (whose attacks are chosen randomly from a pool and can point-blank you).

Stage 6 needs to be conquered without a bomb, because you NEED a bomb to help quick-kill the stage 6 boss's two pods: start the fight max-locking one to kill it, and then a bomb to weaken the second and finish it off before the mech comes back to dual-wield its guns. Alaric chooses its Y position randomly when it goes to do its machinegun spread. This means you can be cucked out of the safespot (just to the left of his head) because he aims too high as he spreads the gun around.

MANY zako waves are also random, again notably in stage 5, but also in stage 2, 3, and 7. You can really get walled easily by not paying attention. Or simply being unlucky.

And this doesn't even take into account the final boss, which has so many random chances and elements that can fuck you up on its first, and its final phase. The first phase, you have to full-lock one of the 4 shield generators (you destroy 2 to start the fight proper), and then a MANDATORY bomb to give yourself breathing room and help destroy the 4 satellite pods that come to make your life miserable 5 seconds into the fight. If they live, you die. There is no other outcome, trust me.

Basically, when I look at the boards, and the 'cords, there's been like a total of 5 or so RayStorm clears in the last few months. Which mind you, taken as a whole, is about 1000000% more than anything ever achieved in the English-speaking shmup community. But I doubt there will be many more. Lord knows I am trying to be a part of that group. But the game is brutal (perhaps not as brutal as some bullet hell 2alls, idk), and most people are just sitting around waiting for their questionably-ordered SLG packages to arrive sometime in the next 4 years... And will probably just spend all their time credit-feeding RayForce anyhow...

[BIL]

Stick to it and believe in your power ;3

[SPM]

Every shmup should start with that line ^^

questionably-ordered SLG packages to arrive sometime in the next 4 years

I hope not! this is my first time getting one of their releases

[Limbrooke]

I am very much out of the loop - it is interesting to see R-Gear, as a 1 stage demo, make an appearance.

Wasn't Shou working on releasing something and or is this the fruits of that labour?

[Steven]

I'm going to Taito Hey tomorrow for the Horror Story field test, but I'll try to remember to take a picture of their RayForce cabinet to see how the colors look on it. Pretty sure it's closer to MAME/City Connection/pre-patch than it is to patched Ray'z, but it's been a while since I actually checked out that cabinet. That's the same cabinet where they recorded the Taito Hey background noise for Ray'z, so I wonder what it will look like.

[Rastan78]

@Steven, any chance you could also get photos of the control panels for the Ray'z games at Hey? I think there are some people who would be curious about what autofire configurations are in use. A+B button for easy bombs on Raystorm maybe?

e.g. the stage 5 spinning laser balls are the obvious candidate.

Ing, I was labbing this section a little bit. Yeah it's a huge pain in the ass and can be fairly easy or extremely difficult depending on where they spawn. Still I'm hesitant to say bad RNG results in a total bomb or die situation. Not to mention pros use their bomb for scoring just prior to this spot. I came up with a game plan that was giving at least fairly consistent results. I think this is a section that will take a lot of practice, and there's no silver bullet strategy that will make it easy every time.

1. Of course try to play high up and acquire the balls with a lock shot ASAP getting as many of them as you can before things get messy. This is much easier to do with R Gray2 since the lock shot is faster. It can even fire just before actually getting a lock I think.

Once you kill an enemy, start preemptively moving back to the opposite direction. Yes the RNG can trick you but more often than not there's a left, right, left sort of cadence to where they come from. At worst you'll be returning to about midscreen and have an equal chance to react in either direction.

2. Notice that there is a blue sphere at the root of each laser. That sphere indicates the direction the laser will fire bc they come from all around the enemy sort of like flower petals. I've had the best luck tracking the lasers by focusing on the enemy who is just about to fire and reacting to the positions of the blue spheres more so than the lasers themselves.

3. Once there is too much going on to focus on the laser directions one at a time, retreat lower on the screen and play safe for a moment, switching back to aggressively locking only when it's safe to.

Some questions still to answer:
- Does the hitbox on the lasers extend all the way to the trailing end?
- Are the spawns 100% random, or can they be influenced in some way. (Likely they really are, but it seems I had some luck getting the first one to spawn at the same place repeatedly)
- When you get hell RNG, like back to back enemies on the far left and right, how far do you go in chasing down the far side vs playing safe? The enemy out of reach will reposition itself later.

[Steven]

@Steven, any chance you could also get photos of the control panels for the Ray'z games at Hey? I think there are some people who would be curious about what autofire configurations are in use. A+B button for easy bombs on Raystorm maybe?

Yeah sure. They will probably be very blurry and dark since it's super dark in there and I suck at taking pictures, but they'll be good enough. RayStorm and RayCrisis are both in the same cabinet from what I remember and there is a button on the CP just for switching games.