How good are console ports vs PCB and MAME?

[Chromecha]

I can say this, I own DDP DFK on 360 and the PCB. The two feel different to me, I can play much better on the PCB than the 360 port. I guess it's more of what works for you. As far as a PCB guy gettting angry about his expensive PCBs being shut down by emulation, he needs a new hobby.

Probably because of the aforementioned lack of slowdown in the 360 port.

Know what I never got? If a company can patch games on the 360 and PS3 (and beyond), why doesn't Cave do that all the time? They could keep patching until the slowdown is accurate to the arcade original. When they did manage to patch the NA version of Deathsmiles, the result was far better. So, they should do it with some of their other games!

I understand that it may have something to do about having to pay to release patches on Xbox Live, but I'm sure Cave has the money to do so.

[mastermx]

but I'm sure Cave has the money to do so.

Believe it or not. Cave died. "cave wa mou shindeiru" as they would say in Japan.

[Squire Grooktook]

but I'm sure Cave has the money to do so.

Believe it or not. Cave died. "cave wa mou shindeiru" as they would say in Japan.

I don't think it would be wise to count them out just yet.

[mastermx]

I don't think it would be wise to count them out just yet.

I really hope you are right... But with asada gone, and them making a mobile hello kitty game, I just don't see anyway they could come back. It's been several years since they have developed anything worthy. I feel the shmup team from cave may form their own Dev company. But I just don't see how the original cave can come back.

[Patashu]

This thread inspires the contrarian in me. I want to play the LEAST accurate version of every shmup - worst port, worst emulation, whatever - with the goal of annoying as many people as possible. Does anyone have some suggestions for games to accomplish this goal in? (Ketsui "Back Label" is a good example of playing bad emulation deliberately)

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, if you want to annoy people, you should recompile some version of MAME and claim that Air Attack is Raiden Fighters or something. Then post it as an app somewhere and get sued. Man, can you smell that annoyance bubbling yet?

[LordHypnos]

@Patashu: I've heard that the Darius II port to Saturn is pretty bad. Not sure you'll actually annoy anyone by playing it, though.

[EmperorIng]

I'll chime in to say that by and large the Darius II port on the Saturn is good outside a really awful glitch where a laser can hit you without touching you. Ok that is bad, and you have the added pain of trying to see enemies made for a three-screen display one one screen. Still not awful, but Sagaia is probably the better bet.

If you want real horror, try playing Darius-R.

If you want maximum annoyance, then marathon the Mobile Light Force series.

[trap15]

Darius II is actually 2-screen, not 3.

[EmperorIng]

You keep on saying that, and I don't believe you.

Unless Darius II is akin to Rastan Warrior Blade, where it's two big screens or something. The Saturn port zooms in three times - one screen, two screen, three screens. Why would they design the game around three screens if you couldn't see the third one in the master game?

[trap15]

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 2#p1004862

See the bit about Darius II? See the two screens?

[LordHypnos]

If you want maximum annoyance, then marathon the Mobile Light Force series.

You might actually succeed at trolling people around here by talking about how great the Mobile Light Force series is, and how XS games (publisher) is your favorite shmup dev.

[Mortificator]

See the bit about Darius II? See the two screens?

MAME has both dual- and triple-screen sets, so maybe there were a couple types of cabs made.

[trap15]

There were; the dual-screen is the original version, the three-screen is a conversion set made for owners of Darius 1 cabs who obviously would've jumped all over it so that they don't have a useless enormous cab running an older (and more importantly, less profitable) game.

[Mortificator]

Ah, that explains it. Thank you for slightly increasing my Darius-fu.

[Chromecha]

This thread inspires the contrarian in me. I want to play the LEAST accurate version of every shmup - worst port, worst emulation, whatever - with the goal of annoying as many people as possible. Does anyone have some suggestions for games to accomplish this goal in? (Ketsui "Back Label" is a good example of playing bad emulation deliberately)

You want a really bad port? Gigawing Generations for the PS2. No tate mode, and it runs at 30 frames per second (compared to the arcade version's 60), despite the graphics not pushing the PS2 hardware that much! How can you play a shmup at 30 frames per second?!

Also, I heard that Raiden Trad on the SNES is pretty bad, due to being developed by Micronics (the same company who butchered the 1942 theme when it was brought to the NES).

Lastly, it's not an arcade port, but R-Type III was ruined when it was brought to the Game Boy Advance.

[Illyrian]

How can you play a shmup at 30 frames per second?!

Isn't this the case with like....every shmup ever? Isn't that why sometimes in Cave games in frame perfect moments bullets can go through your hitbox but not get registered, or something? Or am I way out there?

Aren't...ALL shmups 30fps?

[trap15]

No, they're almost all universally 60FPS. The "passing through bullets" thing is because collision is only checked every other frame, to make the game slow down less.

[LordHypnos]

No, they're almost all universally 60FPS. The "passing through bullets" thing is because collision is only checked every other frame, to make the game slow down less.

holy shit, that's crazy. How common is this?

[trap15]

Not very. I think that's only in the PGM CAVE games (DOJ/Ketsui/Espgaluda 1). I think.

[Tarma]

Playing the arcade originals is always a great experience, but for me, if there's a decent home console port available ,that is the route I will take to own the game at home.

I've only got a small collection of PCB's at the moment, and unless I get back into Neo-Geo via MVS, then it will pretty much stay that way. None of the PCB's I have had a home port and that's why I've got them. In all other instances I've bought a port, and going on experience so far I'm not disappointed with any of the ports I've got. I'd be very surprised if I ever start going after CAVE PCB's when I've got a perfectly enjoyable Xbox 360 / PS2 ports (as an example).

At one time, of course, ports were always inferior, but since the Saturn was launched, if the programmers put the effort in, then they're always pretty close.

[casualcoder]

No, they're almost all universally 60FPS. The "passing through bullets" thing is because collision is only checked every other frame, to make the game slow down less.

holy shit, that's crazy. How common is this?

I usually don't care enough to ask but does anyone have a reference to back this claim up? If the game runs at 60fps, a single frame is about 16.5ms and if your collision is not checked until the next frame, you have a 33ms window to "pass through" the bullet. If that's the case then tap dodging should still yield a collision because you probably can't very often move out of the collision with a single tap within a 33ms window, however, it's conceivable by holding the stick in a direction you can move enough pixels to pass through a collision in that time frame. This is the exact effect I think I observed in the final pattern of espgaluda which would favour a technique of holding the stick to pass through certain bullet curtains. Since it's easy to die in these bullet dense areas in a lot of these games it's practical to know exactly which games have the collision-detection frame skipping.

[Patashu]

BarfHappy is the one to study and disassemble how bullets work in CAVE games. The disassembly is from DoJ but he claims that the CAVE bullet engine is universal. These posts lend evidence to the collision flipping occuring in at least all non-ESPGaluda games. (This isn't to say that collision flipping isn't in ESPGaluda, he just hasn't looked!)

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 39#p672939

In CAVE engine standard implementation (excluding esp galuda series), enemy bullets are only checked for they center, even big ones, and so only once every 2 frames. So they can go right through you when you move. Don t bother escaping lines of large bullets, because they are only 6-8 dots to pass, imagine that each bullet is just a point at their center, you ll fare much better at the games xD .
Saws and other special bullets are made as enemies and are checked like enemies (and spawned like ones).

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 93#p673393

at each frame if the bullet is set to be collision detected it is checked against the player collision box through successive testing (i put a description in the development part of the forum somewhere with the exact code), if collision happens, tough luck, you die.
at each frame the collision bit is flipped.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 60#p673660

And yep they kept it the same throughout afaik, it is easy to struct a bullet entry rewriting to C so that it acts the same way.
At least for ibara/mushihime+f There s a bit more information in there, but the basics remain.

To be frank, I don't really know for deathsmiles, MMP, PS and DFK, i ll tell you more in a couple years when i can see their code :p
Esp Galudas are a different beast, i never studied them.

There was a picture in here somewhere, where in the background of a picture of some big shot (IKD perhaps, don t remember) we could see a portion of code from deathsmiles, and it was clear that the engine was not really overhauled xD

I would be surprised if the code came from toaplan, could you imagine, the same engine spanning from batsugun to DFK ?
I ll have a look at batsugun and see if indeed there are common chunks.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 91#p673691

OK i quickly checked batsugun, and quickly this IIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS a quite surprisingly similar beast in some aspect.

However, there is one thing to note, not for bullets... it uses the same header for active bullets, except the active and colliding bit are 3 and 1 instead of 4 and 2. but other wise bullets operation is much more rudimentary and quite different.

at first glance float operations and transformation from gamespace to screenspace seem to be comparable.
it uses the same level playlist system:
a table gives gives the appearance of ennemies:
frame, offset, type, move table entry
then the move table which is the offset into the motion description table
and finaly the motion description table
motion description is: Y appearance value; X appearance value; and the actual move coded in several bytes(depending on the enemy types the move structure is different).
enemies motion handling is similar, i have not yet checked the enemies structure to see the way they fire if it is counters based like cave engine.

so, suprisingly, the level setup is a cave-engine style. If you want my opinion, cave used toaplan level designer tool, i see no other explanation.

(I would love to see a definitive 'Yes, this game does collision flipping' or 'no, bullets are dangerous every frame in this game' listed beside each Cave game, btw)