Anger Management

[Jonst]

I'm fresh off a session of ddp doj blex 360 mode,once again,I was a whisker away from clearing it...but no! I finally worked out a kind of pattern I need to use,once I did and I wanted to get back to the final fight,I couldn't play worth a damn! Stupid mistake after stupid mistake.I kept playing far longer than I should and it just got worse and worse,I wanted to explode but I felt I made a new discovery on how to deal with the final fight...I do expect to clear this by the end of the weekend at the latest.

@jws,shmups and guitar are painful when you feel like you're failing at them and there is always a ton of people that are better than you'll ever be,yt is full of them,but you just gotta keep at it! I can play guitar stuff now that I never dreamed I would be able to play years ago,stuff I tried back then was far to advanced for the stage I was at then but time and patience has brought rewards and I'm glad I kept at it! But It can certainly be hard and frustrating,that's normal...keep at it all mate!

[Icarus]

My point being even after a few thousand miles in the saddle you'll still be learning, struggling and you'll have shit days. But that doesn't mean you should get upset, follow the advice in this thread, take a break. Come back another day.

This. Everyone has off-days, and everyone gets a little frustrated from time to time, but if you aren't learning something from it, then it'll just continue to build up.
Every mistake is a lesson learned, every error is a stepping stone to improvement.

[Patashu]

Insanity is defined by repeating the same action again and again expecting a different result.

What the fuck?? Have you ever even played a video game before?

My advice to the OP:
It doesn't matter what the skill is. Whether it's making art, music, programming, designing a game, building something with your hands or devices, gaming, writing, whatever.
Everyone SUCKS at it when they start out.
Life as a human is an endless trail of mistakes, flaws, errors, oversights and ignorance.
Yet at the end of your road, you have purged the thousands of mistakes from your body through your devotion and passion from your craft, and create something truly amazing for others to be inspired by.
Superplays, amazing songs, art, games - these come about via years of work. And years of work doesn't mean years of flawless play with no mistakes. It means thousands and tens of thousands of mistakes.
When you are making mistakes, Reflect on WHY we are making mistakes.
We make mistakes because we have to make mistakes to break them.
To purge them from our bodies, eliminate all that is wrong until the only path left is the correct path.
Learning every idea that is wrong and striking it down so that the only thing left to do is the right thing - and it is automatically done by your body.
Again - doesn't matter what it is. This is how it works. Embrace it. Your mantra should be: 'Today I am weak, but every day that I practice, I am taking one step closer to the total transformation of my body into my passion. Some steps are invisible, some steps are great, some steps are clumsy, but every step contributes to the whole.'

Keep in mind the #1 advice I can ever give you.
We don't practice and study to be good RIGHT NOW or EVERY SINGLE TIME.
But to be good in the future.
In expectations of reward for hard work, not immediate gratification.
(Especially since there are compounding factors, such as tiredness, sleepiness, distraction, mood, morale, nutrition, hunger, etc - Even things like being high/shaky/drained off of a recent victory or new discovery can make you completely unable to play, so don't expect amazing success to follow amazing success - that will make you play sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always practicing and learning.

I suggest you read the guide, 'Using Neuroscience to Practice Optimally'. https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/pos ... mally.html
It is written with speedrunning in mind, but using savestates, you can practice shmups in exactly the same way (it's just that survival and/or score is your goal, not speed).
Armed with tools for how to practice and confidence that you can improve your morality will improve.
If you start to fail/fuck everything up hard - are you doing something functionally wrong that you need to improve, or do you just lack the mental energy to focus on practice? If the former - identify and fix it. If the latter - It's OK! You don't have to be perfect every time, and not even the best people of any field are. Just do something else to relax and try again later. Put your mind off of it so it can get ready for round 2.

EDIT: Another thing I forgot, is that practice doesn't have to be mammoth multi-hour sessions every day - or rather do it if you like, but don't feel obliged. Comparatively it's better to practice for small amounts but practice often, unless the skill you are practicing requires a lot of setup/winddown (for example, if you can't program or compose in short spurts due to needing to build up a flow/get everything set up/put away afterwards, then it would be better for you to use large enough chunks - but when shmup practice is basically just 'load up savestate of the part you're interested in, look at a replay for how to do it if needed, then try it over and over until you're satisfied' you can do it in very tiny chunks).

[God]

pixel perfect runs

Is that even possible?

[Patashu]

pixel perfect runs

Is that even possible?

A lot of speedruns require a pixel/frame/both perfect trick to be hit or you must reset.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a superplay tier scoring route for some game that requires similar precision at least once (Maybe a Dodonpachi series game?). I once saw a Mars Matrix superplay where the guy dives fearlessly through fast moving bullets during a boss in the name of increasing his score.

[Squire Grooktook]

pixel perfect runs

Is that even possible?

A lot of speedruns require a pixel/frame/both perfect trick to be hit or you must reset.

Maybe pixel perfect in certain places, but I personally don't think pixel and frame perfect timing throughout an entire game would be viable for anyone. But who knows.

[LordHypnos]

I once saw a Mars Matrix superplay where the guy dives fearlessly through fast moving bullets during a boss in the name of increasing his score.

I can't help but ask which superplay it was.

[Patashu]

I once saw a Mars Matrix superplay where the guy dives fearlessly through fast moving bullets during a boss in the name of increasing his score.

I can't help but ask which superplay it was.

I had a look and I can't find it. Maybe memory is faulty. But there's always Futari 1.01 Ultra or DDP DL where you DO have to go through ridiculously small gaps to even have a chance at winning.

Maybe pixel perfect in certain places, but I personally don't think pixel and frame perfect timing throughout an entire game would be viable for anyone. But who knows.

That would be called a 'TAS'.

[LordHypnos]

I once saw a Mars Matrix superplay where the guy dives fearlessly through fast moving bullets during a boss in the name of increasing his score.

I can't help but ask which superplay it was.

I had a look and I can't find it. Maybe memory is faulty. But there's always Futari 1.01 Ultra or DDP DL where you DO have to go through ridiculously small gaps to even have a chance at winning.

I wouldn't be surprised or anything, I'm mostly just curious. There are definately a few places with bullets that are really tight.

[ACSeraph]

Warning!!!
A Huge Response is Approaching Fast!!!

There has been some really awesome and motivating advice in this thread. Thanks to everyone who has shared so far. I should probably start by answering Jonst's question:

What's the game that's making you rage?

One of my goals for this year was to take number 1 in Caladrius. This has evolved somewhat and I am now pursuing a World Record tier score with Default Lilith in that game (Though knowing exactly what the world record default score is is a bit of a guess due to some deficiencies of the leaderboard. In any case I'm currently rank 7 with her including non-default scores, but I was not satisfied with the run that got me there at all.

Basically over countless hours of practice over the past few weeks I have devised a scoring route that is nearing the top of what I believe can be achieved with the character in Caladrius Vanilla. I can actually execute it within individual stage practice with decent-ish consistency. The problem is it requires a no-miss through the entire game while also executing some excessively risky scoring tactics. So in that sense my standards can't really be lowered, one major fuck-up and the run is ruined. To compound the problem:

pixel perfect runs

Is that even possible?

Obviously I don't mean the entire game, but yeah there are certain sections that require extremely precise movements and 1-2 pixels is the only thing separating your perfect run from an untimely death. There are a couple spots like this, and the route itself is also extremely strict in order to execute the scoring. Basically it's such that if you hesitate for half a second or accidentally tap left when you should have gone right, it doesn't matter that you have realized it because your score is going to take a major hit or you're just going to straight up die do to constantly being in risky positions.

I guess what it really is for me is that the plan is there, and my personal execution of it is getting to a point where I can't really go much higher. The things that ruin my runs are always extremely minor miscalculations. For those pixel perfect sections I basically hold my breath, shut out the entire world like a sniper and pray. I think my execution of those sections is quite high actually, but it's so precise there's no way I'm going to get it 100% of the time.

Which leads to:

I think shmups is a lot like gambling, you will rarely win, and it's best to know when to stop, but in the end, some of us are more addicted than others and can't let go.

I've never thought of it this way, but this is an extremely good comparison and it probably would help me a lot to view it this way.

I think I'll probably take a lot of the advice here I've read to heart and try to apply it to my play sessions. I think the big one tonight is that I will take Ruldra's advice and stop doing full restarts after every mistake. Caladrius has a system where if you get hit your character becomes more powerful and thus it changes a lot of things about the route negating the value of post-mistake practice. However I'm thinking what I'll do is only restart the stage upon failure and do full stage-restart runs over and over to get balanced practice with the hope that eventually one of those runs will be restart free. This may alleviate the frustration a lot actually.

Anyhow it's been great reading about how everyone copes with this stuff, and it's nice to know I'm not alone with these feelings and failures. Knowing that alone and having the support of many other awesome players is a big boost to my morale. Thanks everyone.

[Mortificator]

Insanity is defined by repeating the same action again and again expecting a different result.

What the fuck?? Have you ever even played a video game before?

Maybe video games just encourage insane behavior.

[Squire Grooktook]

Insanity is defined by repeating the same action again and again expecting a different result.

What the fuck?? Have you ever even played a video game before?

Maybe video games just encourage insane behavior.

Man, every thread I go to today seems to have some great posts.


Anyway, right now I'm kind of experimenting with a playstyle where I play 1 hour per day of whatever game I'm serious about, than play something for more casual (read: don't care if I do badly at it) fun for the next 30 minutes or so to cool off. We'll see how that works out on alleviating addiction/stress/frustration.

[Some-Mist]

than play something for more casual (read: don't care if I do badly at it) fun for the next 30 minutes or so to cool off. We'll see how that works out on alleviating addiction/stress/frustration.

that's what I use milestone shooters for

[LordHypnos]

Upon reading your large post, ACSeraph, I see why you can't just lower your standards, but based partially on my own experience and partially on what others are saying, I'd recommend keeping in mind that it's not gonna happen overnight; could take months. If you think you're ready for WR level play, then you're gonna have to accept that it takes time.

I have heard (including outside of this thread) that short practice sessions are as good as, if not better than spending like 5 hours at a time on it. I think too much time will leave you burned out, most likely, so maybe what you should do is limit your practicing to a fixed amount of time daily (this is generally how people train for anything, including things like sports and music). That'll probably do the most to keep the rage from interfering too much. If you get too much rage, then do what ever it takes to calm you down (scream into a pillow, break shit, cry yourself to sleep, try stuff to see what works), because I honestly think that rage is going to interfere with playing well and practicing.

Personally things that calm me down include: watching TV series, playing easy games / games I don't care about doing well at, music, or really anything else that is low stress.

Take what I say with a grain of salt though, because I'm pretty bad at shmups...

[Xyga]

I'm a total wanker, my brain really is functional only about 1 hour a day, which I use either for work or shmups (or something else when people don't leave me alone).

Therefore my shmupping time rarely goes beyond 1 hour, the 'good' credit is often the first or second, sometimes third one. After that I'm out of juice.

The bad thing is I don't do much progress like this and tend to switch to another game after a few days. I'm tired of seeing only level 3s or 4s, I give up / get bored too early...

EDIT: to stay on topic -> Maybe I should persevere and get angry.

[MrOldSchoolCool]

Stop treating it like it's a job. Have fun regardless of whether you reach your goals or not.

[ACSeraph]

God damn it... Being willing to give up and call it quits for the day after you know you've lost your head too much to continue is so incredibly hard for me. It leaves such an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. But I've blown it in stage 1 or 2 almost ten times in a row now after making it towards the end game all morning, so clearly my mind isn't in the game anymore. I think I went a bit longer than usual before cracking by taking some of the advice here, but everyone has their limits before they break. I just can't bring myself to stop. I don't get it... why can't I just stop? Also I just looked at the clock now and it's 5 PM... how the fuck long have I even been playing?

/dies-of-dehydration

[Jonst]

^ you've just described my last two nights! It's very hard to accept that whatever the goal is,it's not happening on the day...you're not alone on this at the moment,you'll get there at some point...

EDIT: FUCK CAVE!

[Eaglet]

I know what you're saying AC.
I've been practicing a lot of Garegga this week, much more than i usually do, and when you know that you've lost too much long term focus to get a consistent run going all there is left to do is practice individual hard bits.
Hopefully able to put something consistently good together sometime soon.

[Despatche]

i can't really say a lot. oddly enough reseting doesn't really burn me out, and the only time i ever really get angry is when i find out that a game is dumb

the notion that "it takes time" might be a bit unfair. i think maybe it's better to sort of "prepare" before every session. unfortunately, i think you'd know how to do that better than i do :S

comparing the genre to gambling is also very unfair and extremely self-defeating. i know people want to dodge as many responsibilities as they can, but in a generally non-random activity the burden is on you to complete it (other than any rng parts of course)

as with all games and genres, the top players of them worry me the most, and it makes me feel awful that i am not a top player so that people will actually take what i'm saying seriously : (

Insanity is defined by repeating the same action again and again expecting a different result.

randomness is defined as preventing you from actually repeating the same action again and again in the hopes of getting the end result

Lol @ having irl friends who play shmups. I didn't even know that was a thing. I tried showing a friend of mine SDOJ & his response was, "you must have really started hating yourself more than usual."

i used to think it was sad that "most people" thought of this genre as something "painful"... then i found this forum

[uncletom]

Don't know if it has been mentioned already, but you need a concrete wall. Not brick, a brick wall is too weak. It has to be a good concrete one that can withstand heavy beating.

And, believe it or not but violence is a perfect way of letting go of steam. You don't necessarily need to hurt another person, or animal, only yourself. I've been playing for 20+ years, and for the first 10 years I needed my wall close to be able to run my fist in a 90 degree straight punch into it, hard and fast. Later I distanced myself from the wall and from any violence, possibly due to my evolving body chemistry, but probably most because I realized that a shout was enough.

In the beginning I also had hostile feelings towards the joystick, I often blamed the stick, but even though I bashed it from various angles I never felt as satisfied as when releasing one of them heavy punches into my concrete wall.

[Cagar]

Don't know if it has been mentioned already, but you need a concrete wall. Not brick, a brick wall is too weak. It has to be a good concrete one that can withstand heavy beating.

And, believe it or not but violence is a perfect way of letting go of steam. You don't necessarily need to hurt another person, or animal, only yourself. I've been playing for 20+ years, and for the first 10 years I needed my wall close to be able to run my fist in a 90 degree straight punch into it, hard and fast. Later I distanced myself from the wall and from any violence, possibly due to my evolving body chemistry, but probably most because I realized that a shout was enough.

In the beginning I also had hostile feelings towards the joystick, I often blamed the stick, but even though I bashed it from various angles I never felt as satisfied as when releasing one of them heavy punches into my concrete wall.

Yeah, this is very effective.
Each punch will feel more bad because your hand hurts, you'll soon realize how stupid thing you are doing and stop it.
This was the everlasting cure against video-game anger for me, it took a long time though.

[ACSeraph]

comparing the genre to gambling is also very unfair and extremely self-defeating. i know people want to dodge as many responsibilities as they can, but in a generally non-random activity the burden is on you to complete it (other than any rng parts of course)

Unfortunately in Caladrius' case, the final stage is excessivle unfair RNG, literally you can be killed in it no matter how good you are. You'd have to play it to really understand, but basically you have to dodge constantly from unkillable enemies that shoot aimed shots and teleport randomly around the screen. So even if you are good enough to see the rare openings that allow you to change directions, theres a possibility when you try to take them that an enemy will teleport right on top of you killing you instantly. This is one case where I gotta say, it's just genuinely shit design. Moss knew it too, because the stage is heavily changed in AC (and I assume Blaze).

[Despatche]

yeah, that's a problem... at least they fixed it! personally, i'm worried less about the actual mistakes like that and more about any refusal to fix it.