Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[LordHypnos]

@Cave Hermit: You could try Bullet Magnet's suggestion, and try updating your graphics card drivers. Seems pretty weird though. Out of curiosity, what kinda machine are you trying to run on?
I got it running with no issues on a netbook, which is a lot less powerful than almost anything else. hahaha.

[cave hermit]

I'm using an Acer Laptop with an i7-3610QM quad core (2.3GHz, auto overclocks to 3.3 GHz if needed), Nvidia GeForce GT 650M with Optimus functionality (Meaning that by default the laptop uses an integrated intel video card, but it automatically switches to the GeForce card when needed for a game), 6 GB RAM. I am using Windows 7 64 bit.

[cave hermit]

So far I have tried running as admin, running under compatibility mode, installing and using AppLocale, and every time the game immediately stops responding, but continues to display the loading screen and playing what I guess is the title screen BGM.

[cave hermit]

Ok, I got it working; apparently it runs perfectly in fullscreen, but just refuses to boot in windowed mode for whatever reason. It looks very rudimentary visually, but a lot of effort seems to have gone into the music and bullet patterns (For the record I barely know anything about 2hu). Seems really easy on normal also. I'll probably buy the other Touhou games in the future now that I've had a sample.
On another note, while playing I thought of the phrase "420 graze it" and thought that I invented a genius new 2hu meme. A quick youtube search proved me wrong.

[LordHypnos]

Ok, I got it working; apparently it runs perfectly in fullscreen, but just refuses to boot in windowed mode for whatever reason.

huh, weird. For a bit there, I thought your computer might be too powerful for touhou. haha

It looks very rudimentary visually, but a lot of effort seems to have gone into the music and bullet patterns

That's toohoo

Glad you got it running eventually, tho. They are fairly affordable for shmups, FWIW. I got MoF for like $25 new

[dink]

Regarding the game Zing Zing Zip - what does the voice say when you pick up and / or use a smartbomb?

[kevinmaccioly]

What's the ship's name in Alltynex 2nd?

[zlk]

In the DDP DFK soundtrack, does anyone know what is being said during the songs "final boss" and "true last boss"? It seems there are real lyrics, I just can't make much out of them.

[cave hermit]

Does anyone know how to disable analog stick detection in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil? It seems like even with Joy2Key running the game still detects the analog stick, and when I use my Wii fightstick through a USB converter, the analog stick shows up as perpetually locked to the upper left, making it impossible to play scarlet devil. Disabling directinput in the customization executable did nothing.

[Despatche]

went through and answered a bunch of questions, brb

I mean yeah, it was outdone by other games that drew and expanded on its ideas rather quickly, but it still stands the test of time pretty well in my opinion.

eh, not really. aside from the capcom games and xevious arrangement itself, there hasn't really been a game that outright challenges xevious, let alone tries to surpass it. especially namco's own dragon spirit; even pac-mania has more to do with the pac-man formula, somehow. also, remember that super xevious exists; if xevious ever seems boring, give that a shot.

the sound effects are kinda nice--xevious arrangement proves this much--and the theme actually fades into them, so i don't really understand the complaints. also, it's only as slow as any toaplan game, and ray force proves the quality of the two planes mechanic (that xevious executed well, it's just that people are supposed to like ray force).

Sidenote: dodonpachi saidaioujou has no second loop. So not all dodonpachi games.

daifukkatsu black label doesn't either. yagawa (the programmer) decided to remove it and just make the game generally harder. the same goes for sdoj, though i heard the "expert" modes (kinda like exy from doj but better) also affect difficulty.

OK, here's something weird I want to ask: Always when I look at my Mushi Futari poster I think of Palm as a girl (with boyish looks maybe). It's strange that he is supposed to be a boy, feels just wrong. Anyone else ever had that thought?

palm is the subject of a common character design and fashion statement (and quite a bit more than that actually) that even has an entire manga and anime series dedicated to the trait.

Gradius or R-Type?

---------------GO!

as a series? r-type. gradius legit ruined itself after the first game; gaiden and probably rebirth are the only other well-made games in the series, as gradius v has little to do with anything gradius. (r-type leo has a lot more to do with r-type)

How transferable are shmup skills between games. To what extent is what I'm trying to figure out. If someone can 2-All DOJ, does that mean he can pick up any other shmup and be at a huge advantage to other players?

"transferable shmup skills" are either extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game, or designer-specific things you will come to remember. they can pick up a similar cave game, but not just any shmup.

I'm, er... "acquiring" embodiment of scarlet devil as I type this; so do I have to run this through AppLocale or can I just run it?

always use applocale when it comes to non-latin characters:

-always install things by using applocale on the installer
-always extract things from archives by using applocale on the archiver
-always run the programs by simply using applocale on them

there's a registry hack that makes this easy for japanese programs and archivers (or any file-browsing tool like that really). also, keep in mind that applocale is not infallible.

I finished "acquiring" the game, and it had an english executable to run, but the game just sits on the intro screen asking me to "watch warmly" and playing music with Windows reporting it as not responding. What do I do?

hell, you should probably use applocale to install and run most of the english patches, except for imperishable night's (because it's crap, and it's not so just because of that).

Ok, I got it working; apparently it runs perfectly in fullscreen, but just refuses to boot in windowed mode for whatever reason. It looks very rudimentary visually, but a lot of effort seems to have gone into the music and bullet patterns (For the record I barely know anything about 2hu). Seems really easy on normal also. I'll probably buy the other Touhou games in the future now that I've had a sample.

i'm not at all sure what happened with the windowed thing. windowed mode is kinda necessary to stream, among other things.

teosd and pcb use some simple graphics (i like them), but the other games look quite nice. touhou games tend to start off easy, especially on the lower difficulties. however, teosd in particular gets very hard once stage 4 starts up. on lunatic, you'll probably die a lot starting from stage 2. and of course most of the games are quite tough to play for score.

Does anyone know how to disable analog stick detection in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil? It seems like even with Joy2Key running the game still detects the analog stick, and when I use my Wii fightstick through a USB converter, the analog stick shows up as perpetually locked to the upper left, making it impossible to play scarlet devil. Disabling directinput in the customization executable did nothing.

you have that tatsunoko fightstick? cool. hate to be a pedant, but that's not an analog stick, it's digital. analog here means variable strengths depending on how far you move it in a direction, e.g. most control sticks on basic console game controllers today. meanwhile, most arcade games use the old-as-time digital sticks, which are much like directional pads, only allowing flat strengths in a given direction.

unfortunately i don't have an arcade stick to be able to test. i know people have gotten arcade sticks to run with all of these games, at least... hopefully it's not some weirdly specific problem with the tatsunoko stick!

[cave hermit]

I know it's digital; the problem is that the stick still sends an analog signal to the computer [since the converter box I'm using expects a standard Wii classic controller], showing the analog stick as locked to the upper left corner; since Touhou 6 constantly accepts analog input, the game is unplayable on the fightstick.

[Eno]

Ok, I got it working; apparently it runs perfectly in fullscreen, but just refuses to boot in windowed mode for whatever reason. It looks very rudimentary visually, but a lot of effort seems to have gone into the music and bullet patterns (For the record I barely know anything about 2hu). Seems really easy on normal also. I'll probably buy the other Touhou games in the future now that I've had a sample.
On another note, while playing I thought of the phrase "420 graze it" and thought that I invented a genius new 2hu meme. A quick youtube search proved me wrong.

Try the Vsync patches if you haven't yet. I used to have lots of trouble with TH06 on Windows until I installed it. It's also nice because it lets you set up custom window sizes.
Just keep in mind that it only works with TH06 if you have an executable with the default name "東方紅魔郷.exe".
Of course, it's third party software, so use at your own risk.

Does anyone know how to disable analog stick detection in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil? It seems like even with Joy2Key running the game still detects the analog stick, and when I use my Wii fightstick through a USB converter, the analog stick shows up as perpetually locked to the upper left, making it impossible to play scarlet devil. Disabling directinput in the customization executable did nothing.

Never had that kind of thing happen to me on Windows. On Linux it happens frequently and it stops just by moving the analog stick once, might be useful to your problem.

[Despatche]

i am so sorry, cave hermit, i completely misread what you were trying to say there. that's what i get for rushing things!

[Squire Grooktook]

"transferable shmup skills" are either extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game, or designer-specific things you will come to remember. they can pick up a similar cave game, but not just any shmup.

Eh, I'd say there's more to it than that. I do feel that naturally, you do build up more consistent fundamental skills like precision, execution, reactions, etc. that will allow you to ultimately get better at other games a bit faster. I mean, you use a motor skill long enough and it'll be a more consistent and active part of your brain.

Obviously you're not going to Ura 2-all Ketsui first try just because you're good at Dodonpachi, but I have found that the more I have played the genre the more consistency I've acquired and the more I do better in general (and not just because of knowing how to do things like streaming bullets etc.)

[Patashu]

"transferable shmup skills" are either extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game, or designer-specific things you will come to remember. they can pick up a similar cave game, but not just any shmup.

If this was true, then whenever someone swapped games, they'd be just as bad as a newbie again. This is not what we see. You see people who have lots of 1CCs - who can quickly 1CC new games. Or people with lots of high scores or even world records - who can quickly digest the scoring mechanics of a new shmup and get an impressive score in it as well. And since these people put years of practice into shmupping, this provides evidence for shmup skill being a transferrable skill from game to game.

Also: 'extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game' Common sense ain't common. You might think bullet herding is the most obvious thing in the world, but at some point you have to come up with it or hear about it, it's not some innate 'obvious' thing.

[Squire Grooktook]

"transferable shmup skills" are either extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game, or designer-specific things you will come to remember. they can pick up a similar cave game, but not just any shmup.

If this was true, then whenever someone swapped games, they'd be just as bad as a newbie again. This is not what we see. You see people who have lots of 1CCs - who can quickly 1CC new games. Or people with lots of high scores or even world records - who can quickly digest the scoring mechanics of a new shmup and get an impressive score in it as well. And since these people put years of practice into shmupping, this provides evidence for shmup skill being a transferrable skill from game to game.

Also: 'extremely basic things you know or learn before even touching a game' Common sense ain't common. You might think bullet herding is the most obvious thing in the world, but at some point you have to come up with it or hear about it, it's not some innate 'obvious' thing.

Yeah. To be sure, practice methods and techniques like herding etc. probably are also a big part of the faster success of more experienced players, but there's definitely also some fundamental improvement in areas outside of pure knowledge, subtle as it may be. For example, when I first started playing bullet hell shooters (about 6-ish years ago?) it would take me 20 or 30 attempts to 1cc past the stage 3 boss in Dodonpachi. I dropped the game for like 4 years and when I came back I 1-alled the game on my third attempt without any kind of route on the last two stages. And that stage 3 boss is now pretty much trivial even with the same exact route I used to use.

Maybe it's not so much shmup skill as skill in general. I could swear that forcing myself to learn to do long combos in fighting games consistently helped me get better at executing routes in shmups.

[LordHypnos]

I definately remember that when I started I had trouble getting out of the way of bullets and moving in between bullets and stuff like that, as well as getting psyched out really easily when there were a lot of them (No twitch gaming experience prior to shmups, FWIW). These days my problems tend to be more with reading patterns, and really tight and/or fast bullets rather than with all bullets. hahaha. Also bullet herding is something which I wasn't able to do at first (Gunbird 2 does a good job of teaching this skill, btw). I still am pretty awful over all, but I think there have definately been some general overarching improvements that transcend just one game. I like to think of these as the really basic fundamentals.

EDIT: It's also apparent because coming back to Gunbird 2 briefly after playing other games for a few months I found the part at the end of Stage 1 America to be quite a bit easier than it used to be, as well as picking up medals at the right time, some of the faster patterns, and a few other things. Haven't played any other Psikyo games, either. Still can't make it past stage 4 (or even to it, most of the time), but I think that's mostly because I don't have the stages memorized like I used to, and there's a pretty distinctive spike in difficulty there.

[Despatche]

common sense isn't common because noone likes these games to begin with, not even the supposed fans. bullet herding isn't remotely obvious, doesn't work in a lot of games, and doesn't really work the same across games that it's in.

precision, execution, reactions, and so on are things you have already have, going into effect whenever you do anything in life, and getting stronger simply as you get older (to a certain extent) or as you practice just about anything. i've left games in general many times and come back after having not played anything in ages and aced parts i would have failed at before; it's not specific shmup skill, it's basic human skills. when you swap games, you do become as bad as a newbie again... but you have a better mindset; you understand that being a "newbie" means nothing, and that it all comes down to practice and putting those basic skills to work.

i'm really starting to get what the "casuals" mean when they talk about masochism; sometimes, there is some kind of real brilliance in supposed "stupidity". the fans of this genre are starting to scare me in ways that i never imagined. that's also something i never would have understood before.

[Patashu]

Are there any shmups that have analog movement (as in not just 8-directional), excluding mouse/touchscreen based inputs?

[LordHypnos]

Why on earth did the Mars Matrix developers choose the resolution that they did. I've heard it's something like 384x224. According to MAME, the pixel aspect ratio is 12:7. WTF! That can't be any kind of standard

[Squire Grooktook]

precision, execution, reactions, and so on are things you have already have, going into effect whenever you do anything in life, and getting stronger simply as you get older (to a certain extent) or as you practice just about anything. i've left games in general many times and come back after having not played anything in ages and aced parts i would have failed at before; it's not specific shmup skill, it's basic human skills.

Now this I can agree with. But really, this is more or less what was originally meant by "transferable shmup skills". Just the idea that you get better in general by playing a lot, and it helps you in other games. Maybe "transferable skills" or just "skills" in general is more accurate, if you wanna get into semantics.

when you swap games, you do become as bad as a newbie again... but you have a better mindset; you understand that being a "newbie" means nothing, and that it all comes down to practice and putting those basic skills to work.

As for the last part, that is not quite what I've seen. When you swap games, you never become as bad as you were, and you almost never perform as bad as you would have before (unless you're like, drunk or not paying attention or something). The fundamental skills you've built up remain, and help you do better your first time than if you hadn't built up those skills prior. This is what I've seen both from myself, and from other players ("oh look, I 1 life cleared the last boss on my first try getting there!", and other things I couldn't do etc.), so I think it's safe to say that this is the most likely answer. Of course, perhaps this is just an argument of semantics and this is really what you meant. Either way, I think we're more or less on the same page here.

i'm really starting to get what the "casuals" mean when they talk about masochism; sometimes, there is some kind of real brilliance in supposed "stupidity". the fans of this genre are starting to scare me in ways that i never imagined. that's also something i never would have understood before.

Yo it's all cool. I haven't seen anything said in this thread that was out of line, just some friendly discussion. No need to get mad.

Also lol it's not like disagreements over basic ideas and errors of communication aren't something that happen on every forum in existence.

[AntiFritz]

Are there any shmups that have analog movement (as in not just 8-directional), excluding mouse/touchscreen based inputs?

The xbox 360 and steam versions of ikaruga use analog movement when using a control stick.

[Patashu]

Are there any shmups that have analog movement (as in not just 8-directional), excluding mouse/touchscreen based inputs?

The xbox 360 and steam versions of ikaruga use analog movement when using a control stick.

Oh, that's interesting. Does it change the gameplay/scoring much to be able to do this?

[mastermx]

Sine mora uses analog movement, where the speed of the ship depends on how far you've pushed the stick. The game isn't even playable on stick.

[Squire Grooktook]

Sine mora uses analog movement, where the speed of the ship depends on how far you've pushed the stick. The game isn't even playable on stick.

I played it on pad on the Steam version. It just feels like shit since you can't move slower for denser patterns.

[Blinge]

I'm pretty sure Gradius V has analog movement on a ps2 controller, pressing lightly on a stick for the ship to move slower is an example of this, right?

[Squire Grooktook]

I'm pretty sure Gradius V has analog movement on a ps2 controller, pressing lightly on a stick for the ship to move slower is an example of this, right?

Prrreeeety sure it didn't. I think.

[nasty_wolverine]

I'm pretty sure Gradius V has analog movement on a ps2 controller, pressing lightly on a stick for the ship to move slower is an example of this, right?

Prrreeeety sure it didn't. I think.

Prrreeeety sure it did. I think.

[Squire Grooktook]

I'm pretty sure Gradius V has analog movement on a ps2 controller, pressing lightly on a stick for the ship to move slower is an example of this, right?

Prrreeeety sure it didn't. I think.

Prrreeeety sure it did. I think.

Maybe. I don't remember being able to move slower than your current speed though, at least. Maybe it just had analog control that functioned the same as pad movement?

[BIL]

GV definitely has at least some degree of analogue control. I remember noticing it but never making use of it, since it seemed to go from the minimal crawling speed to 100% anyway - not much different from digital tap-dodging. I actually got my first nubby clears with the analogue stick but essentially treated it as digital all-or-nothing input.