Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[nosorrow]

I keep playing Ibara (PS2, Arcade Mode), but it's way too difficult on normal. How do you guys do it? I managed only once (!) to reach the second stage boss, lol. Also, the first stage boss is sometimes ridiculously hard. I try bombing whenever I can during the stages but it's not much help. I always score around 700 000-800 000+ points...

P.S. I play for survival, just mentioning the score for reference. I don't like suiciding btw because, you know, I'm already doing a pretty good job of losing my three lives during the first two stages.

[KAI]

Dude, it's Ibara, you can't survive if you don't score.

[trap15]

You have to score so you get lives so you can suicide so you can make the game easier.

gl;hf

[jepjepjep]

Playing DOJ black. Messing around with 1-loop mode, faced Hibachi with a spare life in stock and a couple of bombs. I got obliterated in no time. My God .

[ACSeraph]

The original Raiden on Raiden Project for PS1. The third boss is giving me a lot of trouble. Also fuck them for using checkpoints in Project. Does the standalone version of Raiden for PS1 have them too?

[Kollision]

ACS, I think you can disable checkpoints in the options.
At least with the NA longbox version that is.

[nosorrow]

You have to score so you get lives so you can suicide so you can make the game easier.

gl;hf

no luck, but still having fun

Seriously, the second boss is unbeatable for me, lol.

[Stevens]

Just 1 CC'd the first loop of my favorite (Under Defeat on the DC).

Nice to know after some time away I still got it:)

[jepjepjep]

You have to score so you get lives so you can suicide so you can make the game easier.

gl;hf

no luck, but still having fun

Seriously, the second boss is unbeatable for me, lol.

Second boss is the first wall in that game, save up a hadou or two for her.

[cave hermit]

I've played a few games heavily inspired by Toaplan over the course of my time as a STG player, and having just played Twin Tiger Shark I decided to try out an actual Toaplan game; I just took Truxton for a whirl and I really like it! I just wish there was auto fire; my thumbs hurt and my wrists are cramping up. Also those checkpoints are really making the game far more difficult than it would be otherwise.

Also I'm still playing Battle Garegga every now and then working my way to a 1cc.

[Patashu]

I've played a few games heavily inspired by Toaplan over the course of my time as a STG player, and having just played Twin Tiger Shark I decided to try out an actual Toaplan game; I just took Truxton for a whirl and I really like it! I just wish there was auto fire; my thumbs hurt and my wrists are cramping up. Also those checkpoints are really making the game far more difficult than it would be otherwise.

No one will look down on you for using turbo

[cave hermit]

I have no clue how to enable autofire though; I just looked through the options in MAME and I can't find a turbo option.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Make sure you're using a version of MAME that has Autofire as an option; the vanilla version of MAME does not have Autofire. ShmupMAME or MAMEPlus do.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 24#p952831

For the record, I think Truxton 2 does have built-in autofire as an option, it's in the dip switches. Not sure about Truxton 1 though (don't think so?).

[cave hermit]

ah; I've been using vanilla mame. So does shmupmame support every stg that MAME has, or does it not support newer games?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

ShmupMAME isn't currently up to date with some of the most modern stuff out there recently released (Mushihimesama and newer basically are unsupported), but it supports nearly every game you'd realistically ever want to play, shmup or not, and is customized with improvements for a lot of shmups to have a frame or two less lag (due to some clever tweaking to speed up the emulation), meaning the games tend to play a bit closer to arcade-level input delay which is nice. The newer releases it doesn't support aren't supported very well in emulation in MAMEPlus yet anyways due to bad emulation of slowdown in stages, input lag, etc.

MAMEPlus has a frame or two input lag more on some shmups, but it currently runs a few modern games that have much less support (Ibara, DaiFukkatsu, Mushihimesama, Futari, Deathsmiles, etc). These games are not recommended due to the large input lag compared to the console releases, and are generally in much earlier phases of playability/accuracy compared to older shmups like DOJ and Espgaluda that run very well in MAME now. They'll still work, but you're better off playing the newer ones on the console ports if you can.

[cave hermit]

I own every region free Cave port, but since that doesn't include Ibara or Mushihimesama (the first one)...

anyway thanks for the heads up!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

When I tried Ibara in MAMEPlus, it was one that seemed to be actually pretty well supported... though I suck at Ibara too much to notice if it has a lot of input lag or anything.

Mushi, Futari and Espgaluda 2 all felt a bit choppier and rough in emulation, DFK maybe a bit less so. It's worth noting that the system requirements to emulate these at fullspeed are quite a bit higher than say DOJ or Ketsui, don't be surprised if you get a bit of stuttering on a lower end machine if you try them (at least that was my experience last time I tried a few months ago, could have improved since then).

[trap15]

You should be using MAME Plus anyways, ShmupMAME has lots of gross hacks and uses an old version of MAME for little reason. Newer MAME is better performing, supports more games better, and actually has some semblance of user support.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you're playing games seriously for 1CC or score though, input lag is a huge deciding factor, and I want something that plays as close to the arcade as possible. True, ShmupMAME's hacks are not necessarily good for overall emulation accuracy, but if the game plays comparably close as possible to the arcade, I think input lag is that important that I prefer playing ShmupMAME for stuff like Progear where it reduces the input lag by a frame (and some games by multiple frames, there was a list posted in the ShmupMAME thread of what games had improvements).

I agree though, you can always use both. ShmupMAME for shmups, MAMEPlus for everything else. If MAMEPlus improved the input lag on shmups to perform more closely in line with the arcade original, it would definitely be the go-to MAME version. (Is there a way of doing this? Not sure if it's been discussed.)

[Paperclip]

Currently playing Crimzon Clover World Ignition and streaming it at http://www.twitch.tv/cyrlous.

[cave hermit]

I downloaded shmupmame and... Truxton doesn't work. Halp plz.

[trap15]

Except the hacks ShmupMAME uses are immediately visible. If they weren't something that actually impacted the game in any way, I wouldn't mind so much. Go play Kyuukyoku Tiger and tell me you don't notice enemy craters moving.

There are also a lot of bugs that have been fixed in the interval between ShmupMAME's version and the current version, most notably fixing the sprite priority issues in pretty much all NMK games (Thunder Dragon 2, Rapid Hero, Macross 2, etc.).

These are not minor issues. Just use MAME Plus. I doubt you'll actually notice the extra frame unless you're either superhuman or trying to feel the extra frame.

[cave hermit]

is this the mameplus you're talking about? http://sourceforge.net/projects/mameplus/

also what does it improve on over vanilla mame?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm not really fond of Kyuukyoku Tiger and I haven't played any of the other NMK games you mentioned, trap. I'm not saying ShmupMAME is the greatest for every shmup, but there's a lot of shmups it runs perfectly fine one compared to MAMEPlus.

I downloaded shmupmame and... Truxton doesn't work. Halp plz.

Works fine for me. Doublecheck the files Shmupmame is looking for - it might be Shmupmame is looking for a dump named slightly different (similar to how the current version of MAME broke support for QSound games like Progear and needs the QSound driver separate in the roms folder).

[cave hermit]

I decided to try mameplus, and it works with truxton along with the daioujou black label rom I couldn't get working from awhile back.
I'm still not sure what's the advantage of using mame plus over vanilla mame or shmup mame though.

[trap15]

MAME Plus adds custom buttons and autofire, and some other stuff.

[ACSeraph]

^And those custom buttons and autofire are a huge huge advantage for a lot of older games.

Most good arcades I've been to in Tokyo use a custom button setup with the actual PCBs, like they will have both a zero delay auto-fire button for mass point blank damage and a non auto-fire button which allows you to control your fire rate relative to the on screen shot limit. Particularly in games with low shot limits like Darius this confers a huge advantage and makes the games much more accessible.

You can set up the exact same features in MAME Plus/ Shmupmame for an experience similar to actual Japanese arcades.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Custom buttons are also a huge help for games with a charge shot function where you want rapid sometimes, and want to be able to hold down the shot others (R-Type games, Giga Wing, etc). If the game doesn't natively support autofire, custom buttons are a great help in setting up multiple fire buttons.

[cave hermit]

Autofire is a massive help for truxton; almost seems like an unfair advantage now! I never used a GUI for MAME, so I was curious to see what the GUI that came with plus looked like. It's an abomination. I have no clue what any of the functions do, it lists thousands of games I don't have the roms for, and the only usage I could get out of it was diagnosing rom errors. Sticking with the standard vanilla interface thank you very much.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Autofire is a massive help for truxton; almost seems like an unfair advantage now! I never used a GUI for MAME, so I was curious to see what the GUI that came with plus looked like. It's an abomination. I have no clue what any of the functions do, it lists thousands of games I don't have the roms for, and the only usage I could get out of it was diagnosing rom errors. Sticking with the standard vanilla interface thank you very much.

It helps to go into the checklist and disable "unsupported roms" or whatever they're called so the list doesn't display any games in red. F5 refreshes the game list (only view supported/listed games, that should help). The GUI takes a bit of getting used to and setting up, but once you've got it working it makes it easier to browse your game list, manage video settings, etc.