Cave & Capitalism

[moozooh]

How many of Cave's ports are worth buying over just playing the versions in MAME? I'm talking about objectively better, forget about any "moral" reasons. Is this latest Steam port really better than just playing whatever MAME version is out there? It sounds like a complete mess from what I'm seeing.

All of them, because non-arcade versions, including all the HD conversions, aren't in MAME (duh). Besides, the SH3 stuff is still near-unplayable, and this isn't about to change anytime soon.

The Steam port in particular is better, even as is, than anything that is found in MAME with regards to Mushihimesama.

[nekketsu]

Is this latest Steam port really better than just playing whatever MAME version is out there? It sounds like a complete mess from what I'm seeing.

Keep in mind that the angry grievances are the loudest, but not necessarily the majority. I've been playing the last few days without any ongoing stuttering or FPS issues. I mean I'm not begrudging those with issues, but those with no issues aren't really going to be saying much. They're too busy playing.

[system11]

[Iori Branford]

How many of Cave's ports are worth buying over just playing the versions in MAME? I'm talking about objectively better, forget about any "moral" reasons. Is this latest Steam port really better than just playing whatever MAME version is out there? It sounds like a complete mess from what I'm seeing.

Of just the ones I have:
R=Game & New Game Modes & New Graphics R=Mushi & 1.5, Arrange & Yes R=Ketsui & X-Mode & - R=Saidaioujou & 1.5 & Yes R=Akai Katana & Slash/Shin & Yes R=Daifukkatsu + Black & Arrange A & Yes R=Pork/Sweets & Arranges & - R=Deathsmiles II & IIX & - R=Espgaluda II & Black & Some R=Futari & - & Some R=Deathsmiles & Mega Black & Some
And Mushi PC issues are getting fixed fast. The last couple crash fixes were all I really needed.

[donluca]

Besides, the SH3 stuff is still near-unplayable, and this isn't about to change anytime soon

I've heard the exact opposite from members who once had the PCBs and decided to sell them because they couldn't tell differences between MAME and the real thing.

It would be interesting to make a MAME-Steam comparison of Mushi from people who actually played the game for a long time on original hardware and see which fares best.

[Bananamatic]

any port of mushi is 100x better than mame
fuck "new game modes" and "new graphics", anything past ketsui & doj is completely fucked up, huge input lag+no slowdown, only worth using as a demo

I've heard the exact opposite from members who once had the PCBs and decided to sell them because they couldn't tell differences between MAME and the real thing.

that's a load of shit, people who buy the pcbs around here usually don't play the games anyways so how would they know

[SapphireDensetsu]

How many of Cave's ports are worth buying over just playing the versions in MAME? I'm talking about objectively better, forget about any "moral" reasons. Is this latest Steam port really better than just playing whatever MAME version is out there? It sounds like a complete mess from what I'm seeing.

The Steam version is a straight port of the 360. Therefore, pretty much automatically better then both the PS2 port (blurry video in yoko, botched slowdown), and MAME (botched slowdown, broken savestates), even with the issues it has at present. Definitely worth the asking price in any case, especially with how expedient Degica has proven towards addressing bugs, etc.

[system11]

It would be interesting to make a MAME-Steam comparison of Mushi from people who actually played the game for a long time on original hardware and see which fares best.

If someone said they can't tell the difference between the Mushi PCB and MAME then they're not qualified to own the PCB and selling it was a good idea. MAME is very glitch, the port is better.

[emphatic]

that's a load of shit, people who buy the pcbs around here usually don't play the games anyways so how would they know

[Strider77]

Quick reminder why it is important to help out Cave bringing their games on Steam:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=47141

Oh please, so is the Saturn, PC Engine, the PCBs themselves.... most every "shooter" console out there is out of production.

[Opus131]

You are right. Who cares whether we can get those games at a reasonable price on an ever lasting platform. After all, we can just wait half a decade for an emulator, or buy expensive out of production hardware.

[MintyTheCat]

ban please

Why don't you post some 'clever' image spam and get the thread shut down too?

I know your tactics.

Yes, he does have a penchant for this.

It is not kinky or clever, Trap.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

20$ for an arcade shmup is a bargain considering you could easily spend way more than that playing it at an actual arcade over the course of a year, let alone a lifetime.

People want amazing games, but they want to pay developers a pittance for them, because the mass market's a bunch of greedy bastards.

[pegboy]

20$ for an arcade shmup is a bargain considering you could easily spend way more than that playing it at an actual arcade over the course of a year, let alone a lifetime.

People want amazing games, but they want to pay developers a pittance for them, because the mass market's a bunch of greedy bastards.

Is anyone really complaining about the price? It seems to me people are pissed off because they feel like they are paying to beta test broken software, not because it's "too expensive".

[MintyTheCat]

I have to agree. I saw the same silly, myopic arguments a couple of years back on the NeoGeo Forum over the hallowed NeoGeo-X with the same die hard statements about "new games", "have to support SNK" and so on.

All bullshit of course.

That's their problem to worry about, not yours.

No, that's our problem. What does Cave care about extending their legacy, if it is no longer profitable? They can just close doors and move on. We are the only ones that stand to lose from this.

Opus, you are missing the point.
Some hard facts of life for you here: the strong survive and the truth is the only thing that remains.

If you release shit and people don't like it then it is your fault for releasing it.

I think that there is a wider issue here of Developer being lazy these days too: "sure, we'll just patch it later - send them an engineering release" - those words are lazy.
No one wants to play a "to be patched" game. We want games that have been put through their paces both as a piece of software and as a game so that accounts for the technical and implementation aspects and then the play aspects. If you take that approach then you stand to impress more first time and people come back for more.

Don't rely on your past laurels - that leads to bureaucracy and idle, lack-lustre waste and ruin.

[Opus131]

Sorry, but the *point* is the objective, practical reality of the situation. Bugs can be fixed. They will be fixed given Digica current record. All that matters is to have the games, everything else is just nonsense, and puerile nonsense at that.

[Strider77]

New Cave Release = Hissy Fits

[MintyTheCat]

Sorry, but the *point* is the objective, practical reality of the situation. Bugs can be fixed. They will be fixed given Digica current record. All that matters is to have the games, everything else is just nonsense, and puerile nonsense at that.

And hope to counter the negative reactions on release? That harms you - hence why Devs need to get this right at the start instead of playing mop up duty down the line.

[Strider77]

instead of playing mop up duty down the line.

Welcome to the digital age....

[MintyTheCat]

instead of playing mop up duty down the line.

Welcome to the digital age....

Oddly as it sounds, as I work in development, but I am not really in the digital age in that sense. My software fucking works and is tested. I blame the Universities for allowing this lazy attitude. It started when they transitioned from C++ to Java - no one had any idea about writing tight code after that and it absolutely shows. I now feel old as I still know exactly how many cycles most instructions are how to handle memory pages - they can write it as an epitaph I suppose...

[moozooh]

It occurs to me that in the present age of multiplatform games, development inevitably shifts towards hardware-agnostic codebase which understandably goes at odds with being tight. Take something like Java—it's super slow but it runs the same way on everything.

Back in the 80s and 90s developers usually had to either dabble in the assembly of the system they were coding for or write everything in it—these days the bulk of the developers seems to be completely disengaged from the hardware their code will run on. Either that, or we have an even more convoluted scenario where code written precisely for a particular platform is painstakingly adapted for another one in some way. No wonder 95% of old non-PC games on Steam are wrapped in an emulator—the devs would never see the end of it otherwise.

[MintyTheCat]

It occurs to me that in the present age of multiplatform games, development inevitably shifts towards hardware-agnostic codebase which understandably goes at odds with being tight. Take something like Java—it's super slow but it runs the same way on everything.

Back in the 80s and 90s developers usually had to either dabble in the assembly of the system they were coding for or write everything in it—these days the bulk of the developers seems to be completely disengaged from the hardware their code will run on. Either that, or we have an even more convoluted scenario where code written precisely for a particular platform is painstakingly adapted for another one in some way. No wonder 95% of old non-PC games on Steam are wrapped in an emulator—the devs would never see the end of it otherwise.

I agree entirely. It is weird how most of these devs have no idea about resources and writing tight code.

Still, if you work with DSPs you may well be writing in Assembly still. There are specific situations where Assembly wins out and you need someone who can write tight code.

I was at a party the weekend before and met an american Game Developer. We were discussing what we do and what we use. He told me that he found it odd that anyone would write in C and Assembly these days as most of his industry use higher languages and lots of scripting languages.

I use Scripting languages too but never for anything on the target unless it is Linux or QNX.

This exchange of machine cycles, memory, etc. for ease of implementation wins out though but it is painful to see such tat pass for good enough these days all the same.

[MintyTheCat]

No mushi for me for now.

I cannot adequately express to you how close I came to needing to put a 'C' in that - very tempting indeed, young sir.

[NTSC-J]

How many of Cave's ports are worth buying over just playing the versions in MAME? I'm talking about objectively better, forget about any "moral" reasons. Is this latest Steam port really better than just playing whatever MAME version is out there? It sounds like a complete mess from what I'm seeing.

the SH3 stuff is still near-unplayable, and this isn't about to change anytime soon.

I can really only speak with confidence about Muchi Muchi Pork!, but I've played it extensively on all available platforms and it runs fine in MAME. It's missing a lot of the slowdown present in the PCB, but so is the 360 port. You can compare a video I made of a bug I found while playing it on MAME with video of the PCB and the 360 port's 1.01 mode. Clearly some areas like the second mid-boss in that stage have the most slowdown on the PCB, but the MAME version is close enough overall to be worth playing seriously and a far cry from "near-unplayable". I doubt a Steam port of Muchi Pork would be any more accurate.

And if you're really serious about chasing scores, playing a version with less slowdown would prepare you even better for "the real thing" on the PCB. The other way around may be a different story.

[CStarFlare]

That's really good to hear about MMP as it's probably one of the games I miss most from my 360 collection (and I expect it to be one of the last to be considered for a Steam port).

[Opus131]

It occurs to me that in the present age of multiplatform games, development inevitably shifts towards hardware-agnostic codebase which understandably goes at odds with being tight. Take something like Java—it's super slow but it runs the same way on everything.

Back in the 80s and 90s developers usually had to either dabble in the assembly of the system they were coding for or write everything in it—these days the bulk of the developers seems to be completely disengaged from the hardware their code will run on. Either that, or we have an even more convoluted scenario where code written precisely for a particular platform is painstakingly adapted for another one in some way. No wonder 95% of old non-PC games on Steam are wrapped in an emulator—the devs would never see the end of it otherwise.

This is true, and the consequence of this is also rising costs for support. Considering all the rumors about Cave being on the verge of going under, i'm sure Degica's budget for this port ranged between a square meal a day and a pack of cigarettes. It is much, much worse when multi-billion dollars companies like Ubisoft or Bethesda release their unoptimized, broken garbage, and are rarely called on it.

For the record, i'd like to apologize a bit for getting heated in this discussion. As a late comer to the genre, i'm not really accustomed to having to go through all those hoops to play those games. Buying expensive PCBs and a cabinet to put them in is out of the question. I just don't have that kind of cash. And the idea of having to buy a Japanese Xbox, having it modified, buying each game individually at what appears to be rather steep prices. It's a bit much. And the mobile versions? The hell with that. I've been mulling over the problem for this past year or so and when i saw they were finally starting to port those games on PC (after i was told numerous times it was never, ever going to happen), i was just elated. Having to suffer through a bugged release to me is nowhere near as bad as the alternative.

[Xyga]

Now again sorry to repeat myself but;

Japanese 360's arent that hard to find and used units sold whithin communities are quite affordable (easily under 200€ where I am).
You don't have to mod anything, just plug and play.
(maybe a stepdown power adapter depending on where you live. I got an Asian model so I didn't even have to bother with that.)

And the Cave Collection, wich is a GOOD deal for someone who got none of the games, is still available from Solaris-Japan for 233€ + shipping.

There's still Ketsui and/or DOJ to buy separately but unlike PS/MMP for instance those don't go for ridiculous prices.
Got Ketsui for 20€ new.

It's all real and not what I would call a luxury, for the price of a single pcb or kit you get pretty much everything. Just saying.

[Despatche]

And if you're really serious about chasing scores, playing a version with less slowdown would prepare you even better for "the real thing" on the PCB. The other way around may be a different story.

i've been trying to tell people this exact thing for years.

people can be afraid of, say, mushi ultra all they want, but they can at least play original and maniac alright enough. you kinda have to grind slowdown to get used to it anyway, so less slowdown is better for easier modes like that.

the easier modes are why no wait options are so cool.

[Drachenherz]

No mushi for me for now.

I cannot adequately express to you how close I came to needing to put a 'C' in that - very tempting indeed, young sir.

Hehehe, you have a dirty little mind.


bjt you are absolutely right hihihihi.

[MintyTheCat]

No mushi for me for now.

I cannot adequately express to you how close I came to needing to put a 'C' in that - very tempting indeed, young sir.

Hehehe, you have a dirty little mind.


bjt you are absolutely right hihihihi.

I am terrible and I need some kind of help I think