Strikers1945guy wrote:If you're doing anything to play the game in a way it wasn't intended to be played then yes it's cheating.
But the way i look at it, you really aren't. Let's look at a made up example: a game with three stages, that come in random order every time you play. This gives you a total of 6 possible stage orders. One particular stage order is more lucrative for scoring than any of the 5 other orders. So if you play this game, you start up and one of two scenarios occurs. You get a "bad" stage one and reset, or you get the "good" stage one and play. You complete the good stage one, and either roll a "bad" stage two and reset, or the "good" stage 2 and continue on. This is playing the game the way it was intended.
Now if you can generate a seed that gives you the preferred stage order, why would this be cheating? The only advantage this gives is saving you time from constantly re-rolling your game. You're still playing the game 100% as intended, just cutting out some of the down time.
And Kamui's skill doesn't really enter into it, as at this point her score is largely dependent on the rng. And bear in mind that some of the most lucrative scoring rng doesn't enter in until around 40+ minutes into the run, with Black Heart 2's mines. Hardly seems fair to have to play a credit that far in just to find out if the rng pooped out the right number for you.
I get what you're saying , and I don't disagree with you. I just think for the sake of competition we have to draw the line in the sand somewhere. For competitions sake I always felt it was easier to just stick with playing the game exactly as intended, even though for many games that can have negatives.
Kamui is a god and I'm always in awe watching his runs. Why doesn't he ever try something similar like Ibara? He could probably in time even beat Archers score.
Mister Midnight wrote:btw, cant trust them Koreans; remember Pearl Harbor
The game starts and ends with the credit you put in, not when you sit down at the machine. I've never seen a super play include multiple runs. You don't have to GoPro yourself driving to the arcade either, or be forced to walk. For these reasons I fully support save states for stage order, even though all my scores including S1945II have been and will always be on a PCB. That's only for "all-time"/world record leaderboards though. As soon as there is a time component then either everyone has to have the ability, or no one. Since time isn't a component of the shmups leaderboards, I vote you post your 2-8 score.
Where do you draw the line on how the game was "intended" to be played, though? Is using the overflow glitch in SDOJ cheating? Is using an autofire controller cheating?
NTSC-J:You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too. 1CCs | Twitch | YouTube
Xyga wrote:It's really awesome how quash never gets tired of hammering the same stupid shit over and over and you guys don't suspect for second that he's actually paid for this.
What about mechanics where it's hard to tell what the designers really intended? Is the suicide trick on Garegga's birds cheating? Is raising rank to milk Black Heart 2's grenades cheating? What about scoring in Bakraid? (the counterstop in the original version suggests that the score wasn't intended to go as high as it did, but the stage layouts suggest that they were intended to be fully chained, but fully chaining the stages almost inevitably pushes you to the counterstop score)
NTSC-J:You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too. 1CCs | Twitch | YouTube
WizardYuuka wrote:Not quite as cheating as using glitches in speedruns, but it's pretty up there.
Sorry for the OT, but using glitches in a speedrun isn't cheating. The whole point of a speedrun is to beat the game as fast as possible. There are sometimes "glitchless" categories, depending on the game, but for the most part speedruns are all about glitches and exploits.
atheistgod1999 wrote:Yes. It wasn't intended, so it's cheating.
So is playing the game on the default MAME startup state (which is the same everytime and essentially a save-state) cheating as well? That would be impossible in a real arcade.
Last edited by pegboy on Sun Nov 22, 2015 4:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
atheistgod1999 wrote:Yes. It wasn't intended, so it's cheating.
So is playing the game on the default MAME startup state (which is the same everytime and essentially a save-state) cheating as well? That would be impossible in a real arcade.
You need to make friends with or give your arcade manager a bunch of cash, and tell him you're going for the guinness world records or something. He'll probably let you reset the machine and even set the dip switches properly.
Arcades in Japan (the good ones anyway) have reset switches rigged up for Battle Garegga cabs because of the way the rank accumulates between credits.
I don't see a problem with popping a Psikyo game in one of these cabs and just doing the default stage order every time.
When I was playing Gunbird 2, I practiced strategies for all of the random stages at their max 1-4 or loop difficulty, but when it came time to do full runs I noticed that because I was recording replays in MAME with an .inp, I had to reset after each failed run and ended up playing the same default stage order, removing that element. Making a save state for the order you like is pretty borderline and should be noted (as I've done with Hagane's Sengoku Blade score in the Records thread), but I think the "cheater" label is a bit harsh. Luy's slow-mo Cyvern and VixyNyan's start button abuse Futari runs are much worse offenses.
Third option, and I'm slightly playing the devil's advocate here: Decide that a game where RNG determines your max. score potential has a design flaw big enough that can't be ignored and therefore isn't worth playing, at least not for score, and play something else instead.
No matter how good a game is, somebody will always hate it. No matter how bad a game is, somebody will always love it.
NTSC-J wrote:Arcades in Japan (the good ones anyway) have reset switches rigged up for Battle Garegga cabs because of the way the rank accumulates between credits.
I don't see a problem with popping a Psikyo game in one of these cabs and just doing the default stage order every time.
When I was playing Gunbird 2, I practiced strategies for all of the random stages at their max 1-4 or loop difficulty, but when it came time to do full runs I noticed that because I was recording replays in MAME with an .inp, I had to reset after each failed run and ended up playing the same default stage order, removing that element. Making a save state for the order you like is pretty borderline and should be noted (as I've done with Hagane's Sengoku Blade score in the Records thread), but I think the "cheater" label is a bit harsh. Luy's slow-mo Cyvern and VixyNyan's start button abuse Futari runs are much worse offenses.
Do those reset switches clear the RAM/memory out? I know in MAME there are two options for reset, one which clears RAM and one which doesn't. If you don't clear the RAM, the stage order will not revert back to the defaults on a reset. So I'm wondering if that switch would actually give you default stage order every time or not.
kane wrote:In my circles at least, we developed the habit of putting down the stage order together with our 1cc and score logs. I don't think it is any different from saying which ship type you pick. That solves the problem. Otherwise in some Psikyo games for example, difficulty changes aside, scores aren't even comparable based on what stages you get.
I honestly think this is the best solution to this problem. Just list your score along with the stage order. No ambiguity.
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