New-ish Schmup on the horizon.

[Captain]

A well-implemented lifebar will deplete in three hits or less, making it have no effect on difficulty (and health inflation of both you and enemies).

It should only serve to prevent immediate gradius-style recoveries if you mess up randomly, the fact that regular enemy bullets drain less of it further supports this, it is an anti-frustration feature at best.

For example, Steel Empire's lifebar.

Anything "chunkier" than that is bad though.

[ptoing]

Captain: You mean "granular"?

But yeah, the ESP games by Cave pretty much have lifebars which are disguised as lives since they do not erase and reset the position of the player avatar. Something like a small autobomb when getting hit that just clears bullets and giving you some breather, but actually taking a life without resetting your position would be fine as well imo. Again, I have not seen an Euroshmup style implementation of a lifebar which did not also come with sloppy level design.

[BIL]

Koutetsu Teikoku / Steel Empire on MD has a true lifebar (not ESP/Shikigami-style hitpoints, which are traditional "lives" presented a bit differently), and is soundly designed. Definitely completable even on Hard difficulty without a single hit taken or bomb used. If anything it uses the lifebar to allow some pretty hard patterns while keeping the difficulty to general console level, since you can afford to screw up here and there. Worth noting a coinop version was in the works. The MD one could pretty much implement one-hit kills and pass for an AC title difficulty-wise.

Unless we're talking strictly European-developed shooters with lifebars, haha. No idea there.

[ptoing]

Did not know about that example, but not surprised it is a Japense made one. They just had (and generally still have) a lot more regard and knowledge about the genre not to make dumb mistakes, many of which Western devs make all the time even though those problems were solved in the late 80s - mid 90s.

[Perikles]

There are quite a few quality shoot 'em ups with lifebars, especially multidirectional shooters seem to incorporate them very well. Elemental Master, Macross (SFC), Granada, Dragon Spirit & Saber, both SFC Kiki Kaikais, Super E.D.F., Undeadline, Mr. Heli no Daibouken, Kidou Soukou Dion, Senjou no Ookami II, Forgotten Worlds... If you get a lifebar as a compensation for terrible level design and/or unavoidable patterns, then the criticisms are justified. But it's just silly to shun games a priori simply because they don't operate on the usual extend/force field mechanism(s).

[trap15]

I dunno if I'd say Elemental Master has a life bar. It has a life counter that's commonly restored, but when you run out you game over, there's no additional life count.

Dragon Spirit & Saber don't have life bars, they have two hits per life. Undeadline is similar, though it's 3 hits and they can be replenished fairly often unlike Dragon Spirit. These are held down by them being checkpoint games, where when you die you have to repeat a section, which means they essentially have to be designed for you to not take mandatory hits.

Life bars are not an instant failure, but they are very very commonly used to disguise more critical flaws. That is why people who care about games being well designed generally shun any shooter with a life bar.

[ptoing]

But it's just silly to shun games a priori simply because they don't operate on the usual extend/force field mechanism(s).

I agree with that totally. All I am saying that in all Amiga shmups and other Euroshmups I played the lifebar helped them get away with sloppy level design. I am sure people can and have made shmups where you got a lifebar without it just being a "oh well, can't be bothered to do good level design where things are always fair so let's give the player health" kinda thing. And I even doubt that that was the line of thinking that those devs had. They just put in lifebars because they probably thought they helped to make the game better.

I remember from some Cave interview where I think Ikeda said that people at Cave who tried to make levels but were not actually halfway decent players themselves, they just could not do it. They just could not make levels that were hard in an interesting kinda way.
This makes a lot of sense, since if you are a bad player how would you know that your levels are hard because they are unfair or hard because you suck. In many cases a bad player very likely wont be able to make that distinction.

[Perikles]

@trap15:
It seems like a fairly semantic approach to differentiate between a lifebar and a life counter that basically works like a lifebar in every respect. You have to beat both Macross and Elemental Master on one "life" per credit, but you do not die on the first hit. Some games drop the one-hit kill system and give you multiple lives on top of that, as you pointed out. But they all have in common that you are allowed to take multiple hits before you die. I'd call it a lifebar when you start out with multiple hit points/energy cells/hearts/whatever that allow you to absorb damage (in some cases you get downgraded when that happens, just like losing a life in many any other games). Of course they are different from each other regarding the opportunities to replenish said lifebar but that's not unlike the differences between, say, force fields from one game to another. I definitely see where you're coming from, I'm just not convinced that there's a need to complicate these things when in reality it comes down to being able to withstand more than one hit from the get-go.

I'm not arguing about the fact that most shooters with a lifebar tend to be quite subpar, to say the least. I've had my fair share with Tekkaman Blade and the MD Xenon 2 Megablast. You do, however, miss out on quite a few great games if that is a criterion for exclusion to you.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

I think designers at the time were thinking "Why would someone send a ship with so little armor into battle?"

Read the classic thread. Hibou's posts are just great.

[Smartbomb]

Well, both so called eurosmups and the japanese games have things I enjoy. I just don't see the lifebar as a design flaw at all. It's simply a different design choice. That said, I enjoy games without it as well - like Raiden, R-Type or IO. But discarding something just because it has a life bar seems extremely narrow minded in my eyes. Most japanese shmups today are bullet hells. This is a subgenre that I'm not fond of, but I would never bash it as 'shit' just because of it.
Frankly I thought people here would like tips about new games as the genre isn't really flourishing anymore. Guess I was wrong. Not gonna happen again.

And to "Elaphy". That's the most egoistic and sad comment ever. Are you a dictator in real life or what?

[Lord Satori]

Protip: If you even so much as look upon a euroshmup with favor, you'll get lynched. People hate them with a passion here. It's one of those things you'll just have to get used to.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

I cry every tiem

There's some legit criticisms in this thread, however I can't think of one instance where all the flaws mentioned are combined into one unplayable shitshow. Even Project X and Blood Money have been 1ccd.

[Smartbomb]

@Lord Satori.

I hate an attitude like that shown here with a passion, so I'd rather leave and stay away.

Keep it up haters and stay in your sorry little pond.
Ciao!

[ptoing]

I cry every tiem

There's some legit criticisms in this thread, however I can't think of one instance where all the flaws mentioned are combined into one unplayable shitshow. Even Project X and Blood Money have been 1ccd.

Have you played Banshee? It has weird bullet handling (as in they are affected by the scrolling in a weird way), way too much vertical scrolling (as in you do not see a large portion of the playfield, underpowered player ship, enemies with generally too much health, health (and pretty much unavoidable bullets in places), inertia, boring ass levels. It does not have a shop, but it has a weird powerup system and seemingly random 1ups as well. I think it also might have shit shooting at you from off screen, not entirely sure about that one right now.

In a nutshell it is 1943 done really badly with graphics inspired by Bitmap Brothers stuff.

[MathU]

Well I for one think a little animosity towards shoddy game design is a healthy thing. High standards from the fanbase and dedication is the only reason the niche that scrolling shooters have been in for the past twenty years now has managed to continue producing good games. Let's not abandon our expectations for quality games just because production by the major good developers is in another lull at the moment.

And if you make a decent game and you're a Westerner, you'll get whatever respect you deserve. Just look at Jamestown, several of Shin'en's games, and the wide assortment of freeware shooters released over the years.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

@ptoing:

No, I never played that. I believe you though!

[Lord Satori]

@Lord Satori.

I hate an attitude like that shown here with a passion, so I'd rather leave and stay away.

Keep it up haters and stay in your sorry little pond.
Ciao!

For the record, I was trying to warn you, not jump on the bandwagon. I'm sorry that this is your first experience of this community.

[Xyga]

You are exaggerating things Satori, I don't believe everyone here 'hates' western shmups, and the poor reputation of those isn't a 'community thing'.

Don't mistake a disliking or lassitude of certain aspects for 'hate', look at Touhou stuff for instance, it's 100% Japanese and lots of members here can't stand it... but what's 'it' ? They just don't like some aspects, like the extreme re-usage of same formulas by Zun over the years, overemphasis on microdoging, unusual distribution of difficulty levels, irritating music, irritating lolishit, and mostly the super anal fanboys.
Do they actually hate the Touhou shmups ? No. It's not that simple.
And let's be honest you will find a lot of criticism for Cave, Raizing or Psikyo shit too.

One thing I believe is kind of brushing many members the wrong way, is the way 'euroshmup' makers or supporters tend to walk in an call some frozen-in-time designs 'fantastic', emphasize the 'true retro' thing, get media coverage and stuff, while they seem to ignore most of the rest, and naturally get offended when the raw crowd of shmuppers aren't all nice with the game.
It's just not good to expect forced positive thinking and opinions from a community that's free to criticize and make them look like the bad guys, even if they're rude, don't walk into a pub offering people a round of tea and complain when they reply 'dude are you for real?'

[BIL]

Additionally - XEXEX's lifebarized World revision gets mercilessly bukkaked around these here parts too. It's not about nationality. ;3 ;3 ;3

[rtw]

Game is released now, anyone tried it ? Noticed that on their blog the devs tried to avoid the "euro-shmup" trap.

http://www.1993game.com/

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Game is released now, anyone tried it ? Noticed that on their blog the devs tried to avoid the "euro-shmup" trap.

http://www.1993game.com/

It has the trigger-word "Xenon II" in the discription though.

I beat this in an afternoon, just need to find one more secret level.

[emphatic]

I was a beta tester, but I think I might have annoyed them with my "I only play Japanese arcade games elitism". I tried to push them into making an arcade style mode, without shop, weapon selection and all the other contrived stuff that seems necessary for Amiga games.

[d0s]

[rtw]

I was a beta tester, but I think I might have annoyed them with my "I only play Japanese arcade games elitism". I tried to push them into making an arcade style mode, without shop, weapon selection and all the other contrived stuff that seems necessary for Amiga games.

Looks like they did not listen to you

[emphatic]

Looks like they did not listen to you

Story of my life.

[Pedro Lambrini]

@Lord Satori.

I hate an attitude like that shown here with a passion, so I'd rather leave and stay away.

Keep it up haters and stay in your sorry little pond.
Ciao!

For the record, I was trying to warn you, not jump on the bandwagon. I'm sorry that this is your first experience of this community.

+1. I'm sorry, too, that you came here to share something that you've worked hard on with a group of people that you'd hope to show some kind of positive interest.

Well done guys. There seems to be some cross-talk here between 'constructive' positing and just being rude.

Why shouldn't it be a 'Euroshmup'? Why can't people enjoy that style too? There is no shortage of score-based twitch-fest Japanese shooters. If someone comes along and wants to share something and you're not interested why can't you either NOT post or if you have to share something why not just wish the guy luck and move on with your day?

There are a lot of paragraphs in this thread in justification and explanation of a poor attitude but it's actually really simple. Did you have to shit on the guy's hard work? Did you make the world a better place? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'no' to both those questions... If you genuinely think 'yes' for either question then you're a dick and you need to grow up.

Anyway, I'm sure there'll be some 'pithy' comments to put me right. And I'll ignore them, like an adult, as there's no debating with rudeness.

I'm actually a bit ashamed at the minute that I'm a member of a 'community' who happily welcome new people this way...

[Squire Grooktook]

I remember from some Cave interview where I think Ikeda said that people at Cave who tried to make levels but were not actually halfway decent players themselves, they just could not do it. They just could not make levels that were hard in an interesting kinda way.

I just want to say, I don't think this is completely true. In fact, I think sometimes the opposite is true. A lot of good designers are only moderately good players (Ikeda himself mentioned that looping Truxton was his best achievement, and M-Kai said his best feats were mostly just average clears and 1cc's, not particularly high scores). Of course, it's hard to tell what Ikeda meant by "not actually halfway decent players". Does that equate to "could not 2-all with a really good score", or "could not beat the first stage on one credit"?

In fact, when a shmup superplayer is designing a shmup or a fighting game tournament player is designing a fighter, I start to worry that it will lack innovation or be too "by the numbers". Because people like that who are so single-mindedly devoted to a single game or a single style of play are often more likely to have what I call "tunnel vision" - an inability to comprehend other styles of play or value new ideas or concepts, and tend to filter everything through their own little set of preferences, biases, and experiences. Sometimes unthinkingly.

You can see a bit of this from some high-level posters here, who never talk about game design except from the perspective of making the scoring systems more competitive. It's never anything like "whoa what if we put tentacles on your space ship".

"An okay game designer can only understand why they like the games they like. A great game designer can understand why other people like the games that they don't like." - A certain designer and programmer I admire.

[Harpuia]

When life bars are well-implemented and not just used to compensate for poor level design/enemy placement I tend to like it more than the usual 3 lives and point-based extends. Guwange has my favorite use of health in any shmup, and Kamui/RefleX handle it quite well also. I haven't actually played any of the really infamous euroshmups unless Iridion II or Nanostray count, which I still think are pretty good games.

[CStarFlare]

Game is released now, anyone tried it ? Noticed that on their blog the devs tried to avoid the "euro-shmup" trap.

http://www.1993game.com/

It has the trigger-word "Xenon II" in the discription though.

I beat this in an afternoon, just need to find one more secret level.

Is the game worth checking out or not? Your post kind of glosses over this.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

If you like euros, sure. But it's short and easy. There are a lot of weapons to try out but you can't use them all in one play through so I guess there's a little replay value. There's a hardcore mode with no shields but I can't imagine it being fun. They should have implemented some shield pickups more like Darius or listened to Emph.

The story behind the 23 year wait is what makes it a curiosity. I would have definitely pirated this as a kid, had it come out in 1993.