Cave announces Deathsmiles as next Steam release!

[dan76]

Here we go with the "slowdown was unintentional" thing again.
All the slowdown in their games was intentional, either forced through hardware limitations or artificially programmed in. Get over it.

[HydrogLox]

• Slowdown is incidental to the hardware that the original product is developed against.
• Slowdown is intentional as some authority decides that it is "good enough" and that it would be "wasteful" to commit further time and effort to eliminate the slowdown.
• Slowdown becomes essential as customers come to rely on it.
• Slowdown introduces complexity into a port that the original product never had to contend with - the port not only has to (A) run the game but also (B) mimic the limitations of the original host platform (at least the desirable limitations) in a way that is consistent with the port host platform. Quite often (B) is a more difficult problem than (A) - and porting to a host platform that lacks hardware and performance standards only exacerbates the problem.

Edit: Finally, the same attitude (reality?) that allowed slowdown to creep into the original in the first place also works against the port ever becoming arcade perfect.

[Xyga]

I think trap15 wrote something about that, somewhere, can't find it anymore...

[trap15]

• Slowdown is incidental to the hardware that the original product is developed against.
• Slowdown is intentional as some authority decides that it is "good enough" and that it would be "wasteful" to commit further time and effort to eliminate the slowdown.
• Slowdown becomes essential as customers come to rely on it.
• Slowdown introduces complexity into a port that the original product never had to contend with - the port not only has to (A) run the game but also (B) mimic the limitations of the original host platform (at least the desirable limitations) in a way that is consistent with the port host platform. Quite often (B) is a more difficult problem than (A) - and porting to a host platform that lacks hardware and performance standards only exacerbates the problem.

Pretty perfectly summed up.

[DestroyTheCore]

Too bad Cave is not even aware of the importance of slow down in their own games.

[BulletMagnet]

I'm pretty sure they are, it's just that the portion of their audience that values that sort of thing is so small these days that it's probably not particularly time- or cost-effective to ensure everything is perfect.

[Xyga]

I wouldn't be too confident about that, sorry to repeat that but I think it's very plausible that the people in charge of those ports have no relation with the original arcade/shmup people of the company, nor any experience with shmups in general.
The kind of feedback they received from experienced players most probably came as a surprise to them, I'd bet at first they were like "WTF !?" and had to inquire.

[brentsg]

Interested players should just pick them up on Steam and refund them if it's bothersome. If they fix it later, great... but I wouldn't hold my breath.

[EmperorIng]

This has probably been discussed, but what zoom level do you all like to use? On my laptop, it takes 150% zoom to take up the full screen. While not totally ideal (it's not really that problematic), the default is too small for my monitor.

Also, since the release has about 8 different modes, does anyone have a recommended "best", or perhaps "easiest to clear" option?

[Tyjet]

It took an eternity (4-5ish months) for the NA version to get their slowdown/bug patch. I would think this release would be the same too, so we are stuck the game "as is" for awhile.

This has probably been discussed, but what zoom level do you all like to use? On my laptop, it takes 150% zoom to take up the full screen. While not totally ideal (it's not really that problematic), the default is too small for my monitor.

Also, since the release has about 8 different modes, does anyone have a recommended "best", or perhaps "easiest to clear" option?

114 on normal and 1.1 mode, 149 on arcade. This fills my screen without slightly clipping the top and bottom ( i.e. the score and counter numbers).

Either play plain old arcade or MBL arcade. Just choose the lowest levels and skip the extra stage and you're good to go.

[OmKol]

This has probably been discussed, but what zoom level do you all like to use? On my laptop, it takes 150% zoom to take up the full screen. While not totally ideal (it's not really that problematic), the default is too small for my monitor.

Since this game is locked to 720p I think (nvm that you can resize window) the same values (114 on normal and 149-150 on arcade) will work for everyone who wants to play this game on fullscreen.

[Obscura]

The slowdown's needed for balance (and arcade-accuracy), but that doesn't mean that CAVE had any idea what they were doing to make it appear. It always occurred to me as the sort of thing where they saw it and went "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" and from then on it was.

So many more game features actually originated from bugs, like increasingly higher difficulty, super attacks and combos, off the top of my head.

I'll just link you people to TVTropes' Ascended Glitch page. No, Cave slowdown is not there, for whatever reason.

Sure, but when those things went from "glitch" to "ascended glitch", the developers responsible had no problems coding them into the console ports. The SNES SF2 ports all had combos.

Cave is just the proverbial monkeys hammering on typewriters, and people are pretending that it's Shakespeare instead of random gibberish.

[CStarFlare]

That's not fair. Cave has programmed slowdown into basically every port it's done - I'm not sure what their issue is with deathsmiles (maybe to do with it being their first port for modern systems), but they typically get their slowdown programmed in to a quite acceptable level.

I really do hope they sort DS out though - much as I'd like to play it again, I'm holding off on purchasing until the slowdown issues are resolved.

[Van_Artic]

Please God, if you can hear me, SDOJ with no input lag and correct slowdown.

Thanks.

this
please
and hire some testers from this forum aka people who know these games back and forth so that cave doesnt screw us up royally again

PLEASE

This is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "omg, slowdowns for balance!" that the Cave fanboys always go on about were actually effectively random, and that Cave really had no idea what they were doing even when developing the originals.

this is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "zomg, slowdowns are bad!" that the 0.2% demographic of shmups forum always go on about were actually effectively untrue, and that you really have no idea what you are saying when typing this post.

[Shepardus]

This is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "omg, slowdowns for balance!" that the Cave fanboys always go on about were actually effectively random, and that Cave really had no idea what they were doing even when developing the originals.

this is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "zomg, slowdowns are bad!" that the 0.2% demographic of shmups forum always go on about were actually effectively untrue, and that you really have no idea what you are saying when typing this post.

I would try to respond to this if I could actually understand what you were trying to say.

[Van_Artic]

This is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "omg, slowdowns for balance!" that the Cave fanboys always go on about were actually effectively random, and that Cave really had no idea what they were doing even when developing the originals.

this is hilarious to me, because it implies that the "zomg, slowdowns are bad!" that the 0.2% demographic of shmups forum always go on about were actually effectively untrue, and that you really have no idea what you are saying when typing this post.

I would try to respond to this if I could actually understand what you were trying to say.

im being sarcastic pls dont shoot me

and im biased towards cave and cave slowdown in general