Despatche wrote:
Van_Dammesque is just mad because he got soundly beaten in a way that he claims is unfair, showing both a lack of understanding of this hobby and an alarming amount of bad faith. He's only ever posted in one of the Slap Fight score threads, and he seems incredibly protective of what he thinks is the "right" way to play this game.
I'll describe why Slap Fight is not intended to be played with autofire, as zaphod has said "there are exceptions", even trap15 claims "nearly universally" adopted, the emphasis are the words "exceptions" & "nearly", to voice an opinion against the use of autofire does not show bad faith or a lack of understanding - I am merely contending this is one of them exceptions:-
1. Intended game play:
(a) - Weapons. Just look at how the weapons are designed, let's assume that the more power-ups required in order to get a weapon then the more powerful that weapon actually is, in any game this is more often than not the case. With autofire the best weapon is the one that requires the least number of power-ups (or the default weapon in this case). The scenario, you reach the final boss on the 5th loop and the best weapon to use a the weakest? This is a paradox only resolved by invoking autofire, my contention is that this game is not DESIGNED to use autofire and the weakest weapon was never intended to so devastating.
Another case is the side shot becomes even more powerful, the player merely has to move past an enemy that is adjacent to his ship and the enemy is hit due to the spatial coverage the weapon now has due to autofire.
(b) - Impediment of other weapons by using autofire. Case in point: Laser. To use the laser at only short ranges requires the button to be pressed briefly, for long ranges it requires the button to be held down for a significant time (c.f. short range). This is a deliberate design by the game, by using autofire the laser weapon is rendered to be ineffective against any enemy. The range is so small as to be impracticable. If the game was designed to be used with autofire how can a whole weapon be rendered useless? Is this bad design or as I imagine autofire is not intended to be used?
(c) - In practice. In actuality, playing the game requires some physical endurance, repeatedly pressing fire can become very fatiguing to the hand/s. When using autofire this gives that gamer an unfair advantage. Coupling this argument with the scenario described in 1(a) shows the advantage gap widen further still.
(d) - Recovery. Like most games that use power-ups, the aim is to get back to a more powerful state after dying. In otherwords get back to a statethat uses normal gameplay tactics if dying didn't happen. This is far more favourable with autofire. Also like most other games, looping the game makes it harder, in this case Slap Fight does it numerous ways but here the amount of hits an enemy requires to be destroyed increases. This then gives the player using autofire an immense advantage (especially if take into account 1(c). Case 1 - look at the video at 56:08 of Perikles, those enemies are destroyed so quickly due to autofire that they look like it is 1st loop. Case 2 - 1:01:08, look at how ridiculously easy the weakest weapon is against a 'boss' on the 4/5th loop!
2. Hardware:
(a) - The original cabinet did not have autofire, I do not care if it where bolted on afterwards by arcade owners/ enthusiasts, the manufacturers did not ship it with autofire.
(b) - Bare metal. The DIP switches themselves also do not cater for autofire either - autofire is always ad-hoc.
Whilst I admire Perikles skills, these arguments are not in 'bad faith', it is an argument that Slap Fight was never intended to be used with autofire regardless of the culture surrounding other games with autofire (deliberately built in or not). Given the detriment of certain gameplay elements argued above and the fact that is was an arcade (coin munching machine) then the extension of length in time of playing the game by using autofire is not reflected in the gameplay's designed response loop after loop.
I have taken time to post a lengthy reply of the sole reason to address the severity of the claims and terms used by Despatche.
Regardless if someone agrees with these arguments or not, I believe the scores should be split.
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