The scrub rules of STG game design

[Sengoku Strider]

Coming from the FGC a scrub is not based on being good or bad as a player. It's more of not having a learning/adapting mindset vs blaming the game and its design, other outside circumstances.

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly
And is also known as a busta
Always talkin' about what he wants
And just sits on his broke ass

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, that's whay I'm actually doing. Get score + player position to generate the "random" order of attacks. I still think it's "random enough", I'd be surprised if someone managed to reach the boss with the same exact score, on purpose, two times.

It'll be fine, for practical intents and purposes it's generally really hard or impossible to do RNG manipulation to this extent when playing a game live and not in a tool-assisted fashion. The only instances of players being able to deliberately manipulate RNG are usually in cases where there's a known RNG table that only advances when you take specific actions in a turn-based fashion, and you can do actions to "waste" the RNG results you don't want (FFXII the stupidly rare bullshit stuff like Seitengrat where you go into battle, cast Cure a number of times until it gives you values that let you know where you are in the RNG table, and then get your ultra rare treasure by opening a chest after following even more convoluted steps, give this a read if you want your brain to melt at how dumb it is, like seriously, who would waste their time trying to obtain this, it's silly).

[m.sniffles.esq]

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly
And is also known as a busta
Always talkin' about what he wants
And just sits on his broke ass

HEY! Let's not forget those who walk instead of driving (environment be damned), live with their mothers (even if they're 80 and riddled with cancer), don't give their shorty any love (even if they're fucking that creep in their yoga class), and especially those who want to have sex with me but have no money.

These too are scrubs (and I think I may be a hooker...)

[Lander]

In practice, I don't think many games are actually deterministic to the level of obsession enumerated in the last few posts. The effort:payoff ratio only really manifests at the peak of high-level play, or for specialized stuff like shareable replays or unbounded rewind, and a regular indie shmup isn't going to live or die off those features.

(There's also the fact that modern EZ engines don't really care about such trifles, but I feel like I've beaten that horse enough over the years )

give this a read if you want your brain to melt at how dumb it is, like seriously, who would waste their time trying to obtain this, it's silly).

Holy moly I'm in favor of well-stashed secrets, but that reads like intentional fuel for the playground conspiracy fire. No dude, I swear, I found an invisible bow in an invisible chest and it's the best in the game! Trust!

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, that's whay I'm actually doing. Get score + player position to generate the "random" order of attacks. I still think it's "random enough", I'd be surprised if someone managed to reach the boss with the same exact score, on purpose, two times.

It'll be fine, for practical intents and purposes it's generally really hard or impossible to do RNG manipulation to this extent when playing a game live and not in a tool-assisted fashion. The only instances of players being able to deliberately manipulate RNG are usually in cases where there's a known RNG table that only advances when you take specific actions in a turn-based fashion, and you can do actions to "waste" the RNG results you don't want (FFXII the stupidly rare bullshit stuff like Seitengrat where you go into battle, cast Cure a number of times until it gives you values that let you know where you are in the RNG table, and then get your ultra rare treasure by opening a chest after following even more convoluted steps, give this a read if you want your brain to melt at how dumb it is, like seriously, who would waste their time trying to obtain this, it's silly).

Sophstar does have some random stuff that also uses the player position to generate its randomness, but it's all graphical, nothing that affects gameplay. There are some more obvious patterns that are changed it you are either to the left or to the right of the boss, but those are easy to understand and manipulate (and it's by design). But some of the explosions effects are indeed random, but decided by things that are on screen, not truly "random".

-

Regarding small hitboxes... I find interesting how long the "shmup industry" took to notice this makes for better gameplay, no matter what. I love some of the old school shmups (Star Force and Gyrodine are two games I really enjoy, even though I know a lot of people hate Gyrodine), but all of them would be better with a smaller hitbox.

Collision detection should always work in the player's favour.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Holy moly I'm in favor of well-stashed secrets, but that reads like intentional fuel for the playground conspiracy fire. No dude, I swear, I found an invisible bow in an invisible chest and it's the best in the game! Trust!

No kidding. If it requires that much luck or effort to obtain, why even bother? Plan a more practical strategy around something you can reliably obtain. Apparently the suspicion is they're meant to be easter eggs and not used seriously, but still, look at the effort players go to obtain them when they know they're there, it's silly.

It's like the 1/256 weapons in Earthbound, none of them are remotely practical or useful for the amount of grinding they take to get one to drop. By the time you do, you'll likely be wildly overpowered for the remainder of the game and get by on sheer inflated stats alone.

[emphatic]

Inertia on the ship/character gives me an inverted erection.
Gimmicky control schemes are for arrange modes.
Drowning the screen in popcorn enemies you have no chance of killing, even at full power is just as bad as 3+ seconds of dead air when you speed kill a mid boss.

[Shatterhand]

Inertia on the ship/character gives me an inverted erection.
Gimmicky control schemes are for arrange modes.
Drowning the screen in popcorn enemies you have no chance of killing, even at full power is just as bad as 3+ seconds of dead air when you speed kill a mid boss.

Inertia should only be used if, somehow, you designed the game around it. There's only one game IMO that made it right, but because the game WAS designed around it: Exerion.

It's awful in every other game I ever played which has it, including Cygni with its "it's not inertia" but.. well, it is.

What is a "Gimmicky control scheme" ?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It's awful in every other game I ever played which has it, including Cygni with its "it's not inertia" but.. well, it is.

I've enjoyed it in very limited uses as a level gimmick such as when your ship moves through a waterfall it gets pushed down slightly, or your ship moves slower when going through a sludge or something, but it has to be used sparingly.

What is a "Gimmicky control scheme" ?

Having to play Dodonpachi with the Kinect controller (after unlocking it in a visual novel).

[Lander]

Do ∀kashicverse's street fighter motions fall under the remit of input gimmickry? Not played it, but the idea sounds decent on paper.
Though, I've always been one for complex input schemes. Use every part of the buffalo and then some

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I do a lot of reading and analysis on game design in my pastime so I'll give an honest take on this list. I don't see it as bait, just a list of thought provokers with some sarcasm here and there.

1. Shmups should never have surprise kills that require you to have seen the level layout before to pass. Good (scrub) design dictates that a player with lighting relexes could in theory no miss a game on reaction during the first playthrough. No memo plz!

This point is spot-on, but i want to add one thing. In addition to just using visual windups like warnings, chargeups or other animations, one should remember the importance of consistency. One of the worst surprise kills is being rammed by an enemy emerging from whatever place suddenly. If enemies never emerge from the left, for example, the player won't see it coming, but if the game is full of enemies coming from both sides, the player will never be on the left edge to begin with. So unless you're ready to use a warning or clear visual indicator for enemies spawning, keep your spawns consistent.

2. Games shouldn't expect you to learn esoteric or hidden mechanics. A game should explicitly, within the game itself, communicate how it is meant to be played. Or else there is a failing on the part of the developers.

This is up to preference of the developer. The real crime is having an unskippable, inbuilt tutorial. There's two ways to go around it: If your mechanics are simpler and can just be conveyed through gameplay, one can make the first bit of the game have segments specifically designed to encourage the use of the mechanics. Some devs go further and give you a visual example of the mechanic as well, typically used by an NPC (rare in shmups, however). Another way to go, preferred if the mechanics are very complex, is to have the tutorial included separately and optionally - you can tell the player how to play but leave it as their choice to learn naturally or by force. Lastly it's important to understand that learning base mechanics and learning every use case for them is different. Ex: you can launch an enemy for big damage vs you can launch an enemy to make an opening in a tough attack (i call this one what if zero wing but good)

3. Dying should never be beneficial to the player. Using lives as a resource to reduce rank, build bomb stock, checkpoint milk, extend chain combo etc. breaks an unwritten rule of good game design. The player should never have to die.

This was discussed by me and fellow members on these very forums and we touched on some good points. It's the actual act of dying that's cringeworthy, not the act of manipulating the game by using your resources. Some proposed solutions were directly using your lives as resources or making deaths have a direct impact beyond a respawn. For example: if your lives are presented as shields, it's more believable that you can sacrifice shield energy for a powerful attack and thus "die", with the game treating it as a death in all regards. Another example was being able to willingly detonate your ship - I don't like this one personally but it's objectively a fine solution that's pretty gritty, or badass if the pilot ejects.

4. Visibility should always be number one even if that means the aesthetic design of the game is in service of that ideal. Desaturated backgrounds and brightly colored bullets are the ultimate solution.

This is spot-on except for the proposed ultimate solution, though it did make me chuckle. You don't necessarily need desaturated backgrounds, just good contrast between the backgrounds and bullets, and a consistent color profile for the bg. If your bg is space, the bullets are bright. If you're flying in the sky, the bullets are dark. Apply this principle to any bg.

5. You should never be forced to miss powerups to play optimally. Items are there to be grabbed and power progression should be smooth and always in the player's favor. No downgrades or dodging troll powerups.

I can easily agree on the troll powerup thing, which while funny rarely brings any value to the game other than baiting new players. This assumes the powerups aren't used as a bullet substitute but are just offered at a bad point, of course. The rest of this point is a meme, however, because many shmups have powerups that swap your weapons, allowing you not just to pick optimally but also up to preference! In that sense even a "troll" powerup might get used by someone who thinks against the meta, so the only real conclusion is that you shouldn't FORCE bad powerups on players, let them choose.

6. Checkpoints are bad and are simply a relic of a prehistoric age. Any game would be improved by adding instant respawn. Checkpoint milking was an oversight and bad game design.

Meme rule. You can balance a game around checkpoints or around respawns, they're different schools of design when it comes to lives. The only thing to avoid is making a checkpoint impossible. Checkpoint milking is objectively bad, however, for the same reasons stated for rule 3, plus repetitive gameplay.

7. The meta game should not be a result of a happy accident where designers have created systems with unforeseen consequences and complexity. They should be in control of how their game is played in the intended way and patch out safespots, exploits, and glitches.

If the above rule is a meme, this rule is a nothingburger. Whether or not a bug or playstyle is intentional doesn't matter. What matters is only how it impacts the game. If it's making it more unfun than it should be or actively detrimental to gameplay/scoring, fix it. Otherwise, leave it. A good protip is that you can always make it a toggle that adds an indicator to final score submissions, if you're worried about "unintentional" gameplay. This separates the two without removing fun.

8. Good balance requires a smooth difficulty curve from easy to challenging wihout noticable peaks and valleys. Spikes such as a long, tough boss fight earlier in the game are result of poor balancing.

Generally seen as true on a wide perspective, but peaks and valleys are actually fine. It's completely justified to give the player a little breather after a tough segment, just don't lose track of overall difficulty after it. Placing a hard encounter in the early game only to keep the player underwhelmed afterwards is also genuinely a poor move.

9. If you have a shield you should still never be forced to take damage. If it's nearly impossible to avoid shield damage then the game is badly designed. A shield was tacked on a a band-aid to paper over the imbalances.

Completely true rule. A shield is just an extra life with some benefits, treat it the same way.

10. View should be direct top down or side view. Angled perspectives like those in Raystorm make it too difficult for the player to judge dodges.

Design choice. Uncommon perspectives do, in fact, make things more difficult, but they can help make the game feel more unique and stylish. One of my favorite examples is Ether Vapor, which sometimes challenges the player to dodge with a front-facing perspective, while still keeping most of the game traditional horizontal/vertical. There's no wrong move here unlike what the rule implies, just make sure the end result actually looks cool enough to justify the nuance.

11. The ideal length of a game is 20 to 40 minutes. We can't have shmups that consist of multiple 10 min routes or longer campaigns with saves.

There's no such thing as an ideal length of a game, there's only an ideal length of a playthrough. If your shmup somehow lasts 50 hours, as long as you allow the player to save every 30 minutes or less, you still have a good product. The rest of this rule is a meme.

12. No item shops. They interrupt the action.

Another meme. Item shops are generally seen as unpopular due to euroshmup connections but as long as you aren't selling overpoweredness to the player, feel free to add one to your game. Ideally these should contain utility, failsafes that cannot be bought en masse, or alternatives to the player's loadout that don't impose power creep. Things to actually avoid include making everything affordable all the time or conversly making an item that requires you to save for the whole game, at least not without letting the player know it exists early.

13. Hitboxes should be significantly smaller than sprites. Only outdated and archaic games have hitboxes roughly as big as the actual player sprite.

Another meme rule. Only thing that matters is how clear the hitbox is, anything beyond that is a matter of balancing and what sort of patterns the player is dealing with.

14. Gradius syndrome: the player shouldn't be punished severely for a single death no matter how OP the powerup system is.

This one is entirely correct. Avoid creating checkpoints that make recovery stupidly difficult. If you struggle with thinking of how to allow a player to recover from something, the answer is often just deleting the checkpoint and letting them use the previous one. A long segment is much better than a deathtrap checkpoint. On the other hand, if this happens with respawns it just means that powerups have too much value in your game. You can consult Cho Ren Sha for what I consider an impeccable balance of powered up vs unpowered.

15. No high HP enemies during levels to antagonize the player. They disrupt the flow and only belong in euroshmups.

To rephrase this rule into something meaningful: The player should be able to dispatch all enemies with skillful play, avoid placing enemies that the player has no hope of destroying. If you want an enemy to "antagonize the player" without dying, make it invincible and let the player do other fun things with it, like destroying attachments or having to shoot its attacks or otherwise counter them with unique mechanics.

16. No randomness ever. Unpredictability is a scourge that should be stamped out.

A nice meme to end the list off with. In reality it's just a matter of choice. You have to ask yourself if you want your game to be memorization-friendly or not. Not all games are memorizers, but most games can still be memorized if you commit hard. When you add randomness, your goal shouldn't be to deny people who enjoy memorization, it should be to add fun and replayability to the game. Avoid randomness that impacts score, however, it's just a shit move.

And to finalize this wall of text, I'll add a rule of my own: Try to genuinely remove unpurposeful milking from your game. Very few players find the act of replaying a checkpoint over and over, spending ages during a boss fight or killing the same enemies over and over entertaining. A lot of the fun of milking can be acheived using more modern and elegant methods. For example, extra enemy waves can be triggered by killing enemies quickly or without wasting resources. Extra boss phases can be triggered by destroying parts of bosses, using certain weapons/mechanics instead of waiting long enough, or by meeting specific requirements. A segment that loops for a while until you do X can get more difficult or varied instead of constantly spawning the same enemies (and should also end after a bit).

Lastly, I have my own controversial take - checkpoints should wipe your score to the checkpoint. There, I said it. If you design your checkpoints to not be unforgiving it shouldn't be an issue. I'd also make it visible exactly where the checkpoints are as well. I will note that this final point is a lot less objective than everything else on the list - it's purely from my own preference and design philosophy. Repetition sucks especially if it becomes forced or meta, and I'd gladly eradicate it. But, again, that's just my view.

[Lander]

I don't see it as bait, just a list of thought provokers with some sarcasm here and there.

That's this thread's great secret - one way or other, it's a very effective discussion factory!

This point is spot-on, but i want to add one thing. In addition to just using visual windups like warnings, chargeups or other animations, one should remember the importance of consistency. One of the worst surprise kills is being rammed by an enemy emerging from whatever place suddenly. If enemies never emerge from the left, for example, the player won't see it coming, but if the game is full of enemies coming from both sides, the player will never be on the left edge to begin with. So unless you're ready to use a warning or clear visual indicator for enemies spawning, keep your spawns consistent.

One thing I've wanted to experiement with for a while is a screen-edge radar; a thin LED strip type thing whose lights glow based on distance to the closest enemy. Seems like it'd solve quite handily for swoop-in deaths, while adding some room to mess with the player's expectations by having formations or bosses lurk out of sight in the lead-up to their formal spawn.

This is spot-on except for the proposed ultimate solution, though it did make me chuckle. You don't necessarily need desaturated backgrounds, just good contrast between the backgrounds and bullets, and a consistent color profile for the bg. If your bg is space, the bullets are bright. If you're flying in the sky, the bullets are dark. Apply this principle to any bg.

There are clever ways to do this, as well - example, the reticle in various first-person games that inverts the color of whatever's behind it. Not necessarily aesthetically pleasant as-is, but color theory offers plenty of ways to take that base and use it to pick a 'nicest contrasting color' procedurally.

[Shatterhand]

To rephrase this rule into something meaningful: The player should be able to dispatch all enemies with skillful play, avoid placing enemies that the player has no hope of destroying. If you want an enemy to "antagonize the player" without dying, make it invincible and let the player do other fun things with it, like destroying attachments or having to shoot its attacks or otherwise counter them with unique mechanics.

I think if a player may *have to choose* between destroying the popcorn enemies or go for the bigger one. I don't think it's a bad design decision. I think the player should be able to destroy all enemies, but he may have to choose between one or another in a run. Making impossible to destroy EVERY enemy in a run is OK to me.

And to finalize this wall of text, I'll add a rule of my own: Try to genuinely remove unpurposeful milking from your game. Very few players find the act of replaying a checkpoint over and over, spending ages during a boss fight or killing the same enemies over and over entertaining. A lot of the fun of milking can be acheived using more modern and elegant methods. For example, extra enemy waves can be triggered by killing enemies quickly or without wasting resources. Extra boss phases can be triggered by destroying parts of bosses, using certain weapons/mechanics instead of waiting long enough, or by meeting specific requirements. A segment that loops for a while until you do X can get more difficult or varied instead of constantly spawning the same enemies (and should also end after a bit).

What really irks me is that its pretty easy to avoid milking, and all of your points I agree. I also think it's fine if you game has a Psyvariar like mechanic where you may choose to keep the boss alive to score points but, like in Psyvariar, the boss phases timeout pretty quickly and you barely ever have any boss pattern repeating. It doesn't feel much as milking, but more as a risky choice to score more points versus safely destroying the boss quickly and scoring less points.

Psyvariar even makes it more interesting that, if you are playing the game "correctly", you are always so damn powerful that bosses go down very quickly if you want to shoot them. But if you are playing "correctly", you probably won't, hehe

[m.sniffles.esq]

Can someone please define 'scrub' for me (other than a guy that thinks he's fly and walks instead of driving)?

The OP never does, and I don't know if they're implying it's a good or bad thing. Like, is a game that adheres to all 16 rules a scrub? Or is a scrub one that breaks them? If you break one rule are you a scrub? Or are there degrees?

[Lemnear]

Can someone please define 'scrub' for me (other than a guy that thinks he's fly and walks instead of driving)?

The OP never does, and I don't know if they're implying it's a good or bad thing. Like, is a game that adheres to all 16 rules a scrub? Or is a scrub one that breaks them? If you break one rule are you a scrub? Or are there degrees?

If you break all of them the game will surely turn into shit .
Some of them you can break, so they are not all "essential rules", it's more of a percentage.

[m.sniffles.esq]

If you break all of them the game will surely turn into shit .
Some of them you can break, so they are not all "essential rules", it's more of a percentage.

Okay, so is a game that breaks (some of) them the 'scrub'? Or the game that adheres to them?

[Bassa-Bassa]

According to the author:

Coming from the FGC a scrub is not based on being good or bad as a player. It's more of not having a learning/adapting mindset vs blaming the game and its design, other outside circumstances.

[Lethe]

Can someone please define 'scrub' for me (other than a guy that thinks he's fly and walks instead of driving)?

The OP never does, and I don't know if they're implying it's a good or bad thing. Like, is a game that adheres to all 16 rules a scrub? Or is a scrub one that breaks them? If you break one rule are you a scrub? Or are there degrees?

The rules are excuses used by small-minded tryhards to declare whether a game is "well-designed" or not, in lieu of appreciating it for what it is.
According to such people, if one finds oneself getting annoyed with deviations from the rules, then it's the game's fault for being bad, not your fault for being bad.
Though some may be generally sensible ideas, none of the "rules" are hard and fast or crucial to whether a game is good or bad, and I would not hesitate to call anyone who believes them to be such a scrub.

[m.sniffles.esq]

According to the author:

Coming from the FGC a scrub is not based on being good or bad as a player. It's more of not having a learning/adapting mindset vs blaming the game and its design, other outside circumstances.

I (naturally) saw this, and it sort of assumes you already know what it means due to your knowledge of the FGC (whatever the fuck that is)*

So a 'scrub' is a player that is neutral (neither good or bad), that is unwilling to meet the game on it's own terms? Okay... Are these 16 'rules' the terms that this player refuses to meet? And if so, who gives a fuck seeing that it's neither a good or bad thing?

Can this scrub thing not be defined in 5 to 10 words? I mean, you can define 'existentialism' in 5 to 10 words. Is it a more abstract concept than that? (I'm just trying to wrap my head around as to why every attempt at definition seems to be making it more abstract)

*The interweb tells me this is Florida Gateway College. Do they teach a class on this?

Edit: sorry I was typing when this appeared

Though some may be generally sensible ideas, none of the "rules" are hard and fast or crucial to whether a game is good or bad, and I would not hesitate to call anyone who believes them to be such a scrub.

So a 'scrub' is someone who will only accept memorizers and micro-dodgers?
If so, I just did it in eight words. Perhaps the OP should add that for idiots like me that have no idea what the discussion starter is attempting to discuss.

[Rastan78]

I didn't realize people didn't know the word scrub in that context. Generally means an inferior or insignificant person, especially in sports.

Like "this will be an easy game, these guys are all scrubs."

Also the TLC song. And makes me think of the 2 guys at the beginning of Aphex Twin's Window Licker video haha

Prickly knew what it meant and he's French lol

[Lemnear]

Can someone please define 'scrub' for me (other than a guy that thinks he's fly and walks instead of driving)?

The OP never does, and I don't know if they're implying it's a good or bad thing. Like, is a game that adheres to all 16 rules a scrub? Or is a scrub one that breaks them? If you break one rule are you a scrub? Or are there degrees?

The rules are excuses used by small-minded tryhards to declare whether a game is "well-designed" or not, in lieu of appreciating it for what it is.
According to such people, if one finds oneself getting annoyed with deviations from the rules, then it's the game's fault for being bad, not your fault for being bad.
Though some may be generally sensible ideas, none of the "rules" are hard and fast or crucial to whether a game is good or bad, and I would not hesitate to call anyone who believes them to be such a scrub.

so anyone who didn't vote Banshee or Wings of Death as the best SHMUPS EVER is a scrub ?

[m.sniffles.esq]

I didn't realize people didn't know the word scrub in that context. Generally means an inferior or insignificant person, especially in sports.

Like "this will be an easy game, these guys are all scrubs."

Also the TLC song

Like every other human that's shopped at a discount store in the past 30 years, I've heard the TLC song. However I was failing to see the correlation between 'guy who has no money' and 'guy who will only accept a memorizer/micro-dodger'*

I mean, it was used in sports to denote a 'bush leaguer' going back to the turn of the 20th century, but even TLC realized their audience may not get the correlation to their sex work, thus they extend the courtesy of spending the first verse explaining this.

*I still kind of don't, but will just accept it and move on.

[Rastan78]

Completely true rule. A shield is just an extra life with some benefits, treat it the same way.

Another question though is should the shield really be equivalent to extra lives? That's pretty OP. So the classic solution is to make the shield hitbox massively larger than the ship hitbox. In that case it's almost impossible even for a superplayer to go through a run with no shield damage.

Some people will complain that is bad design since the game is more or less requiring you to tank damage at some point.

The alternatives don't work though. Either make the shield hitbox the same as ship hitbox to allow for perfect play which makes the shield equivalent to an absurd amount of extra lives. Or balance the game around the larger hitbox of the shield which will also make things way easier.

[Bassa-Bassa]

So a 'scrub' is someone who will only accept memorizers and micro-dodgers?
If so, I just did it in eight words. Perhaps the OP should add that for idiots like me that have no idea what the discussion starter is attempting to discuss.

This was the 4th reply here:

It's like if the list was made by an Ikaruga fan.

Not a bad early hint, I'd say.

[Lemnear]

Completely true rule. A shield is just an extra life with some benefits, treat it the same way.

Another question though is should the shield really be equivalent to extra lives? That's pretty OP. So the classic solution is to make the shield hitbox massively larger than the ship hitbox. In that case it's almost impossible even for a superplayer to go through a run with no shield damage.

Some people will complain that is bad design since the game is more or less requiring you to tank damage at some point.

The alternatives don't work though. Either make the shield hitbox the same as ship hitbox to allow for perfect play which makes the shield equivalent to an absurd amount of extra lives. Or balance the game around the larger hitbox of the shield which will also make things way easier.

But if the shield has a bigger hit-box, wouldn't it become almost superfluous then?
I take Batsugun Special as an example, if the shield was bigger you would never pass through the patterns without losing it, which would be equivalent to not having it at all.
Personally I take it as a "Free-Hit", not as an extra-life because when you lose it you don't lose the power ups anyway.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Another question though is should the shield really be equivalent to extra lives? That's pretty OP.

Yeah, this is fine honestly. As long as your shield items are spaced out far enough to make them meaningful, it's a way of making a game a bit more forgiving without making you too overpowered I think. ChoRenSha, Batsugun Special, Devil Blade Reboot on Hard all strike a good balance.

Devil Blade Reboot on Normal lets you recharge your shield by bombing, which typically results in a hilariously easy 1CC the moment you discover this. Every bomb item is essentially an extra life and the game gives tons of them out alongside shield items.

If you make your shield the same hitbox size as the ship, just don't make it take multiple hits to deplete. That makes it feel too overpowered. Or, you need some kind of balancing factor; SideLine gives you 3 hit shields that are the same size as your hitbox, but not every stage has one, and there is an absolutely gargantuan power down penalty for dying which makes recovery tough (not quite Gradius syndrome where you're totally depowered, but you lose your two options to block shots and several weapons in the game are noticeably weaker when not at max power).

[m.sniffles.esq]

Not a bad early hint, I'd say.

I guess while some people are blowhards about memorizers and micro-dodgers, I'm a blowhard about wanting to know what someone is talking about, rather than playing 'animal, vegetable, or mineral' to narrow it down, eventually closing-in 19 questions later.

Everyone has their 'thing', I suppose...

[Rastan78]

But if the shield has a bigger hit-box, wouldn't it become almost superfluous then?
I take Batsugun Special as an example, if the shield was bigger you would never pass through the patterns without losing it, which would be equivalent to not having it at all.
Personally I take it as a "Free-Hit", not as an extra-life because when you lose it you don't lose the power ups anyway.

The most obvious examples of the big hitbox mult-hit shield thing are classic sidescrollers like Gradius and Darius series.

You can preemptively tank your way out of a tight corner by sacrificing shield hits or even get a burst of kamikaze damage depending on the game.

Although a certain sense of fairness is subverted because the game introduces a hitbox that makes it nearly impossible to not get hit in some situations.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I don't like the idea of a bigger-hitbox shield, I'd rather shield just be meaningful and rare. If you can get one every stage, I'm not a fan, I'd rather there only be one or two per game that you can carry for a while if you've got the skill. Also goes without saying, shield works a lot better in games without bombs, since it's basically a worse autobomb.

[Ice Beam]

I (naturally) saw this, and it sort of assumes you already know what it means due to your knowledge of the FGC (whatever the fuck that is)*

It's a reference to the STG circle/Rock band 'Fine Gynoug Cannibals'.