GD: ESPRade Stage 4 Boss

[BIL]

Recently overheard on the WANGAN SUBWAY LINE

I've decided to go full pervert and use this thread to make a Shoot'em up post.

Because of reasons, a youtuber working on ESP Ra.De. got me to put a little time into it. The game so vehemently wants you to use the bomb system in that game, that I was trying to work on a run without it. But this game man... it's a bastard.

Rank activates if you DON'T bomb or die, and some of these patterns... While I was laying down the savestates to practice the checkpoints, there was one pattern in particular by the fourth boss that turns into utter bullshit. I had to use a savestate in the middle of dodging bullets in order to... dodge the bullets. That was a first. Stage 5 with rank activated is also quite difficult. I don't think I can even begin to make a half-serious attempt, with it all laid out like that.

It's funny we think of it as a relatively benign game, but there's this horrible leopard monster waiting just beneath the skin, that leaps out the second you collect 200 boxes and don't use them. It's a less intrusive difficulty switch than simply having a difficulty mode select, but I dunno. I find different ways of implementing difficulty-matching to player skill interesting.

For platformers specifically.. I've been wondering if there's any way to make touch controls that aren't utter dogshit. From what I've seen of touch action games, they often automate the gameplay somehow. Auto running. Auto fire. Etc etc. Not ideal.

Rank activates if you DON'T bomb or die, and some of these patterns... While I was laying down the savestates to practice the checkpoints, there was one pattern in particular by the fourth boss that turns into utter bullshit.

This didn't sound right at all, so I investigated briefly:
The game has survival time rank and powerup rank, but the effects are unnoticeable if you're not looking for them, and are even more minuscule on bosses. I don't see cube count or bombing doing much of anything either, including if 200 is never reached.



If I covered up the UI, nobody would be able to tell which was which. Diagnosis: psychogenesis.
Ironically, this is one of the few Cave games where changing the difficulty setting makes an obvious and lasting difference.

(This useless information is now trapped down here tainting this thread forever thanks to your posting cowardice)

If I covered up the UI, nobody would be able to tell which was which. Diagnosis: psychogenesis.

This is, by far, the least problematic pattern of this boss. The green shurikens that shoot bullets at you that you have to shoot down before a kill screen forms, the middle phase version of that pattern, is much more significant. As is the final phase two-color grid fire 'cheese grater'; in the normal version there's always some room to dodge between the two overlapping patterns. In the rank version there's safety windows you have to hit, as they form a solid line (to normal people) intermittently. Open around 70% of the time, which you have to be in a position to hit every time.

It's gotten easier with practice and when my brain's fresh in the morning. Still the whole no-bomb thing will be an impossible run without giving up multiple lives, in my lifetime.

Probably not so for you, since you can't tell the difference between gaps that are seven pixels wide and three pixels wide. (Of course I'm certain you played through the entire boss start to finish to compare the two, and saw no increased trouble with it. A god can't tell the difference between an ant and a bear, after all.)

(Even the gifs you posted of the easiest and least impacted pattern has some of its 25 pixel gaps turn into 0 to 4 pixel wide gaps. You can't tell a difference from that by looking???????)

The game has survival time rank and powerup rank

Does it really? The word here has always been it's a simple toggle that flips on whenever the box count is full.

(Even the gifs you posted of the easiest and least impacted pattern has some of its 25 pixel gaps turn into 0 to 4 pixel wide gaps. You can't tell a difference from that by looking???????)

You're right to suspect that I chose that pattern deliberately, because it's easy to explain what's going on. In the first gif, the boss is mostly moving upwards, and in the second mostly downwards, making the gaps bigger and smaller respectively. You can see how this changes at the end of each. Something I really like about the game is that it has great sound feedback; almost every pattern has an audio profile. If you could hear the gifs, you'd immediately be able to tell that the bullets are coming out at the same rate.

I think you're just experiencing randomness and rationalizing it. And the developers often demonstrate their skill at creating confounding effects with only simple programming - for example the final phase opener goes aimed left -> aimed right -> fixed left -> fixed right -> repeat, but if you're where you're "supposed" to be at the bottom of the screen (as opposed to dancing on the boss's head), all the waves will look about the same and you won't catch on to the logic behind the variance. Wait until you try no-bombing Garra hands, that's some proper bullshit.

Does it really? The word here has always been it's a simple toggle that flips on whenever the box count is full.

Yeah, I checked with a debugger. I assume the boxes don't do anything but if they do, it's very subtle.