The Joy of Golfing

[endoKarb]

or "The Gentle Art of Not Killing Enemies"

I was sitting there fiddling with some toy code in the lovely TS-100 game by Zachtronics trying to figure out how to get all my computations done in as few cycles as possible, meanwhile vaguely pondering my deep distaste for multiplicative scoring systems and *level wide puzzles* like DoDonPachi's chaining system, for which I never had much patience and for which I have even less patience now.

I was turning around this idea in my head of a little rom hack that would turn DDP chaining upside down, perhaps punishing you for chaining *too much*, an idea I might still want to look into in the future.

But things started to click... wait, there's a much simpler solution without any bit fiddling and hex editing. Punishing players for chaining... local optimizations... minimum cycles... code golfing...

What started as a silly thought experiment turned into one of the most fun experience I've had with shmups in years.

Presenting "Shmup Golfing" the refined and intellectual past-time for the busy everyday shmupper.

The rules are very simple: choose a number of stages in your favourite shmup, from 1 to a full 2-ALL and beyond (for the most daring), and complete them while minimizing your score. No continues allowed of course!

What's so fun about it?

• Come up with your own strategy! There's no known strategies or superplay videos to copy, so it's a good chance to give the ol' noggin some exercise. And you can start immediatley, don't need months of practice to get there!

• Learn systems in depth: Did you know that in DoDonPachi suiciding your ship into a boss counts as a hit and scores 10 points? Or that it temporarily stops the boss timeout timer until you respawn? Learn more arcane shmup system trivia, today, with Shmup Golfing! (compatible with any shmup you have at home. batteries not included.)

• Turn boring old early stages you played a million times into second loop grade challenges! Turns out if you don't shoot at enemies... they shoot at you... a lot! Who would've thought.

• Enjoy shumps that you love, or would, if not for the fact that you hate the fucking scoring system! What's points? I don't want any of that!

• Learn to dodge those pesky bullets! You will have to dodge. Like a lot. A looooooooot. It's seriously amazing practice.

Some notes from the first foray into DoDonPachi Golfing.

Right after entering my first credit and playing a little bit, I was immediately struck by a problem: the game wouldn't let me save my score. It was just too damn low for the hi-score board.
Luckily, with a little hiscore.dat manipulation the issue was swiftly resolved and the adventure could begin.

Scrubbed hi-score table

Choice of aircraft: Well, since we are not killing enemies as much as we can and we need to dodge a ton of bullet, Type-A feels like the natural choice. I suspect that for longer runs the difference between the ship types gradually disappears, but for the first few levels Type-A is drastically better for herding enemies.
Laser or Shot? At first I hesitated a bit, but it turns out Shot is clearly the right choice. We just basically never want to use our Laser. So why is powering up the Shot a good thing? Because while we want to shoot as little as we can, the few times we need to get rid of something in our way, we want to deal as much dmg as possible. Onward!

Stage 1: After getting kamikazed by some annoying helicopter zako packs and dodging the simple patterns in DDP's most famous stage, it became clear that it would be possible to get to the boss without scoring a single point. I didn't remember all the details of DDP scoring, but it turns out that with a tactical suicide to avoid the no miss bonus it would be possible to complete Stage 1 with exactly ZERO points. Very satisfying.
This took some care though, cause when DDP bosses die, all their on-screen bullets turn to stars, and the ship's hitbox for collecting them is fucking huge, so you need to be REALLY careful to dodge them, or you pay 600 points each between immediate scoring and end of stage bonus.

Perfect Stage 1

Stage 2: Harder for sure compared to Stage 1, but I believe it is possible here too to reach the boss without scoring a single point. Haven't managed yet, but in any case, unless there's some crazy boss abuse I am not aware of, Boss II is where our zero-point dream comes to die. Why? Well even if you manage to time out the boss scoring exactly zero points, it will throw an enrage attack (that's pretty damn hard to dodge) before dying that will turn into a golden shower (...whatever) of stars that seems impossible to avoid.

Stage 3: This is where we start seriously shooting enemies. The bullet spam is insane and there's even more groups of zako kamikazeing into your aircraft at the first occasion. The whole bullet cancel section can't be dealt with without blowing up some enemies, but by carefully avoiding all the screen canceling effects we can minimize the damage. Boss 3 is easier to timeout than Boss 2, but seems a lot longer...

BTW we encounter a new problem here: no scores means no 1ups, and since we get a compounding bonus for each stage we complete without dying, that's going to be our first BIG source of points that we just cannot avoid collecting.

Stage 4: To be continued...

Entering stage 4 with less than a million points

[jehu]

I don’t have much to say, but I appreciate the spirited write up. This doesn’t appeal to me at all, but I thought I’d give you a nod for the enthusiasm.

There are some games - like Night Striker, new or old - that have official pacifist recognition in the game. Though I get the sense the thrill of the thing for you is in the attempt to clear something unaccounted for in the design. And I suppose you score for going pacifist in those games that account for it, so…

In any case, post again if you manage to clear anything past stage one.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There's a couple games that actually have mechanics designed for this kind of thing. You can keep the scores low in Giga Wing if you don't collect any medals. In fact it's possible to get a 0 score in Giga Wing 2 because you start with a 0x multiplier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fDiuvlhp0k

There's also Night Raid made by Takumi that has three scoreboards: you can go for a high score, a score as close to 0 as possible, or an ultra low score!

[Starfighter]

This topic is making me smile! I love it!

[bobhasashotgun]

I attempted something like this with Gradius 3 (snes) back in the day. I cranked the difficulty to "arcade" and only killed for the speed ups (and maybe the tiny shield? I can't remember). I made it to stage 3 before threw in the towel. I couldn't find anyone else who tried this and I wasn't sure it was even possible. It was a fun attempt though. Honestly, Im suprised I even made it to stage 3. The game runs a lot faster when you're not filling the screen with lasers.

[Acid]

Speaking of golf, I don't get why Neo Turf Masters wasn't eligible for the Top Shmups poll. Sure it's a little experimental; with the ship taking the form of a ball that you steer by sending it on a trajectory; and the bullets are huge, covered in grass, water, and sand, with only a small opening to fly the ship into. But at it's core, Neo Turf Masters is about steering your ship, and avoiding misses. Is its ineligibility due to misses being unavoidable on some stages?

I'm a little bored.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

I'll always laugh when the boss deems my efforts MOST DISHONORABURU and promptly self-destructs after being throughly exhausted. Indeed, surviving stages is smooth sailing, but it's always the big boys who bring trouble to this idea...

We must look into ancient teachings, for instance, in Dangerous Seed, where the bosses actually have quite strict time limits and penalize you for not killing them! Indeed, a golfer would have to contend with the lategame foes fusing together into what I believe is meant to be a grotesque parady of your own ship, bundled even with new stages for the fusions (as opposed to fighting the 'pieces' separately). You can't get that level of experience at Pine Valley, what can I say. Just don't play the MD version, that one's only good for music.

See also: Gaia Seed,

Spoiler

in which the final boss specifically wants you to leave him alone. If you want the good end anyway.

Lastly, not shmup, but I recall Night Striker gives you respectable score for golfing, and is a viable full-play for it!

[CaptainKraken]

Lastly, not shmup, but I recall Night Striker gives you respectable score for golfing, and is a viable full-play for it!

Isn't the point to have the lowest score possible? I wonder how you would do that in Night Striker in that case...

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

If that's the criteria, I suppose you'd have to just shoot once per stage ;p

[Rastan78]

https://youtu.be/41xVz2ppoMs?si=Ga-TWYQataEpGZOT

Here's a pretty crazy example of lowest possible score on Darius 2