Doujin Circle Deathmatch

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:09 am

this guys make good shmups, no doubt...
they give them out for free... great thing...

but, from there, to call them the best doujin shmup creators... thats another story... i've played almost all of their games... and yes, i love them, but again, i think there are many more good doujin shmup coders (devs) outthere... say, like ZUN or Murasame (two big dogz of the doujin shmuppin scene)...

anyways, its your oppinion, and because of that, i rspect it, but im not agree with it.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:58 am

ZUN - This guy makes pretty bullets patterns to LOOK at, but after you play for awhile, you realize that 99% of his patterns are dodged in exactly the same way. Pixel to the left, pixel to the right. There is very little actual spacial control in his games. On top of that, his scoring systems are always lame. He has a few cool patterns that stray from his normal formula, but they don't make up for the rest that are hemma unexciting to dodge.

Murasame - These guys piss me off so much. When working on a new game, they'll have these awesome screens and such that make you say "SHIT THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME", and then they find some stupid ass way to fuck it up. The Gun___ series was cool, but ever since then they've been a constant source of disappointment to for me.

First the isometric game which name I forget, which was really cool up until stage 3 or 4 when you realize isometric + bullet hell = bad idea.

Then Hitogata Happa, which was absurdly stupid due to it's 100% reliance on memorization before you could even start playing the game, because you had to have the correct characters for the correct stages. It would've been better with only a few characters, and give them all different but equally relevant ways of dealing with every situation, but it didn't end up like that at all.

Then they made Bunny Must Die (ok not a shmup, but I'm on a roll here). I'm thinking, "okay, they cannot fuck up a platformer". Man I was so wrong. In a normal platformer with nice animation, things like landing frames, turning around frames, attack recovery frames, etc. and be canceled or buffered out of. Not so in this wonderful game! You want to immediately walk after landing from a jump? You're gonna have to crouch-cancel! Want to turn around and shoot another direction? Welp, you're going to have to wait 5 minutes for your current attack to recover, and then hope your input doesn't get lost! And of course if you miss it, you don't turn around and get hit in the back! Cool!.

Their new game is some dumb thing where you have to circle bullet patterns with your mouse. Sounds cool, but they somehow found a way to make it incredibly boring. Murasame have become the kings of having great ideas and concepts, then fucking them up in every way possible.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 6:46 am

I agree with the above post. Hitogata Happa would have been playable if all of the dolls were actually useful, instead of just having a bunch of throwaway rambombs and that one laser doll.

And the fact that I'm actually required to have all of the regular dolls to get to the true last boss: huh?

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:41 pm

one thing its clear for me... the fact that YOU (and other ppl, ofcourse) dont like ZUN nor Murasame's games, doesnt means that they are bad games AT ALL ...you might have your reasons to not like them (bcuz they're lame or shit for you), but for other ppl (like me) those are PRETTY GOOD exponents of doujin shmuppin...

now, i have to agree with you in something... some of murasame's games are weird (maid san, bunny must die)... but Hitogata Happa ITS NOT one of them (again, for me)... you dont like the way its played?... well, o tell you the truth, thats somethin i like from the game... its a lil strategical, and even tho, i at first didnt like the suicide-bomb thing, its just a matter of gettin used to it... like in every other game.

anyways... once again, for me, DHC are NOT the best representatives of doujin shmuppin... they're good, but DEFINITIVELY not the best IMHO.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:12 pm

Dandy J wrote: Pixel to the left, pixel to the right. There is very little actual spacial control in his games.

Err... Yeah there is!

Sorry but you've obviously not played many of the games if you think that is the chase.

Try fighting some of the later bosses in the game and tell me you don't need "spacial awareness"!? Saying that the reason why ZUN's games are so twicthy (I.E dodge left, right, left) is because they are certain shmups and they are supposed to be like that. If you don't like that style of shmup then I would strongly suggest playing ZUN's PoFV as it's a lot more random as it's a manic remake of Twinkle Star Sprites.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:43 pm

Danny wrote: Sorry but you've obviously not played many of the games if you think that is the chase.

Try fighting some of the later bosses in the game and tell me you don't need "spacial awareness"!?

Point proven, and better than I could have ever done it. There's no spacial dynamics going on there at all; it's all simple reaction play and minor herding. You could have at least used the one stage 4 boss from IN's dbz kamehameha pattern or something, one of the few patterns in all of his games that actually forces you to move (and even then it's from a gimmick). Other than the very few patterns that are truly cool and are dodged in some novel way (there's a pattern on I think stage 5 of IN that's pretty cool), the only other drastic movements are forced from having the small bosses moving around. You are right I guess, they are supposed to be art projects with shooting and bombs.

I also never said anything about the suicide bombing in HH, that is not the game's flaw. If memorizing which dolls to use where is your idea of strategy, well whatever.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:45 pm

here is a nice video I found...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjUqJal ... ed&search=

Move baby, MOVE!

Saying that I like HH but I can see why other people might not. It's the same as R-Type series as they are also based around remembering stuff. I'll check out your game later once I watched some TV.

EDIT: Actualy I was going to point out boss four but I dunno why that one attracted me more to it.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:50 pm

A gimmick pattern in a Zun game what a surprise! I don't think you really understand what I'm talking about, and I'm not sure how to explain it any better so whatever...

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:51 pm

Gimmick? Most shooters have gimmicks (gimmick meaning something that makes it unique or quirky last time I checked in the dictonary) in some way or another?

Are your games more based around the old school prinicble? and again the reason why there is a set patern is because they are curtain shmups and not manic shmups which is what I guessing your game is like?

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:56 pm

There is a difference between a system mechanic or a hard pattern, and a pattern like the second clip which is basically dodged on rails. To me it crosses the line from being a shmup to being some kind of functional art. Not that it's a bad thing, but stuff like that seems to serve the purpose of just looking cool, but not having any real meat.

Nuke · Post by **Nuke** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:56 pm

Some like apples better, others prefer oranges.

Lock plz

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 12:44 am

Danny wrote:here is a nice video I found...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjUqJal ... ed&search=

Move baby, MOVE!

hey this is like that trap sequence in raiden fighters 2 only everything's a lot slower and has lost its urgency

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 1:35 am

my god. I suck at anything remotely manic, but that seriously looks too easy to dodge for anyone.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:37 am

Nuke wrote:Some like apples better, others prefer oranges.

Lock plz

Not when I'm having so much fun.

Gungriffon: are you still having problems running this? What about their other games? I'd like to help but I'm not sure what the problem could be.

shiftace · Post by **shiftace** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:20 am

Dandy J wrote:ZUN - This guy makes pretty bullets patterns to LOOK at, but after you play for awhile, you realize that 99% of his patterns are dodged in exactly the same way. Pixel to the left, pixel to the right. There is very little actual spacial control in his games.

I agree with this; they're more pretty than interesting, most of the time. There's no need or incentive to analyze the patterns, so they're not very engaging. I only played the demos though.

And I can't get Demolition Gunner to run either; I'm guessing it's shitty video drivers.

Frederik · Post by **Frederik** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:02 am

Twiddle wrote:
Danny wrote:here is a nice video I found...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjUqJal ... ed&search=

Move baby, MOVE!
hey this is like that trap sequence in raiden fighters 2 only everything's a lot slower and has lost its urgency

Danny posted that video to prove that ZUN patterns are NOT about "moving a bit left...moving a bit right" and no matter if you guys like this particular pattern or not, he made the right point on that matter. And if I am wrong too than I didn´t get what Dandy J tried to say. Moving from a gimmick? What´s the difference between "gimmick" patterns and "real" ones?

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:38 am

The first part of the pattern is deathly obvious: you're moving in a rather slow circular motion, in which you are given a very large amount of margin of error. The next part is the odd bullet that's coming in from the top side, in which you either move a little to the left, or a little to the right to avoid it, and the hitboxes of the bullets themselves are about a third or fourth of their visible size.

This isn't exactly brain-punching pattern dodging.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:53 am

I think he's complaining that while fighitng the bosses people use set movment paterns (hence the "on rails" comment) in a sense which is a little silly since a majority of bosses on shmups have a set or ideal paterns to follow in some way or another.

p.s: I think the second link I posted is a patern from the "extra" diff' on IN and not in the main game but I'm not to sure about that...

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:37 am

That sure as hell doesn't look like EXTRA Game output.

Post by **Ghegs** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 9:37 am

This is actually an interesting topic since there's never been that much discussion about the different doujin circles. Split to its own thread so it can hopefully flourish and bring more doujin shmups to everybody's attention.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 3:39 pm

for the comments you've posted, DandyJ, i think you havent played the touhou games too much.

its true, that sometimes you just have to move left a bit, then right a bit... but thats on the ez settings... try playin this babies on Lunatic, or the extra stages, and the story changes radically.

i guess you should just say that YOU DONT LIKE ZUN's or Murasame's games and thats it... but tryin to disqualify them the way you're doin it, its not right....

like i said from the very begginin, the fact that you dont like somethin, doesnt automatically make it bad.

i might not be a shmup G.O.D., but im good at them anyway... and i find ZUN's, Murasame's and even the Seihou ones (BanShiRyuu, Samidare...) pretty challengin and enjoyable.

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:58 pm

Dandy J wrote:Gungriffon: are you still having problems running this? What about their other games? I'd like to help but I'm not sure what the problem could be.

Every other game of their's works perfectly fine. Demolition Gunner is the only one I can't get running at all. and I need another shmup to play, because I'm getting incredibly bored with my current stockpile of games.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:04 pm

Kaspal wrote:i guess you should just say that YOU DONT LIKE ZUN's or Murasame's games and thats it... but tryin to disqualify them the way you're doin it, its not right....

It's right as rain. Actually, saying that I just don't like their games is an overstatement, because surely there are things I like about them. I'm merely expressing an opinion, and I support that opinion by citing reasons for feeling a certain way about certain things.

Kaiser · Post by **Kaiser** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:18 pm

Watch this pattern it came from hell(Imperishable night)! It's more than moving left & right
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCcvPDX ... ed&search=

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:31 pm

If only that went twice as fast then the player would be forced to actually find holes and not squeeze in between things in the last half until the end

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:58 pm

I love the games to death...however, it is true that 90% of boss patterns can be evaded with tap dodging. There's nothing wrong with that. I look at them as Cave bosses taken to the extreme. C'mon...we're talking about a hitbox of 4 (or less) pixels...what do you want to do? The point is to dodge the patterns that you can, and squeeze between the ones you don't know.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:50 pm

Twiddle wrote:That sure as hell doesn't look like EXTRA Game output.

Could be mid-boss extra stage output?

Just noticed the forum title has changed lol. Yeah I like talking about Doujinsoft creators. To be honest in my opinion (and this is just my opinion) I feel that ABA Games is proberbly the best Doujinsoft shmup creator overall.

ABA Game's games are all free but you just have to look at what the one man team has produced over the years to understand why I like his style so much. Titanion (ver 0.3 out now!), Gunroar (my personal favourate), Torus Trooper, TUMIKI Fighters, PARSEC47, rRootage (no fixed patern here, randomly generated bosses and bullet paterns!), Noiz2sa (Endless mode = bliss!) etc... also he's created his very own bullet patern programming language which can be used in other programmes like Game Maker 6 called BulletML and Bullesmorph which is just awesome!

You've not lived really till you've tried out these games in my opinion altough saying that they have not created my favourate Doujinsoft Shmup. My favourate shmup goes to Warning Forever which is another free but rather unique Vs. Boss Shmup which adapts it's strategy to how the player plays like which I think is rather nifty.

dai jou bu · Post by **dai jou bu** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:58 pm

All this talk about ZUN and not one single mention of Shoot the Bullet, the game that makes me forgive him by bringing in a fresh concept in this stale genre.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:01 pm

dai jou bu wrote:All this talk about ZUN and not one single mention of Shoot the Bullet, the game that makes me forgive him by bringing in a fresh concept in this stale genre.

Shoot the Bullet is great. I love it even though I suck at it heh.

My favourte game of his though will proberbly always be PoFV due to it being a manic clone of Twinkle Star Sprites which is a game I really love and own on the Sega Saturn.

dai jou bu · Post by **dai jou bu** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:16 pm

Guys, Studio Siesta came up with the concept of making enemies fly into other enemies causing Twinkle Star Sprites chain reactions first before Warashi did.

That reminds me. I need to finish Air Rade Air so I can review it here. ><