I wanna dodge some bullets...

answerthesun · Post by **answerthesun** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:29 am

... And not really worry about shooting for a bit.

What are some games I could hunt down for MAME that are more about dodging bullets than returning the favor?

I've been playing DoDonPachi and GigaWing for about three weeks now and I need a break.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:36 am

I don't recall any passive shmups for MAME but you can try some of the PC games like Fuzetsu (Java) and other bullet hell simulators.

nlen83 · Post by **nlen83** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:36 am

Hmm...I was gonna say Psyvariar (Complete or 2) is exactly what you described but i doubt you can play it on mame. You can get it for about $40 for the PS2 though.

unsane · Post by **unsane** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:43 am

Though not for Mame, the rRootage doujin comes to mind. There is shooting (in that you have to hold down the shoot button) but the perma-boss fills up half the shooting area, so it's really almost only about dodging bullets.

Dragon1952 · Post by **Dragon1952** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:45 am

There is an old trick (bug) in Namco's Galaga, that if you dodge bullets on some particular early stage for a period of time, all future attackers in subsequent stages will also not fire at you thereafter (they just try to collide with your ship)!

I know this is not what you were looking for, but.....it answers your desire. Some additional research is necessary to accomplish the exact trick though...

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:01 am

Siroi Danmaku Kun for PC comes to mind... it has quite a lot of bullet patterns, and none of them requires you to "return" the favor.

now, you can also get BulletGBA 5.0 for the GBA... its about the same than SDMKun.

mirkvid · Post by **mirkvid** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:08 am

i saw a video of mushi being played without shooting. too passive. kill kill kill is my motto!

Ozymandiaz1260 · Post by **Ozymandiaz1260** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:22 am

It's not for mame, but you should check out Shoot the Bullet.

Dale · Post by **Dale** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:26 am

If you wanna a slower older style of domup(dodge em up) check out Barbie Super Model for Genesis. It also has rhythm based stages in between the domup action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7vLdU0MfE

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:34 am

Has the term passive shooter been coined yet?

I want the credit plz.

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 9:58 am

Siroi Danmakukun has been mentioned, but Shinichiro actually has a full set of simple little games that are based around just dodging. I think definitely the best choice of these for the OP's purpose is Bullet Philharmonic Orchestra. It's like SDK in that you just dodge, but unlike SDK, as soon as you get hit, you don't die and ruin your flow by having to restart. Also the gimmick of BPO is that you input your own music, and BPO generates bullet patterns (roughly) based on the music. It's great to just chill to, if you were gonna be just listening to music anyway, and you can just dodge and play for score until the song runs out. I wish someone would make a Winamp vis plugin like this actually, hmm.

Ozymandiaz1260 wrote:It's not for mame, but you should check out Shoot the Bullet.

Shoot the Bullet honestly might be my favorite shmup ever, actually, but I don't think I would recommend it to someone wanting to "not really worry." Sure, you don't have to shoot (well, you "shoot" pictures), but if the goal of a passive shmup is to not have to worry about positioning and hitting people, then STB is even more demanding in terms of positioning to attack.

Maybe a better choice would be any game with homing bullets. Then you just hold on to shoot and dodge and let the homing do all the work.

unsane · Post by **unsane** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:29 am

Enhasa wrote:the gimmick of BPO is that you input your own music, and BPO generates bullet patterns (roughly) based on the music. It's great to just chill to, if you were gonna be just listening to music anyway, and you can just dodge and play for score until the song runs out.

Wow neat idea! I like mixing media, stuff like music-directed eye-candy plugins for winamp, so i'm gonna have to try that.

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:25 am

I don't mean to derail the thread but any idea what BPO seems to be looking for when analyzing the music? just the peaks? Just started playing this and now I'm really interested, I'd love to compose some music specifically for it.

ROBOTRON · Post by **ROBOTRON** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 1:09 pm

I would suggest Psyvariar....its the only fun way to dodge bullets.

Otherwise, move here to Detroit, MI if you want a REAL bullet-dodging challenge.

0/10 fail.

Frederik · Post by **Frederik** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:55 pm

ROBOTRON wrote: Otherwise, move here to Detroit, MI if you want a REAL bullet-dodging challenge.

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:00 pm

szycag wrote:I don't mean to derail the thread but any idea what BPO seems to be looking for when analyzing the music? just the peaks? Just started playing this and now I'm really interested, I'd love to compose some music specifically for it.

I haven't looked at the source, but I think it's just basic beat detection stuff. Pretty sure volume has no/little effect since sometimes at the end of songs during fadeouts there will be a sudden flurry of bullets.

I think tempo mainly has an effect in that faster tempo = more beats, heh.

-Bridget- · Post by **-Bridget-** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 6:33 am

How exactly do you make that Orchestra thing work?

I put music in the folder it tells me to, load it, hit start, there's about 1 second of some shiny thing moving at me, and then POW, scoreboard. No actual music plays. And Im using MP3 files.

This thing sure SOUNDS neat...... but of course, anytime I find something that sounds neat it's almost ALWAYS from an I-cant-read-a-word-of-it Japanese site (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh..... need to learn that but am lazy)

EDIT:

Nevermind, got it to work.

A bit confusing on what was going on, though Vista definitely wasnt helping matters any (sigh)

koda · Post by **koda** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:32 am

-Bridget- wrote:How exactly do you make that Orchestra thing work?

I put music in the folder it tells me to, load it, hit start, there's about 1 second of some shiny thing moving at me, and then POW, scoreboard. No actual music plays. And Im using MP3 files.

This thing sure SOUNDS neat...... but of course, anytime I find something that sounds neat it's almost ALWAYS from an I-cant-read-a-word-of-it Japanese site (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh..... need to learn that but am lazy)

EDIT:

Nevermind, got it to work.

A bit confusing on what was going on, though Vista definitely wasnt helping matters any (sigh)

How did you get it to work? I'm also on Vista and encountering the same issue.

Edit: Figured it out.

I grabbed a handful of songs from my chiptune group and tried them on the game. Really fun!

If anyone would like to try it with our songs, I put together a little .zip (2.52 MB, 7 songs). If anyone does try it out, let me know what you think. I've always dreamt of this music being in some kind of SHMUP, and a lot of my composition is inspired by bullet patterns. :p 99% of our samples are hand-drawn, hence harshness of some.

http://www.flu3ncy.net/misc/bpotunes-rageltd.zip

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 4:14 am

Hey I tried your song pack. It worked really well.

I don't know if it's a chiptune/demoscene thing or if the tracker file formats actually are better analyzed by BPO, but it was cool.

I never thought to try this with the soundtracks for commercial shmups. I think it would be interesting to see how well different games worked.

kengou · Post by **kengou** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 4:18 am

I've tried with a few Radiant Silvergun, Gradius V, and Ikaruga songs, and for the most part they're pretty good. A few Ikaruga songs are ridiculously hard actually.

If anyone wants a good challenge, pop in Sandstorm by Darude.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:22 am

Do these actually seem to go to the music for you guys? It does seem to get more hectic as the beat gets faster, but it doesn't really coincide too well. I've had 5-10 seconds of no-bullets when music is still playing.

Necronopticous · Post by **Necronopticous** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 7:36 am

It doesn't match up incredibly well, but the important thing is that the patterns are always different with different songs, and always the same for the same songs. My main problem with BPO is that there is no "death" setting. I get bored of it quickly since I am incapable of losing.