Who is going to take the first plunge on Soldner X?

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:03 am

@Ceph

"-weapons are too weak"

Part of the design. Reminds me of people complaining about R-type when loosing all the weapons after getting hit...Love it or hate it.

"-very boring enemy designs"

Some of the designs are more on the generic side BUT they're incredibly detailed and beautifully rendered. Just saw the tunnel level...DAMN

"-energy bar"

Makes total sense here.

"too much stuff on screen"

Again, part of the design. You don't play Cave shooters I guess...the visual overload will certainly be hard to master but bullets are perfectly visible.

"weapons sometimes suddenly switch automatically when the game feels like it"

Bullshit. If you drain your weapon completely it switches to the next (blue bar at the top) - part of the chaining system.

"-your whole ship is your hitzone"

Why is this bad?!

"-somewhat generic bgm"

Imo very good music and fx. Matter of taste anway...

"-ship reacts too slowly"

Pick up speed-up, ship can get VERY fast;-)

After playing with a pad I'm starting to really like the chaining system.
I have the feeling that I'm going to spend alot of time with this game:-) As Afterbirth already mentioned, there is a certain Boder Down feel to it. Any impressions from Boder Down players?

nlen83 · Post by **nlen83** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:49 am

Sweet...sounds to me like its not a total failure. I'm excited now.

Post by **nZero** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:26 am

bVork wrote:I give this game 0 out of any numerical system you would care to use. It does not run on my system.

It refuses to run at anything but 60hz. My monitor seems to refuse to do anything but 75hz, so I can't play it. I realize that refresh-based timing is the "right" way to do things, but some sort of alternative timing (or, gasp, support for multiple refresh rates) would have been useful.

There is no reason for a game in this day and age to simply not work. FAIL.

It's better than that! If for any reason the game can't set the screen mode to 1024x768x32bpp@60hz fullscreen, it will fail to run. I'm hoping for a patch that lets the game run windowed. Also, I thought this was being developed with widescreen in mind? So much for high defintion shooting.

Squirrel · Post by **Squirrel** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:11 am

Ceph wrote:
-weapons are too weak
-very boring enemy designs
-very boring enemy formations
-weapons sometimes suddenly switch automatically when the game feels like it
-your whole ship is your hitzone
-somewhat generic bgm

I agree to these. I'm not impressed with it. I know I don't have a whole lot of shmup experience like the rest of you, but I did notice these, and while drunk I 1cc'ed perfect cherry blossom on normal. <_<

Afterbirth · Post by **Afterbirth** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:26 am

It supports widescreen monitor resolutions with exception of true 16:10 (it does support 1680x900). Theres no seperate widescreen mode as the 3 resolutions are typical PC monitor resi's. I think HDTV players can use 1024x768.
The game will auto letterbox on res's above 1024.

Playing at top res on my 16:10 viewsonic, it stretches full screen and you get the feeling your playing Darius (it does feel a bit like Darius at times) not just because of the widescreen, but the actual seemingly initally poor firepower of your ship.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:30 am

Squirrel wrote:
Ceph wrote:
-weapons are too weak
-very boring enemy designs
-very boring enemy formations
-weapons sometimes suddenly switch automatically when the game feels like it
-your whole ship is your hitzone
-somewhat generic bgm
I agree to these. I'm not impressed with it. I know I don't have a whole lot of shmup experience like the rest of you, but I did notice these, and while drunk I 1cc'ed perfect cherry blossom on normal. <_<

Uh Oh. This sounds very much like Project-X on amiga..

Afterbirth · Post by **Afterbirth** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:54 am

Its really nothing like Project X.

3 of those points are pointless.

Very Boring enemy designs - ?
Yeah, its a typical hori shmup. Some of the deisgns are a little dull, but your gonna blow most of it to shit.

Very boring formations?
Well what exactly do you want?
Some of the formations have been used before, yes, but again, its a minor detail really.

Given the nature of the game you really won't care.

Point 3 has already been voided elsewhere. Your weapons have an energy guage.

The fact is them game gells well and becomes very balanced once you've got used to it.

I totally agree with Point 4 - a health bar makes you somewhat lazy and willing to take pointless risk through intense fire, although you will get blitzed very quickly if you hang bout.

Point 5 is debatable - i think the music is okay.
(The in-game speech is a bit shite though)

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:57 am

"Uh Oh. This sounds very much like Project-X on amiga.."

When watching the credits at the beginning a lot of German names pop up. Though I don't recognize the names I'm pretty sure Amiga and demo scene are where the roots of those devs are...kinda like Shinen.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:41 pm

Necronom wrote:"Uh Oh. This sounds very much like Project-X on amiga.."

When watching the credits at the beginning a lot of German names pop up. Though I don't recognize the names I'm pretty sure Amiga and demo scene are where the roots of those devs are...kinda like Shinen.

Project-X was actually developed by brits, so it had lots of traditional brit silliness (aka just throwing enemies at you instead of thought out attack patterns).
Germans (especially factor 5 bunch) while being not so good with originality, usually were often better at nailing down the playability (though their own graphical design -when not ripped off from somewhere else- was horrible).

I have not had tested out soldner X, so I cant comment on it directly-I merely commented a comment

In fact, if I did not like it[S X], I'm not sure if I wanted to criticize it too much here as I would not wish to discourage play-asia from releasing new shmups. As I think its very nice and brave move from them.

Afterbirth · Post by **Afterbirth** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 3:52 pm

This has a mixture of both patterned and non-patterened attack waves - but whereas Project X suffered god awful inertia - this isn't nothing like as bad. And its far smoother.

The only downside is the slighty large ship and that health bar thing.

soniq-man · Post by **soniq-man** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:23 pm

Glad you guys like the audio (at least those, who say the like it)

Just to clear up on two things I noticed being said earlier:

Someone mentioned that the whole ship was a hitzone, that's incorrect.

Also, the game *does* support Widescreen, I play it on both my TFT 19" in a widescreen resolution and on my 37" Full HD TV screen. Works fine if you ask me.

Rafael

Afterbirth · Post by **Afterbirth** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:56 pm

Actually 1280:800 is supported isn't it? thats 16:10 too although i prefer the lower res to give the game a full screen look on my monitor without the widescreen bars.

lawnspic · Post by **lawnspic** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:46 am

The control in this game is horrible, it lags like a bitch. It feels like shitty laggy control you get in emulated games. This game is dead to me

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:46 am

i gave the game a second and third run, and still lags a lot... i mean, i tried every possible setup for my VGA (nVidia GF 6200 with 256 MB VRAM... yeah, i know its a crappy one, but every other shmup i've tried with it has worked pretty damn well, the most recent was trouble witches), and theres no way for me to make this game run smoothly, and that kills the purpose (ad the diversion factor) on a shmup.

i dont like (much) the weapon upgrade system... while is true that when you get the hang of it, you can enjoy it more, i preffer the good old style of gettin the upgrades in certain spots or by destroyin certain waves of enemies... the way its implemmented in S-X is not bad, but not the best imo.

btw, i'd like to ask you guys, what are your machine specs? maybe theres somethin wrong with mine?

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512 DDR RAM
100 GB HDD
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
nVidia GF 6200 w/256 MB VRAM

and it lags like hell whenever an enemy formation enters the screen, or when i destroy them.

The Coop · Post by **The Coop** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 5:53 am

Kaspal wrote:i gave the game a second and third run, and still lags a lot... i mean, i tried every possible setup for my VGA (nVidia GF 6200 with 256 MB VRAM... yeah, i know its a crappy one, but every other shmup i've tried with it has worked pretty damn well, the most recent was trouble witches), and theres no way for me to make this game run smoothly, and that kills the purpose (ad the diversion factor) on a shmup.

i dont like (much) the weapon upgrade system... while is true that when you get the hang of it, you can enjoy it more, i preffer the good old style of gettin the upgrades in certain spots or by destroyin certain waves of enemies... the way its implemmented in S-X is not bad, but not the best imo.

btw, i'd like to ask you guys, what are your machine specs? maybe theres somethin wrong with mine?

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512 DDR RAM
100 GB HDD
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
nVidia GF 6200 w/256 MB VRAM

and it lags like hell whenever an enemy formation enters the screen, or when i destroy them.

Some of it could be the amount of RAM you have. If you're using XP, it recommends 1GB for best performance. For Vista, 2GBs. You have the minimum requirements for RAM on XP right now.

nlen83 · Post by **nlen83** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:00 am

I'm hoping my specs cover it well enough...i'll let you know when I get it.

I plan on playing this on my main machine which is:

Asus P5P MB
P4 3.0ghz HT 800mhz
2.0GB DDR 400 Ram Matching Corsair
Maxtor 200GB ATA 133 HD
SB Live Audigy
XFX 7600GT 256MB GDDR3 AGP 8X
Thermaltake Purepower 500W

Not a massive computer in any way but I figured it would be able to run this game maxed out with no problems...we will see...

Strider77 · Post by **Strider77** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:34 am

it slows down on my pc.... think it's my memory.

aphexacid · Post by **aphexacid** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:44 am

I just got through playing this for about 1.5 hours. I played it on my laptop, 2GHZ C2D, 2GB ram, geforce go 7400
Played it perfectly.
Graphics are really great. the game itself however is terribly boring. its just really slow paced, the stages are WAY too long. the weapons suck, and it takes too many shots to kill some of these enemies. enemies are very drab looking and not enough variety.
It really surprised me how disappointed i was. i thought for sure this was going to be fantastic.

The first time you hear the german guy scream that you "fight like maniac", you respond by saying "fuck yeah i do".
after the 5th time of hearing him say the same shit, your looking for a way to make him piss off.

2.5/5 thumbs down

(it may seem like im being harsh, but i really feel disappointed, and this bitch wasnt a cheap downloadable game.)

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:08 am

aphexacid wrote:i thought for sure this was going to be fantastic.

icycalm · Post by **icycalm** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:02 am

Let the man be optimistic if he wants to.

Nothing wrong with some optimism in this day and age. We could all use some.

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:46 pm

Kaspal wrote:AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512 DDR RAM
100 GB HDD
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
nVidia GF 6200 w/256 MB VRAM

and it lags like hell whenever an enemy formation enters the screen, or when i destroy them.

Might be either your graphics card, your RAM, or both. I'm not sure if the GF6200 you have has 256 MB of built-in VRAM, rather than dynamically allocated from your main RAM, and if that's the case, it's no wonder it lags like hell. It's supposed to be a "next-gen" game, after all. :)

Also, to reply to The Coop: 512 isn't the minimum required for XP, by far, since I was able to successfully run it on 128 MB when my 512 stick suddenly malfunctioned. :)

Post by **Shatterhand** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:58 pm

Minimum requirements are rarely correct anyway

. I've managed to run and play properly Quake 3 and Serious Sam in a Pentium 233Mhz with 64 mb of ram and a TNT2 video card.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:12 pm

moozooh wrote:
Kaspal wrote:AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512 DDR RAM
100 GB HDD
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
nVidia GF 6200 w/256 MB VRAM

and it lags like hell whenever an enemy formation enters the screen, or when i destroy them.
Might be either your graphics card, your RAM, or both. I'm not sure if the GF6200 you have has 256 MB of built-in VRAM, rather than dynamically allocated from your main RAM, and if that's the case, it's no wonder it lags like hell. It's supposed to be a "next-gen" game, after all.

Also, to reply to The Coop: 512 isn't the minimum required for XP, by far, since I was able to successfully run it on 128 MB when my 512 stick suddenly malfunctioned.

no, the VGA has built in 256MB of VRAM, i already checked that (if im not mistaken, when the VGA takes some of the main RAM, its called turbocache or somethin... anyway, i checked the VGA reference, and it has 256MB of built in ram). and yes, WinXP needs a minimum of 128 to work, with 256 being the average amount of RAM requiered to function "well"... i did use it with 256MB of RAM about 6 years ago, got about a year and no probs at all...

now, the game can be all the next gen it wants, but still, thats not a real xcuse to lag like it does (at least not for me), since its the only shmup that lags like that on my machine (except ikaruga, on the DC emulator... and that why i got a real DC, since i didnt wanted to play a shmup at 10 fps).

pixelcorps · Post by **pixelcorps** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:36 pm

large hit box, inertia on ship, gauged weapons that auto switch..

ewfuckno!!

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:35 pm

pixelcorps wrote:large hit box, inertia on ship, gauged weapons that auto switch..

ewfuckno!!

Well, actually they only switch when you really suck at the game and totally ignore the weapon-energy. It's definitely not that they switch constantly. I'd still say that although it isn't perfect (why can't I change the keyboard layout?!, lose your weapon powerups in the middle of a level and you're pretty much fucked because powering up does take a while) the chaining system is interesting and rewarding if you can get into the groove of it and don't suffer from an incurable Euroshmup allergy

pixelcorps · Post by **pixelcorps** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:57 pm

oh my euroshmup allergy is very much incurable,mainly due to the fact I prefer living in this century

Gwyrgyn Blood · Post by **Gwyrgyn Blood** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:18 am

Yeah of all of the little issues with the game, the weapon strength is the biggest problem. The weapons are just too weak at lowest power and you can't get them powered up quickly at all. The game is just unfun because the weapons are unfun to use unless you've got them powered up.

Aside from that, the resolution handling is retarded, they restrict the usable resolutions to some arbitrary numbers, and on my machine of course that means none of them are my actual native resolution, and the 'widescreen' resolutions only fill up a small portion of the screen for some reason. Bug with the game I guess, seeing as the resolution works fine other than with this game. Also the game doesn't seem to reset my resolution back to the normal when I quit, which is just extra fun.

Just tons of little problems all over with this game. It would actually be pretty easy to fix up with a big patch, but I doubt the company thinks anything is wrong with it.

-Bridget- · Post by **-Bridget-** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 4:58 am

Sounds like this is another "love it or hate it" title.

The stuff I saw in the vids looked interesting, and some of the stuff I read in this topic from those that have played it, are gonna make me end up buying this indeed.

It's gonna have to wait likely till right after Christmas though, since I just spent 10-gazillion bucks on a PS3, and I gotta do my gift-shopping this Friday (argh).

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 5:45 am

I suppose this will just echo what most people are saying.

-Beautiful game, but some enemies blend into the background (snakes/dinosours on Stage 1)

-Only the lowest of popcorn enemies will die in number. You'll be lucky to take out 1/4 of enemies in the stage. Maybe once weapons get powered up and you know where to use each one. *shrug* Maybe not.

-Levels are too damn long and not intense. Want waves (literally)? You got 'em.

-A few cheap hits from ascending/descending enemies.

-Music seems good...at least what I've heard.

I've stuck with the game because it's pretty. ...and it's new. That's about it. Maybe once I discern proper weapon usage/chaining the game will become better. I hope so.

P.S. Good god, the keyboard layout sucks. Have they never heard of using ZXC for actions? At the very least assign weapon switching to keys in range of the fire key. Ctrl for fire and 1,2, etc. for weapons? No.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 6:16 am

Damocles wrote:I suppose this will just echo what most people are saying.

-Beautiful game, but some enemies blend into the background (snakes/dinosours on Stage 1)

-Only the lowest of popcorn enemies will die in number. You'll be lucky to take out 1/4 of enemies in the stage. Maybe once weapons get powered up and you know where to use each one. *shrug* Maybe not.

-Levels are too damn long and not intense. Want waves (literally)? You got 'em.

-A few cheap hits from ascending/descending enemies.

-Music seems good...at least what I've heard.

I've stuck with the game because it's pretty. ...and it's new. That's about it. Maybe once I discern proper weapon usage/chaining the game will become better. I hope so.

P.S. Good god, the keyboard layout sucks. Have they never heard of using ZXC for actions? At the very least assign weapon switching to keys in range of the fire key. Ctrl for fire and 1,2, etc. for weapons? No.

and i thought i was the only one who HATED that fact.
while KB its not good (enough) for shmups, most ppl still use them on their PCs to play some... and leaving out the option to customizeit is just silly.