Applying real-world ideas to shmup playing

[Arvandor]

So, one of the most important concepts of riding a motorcycle, is when you want to turn, you turn your head and eyes and point them exactly where you want to go; your shoulders will naturally follow. If a new rider panics and looks at the curb he's afraid of hitting, he's going to hit the curb.

Well, it occured to me one play session, as I looked at one stray bullet moving through the cluster of bullets faster than the rest and thought "Oh crap that one's going to hit me!" and I focued on that bullet, and that bullet only while navigating through the cloud, and sure enough, that ONE bullet was the one that killed me. So I decided: how about instead of focusing on the bullets, focusing on the gaps inbetween? In other words, where I want to go.

I've been trying this out, with a fair amount of success. I think it may actually improve my shmuping abilities as I get more used to this alternate mindset. Of course I still have to keep an eye out for threat bullets, and it takes even MORE of an ability to multi-focus than shooters already require, but it seems to work fairly well.

Just thought I'd share. Maybe it won't work for everyone, and maybe even I'll revert back to my old ways, but for now it's an interesting personal experiment.

[kengou]

Absolutely, it's great to look at the gaps in the bullets and move to those gaps. For really thick stuff I also tend to unfocus and just star at the middle of the screen as I dodge, which works well enough.

[shoe-sama]

lol i always look for gaps to fly through

been playing loop 3 cho ren sha a bit recently, and that's pretty important for dealing with those semi-aimed revenge bullets

Not as important as planning a stage route that'll kill enemies fast + herd those things easily, but still fairly significant

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Weaving through crowds of people with the dexterity of a deity?

[shoe-sama]

i also like to abuse mechanics
and watch superplays
like i do irl LOL

[Arvandor]

Well, of course everyone is always looking for gaps to fly through. But what I mean is more pointedly NOT focusing on a specific threat, as it increases your odds of running into it. Perhaps not as strongly as on a motorcycle, since the direction your upper torso is facing has a strong influence on where you'll be going, but it's something interesting to consider while playing.

[Twiddle]

How about applying shmup playing ideas into the real world, such as using your incredible bullet dodging skills to dodge other cars as you drive on the wrong side of the freeway

I say this because I remember a thread about this that posed this exact same question and there was an anecdote from some guy who has left this board for greener pastures about using his Mars Matrix skills for this exact situation

[FIL]

Just as long as you don't start grazing.

[Nuke]

How about applying shmup playing ideas into the real world, such as using your incredible bullet dodging skills to dodge other cars as you drive on the wrong side of the freeway

I say this because I remember a thread about this that posed this exact same question and there was an anecdote from some guy who has left this board for greener pastures about using his Mars Matrix skills for this exact situation

....he's yet to return.

[Randorama]

You know you have played too many shmups when...

[spadgy]

Well, of course everyone is always looking for gaps to fly through. But what I mean is more pointedly NOT focusing on a specific threat, as it increases your odds of running into it. Perhaps not as strongly as on a motorcycle, since the direction your upper torso is facing has a strong influence on where you'll be going, but it's something interesting to consider while playing.

I know what you mean. Surely everyone here can sympathise with that horrid situation when looking at a bullet turns it into some inexplicable magnet that lures your ship towards it? I always find that killing me off...

[spadgy]

Perhaps playing astride an exercise bike would help?

[shoe-sama]

Well, of course everyone is always looking for gaps to fly through. But what I mean is more pointedly NOT focusing on a specific threat, as it increases your odds of running into it. Perhaps not as strongly as on a motorcycle, since the direction your upper torso is facing has a strong influence on where you'll be going, but it's something interesting to consider while playing.

I know what you mean. Surely everyone here can sympathise with that horrid situation when looking at a bullet turns it into some inexplicable magnet that lures your ship towards it? I always find that killing me off...

collect the bullets

[Frederik]

So I decided: how about instead of focusing on the bullets, focusing on the gaps inbetween? In other words, where I want to go.

That´s funny, I thought about this once too. Sort of inverting the way you see the screen, right? I guess it helps when the screen is really filled with bullets; especially in slow games like TouHou - it´s more about seeing the bullet-free corridors than the actual bullets.

In faster games with fewer bullets, like Raiden, that might not make much sense, however. I guess I´ll try that out the next time I try to make my way through Battle Bakraid, which kind of falls into the middle.

EDIT: I just come back from some credits on the boss rush, and your method made the more complex, denser patterns A LOT more easier.

This is in fact a pretty nice analogy to life in general: Stop concentrating on the stuff you want to avoid and go for the possibilities you have. I read somewhere that phrases like "Please use the sidewalks" work better with our brains than "Don´t step on the grass". You are definitely up to something with your experiment.

[unsane]

I find in very fast games (like Dangun Feveron) or fast sparse bullets (Gunbird 2), when i focus on a lone stray bullet i occasionally stupidly run into it, even going so far as to go back and forth until i hit it. Bizarre. Like a moth to light.

I also just realized today that when playing Dangun Feveron i do exactly what you detailed, but unconsciously. The game is so blazing fast on speed 4 that i unconsciously navigate the large gaps rather than avoid bullets.

[MX7]

I find in very fast games (like Dangun Feveron) or fast sparse bullets (Gunbird 2), when i focus on a lone stray bullet i occasionally stupidly run into it, even going so far as to go back and forth until i hit it. Bizarre. Like a moth to light.

It's so bizzarre isn't it? I was thinking about posting something similar, but I was afraid no one would understand what I meant. I was also afraid I might have some form of brain damage

[moozooh]

I'm subject to this syndrome, too. It often happens when I'm getting nervous due to a stressing moment in a game, so that I don't realize I'm going to be safe if I just continue moving forward (or even standing still), instead jerking back in doubt until the bullet hits me.

[spadgy]

There must be something factual behind it, as we've all admitted to the condition...

[Arvandor]

[quote="FrederikJurk]That´s funny, I thought about this once too. Sort of inverting the way you see the screen, right?[/quote]

Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Instead of being aware of where all the threatening bullets are and where they're going, be aware of where they're not and where they won't be. You're more likely to follow the path you want to take if you're focusing on it. It's the whole "keep your eye on the ball" principle, really.

[spadgy]

Actually, taking the 'real life' analogy, it's kind of like doing a trick in skateboarding. Always helps to look at where you're going to land, and not where your going to do the trick/be in the air...

[Randorama]

Since we're here, you can get a very good idea on how Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) and, more in general, Vision works by reading Zenon Pylyshyn's "Vision: it's not what you think". It is usually cheap, very easy to read and would probably help you to pin-point the intuitions.

[Arvandor]

I'll definitely have to go check that out. If I'm lucky our local library will have it or something ^_^

After doing a run of Dodonpachi with this concept in mind. Man, reversing how you look at the playing field makes stage 5 look MUCH less crowded with bullets. Before, I was trying to keep track of too many unimportant bullets and trying to decipher which were a threats to my path and which weren't. My mind would overload at some of the clouds, and I'd get cornered because I couldn't see a way out. Focusing on the empty spots however and ignoring the clouds for the most part, makes things MUUUCH easier.

That's not even to mention the fact that my ship is much more likely to travel the path my eyes are taking than another path, so when I'm focusing on empty spots rather than bullets, I'm just generally less likely to collide with any. It's quite amazing really, and somewhat frustrating I didn't think of it earlier. It seems most things in life requiring hand eye coordination are more focused on eyes than hands. In baseball you want to keep your eye on the ball, if you anticipate its trajectory, chances are you'll miss. A quarterback wants to keep his eye on where he wants the ball to fall when he throws it. If he's too concerned about the guy who MIGHT intercept it, and is focusing on him when he throws the ball, chances are he'll throw it right to the wrong guy. And of course the previous motorcycle versus the curb (or any obstruction) example. The examples go on forever, and clearly shmups aren't any different ^_^ Not so surprising, really. Just funny it didn't occur to me sooner, you'd think at this point something like that would be insanely obvious, to all of us, as it's been drilled into us in almost everything we do involving coordination.

I feel like a retarded genius. You know, "Brilliant! DON'T focus on the bullets you don't want to hit!" And then "Duhrrr, of course you don't want to focus on the bullets you don't want to hit."

[Icarus]

Man, reversing how you look at the playing field makes stage 5 look MUCH less crowded with bullets. <snip>

Eye movement (obviously) plays a very important part to developing skills in shooting games. Previous debates over "inherent skill" (go look them up) rarely touched upon the subject of visual and mental ability in shooting games, but like all skills, time and training can help improve them.

In the case of shooting games, visual and mental skills that should be developed include visual acuity; fast eye movement (for quickly scanning the screen); trajectory estimation; hand-eye co-ordination; rapid creation/alteration of strategy (what is and isn't a threat, and how to deal with them); observational skills (to spot patterns, tricks and exploits); memory recall; and so on. You can train these kinds of skills with various activities, such as sport, or strategic games such as chess (with regards to quickly calculating variations in strategy and isolating ones that work).

When I made this a while ago in response to a post here, I was half-joking and half-serious.

On a related note, I picked up Sight Training for the DS at the start of the month, out of curiosity. While I am usually sceptical of the supposed benefits of "training programs" such as this and the two Brain Training packages, I am doing the exercises on an almost daily basis. Whether they actually do have an effect remains to be seen in the mid- to long-term, but I thought I'd bring them up in discussion for people who might be interested in them.

[spadgy]

I feel like a retarded genius. You know, "Brilliant! DON'T focus on the bullets you don't want to hit!" And then "Duhrrr, of course you don't want to focus on the bullets you don't want to hit."

Good way of explaining it. It does seem stupefyingly obvious even though I'd never really though about it. When non-shmup playing friends have been completely bewildered by something like Mushi on Maniac setting, I've often said 'the more bullets there are the less options there are in terms of evading, so there's less to think through in a way'. Shame I never followed that thought through to your far simpler, more helpful line of reasoning.

Concentrate on where to go, not where not to go...

[J-Manic]

Umm...looking for the gaps in between huge bullet waves (seeing the openings ahead of time, as I like to put it) is pretty much common sense though, isn't it? It would be wise to do so in order to survive, especially in manic shmups. That is the art of bullet dodging, my dear Watson. But, it's easier said than done. I still haven't been able to perfect bullet dodging in any of the shmups I own, even the ones I've had and been playing for years. Quite sad, really.

[worstplayer]

Wow! It really works. Just made it to fifth boss in DDP thanks to this. Arvandor, you're genius.