I thought I was getting decent at shooters, and then...

[charlie chong]

try this

http://www.divshare.com/

[Keade]

I've been using 99 for all my inps

Right, versions which should be ok for record/playback with Cave system games are "anything between 0.68 and 0.99" (included).
I think the Cave driver is ok again now, but I don't know starting from which version exactly.

[Arvandor]

Oh, I realized it's not the little brown tanks coming from the bottom that are the issue, it's the ones coming from the base thing at the top near the end of that section. I'd sweep from left to right so quickly that I wouldn't kill many off, and they'd just overwhelm me with bullets. If I pause during each sweep to the side of the turret just long enough for the laser to clear off that row of tanks before moving the rest of the way to herd bullets, it's MUCH more managable.

[R_Typist]

DDP has been giving me fits lately as well.

I'm a noob, but I love the aesthetics and adrenaline of maniac shmups -- therefore I've bitten off more than I can chew.

I barely make it to the end of the 3rd level before my continue is toast.

[charlie chong]

arrrrgghhh


i feel your pain arvandor .. finally no missed till level 5 with 5 extends in stock (i used 2 bombs on level 4 tho) i was a bit scared at first as the 5th life didn't show but when i died i still had 4 lifes.. anyways even with 5 lives i still fucked up the last 2 levels .. i only need 1 extend spare and i can bomb that bitch to death and i still mess it up...grrrrrr

[BryanM]

It's aggravating - I'm able to "No Miss" every stage in the game... it's just getting to the point of doing it all in the same play. It's always something stupid.

Getting close to a first loop 1cc, maybe six more months or so. What killed me was seeing a vid a guy made of a 1cc, and didn't qualify for the loop. That was just mean.

I'm torn between the A and C shot type right now - The last stage feels a lot easier with the added speed, but the angled shots makes stage 3 and certain other spots less stressful...

One thing I think is hindering my progress is that my current version of MAME.. gives me error messages when trying to save states, which means I have to do full runs every times I play it instead of practicing stages or bosses on their own. "Pending anonymous timers" my ass.

This is what is killing my progress, too. The first four stages are boring nothings, and a large waste of time and attention and energy. Working on taking down the last three bosses without bombs and the last couple stages - all I have left to round out my current goal.

[Arvandor]

Don't get me wrong, I could clear the first loop every time if I really wanted. But I'm trying to improve on chaining and abstain from bomb-useage at this point. The no-bomb policy is what really makes things difficult ^_^ I can no-miss up to stage 5, and theoretically no-miss stage 5, but... it almost never happens that way =P Gotta work on consistancy.

Also, for those of you having save-state problems, I have never once used save states in this game, so I can't help you -_^

[PROMETHEUS]

BryanM : To choose which type you want to play, take a look at a C-S video and a A-L video. See BR1's video on this page for C-S, and KO's video on www.superplay.co.uk or my replay for A-L. C-S has an easier time in 1-5 and probably 2-5 which is very nice but I don't know well about the difficulty of scoring for C-S in other sections, compared to A-L. Anyway, I think you should choose according to the style you like best. If you're just playing for survival C-S is definitely easier. Scoring wise, A-L also is kind of harder to use sometimes due to its high speed : you have to be more accurate, but it's good practice for this reason too.

As for the save states problem, just use the proper MAME version... (wolfmame99 for instance).

[Arvandor]

Maybe it's just because I've been playing A-L for so long, but I seem to remember when I switched from C-S to A-L that I actually had an EASIER time surviving just because I could bullet herd better and kill off nasty bullet spewers faster. C-S may nuke popcorn like they don't exist, but some of the big tanks really give it hell.

[Arvandor]

Alrighty, not that anyone cares about my DDP prgoress report, but here it is anyways. I need a personal shmup blog or something, which even fewer people would read =P Which would suck, because I like the feedback like "Hey stupid, do it this way, it's easier."

I've been getting more runs into stage 6 without the use of bombs. This is definitely signs of improvement, though stage 5 still gives me a hard time in a couple spots, and generally leaves me with one or no lives to do stage 6 and boss and whatnot. While I appear to finally be getting more consistant at stages 1 through 4, I still die to the stage 3 boss more than I think is reasonable.

I chain break in stage 4 A LOT; but I'm getting a lot better, managed a few 400-500 chains today, and can THEORETICALLY get it all. I very frequently break right at the beginning around the two power up ships, then shortly after that at the large tank under the building followed by the turrets, power up ship #3, bee (#4 I think?), and tank spawns, there are about 2-3 various spots in this little section alone where I'll chainbreak a lot. After that I'm usually pretty set.

Also, I really REALLY hate the arrow head spray + aimed large blue bullets from the 4th boss. I have basicailly 3 options, and I hate them all. A: Try to stay in the middle, going back and forth right in the middle of the arrow head cloud. Very dangerous. B: Start at one side, and sweep to the other, but I'll most likely get corenred and die unless I C: Go so far to the side, that I'm no longer shooting the boss. Certainly the lesser of 3 evils, but... I really don't like it when I'm not hitting the boss for some reason =/ The other problem with trying to continously shoot the boss with that pattern, is that he starts his final pattern with me still sitting in the midst of pink arrowheads. Not good. I'm more or less forced to move all the way to the right of the screen to start that pattern, which is irritating, but I guess at least it works... Right?

Last thought (I bet even Prometheus has stopped reading by now). If I ever start getting runs that are super-play worthy, I'll have to get fraps and some video editing software and whatnot so that I can make an "outtakes" reel at the end of the video with all my stupid random deaths with "yakkity sax" playing in the background. Because I gaurantee, no matter how amazingly good I get at this game, I WILL have deaths in 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc, and some of them will be purely genius. Single bullet on the screen moving nice and slow? POW! It happens, and not on purpose. I'm just that retarded. It'd be funny to watch a huge series of suge brilliance though, don't you think?

[moozooh]

Record .inp's instead, they're much more convenient to make into a perfect-framerate video files.

[Arvandor]

There are a couple of problems with INPs (perhaps more than I can think of, it's late and I'm tired).

A: I'd have no way of splicing all the good outtakes into one INP, at least not that I know of.

B: And perhaps more importantly, unless I put everything into one really long INP for each session, I'd have to wait for that goddamn copyright text to scroll by every restart since f10 doesn't work while recording.

[shoe-sama]

it does if ur nut using wolfmame LOL

[moozooh]

A: I'd have no way of splicing all the good outtakes into one INP, at least not that I know of.

You don't have to do that; instead you make the .inp's you need into sreaming videos and do easy editing on them without quality loss.

B: And perhaps more importantly, unless I put everything into one really long INP for each session, I'd have to wait for that goddamn copyright text to scroll by every restart since f10 doesn't work while recording.

This is a major inconvenience everyone has to put up this until there's a convenient recording in an arcade emulator. :(

[PROMETHEUS]

This text is annoying indeed but you can make it go away faster by pressing the credit button right when it has finished displaying entirely. It will immediately fade away instead of 5-10 sec later.

[Arvandor]

Woops, beat my old high score by about 10M, but forgot to write down my max chain =D And I don't remember what it was if I beat the 488 chain I got in stage 2 (which I don't THINK I did... but who knows).

Oh well, I'll beat it again later, maybe even soon. Perhaps I should start making it a habit to take screenshots of my high scores.

[charlie chong]

I find the 4th bosses arrowhead attack quite easy .. it helps if you try and look at the pattern as a whole and rather than look at the arrows instead look at the gaps and plan your movement slightly ahead of when you are actually going to move.. then you just stay in the bigger gaps while twitching left/right to avoid the blue bullets..

[PROMETHEUS]

or just learn the boss' bug and don't have to even deal with it -.-

if I have to do this arrow spread attack, I just move in one direction slowly through whatever gap I find in the arrows. If you keep moving a little bit without stopping for more than 2 seconds you don't even have to watch the blue bullets, they can't hit you. They're only forcing you to keep moving in that direction.

[charlie chong]

how exactly do you trigger the bug???

i triggered it once a week or so ago and was wondering what the hell was going on.. i'd never heard of it before ..

[Arvandor]

Well, basically if you get the boss down past 1/2 health (which is when he explodes and starts doing his final patterns) while he's on the far right side of the screen (mostly off the screen), then he'll freeze there. I've never even tried doing this =) Just seen it in KO's replay.

Yeah, I USUALLY can manage the arrowhead pattern without any troubles, using Prometheus' preferred method, but sometimes I'll encounter a wall I either can't slip through, fail to slip through, or am forced to go back the other direction. It's becoming less of a problem, as now I know I need to get high and to one far side before the last pattern starts. My biggest problem with the arrowhead pattern wasn't the pattern so much as me still being surrounded by arrowheads when the twin aimed purple streams were fired.

I still die more random deaths to the third boss than any other single part in the game (even the tough bits of stage 5 now give me less stupid deaths). Also, now that I'm starting to make it to stage 6 semi-consistantly, I'm finding out how freaking tough the final boss is. Particularly that final pattern. I can slip through it for about 5-8 volleys then I'll miss the hole, or run into a blue stream of death, or something. Ugh, such a pain.

[charlie chong]

aahh thats exactly where he was when i triggered it by mistake.. i'll have to try it again as i had a good laugh at the completely helpless boss last time.. NO MERCY!

[HeLGeN-X]

Set us up the bomb and you fire.

Lmfao, but yeah serious, I know what the first poster means, like I used to get to S5 in Mushi, then get pwned by the last boss, I never could get by the wave of bullets in that part, my friend however got through it once.

As for DDP, I could get up to either S3 or 4 without dying, after that, it's just like "argh" because for some reason, I hate using bombs in all shmups, but I should really get used to them, as they're there to save life.

[HeLGeN-X]

Don't mean to double post, but I was just thinking about DDP and about to play it with a friend on P2P, and I was like "damn, for an old game, it's quite hard." I feel it's harder than mushi or Daioujou."

[Arvandor]

I feel it's harder than mushi or Daioujou."

Mushi - Even taking the absurd amounts of bombs into consideration (which cripples your score in both games), I think DDP is harder, so yeah.

Daioujou - You freel wrong, my friend. DOJ is MUUUUUUUCH more difficult than DDP, no matter how you look at it.

[Necronopticous]

Mushi - Even taking the absurd amounts of bombs into consideration (which cripples your score in both games), I think DDP is harder, so yeah.

It really depends on what mode you're playing in Mushihime-sama; I find MANIAC to be about the same difficulty as DoDonPachi, and ULTRA to be worlds harder.

[PROMETHEUS]

Ultra is definitely harder than DDP's loop 2, and maniac may be harder than loop 1 and easier than loop 2 I guess.

[PROMETHEUS]

Well, basically if you get the boss down past 1/2 health (which is when he explodes and starts doing his final patterns) while he's on the far right side of the screen (mostly off the screen), then he'll freeze there. I've never even tried doing this =) Just seen it in KO's replay.

Yeah, I USUALLY can manage the arrowhead pattern without any troubles, using Prometheus' preferred method, but sometimes I'll encounter a wall I either can't slip through, fail to slip through, or am forced to go back the other direction. It's becoming less of a problem, as now I know I need to get high and to one far side before the last pattern starts. My biggest problem with the arrowhead pattern wasn't the pattern so much as me still being surrounded by arrowheads when the twin aimed purple streams were fired.

I still die more random deaths to the third boss than any other single part in the game (even the tough bits of stage 5 now give me less stupid deaths). Also, now that I'm starting to make it to stage 6 semi-consistantly, I'm finding out how freaking tough the final boss is. Particularly that final pattern. I can slip through it for about 5-8 volleys then I'll miss the hole, or run into a blue stream of death, or something. Ugh, such a pain.

To trigger the bug at the area 4 boss : get his life bar to 10 pixels over its half during the first attacks, by point blanking him when the fight starts. When the laser attack ends you should be done with getting his life bar at this state. Now dodge the next attack so as to be in the middle of the screen vertically and to the far right when it ends. The boss will come to you then, make his weapon explode exactly when his speed is 0 and he is positioned on the far right and middle right over you.

The 1-6 boss isn't that easy indeed and the game rewards you a lot of points for not bombing him at all (about 40M), by letting you play 2-1 and 2-2 with the MAX bonus. Then you find a bomb at the end of 2-2 if you had bombed once.

[-Bridget-]

Mushi - Even taking the absurd amounts of bombs into consideration (which cripples your score in both games), I think DDP is harder, so yeah.

It really depends on what mode you're playing in Mushihime-sama; I find MANIAC to be about the same difficulty as DoDonPachi, and ULTRA to be worlds harder.

Aye.

Mushi's legendary difficulty level stems mostly from Ultra. Though the nightmarish endboss can also be faced at the end of Arrange mode as well for some unholy reason (to piss me off, likely). But the rest of Arrange isnt bad at all.

Maniac is pretty basic, as Cave difficulties go (their usual, basically), and Original, I've heard varying opinions on that one. Some say it's harder than Maniac, or that it's too hard, or whatever. I didnt have any trouble clearing it, myself.



As for Mushi or DOJ being harder than the other, not entirely sure.

For me, Mushi has more bullets, DOJ just plain annoys me more. It's hard for me to tell which level is more obnoxious, Mushi's stage 4 or DOJ's stage 3..... But Ultra takes the cake, to me. Even Death Label cant get anywhere near the sheer awfulness that is that damn 2nd boss in Ultra. Curse that thing. It should be the 5th boss. But nooooo, jammed into the end of 2 just to irritate me.




Oh, and on another note, exactly how does one go about making IMP files into videos? I've never been too clear on this, and there's a few of my own that I'd like to do this with.

[PROMETHEUS]

Imps don't convert themselves so well into videos.

[Arvandor]

I've been playing this game almost daily for the past 2-3 months, I've logged 60 hours in wolfmame, and I have no idea how much time I put in before that in MAME and the Saturn version. Probably a few hundred at least, and haven't broken my old high score. In fact, I still can't ever make it to stage 6 if I'm going for no-bomb. That stupid ass section in the middle of stage 5 still almost always kills me, no matter how I herd bullets, I'll end up walled, and no matter how many times I freeze state play that section, and how many times I watch various replays, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong when I get walled in by utter bullshit carpet fire. I can make it through that section untouched maybe once out of twenty tries, and again... I cannot see what I'm doing wrong to cause enemies to make a wall of inescapable pink.

Then there's the second loop. I've spent hundreds of hours sucking on the first loop, and I decided to save state cheat my way through the second loop, just to see what it was like, and dick around with hibachi a little. I can't even make progress save-state cheating on the second loop. I can't imagine how many thousands upon thousands of hours it would take me to make it decently far one out of every 100 credits or more. In fact, I don't know if even after thousands of hours of practice I'll be able to do THAT well. I'm the best gamer I know personally, with above average reflexes, and amazing hand-eye coordination, but this game just feels completely beyond my capabilities, and that is more frustrating than anything else. Truly.

Fuck this god damn, fucking game.

/vent