DoDonPachi Daioujou Ps2 Port vs PCB?

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:08 pm

again, i would disagree with you - because we aren't talking about difficulty in the bullet-dodging sense. i mean in terms of the game as memorisation. doj is very heavy memorisation for good scores, so it's important to keep your memory fresh for the chaining routes of all the levels.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:11 pm

Also, when you know fully well your way into a stage that is still hard for you, it's not necessarily a good idea to practice it over and over instead of learning another stage or practicing another stage that is harder.

For example in DDP, I know very very well my way into 1-5 or 1-6 but I can still miss there sometimes. But it's still not very interesting for me to practice them in particular instead of 2-5 or 2-6 because I know the method anyway and I just have to rely on skill (which I can improve better by playing 2-5 or 2-6) and luck to do them successfully in a run.

EDIT : oh and in response to your last post I think it's good to keep your memory fresh but I think hopefully we don't need THAT MUCH reharsal to remember stages. I haven't been playing 1st loop in DDP for a long time and when I came back to it recently, it only took me a couple of tries to find the paths through the stages again and do as well (and actually better) in them that before. Same for Guwange after 6 months. It's much like songs that you learn and don't forget so easily, some details may have faded but if you try to learn it again everything comes back very fast.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:16 pm

another aspect you need to take into consideration with DOJ is that the game has two accumulative rank systems in place, working simultaneously. so for instance, practicing stage 5 as-is is not the same as playing stage 5 during a normal run. now, you can alter the settings of simulation mode to try to recreate what sort of bullet speed and bullet density you think you'll get on a full run (ie number of lives left, bombs in stock, hypers in stock, hypers consecutively activated, etc), but it's fair to say that you wont get these same parameters each and every time you reach stage 5 anyways. the no bullet mode sounds great in theory, but i didn't find it that useful in practice

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:31 pm

For that matter, I personally think the best way to play a full run for a target high score is to have a rigid plan set up that you will keep trying to accomplish, and that you have practiced over and over before. This way, you can focus your practice on only one "aspect" of the game (a particular rank setting), thus increasing the efficiency of your practice, and consequently you will also be able to perform best in those particular conditions in your run. If your plan is made cleverly (its final score is as high as it can be considering your skill level), it is I think the best way to make the highest possible score while playing as little as possible.

You could have a plan with a loose end though that says "ok, after that part if all the rest was done as planned I will consider the run to be a success anyway so I can face many different possibilities from there depending on whether I miss and whatnot...". Then practicing the last stages over and over with many different settings might be a good idea (again much better to do that with level select in DOJ if the settings are alterable like you say). But if you know that you will want to include those latter parts in a rigid plan in the future to do an even higher score, it is best not to bother with that kind of practice now and either not practice them at all yet or learn a optimal way of doing them as well now, even though you aren't necessarily going to succeed at them for your current target run.

Hope that was understandable ^^ What do you think ?

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:56 pm

i think we should probably stop spamming this guy's thread

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:59 pm

but it's interesting!

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:04 pm

okay...

well, for me, what is important is connecting a chain through the whole level. i can do this on stage 1, 2, and 3. stage 4 i am not so concerned with, because 1-4 is possibly the most difficult stage to chain, so i want to learn this one last. for stage 5, i can make a chain through the first half, up until a beehive section. and if i have my bullet-dodging boots on, i can chain from the beehive up until the last boss. if i can connect that section (in a full run, of course) i could double my 250m score. so in this instance, i want to practice that section repeatedly. however, the way in which i reach stage 5 might always be different. ie i might be practicing stage 5 with 1 hyper in stock, but when i reach stage 5 in a full run, i might have no hypers in stock. will i still be able to make the same chains. or i might reach the stage with 4 or 5 hypers in stock. etc. and because DOJ has a lot more forward-planning than ddp (in terms of getting hypers, when/where to activate), there are a lot more variables to think about. so i don't think it's worth playing stage 5 in isolation with many different settings.

but... i do believe the ps2 port is worth having if you can reach the second loop. in the scoreboards, you'll notice a lot of players reach a wall at 2-1. this is because the game confiscates any extra lives you have at the end of the loop. 2-1 is quite a shock to the system, and indeed this is the reason i want to buy the ps2 version again.

(one other point about full runs is the boss battles in DOJ are very brutal. if you watch plasmo's 437m replay, he dies on the 1-2 boss.)

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:28 pm

Assumptions :

- a harder level = a level that you need to play more times in order to master it.
- a level always ends up being mastered after a certain playtime and then it isn't time efficient to play it every time you want to play the harder levels.
- repeating a section many times in a row or at whatever other frequency of your choice is better for memorizing and/or finding a good path through it than repeating it with the frequency the game imposes you to.
- the best way to have a chance at reaching a target score is knowing a very precise path through the game that will lead you to that score (= a plan, a path, some people call it "strategy").

Then :

1) if you are able to play stage 1, 2 and 3 properly consistently it's indeed quite a more efficient way of practicing for you to play stage 4 and 5 in level select. If not, there are likely only a few parts of each of the first 3 stages that are still a real problem, and wouldn't it be a good idea to repeat those parts over and over (or at whatever the best frequency is for memorizing) through level select (or even more efficiently, save states, but this feature is missing from ports ^^ which is why I think MAME will always be superior when it emulates the game well), so that you can finally know them really well and move on to stage 4 and 5 level select practice ?

2) obviously with this rank system that changes all the time, full runs are even more horrible for practicing than in DDP because you aren't even facing each stages with the "right" settings every time. In your case, isn't it best to learn a plan with a half chain of stage 4 that will bring you into stage 5 with always the approximate same settings, and to practice those 2 stages accordingly with level select ? Then your target run would be "complete stage 1, 2, 3 full chains as planned, stage 4 half stage as planned, fly into stage 5 with known rank setting and follow the well known path for that setting to complete the chain and double++ the score". I think if you'd do that you would reach a much higher score with less playtime.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:59 pm

sorry, i wasn't very clear before. for stage 4, i am actually quite consistent. i get a large chain at the start; followed by a break in the chain; another large chain; another break; and another large chain up to the boss. i can do it fairly consistently with no deaths, it's just that i cannot chain the whole level in one go (like i say, this level is perhaps the hardest in terms of timing - before the recent black label dvd, i had never seen a japanese replay where the player chains all of st4 on both loops!). in terms of what sort of bullet hell i face in stage 5 is dependant on how i do on the stage 4 boss. he is exploitable for a lot of points, so it kinda depends on how you play him on that particular day. on plasmo's replay, it look like he must practice stage 5 with multiple hypers at the start, as he sacrifices all but his last life on the st4 boss. for myself, it would be worth my time practicing st5 just to get a route/pattern that i'm comfortable with, and preferable to me as a player. but once i have that pattern in my memory, i would practice full-runs so i can learn to improvise a bit around that. or as chtimi put it: being a good DOJ player means always having a plan B.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:35 pm

I'm doubtful about the efficiency of practicing that way (with the plan B idea) but I see where you're coming from. It would be interesting to see the difference in score of players of the same skill level playing with either method. Perhaps the impro-free method is fine for loop 1 scores, but high scores (nearly perfect loop1 then some goos stuff in loop 2 at least) demand more rigidity than that as far as I know, or your probability of success will be really really low.

This improvisation thing you're talking about is like a situation that branches out of the main plan if something misses. If you know where you are susceptible to miss, you could just learn a secondary plan (= plan B) through the same "level select method" I described. If the way you miss is always different and affects the rest of the run in quite a noticeably different way every time, then practicing full runs still isn't nearly as good as starting from the stage you're susceptible to miss in (and that you would accept yourself missing in for your run).

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:51 pm

the trouble in comparing different techniques to practice is how can you measure someone's overall skill-level, and know that two players are equal? in our doj scoreboard, there are some players who practice a stage in isolation, and some who only use full-run practice method. and the scores are very comparable. who takes more time? difficult to answer accurately. but it's probably safe to say that the players who use full-runs have the better consistency. this makes me think of ikaruga (which is quite similar in the chaining+memorisation aspect). on ikaruga.co.uk there are some players who actually have higher scores on individual stages than what's in the japanese appreciate dvd. but their overall full-run scores are lower. in terms of practicing the "danger areas" of doj is that there are honestly a large number of them. i think it's more difficult than ddp, guwange, and definitely ikaruga, in this aspect. one last thing to add: doj becomes more difficult the better you play. so say for example that a player can reach 1-4 on a credit, but itsn't making too many points. so he practices stage 2 over and over because a full-stage chain is worth 50+ million. when he goes back to playing full-runs, stage 3 is now more difficult.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:00 am

Well DOJ looks harder and just plainly better than DDP to me indeed, but that's only a better reason to learn the danger zones with save states / level select. And I don't see why the fact stage 3 has become harder in a full run after the player has practiced stage 2 is a bad point for level select practice. As I said a smart level select practice is included in a plan and you are supposed to be fully aware of the requirements and consequences of what you are practicing at doing.

Also I don't see why you think the full-runs players will have the better consistency, they will probably be a little more consistent on the first stages (depending how the level select players have practiced the first stages, they're only supposed to stop practicing them once they get consistent at them anyway) but will be much less consistent on the later levels.

When I played Guwange in that contest with the usual save state practice used at the best efficiency I could, I got much better results than the next 2 best ranked other players who I assume where playing with full runs, although I don't know exactly how much time they spent on it nor how their skill compared to mine at the beginning of the contest so like you said it's difficult to compare, but I really can't imagine having done the same score in the same time frame without save states practice...

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:47 am

I kinda agree with PROMETHEUS. It's always better to have a stable plan with a high enough goal, and work towards it. Even if you won't ever reach it exactly the way you wanted, it at least won't impede your natural progress, and will be more worth it in the long run, compared to a plan that accounts for many mistakes. The only downside to that is that following a higher goal will likely take more time and may thus be less effective timewise. But think about the feeling of accomplishment you will attain when you finally do it. :P

Also, the reason full runs may let you become more consistent over time is that the timeline of a run gets more consistent, and easier to relate to between stages. It's noticeably less effective, but it can get the job done just as well over time. A matter of preference, I guess.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 9:15 am

again, i can't say i agree. i think what you are saying is to practice stage 1 over and over in level select, then move onto stage 2 in level select, etc etc. but is that really faster than slowly improving upon all stages simultaneously? again, difficult to answer. and in the context of this game, doj, full runs do give you better consistency, as you are able to attack levels in different ways and improvise around mistakes more effectively. for example, if a player is chaining stage 2 and intends to stockpile all his hypers for the final gauntlet of the level, but he makes a mistake midway through the level. and now he needs to activate the hypers to gain 2 seconds and continue the chain ad lib. but now he needs to attack the latter half of the level in a different way. and when the next hypers come down, it will not be at the time the player is usually expecting. which has a knock-on effect for the boss fight, and the next level. etc etc. a level select practice player may not realise initially that he needs to know routes through stages 1, 2, 3 with and without hypers. you need the ability to improvise. is practicing the levels individually with different settings, different difficulty, and altered routes, really quicker than practicing all stages with slightly differing results anyway? in terms of the scores and consistency etc, i'm talking first-hand from the scoreboards and reading other players' posts. and from my own experience, my top score is 250m, but if i sit down with the game, i will always have a run over 200m. and i've only practiced full-runs. looking at the tables etc, both methods bring their results. personally, i will soon be practicing both methods, but this is more for 2nd loop play.

anyways, the real question: when are you buying this game?

Ligersknight · Post by **Ligersknight** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:37 pm

im buying DOJ, Espgaluda, and a japanese ps2 this summer

EDIT: its funny how all the spam helped me better understnd DOJ

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:24 pm

What I'm saying is that you don't have to leave yourself so much room for improvisation and mistakes. Make a plan and practice it well with level select / save states, and if that plan fails in a run, restart the run until you get that plan done. This way you have optimized both your practicing time by learning only one (or 2, or a few) possibilities and your high score because your plan is tailored to produce the highest score possible depending on your skill level and the probability of success that you can accept for your attempts.

PC Engine Fan X! · Post by **PC Engine Fan X!** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:25 pm

Of course, with a DDP-DOJ PCB, one has to do a full-run without the ability to access stage select option found in the PS2 port -- a valid point to consider if one does have access to a DDP-DOJ PCB in the first place.

There will be times when such a "perfect run" isn't possible -- the law of "diminishing returns" comes into effect here. How is this so? Logic says that more times than not, a perfect run will not be possible due to player's making error(s) during current gaming session, thus messing up the current run for personal best score (or World Record score run for that matter). To strive for the perfect 1CC run is to be "in the zone". Not many folks will have ventured into that territory but only the "best of the best" will. An ace player would know the game forward and backwards and utilize his or her skills and experience honed over time (for some folks, that would months or years of playing the same game to the point of mastery) to pull off the perfect 1CC gaming session...

After doing the ever elusive 1CC, there isn't any room for improvement but to see if your personal best score attempt can be increased even higher. And so thus, is the never ending quest to see if such WR scores can be broken by ace players...

As the ol' saying goes: Practice makes perfect... ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:48 pm

again, pmt, i would say try the game for yourself before making the judgement. i also don't think your approach works for other games (ibara, galuda 2, pink sweets, garegga, batrider, etc). anyways, i agree that level select can be a useful tool; hopefully you agree that full-runs are not a waste of time?

and when are you buying this game...?

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:50 pm

The zone doesn't exist, it's an adrenaline injection given to your body in times of extreme stress.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:05 pm

Twiddle wrote:The zone doesn't exist, it's an adrenaline injection given to your body in times of extreme stress.

I don't know.

There are times when I can't believe I've survived this long, and somehow manage to dodge the undodgeable on my last life with no bombs (usually my first credit on a new game). There are also times when muscle memory completely takes over, and I realize I'd been sitting thinking about schoolwork or a conversation I had and all of the sudden I'm in Stage 4 and I've already beaten my high score by a hundred million.
The first is definitely caused by adrenaline - the rushing blood and shaking hands, the extreme focus and excitement... But the other is totally sedate. I don't even realize I've done anything at all, and the instant I realize what's happened and try to focus I start to falter.

Besides, happiness is just a chemical cocktail, but that doesn't make it any less real, right?

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:20 pm

jpj wrote:again, pmt, i would say try the game for yourself before making the judgement. i also don't think your approach works for other games (ibara, galuda 2, pink sweets, garegga, batrider, etc). anyways, i agree that level select can be a useful tool; hopefully you agree that full-runs are not a waste of time? :) and when are you buying this game...?

Of course full runs aren't a complete waste of time, I only said that as a comparison with level select / save states for practicing.

As for me, I can see that DOJ is clearly superior to DDP, but I will probably never or not any time soon be playing it for several reasons. The most important reason is that I'm currently doing my final play sessions of DDP, and while I don't regret one bit having played it and worked towards this final goal, I will probably stop playing STGs for a long time after it's done, because playing at a high level takes a lot of time and energy that I want to use on other things (well, other games actually :p I play RTS and FPS). Since I don't like playing something half heartedly, I won't be buying other shmups.

Another reason is that DDP made me hate the idea of loops :p If I play other STGs again in the future I will carefuly avoid any game that loops. Loops are another thing that will waste a lot of time when you play for second loop scores, and it's not as fun to play and to watch than games that don't loop imo. I'm very curious to hear what the best japanese players think about that issue, and why the f*** Cave keep making looping games today (I assume DFK's going to loop as well...).

I also think level select could be quite inefficient compared to save states for practicing and use up another big bunch of hours for the same achievements. So maybe I'll consider playing mushi futari when it comes onto MAME in 10 years or something ^_^

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:25 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:I have played a few credits at NEV's house :p I think it's better to play with level select for any arcade game anyway. Seems pretty obvious to me : there are always harder things you would want to try a lot of times in a row or easier parts that you wouldn't want to play over and over...

Playing full runs is part of the challenge, and clearly the way the game was meant to be played.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:41 pm

GaijinPunch wrote:
PROMETHEUS wrote:I have played a few credits at NEV's house :p I think it's better to play with level select for any arcade game anyway. Seems pretty obvious to me : there are always harder things you would want to try a lot of times in a row or easier parts that you wouldn't want to play over and over...
Playing full runs is part of the challenge, and clearly the way the game was meant to be played.

of course I mean for practicing only

If what you meant is that arcade games were meant to be practiced in full runs, you're right, but it doesn't make it an intelligent way of challenging a player or the best method for practicing. If wasting dozens of hours on easy stages to get a couple of glances at what the harder stages are like and how they're meant to be played, then I'm not sure it's clever to accept that challenge, given a better alternative ^_^

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:47 pm

like i say - do both.

play full-runs, and when you've identified a part that you can't chain, try it in level select until you have a method you're happy with; then adapt that into your full-runs, and see how well you can work around that pattern.

the trouble with your method, prometheus, is that it entails you having a specific goal in mind (not high score, but the highest score that you can achieve). but for most people, their goals, and amount of patience/dedication to practice changes with time. apart from stage 2, i wouldn't recommend anyone practice a level over and over until a (near) max score until they can clear the loop anyways.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:54 pm

of course I mean for practicing only

Me too.

If what you meant is that arcade games were meant to be practiced in full runs, you're right, but it doesn't make it an intelligent way of challenging a player or the best method for practicing.

What is a more intelligent way? Players are benchmarked on their ability to do a full run, not a particular stage. As such, why have any other method for practicing? If you could just do stage 4 and 5 without having to trudge through 1-3 of just about any Cave game, they'd be exponentially easier. The trick is getting there with enough extends enough times to learn the patterns.

If wasting dozens of hours on easy stages to get a couple of glances at what the harder stages are like and how they're meant to be played, then I'm not sure it's clever to accept that challenge, given a better alternative ^_^

I think clever and the other adjectives you're using aren't sufficient in this case... or just wrong. Of course it's clever: It gets the player to put more money into the machine, which is the name of the game. I see where you're coming from on the time constraints (I have very little gaming time, and the irony is that most of these games require as much time as an RPG to 1CC) but it still doesn't make it right.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:02 am

Call it whatever you want instead of "not clever", it takes a LOT more time and isn't skill related.

Basketball players don't practice basketball just by playing full matches. They practice dunks, jumps, running, tactics and they do body building. If they didn't, perhaps they could still reach high goals but they would make progress at an incredibly slower pace, and would suck compared to teams who practice as much but better (= more cleverly, in a way).

If time matters to you for whatever reason (you want to dedicate yourself to more than one game or play the piano or learn languages or whatever), it's a nice idea to save up 100s of hours I think ~_~

Now if you think it's more fun to play full runs only, that's another story entirely. I'm only saying practicing differently is a better way to make progress timewise.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:13 am

PROMETHEUS wrote:Call it whatever you want instead of "not clever", it takes a LOT more time and isn't skill related.

It is the definition of "skill-related". If you die on stage 2, you need to work on your skills.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:22 am

What I said wasn't clear :

obviously being able to "survive the stages with enough extends to see the latter stages' patterns" takes skill, but the "challenge" you get out of learning that way (being given limited views of the latter stages and having to play the easier ones every time before that) is not a challenge of skill compared to learning by just viewing said latter stages over and over. It's only a constraint to prevent you from memorizing efficiently and make you waste more time before you achieve whatever goal you want.

It's a clever way of forcing players to put more coins in the machine sure. Just like world of warcraft is clever for trapping players into addiction so they keep playing and paying. But if what you're looking for is skill and high scores, it's not the best way to practice.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:34 am

sorry, i probably wasn't too clear - when i say full-run, i mean continuing to put credits in until the end of the game, ie the way most top japanese players say they practice.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:31 am

It's only a constraint to prevent you from memorizing efficiently and make you waste more time before you achieve whatever goal you want.

It's still a question of skill no matter how you slice it. Time is involved, yes, but if you don't have the time, you shouldn't be bothering in the first place. You're looking at different pieces, while I look at the game as a whole. You earn the practice in latter stages by perfecting the earlier ones. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that.

Full runs w/ continues is an entirely different aspect. It definitely comes with it's penalties (depending on the game).