Shooting Game Tournament 2008 Theme Weeks and possible Rules

[DMC]

DMC: I think this system would lead to large differences between the first and second teams. And avoiding that is why linear scoring system was suggested.

not at all, I dont think it would make it too spread out between two teams. a fourth player would only make 3 points difference at most (if he places above all the players from the other team).

someone suggested to have a two-point difference at the top anyway, that would result in more or less the same difference. But the thing is, that system makes the fourth player redundant. This, on the other hand, would motivate more players.

I think a system that only makes a minority contribute (3 out of 7) needs to be revised.

[mikwuyma]

I think a system that only makes a minority contribute (3 out of 7) needs to be revised.

Why? Not everyone can devote every week to STGT, which is why teams have more than 3 players.

[DMC]

true, but I bet many teams will have the same top-3 every week. Participation has decreased over time in both tournaments (and in our own swedish version where there were complaints about this system). maybe it has something to do with this, maybe something else.

[sikraiken]

Zakk and elbarto have both stated something, elbarto putting it as "Banned users in teams? "

As some of you may know, shoe-sama was banned from the forums. It was deserved; he acted like a moron.

However, I would like him to participate as part of my team. He won't be able to post/contribute to public discussion, so no stupid posts. It's unfortunate because he does have plenty good to say when he wants to. He would be contacting mikwuyma personally for score submission (outside of the forums, for obvious reasons).

Will this be a serious problem for people? I understand the whole "well, he was banned from the forums, why should he be allowed to participate in a forum tournament?" I'm pretty much asking for some mercy here.

[P_HAT]

he acted like a moron.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUjkbKpF ... re=related

[Zebra Airforce]

Super Space Fortress Macross 2, as suggested by Ghegs - This may or may not count as a caravan game, but it would be a good choice for the tournament. There are three routes which are broken up into stages that run on a time limit of about 3 - 4:00 per stage. Dying penalizes you by taking away a good chunk of time (and initializes the Raizing style medal value). The game has some graphical issues that can make it difficult (bad priority), but the problem only seems to affect the beginner course, which I think would be a bad choice for the tournament anyway.

The key is to no miss and collect as many bonuses as you can, which is difficult because many enemies leave tons of items at the right side of the screen. Defeating the boss quickly and having a nice hunk of leftover time allows you to maximize on some serious bonus time while invincible.

[lgb]

Will this be a serious problem for people? I understand the whole "well, he was banned from the forums, why should he be allowed to participate in a forum tournament?" I'm pretty much asking for some mercy here.

Not for me. He may have acted like an "idiot" on the forums, but that doesn't mean he never existed. Nor does it mean he sucks at shmups.

[Ghegs]

I don't see shoe participating in the competition as a problem.

On the subject of using full-version commercial doujins, the forum's rule of "no linking to copyrighted material" is still in effect. There can not be any links to such downloads (and this includes roms, of course). There can't be any "PM [user] for your super-secret tournament zip file"-type of antics either.

I fully realize using TEH ROMZ for playing emulated games is not any different as far as legality is concerned, but people seem much more capable of finding those themselves. As such, using full versions of commercially sold doujin games for the competition is not a good idea.

[bsidwell]

One week I would like to have just for kicks:
Dragon Week - Dragon Spirit (system might be too reliant on suicides), Dust Dragon (never even heard of this game until today), Cyvern: The Dragon weapons, Mahou Daisakusen, Raiden Fighters Jet (miclus is a dragon)

Dragon Week with no Dragon Blaze? I mean it's right there in the title and everything.

[Rob]

SYVALION has a dragon in it.

[mikwuyma]

bsidwell: I didn't include Dragon Blaze because it was in the stgt two years ago. I have no qualms with including it this year if people actually want a dragons week.

Rob: I know

Shoe's participation: I know I'm not a mod, but I don't really care since all he will do is submit a score and that's that. Unless if I feel like submitting myself to screams of "PVP" in #shmups.

[The Coop]

One week I would like to have just for kicks:
Dragon Week - Dragon Spirit (system might be too reliant on suicides), Dust Dragon (never even heard of this game until today), Cyvern: The Dragon weapons, Mahou Daisakusen, Raiden Fighters Jet (miclus is a dragon)

Dragon Week with no Dragon Blaze? I mean it's right there in the title and everything.

Don't forget Dragon Breed, and the hidden dragon fighter in Battle Garegga.

[lgb]

I expect to have a bajillion posts about this before the actual voting begins, but I think we should have Progear this year.

[Rob]

bsidwell: I didn't include Dragon Blaze because it was in the stgt two years ago.

Yeah, no old selection should be included except Batrider because I want to play that again.

[KennyMan666]

Alright, here's what I actually know about the scoring systems in those other freewares:

- Psyche Metal the Bleeding: There's three kinds of pickups. Red, blue and green skulls. Red ones increase your firepower, and you can have up to 20. Dyyng or triggering bullet time costs red skulls. Blue skulls provide a shield, you can have two of them. Green skulls only appear when you have 20 red, and they are purely score, when you pick them up their value increases - I think it doubles for each one, so the first one you pick up is worth 10, the second 20, the third 40, and so on, up to if I recall correctly 10240 per skull. If you lose any red skulls, the counter resets. Also, bullet scratch to build up a berserk meter, berserk being a hyper that automatically activates when you get hit if you have it charged.

- Galshell Blood Red Skies: Collect flesh things that enemies drop, which increases both shot power and score. There's two different attacks, normal shot and special shot, enemies only drop the flesh things when killed with the normal shot. I do not believe there is much more to it.

- Twin Seeds: Bullet scratch, and how! When your power meter is full, enemies drop score items that are autocollected no matter where on the screen you are. Scratch force releases for canceling a lot of bullets. Bombs get charged up until you have three, and if you charge up the other meter on top of that you get one auto deathbomb. Also, simply shooting increases your score, even if you don't actually hit anything. Unfocused shot gives a little more than focused.

- nomltest: Shooting down an entire enemy formation gives a big bonus. Hold bullets inside your "aura" for a little while to eat them, the more you eat the more eating becomes worth. I don't think this game actually ever ends.

Ultimate Stage I have no idea about, really. Not in Uwabami Breakers either. Blue Wish Resurrection is basically the same as in Ketsui, kill enemies on close range for massive points.

[dex]

- nomltest: Shooting down an entire enemy formation gives a big bonus. Hold bullets inside your "aura" for a little while to eat them, the more you eat the more eating becomes worth. I don't think this game actually ever ends.

Actually it's a bit different, shooting down enemy formations makes the bullet eating bonus higher, failing to shoot them down makes it lower, and the eating bonus goes up to 500 per bullet. It doesn't end - it gets very difficult later (each bullet eaten and passing time make the difficulty harder), but even with that difficulty a single play might take a looong while. It's one awesome game, though.

[sikraiken]

shiftace has the high score on nomltest in the hiscore subforum. I'm guessing his 2.56M score only took about 25min, which isn't really too bad.

[dex]

Yeah, I don't think anyone would be able to last much more than half an hour, but you never know.

[Zebra Airforce]

Thundercade?

edit: nvm, I guess it's by seta? Sky Adventure kicks this game's ass.

[mikwuyma]

Uwabami Breaker's scoring system is (gasp!) enemy chaining for higher values when you destroy enemies.

Ultimate Stage's scoring system involves collecting the stars from bigger enemies, then killing more enemies with your higher multiplier. You want to collect stars ASAP, because your multiplier slowly decreases.

nomltest might work, I do like it myself.

Sikraiken told me Xed is a good doujin, haven't tried it myself.

Also, can someone give me links for some of these doujins so I can try them out? I already have Uwabami Breakers, Ultimate Stage, Twin Seeds, and Galshell.

[Ed Oscuro]

After an initial negative reaction (ewww Crapcom week) I decided the tentative list has quite a few gems (yay Varth).

-Varth
-Sky Adventure
-Dragon Week

Caravans: Everybody should play via PC-Engine emulation. Also we need to have a notice about autofire, since apparently that matters a lot.

[-Bridget-]

My only concern is the doujin week.

Just because computers tend to be....... computers.


I know on my end, Vista *will* find a way to interfere..... that's not even in question.



That's really the only issue I see here, and it's not that big of an issue as it could be.



And what's this thing about autofire for caravans that Ed just mentioned? I get the feeling Im missing something here.

[ED-057]

Ultimate Stage's scoring system involves collecting the stars from bigger enemies, then killing more enemies with your higher multiplier. You want to collect stars ASAP, because your multiplier slowly decreases.

Also, bullet scraping temporarily stops the multiplier from going down, and operates an extra weapon.

[KennyMan666]

Mike:

Psyche Metal the Bleeding - rename BAKU.bmp to whatever and then rename BAKU01.bmp to BAKU.bmp to get pink and green bullets rather than red and red. On red background.

...was there any other one you needed links for? Also, for most of them, you can just Google the name.

[lgb]

And what's this thing about autofire for caravans that Ed just mentioned? I get the feeling Im missing something here.

Turning on autofire has a better rate of fire than the built-in autofire. I've only seen real difference in Super Star Soldier.
--------
Kamui: Like Rayforce, but pressing both the shot and homing buttons gets you a giant laser.

PARSEC47: Collect bonuses from destroyed enemies to build up a chain; when you die, the chain resets. But what would we do about the two different styles of play?

Rally Raid: You have a secondary weapon that requires you to charge a bar to use it; charge the bar by picking up small grey boxes from destroyed enemies. When the gauge runs out, you'll have to charge it up again (think Metal Black, in a way). This secondary weapon is used to net a combo of sorts, depending on how many hits are inflicted on enemies during the use of the weapon. When the amount of hits reaches the amount displayed at the bottom (beside the weapon gauge bar, it says "NEXT: n HITS"), you then receive a mutliplier that begins at x2, then doubles itself everytime you get the required amount of hits; this multiplier goes into effect when you use the secondary weapon again. Depending on the amount of enemies you destroy, the amount of hits you need to get next will increase, accordingly.

Sorry if this confusing. I think this correct. I never found anything else that did crazy scoring things.

[Shatterhand]

Super Space Fortress Macross 2 is a great pick for a Caravan week.

We also should have an MSX week. I know it will never be accepted, but I'll always suggest it. It would feel good to be 1st place in a week someday (I was 2nd when we played Star Force )

[P_HAT]

How about http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=1826

[Enhasa]

DMC: From experience, even in individual-based tourneys, participation always starts off highest and falls off as the tourney goes on. It's just human nature. That being said, I agree 100% with DMC's proposal. We already have to calculate individual scores. This just means that the same scores are used for both, which is much more natural. I also don't agree with the arbitrary top 3/5/10/whatever cutoff.

re Dragon Week: I mentioned Dragon Blaze, Dragon Breed, Syvalion, Saint Dragon (NMK ha), Forgotten Worlds (lol) to mikwuyma before thread creation but whatever, it's kind of a funky idea anyway. For completeness though, I looked on MAWS and there's also Black Heart and Dragon Saber (which is actually famous but whoops I forget it exists).


re DJI in the other thread about ratio vs linear scoring: I don't really care, but I prefer linear since it is more robust. It has built-in tolerance for wide scoring spreads and makes some games possible that otherwise have unbalanced scoring (e.g. endgame bonuses). Also, if you use ratio scoring, you are essentially condemning Twinbee Yahho to matter less as a week than Giga Wing. Really, the biggest benefit of linear scoring is voters would finally stop concerning themselves over point spreads and just pick games they would like to play. (which is what they should be doing anyway but whatever)

Minor benefits include: being easier to understand (helps people feel more involved if they can estimate how they stand instead of waiting for the magical scores to come back) and it fosters competition to place ahead of other people (before, if you placed just below a chunk of players, you were happy, but now it spurs you to improve just a bit and place ahead of all of them). It also emphasizes trying your best and placing well each week.

Some negatives of linear scoring are: Someone at the top of a wide point spread who crushes everyone else in a week could feel like they ought to have earned more from this. Also, linear scoring makes it slightly harder for comebacks to happen. The guy in 1st going into the last week only has to place above a certain mark and victory is guaranteed. I think these benefits of ratio scoring are minor and only apply to fringe cases (mostly at the top), whereas the benefits of linear scoring apply to everyone. If you're placing 3rd in a week and upset that you aren't bashing the guy in 50th more, why? You're going to finish ahead of him anyway.

Week 1: BWR+
Week 2: 19xx
Week 3: Armed Police BatRider
Week 4: Progear
Week 5: Gekirindan

Sign me up!

[mikwuyma]

The problem with knocking off the cutoff is that every team will need 7 players, and all 7 players have to play every single week. Or are you talking about DMC's score blocking suggestion?

I also realized Thunder Dragon II could be a candidate for Dragon week just because it has a dragon in the name

Also, I have enough suggestions for doujins now, so I don't need any more ideas. Now we (we being anyone really) need to sort through the ones listed.

[dex]

The problem with knocking off the cutoff is that every team will need 7 players, and all 7 players have to play every single week. Or are you talking about DMC's score blocking suggestion?

He means 'top 3 gets a double point spread' cutoff.