How to learn the hit box?

[gundamalpha]

I've been playing shmups for decade and I still don't understand how do you guys learn about the hit box, like the position and size. Care to enlighten me a bit please?

And how should I separate the hit box from the sprite when there are millions of bullets around? Thanks in advance and hope I can be a better player

[BulletMagnet]

I know there's a thread around here where there are a few reference pics of some popular shmup ships and their hitboxes (not sure where it is now though), not to mention that more and more modern shmups are making the hitboxes visible, at least under certain circumstances. Absent anything concrete, though, when learning a shmup I just in my mind set aside a chunk at the very center of the ship (since that's pretty much a given) and watch to see if anything other than that also registers a hit. Hardly an exact science, but I'm not the type to memorize pixel amounts and whatnot anyway.

[LtC]

Play shmups with visible hitbox and slowly get used to knowing where it is without looking at it. Once you can learn it in one game with tiny hitbox it's usually easier to pinpoint it with other games as well.

Trial and error.

Learn bullet hitboxes, usually in games bullet hitboxes =/= bullet sprite sizes.


Personally I'm quite comfortable with a hitbox if it's a ship and I can usually pinpoint it perfectly after first couple deaths in a game but when your 'ship' is a humanoid I'm pretty much lost and tend to make mistakes with the hitbox often.

I'd say it's something you'll get used to but a decade is pretty long time. I suppose it totally depends on which games you've been playing and for how long. If you've been playing something like Tyrian, Darius or Raptor and start playing DoDonPachi or Giga Wing you should expect some trouble in the beginning and it's only normal because curtain fire games tend to have tiny hitbox and it's hard to take full advantage of that in the beginning.

[Fenrir]

Weird topic
It's easy to get the dimensions of a hitbox after a few games
Some software houses tend to reiterate the same hitbox dimensions/position in every game they make. With danmaku games is even easier, it takes nothing to memorize the exact placement and pixel width of a (very small) (and sometimes even glowing) hitbox.
My suggestion? Erm... try. After a couple of CCs you're pretty much ready

[agustusx]

i dedicate a few suicides learning the hitbox meself. There aren't arcades in GA, so i'm not losing money. Every game is different, but many of the current games use a VERY small hitbox. When i first started playing mushihimesama last year it actually threw me off since I did not die when expected. I have felt it out over time, so i usually know where i am good.

ESPgaluda is opposite im clueless on the hitbox, and I use a lot of hoping and guessing on the final boss.

Games like touhou, mushihimesama and shika3 make it really easy to see the hitbox when using certain firing modes are used as others have mentioned. Often new games have 3x3 pixel hitboxes or even 2x2. While some older games have a larger hitbox that includes wings. Third stage of Ikaruga made me learn that the hitbox was actually much smaller than the entire ship. Ikaruga bullets tend to be much smaller than large Mushi bullets as well. Mushi seems to have a soft spot on the edges of larger projectiles that do no damage. Smaller bullets in mushi will kill you always

You have to learn the hitbox of each game separately. You also need to learn the hitbox of the bullets. I tend to do a practice run before a serious run each day just to remember the hitbox, game speed and gameplay for each game. When switching titles, especially when jumping from developer and decade you can forget

[PROMETHEUS]

I just play the game a bit and after a couple of hours you'll get a very good feeling of exactly where the hitbox is.

[Frederik]

Personally I'm quite comfortable with a hitbox if it's a ship and I can usually pinpoint it perfectly after first couple deaths in a game but when your 'ship' is a humanoid I'm pretty much lost and tend to make mistakes with the hitbox often.

Yeah, it´s the same with me, too. Weird. One of the many reasons I can´t stand "flying people" shmups.

[captpain]

Personally I'm quite comfortable with a hitbox if it's a ship and I can usually pinpoint it perfectly after first couple deaths in a game but when your 'ship' is a humanoid I'm pretty much lost and tend to make mistakes with the hitbox often.

Yeah, it´s the same with me, too. Weird. One of the many reasons I can´t stand "flying people" shmups.

I really don't like how much the character wiggles around when you move in ESP RaDe. I run into bullets that I would absolutely not be hit by if I could just use a DDP ship sprite.

[Aru-san]

Personally I'm quite comfortable with a hitbox if it's a ship and I can usually pinpoint it perfectly after first couple deaths in a game but when your 'ship' is a humanoid I'm pretty much lost and tend to make mistakes with the hitbox often.

Yeah, itｴs the same with me, too. Weird. One of the many reasons I canｴt stand "flying people" shmups.

I really don't like how much the character wiggles around when you move in ESP RaDe. I run into bullets that I would absolutely not be hit by if I could just use a DDP ship sprite.

Maybe as your character moves, so does the hitbox. That would be really cheap, though!

[dmauro]

I have this problem too. I love it when games like Mushi show the hitbox when you use your laser, and that even helped me to learn it for other Cave games to an extent, but otherwise it's just lots and lots of play that teaches you an intuitive sense of where it is. :/

[ZOM]

Absent anything concrete, though, when learning a shmup I just in my mind set aside a chunk at the very center of the ship (since that's pretty much a given) and watch to see if anything other than that also registers a hit.

this.