Using the hi-score board makes you a better shmup player?

[Rob]

it's the reason i registered, and according to my profile, where i make the most posts.

i'm glad you started this topic spadgy, because it's something i find odd as well. i wont name names, but we all know who the chronic off-topic spammers are who never post scores -

"Most active forum: Off Topic"



As for the rest, I honestly don't see a point in posting a half-assed effort for a game I have casual interest in. I play for fun. (tm)

[captpain]

it's the reason i registered, and according to my profile, where i make the most posts.

i'm glad you started this topic spadgy, because it's something i find odd as well. i wont name names, but we all know who the chronic off-topic spammers are who never post scores -

"Most active forum: Off Topic"



As for the rest, I honestly don't see a point in posting a half-assed effort for a game I have casual interest in. I play for fun. (tm)

Shmups are about being obsessive-compulsive, not about having fun. They are torture that you impose upon yourself.

[Aru-san]

it's the reason i registered, and according to my profile, where i make the most posts.

i'm glad you started this topic spadgy, because it's something i find odd as well. i wont name names, but we all know who the chronic off-topic spammers are who never post scores -

"Most active forum: Off Topic"



As for the rest, I honestly don't see a point in posting a half-assed effort for a game I have casual interest in. I play for fun. (tm)

Shmups are about being obsessive-compulsive, not about having fun. They are torture that you impose upon yourself.

Some people love being a masochist. After all, the Shmups forum is full of 'em.

[unsane]

and i've never understood why people complain about capped tables. i had this with one of my score threads, so i ended up uncapping it. and despite having unlimited places, and me bumping it periodically, i didn't receive a single new score in 4 months. i think people *think* that's why they aren't posting scores, but the reality is they simply can't be bothered. i hope to see you posting some strikers scores now unsane

You bet, i already had before you posted this. Ruldra also submitted a score since it's been uncapped.

it's a bit late now, but i might compile a list of every score thread that is half empty, and we'll see what happens

That's an interesting idea, to see which games need the most hiscore lovin'.

i wont name names, but we all know who the chronic off-topic spammers are who never post scores

"Most active forum: Off Topic"

There's nothing wrong with regulars posting a lot in Off-Topic, if they post in Hi Scores too. My most active forum is also Off-Topic - when i first joined i wanted to get to know ppl and ppl to get to know me. Over time Shmups Chat is likely to pull ahead for me, but it's so easy/fun to talk a lot in Off-Topic that it may never happen.

[spadgy]

"Most active forum: Off Topic"

Quite a funny spot, but I think we all know our forum use changes over time and so on. Perhaps I was wrong to make the emphasis of the poll how much you 'use' the hi-score thread, as opposed to how 'importantant' it is to you relative to other thread elements.

With regards to capping, I think jpj's right again. In essence, you have to adapt the capping strategy to each shmup, with an aim to keeping the given high score board active. Because being active it what makes the boards useful and fun for everybody enjoying the game in a scoring context.

[unsane]

With regards to capping, I think jpj's right again. In essence, you have to adapt the capping strategy to each shmup, with an aim to keeping the given high score board active. Because being active it what makes the boards useful and fun for everybody enjoying the game in a scoring context.

Agreed, i'm no pro on what exactly fosters competition the best. Tho i have noticed that often ppl who like caps are the ones unaffected by them. Perhaps at most a minor hurdle on the way to fighting for the top spots. Those of us that think caps are a bad idea are the ones that cant even get into a capped list with a ton of effort, let alone fight for top spots.

[Davey]

I thought caps were mostly there for the maintainer's benefit. If there are 65 scores and a new player gets #10, that's over 50 rows you have to manually edit. If the game is popular and new, this leads to a lot of manual editing and potential for errors.

I think people avoid submitting low or mediocre scores out of laziness, not embarrassment. If there are 27 scores for a game and I have a high enough score to get 24th, I'll probably just play the game more before I bother to submit a score (or, more likely, I'll lose interest before I consider my score worthwhile). The negative to this is that it skews the perception of what a "normal" score is because only the halfway decent scores get posted. XBLA doesn't have this problem. If anything, it leads to an inflated ego because of all the chump scores.

[captpain]

I'd always assumed that people just use some fancy regexp find-and-replace stuff to update the scoreboards.

[Davey]

I think some people have tried that, but most boards are updated manually AFAIK.

If you're scripting the board updates, then a cap doesn't make much sense. Since it's automated it would be pretty simple to break up the output into smaller, more readable sections (and/or format it some other way... font size, color, whatever).

[sven666]

wow, i had no idea you could see stuff like most active topic and forum, can we have more profile stats please?

[Davey]

I think those are built-in phpBB stats, so we got them during the board upgrade. Other stats would require custom code, I think.

[Icarus]

I thought caps were mostly there for the maintainer's benefit. If there are 65 scores and a new player gets #10, that's over 50 rows you have to manually edit. If the game is popular and new, this leads to a lot of manual editing and potential for errors.

Or you can use numbered list tags and a score-first-name-second method of score organisation, so that updating a new score is considerably easier via the use of cut and paste.

For what it's worth, I've never ran a capped scoreboard, and editing a table as big as Batrider Advanced's was back then is quite simple with this method.

[Davey]

Or you can use numbered list tags and a score-first-name-second method of score organisation, so that updating a new score is considerably easier via the use of cut and paste.

I'm guessing that wouldn't work inside a Code block though, right? I use those because they're monospaced and you can line up columns nicely. But I've never been in charge of a board with regular activity, so manual updates were fine.

[crithit5000]

I said this earlier in Pixel_Outlaw's thread for his little score-keeper program, but I do miss that automated scoreboard that was hosted at victoly.com. The best thing about it was how it kept a list of all my scores for a given game, and that really pushed me with my score and ultimately my 1CC in Giga Wing. It was a nice centralized list that showed my improvements and I could view it in a second at any time without any hassle, unlike here. As much as I like the score section here, you just can't beat that. I suppose I could keep a dinky text file, spreadsheet, or database for that type of thing, but I sort of want to do a project like that in my spare time if I can because I thought it was so helpful.

[Icarus]

I'm guessing that wouldn't work inside a Code block though, right? I use those because they're monospaced and you can line up columns nicely. But I've never been in charge of a board with regular activity, so manual updates were fine.

No, it won't work inside a code block, but it is the easiest way I've found to maintain score lists of 50 or more places. All you would need to to do with this method is edit the player's score, cut his whole entry to clipboard then paste in the new position, and everything is updated accordingly.

And you can also apply custom formatting to the entries too, like colours and sizes, which you can't do with a scoreboard that uses code tags. I also place the whole table within a quote tag to drop the text display size and to enclose the table in its own block, to make it more organised and easier to read/locate.

The only other alternative is to use HTML tables, but phpBB does not allow HTML tags to be used natively, and SMF only allows admins to use HTML in posts, and also requires a mod to be installed for permissions for this feature to be added to non-admin accounts.

[jpj]

it's weird how stgt rolls round, and everyone wants to sign up to playing mediocre games for 1 week at a time and posting their scores, but doing it in the normal forum is too much of a chore. don't get me wrong, i know stgt is sort of more frivolous (at least for most of us) event, but i doubt i'll play 1 week

there shouldn't be any general positive/negative reaction to capping, and it should be dictated by the game. i don't think something like galuda or ddp should be uncapped with 100 or 200+ scores. but then something like strikers 2 being capped at 10 (with the tenth score being over a mill) is maybe not so good. and it's not like i haven't been the victim to a few caps myself

maybe i should send james an email in case it's a bug with the new software but i think over time almost everyone's most posted in section will become off-topic or shmups chat. sad to see that i've also lost the way..

but i do manage 5 score threads, and don't abandon them whenever i stop playing said game either. and i'd like to think i've endeavoured to instigate strategy discussion on those titles when possible. i've posted something like 100+ times in the doj high score thread; and helped the general strategy discussion thread reach 10+ pages

i stopped playing shmups properly about six-nine months ago, and play something like 2-3 hours a month these days. whether you believe it or not, the only reason i haven't left yet is some strange feeling of duty to my high score threads, and i don't want to surrender them.

signature updated, and it looks like i finally got counter-stopped

[Rob]

i stopped playing shmups properly about six-nine months ago, and play something like 2-3 hours a month these days. whether you believe it or not, the only reason i haven't left yet is some strange feeling of duty to my high score threads, and i don't want to surrender them.

Cave fandom claims another young gun.

[MX7]

i stopped playing shmups properly about six-nine months ago, and play something like 2-3 hours a month these days. whether you believe it or not, the only reason i haven't left yet is some strange feeling of duty to my high score threads, and i don't want to surrender them.

Cave fandom claims another young gun.

I think focusing on any genre in any degree of specificity is problematic in the long run. You need some real drive, foolhardy or otherwise to pump some serious hours into a shooter, and the crazy upper threshold of Cave scores creates a situation where to compete with top level players, you have to sink 40 plus hours into a game a week. And that's one step away from Warcraft. I realised this a long time ago when I was pumping about 2-3 hours a day in ESPGaluda, which is obviously not much time at all compared to many players, but combined with my non-videogame obsessions, burnt me out somewhat. I'm glad I stopped when I did, and I switched from just playing one game, and just Cave games, to enjoying Psikyo, Takumi, Raizing, Toaplan stuff etc. Even this got me fed up after a while, so nowadays I find myself spending an equal time on Bemani, 2D Fighters and 2D shooters. And even then, I try to play for less than an hour a day, not because of any pressing distraction from my life, but just because I want to still enjoy these games. It should be a laugh, innit?

TL;DR: Using the Hi Score board does make you a better STG player, but also it leads to you eventually hating shooting games.

[Rob]

Yeah, there's no reason to turn shooters into RPGs. The typical high score board favorite requires too much work and isn't interesting enough to demand so much attention. I've enjoyed playing more casually for a long time and I'll replay something like Mars Matrix when I'm in the mood to obsess over score. 2-3 hours a (good) game is enough.

[jpj]

cave, raizing and treasure - that's the holy trinity.

and no, nothing more than real life and getting older. it'll happen to you too

[Aru-san]

cave, raizing and treasure - that's the holy trinity.

and no, nothing more than real life and getting older. it'll happen to you too

It sort of has happened to me a bit. (Hasn't touched a shmup in about 2 weeks)

[captpain]

and no, nothing more than real life and getting older. it'll happen to you too

Yeah, right. Next you'll be saying I'll get out of college and have to find a job.

[Aru-san]

Another thing I used to do with myself with high scores is play the game a couple of times and, when I feel I've gotten the hang of how the system works, make score quotas for me to reach. Here's an example of how I used to do it with DoDonPachi:

Code: Select all

Rank            Score needed
Grand Master    320000000 or above
Master          220000000 to 320000000
S+++            150000000 to 220000000
S++             110000000 to 150000000
S+              80000000 to 110000000
S               60000000 to 80000000
A+++            42000000 to 60000000
A++             30000000 to 42000000
A+              20500000 to 30000000
A               14000000 to 20500000
B++             10000000 to 14000000
B+              7500000 to 10000000
B               5500000 to 7500000
C++             3500000 to 5500000
C+              2000000 to 3500000
C               1350000 to 2000000
D+              800000 to 1350000
D               500000 to 800000
E+              300000 to 500000
E               100001 to 300000
Fail            100000 or less

It may not have been the best quota system, but it sort of helped me rank myself in a grade-based ladder as a slight means of improving myself. Sadly, I didn't really stick to this system very long, but I might adapt it in some of my scoreboards if the idea's good enough.

[Rob]

cave, raizing and treasure - that's the holy trinity.

Replace Raizing with cardboard boxes. I can't wait to be old and so over cardboard boxes.

[jpj]

cave, raizing and treasure - that's the holy trinity.

and no, nothing more than real life and getting older. it'll happen to you too

It sort of has happened to me a bit. (Hasn't touched a shmup in about 2 weeks)

i haven't bought a new shmup in two years sold about £1600 worth of pcbs in the last twelve months (but sadly i didn't even spend it on drugs and women )

no idea what you're on about with cardboard boxes.

[Rob]

no idea what you're on about

Collecting garbage. At least you got some money back.

[Ed Oscuro]

Some people love being a masochist. After all, the Shmups forum is full of 'em.

I liek to follow my hero and extend that masochism by pretend that I post most in High Scores while actually just shitposting in OT

Solution to Cave Fanboyism Counterstopping: Only buy old Toaplan PCBs, you never have to maintain them (looking at any system with a battery here) and they leave enough money for tilt-shift lenses

[jpj]

still no idea what you're on about

[Rob]

£1600 worth of cardboard boxes.

[charlie chong]

whats this some monty pythonesque humeur
people who buy cave games get stick but your friend ed who buys msx raers for dosh and neo geo games he's scared to play in case it devalues from a scratch is cool..

dummys
i have no cardboard
btw no slur on ed .dude can buy and play what he wants same as anyone.