Dodonpachi II: Bee Storm appreciation thread (was Proto-DFK)

[Despatche]

Have CAVE ever made any comments or statements about DDP2 bee storm, what do they think of it?

The only thing I can think of are the DOJ stage clear screens.

[Udderdude]

Wouldn't your score suck if you were creditfeeding anyway? I can't imagine a 1cc run scoring less than a creditfeed run, no matter how badly played.

[Lance Boyle]

Wouldn't your score suck if you were creditfeeding anyway? I can't imagine a 1cc run scoring less than a creditfeed run, no matter how badly played.

You could deliberately lose all your lives on, say, a boss, where there wouldn't be much penalty in score for dying. Keep in mind that it doesn't reset the score when you continue.

But since it does add a single digit, and assuming it (intelligently, as many games do) stops at 9, the problem is moot.

[Skykid]

Have CAVE ever made any comments or statements about DDP2 bee storm, what do they think of it?

The only thing I can think of are the DOJ stage clear screens.

How do you mean (or do you just mean the fact DOJ has stage clear screens?)

[drunkninja24]

Have CAVE ever made any comments or statements about DDP2 bee storm, what do they think of it?

The only thing I can think of are the DOJ stage clear screens.

How do you mean (or do you just mean the fact DOJ has stage clear screens?)

Some of the clear screens in DOJ say "Donpachi Episode 4", which would indicate that Cave considers DDP2 canon in some way.

[Despatche]

Indeed. There were some documents on Donpachi history and storyline that CAVE published somewhere, someone needs to bring those to light; however, I heard that DDPII isn't mentioned in it...

[sven666]

ddp doj BL is referenced as episode 4 in some promotional materials and several superplays.

i seem to recall DDP DOJ being referenced as episode 3 somewhere but cant remember where tho..
ed: could have been DDP campaign was referenced as ep: 3 or 2 aswell.. my memory is hazy, its hardly a life-or-death thing to remember

[Skykid]

ddp doj BL is referenced as episode 4 in some promotional materials and several superplays.

i seem to recall DDP DOJ being referenced as episode 3 somewhere but cant remember where tho..

Hmm, interesting. I have a feeling that Cave have probably brushed it under the carpet though, there's no mention of any Bee Storm events in the iphone story chronology.

[Dave_K.]

Han shot first!

[Udderdude]

Did DDP II even have a story?

[CptRansom]

Did DDP II even have a story?

HELLO PILOT HERE IS A FLYING MACHINE THE ENEMY IS OVER THERE GO BLOW THEM UP AND IF YOU DO IT IN THE EXACT ORDER YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO YOU CAN HAVE A HIGH SCORE

[Udderdude]

Did DDP II even have a story?

HELLO PILOT HERE IS A FLYING MACHINE THE ENEMY IS OVER THERE GO BLOW THEM UP AND IF YOU DO IT IN THE EXACT ORDER YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO YOU CAN HAVE A HIGH SCORE

Works for me!

[Despatche]

ddp doj BL is referenced as episode 4 in some promotional materials and several superplays.

i seem to recall DDP DOJ being referenced as episode 3 somewhere but cant remember where tho..
ed: could have been DDP campaign was referenced as ep: 3 or 2 aswell.. my memory is hazy, its hardly a life-or-death thing to remember

This doesn't even begin to make sense.

[Mills]

More fun to play than the other versions.

[esreveR]

I forgot to mention to you folks that contrary to popular belief, DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu doesn't re-use sprites, nor does Dai-Ou-Jou. If you look closely at them you'll notice that the shading and many of the details are different (Especially looking at the Stage 2 boss from DDP--That thing clearly has different shading). Basically, the layout is the same, but the sprites are still entirely redone.

That said, I've never played DDP2 so I don't really know if the sprites are recycled there or not. It would be kind of difficult to do so anyway on the PGM, due to its weird aspect ratio. (Might explain the lack of detail some here complain of though, but DOJ also kind of suffered from the same issue...)

[captpain]

I forgot to mention to you folks that contrary to popular belief, DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu doesn't re-use sprites, nor does Dai-Ou-Jou. If you look closely at them you'll notice that the shading and many of the details are different (Especially looking at the Stage 2 boss from DDP--That thing clearly has different shading). Basically, the layout is the same, but the sprites are still entirely redone.

That said, I've never played DDP2 so I don't really know if the sprites are recycled there or not. It would be kind of difficult to do so anyway on the PGM, due to its weird aspect ratio. (Might explain the lack of detail some here complain of though, but DOJ also kind of suffered from the same issue...)

Why would it be difficult to recycle sprites? I don't know anything about this but it seems like they'd have access to the image data somehow....

[Skykid]

Recycling sprites should be easy on any platform with the processing power and facilities. Sprites have been recycled cross platform forever, just look at all the fighting game iterations.

Pretty sure DFK is full to the brim with them. Shifting colour tone and resolution is an easy tweak.

[captpain]

It seems like copy-pasting... dunno how that could be hard.

[moozooh]

Anybody ever noticed how DDP bosses seem smaller in DOJ? That's because DOJ has higher resolution. ;)

Not sure about DFK, they may have as well been redrawn, or at the very least retouched.

[Dave_K.]

More fun to play than the other versions.

So true, its much more fun learning how to squeeze points out of each level than learning anal chaining. You build up large bullet swarms and bomb them for mega points, or scrape them for points while building up your bomb meter, or both at the same time (if you really know what you are doing). So its closer to Psyvariar than DDP in that regard.

[Skykid]

Anybody ever noticed how DDP bosses seem smaller in DOJ? That's because DOJ has higher resolution.

Not sure about DFK, they may have as well been redrawn, or at the very least retouched.

Retouched definitely. Redrawn, forget about it. If there's one thing the Japanese are SUPER efficient at it's how to get something done by cutting as many corners as possible, yet retain quality. That's their methodology for production in everything, and they're good at it.

Sprites are drawn on tilesets. I worked on the GameBoy Color for a company doing graphics on tile editors for six months and they're just frame based files, very simple. You can import them into any programs or toolkits that will accept them, and today's technology offers near limitless options to mess around with 2D images.

More fun to play than the other versions.

Mills is just bitter cos DOJ kicked his ass.

[esreveR]

I forgot to mention to you folks that contrary to popular belief, DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu doesn't re-use sprites, nor does Dai-Ou-Jou. If you look closely at them you'll notice that the shading and many of the details are different (Especially looking at the Stage 2 boss from DDP--That thing clearly has different shading). Basically, the layout is the same, but the sprites are still entirely redone.

That said, I've never played DDP2 so I don't really know if the sprites are recycled there or not. It would be kind of difficult to do so anyway on the PGM, due to its weird aspect ratio. (Might explain the lack of detail some here complain of though, but DOJ also kind of suffered from the same issue...)

Why would it be difficult to recycle sprites? I don't know anything about this but it seems like they'd have access to the image data somehow....

For starters, the SH1 was intended for a monitor with square pixels (Or damn close to it at least). The PGM runs on hardware with an odd pixel aspect ratio, which complicates matters--essentially, you can't just copy them over or they'll be distorted. This is why Rankou and Raikou were reworked majorly if not redone entirely in that game, albeit slightly smaller than their original selves. Perhaps CAVE stores the data at a larger resolution and resizes it for different hardware, but I doubt they did that until they moved to pre-rendered graphics (In fact that's probably why they use pre-rendered ones these days). Quite simply, it's too difficult to fill in pixels for sprites at resolutions you'll never use.

Recycling sprites should be easy on any platform with the processing power and facilities. Sprites have been recycled cross platform forever, just look at all the fighting game iterations.

Pretty sure DFK is full to the brim with them. Shifting colour tone and resolution is an easy tweak.

The fact is, though, you can't change shading on two-dimensional graphics without changing the graphics themselves (By shading I mean changing the light direction, texturing, etc.). If you ever play the original DDP sometime and have a computer nearby, pause the game at the level 2 boss, open CAVE's DFK site, and take a damn good look at Center High School (Fuck if I know why they called it that I'm using Google Translate ;_;). One of the first things you'll notice is that many of the flat colors in DDP are totally replaced with smooth blended colors. In other words, the sprites use a 256-color palette, not a 16-color one. That means re-working wouldn't have been a simple matter.

The reason why games like Metal Slug 7 can re-use sprites is because it's using one line of each 256-color palette to do separate sprites, instead of using all of them for a single one. Speaking of which, Ketsui Death Label doesn't quite recycle the sprites either--it seems they've adapted them specifically for the DS (Again due to aspect ratios).

It seems like copy-pasting... dunno how that could be hard.

It's not copy-pasting, so it's more difficult than you might imagine.

EDIT:

Anybody ever noticed how DDP bosses seem smaller in DOJ? That's because DOJ has higher resolution.

Not sure about DFK, they may have as well been redrawn, or at the very least retouched.

Retouched definitely. Redrawn, forget about it. If there's one thing the Japanese are SUPER efficient at it's how to get something done by cutting as many corners as possible, yet retain quality. That's their methodology for production in everything, and they're good at it.

Sprites are drawn on tilesets. I worked on the GameBoy Color for a company doing graphics on tile editors for six months and they're just frame based files, very simple. You can import them into any programs or toolkits that will accept them, and today's technology offers near limitless options to mess around with 2D images.

More fun to play than the other versions.

Mills is just bitter cos DOJ kicked his ass.

Well, of course they weren't entirely redrawn, but 'recycled' doesn't imply (to me at least) retouching of any kind except for in-game effects (Like palette changes and bilinear filtering). Metal Slug? Those are recycled. DoDonPachi? Those are not. Oh, it's also worth noting many of the bosses look brand-new in DFK while in DDP they looked more gritty and beat-up. It's rather subtle though.

Anybody ever noticed how DDP bosses seem smaller in DOJ? That's because DOJ has higher resolution.

Not sure about DFK, they may have as well been redrawn, or at the very least retouched.

This is entirely false. The PGM actually has a thinner screen than the SH1, at 224 pixels instead of 240. Additionally, the length is exactly the same at 320 pixels.

[Skykid]

Well it sounds like you know your stuff, certainly more than me. But knowing how the Japanese work I'm sure they'll have come up with a gob-smackingly simple method rather than redrawing all the old sprites from scratch.

[moozooh]

This is entirely false. The PGM actually has a thinner screen than the SH1, at 224 pixels instead of 240. Additionally, the length is exactly the same at 320 pixels.

Eh? Cave PGM is 224x448 stretched to 336:448.

[nZero]

This is entirely false. The PGM actually has a thinner screen than the SH1, at 224 pixels instead of 240. Additionally, the length is exactly the same at 320 pixels.

Actually...

1st gen: 320x240 (@ 57.55Hz)
PGM: 448x224 (@ 59.17Hz)
CV1000 (Cave SH3): 320x240 (@ ~60Hz)

Also, your terminology is confusing as the first-generation Cave hardware is neither called SH1 nor is it based on the (formerly Hitachi, now Renesas) SH1 processor/microcontroller.

[EPS21]

ddp doj BL is referenced as episode 4 in some promotional materials and several superplays.

i seem to recall DDP DOJ being referenced as episode 3 somewhere but cant remember where tho..
ed: could have been DDP campaign was referenced as ep: 3 or 2 aswell.. my memory is hazy, its hardly a life-or-death thing to remember

Could have sworn after playing the PS2 port to death that it says episode 4 in the end of stage screens as well, and that of course is white label. Unless they changed it from the PCB to the PS2 port but I highly doubt they'd go through the trouble for something like this. I'll check the 360 port too, which although just as doubtful, could've been changed too.