The BIG thread of Shmup grievances.

[BIL]

^Toggle Autofire has always been glitchy for me as well, in MAME Plus. I found it much better to make a custom button and set that to autofire.

Assuming you've not tried this (it's a bit unintuitive), you need to go to custom buttons and hit whatever numeral corresponds to the fire button. So if the game's "Button 1" = "Fire," open the custom buttons menu and hit "1" on your keyboard. A red "1" should pop up in the selected custom button's slot.

Then go to the control mappings and set the custom button to your key/button of choice. Finally, enable autofire on the custom button. Much more reliable to switch to another button occasionally than get blown away waiting on the glitchy toggle feature.

edit: this is also handy if you hate having to press two buttons simultaneously, say in Metal Slug or Final Fight. Custom Button 1 + Button 2 = EZ suicide attack!

[burgerkingdiamond]

Here you go. I admittedly made a mistake on the first attack of the final phase but it didn't cost me that time. I also have the complete recording from start to finish, including screwups, available on request. It's about 10 minutes including menus and such.

ahahahaaa man that was intense.

[Ed Oscuro]

Assuming you've not tried this (it's a bit unintuitive), you need to go to custom buttons and hit whatever numeral corresponds to the fire button. So if the game's "Button 1" = "Fire," open the custom buttons menu and hit "1" on your keyboard. A red "1" should pop up in the selected custom button's slot.

Oh, duh, I should've thought of that. That might save my bacon, thanks! (Well, I don't need this in Batsugun, but you get the idea.)

[DrTrouserPlank]

I've pretty given up on Cave's games. Things like Triggerheart are still impossible but I don't need to add another layer of shit into the mix by playing other games that are even worse. Games like Deathsmiles and AKS show promise, but are ruined at the end by two bosses with undodgeable attacks. The rest of their games that Ive got are just ridiculous all the way through; most of the game being a stitch-up designed to remove coins from the pockets of people in arcades.

Progress in all games is so slow as to be virtually non-existent. It's frankly a feat of inhuman ability that I'm able to avoid all the shit that I do. The games are designed to be overwhelming, but overwhelming to the point of being all but impossible.

In the face of zero progress over a long period, it's just too hard to dedicate whatever time is necessary to beat any of these games; the endeavour becomes tiresome and frustrating and the enjoyment is minimal. The games themselves are fun to play, but trying to advance score or progress isn't because little advancement occurs past a certain point.

[Hagane]

Play Touhou on easy then. If you can't 1CC those then maybe you should stick to JRPGs.

[Special World]

Bullet Soul is an asshole for not having a better scoring system. I could have sat down with it for five minutes and arrived at a better system. Make the souls give you points when you collect them. Make the multiplier increase during the point blank, not just whenever you've killed something. It isn't rocket science, 5PB.

Also, I love Eschatos, but I honestly have no idea what's going on with Advanced mode's scoring. It just doesn't click with me.

[MR_Soren]

Typical number of hours to clear Triggerheart?...... 20, 50, 100?

I'd say under 5 hours on easy. Maybe 10 if you want to get all of the endings. Hardest section on easy, IMO, is the stage 4 midboss. Just bomb if the screen gets too busy. The section after the stage 4 midboss is my favorite part of the game. Just anchor throw things constantly.

I don't know why you seem to ignore suggestions to play easy/novice modes. You can learn a lot from them, and then tackle Normal modes/diffs later.

[Annoyboy]

I've pretty given up on Cave's games. Things like Triggerheart are still impossible but I don't need to add another layer of shit into the mix by playing other games that are even worse. Games like Deathsmiles and AKS show promise, but are ruined at the end by two bosses with undodgeable attacks. The rest of their games that Ive got are just ridiculous all the way through; most of the game being a stitch-up designed to remove coins from the pockets of people in arcades.

Why do you refuse to play DeathSmiles IIX? Just look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bFm3DHvxn0 LOOK AT IT.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Typical number of hours to clear Triggerheart?...... 20, 50, 100?

I'd say under 5 hours on easy. Maybe 10 if you want to get all of the endings. Hardest section on easy, IMO, is the stage 4 midboss. Just bomb if the screen gets too busy. The section after the stage 4 midboss is my favorite part of the game. Just anchor throw things constantly.

I don't know why you seem to ignore suggestions to play easy/novice modes. You can learn a lot from them, and then tackle Normal modes/diffs later.

I've played novice modes but they're too easy.

Easy mode on triggerheart confuses me as well with some bullets being cancelable and some not. I think that's just as hard as dodging everything.

I've pretty given up on Cave's games. Things like Triggerheart are still impossible but I don't need to add another layer of shit into the mix by playing other games that are even worse. Games like Deathsmiles and AKS show promise, but are ruined at the end by two bosses with undodgeable attacks. The rest of their games that Ive got are just ridiculous all the way through; most of the game being a stitch-up designed to remove coins from the pockets of people in arcades.

Why do you refuse to play DeathSmiles IIX? Just look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bFm3DHvxn0 LOOK AT IT.

I might get around to it sometime.

[dunpeal2064]

Gah, I cannot get a single Psikyo game to run in MAME. Every Cave and Raizing game I've thrown at it has worked just fine, but Psikyo games hate me apparently.

Oh, and Freakn DDP. Got to stage 6 with 2 lives and full bombs, and something opened up on my computer and minimized my window. I have never been so pissed, but now I KNOW I can clear this game.

[Hagane]

Which MAME do you use, what are your specs / OS?

[DrTrouserPlank]

*sighs*

I absolutely give up, I really do. There's so much fucking luck involved that it's just impossible.

If the game doesn't screw you by leaving you no fucking room you just end up nudging things and losing lives anyway. Either way you're getting nowhere fast.

Fed-up with it...

[Deca]

*sighs*

I absolutely give up, I really do. There's so much fucking luck involved that it's just impossible.

If the game doesn't screw you by leaving you no fucking room you just end up nudging things and losing lives anyway. Either way you're getting nowhere fast.

Fed-up with it...

1.) You're doing a poor job of bullet herding and route planning.

2.) You're admitting to entirely at-fault unforced errors

3.) We all know by now you're not going to stop playing and complaining about it

[azinth]

*sighs*

I absolutely give up, I really do. There's so much fucking luck involved that it's just impossible.

If the game doesn't screw you by leaving you no fucking room you just end up nudging things and losing lives anyway. Either way you're getting nowhere fast.

Fed-up with it...

Sorry to hear about that man ;_;

Welp so long and I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, impossible or otherwise.

[Ed Oscuro]

The webpage I stole that from, here, has some advice which can be mangled into something topical here: Do play to your strengths, don't play to be "cool" and trying to overextend yourself to become something you are not, when it is not essential you do so. Wynton Marsalis would not approve.

[dunpeal2064]

Which MAME do you use, what are your specs / OS?

At first I tried MAME 32, and when that wasn't working too well, I switched to shmupmame v3.0. My OS is Windows Vista.

Specs:

AMD Turion Duel-Core RM-75 2.20 GHz Processor
3 GB RAM

I'm bad with computers, so I'm unsure of where to find the video card information. All I see is a rating, which is 4.0. Must be a Vista thing.

[Annoyboy]

Which MAME do you use, what are your specs / OS?

I'm bad with computers, so I'm unsure of where to find the video card information. All I see is a rating, which is 4.0. Must be a Vista thing.

The rating is your computer's performance out of 7.9 as determined by Windows. (why 7.9 I have no idea). To see the name of your graphics card on Windows 7, it's: Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Display Adapters. Or just type "device manager" into the "search programs and files" bar. I presume Vista has the info in the same area.

[AntiFritz]

Which MAME do you use, what are your specs / OS?

I'm bad with computers, so I'm unsure of where to find the video card information. All I see is a rating, which is 4.0. Must be a Vista thing.

The rating is your computer's performance out of 7.9 as determined by Windows. (why 7.9 I have no idea). To see the name of your graphics card on Windows 7, it's: Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager > Display Adapters. Or just type "device manager" into the "search programs and files" bar. I presume Vista has the info in the same area.

I think 7.9 is the highest to give room for them to increase it as computers get more powerful over time. Also, note your total score is equal to your lowest score, i assume because your computers only really as fast as the weakest link.

[dunpeal2064]

Ah ok, so a 4 isn't really too beefy, but are Psikyo roms that heavy on the hardware? I can get batrider fairly pissed at me with little issue, and I don't know why, but I thought that would be harder on the system than gunbird 2 or Strikers 1945 III.

Oh, if it helps, my video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G

[Hagane]

You should have no problem running Psikyo games with that PC. I'm guessing the problem is Vista. From my experience it and Seven don't get along very well with emulators. It's weird that Cave / Raizing games work normally though.

[dunpeal2064]

You should have no problem running Psikyo games with that PC. I'm guessing the problem is Vista. From my experience it and Seven don't get along very well with emulators. It's weird that Cave / Raizing games work normally though.

Ah ok, so getting an older version of Windows might fix the problem? Stupid question, but can I have multiple OS's, and just pick one from start up?

To describe what is happening, basically the audio gets off track, and each sound is happening twice. I'm also getting much more slowdown than I should, but sometimes it will clear up.

The only Raizing games I have tried are APB and Dimahoo, and I haven't tried anything newer than Esp RA DE as far as Cave goes.

It sucks that Psikyo ports tend to not have a traditional arcade mode that isn't in TATE. (right? Theres a zoomed in non scrolling mode and a zoomed in scrololing mode, along with TATE?) I have a perfectly fine vopy of Gunbird 2, but I can't play it properly on my monitor, and my smaller TATE'd tv doesn't have VGA.

Thank you guys for the help so far.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Thing is, even if you can clear every stage on a particular game sometimes in practice (let's even say you can no miss every stage in practice sometimes) the chances of you doing all stages back to back is very small. It's in the order of 5% probable that you'll manage to complete a run. That's the luck factor.

You can never guarantee that you'll be able to no miss a stage (I doubt you can ever get more than a 30-40% no miss rate for any stage that is anything more than routine), and being able to no miss some stages is essential to compensate for when you lose 3 fucking lives on that stage you consider yourself to be brilliant at. Averaging out the probabilities over a run, you are aiming for that impossibly small chance that you'll string together however many stages it is without blowing all your lives.

Doesn't matter how good you are, the luck factor plays a significant role in whether you'll ever get that clear.

Tomorrows lesson: Looking in 16 different fucking directions at once.

[StarCreator]

Thing is, even if you can clear every stage on a particular game sometimes in practice (let's even say you can no miss every stage in practice sometimes) the chances of you doing all stages back to back is very small. It's in the order of 5% probable that you'll manage to complete a run. That's the luck factor.

You can never guarantee that you'll be able to no miss a stage (I doubt you can ever get more than a 30-40% no miss rate for any stage that is anything more than routine), and being able to no miss some stages is essential to compensate for when you lose 3 fucking lives on that stage you consider yourself to be brilliant at. Averaging out the probabilities over a run, you are aiming for that impossibly small chance that you'll string together however many stages it is without blowing all your lives.

Doesn't matter how good you are, the luck factor plays a significant role in whether you'll ever get that clear.

Tomorrows lesson: Looking in 16 different fucking directions at once.

This is, nearly word for word, what you've been saying for at least the past two years in nearly every thread you've posted in, just to be completely disproven by players who nearly immediately do exactly what you state as statistically impossible on demand. Please stop confusing consistency and endurance with luck.

It's no different from people who can consistently get scores of 200+ in bowling, or people who can finish an 18 hole golf course under par. No one calls people who can bowl or golf well lucky, so why do you insist on calling good shmup players lucky?

Also, your completely made up statistics sure make you sound smart.

[dunpeal2064]

@DTP: Well, for me, I no miss stages 1-3 in Futari every run, unless its my first time playing in a week. Stages 1 and 2 are ridiculously easy once you know whats going to happen, and knowing that stage 3 is a bitch, I have my bomb finger ready. The boss is do-able with no bombs or lives, at least with Palm A.

So, for me personally, it comes down to doing a whole 2 stages back to back without messing up TOO many times. You act like one messup is it, but thats not how it works, unless you are seriously playing for score. Stage 4 is just weaving correctly, and hold-shotting the correct enemies so that they don't flood the screen.

It really isn't impossible if you can do each stage in practice, you just need to chill and get some good runs in, and stop rage-quitting. Everyone gets mad at something dificult, but use that anger to push on. Don't let a video game beat a human!

Honestly, I'm sure you aren't even looking for responses like this anymore, but you are posting for a reason, so here you have it.

Can you no miss the first 2 stages regularly? Like, at least 8/10 runs? If you look at it strategically, you can narrow down the problematic areas, and actually learn what to do. Its been said a million times, but the game will do the exact same thing every time, as long as you are doing so too.

Also, maybe you are using too fast a character? I see you have a lot of problems with slamming into a bullet randomly, even when you are dodging well. If you are doing more micro-dodging (through patterns), then you might prefer a slower character. If you like using a fast character, tryi macro-dodging more (going around the entire pattern, not through it). that way you can avoid even the random few bullets that might end up grazing you.

The factor for you might actually be less than 5%, but that means you are still unfamiliar with certain aspects of later stages. Lets assume you can no miss stage 1 (I would assume you can). Now, lets imagine thats the entire game. If you played stage 1 40 times, I'd bet you get at LEAST 35 of them no miss. See, people with higher skill look at more and more of the game in this fashion. If this were a Psikyo game, you would know how far you've learned really quick, as the game would ust kill you if you didn't know what was coming. In Futari, if you aren't completely familiar with whats going to happen, your hitbox is small enough that you can cheese your way through, not knowing whats gonna happen. So, when you die in the middle of all this shit that you aren't familiar with, the game feels luck based. However, you were using luck to get there in the first place. If you had only relied on skill, and not luck, luck would not be a factor.

I know at least Deca and I will be quite happy when you get that 1cc.

On a side note: Does Dodonpachi really give you 30 bombs throughout the game, or am I calculating that wrong?

[Paradigm]

You can never guarantee that you'll be able to no miss a stage (I doubt you can ever get more than a 30-40% no miss rate for any stage that is anything more than routine), and being able to no miss some stages is essential to compensate for when you lose 3 fucking lives on that stage you consider yourself to be brilliant at. Averaging out the probabilities over a run, you are aiming for that impossibly small chance that you'll string together however many stages it is without blowing all your lives.

It's called consistency, if you want it; practice.

Doesn't matter how good you are, the luck factor plays a significant role in whether you'll ever get that clear.

You say 'ever get that clear' as if it's the be all and end all. Most players who are genuinely good at a game aren't even playing for a clear, they're playing for score. This was all covered months ago anyway. How do you explain Sapz being able to clear Futari 1.5 Original so easily if luck is such a big factor?

Please stop spouting the same old shit over and over, you've had your 15 minutes - it's boring now.

[Obscura]

Thing is, even if you can clear every stage on a particular game sometimes in practice (let's even say you can no miss every stage in practice sometimes) the chances of you doing all stages back to back is very small. It's in the order of 5% probable that you'll manage to complete a run. That's the luck factor.

This is why you're given more than one life! Hell, you're even given bombs as a way out when you screw up! If you figure you get 5 lives (3 lives + 2 extends), get 3 bombs on each, and get 2 bomb pickups over the course of the game, that's 19 mistakes! Almost 4 per level on average!

You can never guarantee that you'll be able to no miss a stage (I doubt you can ever get more than a 30-40% no miss rate for any stage that is anything more than routine),

If we're counting stages 1 and 2 as routine, that means you've got over 6 mistakes you can "safely" make per level. If you have a 1-in-3 chance of not making any mistakes AT ALL in every level, it sounds like you have a fantastic chance of making it to the end!

and being able to no miss some stages is essential to compensate for when you lose 3 fucking lives on that stage you consider yourself to be brilliant at.

How would you ever blow three lives on a stage you think you're "brilliant at"?

Tomorrows lesson: Looking in 16 different fucking directions at once.

Personally, I recommend memorization and pattern recognition.

Also, I don't know why you don't take people's advice and play Imperishable Night. It seems to be the exact difficulty you're looking for; as a newbie to the genre, it took me 33 hours to get a 1 CC on it. Plus, its normal mode actually limits your continues based on scoring (not as harshly as 1 CC, though), so if you don't think you're up for the 1CC, there's still a challenge to go for (try for the 6A clear). But, if you plan to bomb the following things, it shouldn't be hard to get the 1CC
Level 1: Nothing.
Level 2: Night Sparrow's Song (stay directly under Lorelei, bomb when the bullets close in)
Level 3: Three Sacred Treasures: Orb (first iteration of the pattern is easy to avoid, but the holes on the second iteration are tight, so wait for the bullets to get close on the second time Keine does it, them bomb)
Level 4: Milky Way (wait for the horizontal-moving stars to close in), Miniboss Marisa's second physical attack (when the star-maze corners you), possibly one bomb if you mess up your streaming in the second half of the stage and get cornered, End boss Marisa's second physical attack (when the thick ring of stars comes down), Master Spark (no set time for this bomb, just do it if you don't see an easy path out of the laser), Earth Light Ray (dodge the first 2 star-rays, them bomb).
Level 5: Both of Tewi's attacks, Idling Wave (dodge the first time, go to the center, wait for the bullets to close in, bomb)
Level 6: Whenever the hell you feel like it.

Hell, you can get deeper into Futari than I can, so you should be able to do it in less than 33 hours.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Gonna just respond randomly here, no quotes.

I haven't played Futari for ages. Would take me over a month to get back to where I was and that's all just so you can get your balls slammed in a door repeatedly. I doubt I'll ever go back to that game.

The number of bombs you have is pretty irrelevant to whoever raised this point because you'll probably never fire more than half of them (due to sudden unexpected deaths from bullets that you had either assumed you'd avoid, or shots you didn't see). You can use all your bombs if you like, but you then have to take the stance of being very bomb-happy; and I don't see what that really achieves other than potentially deprive you of a bomb later that you might really need.

I don't particularly see a 1cc as the be-all-and-end-all. I play for score as it happens, but you can only score so much before how far you can get in a game becomes a severely limited factor. I've never once believed that trying to score less would make a clear any easier.

[Obscura]

You can use all your bombs if you like, but you then have to take the stance of being very bomb-happy; and I don't see what that really achieves other than potentially deprive you of a bomb later that you might really need.

There's your problem. If you die with bombs in stock, you're depriving yourself of them just as much as if you had used them. Actually, you're depriving yourself of more bombs, since using one costs you less than dying with 3.

Whenever you don't like your chances of escaping the current barrage, bomb. If you've got a plan for who you want to accomplish some section, and get pushed off of your plan somehow, bomb.

[RNGmaster]

You can use all your bombs if you like, but you then have to take the stance of being very bomb-happy; and I don't see what that really achieves other than potentially deprive you of a bomb later that you might really need.

There's your problem. If you die with bombs in stock, you're depriving yourself of them just as much as if you had used them. Actually, you're depriving yourself of more bombs, since using one costs you less than dying with 3.

Whenever you don't like your chances of escaping the current barrage, bomb. If you've got a plan for who you want to accomplish some section, and get pushed off of your plan somehow, bomb.

You're new to the forum, so you might not know this, but don't take DTP seriously. We've been trying to encourage him for a year and he still spouts the exact same shit. Don't try to pry into his logical fallacies, just play shmups and ignore him.

[Deca]

He can be fun if you're really bored, but he's never actually going to consider anything you say at all. He's just been rephrasing the same post the majority of the time he's been here. I want to believe that some of the responses in his threads have helped out random observers that happen to not be self-defeating doofs on occasion.