GD: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

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Estebang
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GD: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by Estebang »

There's barely any info in English or otherwise about Triangle Service's first game, which plays like a prototype of Trizeal. The medaling system works the same; I get that much. What I don't understand are the color-coded powerups that are slotted into a line of holes next to the bomb counter. Sometimes I've been able to produce a charge shot that creates a temporary field of invincibility (this later appeared as XII Stag's bomb), but I'm not sure what combination of colors allowed me to use it. Anyone know more than I do?

Fun fact: "Cloudy Today!" is the name of Stage 1 in both G-Stream and Trizeal.



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Gespenst
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by Gespenst »

Colored power-ups: Stack same colors to gain bigger effect on a weapon (red: spread, green: missile, blue: laser). If you have all three colors in it, you can use all 3 weapons at the same time, but completely filling the bar with only a single color will result in more firepower. But be careful since the last power-up you pick will overwrite the last color bar (leftmost).

IIRC the charge shot can be 'refilled' by collecting medals (there's a number near the the power-up counter that represents its sort of 'energy bar'). Fire the charge shot by holding and then releasing the shot button.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Bump for great justice.

I think it's been briefly mentioned somewhere outside ST but this game has got some serious stage-based complexity. I'm finding that depending on how well you do on segments of each stage the actual content of the stage will change.

For example, in Stage 1, (something) causes a lot of fast and large bonus ships to appear, possibly if you kill off the existing enemies quickly enough. See that here. On the flipside, if you don't, the screen scrolls right a lot and the boss just appears after some amount of dead air, as seen here.

In Stage 2, (something) causes either you to immediately stop in front of a mob of shrubs with tanks coming out from underneath (here, same vid as one with dead air in 1), or get a 'WARNING' text to appear at the top followed by a stop at several columns of tanks. In addition, it splits again, where (something) at the three tanks that appear after the aforementioned leads either straight to the boss or scrolls left and leads to two railtracks with trains that carry medals, powerups and enemies (they DO NOT HAVE DEADZONES BEWARE).

I believe the versions of Stage 3 you transition into change completely depending on (something) in Stage 2 as well. I didn't pay much attention because I always got killed shortly after but one version of Stage 3 is a watery area like Raiden's stage 3 somewhat, while another is more like Battle Bakraid's stage 5 (with sand). I don't know if the later stages do this as well but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Now the unknowns I've placed there I've got (something) there, but I suspect it's a combination of not dropping medals, not dying and killing off everything on the screen real quick. I have dropped some medals previously and ended up having the large enemies in Stage 1 appear sometimes though.

EDIT: Also, I suspect being on a particular side of the screen at the right time may have something to do with it as well. One tip regardless though: if you're going to play for any amount of score DO NOT LEVEL UP WITH GREEN. The game's mechanics seem to be based around you focusing your weapon usage forward, not too wide and being in the right place at the right time to quick-kill enemies and collect medals. Having homing missiles that go bloody anywhere is detrimental to this, I think.
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trap15
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by trap15 »

Gespenst wrote:IIRC the charge shot can be 'refilled' by collecting medals (there's a number near the the power-up counter that represents its sort of 'energy bar'). Fire the charge shot by holding and then releasing the shot button.
I've managed to charge it even without grabbing medals. Perhaps it's based on medals spawning? If this is the case, powering up wide-shot to fill up your energy, then unleashing it in front of an enemy that fires a lot might be a good tactic (the charge shot converts all bullets that hit it into medals).

EDIT: A good example of an enemy like that are the groups of 4 enemies that shoot the multi-colored shots in stage 7. If you pop the charge shot right in-between two of them and go inside the shot (you should have it at a high value, say 300), you can rack up a pretty significant amount of points.

EDIT2: The value of the medals dropped by the charge shot is the medal value you chained to when you fired it. So if you really want to rack up points, get them to 1000 points, then do it 8)

EDIT3: If you make your powerup bar full of a single element, grabbing that element again gives a 10000 point bonus.

EDIT4: That same trick in stage 7 can be done in stage 4 on the WARNING section with the submarines.

EDIT5: There are a bunch of opportunities to use the stage 7 trick in stage 5 as well.

EDIT6: In stage 7, a better way to milk those enemies is to drop the shot right on top of one of the bottom enemies, then stay under it and catch the medals. Worth a ton of points.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by BPzeBanshee »

I would think that Wide Shot would be a bad idea considering how wide it is, but then again I have not reached Stage 7 on a credit.

Hey trap15, would you have any idea what causes the change in components of the earlier stages, and whether the same thing happens in the later stages? If we can figure it out than between that and the info here we might have enough for a dedicated ST.
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trap15
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by trap15 »

I have no idea; all that stuff I gathered back there was me just pushing through the game with infinite lives on :P

I'd imagine it's tied to which powerups you grab, performance, or some other factor. Same with the WARNING triggers. I'd have to play a bit more to figure it out. I wish the CPU they used wasn't so god-awful, otherwise I'd actually check out the code for this stuff :?
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by BPzeBanshee »

I don't even know what the CPU is for this but the MAME driver kinda looked like the music was more hacked in than actually working. I suspect it may actually work like Raiden Fighter's bonus enemy planes: kill off a wave quickly enough and it'll just spawn more special ones. Need to play more to confirm if there's any other factors.
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trap15
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by trap15 »

Yeah, the sound is very hacked up; the banking on the OKI sound chips is really weird, which is why some stuff sounds wrong.

The CPU is a Hyperstone E1-32X. General info about it is here: http://www.hyperstone.com/en/Product-ma ... SA-13.html. Hopefully just by looking at that, you can tell how awful it is :lol: I guess the Koreans at Oriental Soft got a good deal on it.
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Actually I thought "Oriental Soft" was the prototype name for Triangle Service, unless they're a bunch of Koreans too?

As for the specs that kind of detail is a bit beyond my knowledge but some of the 'features' do seem a bit.....odd. I guess what makes it annoying is that they got development tools because the actual components by themselves aren't so easy to figure out or something? I did hear the actual board gets very hot very quickly though.

Gotta hand it to the developer of G-Stream though: I think this game would've gotten a lot more attention and less 'oh this looks like a Korean piece of shit' if it weren't for the sound chip and poor sound quality. In the three stages I've gotten up to I've yet to see any kind of slowdown to suggest hitting the limits.
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trap15
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by trap15 »

Nah, Oriental Soft was probably a Korean company, judging by the name and crappy hardware. G-Stream G2020 was released by Oriental Soft Japan, and the main developer was the same Fujino that started Triangle Service. Oriental Soft had stopped paying Fujino his salary at some point, which is why Fujino left and started Triangle Service to release XII Stag.

As far as the slowdown goes, yeah, the processor is pretty decently fast, but I wouldn't trust MAME to have the timing correct. It probably runs without slowdown on the PCB as well though. I'm not really surprised about the heat though, I'd imagine the CPU runs pretty hot.

I've spent a bit of time today figuring out what unlocks the "sections" of the game, and I think I'll start an ST in a bit. I think I've figured it all out for Stage 1, gotta check a bit more.
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Oh, I see! Interesting, certainly more than what I dug up.

From what I looked up regarding videos I believe all the videos on Nicovideo/YouTube are all from MAME (not sure about the Nico one though) so they show all the same results. I have no idea how much an actual board would cost but I can't imagine it'd be too common anymore if the heating was as serious as I read it was (I believe it was a post here actually) - certainly wouldn't last two minutes in Darwin.

If you need any help with the ST I'm all ears! It's good to actually get some info for this at last. :)

EDIT: Kaiser upped a video of clearing the final boss. Sound emulation seemed to go real broken from the credits onwards but I'm not sure if that's the emulation or the savestate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voDzyQtseo4
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trap15
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Re: RQ: G-Stream G2020 mechanics

Post by trap15 »

Yeah, I credit-fed to that spot the other day. What a shame :(
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<S.Yagawa> I like the challenge of "doing the impossible" with older hardware, and pushing it as far as it can go.
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