ST: Ketsui Arrange 1.0

[trap15]

The scoring system in Ketsui Arrange has been significantly modified from the original scoring system. It now involves intentionally making the game harder to make enemies reward more chips.
As time goes on, I may or may not add optimal route information. If I do, the descriptions will be linked here.

Patcher download and more information about Arrange can be found here: http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/ketarr/

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1.0

Buttons

• A - Fire
  Tap - Shot
  Hold - Lock-shot
  Holding A+C causes the option fire to deal ~1.25x damage. This is usable on bosses where you'd like to defeat the boss a bit faster (and save some chips).
  Lock shot slows down your ship to 2/3rd speed.
• B - Bomb
  Upon pressing B, one bomb is released from each option, in the direction that it is facing (thus, on Rotate mode, bombs fly in all directions).
  Bombs will bounce once off of the side of the screen, and will explode upon hitting an enemy or the top/bottom of the screen (and left/right after the first bounce).
  For each bomb that is released, the manual rank is decreased by 2 per frame while the bomb is on screen (exploding counts).
• C - Rapid-shot
  The difference between C and tapping A is that C will only fire as long as you are holding the button. A will continue firing a few frames after the button is released. Due to this, it is usually advantageous to just use C for shot.
• D - Option adjust
  Pressing D will change your option mode. Utilizing this functionality can be quite helpful in the later stages. The option modes are:
  • Wide
    First two options are on the top-left and top-right of your battleship, and are pointed at approximately a 15deg angle.
    The second two are on the direct left and right of your battleship, and are pointed at approximately a 30deg angle.
  • Back
    First two options are on the bottom-left and bottom-right of your battleship, and are pointed at approximately a 165deg angle.
    The second two are on the direct left and right of your battleship, and are pointed at approximately a 150deg angle.
  • Forward
    All four options are in a row in front of your battleship, and are pointed straight ahead.
  • Rotate
    First two options are on the direct left and right of your battleship, and are pointed at a 90deg angle.
    The second two options are on the direct top and bottom of your battleship, and are pointed directly ahead and behind.
    These options spin clockwise around your battleship, changing their angle appropriately.

Mechanics

• Extends
  • Extends are awarded at 40mil and 100mil points.
  • There is an extend if you kill Vinogradov (stage 3 midboss) by destroying all of his turrets and parts before destroying the center part and engaging the actual midboss fight, and you don't bomb.
  • There is an extend if you kill the first two player ships in stage 5 without bombing.
• Counters
  • 
  • When you kill an enemy with rapid-shot, you receive the enemy's base points added to your score.
  • When you kill an enemy with lock-shot, you receive the enemy's base points times your multiplier added to your score, and your multiplier is either decreased by 1/16th, 1/32nd or 1/48th, depending on the enemy.
  • Dying decreases both counters by 1/4th.
  • Your multiplier and your stage counter both decrease throughout the entire game. During the actual stage, they decrease at a rate of 1 per 35 frames. During boss fights, they decrease at a rate of 1 per 15 frames.
  • The multiplier is capped at 999, and the stage counter is capped at 999999.
• Chips
  • The closer you are to an enemy, the higher value chip it releases. If you are too far away from an enemy, they will not drop any chips.
  • When you collect a chip, if the chip value is higher than the chain value, your chain timer is reset to 55, and the chain value is set to the chip value.
  • The chain timer is usually decremented by 1 every 2 frames. Occasionally it will decrease by 2 every 2 frames, but what causes this is currently unknown.
  • Chips are released from enemies during explosions. Calculation on how many chips to release is done as the explosion begins, not upon enemy death.
  • More chips are released from an explosion while in lock-shot.
• Rank
  • The rank is re-evaluated every frame, according to this formula:

    Code: Select all

    rank = rank_timer/rank_timer_div + stage_rank + power_level*2 + multiplier/50 + lives*2 + bombs + (manual_rank/4)
    
           rank_timer_div is 1024 for Easy, 512 for Normal (same as original), 256 for Hard, and 128 for Very Hard
    
           stage_rank | Easy | Medium | Hard | VeryHard |
              Stage 1 |   8  |   16   |  32  |    40    |
              Stage 2 |  10  |   20   |  40  |    48    |
              Stage 3 |  11  |   22   |  44  |    52    |
              Stage 4 |  13  |   26   |  52  |    60    |
              Stage 5 |  15  |   30   |  60  |    68    |

  • Rank maxes out at 255 ($FF).
  • You can increase manual rank by 2 per frame by holding A+C.
    • Due to the implementation, you may maintain or increase rank while still firing rapid shot by holding C and tapping A.
  • When you are not holding A+C, manual rank decreases by 1 per frame.
  • As mentioned earlier, bombing decreases rank by 2 per frame per bomb.
    
  • The rank bar changes colors depending on the rank value:
    • When the rank value is under 175 ($AF), the rank bar is blue.
    • When the rank value is under 223 ($DF), the rank bar is yellow/green.
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 223 ($DF), the rank bar is red.
  • In addition to regular rank effects, at certain rank levels, the difficulty spikes:
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 175 ($AF), enemies behave like in Omote loop.
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 223 ($DF), enemies behave like in Ura loop.
  • Bosses are also now affected by rank:
    • When the rank value is less than 64 ($40), bosses behave like on Easy difficulty.
    • When the rank value is less than 128 ($80), bosses behave like on Normal difficulty.
    • When the rank value is less than 192 ($C0), bosses behave like on Hard difficulty.
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 192 ($C0), bosses behave like on Very Hard difficulty.
  • More chips are awarded depending on the rank value as well:
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 175 ($AF), for every original chip released, 1 additional chip is released.
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 223 ($DF), for every original chip released, 2 additional chips are released.
    • When the rank value is greater than or equal to 252 ($FC), for every original chip released, 3 additional chips are released.

Scoring Breakdown

• The main contributor to your score is your multiplier. You want to keep this as high as possible, and kill a majority of enemies with lock-shot.
• You want to avoid killing enemies with your lock-shot when your chain value is not 4 or 5, as this can lower your multiplier significantly.
  • However, if you are being overwhelmed, this might not be a bad idea, because the multiplier contributes significantly to rank as well.
• The best way to increase your multiplier and keep it high is to raise the rank to maximum, kill an enemy closely to get the chain value set to 5, then lock-shot everything until your chain timer is about to expire, and repeat the process.
• For those tight cases where you don't have the luxury of using lock-shot effectively, you can hold C to rapid fire, and tap A to keep the rank up, so that you can gain a higher amount of chips than would be possible otherwise.
• The other contribution to your score is the end of level bonus. It is calculated as (stage_counter * (lives * 500 + bombs * 50)).

[kingka]

you are the man !!!!! thank you for all your hard work!!!!!

[emphatic]

How is autobomb enabled/disabled?

[trap15]

Read the release page DIP switch #7 (the second "Unused" dip in MAME, I believe)

[emphatic]

Read the release page DIP switch #7 (the second "Unused" dip in MAME, I believe)

Thanks. I thought it only turned on the secret mode.

[trap15]

That's DIP switch #8. It's confusing, since the board has the dips labeled 1 through 8, but in my head I tend to number them 0 through 7.

It's the second to last switch, how about that