Scoreless shooter mods: "Scoring" for survival

[Erppo]

Dude, clearly it would expand the experience for those who want to clear the game -- they could have just ignored all the mechanics associated with score maximisation.

One thing this reminds me is DFK and its second extend, which is set to such a score value that you're basically forced to learn some elementary scoring if you want to reach it. The usual kind of commentary you get to see about that is people whining.

[RNGmaster]

To be more serious, I presented a single example, this wasn't one of them. It was a simplification to the extreme. I'm telling you to imagine if DOJ's chaining mechanics actually had a point in the game, so that you're motivated to actually chain these sections properly, or even maintain a full-chain throughout.

Ah, sorry for misinterpreting that. I agree that scoring and survival are at odds in that sense.

While I don't agree the way you treat people under 18 or those you deem intellectually inferior, creating rom hacks along these lines might be interesting.

Considering my, ah, fixation on Dragon Blaze, I think I might be well equipped to offer a few suggestions. The only problem is that a lot of systems where better scoring directly contributes to easier survival are kind of RPG-like. Like, the more gold coins you collect the stronger your dragonshot is. That would be awfully silly.

Hmm, what if you got extra firepower or a bomb for executing a tech bonus correctly? That would change a previously arbitrary scoring technique into a component of play that is necessary for survival.

[Skykid]

Yo Austere, welcome back (wondering what happened to you.)

This idea is intriguing indeed, I like the idea of constant knife-edge play where you're forced to score absolutely optimally to stay alive. Sounds intense!

However it's an idea that would need to have a very well moderated difficulty curve. For instance I think the difficulty should be on a similar increase to regular shooters (tougher ones of course, not the DS variety) but so that seasoned shmuppers can easily push through the early stages and then need to get sharper as the game goes on: that way it won't be cripplingly punishing.

Using your DOJ example, chaining the first stage alone is an incredibly difficult task for most people to bend their heads around - something like that wouldn't work from the outset. But your Giga Wing idea would work as long as you needed to reflect fewer enemies to increase your energy tanks in the early stages, and then later perhaps enemies wouldn't be worth so much to the tank and you'd be prompted to maximise the reflecting to the fullest.

Anyway, interesting idea, I like the originality.

[Weak Boson]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think what you're saying is analogous to the problem of having infinite credits. The option of credit feeding means some people don't really experience proper survival play. Likewise you can miss out on a game's best mechanics if your aren't bothered about score. I know when I first started playing shmups having limited continues helped me enjoy them more because it forced me to engage with them on a higher level.

But now I don't really need that, I've learned not to credit feed and that that's generally going to be an inferior experience. I've also learned that some of a game's best bits can be the mechanics tied to scoring and so I explore those too. The thing is I don't see why it's that much better to have the metric of your grasp of the mechanics be the extent of progress in the game rather than a score. It can be nice when the two are tied, but there are also games for which I'm glad that's not the case. DOJ is one. It's fun to play for survival, I don't have anything in particular against the chaining, maybe I'll get into it one day, but at least in the meantime I can enjoy other aspects of it.

I guess I just don't see the logic in limiting this flexibility in games. To go back to the credit feeding analogy, I'm glad that Sine Mora had a story mode that wasn't 1 credit only with no checkpoints/stage select. It's fair enough to want games to be designed with their principal mechanics linked to progress within the game, that's sensible, and while having a scoring system may be a compromise, it doesn't seem to me to be a terrible one.

[Paradigm]

So basically you're forcing everybody to 'play for score', which means that the people who prefer to just shut their brain off, shoot stuff, dodge stuff (ie play for survival);

Are you on common-sense-altering drugs, kid? Good luck getting past this forum's beloved Futanari stage 3 with that MO.

If you're paying absolutely no mind to the scoring system and focusing only on staying alive, then yes, one can undeniably say you're playing for survival.

can't, and the people who do enjoy playing for score don't actually get the satisfaction of competing.

Ever heard of clearing a game? Or showing people how good you are with a replay (or *gasp* playing in person)? No one's stopping anyone from playing any scoring games. CAVE's backlog isn't disappearing (nor are any others); in fact, they are about done with arcade games.

Do you have even an ounce of reading comprehension? Maybe I should have added 'for high scores' on the end of that sentence, in case it wasn't already obvious enough. How is clearing a game, competing (apart from with the actual game, of course)? How is showing a replay, competing?

No one's stopping anyone from playing any scoring games? austere's whole idea is based around removing scoring from these games and it seems he wanted to hear people's opinions.

CAVE's backlog isn't disappearing though, you're right. Thanks for that.

It just sounds like a way of limiting everybody's options.

No. You have the option to go play a different game.

And I will do, but that's entirely irrelevant to the discussion in this thread.

[Randorama]

Should make a Garegga patch.

Suicide or die

And the award for the wittiest post 2012 goes to...

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I get what the OP is getting as I had something similar in mind when describing Akai Katana, ie scoreplay felt more intune with survival than say DDP.

It would be intresting if CAVE added a extra mode of SDOJ in their console port where survival ment maintaining the chain. Although as someone has recently mentioned in another thread scoreplay is a means to finetune the difficulty to each players level. Compulsory scoreplay might spoil that or make the game too hard for most ppl if a normal 1CC is very difficult.

Imo they would have to make the game easier then add scoreplay on top or add more carrots and less sticks for scoreplay. IE power up a special weapon for scoring well, more extends, dont lose a full life but only a section of a lifebar.

[Noah!]

OK, so I wrote out a bit of thoughts-ness inspired by this topic. And while I read everything up to this, it's not really a response to anyone here, not even to the OP. Instead it's kind of its own thing that I just wanted to get out of me and into the endless cascades of noise that this world-wide medium is known for. Sorry about that.

So, to my dearest infinity, this is for you.

---

I like scoring. I like playing for score for scoring's sake. I don't care about being number one, I just like doing the best I can. And the concept of deep scoring facilitates that. If it were simply about being the big ichiban then I'm not sure these complex scoring systems would have emerged the way they have. I don't think there would really be a reason for them to. But it is a beneficial side-effect of the phenomenon.

One of the neat things about these deep scoring systems is that they're no longer a direct product of survival. In the early 80's score was directly tied to how well you survived. Kill an enemy, get points. Pick up an item, get points. Even when there were secrets (like the 10,000 house in Tiger Heli), once players knew about them, it just became a thing and so scoring collapses into the above model but with slightly bigger numbers.

But then survival and score got divided. The best example of the clear rift I can think of is the original DonPachi, where you're awarded points for destroying waves in a single glorious swoop. By adding in this extra element, the link between score and survival is once-removed. The sequel spread it one wider with the ever-stacking MAXIMUM bonus, which in itself denies reward for anything less than perfect play (which pressures players to not utilize their survival resources).

In summary, dividing score and survival lead to the presence of two different goals within the same game. And with that extra goal came the emergence of rules and mechanics to pursue that goal. Yeah, we all know this already. But there's an important distinction here.

Scoring and survival are both goals. However, scoring is an open-ended goal, while survival is closed-ended. That is, survival is binary: you either achieve the goal or you don't. On the other hand, the goal of scoring is more of a spectrum. There might be a perfect score, but such a score is (usually) unattainable.

Now here's the problem: In order to cope with the open-ended nature of score, the mechanics of scoring themselves have evolved to be similarly open-ended. However, due to their nature, linking open-ended mechanics to a closed-ended goal is pretty difficult to reconcile. However, there are a few ways of doing it (and there may be more):
1. To make scoring binary, an arbitrary score limit is set and linked to survival, regardless of any other failure conditions. Those who score above it pass and can try to survive, and those who don't have their game ended right on-the-spot. Now, I can't really think of any reason why this is wrong, but...it does feel rather unnatural, in the few games I can recall that implement this sort of thing.
2. Scoring gives you resources with which to survive. I guess extends are kinda like this, as well as something like Silvergun's system. So it's not too ground-breaking.
3. The goal of survival itself becomes open-ended. So, essentially, an endless game. This has the advantage of making the score limit above no longer arbitrary, though.
4. The pre-existing closed-ended mechanics of survival are scrapped. For example, think of an arcade racing game. The score here is time, and you have to keep meeting pre-determined scoring thresholds in order to survive. However, outside of failing to meet the score cap, there is no other way to end your game.

I'm not gonna lie, I personally love this last idea. It gives the player an intuitive reason to mind score, while also removing that weird dichotomy between the two goals. In the end, scoring isn't essential to survival; rather, to score is to survive.

However, in order to make it work, the presence of other failure states needs to be discarded, which means you can miss as much as you want as long as you meet the threshold at the end. And also there still is a score to obsess over, so the cult shall live on.

But, if you can tolerate those things, I think it would make for a killer game.

[spineshark]

The only problem is that a lot of systems where better scoring directly contributes to easier survival are kind of RPG-like. Like, the more gold coins you collect the stronger your dragonshot is. That would be awfully silly.

I would actually love to see this in MFBL Original. It wouldn't be a good serious game since the challenge would go down so dramatically once you got ahead of the curve, but getting to just straight-up melt the bosses' faces off in a few seconds would be hilarious.

[Ghegs]

So...you want Dragon's Lair: The Shmup?

I'm not much a score-player and I still don't understand the appeal of the idea. If the concept of "playing for score is totally different from playing for survival" bothers you so much, play all the shmups that are great despite having an extremely simple scoring system. The R-Types, the Gradiuses, the early Toaplan stuff...there's quite a lot of them.

4. The pre-existing closed-ended mechanics of survival are scrapped. For example, think of an arcade racing game. The score here is time, and you have to keep meeting pre-determined scoring thresholds in order to survive. However, outside of failing to meet the score cap, there is no other way to end your game.

I'm not gonna lie, I personally love this last idea. It gives the player an intuitive reason to mind score, while also removing that weird dichotomy between the two goals. In the end, scoring isn't essential to survival; rather, to score is to survive.

Outrun (and especially Outrun 2 and its descendants) where you need to get to the next checkpoint in time or it's Game Over seems to fit your description nicely if I understood it correctly. To bring it into the realm of shmups, Macross II seems to do pretty much the exact same thing only with score. You can die all you want there, it just makes it harder to fulfill your score quota due to losing some time and powerups.

[Herr Schatten]

Forcing players to score for survival does indeed sound like a bad idea. There's a reason most scoring systems are by and large optional.

As has been said before, Radiant Silvergun pretty much enforces a system, where you have to score well or go under. As a result, the game doesn't feel more like fun, quite the opposite, it feels more like work. Some people do dig that, but I don't think it's an approach that's universally appealing.

The only way I can see to make scoring feel less detached from survival is making the things you have to do to survive also give you a good score. As Hagane pointed out, Psikyo did this beautifully with their games. Scoring well in those is still optional, strictly speaking.

[shadowbringer]

opinions/thoughts/suggestions/whatevers/etc:

- what I'm going to say wouldn't necessarily be viable for mods, even though it could happen, by some chance.

- if we think about the rewards of scoring as wanting the rewards earned proportionally to the risk taken, we could try to make survival more rewarding than it currently is. For example, rewarding the player for 1ccing the game (could be a prerequisite for unlockable features, for example), rewarding the player for having reached a certain place (stage or boss) in the game while spending x lives + n bombs (optional stages could be a reward, for example), rewarding the player for finishing the game proportionally to how many lives and bombs he/she has (this could even make some players want to learn easy scoring techniques if said game offers enough score-based extends). For example, if the game shows the player's rank during the game or right after the final boss is defeated, then people can compare "who has made a better video/replay", and be motivated to compete to get a better rank.

- try to offer a varied set of challenges to the player, for example
--- execution for micrododging or fast positioning or grazing
--- reaction for fast bullets or random ones or confirming that certain important enemies are destroyed, allowing the player to avoid being cornered;
--- memorization for making sections easier and reducing the amount of execution and reaction that would be needed if you can lure a bullet spray or wall away, or avoid it by placing yourself at a safespot/blind region
--- timing, for more specific gameplay mechanics -- medal/enemy/event chaining, reflect barrier-like cooldowns, feeling of enemies' fire rate, bullet cancelling, if any of these would give resources that would help the player's survival
--- resource management -- ESP Galuda's gems, Samidare's shield --
--- precision in where you should shoot -- for example, to avoid creating suicide bullets or to kill enemies quicker by hitting their weak point or avoiding their more armored parts, or killing important enemy/boss parts first
--- feeling of enemies' hp -- Progear and ESP Ra De and any stage which uses bullet cancelling for either survival or score come to mind.
the idea behind this variety (but not limited to said list) is that one player may be good at some of them (or even all of them) but isn't required to master every aspect. So he/she has the choice to work around their flaws and/or further develop their strong points to finish the game.

- one idea would be to have unlockable content that you could "buy" through in-game money; the better at scoring (not survival) you are, the faster you earn said in-game money (Crimzon Clover did this well enough). Having other pre-requisites (using Imperishable Night's Spellcard Practice Room as an example) is up to the designer's choice.

- I can't say much about how to decrease restart-syndrome on shmups when playing for score, but about the issue of "normal" people not paying attention to scoreplay, let's remember (at least, even if it may be off-topic) that different shmups reward different abilities (with a varying number of abilities and their intensity, being carried over from different games), some of said required abilities possibly not being interesting to the "normal" player, or being too difficult for him/her (like, rewarding the player for not bombing, or using bombs for score instead of survival)

- a game that has said rewards towards survival-oriented players could have another mode (provided that there's enough time and resources for making and testing said mode, of course), which would be balanced towards scoring.

[wiNteR]

My recommendation is for gunbird-2, but it depends on whether auto-bomb can be implemented or not. If it is possible to implement it then it would go like this:

1) Remove manual bombing from the game. Quite honestly, I think a lot of Psikyo games would be better with auto-bombs anyway since the first death usually feels incredibly cheap.

2) Remove the bombs that are given to the player in the game (that is, player gets no extra bombs from collecting the bomb icons).

3) Reward the player 'points' for coin chaining. These points basically contribute towards bombs. For example, you could keep a simple equivalence like 1 bomb = 100 points. The bonus would have to be balanced. But a reasonable figure could go like:
simple coin chain = 1 point
1 chain = 1 point
2 chain = 2 point
.......
10+ (10 or more) chain = 10 point

When the player loses their coin chain the penalty is that they have to pick up their points bonus again. In the second loop you could increase the points bonus for coin chain by a certain factor (say 30 or 40%). Similarly, points (say 3 or 4 per gem) could be awarded for collecting gems.

Obviously these numbers will need to be balanced, although these modifications are more likely to make the game easier (but that obviously depends on the exact values). I think this will make the game more fun to play.

[BPzeBanshee]

Isn't scoring for survival what Battle Garegga does anyway? You know, the whole "control the rank by suiciding, then getting extra lives per score extend, rinse and repeat" thing?

I'm actually thinking that Xeno Fighters R kind of does this as well. I believe v0.12 will change this but part of the original proposals for dynamic rank implementation was that the rank would drop if you scored more by discovering Micluses and collecting medals. Expert stages (stages that are inbetween the standard progression of stages) have more medals so essentially by scoring you'd be able to take a seemingly "easier" route towards beating the game. I say seemingly because until the change was added for expert stages to REPLACE the next stage you were otherwise going to transition to you'd have to go through more stages to actually beat the game.

I actually have reason to believe that the Raiden Fighters series did this to begin with to some extent however. I swear the rank actually rose higher and faster especially in JET when you took the lesser stages and didn't activate the X-Medals. Implementing extends by medal collection like Xeno Fighters R did would be pretty impressive but I'm not so sure this would be that much different from Garegga.

Galuda's Overheat mode does seem like another point but I was thinking of having the entire game at max rank and then by collecting Gold slowing the bullets down for a certain amount of time.

[zinger]

I think a problem here is that people here (myself included, no doubt) have too many fond memories associated with shooters that have scoring systems, and therefore it's difficult to imagine what they would be like without those mechanics, and with the action allocated to things that also made sense from an aesthetic perspective.

And then there's another thing that complicates things a bit further. For instance, Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou is one hell of a game. However, within it there exists a mini-game called Chaining Dai-Ou-Jou, and it is garbage. Those of you afraid of being forced into doing maneuvers that feel like boring work (like in DOJ, eh, I mean Chaining DOJ, where you are severely punished if you take one step outside its ridiculously narrow path), aren't the scoring systems you are thinking of then actually quite flawed? Even though the fundamental game is awesome? For austere's theory to work well, the game must of course be constructed by a person with good taste in scoring systems (or, good taste in games).

If I were to reprogram Garegga I'd first of all remove the rank system, the medals and the score counter. The breakable ship parts and the chipped off paint graphics would still be there of course, but the only reward you'd get for destroying ship parts would be the visual effect as well as the transformation of the bosses' attack patterns. Now, you'd have to do a lot to match the intensity of the original game, and I haven't given it much time yet, but first of all the C-button options managing would be used for simultaneously fighting several different enemies (so you could take down one group of ships with your regular shots while your options are aimed backwards, for instance, towards another enemy), like in Gleylancer or many other games where the options can be regulated. Another thing about Garegga that I always liked was the bombing. At least, or especially when playing as Gain, with whom you can strategically place your bombs both as shields or in order to cause a lot of damage in specific areas. The enemy formations and patterns would probably have to be redesigned to a large extent in order to make the player want to use these strategies, though, but I think it would be a much better game this way.

[Paradigm]

For austere's theory to work well, the game must of course be constructed by a person with good taste in scoring systems (or, good taste in games).

:rolleyes:

If I were to reprogram Garegga I'd first of all remove the rank system, the medals and the score counter

:vomit:

[Randorama]

Two very quick points:

And then there's another thing that complicates things a bit further. For instance, Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou is one hell of a game. However, within it there exists a mini-game called Chaining Dai-Ou-Jou, and it is garbage.

What is the evidence proving that chaining in DOJ is garbage?

For austere's theory to work well, the game must of course be constructed by a person with good taste in scoring systems (or, good taste in games).

And how one establishes who is an authority on games?

If I were to reprogram Garegga I'd first of all remove the rank system, the medals and the score counter.

So you would get Gun Frontier with different graphics. WHY you would like to do this?

[austere]

I honestly think after the active discussion here that the point of the original post and previous thread is best motivated via demonstration -- i.e. a mod realising the scoreless design. I haven't convinced anyone else capable of doing it about its merits, so I guess the I'll have to do it when I get time. Until then I'll pull out of the debate leaving the floor to you all.

Yo Austere, welcome back (wondering what happened to you.)

Hey dude, thanks, it's been a hell of a year (and some say there is no end in sight, I certainly feel exhausted), if I told you about it , most people wouldn't believe me. I'll tell you in DM.

This idea is intriguing indeed, I like the idea of constant knife-edge play where you're forced to score absolutely optimally to stay alive. Sounds intense!

That's right, but you'd take out the score all together and put something more intuitive in. I mean what's the point anyway, most people who are enjoying themselves are not going to be in the top ranking spots, may as well give people a visual and intuitive reason to use a revised scoring mechanics of the game as proper mechanics.

However it's an idea that would need to have a very well moderated difficulty curve. For instance I think the difficulty should be on a similar increase to regular shooters (tougher ones of course, not the DS variety) but so that seasoned shmuppers can easily push through the early stages and then need to get sharper as the game goes on: that way it won't be cripplingly punishing.

Of course, it will take quite some time to make sure the game doesn't rush you into a difficulty that spoils the game. But it should be a very difficult challenge to complete the game, no compromise on that one.

Using your DOJ example, chaining the first stage alone is an incredibly difficult task for most people to bend their heads around - something like that wouldn't work from the outset.

Yeah I probably should have avoided DOJ all together because its very difficult to justify the chaining mechanics in both a visual and mechanic way. Ketsui, for example, is much easier (the fuel idea, once again).

Anyway, interesting idea, I like the originality.

LOL

I get what the OP is getting as I had something similar in mind when describing Akai Katana, ie scoreplay felt more intune with survival than say DDP.

That's actually what frustrated me initially, the whole "great for scoring blah" "oh but its easy for survival to get new players into the genre". I mean, DoDonPachi is no push over and it gets people into the new genre! Most of them don't even bother with the chaining, the levels are hard enough.

I think a mod like this could be pretty interesting in theory, but in practice I'm having trouble thinking of ways in which it could be more interesting than the original game in any capacity unless the modifications were particularly game-changing.

That's the idea, it's not just a matter of reintegrating the scoring system into proper mechanics (and removing the score all together) but also aesthetically justifying it. It has to make sense for someone who has never seen the game before (and it should definitely make more sense for someone who didn't know the scoring system).

So...you want Dragon's Lair: The Shmup?

Oh god no. See, the problem with that game is you have to know well in advance what kind of silly scenario the game designer cooked up for you in order just to survive. It doesn't feel normal at all and it's not fun, it's just a series of "gotchas" at every turn. Playing the "maximise your score" game feels the same way to me, I mean I watch a superplay and the guy's doing things that make no sense until one reads up on the internals of the game and even then they have to know what's coming later.

So basically playing for score turns every existing game into Dragon's Liar: The shmup. That's because the designers thought of a nice idea (e.g. chaining) to make the game more interesting than their previous creations but never really integrated that to the mechanics (other than getting 2 extends). I should check out Macross II... when I have time to breathe.

The only way I can see to make scoring feel less detached from survival is making the things you have to do to survive also give you a good score.

That's what's being proposed, without the pointless scoring because if survival is scoring, then at the end of the game everyone should have the same score.

Isn't scoring for survival what Battle Garegga does anyway?

Indeed ... but it breaks the illusion of the game, I mean, imagine if you're really fighting all those fleets, would destroying your ship to make the enemy less annoyed at you be realistic. I don't know, it does the job (I play the game a lot by the way) but it's counter-intuitive.

About zinger's modifications to Battle Garrega, I'll just comment that it's not just a matter of stripping away the scoring mechanics, they are the very reason the game is fun -- it's a matter of reintegrating them back into the game in such a way that there's not two seperate "games" going on at the same time. In Battle Garegga half the time I'm looking at the most significant digit (I'm not good enough for it to break the YGM BCD routine and leap into hexadecimal notation, lol) of my score and suiciding, surely surely this mechanic can be turned into something that makes more sense, even visually? Some kind of accumulation of items that make the gradually increasing difficulty easier that you get rid of? I don't know, Garegga is tough one to crack, it's not something you will sit down and figure out while typing out a forum post. I'm asking you to improve the design of the original games, something they worked months (or even, you could argue, accumulated decades) on, but the difference is you're now armed with a new perspective.

My piece of advice: You're probably going to have to add more than what you've subtracted.

Anyway I've got to go, have fun and please hold your bile Paradigm.

[zinger]

Randorama: Two points? I count three? Or wait, one was a slow point and the other two were quick? :)

The fact that DOJ chaining is boring for me is proof enough. For me, that is. But it doesn't matter, it was just an example. My point was that systems that "feel like work" shouldn't be forced upon any player. Systems that induce divine pleasure should instead be presented to him. So, in response to Herr Schatten: replace DOJ with RSG's system (which I'm not yet familiar with enough to criticize) and I've made my point. For reference:

Forcing players to score for survival does indeed sound like a bad idea. There's a reason most scoring systems are by and large optional.

As has been said before, Radiant Silvergun pretty much enforces a system, where you have to score well or go under. As a result, the game doesn't feel more like fun, quite the opposite, it feels more like work. Some people do dig that, but I don't think it's an approach that's universally appealing.

As for Garegga without a rank system, medals and a score counter being Gun Frontier with different graphics? You've got to be kidding me? Gun Frontier is one of the most sedate arcade shooters in existance, while Garegga on the other hand is tsunami inducing manic hell! :D

Now, you'd have to do a lot to match the intensity of the original game, and I haven't given it much time yet, but first of all the C-button options managing would be used for simultaneously fighting several different enemies (so you could take down one group of ships with your regular shots while your options are aimed backwards, for instance, towards another enemy), like in Gleylancer or many other games where the options can be regulated. Another thing about Garegga that I always liked was the bombing. At least, or especially when playing as Gain, with whom you can strategically place your bombs both as shields or in order to cause a lot of damage in specific areas. The enemy formations and patterns would probably have to be redesigned to a large extent in order to make the player want to use these strategies, though, but I think it would be a much better game this way.

Redesigned, that is, in a way in which you'd never even survive the second stage without using the B and C buttons extensively.

[wiNteR]

What is the evidence proving that chaining in DOJ is garbage?

At least one can't say that it isn't highly restrictive. Restrictive simply in the sense that, for example, what percentage of actions (in a given section) lead to a given percentage of maximum possible score in that section. That may be a bad measure in some cases, but you could think about it in terms of only the movement of the player.

[zinger]

About zinger's modifications to Battle Garrega, I'll just comment that it's not just a matter of stripping away the scoring mechanics, they are the very reason the game is fun -- it's a matter of reintegrating them back into the game in such a way that there's not two seperate "games" going on at the same time.

I don't agree about the scoring system being the very reason Garegga is fun. I picked out the two aspects of the scoring system that I like and reintegrated them. I believe the other aspects, such as the medal hunting (and the rank system) detracts from the game, so therefore I figured we might as well remove them? I forgot about the aspect of gambling your lives for bombs though, so yeah, mine's really not a very thought out idea after all. In any case, using the options and bombs for targets that threaten your survival is a given development!

[Ghegs]

So...you want Dragon's Lair: The Shmup?

Oh god no. See, the problem with that game is you have to know well in advance what kind of silly scenario the game designer cooked up for you in order just to survive. It doesn't feel normal at all and it's not fun, it's just a series of "gotchas" at every turn.

To quote you:

Imagine DoDonPachi Daioujou's popcorn corridors where you had to keep your chain going -- or die, how exhilarating would that be?

That sounds exactly the same thing to me. Do exactly what the designer wants you to do, or die. You would have to know in advance the enemy layout and patterns if you wanted to have a chance of survival in this version of DDPDOJ, requiring the player to memorize all this after repeated attempts.

Which sounds awfully familiar to how the game is played now.

(Also, the NES version of Dragon's Lair is quite different from the arcade original which I was referring to.)

Playing the "maximise your score" game feels the same way to me, I mean I watch a superplay and the guy's doing things that make no sense until one reads up on the internals of the game and even then they have to know what's coming later.

How would this be any different in your mods? Shmups are by and large pre-determined affairs - enemy X will always appear at point Y, or in relation to player at time Z, powerup P will always be dropped if you destroy enemy C, and so forth. If you wanted to remove memorization completely you would have to randomize a whole bunch of stuff and that usually doesn't end up well in shmups.

So basically playing for score turns every existing game into Dragon's Liar: The shmup.

Except that playing for score doesn't automatically kill you when you fail a score trick, while Dragon's Lair and your mods (apparently?) would. Also, some shmups offer quite a bit of leeway in their scoring mechanics, allowing there to be multiple ways to deal with certain situations while still providing more or less the same score out of them. I understand Mars Matrix is quite prominent in this regard. This allows the player to play more in their own style instead of having to follow the path the designer wants them to.

That's because the designers thought of a nice idea (e.g. chaining) to make the game more interesting than their previous creations but never really integrated that to the mechanics (other than getting 2 extends).

I would say good scoring mechanics does exactly that - the stage layouts, enemy paths, bullet patterns, boss fights, weapon behavior, etc are all designed to support the scoring mechanic, making the game whole in that way. Sure, there are some shmups where the scoring system was just slapped on to an already finished game as an afterthought, but they're probably not particularly good games to begin with, anyway.

[wiNteR]

Shmups are by and large pre-determined affairs - enemy X will always appear at point Y, or in relation to player at time Z, powerup P will always be dropped if you destroy enemy C, and so forth. If you wanted to remove memorization completely you would have to randomize a whole bunch of stuff and that usually doesn't end up well in shmups.

The reason that this usually happens, in a good number of cases, is exactly because the need of developers to cater to the higher or highest percentile of scorers. As soon as you allow scoring to exist in even a reasonable spectrum for the player (given roughly the same performance) you are given the leeway to make the level design less rigid.

[Hagane]

Quite honestly, I think a lot of Psikyo games would be better with auto-bombs anyway since the first death usually feels incredibly cheap.

Hahahaha

Well, I'll try my best for an austere mod of Shippu Mahou Daisakusen. Make racing well mandatory instead of sorta necessary (for example you can only advance to the next level if you get top three in the first loop, and first in the second), fix enemy AI so it doesn't randomly go to impossible to catch speeds, make enemies and obstacles fiercer... best times would still function as a way to tell who is the best player instead of traditional scoring.

Instead of losing a life, when you get hit you get stunned / crash and lose precious time as in a real racing game so you won't qualify to the next round if you crash more than once or twice. The ship would also be damaged and if you crash three times you explode and it's game over. You would get an "extend" if you qualify to the second loop that would repair your ship so you can take an extra hit.

[austere]

I don't agree about the scoring system being the very reason Garegga is fun. I picked out the two aspects of the scoring system that I like and reintegrated them. I believe the other aspects, such as the medal hunting (and the rank system) detracts from the game, so therefore I figured we might as well remove them? I forgot about the aspect of gambling your lives for bombs though, so yeah, mine's really not a very thought out idea after all. In any case, using the options and bombs for targets that threaten your survival is a given development!

Well rank doesn't make sense (I mean, why don't they just fire at you with full force, lol) but I'm just saying you're proposing a very different game, you may as well rename the title. The challenge is to use what's already there (in the scoring mechanics), are medals detracting from the game? It's an integral part of it, if you don't collect them, you don't have enough points and can't suicide to lower rank later. So basically, losing medals is pretty fatal, and this forces you to get in there and risk bullets to get the medals. One thing that's definitely out is suiciding, this is the most immersion destroying aspect of the game. Maybe instead of medals it's parts of your enemy's bullet research weapon program and if you miss them the next stage gets a lot harder. Instead of suiciding, you do something that risks the structural integrity of your (only) ship to stop it from getting more advanced. Something along those lines, I really think Battle Garegga is a very hard one to look at unless you change the entire game but then that's not the exercise at hand.

You would have to know in advance the enemy layout and patterns if you wanted to have a chance of survival in this version of DDPDOJ, requiring the player to memorize all this after repeated attempts.

Well, like I said earlier, the DOJ partial example is an unfortunate one, but I never stated the reason why you'd need to keep chains going. That's up to whoever suggests a good example. I really like DOJ, most of the time you know where the enemies will be to chain them, it's quite intuitive, if you add a few enemies at the more annoying points and give a proper reason for chaining, it could be quite a nice experience.

What you're talking about, forcing chaining and that's it, yeah, that sucks, that's basically a broken rhythm game.

If you wanted to remove memorization completely you would have to randomize a whole bunch of stuff and that usually doesn't end up well in shmups.

Ah but therein lies the key, if the player intuitive could tell what was going to come up with next, based on what they've seen before and the visual cues, then it's no problem. We're not machines after all, we don't have to store new information to be able to guess what's going to come up with next correctly, most of the time.

I was kind of getting at this here: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32990

Except that playing for score doesn't automatically kill you when you fail a score trick, while Dragon's Lair and your mods (apparently?) would.

Just to reemphasise, it wouldn't be a trick at all, the game would have to be modified to make it seem quite obvious. I'm not saying you have to know where all the hidden bees are for example, I'd get rid of them all together (or make them have some kind of obvious purpose and make their location known).

I would say good scoring mechanics does exactly that - the stage layouts, enemy paths, bullet patterns, boss fights, weapon behavior, etc are all designed to support the scoring mechanic, making the game whole in that way. Sure, there are some shmups where the scoring system was just slapped on to an already finished game as an afterthought, but they're probably not particularly good games to begin with, anyway.

And the nice stage layouts, enemy paths and so on, will all have a bigger role now that the scoring mechanics suddenly have a real purpose.

[Ghegs]

And the nice stage layouts, enemy paths and so on, will all have a bigger role now that the scoring mechanics suddenly have a real purpose.

They have a real purpose - the score itself. Many of these games are designed from the start to be played competitively and having a clear, unambiguous way of tracking results is a necessity that score provides. If you don't care about competition, you can still play and enjoy the game in your own way. Why remove the possibility of playing the same game in different ways?

I think you're trying to solve a problem that isn't actually there - you talk about immersion and intuitive gameplay, but shmups are fundamentally different to most other games genres out there, in both philosophy and execution. Immersion is a subjective thing to begin with, but if you're trying to make real-world sense out of these things you should have difficulties accepting the whole 2D-movement only bit to start with. Or the fact that there's (usually) an unlimited amount of ammo at your disposal.

The basic gameplay of shmups is generally very intuitive - dodge and shoot. It's only when certain score mechanics are introduced when you have to do unintuitive things like suicide to live, or letting enemies survive long enough to fire so you can buzz/reflect/transform/etc their bullets, even though you could easily destroy them beforehand. But many actually like these things, since it forces them to think outside the box and work things out in a different way to what they've done in so many other shmups already.

[Lance Boyle]

and with the action allocated to things that also made sense from an aesthetic perspective.

You seem to be forgetting that we're talking about top-down scrolling shooters, which by default make very little sense from an aesthetic perspective.

Ketsui, for example, is much easier (the fuel idea, once again).

I really wish I hadn't invented this retarded idea, even as a joke.

[zinger]

and with the action allocated to things that also made sense from an aesthetic perspective.

You seem to be forgetting that we're talking about top-down scrolling shooters, which by default make very little sense from an aesthetic perspective.

That doesn't mean the aesthetic dimension should be arbitrarily designed. Sure, the top-down perspective has its limits, but would you be just as content with Ketsui if every other sprite was automatically generated using random Google image searches?

[Lance Boyle]

That doesn't mean the aesthetic dimension should be arbitrarily designed. Sure, the top-down perspective has its limits, but would you be just as content with Ketsui if every other sprite was automatically generated using random Google image searches?

No, but my point stands, regardless of whether the cock in your throat is climaxing.

Also that ridiculously exaggerated hypothetical example doesn't justifiably follow "arbitrarily designed", nor are any shooters we've discussed as reference comparable to it.

The entire Insomnia cadre seems to not understand that gratuitous hyperbole has no place in a discussion based by their own insistence on the pretext of civility, which is now forfeit.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

No, but my point stands, regardless of whether the cock in your throat is climaxing.

You would think having someone like him essentially fap to your posts would be a huge warning sign that you really ought to rethink what you're typing.

Outrun (and especially Outrun 2 and its descendants) where you need to get to the next checkpoint in time or it's Game Over seems to fit your description nicely if I understood it correctly.

Outrun isn't quite the best comparison; you aren't punished with a gameover if you don't adhere to the ideal racing line in Outrun or anything. As long as you don't crash much or anything, you're good. What's being suggested would be more like Outrun 2006's Heart Attack mode giving you a gameover if you fail to get to a checkpoint with an A rank in that segment, even if it's the first stage. Or even more apt a comparison would be Lotus II RECS for the Genesis, if you're playing on the tropical/seaside course. Like Outrun, it's a checkpoint racer, but the tropical courses have pylons you need to hit in order to increase the time on the clock by a few seconds. If you crank the difficulty up, you will not make it to the checkpoint if you miss like half of them because you don't start with enough time on the clock to make it; you need to memorize the pylon locations and follow the route accurately from checkpoint to checkpoint.