TRP-STGT Conversation Week 2: Gun Frontier

[trap15]

Gun Frontier

Dynamic scoreboard at http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/stgt/

Tournament main thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=43289
Score submission thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=43421

Discussion goes here.

[NTSC-J]

Have fun!

[CptRansom]

Have fun!

brb counterstopping

[KAI]

quasi-infinite enemy respawning!!

[Ed Oscuro]

Have fun!

lol I was going to rush in here and mention that as soon as I saw the title.

If we change the extend awards that'll solve it dead.

[Despatche]

yes let's disable extends and force 1 life

better idea is to just pick a different game but i guess people love to find too many solutions to very simple problems

[trap15]

Best idea: stop bitching and play the damn game.

[SuperSoaker360]

that fucking boss explosion

[EmperorIng]

I look forward to seeing everyone get their ass pounded by Stage 5.

If you even make it that far.

[trap15]

Just poked around the ROMs a bit. The game is the same for both Japan and World. There's also a bit setting that'd make the game US version, but it appears MAME doesn't have the ROMs for it. It shows the Winners Don't Do Drugs message and everything

[Nana]

that fucking boss explosion

+1

This game IS ridiculously fun. Personally I'm enjoying playing without autofire even though it's obviously not conducive to scoring as well... it's just a lot more satisfying to mash away at the fire button and take down a boss than to just see it go down in a few seconds.

[trap15]

that fucking boss explosion

This game IS ridiculously fun. Personally I'm enjoying playing without autofire even though it's obviously not conducive to scoring as well... it's just a lot more satisfying to mash away at the fire button and take down a boss than to just see it go down in a few seconds.

It's definitely a cinematic experience, all the way down to the last boss.
Admittedly, you'll never really experience how cinematic it is if you use autofire... But it's basically required if you want to score well and/or survive.

[blackoak]

I'm shocked at how much I hate this game given its an old favorite of Yagawa. The only kinship I feel with Raizing at this point is aesthetic. And yet, Yagawa wasn't a graphic designer...

I must be doing something very very wrong, but I can't progress past stage 3, even with savestates! I hate feeling like these patterns aren't visually threatening, but I'm incapable of dodging because of the ship speed and hitbox. Difficulty via player handicap==tedium. The way the blue copters move COULD be really cool and make me feel like i'm in an approximated dogfight, but instead I have to hardcore abstract-memo routes or I'm doomed. Bleh. Hey Skykid, I have a suggestion for your list....

[Imhotep]

I think, together with much of the other Taito STG output, Gun Frontier plays in its own league in terms of presentation.

Hearing the big battleships humm well before they appear on screen is just so fantastic a feeling.

From the first long-lasting tone that introduces your ship to the screen, to the battle with the pirate chief, the game's epic.

[EmperorIng]

I still get goosebumps when the stage 1 BGM when the "Wild Lizads Monster Tank" crashes out at the end of stage 5.

Stage 5 is an incredibly frustrating stage, and practically impossible to recover from, but it has a strangely easy final boss. Well, with autofire.

The game is full of excellent set-pieces that typify Taito's 80s-90s meticulous care for presentation. Stage 6 especially. Yes, it's another huge fucking pain in the ass. But sooooo good.

[Klatrymadon]

I've only just noticed that GF's and Metal Black's intros both begin with the same few notes of music.

[blackoak]

st3 gun frontier: harder than st3 futari

[Klatrymadon]

If it's the final section of st3 that's giving you grief, blackoak, try taking out all of the big grey planes as they come down on the left, and ignoring the blue ones that swing in from the right. You lose out on a few points, but it should give you enough room to comfortably weave around their bullets. The main thing to avoid in this level, I think, is letting the blue ships get close to you. They travel down the screen and shoot from the sides when they're parallel with you, often at point-blank range.

[EmperorIng]

Bullet dodging in this game is at this point sort of second-nature for me - it's just a constant, sort of rhythmic weave left and right around all the aimed shots.

I myself was practicing a bit more for fun last night and almost got to the end of stage 3 but the midboss tank sort of caught me. The thing is, with this game's bombs, you have to bomb just a little bit before you know you're fucked. Essentially, you have to know you're going to be fucked and bomb accordingly.

Basically, about right as the tank comes onto the screen I bomb, just to clear the popcorn and focus on taking that thing down ASAP, because it will provide a lot of grief if left alive.

[Naglfar]

Have fun!

seriously how does he start stage two with that many bombs

[trap15]

Collect almost all of the fragments in stage 1.

[Naglfar]

I could collect literally all of them and not have that many.

[trap15]

I get that many even with bombing the rock in stage 1. Dunno what you're doing wrong...

[coturnix]

What´s the criteria for bombing in this game? In Raizing it´s usually bomb ground scenery, but i´m not sure if the same applies here. I didn´t know that bombing those blue ships in stage 2 gave so much points compared to shooting them down.

Actually i know very little about this game (and maybe i´m thinking too Raizing). There´s a thread in the strategy forum but not much info there either.

[trap15]

I get that many even with bombing the rock in stage 1. Dunno what you're doing wrong...

Actually, I'm totally wrong. I get like 1 less full bomb than that video does. I'm going to take a guess that there's a spot to checkpoint milk bombs, or maybe you can let one of the tanks run into the cave and give you bombs.

What´s the criteria for bombing in this game? In Raizing it´s usually bomb ground scenery, but i´m not sure if the same applies here. I didn´t know that bombing those blue ships in stage 2 gave so much points compared to shooting them down.

Actually i know very little about this game (and maybe i´m thinking too Raizing). There´s a thread in the strategy forum but not much info there either.

Certain stuff is worth more to bomb, and there are some secret ground things that you can bomb for points. For the most part, there's no "criteria", it's just whatever is worth (more) points to bomb is so.

[Ed Oscuro]

Is it just me or are there more powerups past the milking section than usual?

Having trouble getting to the boss, though...

[trap15]

There actually are a ton of powerups after the milking section. I believe there's actually enough to go from 0 to max power

Getting to the boss is difficult, and takes a fair amount of route planning and memorization. A general rule though, is if you move side-to-side in a \_______/ pattern, you can tend to divert the bullets from your path, and stay safe, while clearing out those fucking hovercopters.

[Ed Oscuro]

Interesting thing: At autofire rate 3, within the top third of the screen you almost never will collide with popcorn enemies, no matter which way you approach them. When your guns fire, there's a little bit of hit detection slightly behind your wings which allows this. Of course, if you are using autofire rate 1, or just get unlucky, you can collide when the gun is dry firing, so be careful. In any case it seems that the better course of action is probably just to hold back further down the screen and concentrate on movement.

[blackoak]

Now that the horror is over, here's a very brief Gun Frontier interview I stumbled upon:

1990 Gun Frontier Interview
Senba Takatsuna (Project Gun Frontier Producer)

For Gun Frontier, not only me but the entire staff really wanted to see how far we could push the F2 hardware. We really struggled with it while making characters and such. We had a calculator handy and were constantly checking whether we had exceeded the memory; there was a 64000 character limit, so we had to be vigilant about removing extraneous things and keeping it as optimized as possible. The vertical raster scroll was also something we had developed ourselves, and we had been thinking about it for a long time. It took a lot of time to get working.

We had planned many ideas for the stages and enemies, but it was difficult to know whether players would ultimately find those ideas enjoyable. For example, if we were to add a midboss to stage 1, experienced players would think its great, but it would be too difficult for beginners that way. Players always want to play at the limits of their abilities, you know? I do think we over-advertised the difficulty of the game, though.

As for the rank increase from autofire, that came from something the programmers had been thinking about for awhile; that is, how to create a game with a "relative" or dynamic difficulty. Preventing operators from installing autofire circuits was not our intention. After all, the game doesn't just increase the rank from autofire. It also uses the number of ships destroyed and a variety of other factors. But I do think all those things resulted in the game feeling too difficult, and that is something I would have liked to change.

There's also lots of hidden bonuses in Gun Frontier. Before the game was released, 2 employees at Taito had managed to 1CC it. We feared that it would be cleared too quickly by players, so we added a bunch of secrets in for longevity.

[EmperorIng]

Ha ha, that's cool. Thanks, blackoak.

I wonder what secrets they meant? The bomb trick at st2?
I know trap15 mentioned "bombing the rock" in stage 1, but I don't know what that means.