∀kashicverse -Malicious Wake

[Rex Cavalier]

My keyboard hates most of methods though, so i have to rely mostly on Scissors and seekers(+occasional Prognosis or blast).

[asu_tenan]

hi, recently i just started playing this game.. anyone play on windows 8? Mine just crashed to the desktop once i started the game. I wonder why...

[Observer]

Bumping this. The defensive circle Method that slows downs everything on screen for a limited time is called Danger Prognosis, yeah. Very useful and I noticed you can manually cancel it before it runs out.

I 1cc'd the game with the Extra Stage yesterday on Advent+ mode. Man, what a trippy journey this was. Now I'll try Another. Stage 4 is tearing me apart, dammit. Stage 5, I found it easier but you have to keep your focus as the bullets just go fucking crazy. Getting pummeled by deadly kanji is like my worst japanese studies nightmares in game form.

Btw, gotta love the Eliminator. Revenge for all the times a boss destroyed us.

Can't wait to see the new content they'll bring to the table!

[asu_tenan]

hi, recently i just started playing this game.. anyone play on windows 8? Mine just crashed to the desktop once i started the game. I wonder why...

well nvm, just get it work by installing some missing prerequisites like XNA Framework. This game is so trippy! I like it!

Still sucks at 1cc'ing the game on advent, man the command is kinda hard to do, especially attractant another...

Can't wait to see the new content they'll bring to the table!

What? They will release new patch?

[SuperSoaker360]

What? They will release new patch?

A patch will be released sometime this month.

Earlier in the thread.

[asu_tenan]

What? They will release new patch?

A patch will be released sometime this month.

Earlier in the thread.

oh so they are going to release new difficulty... looks interesting, I'll looking forward to that

And just read that there is "omake" boss that not clear how to trigger it.. hmm gonna play now, see if i can trigger it...

EDIT : Just seen the boss, what a joke. The bullet pattern is so sick and so fast. Can't believe this boss are on stage 2..

[Lord Satori]

Ugh, I'm so sick of waiting. Is the patch going to come out or has it been delayed again?

Just seen the boss, what a joke. The bullet pattern is so sick and so fast. Can't believe this boss are on stage 2..

I guess thats why its an omake boss.

[Aisha]

No news. It was delayed until February at the earliest, and it's still February. The developers surely have other obligations, so you just have to be patient.

[Keith]

Well if that wasn't the prettiest thing I've played in a long time.

Still have a ways to go before I can 1cc this thing even semi-reliably, but boy will it be a fun trip.

A quick question: Just how effective is the delayed laser portion of A.Seed? A.Chaser is amazing (disclaimer: I scrub my way through Hellsinker using Minogame's subweapon), but I'm not sure if I'd want to spend all that extra meter to finish the series, especially when A.Other and J.Driver exist and are so much more attractive.

It's always wonderful to drop Prognosis down and watch as your screen turns into a super dense mesh of lines.

Also, I wonder if the Time Stop and Overclock methods from Alternative Arguments will ever see the light of day in Malicious Wake.

[Rex Cavalier]

A.Seed actually does pretty decent damage, but it's lower than J.Driver if you are aiming for single target, but just using A.Chaser is usually enough to clear the screen from popcorn and even some larger enemies. Though there are places where A.Seed is useful, like drone rush at the end of the stage 2 if you want to save eliminator for Omake for example but still want to get more score.

Edit: On a side note, got the new keyboard and now enjoying being able to use all the methods consistently.

[Cadrin]

Yeah, Apocalypse Seed is bretty good for the final portion of Stage 2. You probably still won't get all of the enemies, though. Speaking of which, which method would be the best for killing as many enemies as possible in that particular segment? I've been using A.Seed + some A.Chasers, but they don't do much. I'm thinking of trying out the Menace Rejector.

So does anyone else experience this problem? When I set the game to auto-restart on game over, strange things happen in stage 2. If I game over on stage 3 or 4 (I'm so bad, I can't get to stage 5 without dying yet), the enemies from Stage 2 get replaced by ones from the stage I game over'd on. The game realizes something is wrong and crashes a few seconds into the stage. I have to exit to main menu and restart manually to prevent the game from crashing if it doesn't load the proper set of enemies.

And one more thing... when I get past the part with rings of bees scrolling from left to right, stage 4 starts to freeze for half a second every second or so until the "OPEN THE GATE..." part. It's pretty bad. It's also kinda synchronized to the beat of the music, so at first I thought it was intentional, but it's not. Also I'm fairly sure it's not caused by the absurd amount of bullets on the screen, as the lag is constant regardless of what's happening. The music gets really desynchronized and by the time I get to Himeno, it loops around and starts playing again for about 5 seconds before being interrupted by the "RESONATE" screen. It really kills my immersion of being the little girl ruining other girls' day with overpowered weapons, man...
Anyone knows what can be causing this? My computer is kinda old, but it has 2GBytes of RAM, a GeForce 8800 with 512 MBytes of memory and an Intel dual core CPU. The rest of the game runs smoothly, save for the final part of stage 5, Hal's last attack before her boss fight, "Freak Out: Tectonics".

Maybe I'll try not running the game on Steam. I don't think the Steam Game Overlay is causing the problem, though.

By the way, I've been looking at the game's cover art. There are some cymbidium orchids on the cover (the purple/pink ones) just left of the "MALICIOUS WAKE" title. I don't immediately recognize other flowers in the picture, but I'm fairly sure they are orchids as well.

And while I try to avoid mentioning drugs or trippiness when talking about pretty crazy games like this one or Hellsinker, I've got to say that I've seen some drawings done by people who do psychedelic/dissociative drugs and the game cover does kinda look like one of those artworks. Since there is no story yet to explain the madness, I shall for now refer to Akashicverse as Drugs: The Game: The Movie: The Game.

EDIT: And what's up with the names of the tracks on Akashicverse's homepage? "Stuldropped", "Inconxleble-Fastymth", "Forthecolida"... Sounds a little bit like the random generated names from Dwarf Fortress.

[Observer]

Actually, I think the Steam Overlay IS the cause of your problems. I can't even run the game with the Steam overlay on. I'll be reporting this to the devs btw.

The game is certainly high on LSD, right, so any attempt at explaining things is a wild guess until they throw us some extra story bits

I'm starting to think the extra content might probably get delayed along with an OST release for C84...

[Rex Cavalier]

which method would be the best for killing as many enemies as possible in that particular segment?

Eliminator is the best as far as i know, but then if you trigger the Omake fight you'll have to rely only on other methods.

So does anyone else experience this problem? When I set the game to auto-restart on game over, strange things happen in stage 2.

Haven't used auto-restart so dunno.

And one more thing... when I get past the part with rings of bees scrolling from left to right, stage 4 starts to freeze for half a second every second or so until the "OPEN THE GATE..." part. It's pretty bad.

I have had similar problem starting from stage 3 on my old PC and when i have used steam overlay. So just run the game without steam, and if that don't helps try lowering the update rate in config from 1/1 to 1/2(it'll make game look somewhat less smooth but music will be synced).

[asu_tenan]

Yeah, Apocalypse Seed is bretty good for the final portion of Stage 2. You probably still won't get all of the enemies, though. Speaking of which, which method would be the best for killing as many enemies as possible in that particular segment? I've been using A.Seed + some A.Chasers, but they don't do much. I'm thinking of trying out the Menace Rejector.

well, i usually use menance rejector + a.seed laser to sweep small enemy swarm to rank up the rate, i usualy use this combo while spreading wings over small enemies and gaining some nice rate point ranked up

By the way, I've been looking at the game's cover art. There are some cymbidium orchids on the cover (the purple/pink ones) just left of the "MALICIOUS WAKE" title. I don't immediately recognize other flowers in the picture, but I'm fairly sure they are orchids as well.

Yeah, everything about this game is all about orchids, since i am not an orchid geek so i don't know the name of the other orchids (well my mom do love orchids, maybe i can ask her lol) dunno what's the connection with the game. Oh maaan they should patch the story + asterism mode soon!

[Cadrin]

Turning off the Steam overlay did actually help with the weird stage 4 lag. I don't understand how, but it worked.

I'm starting to think the extra content might probably get delayed along with an OST release for C84...

You're probably right. And there will be an OST released at Comiket 84? That's neat. I'd love to support Endless-Shirafu with a little bit more of my money for a job well done.

Think they could add online scoreboards to the game as well? I don't know of any other shmup that has a Twitter integration. A built-in scoreboard sounds neat. I just hope they would allow for the community to manage it, or something like that to make sure it doesn't get littered with hacked scores after the circle inevitably stops caring about the game as they move on to make new works.

On a more random note, when I fought Subaru (stage 6 boss), she put down her equivalent of the Attractant Other method (Resentment Paranoia or something). I left it alone, waiting for it to expire, but after a while, the clone started shooting out those weird DNA strands in an X-shaped pattern and the method name changed to "Malicious Wake - Scelus: Vita -". That was unexpected, and pretty weird. I've never seen that happen before in any of the videos on YouTube.

Also, the improved Danger Prognosis really doesn't seem to do anything except being there just to interrupt the Dogma Circuit when it is used during the boss fight. All the bullets are flying at the speed of sound anyway. I could be wrong, though. Maybe the improved Prognosis actually gives you something like damage resistance, or some form of pseudo-invulnerability. Not that it matters that much, since you can die and still get your free 2CC, and the final boss is worth next to no points.

EDIT: oh my god the stage 5 boss when you activate the hard mode and wait for the third loop of attacks

How do you even unlock the hard mode? I usually do that by not attacking during the stage portion, then bringing down the boss' health from 6 bars to 3. That makes the second round of attacks much harder, and the one on the next loop after that even harder.
Tried that on Another, I was slaughtered, dying time and time again. Should anyone trigger the hard mode like that on Akashic (without weakening the boss before the fight proper), and then defeat the boss without using the Crutch Bringer method, they shall be known as god among men. The patterns are really fast and pretty hard. ESPECIALLY Blade Rain.

[SuperSoaker360]

Bringing some activity back in this thread.

I found this video of Stage 5 ∀kashic done without Jaunted Driver and Doom Bringer. Plenty of Attractant Other manipulation done especially during the sword/axe/spear attacks to make things a bit easier. That last attack during the boss' main attack phases - the one with the pink jumping bullets - was pretty well done. Looks like the bullets are aimed so if you use A. Other, you can find a safespot and sit there. Never would have thought of that.

[asu_tenan]

Bringing some activity back in this thread.
Looks like the bullets are aimed so if you use A. Other, you can find a safespot and sit there. Never would have thought of that.

you should do that, and in fact i always play like that...

only red bullets will aimed to the clone, the blue one isn't. Red bullet are supposed to aim us whenever we move, as we use a. other that bullet will target us. The blue one seems just patterned move.


oh also i never use jaunted driver because it's so hard to do (well my keyboard sucks)

[nasty_wolverine]

does anyone know how to look into the music.dat files...?

[Lord Satori]

I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure someone already posted the songs somewhere in this thread. If not, somewhere else on the forums. Man I wish that update would come already. I can't believe this was originally scheduled to come out mid january.

[nasty_wolverine]

the ost is there on youtube, but i am looking for the alternative arguments version of the soundtrack...

[Cadrin]

the ost is there on youtube, but i am looking for the alternative arguments version of the soundtrack...

You and me both. It may be worth your while to send a message to the uploader of the soundtrack and ask if their friend can get us the A:AA soundtrack - or better yet, ask how they got those tracks. Just in case they don't get included in the OST release.

Let's talk about scoring for a bit. Do you guys know how using different methods affects your score? Apparently killing enemies with your basic shot gives you the lowest amount of points. Using most methods multiplies these points by 3. Using the Dread Scissors might give a better multiplier, since it requires you to get close and personal, and all, but I'm not so sure about that. And finally, killing things with the Jaunted Driver seems to give you the best multiplier. I mean, sometimes there are large enemies on the screen. Using specifically J. Driver on them gives a substantial boost to their value.

Then there is, of course, the Eliminator, which apparently always gives you a really good multiplier on everything. You can increase your score in stage 1 from 130mil to over 430mil just by using the Eliminator in a clutch moment (tested on Advent, because I'm pretty bad), so the score increase is very substantial. Although it seems that killing the Stage 2 bonus boss with or without the eliminator always gives the same amount of points (about 200mil, based on your RATE). So maybe the Eliminator only works on non-boss enemies.

That being said, it comes as no surprise that Aranya during her bloom trance is meant to be survived, not nuked down. She seems to give substantial amounts of points for every few seconds you survive. Just be advised that you still need to kill her at the end of the second round of attacks, before the timer hits zero, to get the huge score bonus.

Also, the game lags more often on Akashic, when there are more bullets, like stage 2 boss' first attack after it transforms. Using the Danger Prognosis on stage 5 boss' final attack also causes a massive FPS hit. Huh, I guess you really need quite a good PC to be able to run this game smoothly at all times. I wonder why?

[Meseki]

Let's talk about scoring for a bit. Do you guys know how using different methods affects your score? Apparently killing enemies with your basic shot gives you the lowest amount of points. Using most methods multiplies these points by 3. Using the Dread Scissors might give a better multiplier, since it requires you to get close and personal, and all, but I'm not so sure about that. And finally, killing things with the Jaunted Driver seems to give you the best multiplier. I mean, sometimes there are large enemies on the screen. Using specifically J. Driver on them gives a substantial boost to their value.

Then there is, of course, the Eliminator, which apparently always gives you a really good multiplier on everything. You can increase your score in stage 1 from 130mil to over 430mil just by using the Eliminator in a clutch moment (tested on Advent, because I'm pretty bad), so the score increase is very substantial. Although it seems that killing the Stage 2 bonus boss with or without the eliminator always gives the same amount of points (about 200mil, based on your RATE). So maybe the Eliminator only works on non-boss enemies.

I believe the tutorial sections about the individual methods specify the multiplier for almost every method (though for Attractant Other it's something like "x3 / ???" or something).

[Cadrin]

I see. For some reason, the tutorial text doesn't want to display on this computer at all, though. That's weird, because all the other text in Japanese seems to be displayed correctly. It was displayed no problem on my laptop, but not on this computer. What could be causing this? I guess I'll have to try to fix that.

On an unrelated note, I took the time spent on re-doing the tutorial to take a screenshot of the Eliminator boot-up screen, because it looks pretty. You know how there is something at the beginning of the animation, but usually flashes by too fast for your eye to notice?

It's HER. What the hell?

[asu_tenan]

I see. For some reason, the tutorial text doesn't want to display on this computer at all, though. That's weird, because all the other text in Japanese seems to be displayed correctly. It was displayed no problem on my laptop, but not on this computer. What could be causing this? I guess I'll have to try to fix that.

On an unrelated note, I took the time spent on re-doing the tutorial to take a screenshot of the Eliminator boot-up screen, because it looks pretty. You know how there is something at the beginning of the animation, but usually flashes by too fast for your eye to notice?

It's HER. What the hell?

maybe you should install Japanese language for non Unicode program support from regional and settings, or try to run via applocale. that's the common fix for Japanese text problem for games.

and OH, there is also little fun thing that you can do with tutorial :



EDIT : multiple hymeno :p

[Rex Cavalier]

To add to talk about scoring: it seems that having wings open when collecting blue crystals gives more rate than having them closed, sounds like it will be fun to do on ∀nother.

[Lord Satori]

Every time I see someone post in this thread, I think, "OOH! Is somebody bringing good news that the new content is out?" Only to be disappointed.

Having the wings open also allows you to recover energy much faster. I bet you knew that already, though.

[SuperSoaker360]

It may be worth your while to send a message to the uploader of the soundtrack and ask if their friend can get us the A:AA soundtrack - or better yet, ask how they got those tracks. Just in case they don't get included in the OST release.

Yeah, the uploader is my friend who uploaded the soundtrack for me because I didn't want to use up a lot of my bandwidth.

The way I had obtained the music was by turning off sound effects and letting FRAPS record while I froze the game. The way I froze the game into inactivity was by running the game in windowed mode and dragging the window a bit which makes the game hang until you let go of the mouse click. Yes, I held down the mouse button the entire time the music played. After that, I took the audio from the recorded clip and turned them into .mp3 files. It was a bit of a trouble but I think it was worth it.
The tracks uploaded were recordings from the game and not actually taken from the game files themselves.

Also, you can really screw up some parts of the game by making the game hang using the aforementioned method. Some of the events are timed to follow the music progression so you can potentially skip some attacks if you freeze the game and let the music play through a certain part and then unfreeze it. Maybe this is why replay compatibility would be difficult - desyncs could happen easily.

If you would like me to record the tracks from ∀lternative ∀rguments, I could do so and maybe get my friend to upload those as well.

It's HER. What the hell?

Holy hell, nice find! Your discoveries and analysis never cease to amaze me, Cadrin.

[Cadrin]

EDIT : multiple hymeno :p

Oh, so that is what it is... I saw all those bullets but never noticed all those Himenos. How did you clone her?

@SuperSoaker: Lol, what a ghetto way to do that! But it worked out just fine in the end.

Also, you can really screw up some parts of the game by making the game hang using the aforementioned method. Some of the events are timed to follow the music progression so you can potentially skip some attacks if you freeze the game and let the music play through a certain part and then unfreeze it. Maybe this is why replay compatibility would be difficult - desyncs could happen easily.

Yeah, that happens sometimes. PROTIP: if you have a slow computer, like mine, try using Danger Prognosis on Stage 5 final attack ("Freak Out: Euthanasia") and slow down as many bullets as possible. Preferably have some processes running in the background, like a browser with 20 different tabs open. Legendary game slowdown ensues. And yet despite it, the attacks still proceed according to how far you are in the music. At some point, the graphics bugged out, leaving only a black screen, and I was forced to dodge bullets without being able to see anything. This continued until the music stopped. Fun times.

(Hopping into your Eliminator causes the music to slightly desync as well. You guys have probably noticed that. And one more Eliminator-related fun fact: the only way to survive Stage 4 Himeno's "Indiscriminate Eclipse" superweapon without destroying the capacitors in time is to use your own Eliminator's superweapon. It seems that the attack itself is just one huge particle that ignores invulnerabilities and drains about 15000 shields per milisecond, but your doomsday laser destroys that attack before it can do damage. Otherwise it will break your Eliminator just like it chews through your shields.)

If you would like me to record the tracks from ∀lternative ∀rguments, I could do so and maybe get my friend to upload those as well.

Yes, please! As far as I know, there are only four tracks that need to be recorded: Stage 1, Stage 1 boss, Stage 2, Stage 2 boss. Well, there's also Stage 3, but it sounds like a beta version of some tracks instead of a remixed one. You might include it too, though, for the sake of completion.

Holy hell, nice find! Your discoveries and analysis never cease to amaze me, Cadrin.

Ehehe, thank you. I suppose I have some experience with discovering stuff from Hellsinker. It seems like a pretty nice drawing. Weird that they chose to just put it there, barely visible for a split second. I have to admit, our loli (Loli? She looks pretty grown up...) has a nice sense of fashion.

To add to talk about scoring: it seems that having wings open when collecting blue crystals gives more rate than having them closed, sounds like it will be fun to do on ∀nother.

Oh yes, those weird blue projectiles are what increases your rate. I thought that bonus rate was awarded instantly when you destroy something. The difference is rather substantial: you can kill a large group of enemies while having your shields up to not die, and once their bullets disappear with their death, you can immediately lower your shields to absorb the projectiles and still get a rate increase.

But yeah, ∀nother is pretty much impossible to 1cc and get good scores on, unless you're really experienced and make no mistakes. Or are really good at hit cancelling in time to avoid being hit with shields down. I don't play that mode much, to be honest. Mostly ∀dvent for fun and ∀kashic for something pretty challenging, but not ∀nother-challenging. I hope ∀sterism mode will make ∀nother more interesting.

[nasty_wolverine]

If you would like me to record the tracks from ∀lternative ∀rguments, I could do so and maybe get my friend to upload those as well.

If you do this, i will wash your laundary for a month...

[BPzeBanshee]

I actually had a few of them recorded for Alternative Arguments but I just turned the sound off and let the music play while playing. I suspect there may have been some recording/looping issues though. Still want them?