XIIZEAL & ΔZEAL (Shooting Love) / Triangle Service / Xbox360

[AntiFritz]

That famitsu reviews (aswell as the sdoj one) were reported on polygon.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/22/435478 ... travaganza


and yes, they used the term "schmup".

[BIL]

This got reviewed in Famitsu as well this week. 7,6,6,6. Not the best review but wtf do Famitsu know? Nothing!

I'm actually more encouraged when their reviews are in that range. Kind of like when IGN or Gamespot slam a shooter for being "short enough to beat in an afternoon and insanely hard."

[jepjepjep]

"Both games have simple gameplay systems but are packed with the raw joy that good shooters exude, making them still fun to play today," Yoshida wrote.

At the end of the day that's what really matters. I'm looking forward to this one.

[BPzeBanshee]

"XIIZeal, in particular, still feels innovative," Honma added, "what with how you can attack from the sides and use your jet exhaust to strike from the rear. Still, it's a shame that the menu screens look pretty barren and lack basic features like setting up how many continues you have."

Since when the fuck was setting up amount of continues a basic feature? I don't remember these in any of Cave's ports apart from the usual Continue option.

EDIT: Another trailer for those who haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzDstY_6w4E

Nothing we haven't seen before but the video covers different areas of said games. It looks like the bug in XII Stag regarding the bonus enemies in Stage 4 and the bomb might be fixed, but it could also be whoever's playing not triggering it. I also see a section in Stage 5 that I've never seen before with trees falling out and revealing tanks underneath, any ideas on triggering that?

[Ed Oscuro]

Setting up the number of continues is something the babby console gamers were familiar with at least since the Mega Drive era. Of course, many of them religiously pumped the number of continues up to the maximum.

[rtw]

Courtesy of yasu(mamedev) here is a translation of the G-Stream hardware description posted on the Triangleservice home page.

Hardware specs of G-Stream PCB
CPU: Hyperstone [Program 512kbyte] [Data 1MB]
SOUND: OKI compatible [4bit ADPCM] [8kHz] [512kbyte ROMx 2] [4 voices]�@2sets
SPRITE: [256 color palette x16 ] [max 1024 sprites] [16x16pixel] [16MB]
BG: [256 colors] [32x32CELL] [512x512 PLANE] [4MB] [3 planes]

At first, target hardware of this project is
- 16bit color with alpha blending
- MIDI sound board

But that PCB is not finished. Furthermore, 16bit color requires too much ROMs and MIDI board is slow like hell. Yes, the target PCB is useless.

However, we had to continue development, and we were not certain if they really be able to complete the hardware, so we decided to adopt "ready-made (and we've used it by another project)" PCB of the spec described above.

Hyperstone is Germany-made CPU. The spec of it is similar to SH-4. It has 32KB of scratch pad to store data or code for easy speedup method. Program size got too large to fit for 512KB ROM capacity, so we added another 1MB ROM for data, if I recall correctly.

The PCB has 2 OKI compatible ADPCM chip, each can play 4 voices, so you can play total 8 voices by the spec. But you can't play waveform of different bank simultaneously, so we've stored same SFX data in BANK0 of both chip.

i.e.: when playing BGM by chip A, sfx will be played by chip B. So actual spec is 3 voices for sfx and 1 voice for BGM.

At that era, this is somewhat poor configuration (16 or more voices is common). It's hard to develop shooters on this poor configuration, but it's not impossible (you can develop shooters on more poor configuration like NES).

ADPCM is same format as X68000, so we made samples in VOX format and trimmed the header, then burned them to ROMs. You have to list addresses of waveform in the top of ROM, but the size of address table is insufficient for ROM capacity. Why? I couldn't find datasheet or other informations. So I asked the man (he was in Nichibutsu) who taught us about this chip. He said "you have to use bank switching" and he told us information
for required port. Then we finally be able to use full ROMs. Still and all, the capacity is very low. We had to store 10+ BGMs, that means you cannot use more than 30 seconds per music. Naoto (our composer) saved this situation. Most significant method is to set loop point after intro. This method reduces the size of waveform, but it is not conform to ADPCM standard. It causes an instant stop of BGM (hardly noticed, though).

Sprites are 16x16 pixels. This is ordinal. It doesn't support flipping. It's not a big problem. But limitation of 256 colors is a big problem. It's better than 16bit color, but takes too much ROMs. The board used by Raiden Fighters is 64 colors (6bit). I think 64 colors is best balance of appearance and size. By using 6bit, you can store 1.3x graphics than 8bit.

I recall one hardware bug. I couldn't use 1 color out of 256 colors. I asked hardware engineer to fix this, but he didn't do that.

If you use more than 800 sprites, noise will appear on screen.

About BG, 8x8 is common size. Probably our hardware (uses 32x32 tile) has less memory to store BG info.

The most peculiarity of this PCB is "very easy to cause failure". If you played this game in arcades on good condition, you were very lucky. 10 years passed, probably you can't play this game anymore.

This game is very rare because of its fragile hardware.

[Ed Oscuro]

Interesting to see how much ROM space and bandwidth of components ruled design, so that (contrary to PC spec thinking) 8-bit color is considered a problem, compared to 6-bit color. And I know many people will be pleased to hear about the X68000 heritage mention

[CloudyMusic]

As a programmer, that's a really fascinating read. Thanks for posting.

[BPzeBanshee]

As a programmer, that's a really fascinating read. Thanks for posting.

Agreed. Very interesting read.

800 sprites sounds like a lot considering the glitches in MAME occur with little explosion-chaining effort though.

[ciox]

Great stuff, I knew it wasn't a coincidence that every single music track loops after 30 seconds or less.
No mention why the sound quality is so bad though, just size restrictions?

[nZero]

No mention why the sound quality is so bad though, just size restrictions?

Size restrictions keeping length and samplerate low, everything mixed through an ancient ADPCM implementation (imagine playing music through the sound effect channel of Street Fighter II or Raiden) and (more for the PCB than for MAME) it's very likely that the design and components for the analog stage were also slapped together as cheaply as possible.

[ciox]

No mention why the sound quality is so bad though, just size restrictions?

Size restrictions keeping length and samplerate low, everything mixed through an ancient ADPCM implementation (imagine playing music through the sound effect channel of Street Fighter II or Raiden) and (more for the PCB than for MAME) it's very likely that the design and components for the analog stage were also slapped together as cheaply as possible.

Figures, very interesting to read this stuff but a bit sad too, like watching the hard constants of a little universe being defined. Of course now I'm wondering how much the game has improved on x360, I guess more than 3 SFX voices is a given.

[Friendly]

Amazing. What a monstrosity. Worst arcade hardware ever?

We should consider ourselves very lucky that the game now gets preserved in the form of this port.

[trap15]

There's far worse hardware, but yes, such Korean hardware is typically pretty awful. Nice translation, though I caught the gist of most of it from good ol' Google Translate. Fujino's so dedicated!!

[BPzeBanshee]

I expect the amount of SFX voices would remain more or less the same but at least the music will be high-quality. You probably wouldn't want more than 3 voices playing: I'm fairly certain most shmups have an sfx limit for a reason that isn't just hardware constraints.

[BPzeBanshee]

More posts from Triangle Service, now with info on what the hell the Carbonara was all about and what's in the Special Pack! I really wish I knew Japanese right about now.

Still, the soundtrack CD is in English, and I see '[ΔZEAL] Unused Stage 1' and '[ΔZEAL] Unused Stage 2-6', along with some NAOTO arranges. I wonder if the soundtrack will also be sped up by 5% for the CD print, I assume it's deliberate.

[jandrogo]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition? Very odd, I was expecting Saidajou + Caladrius + "X-Zeal" in the same pack together this month...

[TSJ]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition?

Yep, same here. Made an order with Play Asia instead, seems to be ok so far...

[Jeneki]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition? Very odd, I was expecting Saidajou + Caladrius + "X-Zeal" in the same pack together this month...

Play Asia put my Caladrius and Ginga Force order on backorder for three weeks now. Wonder if that will come in the same time they send out Saidaioujou and Zeal, even though they were separate orders. That would make for one hell of a weekend.

[VixyNyan]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition?

Did you place the order late? I didn't get a message yet and I placed my "bundled" order since back in March.

[BPzeBanshee]

I've not received an email from Amiami myself (though I ordered the Special Pack). If they screw up my order there'll be hell to pay though.

[Joerpg84]

If I thought XIIStag was just ok...would I enjoy this collection? I still have XIIStag on my PS2.

For some reason I have been more interested in completely different type of shmups like Ginga Force, Strania, Psyvariar 2, border down and radiant silvergun etc.

[BPzeBanshee]

I think most folks here are really getting it for DeltaZeal which is definitely a different beast from XII Stag despite the similarities.

Both games are about depth. They seem 'ok' at face value but once you start to learn the secrets it just gets so much better. Someone (maybe me) should write up a proper XII Stag ST thread some time.

[Herr Schatten]

I think most folks here are really getting it for DeltaZeal which is definitely a different beast from XII Stag despite the similarities.

Exactly. I already have the perfectly fine PS2 port of XIIStag, so I doubt I'll even play it on the new collection. Being able to finally (properly) play the predecessor to Trizeal is something I look forward to very much, though.

[EmperorIng]

Especially without that long-ass, Raizing-esque wait time spent watching the game load in MAME, even after fast-forwarding.

[malchitos]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition? Very odd, I was expecting Saidajou + Caladrius + "X-Zeal" in the same pack together this month...

Play Asia put my Caladrius and Ginga Force order on backorder for three weeks now. Wonder if that will come in the same time they send out Saidaioujou and Zeal, even though they were separate orders. That would make for one hell of a weekend.

wow hope it does work out that way for ya...cause that would be an epic weekend...

btw where do you live

[jandrogo]

Does anybody else received a confirmation from ami ami saying can't secure the order for the regular edition?

Did you place the order late? I didn't get a message yet and I placed my "bundled" order since back in March.

15th may

[ReKleSS]

I should probably have looked at this thread before heading down to the demo event. Pretty quiet, I was the first one to play. After an hour I think about 10 posters had been given out.

The Triangle Service president was the one running the event, wearing a ゲーセン　ラブ。 t-shirt. He ended up signing a poster and a copy of Trizeal as well - had to scrounge a pen from the store counter.

I asked why it was in Osaka rather than Tokyo. He said the store asked him to do the demo. I guess someone there is a fan?

[Acid_Rain]

@ReKleSS: Any gameplay impressions? Did you notice any differences to the old versions?

[ReKleSS]

Not really, I haven't played much of the original games. It looks to be a decent port though. Display wasn't filtered, back then confirm to abort a run (returns to the main menu), gameclip recording, straightforward main menu where you choose arcade mode or single-stage score attacks for either game. Credits were limited (start + 2 continues for both games) but I didn't see if that could be configured. You can press X+A or something to start on the 2P side.

There was huge slowdown and frame dropping in XIIZeal (... probably) when a boss was destroyed with a bomb on screen, no idea if that's in the original. There was also a glitch where the player couldn't grab a powerup that was floating around after the boss was the destroyed, but the president guy said that's how the original game worked and they didn't change it.

There were questions about how Deltazeal related to G-stream but I couldn't hear the details over the noise in the shop.