Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[heisenbergman]

What one person finds "bad" another could potentially think is the best game ever. So you can't just weed out all the "bad" games.

Yeah. The most you could do is list all the games that have more than 3 euroshmup traits, but even than there would probably be disagreement.

Yeah, but I'm not sure why you guys are pointing that out. I was just asking out of curiosity if anyone here has done it (for their own benefit).

[CStarFlare]

No, because the list of titles is massive and quality/fun factor often isn't immediately apparent. Even identifying all the games that can be categorized as shmups and gathering the ROMs would be a daunting task, much less playing all of them long enough to develop more than a kneejerk good/bad opinion.

[heisenbergman]

Yeah, that's understandable.

I came across someone on another forum saying he spent around a year going through every shmup on MAME to determine which were his favorites, which is why I asked.

fwiw, going by one of nimitz's posts here, he's listed 471 shmups on shmupmame starting from 1977 onwards.

If one takes only those from 1984 onwards (idk, 1984 seems to be more or less the point when scrolling shooters as we currently know them started to take shape), that list goes down to around 330 titles.

[japtor]

I kinda did something like that way back. I think it was in college and got into shooters, and when I still kept a full ROM set, when everything still fit on a single layer DVD. I think I filtered down by genre and just looked at screenshots (had a complete screenshot set too) and played the ones that looked interesting. That's pretty much how I discovered the Cave games and a bunch of others.

If you're bored and have the time it's fine. If you're not super crazy into them I figure there's a decent chance you'll find something you like that you've never heard of before. My method was far from thorough and I still found a bunch of cool stuff.

[ciox]

There's a list of bad shmups, with some contestation like you'd expect http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35212

[heisenbergman]

I shall do it.

I will call the list "Top 100 MAME shmups from the perspective of a noob based on kneejerk impressions!"

[heisenbergman]

There's a list of bad shmups, with some contestation like you'd expect http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35212

Yeah I saw that recently. I was initially sad to see B-Wings on there since I have fond memories of playing it on the NES when I was a kid, but then I tried the arcade version some weeks ago and it's way worse than how I think I remember it.

[ACSeraph]

There's a list of bad shmups, with some contestation like you'd expect http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35212

Most of these games I've never even heard of... I'm probably fortunate for that.

What's so bad about Gaia Seed though? I got in on PSN a few years ago and didn't find it particularly offensive. Am I missing some kind of serious problem with it?

[ciox]

There's a list of bad shmups, with some contestation like you'd expect http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35212

Most of these games I've never even heard of... I'm probably fortunate for that.

What's so bad about Gaia Seed though? I got in on PSN a few years ago and didn't find it particularly offensive. Am I missing some kind of serious problem with it?

It's just too easy I guess, too bad because the stage aesthetics and music are great.
It all depends on who you ask, people on japanese boards call Battle Bakraid and Psyvariar kusoge.

[ACSeraph]

Just played through it (haven't played it in a few years so I mostly forgot what it was like). Seems OK to me, certainly not a bad game, though not great either. You're right about the aesthetics though, very nice.

[cave hermit]

Do I need to configure anything to run Cho Ren Sha on an english Windows 7 installation? Are there any japanese installers or launchers to deal with? Does it have native gamepad support?

[Squire Grooktook]

Do I need to configure anything to run Cho Ren Sha on an english Windows 7 installation? Are there any japanese installers or launchers to deal with? Does it have native gamepad support?

You MAY get some sound issues if you don't run it in compatibility mode for windows 95. Other than that it should be fine. And yeah, automaticly recognizes your gamepad, too bad you can't reconfigure buttons as far as I know.

[Iori Branford]

Do I need to configure anything to run Cho Ren Sha on an english Windows 7 installation? Are there any japanese installers or launchers to deal with? Does it have native gamepad support?

No installer, no AppLocale. Just extract and run.

Resolution locked to 640x480 fullscreen; not sure the color depth. If you run it and see nothing, you may need to add custom resolutions (640x480x8, 640x480x16, 640x480x32) in the Intel|NVIDIA|AMD graphics driver.

In-game framerate option keys
F: Sync to monitor vblank
G: Sync to timer
H: Sync OFF; run as fast as possible
J: Sync ON; use the sync method selected above

Controller support is via DirectInput. Xbox 360 controllers and other XInput-based ones may need the XBCD.

[cave hermit]

Just extracted it, and I noticed that the application file has a UAC shield next to it; I thought the game didn't have to install anything?

[Iori Branford]

Just extracted it, and I noticed that the application file has a UAC shield next to it; I thought the game didn't have to install anything?

No, I guess your Windows somehow detected that it should run as Admin.

[cave hermit]

This game's BGM is fantastic. Absolutely Fantastic. Managed to make it to stage 6 on my third run
What are the config options for though? They seem pretty cryptic. Also I thought I saw in a video there was a reset score option, but I don't see one.

[cave hermit]

What's the "XSP mode" option for (the one that is set to three by default)?
Also the lack of turbo fire is really annoying; my thumb is so sore...

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah, any help on the auto fire setting? I tried using Joy2key with an automatic setting but that doesn't seem to register with the game.

[PedroMD]

Yeah, any help on the auto fire setting? I tried using Joy2key with an automatic setting but that doesn't seem to register with the game.

It seems running the game in compatibility mode (which causes it to be run as administrator) stops Joy2Key from working with it. Outside of compatibility mode Joy2Key works fine, but then there are those sound issues...
At least this is what I gathered from trying to make it work. If anyone knows a solution to this, I'd appreciate it.

[cave hermit]

Speaking of which, where do I get Joy2Key? Two sites show up in google, one claiming to be official, the other is called "electracode". The thing is, a lot of people on steam seem to link to electracode. Which site should I be grabbing from?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, any help on the auto fire setting? I tried using Joy2key with an automatic setting but that doesn't seem to register with the game.

Get AutoHotKey, use this script:

$*z::
While GetKeyState("z","P")
{
Send {z down}
Sleep 10
Send {z up}
Sleep 10
}
return

Z key is full auto, problem solved. I discovered ChoRenSha love thanks to this (thanks to Erppo). The game is SO MUCH MORE playable with autofire.

You can also use this to remap keyboard buttons for PC games that don't give you the option to do so (don't like Touhou's default controls? You can make a script you load right before running the game, and it swaps whatever keys how you like).

Play with keyboard or setup joy2key if you want, might be possible to map it to joystick buttons, dunno. I think I just got my copy of joy2key off Sourceforge, I haven't really used it though as I mostly play with keyboard when I'm on PC.

[Squire Grooktook]

Unfortunately, that gives me the same problem as Joy2Key. It stops working the moment the game launches, and it conflicts with joy2key also.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Have you tried launching ChoRenSha, then doubleclicking the script file to execute it when the game is already running? I don't recall having issues with this though. What operating system are you on?

Does this work when your joystick/gamepad is NOT plugged in? It could be the gamepad's controls are overriding the script itself, I'm not sure how to fix that though if the game detects pads by default.

[Squire Grooktook]

Have you tried launching ChoRenSha, then doubleclicking the script file to execute it when the game is already running? I don't recall having issues with this though. What operating system are you on?

Tried it just now, still nothing unfortunately.

I'm on Windows 7, running the game in Windows 95 compatibility mode.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Weird. It works on my XP machine I know... hrm. It's not working on my Win 7 machine. Odd. Maybe because I was using an older version of autohotkey or because of a different way Win 7 sends key inputs? Lemme mess around with it.

edit: yes Win 7 is being a buttface

WAIT GO GOOGLE MAGIC

Try this out:

http://www.autohotkey.com/board/topic/6 ... k-in-cod4/

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Okay, got it to work in Win 7 with the script I posted. Right click the .AHK and select Run As Administrator, then do the same for ChoRenSha's .EXE file. It should work - fixes it without having to turn off the User Account warnings and lets you use autofire. It looks like Windows 7 doesn't approve of Autohotkey taking over programs unless you run the script as admin!

More fiddling around, all that matters is running the .AHK script as Administrator. Doubleclicking ChoRenSha's executable and running it normally works fine after you do that, and z button autofire works like a charm.

[Squire Grooktook]

Okay, got it to work in Win 7 with the script I posted. Right click the .AHK and select Run As Administrator, then do the same for ChoRenSha's .EXE file. It should work - fixes it without having to turn off the User Account warnings and lets you use autofire. It looks like Windows 7 doesn't approve of Autohotkey taking over programs unless you run the script as admin!

More fiddling around, all that matters is running the .AHK script as Administrator. Doubleclicking ChoRenSha's executable and running it normally works fine after you do that, and z button autofire works like a charm.

Thank you! that actually works. One last problem though: It still conflicts with Joy2key. It seems that other buttons will work if the script and joy2key are working, but not ones that are used by both the script and j2k.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I've never tried using Joy2Key and AutoHotKey together... but doing some research, it looks like AutoHotKey natively supports remapping joystick inputs so alone that might work if ChoRenSha detects your controller. In fact, while it's more complicated, it's actually possible to make AutoHotKey do everything joy2key does, just takes more work to setup via a script.

Go into Control Panel, look for Game Controllers (you can type joy.cpl in the start menu and it'll pop up), and figure out which Joystick button is registering as the shot button (1, 2, 3, etc.) Then, replace all instances of "z" in the script with "Joy#" with # being the number of the joystick button for shot (if you have two joysticks/gamepads plugged in at once, you'll need 2Joy# if it's controller 2, etc).

This script will also help you figure out what button is detected as what button number/axis for the purposes of setting things up: http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/scripts/JoystickTest.htm

What kind of controller are you using? 360 pad? Arcade stick? If you're trying to get a pad working and using RT for the shot as opposed to a face button, might be more complicated because I think it's detected as a joystick axis and not a button.

http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/RemapJoystick.htm

If you want to switch one key for another:

The syntax for the built-in remapping feature is OriginKey::DestinationKey. For example, a script consisting only of the following line would make the "a" key behave like the "b" key:

a::b

So if ChoRenSha had something weird set to the shot button you could replace it with Joy#:::Joynew# (after you work out which buttons are detected as which button number).

[cave hermit]

I just looked up joy2key on sourceforge, but their version appears to be a linux program

[BareKnuckleRoo]

AutoHotKey doesn't play well with Joy2Key anyways, and AutoHotKey seems to be able to do everything Joy2Key can and more, just with more setup time.

edit: this is wrong, Joy2Key handles rebinding/controlling gamepad inputs a lot better, if you're messing with a gamepad you'll probably want to use Joy2Key