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[AntiFritz]

Found a really stupid bug on stage 5, as during the bosses entrance the WARNING message shows up. And then afterwards the game gets stuck for like 2 seconds before the game continues.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =229726308

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =229726350 Notice my ship stuck at a strange angle

[PedroMD]

I honestly can feel no input lag, even in fullscreen with v-sync. Maybe I'm just not very sensitive to it.

Is the difference between the difficulty modes really only the added suicide bullets? I was never very good at this game, but I'm specially rusty, so I think I'll go for an Easy clear first. I'm having enough trouble with it already.

Feels good playing Ikaruga again. I've been meaning to do it for such a long time.

[Sixfortyfive]

Max prerendered frames to 1 seems to have produced a playable experience for me in full screen with vsync on.

Cool, the same works for me as well. I went ahead and bumped it all the way down to 0 though.

I might just play at 480x640 windowed though. Doesn't make that big of a difference in the viewable area with how small my laptop's native res is anyway.

Is the difference between the difficulty modes really only the added suicide bullets? I was never very good at this game, but I'm specially rusty, so I think I'll go for an Easy clear first. I'm having enough trouble with it already.

There are more differences than that, particularly when it comes to boss patterns. The enemy patterns in the first half of stage 4 are a huge difference, too.

[MrMonkeyMan]

It feels better in fullscreen with forcing max prerendered frames 1, but I'm too tired and might be imagining things.

Yeah, that helps a lot. Full screen feels comparable to windowed mode with max prerendered frames set to 1.

Is the difference between the difficulty modes really only the added suicide bullets? I was never very good at this game, but I'm specially rusty, so I think I'll go for an Easy clear first. I'm having enough trouble with it already.

Enemies shoot more on higher difficulties, there are more enemies at certain points when you boost the difficulty too.

[PedroMD]

Thanks, that's what I expected. I thought I saw some differences in stages 1 and 2 between normal and easy, but wanted to be sure.

[hail good sir]

I went ahead and bumped it all the way down to 0 though.

Are you on Nvidia? I am and I don't have an option for 0.

[Square King]

just play the DC version why buy it AGAIN.. make a new game for gods sake

I've bought it twice for DC and once for XBLA. I love you, Treasure, but.

[Sixfortyfive]

I went ahead and bumped it all the way down to 0 though.

Are you on Nvidia? I am and I don't have an option for 0.

http://www.sixfortyfive.com/temp/nvidia2.png

I'm also on Win7 and have Desktop Composition disabled.

[Snake]

I didn't have any noticeable lag on fullscreen mode. Then again I'm not a high level player.

Game wouldn't start up in offline mode though. No message or anything, just won't open up. I don't have this problem with any other Steam titles, and I usually play offline.

[ZellSF]

I fixed it by turning on a hidden framelimiter in my driver settings using a program called Nvidia Inspector. There should be similar methods for other cards. Getting a lot of tearing now though.. I'm probably just going to use my intergated card because it has no problems in windowed.

Enable vsync again. Vsynced input lag isn't so bad if you're also using a framelimiter.

[ciox]

Thanks for the tip about "max prerendered frames", makes the input lag acceptable to me.

I also noticed some extra stuff added, not in XBLA version or anywhere else
- boss 1 cutscene the camera pans and does a full revolution when the boss enters, instead of only panning a little bit
- the barrier smasher in stage 3, will spawn spinning broken barrier bits as 3d objects when he goes through the barriers, there were just sprite explosions there in all previous versions

Too bad they didn't do something about the main cutscene in stage 3, the ship powers up to blast off....then moves a few inches into the background.

[P_HAT]

btw for those who have problems with non-x360 pads there is https://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

i use it with may PS2 pad and PS2 HRAP2.

[Cagar]

Good god.
I thought I was the most input-lag sensitive person on this forum, and finally when there's a release that I don't feel lag at all, everyone else is complaining.
Weird, it might just be my PC though.

[Sixfortyfive]

Good god.
I thought I was the most input-lag sensitive person on this forum, and finally when there's a release that I don't feel lag at all, everyone else is complaining.
Weird, it might just be my PC though.

It seems very dependent on video card settings.

It was extremely obvious with my card's default setting of a max 3-frame buffer.

[ZellSF]

With physical access to the PCs, I'm sure I could fix anyone's input lag problems with this game within 10 minutes. I don't though and it's hard to know what causes of input lag are on everyone's PC.

I feel like I should stress that using a framerate limiter is very important. If you limit your framerate to your refresh rate, you get much less input lag even when vsynced. You can also force vsync off without screwing up the game speed if you have a framerate limiter. Read here.

For AMD users, the max prerendered frames setting mentioned a few times here is available in ATI Tray Tools as "flip queue size". It should be set to 1 IIRC, because 0 means default. AMD's hotkey listener has been known to cause input lag in the past, no clue if it's fixed, kill it just to be sure. Close ALL unneccessary background processes just to be sure.

I think SLI/Crossfire causes input lag, create a profile that disables it for Ikaruga if you're on a SLI/Crossfire setup: Ikaruga doesn't need more than one GPU.

If you followed the above, disable desktop composition, it adds lag.

Controllers: if you use the 360 controller, try XBCD drivers, I found the drivers Windows installed by default for my 360 controller had really bad lag, no idea why. Make sure your controller is lag free with other timing sensitive games before blaming this port.

Edit: and if any of this sounds complicated, if you're going to be playing more PC games then you'll definitely want to figure it out.

[StarCreator]

I've seen this program floated around as a platform-agnostic solution: http://www.kegetys.fi/d3d-antilag-v1-01/

Not sold on desktop composition creating significant lag, and turning it off on some games creates a teary mess.

[ZellSF]

I've seen this program floated around as a platform-agnostic solution: http://www.kegetys.fi/d3d-antilag-v1-01/

Not sold on desktop composition creating significant lag, and turning it off on some games creates a teary mess.

Desktop composition causing input lag is well known.

If you don't like tearing, force vsync on in your graphic card drivers rather than relying on your desktop compositor to do it. It leads to some weird issues, especially with emulators.

[ciox]

They've fixed some stuff but there's definitely a new glitch with the 'dynamic enemy sequence' in stage 1, you can spawn extra enemies too late somehow right before you whoosh through the cloud layer, and the whoosh deletes them almost immediately after they spawn.
It might be an intended extra spawn but if so it looks very glitchy when the enemies get deleted so I doubt it.

[Raytrace]

It's definitely there, even in windowed mode, but small enough that you get used to it in a couple minutes. aum aun has already broke 30 million so it's playable.

I watched his replay last night - unbelievable .

[AntiFritz]

They've fixed some stuff but there's definitely a new glitch with the 'dynamic enemy sequence' in stage 1, you can spawn extra enemies too late somehow right before you whoosh through the cloud layer, and the whoosh deletes them almost immediately after they spawn.
It might be an intended extra spawn but if so it looks very glitchy when the enemies get deleted so I doubt it.

Yep, I think I ran into them once or twice too because the cloud covers them or something.

[Keade]

For AMD users, the max prerendered frames setting mentioned a few times here is available in ATI Tray Tools as "flip queue size". (...)

Thank you very much, I can't wait to try this

[Raytrace]

I experienced a small glitch where I disappeared behind a cloud for about a second - somewhere in Stage 2 I think - I will keep an eye out for if it happens again.

[ZellSF]

For AMD users, the max prerendered frames setting mentioned a few times here is available in ATI Tray Tools as "flip queue size". (...)

Thank you very much, I can't wait to try this

Reading up on it, RadeonPro is what people use now (setting name is still the same). ATI Tray Tools still works, but RadeonPro is more up to date.

[StarCreator]

Desktop composition causing input lag is well known.

If you don't like tearing, force vsync on in your graphic card drivers rather than relying on your desktop compositor to do it. It leads to some weird issues, especially with emulators.

Known by whom? How long ago? Under which versions of Windows? Where is the proof?

I've been gaming with desktop composition enabled ever since Windows 7 came into existence and I've never experienced any input lag. Turning composition off has never made a difference either. I've played mainly music games for over a decade, so if there was any appreciable lag vs a v-synced game with it off, I think I would have noticed by now.

[ZellSF]

Desktop composition causing input lag is well known.

If you don't like tearing, force vsync on in your graphic card drivers rather than relying on your desktop compositor to do it. It leads to some weird issues, especially with emulators.

Known by whom? How long ago? Under which versions of Windows? Where is the proof?

I've been gaming with desktop composition enabled ever since Windows 7 came into existence and I've never experienced any input lag. Turning composition off has never made a difference either. I've played mainly music games for over a decade, so if there was any appreciable lag vs a v-synced game with it off, I think I would have noticed by now.

Known by Google. You'll find many results saying turning off Aero helped with input lag, and none that says the opposite.

I've been gaming with desktop composition enabled ever since Windows 7 came into existence and I've never experienced any input lag. Turning composition off has never made a difference either. I've played mainly music games for over a decade, so if there was any appreciable lag vs a v-synced game with it off, I think I would have noticed by now.

Well, two things:

1: Desktop composition will turn itself off for most fullscreen applications.
2: Just because you don't notice it causing lag, doesn't mean it isn't there and doesn't mean it can't help add up to something noticeable. Getting rid of all the factors that "aren't noticeable" is pretty important when trying to reduce input lag.

[Krooze L-Roy]

Gonna wait for a sale to snag this. A steep sale. Though I always try to support shmup companies, this'll be the forth time I've paid for this damn game, so they should be happy with what they can get.

And though it's an "all time" favorite of mine, it's one of those rare shmups that is difficult to just pick up and play. Only other one I can think of is Psyvariar 2. If you're not playing it on a regular basis, it's not terribly enjoyable.

[StarCreator]

Known by Google. You'll find many results saying turning off Aero helped with input lag, and none that says the opposite.

I'm not sure what that proves, considering people who don't have issues in the first place wouldn't write anything about it. Also, how many of these people have the capability of scientifically testing such things?

Well, two things:

1: Desktop composition will turn itself off for most fullscreen applications.
2: Just because you don't notice it causing lag, doesn't mean it isn't there and doesn't mean it can't help add up to something noticeable. Getting rid of all the factors that "aren't noticeable" is pretty important when trying to reduce input lag.

I don't run anything fullscreen, and input lag completely destroys music games - of all genres of games, music games are the most effected by even the most minute amounts of lag. And they run fine with Aero on (better than fullscreen, in some cases). I'm hardly an expert on the subject, but I've long felt Aero is just a common scapegoat and no one has ever been able to show me concrete evidence to justify it.

EDIT: I decided to ask around, and I received this particularly interesting reply from Durante, the author of DSfix for Dark Souls among other things:

In my experience, running windowed (or borderless fullscreen) in Aero and turning off in-game v-sync has generally much lower input lag than fullscreen exclusive mode with in-game v-sync.

[ZellSF]

Known by Google. You'll find many results saying turning off Aero helped with input lag, and none that says the opposite.

I'm not sure what that proves, considering people who don't have issues in the first place wouldn't write anything about it. Also, how many of these people have the capability of scientifically testing such things?

Does it really matter? If disabling composition helps with input lag for lots of people, then it's good advice to try it.

And no, there's no scientific proof, they can say Aero causes input lag as certainly as you can say it doesn't when you're playing music games. Maybe there are circumstances that can make Aero lag more or less.

[StarCreator]

Does it really matter? If disabling composition helps with input lag for lots of people, then it's good advice to try it.

And no, there's no scientific proof, they can say Aero causes input lag as certainly as you can say it doesn't when you're playing music games. Maybe there are circumstances that can make Aero lag more or less.

The point I'm trying to make is, is Aero actually causing any lag in the first place? What's to say turning Aero off wouldn't cause lag instead? Why is the default reaction to turn it off rather than see how things are with it on first?

[ZellSF]

Does it really matter? If disabling composition helps with input lag for lots of people, then it's good advice to try it.

And no, there's no scientific proof, they can say Aero causes input lag as certainly as you can say it doesn't when you're playing music games. Maybe there are circumstances that can make Aero lag more or less.

The point I'm trying to make is, is Aero actually causing any lag in the first place? What's to say turning Aero off wouldn't cause lag instead? Why is the default reaction to turn it off rather than see how things are with it on first?

There are lots of reports of turning aero off reducing input lag.
There aren't any reports of turning aero on reducing input lag.

It's logical to try turning it off first. And another reason to recommend to try to turn it off: it's on by default. Off is the only other state you have to try.

Why do you care? What could it possibly hurt to try?

Of course it would be interesting to see a scientific analysis of how aero influences input lag, but I don't see anyone doing that. Also as said, it's entirely possible aero input lag is influenced by other factors.