RayCrisis (AC,PS1,Windows,iOS,Android,PS4,NS,Steam)

[Carmen]

Update, new PB! Finally broke the 11m "barrier"

Carmen / CSK / 11 016 580 / WR-02R / 22 / 12 / A |S S B+| / 62 / AC (PS4)



Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqtGEeo4FHA

I am finally understanding the power of save state practicing only two decades after everybody else here. Stage 2 needs a bit of refining (it is possible to get 700k from the robots prior to Sem-loke with a well-placed RD from my research) and not dying would have helped, while missing the Hyper Laser on the second flying enemy prevented me from keeping Encroachment low enough for an A rank in Stage 3 (still haven't figured out how to get an S there... doesn't seem to be enough enemies? Unless the technique is to cause a lot of missiles to appear on screen, as missiles seem to count towards Encroachment... maybe?) And of course, I clearly don't know what to do against Infinity, yet. I'll be referring to your video, EmperorIng, for tips.

The 1cc is feeling closer than ever before though! I have actually made it through the Dishuman fight without dying a few times during save state practice, so hopefully I'll have more in reserve against Infinity in future runs.

[Jaimers]

Jaimers / JRS / 18 772 050 / WR-01R / 05 / 0 / S |S S S| / 62 / AC (PS4)

Spoiler

Video

Good game.

[EmperorIng]

Really nice replay! The commentary is also quite trying to suss out why you were bombing/locking when.

I really need to be more methodical with the game; I leave far too much score on the table in the name of safe quick-kills.

[Carmen]

Updated! Great video - especially slick use of Lock-On to maximise points. I also see you're on top of the PS4 leaderboards, congrats!

Raycrisis is indeed a good game. It really feels like something ahead of its time with the emphasis on a quick playtime with many changing variables so that each session can feel entirely fresh. There's so much in this game that I feel I'm still learning more information about it from Vangluon's guide and other sources. I'm really thinking after I get skilled enough I'll reach out to him and see how he'd feel about me helping out with a translation of his materials into English.

I really need to get back to the game soon... so close to that 1cc. Once I finish my current binge of 13 Sentinels, I'll get back into it...

[EmperorIng]

EmperorIng - EC - 12,340,300 - WR-01R - 6 - 12 - B+ [A , B+ , B ] - 63% - AC (NS)



I've come back to this game the last week or so and managed to improve my score by a half a million! I still have a lot to learn about where to properly bomb and use my hyper laser. I watched Jaimers' replay above again and couldn't believe all the great spots I missed out on, especially during boss fights.

However I really want to try to get a WR02 clear and decent score with that, especially as resources to learn that ship are so limited (or in poor quality). The highest switch replay for WR02 is 17 million. I doubt there is anything good on the steam leaderboards.

[Carmen]

Great score! Sorry I've been out visiting family; look forward to get back into the game after I return! IIRC, the top on the PS4 leaderboards is 26m or something, will need to check.

[EmperorIng]

Thanks! I finally decided to give the WR02 a try, and it is definitely a challenge scoring with this ship. I've made it to Infinity several times now but always seem to fall short just at the end/final phase. I am on the cusp of getting 16 million in this run, but I could "theoretically" get up to 19 million if I have good luck with the hyper laser score bonuses and actually managing to get all the enemy spawns I need to get x16 lock-ons.

EmperorIng - EC - 13,203,740 - WR-02R - 39 - 0 - A [B- , S , S ] - 72% - AC (NS)



Video here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2209220662

Unfortunately the randomness of the hyper laser is really aggravating. For example in my video above, the first stage (Consideration) has a giant tank you full lock for a hyper laser. I have gotten the following values from it:
198,000
235,000
300,700
577,000
700,000+(!!!!)

There seems to be absolutely zero consistency as to what bonus you will get, which means you just have to hope you get lucky. Consideration in general is an extremely random stage - the laser wheels halfway through (as seen above) not only shoot in random directions (often killing you), but spawn randomly, which makes it very hard to full chain into them. And Protor chooses his attacks randomly, meaning you can get super unlucky and miss out on the lucrative destructible laser spawn and several hundreds of thousands of points. It's enough to drive someone crazy.

Great score! Sorry I've been out visiting family; look forward to get back into the game after I return! IIRC, the top on the PS4 leaderboards is 26m or something, will need to check.

If you ever get the chance I'd be interested in knowing the highest WR02 score on ps4. The highest on steam is, uh, me, and switch (as I said) is 17 million. I'm catching up!

[EmperorIng]

Bad practice sessions last night - not bad because of doing poorly... bad because I was doing GREAT and choked at the end. Two runs ending around DisHuman. Just too chaotic at that point (and mistakes earlier, especially the stage 3 variant of Consciousness or whatever the underwater level is).

My score splits for those two runs were awesome though:
Map 39
Stage 1: Consideration (Nighttime City) - 4.2 million
Stage 2: Emotion (Volcano) - 8 million
Stage 3: Consciousness (Underwater) - 11 million (if I didn't choke)
Would have put my clear in the realm of 16-18 million, depending on my luck with score bombs during dishuman and infinity.

Just really frustrating on top of the random score bonuses... The bosses all just move in very annoying and sporadic ways (especially SemSlut and SemLoke) and as always, dodging bullets and judging your hitbox on the bottom of the screen is a toss-up due to the sometimes (frankly) shitty perspective.

Update, new PB! Finally broke the 11m "barrier"

By the way, I noticed watching this video, your trouble with the lasers (which you have long mentioned) that dishuman fires
https://youtu.be/sqtGEeo4FHA?t=678

You should probably know that when the laser volley is real thick, like it is here, the right corner is a safespot if you tuck yourself into it. Check my video above at 12:25 to see what I mean.

[Carmen]

Hey so sorry! Still out visiting family... but I am definitely pining to return to Raycrisis. That was a very awesome video and some nice scores! I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the WR-02! I've messed around with the other ships throughout the years but always find myself wanting to keep coming back to the power of the thunder laser. There is absolutely a lot of randomness in the game... in fact I remember the Van Gluon guide saying something about total number of plays under the player name file (or something) influencing rank as well, which is just crazy. Helps keep every session fresh I guess! Thankfully a run of the game is only like 10-ish minutes long, so it works.

I remember reading something in either the Van Gluon site or the guide that came with the game that there's always a safe spot on the right corner during the Dishuman laser barrage, but only depending if he starts either left-right or right-left (which depends on having an even or odd digit in the hundreds place in the score or something?). I'll have to double-check when I get back home, but at the end of the day I think I'm going to be resorting to a lot of save state practice to figure out the bosses. Thankfully, the Anthology makes that very easy! I'll also be referencing your runs on Twitch as well!

[EmperorIng]

If he starts from the left moving right, you are usually safe no matter what, because there's a big gap from where he starts that you can move above. Otherwise the fight should more or less be ending before the laser walls become undodgeable.


Also, finally! a 1cc! It's very annoying that I didn't hit 16million, but I had a lot of bad luck with sem-loke and the consciousness stage, which made me play it safe during Dishuman/Infinity (all with 0 lives in stock!!!!). I don't want this to be the end of my pushing scores with the WR02, but it's good to see that I at least have one clear in the bag, as a confidence builder. This run I got the ultra-lucky 700k bomb bonus on the tank midboss in Consideration. That's pretty cool. In general the run went well until the consciousness underwater stage, which has way too many targets for the laser to keep track of.

EmperorIng - EC - 15,986,750 - WR-02R - 39 - 8 - A [B , S , A ] - 72% - AC (PC)

[EmperorIng]

Jesus. It took three fucking weeks to do this again. This game's random BULLSHIT is maddening. Enemies can spawn in different locations, and totally fuck up your route for survival... and scoring! Your bomb bonuses are random, and can cost you millions of points! Bosses can decide to move off-screen, preventing you from locking onto them and wasting precious seconds... And let's not forget the capstone, Infinity, who can randomly decide to end your run in at least 5 different ways, if it feels like it! I am losing so much patience with this game, "lol."

Improved my score by 1 million. Based on my rough estimation, having simple BAD LUCK with bomb bonuses, and being off by milliseconds during boss fights cost me cumulatively over 1 MILLION points! I had several 18 million runs earlier today that all ended in failure. Lord help me if I want 19. Is it even worth it?

I will keep this replay in my back pocket, but I probably won't upload one until I hit at least 18 million. Maybe not though, depends on how quickly I give up! I have gotten dangerously close to snapping my keyboard in half grinding runs of this ten-fucking-minute game.

EmperorIng - ECC - 17,153,620 - WR-02R - 39 - 6 - A [B , S , A ] - 75% - AC (PC)

Please note that I am using WR02! I just noticed the OP showing me still using WR01. I wish!

[BIL]

Hardcore

Is it even worth it?

Dunno tbh, posts were worth it though (｀w´メ) （＾w´ ）Regardless don't fuck up ur hand smashing ur kb ING-san (■｀w´■)

[EmperorIng]

I've heard some plastic cracking...

The night city stage, Consideration, has a section which (if you are playing well) spawns 8 spinning towers that all fire lasers in random directions. The lasers are those long needles taito is so fond of.
Their hitbox is about thi----------------------------------------------------------------s long. Can you guess how many runs end right there?

"But just continue from there bro!"
NO. Infinity is so notoriously random that you need a 1 life tax for security, and I'm not roughing it to the end only to find out that the game was rigged from the start

[EmperorIng]

Hey, back so soon? Might as well keep the 'good' times rolling

This time I recorded a video of my run, which went remarkably well outside of two very annoying things:
1) a dumb death in Emotion (st2), which cost me several 100k as it interrupted my chain
2) taking less than a SINGLE SECOND too long to kill Sem-Loke on stage 3. This cost me 500k as my encroachment prevented me from getting an S rank. This one hurt, that would have been huge.

Needless to say, I got lucky during Infinity because at this stage even if I have no lives left I play risky and score bomb in order to get that extra bonus. I had 0 lives going into the fight so I more or less expected to die, but this time I didn't.

EmperorIng - ECC - 17,416,170 - WR-02R - 39 - 0 - A [B , S , A ] - 71% - AC (PC)

NOTE to Carmen: I am using WR02! The OP shows me still using WR01. I wish!

[Carmen]

Ohh man, sorry I've been missing out on this part of your journey! That was a pretty amazing video -- I can only imagine the desperation with the two losses at Emotion/Consciousness... only to bring it back for the end! Just, wow I think that 18m barrier will be coming down soon if you keep at it at this rate!

[Carmen]

Lame double-post here, but with Nico coming back up recently (it's been down for months), this old vid from years ago came to mind. https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm852423 I see you guys are using the same route, so I take it that's the agreed upon top ranker route? Next time I boot up the PS4 I'll let you know what the top score is there. I wonder how those PS4 leaderboards have been doing... (side note, but wouldn't console-combined combined leaderboards be awesome? One can only dream.)

[EmperorIng]

Thanks man! Don't feel too bad about double-posting, because imo, it's not like the discussion is moving too fast to make it annoying!

I managed to break the 18 million barrier tonight, after hours of attempts (way too many!). I have a decent number of 18m-paced runs and they tend to get torpedoed some way or another, either due to bad luck, bad enemy positioning, or stupid bullshit deaths during the Emotion and Consciousness boss fights. To say nothing of the random TLB horseshit!

This particular run had yet another spat of bad deaths, COMPLETELY unavoidable due to the randomness of Sem-Loke's underwater laser buoys firing in all directions without a means to properly get out of the way in time. It is really a frustrating part of the run because you have NO control over where they decide to aim and you are helpless. It's frankly poorly-designed.

The route is mostly the same as my video above, just small refinements -and frankly, better rng- than before, netting me 600k more (a more lucrative bomb during dishuman helped too). What kills me, however, is that earlier this evening I had a GODLIKE run, 4.4million out of stage 1, 8 million by stage 2 (!!) and in total, I had a GUARANTEED 19 million had I won against the TLB. Unfortunately, I had ONCE AGAIN bad fucking luck during infinity, and the run just got tossed in the fucking toilet like the rest of my good runs. I do not know when I will get that lucky again.

As to your question, yes, that old superplay (also on youtube!) is the one I have been referencing for getting a high score, being (afaik) the highest-scoring replay for WR02, as well as the route used by some of the old world record holders (I think) if the Hall of Records is anything to go by. I also wish there were linked leaderboards, as much of a pipe dream as that is.

EmperorIng - ECC - 18,094,550 - WR-02R - 39 - 0 - A [B , S , S ] - 75% - AC (PC)

[Carmen]

Wow, past 18m now, getting up there! Congrats! Can't wait to see an updated video from you when you finally do break the 19m barrier. Sorry, been a little busy as of late. I can't believe I didn't know about that Shmups wiki site, that seems like a really good resource, I'll have to keep an eye on it.

[EmperorIng]

Shmups wiki (and the attached hall of records) are incredible, a great resource for learning about all the different shmups out there and

So, I can't believe it's been three weeks, it feels like an eternity. In that time I pb'd a few times, got achingly close: 18.7, 18.8 million, each time feeling like "if luck had gone my way just a little bit more." In some cases all I needed was a better round divider/bomb to give me that extra couple 100k, and I could have gotten that big score. But this game is maddening, in just about every way. I don't think any shmup has EVER made me upset and angry like this one has. Just none of the deaths ever felt like my fault! Maybe that's a normal coping mechanism. But between the bad deaths, runs ending in mere seconds, the way your laser just gets lost sometimes... not to mention the random bullets, random enemy spawns, random boss attacks, and random score bonuses! It's enough to drive me totally insane, and I think I have smashed my keyboard way more than a grown man should

But I guess that means, uh, I am just very passionate about this! I was honestly going to stop at 18.8 and call it good enough. But after weeks of ALMOST, tonight I did what I thought I was never going to do! And I gots the video to prove it!

RAYCRISIS - 19 MILLION - WR02

This video shows me getting really lucky on protor on stage 1, getting two cycles of the optimal attack to lower encroachment + get lots of score. This helped out a lot as a base for moving forward. There were some dumb mistakes though (I mistimed my bomb at the "RayForce boss homage" in stage 1 and lost 200k), and didn't do some sections as cleanly as I would have liked. Of course the death to a stray missile during Sem-Loke was incredibly disheartening - oh great, ANOTHER run that ends here because of a stupid fuckin' mistake, I thought. But I figured I had done so well up to that point I might as well go for it. Unfortunately I lost 400k (!!!) due to a bad bomb on DisHuman, which would have given me a much-needed cushion for Infinity. During that fight, I realized that if I played it safe, I would not be able to get my goal. So I had to sacrifice my last spare life for a score bomb to push me over the edge to ensure a 19m score... if I survived. Sometimes the only thing you can do is put it all on the table!

EmperorIng - ECC - 19,300,410 - WR-02R - 39 - 0 - A [B+ , S , S ] - 78% - AC (PC)



What a wild journey, nearly 80 hours just in this 17 minute game. I think I have earned a taito break now

[Carmen]

Sorry again for the delay! I'm happy to see you finally make it through! 19 million, that's not going to be easy for most people to beat I don't think I'll ever get anywhere close, but I will be referencing your vid (appreciate the additional detail in the vid description, btw!) when I do pick the game up again! For now, I think you can rest easy knowing that your score will be safe here for a while... you've earned it!