DoDonPachi Resurrection - Steam Edition

[Xyga]

Correct me if I'm wrong but we have yet to see Cave modify anything directly game-related from these 360-to-PC ports.

Fixing the incorrect slowdowns already seems like an immense hurdle to them, so fixing/modifying things in the very game's code is probably beyond their ability.
Replacing text language and audio files, add a switch to turn vsync on/off, yes they can do that, but IMHO we shouldn't expect anything more significant.
(and yet even in regards to the basics of porting; Mushi on my system still experiences awful hiccups that completely break the game since I can die when they happen, so even the vsync implementation and overall compatibility has remained so-so)

I still believe not a single actual game developer with the appropriate knowledge to alter the actual games code has been involved, and that since the beginning when they have started this porting 'campaign'.

Sorry if that reads like another negative post here, it's not intended as more bitch criticism but rather to recall that with the Steam ports we're not getting products crafted nor supervised by their now dispersed legendary arcade shmups team.

Sometimes I wonder, if porting to the 360 was an easier job to them, maybe they should stop the Steam porting series after DFK and think about going PS4 for the rest, where they could maybe even offer their entire library in a quality comparable the the 360's, even if just in downloadable form.

[Shepardus]

I actually disagree that DFK really achieves what you say it does, STG4WD. I agree that accessibility is important but think DFK approaches it in the wrong way. Its scoring mechanics are full of arcane mechanics and hidden numbers that few people on this forum fully understand, while the survival-focused 1-ALL is made so forgiving that actions feel inconsequential and unengaging. In my opinion DDP is the most "accessible" entry in the series. While harder to 1-ALL than DFK 1.5, it still gives you enough resources to make a clear relatively easy, especially for a CAVE game (in fact I think it gives about the same number of bombs as DFK, you just don't get autobombs or hypers). While it may seem frustrating at first, the lack of autobombs in my opinion makes the game more engaging from a beginner's perspective since they're actually encouraged to participate in the "to bomb or not to bomb" minigame - those who fail to use their bombs can take solace in the fact that there's a clear path to improvement as long as they remember to use their arsenal more proactively the next time they play, while those who do use their bombs are treated to a glorious blast of color that they triggered, not the game holding their hand. With autobomb it's much easier to just fly around aimlessly and go "meh, ran into a bullet, lost count of how many times that's happened." Strictly speaking, the game's easier with autobomb, but it also tends to lull players into a complacent mindset in which players are not encouraged to make the most of the game, and it discourages players from using a mechanic (bombs) themselves that should be fun to use and should provide variety in the gameplay rather than just being what amounts to little more than a healthbar.

Regarding scoring, I'm not sure if DFK's the "deepest" entry in the series, but it's certainly the most complicated to explain what you're supposed to do and why. While DDP clearly encourages a certain style of gameplay and establishes an identity this way, it's hard to see what sort of gameplay DFK (1.5 in particular) encourages, other than "whatever happens to maximize the score." In DDP a new player can pretty quickly intuit what contributes to score and what they're supposed to do, even if actually executing full chains turns out to be very difficult. Chain enemies in a combo, a big hit counter appears and your score rises faster (and the formula for this is also simple and elegant). Grab extra bombs, your bomb gauge shows "MAXIMUM" and your score visibly rises over time. Those two things and bees are pretty much all the important scoring mechanics in the game, and they're all made clear and visible to players so even an inexperienced player with no outside knowledge of the game can get a taste of the scoring while they're still becoming acquainted with the stages and survival, and from there figure out what they need to do to improve their score. In DFK figuring this out is a much more confusing process, as there are a bunch of different systems (hit counter, big stars/little stars, hypers, hyper rank, bee colors, hidden routes, rank bar in Black Label, chips in Ketsuipachi, etc.) that interact with each other in convoluted ways, which makes it hard to tell where your score is coming from and how to get more of it. When I was playing 1.5 for a 1-ALL, I felt like my score was largely random, even though I knew it wasn't. To engage with the score system in DFK requires more initial investment learning the mechanics (likely from some guide written outside the game) or studying/copying replays, which is offputting to people like me who want to spend their limited time, you know, playing the game. At some point the mechanics just become too complicated for the average player to bother thinking about them, and they just resort to copying replays from those who have figured the system out, and in my opinion DFK crosses this line, hurting its "accessibility."

Also the game had like a billion modes and even modes within the modes, which is nice from a "SO MUCH VALUE" perspective but good luck wrapping your head around all that. At least there are "novice" modes which suggest a place for beginners to start but there's still multiple novice modes and ship modes within those choices.

[monouchi]

I still dont understand why they didnt have an option to turn autobomb off in 1.5...

[Van_Artic]

Sometimes I wonder, if porting to the 360 was an easier job to them, maybe they should stop the Steam porting series after DFK and think about going PS4 for the rest, where they could maybe even offer their entire library in a quality comparable the the 360's, even if just in downloadable form.

at some point they declared (in Asada's now defunct blog i believe) they were able to port from pcb to 360 in just a couple of weeks; add a couple more months to replicate accuracy as much as they could and there you go, master version ready for microsoft to certificate

also @Shepardus
dont forget that in 1.5 each ship style has different hyper mechanics and thus must be played quite differently for scoring~ just adding more to the complexity of it

[Shepardus]

also @Shepardus
dont forget that in 1.5 each ship style has different hyper mechanics and thus must be played quite differently for scoring~ just adding more to the complexity of it

Ah right I knew I forgot something. The game had like a billion modes and even modes within the modes which is nice from a "SO MUCH VALUE" perspective but good luck wrapping your head around all that. At least there are "novice" modes which suggest a place for beginners to start but there's still multiple novice modes and ship modes within those choices.

[STG4WD]

I still dont understand why they didnt have an option to turn autobomb off in 1.5...

Because whether you die or autobomb, you still break your chain and lose your Get Point bonus. Turning it off would have no further impact on scoring (except for cutting your survival time down) but leaving it in makes it friendly for beginners and gives you a longer credit for your money.

The fact that you cannot understand that neatly encapsulates the problem on this forum.

[monouchi]

The fact that you cannot understand that neatly encapsulates the problem on this forum.

You dont know what I understand or dont understand, thank you.
And dont bring me into your childish preachings.

Regarding the autobomb, well it had the turn off option in both DFK BL and SDOJ, go figure.

[CStarFlare]

Power Style is basically the autobomb off mode. You do get one when you grab bomb pickups, but you could probably skip the bomb pickups if you really wanted to.

edit:

Because whether you die or autobomb, you still break your chain and lose your Get Point bonus. Turning it off would have no further impact on scoring (except for cutting your survival time down) but leaving it in makes it friendly for beginners and gives you a longer credit for your money.

The fact that you cannot understand that neatly encapsulates the problem on this forum.

He was suggesting an option to turn it off, which doesn't hurt the experience for beginners at all.

Despite that misunderstanding, your post was fine until you added that last line. That bit of unnecessary aggression neatly encapsulates the reason you're getting such a horrible reaction from the forum.

[AxelMill]

^Yes, but you start with only one, IIRC.

but leaving it in makes it friendly for beginners and gives you a longer credit for your money.
The fact that you cannot understand that neatly encapsulates the problem on this forum.

"Next time let's make a shmup where you're forced to start with 5 lives and it continues automatically whenever you run out of them, resetting the score. You know, for the beginners."
"Oh, and in the sequel, the ship moves on its own".

You know, learning when to bomb is one of the most important things in the genre. If autobomb is obligatory, you're effectively babysitting the player, who will never learn how to play any other shmup, because he can die in one hit (!) in those.

[CStarFlare]

Do you start with one in Power Style? I thought I remembered not having one until the pickup at the stage 2 boss but it's been many many years.

[Bananamatic]

Regarding scoring, I'm not sure if DFK's the "deepest" entry in the series, but it's certainly the most complicated to explain what you're supposed to do and why

reading the DFK manual I have here:
invisible multiplier: active when your hyper is filled but not being used, goes from 1x at 0-499 hits to 7x at 10000+ hits, multiplies the kill value of the enemy when active and adds it to the chain value

basic scoring: counter lasers and cancel bullets to max out or just increase the hit counter to get past the desired multiplier threshold as soon as possible (which are listed in the manual), fill up your hyper gauge but don't use it, chain the rest of the stage like in the first dodonpachi (and the chaining in DFK is way easier than in DDP/DOJ)
all this is explained in 1 page and a half in the small paper manual that came with DFK

how is this any more complicated than all those league of legends/dota build guides that are 20 pages long and 13 year olds can follow them?

At some point the mechanics just become too complicated for the average player to bother thinking about them, and they just resort to copying replays from those who have figured the system out

copying replays without even understanding how the game works (which isn't more complicated than your average AAA game) only leads to failure for unknown reasons and disappointment

"Oh, and in the sequel, the ship moves on its own".

actually, sdoj does have an autopilot you can unlock

[AxelMill]

Oh God.
Still, that's the word: unlock.

Do you start with one in Power Style? I thought I remembered not having one until the pickup at the stage 2 boss but it's been many many years.

Apparently three..? Three different videos I just watched say so.
Oops.

[Van_Artic]

Do you start with one in Power Style? I thought I remembered not having one until the pickup at the stage 2 boss but it's been many many years.

exactly what you stated, no bombs until st2 boss

Oh God.
Still, that's the word: unlock.

SDOJ has quite a bit of neat unlockables in the Shop menu https://postimg.org/image/w7odwu733/
generally its got things i wish other cave ports got, to add at least some willpower in me to play the game more than just for scoring

Apparently three..? Three different videos I just watched say so.
Oops.

that's bomb and strong style

[AxelMill]

Yeah, sorry, both of you.

BTW, every single shmup should have a Shop like that one. Can't get more "noob-friendly" (as in, players not used to 30-minute-long games) than that.

[STG4WD]

"Next time let's make a shmup where you're forced to start with 5 lives and it continues automatically whenever you run out of them, resetting the score. You know, for the beginners."
"Oh, and in the sequel, the ship moves on its own".

You know, learning when to bomb is one of the most important things in the genre. If autobomb is obligatory, you're effectively babysitting the player, who will never learn how to play any other shmup, because he can die in one hit (!) in those.

Yeah like a fighting game where there are no special inputs! Hahaha scrubz... Oh wait, you mean like the one Seth Killian is developing with Riot Games? Yeah that's bound to flop...


Also, manual bombing in DDPR awards you a longer and more powerful bomb, so the player is incentivised (rather than forced) to bomb manually.

[AxelMill]

Yeah like a fighting game where there are no special inputs! Hahaha scrubz... Oh wait, you mean like the one Seth Killian is developing with Riot Games? Yeah that's bound to flop...

You mean a Divekick clone? Or something closer to Rising Thunder?
What, you never heard of them / forgotten them? Figures.

[Bananamatic]

Yeah like a fighting game where there are no special inputs! Hahaha scrubz... Oh wait, you mean like the one Seth Killian is developing with Riot Games? Yeah that's bound to flop...

easier execution doesn't mean no depth

[STG4WD]

easier execution doesn't mean no depth

HALLELUIA!!

[Bananamatic]

then why is no one playing easy games like chorensha seriously?
the issue is not the execution difficulty but the general lack of interest and having to go into any sort of depth in general

you have plenty of good games with stuff like shields that bleed free score just for not dying yet they haven't saved the genre with their accessibility yet

[Eaglet]

Bananaman is correct. In the end; whether or not you want to invest any effort in and gain any understanding of these games is up to the individual but i think that one of the main reasons that there isn't as much high level play over here as there is in Japan is due to a lack of "arcade" or cohesive culture.
To draw a comparison to fighting games; most people unfamiliar with the genre still knows that the substance in fighting games is about competition and outdoing someone else. With shooting games the situation is quite different where concepts such as playing for score or going for a 1CC is utterly alien to the majority.
Most folks i talk to who don't have any experience with the genre see these games as hard "casual" games that were created for 2 players to credit feed through and earn the arcade some money. The thing is; that might be a correct observation at some point, but as us "enlightened" ones know; what gives the games their longevity is whatever depth is in exploiting the system of the game and master it to varying degrees.

I have no idea how that perception could be changed other than with increased exposure.

[davyK]

Here's my modest attempt at persuading people to try a modern shooting game. Trying something like this on more mainstream sites might be one way.

Wouldn't mind hearing back from folk here - it certainly didn't attract any feedback on the site mores the pity. I've submitted a Mushi Futari review to the same site which will reference this article and maybe give it a 2nd chance and getting some readership.

I should probably have reviewed something more contemporary such as a Steam release but I've avoided those because of the age of my PC and I'm also not convinced that shooters , being the exacting type of game they are, are best served by something like a PC that is far too variable re available resources (CPU, RAM etc)

http://www.cubed3.com/news/26558/1/insi ... rimer.html

[PepsimanVsJoe]

What a coincidence. I just started writing for cubed3.

I really want this and Mushihimesama... but I'm really opposed to Steam's platform, and DRM in general. Makes me quite sad as I'd love to play this on PC, but I'll be waiting for it to appear as a DRM-free release (why hasn't GoG picked these up yet?!)...

Degica has tried, but for whatever reason GOG is rejecting it.
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/mushihimesama

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I really want this and Mushihimesama... but I'm really opposed to Steam's platform, and DRM in general. Makes me quite sad as I'd love to play this on PC, but I'll be waiting for it to appear as a DRM-free release (why hasn't GoG picked these up yet?!)...

[Xyga]

I have no idea how that perception could be changed other than with increased exposure.

We've had that debate many times but I'd say it can't be changed. The attraction to shmups, for people not already into it since the cretaceous, never came from the apparent simplicity and easiness.
For many years I've seen new people joining communities for the 'advertised' bullet hell and the complexity, many getting discouraged early, basically they came for the wrong reasons.
There's a misunderstanding, a quiproquo even.

The shmups community boom happened in the early 2000's when enough people with a passion gathered on the internet.
Used games were still affordable including pcbs, 'premium' titles looking and playing good still developed and released on a regular basis, with Cave as the flagship shmups cooking joint.
Then about a decade later the retrogaming 'specultive crash' happened, classic arcade gaming was saying its goodbies and that would soon include Cave, and the most passionate community members, the 'spine' either went away or turned into veterans still playing but showing minimal presence on forums, either because in the meantime most of them had become much busier adults, or they couldn't bear the change of mood.
Things - and people - get old, trends die, and I've never seen significant-enough revivals that would make something niche like that become a phenomenon - and a market - anew.
At least not without fundamental and denaturing changes. I mean IMHO exposure will not work, further explaining won't work, shmups will have to become something new, only vaguely related to what we old farts know, and that new thing will have to please the players of today. *gasp*

I understand the bitterness of some, personally I have accepted the situation. I'm sorry to say to me it's become just a passtime and the forums like a pub where I come to chat like an old fart about what I used to be madly into (that was years before I joined here, sometime in the middle of the 2010's) or how to tinker with hardware and stuff.
I'm sure there won't be a new genuine shmups golden age without entirely fresh and massive production coming from the 'heavy' industry, something they have absolutely no reason to do, and whatever the minuscule communities do to help won't be enough to lit their extinguished fire, because it's a genre not fitting our present at all.
Most of the dev talents of the 20th century who made shmups what they are have left anyway, it's also very common apparently that they don't keep much traces of their past works nor thorougly document their acquired knowledge.
Today's developers new to the thing but still trying to make shmups that please, struggle with their attempts at imitating or adapt to new platforms and heavily disparate audiences.
Obviously nobody can revive a past cultural artistic/technological breeding ground, we're a frustrated generation because of it.

I do speak like an old fart.

[Squire Grooktook]

When you think about it, shmups (and scoring in particular) are a lot like anime fetish porn.

Niche by their very nature, yet there will always be quality new titles.

Just gotta keep on lurking for nice looking doujins.

[davyK]

There is still an attraction to the genre for many. It all depends how it is presented.

I ran a caravan score attack competition in work several months ago (Star Soldier on Gamecube) and it attracted quite a bit of attention - it even got some FPS graphic whores taking part who normally ignore the sort of thing I organise. So there is a latent interest there.

They can also be sneaked under the nose of players as mini-games or Easter eggs in mainstream games. Wasn't that how Geometry Wars became so popular?

STGs will never be mainstream but I believe they could be more popular - but developers need to be making slightly different games with a blend of old school accessibility and modern game depth. Having a casual campaign mode with set pieces would also make the genre fit a bit better with mainstream tastes.

[Squire Grooktook]

This is also correct.

[Xyga]

I agree shmups indeed attract people as a show. But getting enough people to actually play beyond credit-feeding or a few attempts at 1cc-ing is a completely different challenge IMHO.

Among my slightly heretical views I'd rank the visuals/art/audio presentation as being the #1 battleground for making shmups popular again.
DFK is what I would call the absolute paradox of the shmup looking stunning and discouraging people to play seriously and discover the fun of a system's depht at the same time. All because of its presentation.

[third_strike]

Maybe One of hardest DDPs 2-All
The score system is hard too.

[BIL]

Hey, great to see you again.