STGT '09 Raizing Week 5-6, Battle Garegga - Overall thoughts

[charlie chong]

i guessed all the games except for strikers 1945 2 which i thought was going to be strikers 1945 3.

also i tried to play some caves last night and all these different games have messed up my ketsui patterns
CAVEZ WEEK NEXT YEAR PLS
XXX
6 WEEKS IS TOO LONG TO NOT PLAY CAVE

[captpain]

Well, I just pushed my score up like 14 places the day after the competition ended

[ED-057]

Garegga is like playing Chess against the computer. It's amusing for a while but I get crushed again and again. And I'm not really interested in studying the game my whole life to become a grandmaster. I just want to shoot stuff. I was pleased with myself though when I finally pwned the Plant boss without dying despite the rank and crappy score. I believe my dodging skills improved this year.

I missed the voting weeks this year (not necessarily the voting), the lack of breaks contributed to my lack of patience I think. And BTW, what was the deal with that bizarre medal-combining ritual in RFJ? Was I playing the wrong game or something because that was just nuts.

[spineshark]

Granted, I've played like 100 hours this year counting STGT, but I don't really see Garegga as out of line for a tournament game. The game is complicated, but it's not specifically demanding like, say, a chaining-based game. You don't have to try and copy a superplay to do okay, because basically every scoring trick is independent, aside from the need to keep the medal value at max and the fact that you only get a certain amount of bombs for everything. It's a hard game and the natural scoring isn't high, but the amount of information out there by now is enough that stubbornness and laziness are bigger barriers to entry than the game being complex and difficult.

Overall game rankings this year:
1) Garegga
2) RFJ (I liked this less during the week, but more distanced from the frustration and weak music I'm appreciating it more)
3) Strikers II (I agree Gunbird 2 is better but I would've gotten slaughtered on the coin chaining so I was kind of happier this way)
4) Varth (still better than everything last year but Rayforce and 19xx)
5) Thunder Dragon 2 (it wasn't as bad as everyone said but I still wish I hadn't played it so much, I got top 3 but it didn't matter because we were still guaranteed second after that week)

[Skykid]

As far as Garegga's concerned my opinion's the same as it's been for awhile - if they'd bothered to include an "ugly flashing pink bullets" option and explained the rank system to the point where we didn't have to hack the ROM to figure it out, it would be just about perfect.

Do you know there's a HK romset that changes all the bullets to bright, cave style purple?

I love Garegga, I just hate myself for being rubbish at it.

[RGC]

For me, garegga pipped RFJ as best game of STGT09. There have been several comments about having to learn the complex science of garegga to achieve a competitive score. I disagree. Okay, I didn't hit a top 20 spot but let's face it, the top 20 scores for any game will be largely dominated by players who have already given that game a hammering in the past. This reassures me that a 6mil+ garegga score is perfectly respectable for 2 weeks' play (I'd definitely consider it a competitive score). Some players will be gifted enough to achieve a top 20 or 10 spot through natural ability (if this means anything), but those will be in a minority. Others will get there through sheer determination and, crucially, hours invested. I always posted the length of time I spent on each game for every 'week', hoping that others might too. I suspect it would be encouraging (and enlightening) to newcomers and newbs if everyone posted the time they spent working on their scores, e.g. B,100,900 - 32h14min, simply because it would reveal how much dedication is required to get good at shmups.

Anyway, here's my super-secret list of garegga super-strats:

suicide to keep life stocks low (actually, I didn't bother much with this)
bomb flamingoes
bomb madball
don't collect loads of options/shot
don't drop medals
bomb 1 or 2 key areas of scenery (notably, start of stage 3)..... that's it!

Maybe not easy to consistently pull off, but I can't see how memorising this could give anyone migraines.

[Ravid]

For RGC:

Varth - 14h 35m
RFJ - 21h 31m
TD2 - 7h 2m
Strikers 1945 2 - 11h 46m
Garegga - 18h 6m

Not an indicator of preference, I just had shitloads of spare time in RFJ week and not much in TD2 week. Preference was something like Garegga >> RFJ > TD2 > Varth > Strikers. TD2 week I spent mystified about people slating it, though I think it might partly have been because some people had graphics glitching in MAME making the bullets hard to see (I never had this problem).

[RGC]

Cheers Ravid, interesting breakdown. Looks like you would fall into the naturally gifted category, relative to me anyway.

My times:

Varth - 6h 17min
RFJ - 11h 48min
TD2 - 9h 47min
Strikers 1945 2 - 1h 58min
Garegga - 24h 48min (achieving my best after ~21h)

Other than a couple of credits in the past, I'd not played any of these properly before. So I'm happy with my results.

Edit: Oh, and I'd go with the exact same order of game preference.

[Tigershark]

First game I bought for the Saturn.

It's a frustrating game. Dying on purpose to keep rank lower is just plain wrong! Not shooting as much to keep rank lower is madness. Putting those medals right in the path of oncoming near invisible shots is excruciatingly tortuous.

But.

Despite this I can't help but like it even though I've never got past level four on 1 credit. STGT gave me the excuse to play it again and I beat my high score over the two week period. In fact just played it now and beat the score I registered this year for the competition!

IMO RFJ was by far the worst game to play this tournament.

[Enhasa]

And to think I hated it at first... I do have qualms about it (obtuse system, several debilitating flaws), but it's not unlike a Tool album. Tool albums tend to contain 80% crap and 20% stuff so awesome, you don't mind the crap at all.

Opiate: 90% crap, 10% awesome
Undertow: 50% crap, 50% awesome (standout: Prison Sex)
Aenima: 20% crap, 80% awesome (standouts: Aenema, H)
Lateralus: 10% crap, 90% awesome (standouts: The Patient, Lateralus, Schism)
10000 Days: 80% crap, 20% awesome (standout: Vicarious)

Wait, what were we talking about again?


Someone said his level of interest correlated directly with scoreboard updates. I think you should make it parse the thread for scores, that way it updates constantly and you don't even have to do anything. People will understand and submit with the correct format if their score being counted depends on it. And of course you can make it pretty robust with handling malformed input anyway. Also if you put the players and teams into the system, it won't even matter if someone misspells team name or even his own name, the parser would get that info from who the poster is. Other than those two items, the score itself is the only other piece of data that is critical.

Thanks, a few comments/suggestions:
* bring back voting plz (because I like diversity, trash talk and strategic as well as stupid voting)
* bring back pauses plz (6 weeks straight is too much imo).
* Now that we have tried extending the weeks (which sucked imo), why not shorten them? Have one "week" where we only get to play the weekend (game announced friday, ends sunday night)?

good tournament tho, thanks! I hope there will be a 2010 stgt, and that I personally can be more active.

Yeah, this year was "better" with the best game selection by far, but a lot less exciting. I dunno if I'm just getting jaded or all the lack of controversy and bitching was what did it. I don't know what I would change either. Two-week final "week" was definitely a bad idea, I wouldn't have done that. Shortening is probably an idiotic idea though, since some people might be gone all weekend and others can only play during the weekend. I think 3 weeks + break + final 2 weeks is a good idea, because the 10 weeks before was a marathon. Regardless of if there's voting or not, next year's selections will be a lot less predictable too.

I think what was really missing was namakoteam. (It feels exceedingly weird for me to have gotten 2nd place, I must add.) Also people posting funny shit, I think the only instance of that we got was Danbo Daxter's classic TF2 image.


For anyone who thinks putting Garegga last or having two weeks at the end caused the lower participation for week 5: Nope, every single tourney has the most participation first week and the least the final week. I've participated in maybe 10 scoring/speed weekly tourneys and they're all like that. It doesn't matter what game you put first or last, it's just human nature.


Everyone's doing it:

1) Garegga
2) RFJ... I admire RFJ more but I actually enjoy playing Varth more (even with muted RFJ music)
3) Varth... these three games are in my top25, rest aren't, so a dropoff to
4) Strikers 2
5) TD2... last place doesn't mean bad though, I still liked this game, for comparison if it had won the vote last year it would have been the 2nd best week (so suffice to say I liked the game selection)


Game selection has gotten better each year of STGT. That streak's probably getting snapped next year though, hard to top this one. What STGT needs more than allowing previously played games (although we could have a 3-4 year moving window) is for the state of emulation to improve. g-net, zn-1, and st-v (if deemed fast enough to use) would be a real shot in the arm for game selection. Allowing console games would do the same thing.

[ED-057]

I never looked at the MAME timers before. Fascinating. For STGT09: BG (5:04), RFJ (2:50), Strikers (4:59), TD2 (6:42), Varth (7:33). Others: 19xx (8:12), Giga Wing (6:02), Omega Fighter Special (7:31), Progear (4:02)

[gs68]

This game made me wish I had joined STGT. Even though I always accidentally the rank, I'm sure I could've ranked in somewhere above last place.

[Sasupoika]

This game made me wish I had joined STGT. Even though I always accidentally the rank, I'm sure I could've ranked in somewhere above last place.

Yeah, me too. But I played Garegga anyway. It is such an awesome game.
I would have gotten the 14th spot.

[DMC]

Enhasa: perhaps the first time I disgree with you. Tool is a lot more of awesome than that.

to sum it up, good games and organization, but not enough lulz, bitching and rivalry. No one even accused sikraiken of cheating? (not that barely anyone congratulated him though, which is a mystery.)

Edit: Please, keep the games a secret as long as possible next year. No obvious themes.

[crithit5000]

Battle Garegga is awesome. It's one of the few games of this genre where I don't reset constantly due to screw-ups, and there's just something about how perfectly the game flows whenever I hit the halfway mark of stage 2. I can't describe it accurately, but I think I get a feeling of elation when I'm dodging those needle bullets from that point on.

As for the rest of the games...this was the first STGT where I liked every game I played, which is weird because I hated Varth whenever I played it before. I still hate the first few stages and the overall length of the game, but it's actually fun. TD2 I didn't get to play enough of due to being sick plus shit tons of work, but it's z-grade fun.

Also, no breaks sucked. Crunch time coding and the flu just royally sucked. No voting ruled, though. AND-

Battle Garegga: 32:45:36
Raiden Fighters Jet: 8:45:00
Strikers 1945 II: 31:11:00
Varth: 4:20:45
Thunder Dragon 2: 2:56:34

I guess my places in each game are not too bad for having not actually played a shmup since last STGT...>shrugs<

[RGC]

Strikers 1945 II: 31:11:00

That's impressive for one week! Almost full-time hours.

[crithit5000]

Being freelance and dictating my own hours has it's perks on occasion.

[RGC]

Now if you can just figure out a way to get paid by the hour for Strikers.

Crunch time coding and the flu just royally sucked

We are offended by this slur on our name!

[Enhasa]

Enhasa: perhaps the first time I disgree with you. Tool is a lot more of awesome than that.

to sum it up, good games and organization, but not enough lulz, bitching and rivalry. No one even accused sikraiken of cheating? (not that barely anyone congratulated him though, which is a mystery.)

Edit: Please, keep the games a secret as long as possible next year. No obvious themes.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that, I was going to say it too. Choices wouldn't have been so predictable this year if there weren't themes, and without voting there's no need for them. Even with voting, I don't think having themes really adds anything. I think last year we had a voting week with RayForce, TD2, and Strikers 3, and I didn't feel like that week was any worse for not having a theme. All they really do is constrain you. There aren't many good dragon games for a tourney for example, ruling out Dragon Blaze there was really only Cyvern.

This is not to say you should be afraid of (implicit) themes, just that you shouldn't shoehorn them. If there's voting and you want exactly one Cave game, best way is to make one week with only Cave games to vote on, and none the other weeks.


About Tool, they're one of my top favorite bands, I guess I was lowballing the numbers. I guess "crap" is the wrong word (more like "not as awesome"), but some tracks like Die Eier von Satan are awesome the first time and awesome in concept but I do skip them now. I don't dig the latest album either for some reason (I think it sounded too close to recent APC for me), maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance but I liked Lateralus's style a lot more. Anyway, most bands are 0% awesome, and I don't want to be an insane fan and say something is 100% awesome when nothing is perfect after all, so being mostly awesome is really good. Sorry for off-topic.

[Plasmo]

Of course the last week was the best week, because Garegga simply is the best game. It's not really fair for others if people already played this game a whole lot, but I'm not in the position to complain.

The only frustrating part is, that I could've easily gotten the second place overall for this years STGT, I just would've needed to play RFJ and get under the top ten, which, to be honest, probably wouldn't have been too difficult. Maybe next year I actually play during all weeks.

[shadowbringer]

DMC: As for the return of pause weeks, this would mean that Namako Team would probably participate again. For some reason, I'm not fond of this idea xD (jokes aside, tougher competition helps raise the playing abilities of those interested in improving themselves, so, they're welcome imho)

As for a "weekend only" week, that wouldn't give people the proper time to do research, watch gameplay videos and practice/learn the game. Most people would feel that they could've easily improved their scores if they had a couple more [s]shots[/s] days.

unsane: I haven't played Garegga much until this STGT, iirc I couldn't get past stage 3 (and haven't watched videos back then). Perhaps my interest (and little experience) in Batrider helped me adapt to Garegga's mechanics, though, but I think that Garegga rewards knowledge/planning well enough to award you a nice score, before it starts demanding increasingly difficult execution tricks. For example, reaching 2 millions (from a minimum of 400k+ at the end of Stage 1, and that's before I learned that Gain's Option shots count as Piercing shots, instead of Option shots, and therefore started using the Tail formation on the propellers) by bombspamming the flamingoes (without suiciding when you have no lives in stock), and then bombing the 2nd stage boss at the right time would've awarded you 3 million (and the remaining turrets); even if you don't get that amount by the end of stage 2, you could make up for it through the secrets in stage 3. My plan was to find out (compared to Kamui's 3-part Garegga video on super-play.co.uk ) what scoring gimmicks were too difficult for me to perform consistently (stage 2's flamingoes with suicide on 0-lives, bombing certain scaffolds during the stage 4's boss, etc.), and what would be worth practicing (for example. The second boss, like I mentioned earlier, gives about 1 million when you bomb it at the right time. The final form of the last boss gives 300.000 points -- disregard the fact that I haven't ever reached it, lol --. Believe me, it's not as difficult as one may initially think, unless you wait for its central turret to activate before bombing )

Zejiro: changing the week order where the game appears doesn't alleviate your issue with the advantage given to veteran players of that game, in fact one week seemed too little time for someone to get into the game and reach their current limit (or wall. Pun not intended, for my case, as I haven't reached stage 6 in my runs D: ), dunno about the past STGTs, though.. people would (see my reply to DMC) feel that they could've done a better score if they had more time (one week wouldn't suffice, I think, especially for my case, where I had to spend the first day studying the ST thread and watching Kamui's video, before starting to practice the game and progressively adapt/change my gameplay. I think that this is the only game of this STGT that I didn't play on the first day :p)

RGC:
Garegga: Playcount: 22 - Play Time: 108:25:51
Strikers 1945 II: Playcount: 17 - Play Time: 58:07:32
Thunder Dragon 2: Playcount: 12 - 54:40:52
Raiden Fighters Jet: Playcount: 13 - Play Time: 29:21:25
Varth: Playcount: 9 - Play Time: 2:05:28 (I've spent most of the time using Wolfmame 0.99's command-line emulator)

I can't give a proper estimate of hours played, and the playtime indicator present in Wolfmameplus' gui seems to be inaccurate (lower than the actual playtime; of course, credits aren't the same as playcount :p). However, I can say I've tried to beat my score a lot of times, persistently. Perhaps half the time spent (at best) was used for actual runs, the other part consisted of watching/reading/savestate practicing (started savestate-practicing in this game, as I was afraid of possible glitches before -- RFJ has further promoted such a worry, though I used savestates in order to bypass the booting sequence and again in order to not retype my initials --; I was so used to MAME emulators not allowing me to save states, perhaps to lack of knowledge or laziness to search for this feature, that I thought I would have lots of work if I were to use savestates "safely").

[Ruldra]

Garegga Play Time: 108:25:51

What the hell man that's insane

TCACTRM - Supreme leader of the world, noone was ever better than us!

Namakoteam

[Plasmo]

TCACTRM - Supreme leader of the world, noone was ever better than us!

Namakoteam

LIES!

[Smraedis]

I'd like to get good at Garegga someday, and seeing all the huge scores will make me feel like I should be able to do well on it too however I'm happy that Garegga was picked in the year that I didn't take part in

I'm a bit sad that I didn't take part this year, but I have been way too busy in these weeks anyway, so I wouldn't have been able to put up many good scores.

All I've done instead is play DeathSmiles and make a rather good Time Crisis replay

[t0yrobo]

As far as Garegga's concerned my opinion's the same as it's been for awhile - if they'd bothered to include an "ugly flashing pink bullets" option and explained the rank system to the point where we didn't have to hack the ROM to figure it out, it would be just about perfect.

Do you know there's a HK romset that changes all the bullets to bright, cave style purple?

I love Garegga, I just hate myself for being rubbish at it.

Sorry this is slightly ot, but does anyone know the title for said rom. Google didn't give me much help

[MR_Soren]

No voting was great. No breaks sucked. I wasn't able to put forth the level of effort I wanted due to real-life activities getting in the way. Wedding, out of town visitors, a house guest, magic: the gathering tournaments, full-time job, spending time with wife, etc.

Strikers 1945 II was my favorite game in the contest. I liked how I could sit down and start playing without having to learn a lot. Just pure shmupping.

Garegga felt like there was too much dicking around with special roms, special emulators, and secret codes. Plus there was the huge guide. I really like the game, and my first PCB will probably be from Raizing because there is so much to learn in their games. I just didn't want to learn it all in two weeks and i barely touched it.

[unsane]

Sorry this is slightly ot, but does anyone know the title for said rom. Google didn't give me much help

http://maws.mameworld.info/maws/srch.ph ... xt=garegga

[Herr Schatten]

Do you know there's a HK romset that changes all the bullets to bright, cave style purple?

IIRC, said ROM has different extend settings than the japanese one, so it's not really a suitable substitute. It defaults to "no extends" and the only other option in the dip switches is extends every 2mil (instead of the usual 1mil). So you get a quite different game experience since Garegga relies on rank control via suiciding and exploiting extends. Unless rank progression is much slower than in the original version I doubt that the HK version can even be completed at all.

[Ruldra]

Each setting has a different rank progression. The longer it takes to get the extend, the slower the rank progression is. At least that's what Twiddle said on irc.

[Herr Schatten]

Each setting has a different rank progression. The longer it takes to get the extend, the slower the rank progression is. At least that's what Twiddle said on irc.

Interesting. So by setting extends to "none" I can disable rank?

Still, this doesn't defy my point that playing the HK version is a quite different experience compared to the jp version, as it's not just the bullets that change.