TRP-STGT 2015 Conversation Week 1: Sand Scorpion

[trap15]

Best of luck to everyone, but especially my comrades.

Question: Does my run/score still count if i set it to the hardest difficulty anyway?

No, please play on the settings I've given.

[KoopaTGR]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZeVXT5_Pk

This video seems to demonstrate a strategy that involves staying at low power, as hinted by Nifty in the score thread.

[trap15]

And as I mentioned in my Quick Tips a few posts back:

Don't power up past the first level of 5-way shot; beyond that your shot becomes less effective due to spread.

[Shepardus]

How do you approach recovering in this game? Or do you just not? I feel like the length of my run is basically how long I can no-miss + about a minute more to burn through the rest of my lives.

[Perikles]

If you refrain from picking up all the power ups as has been mentioned you should always have a chance to recover in the first loop. Use your bombs to safely get at least a few of the power ups that float around and try to resume your original plan. There are few (not a single one, rather, although some parts are delicately tricky without) spots where you absolutely have to bomb in the first loop, so it should be possible to get back in action. Second loop is most likely a different story, however.

[Heavy Viper]

I don't know the requirements for it, but I've had a "S" item drop when I've died at some points. Grabbing it bumps you up to Lv.2 Blue shot and Lv.1 Missile, so it's handy for recovery.

[DKA_Darius]

There are so many hard small enermies' aircraft in loop two.

[Lyv]

This game slows down like crazy as soon as there are more than two moving things onscreen.
Does anyone else have this problem ? (I tried shmupMame 4.2 and MamePlus, it's slightly better on the latter, but still painfully slow)

[Illyrian]

Okay so this is one of the shit games Trap always picks. There are always 2 shit ones and 3 good ones.

None the less it's awesome that the tournament has actually started!

[DKA_Darius]

This game slows down like crazy as soon as there are more than two moving things onscreen.
Does anyone else have this problem ? (I tried shmupMame 4.2 and MamePlus, it's slightly better on the latter, but still painfully slow)

I have this problem also,using shmupmame 4.2, but I think the slows down also can improve your reaction time.

[EmperorIng]

This game slows down like crazy as soon as there are more than two moving things onscreen.
Does anyone else have this problem ? (I tried shmupMame 4.2 and MamePlus, it's slightly better on the latter, but still painfully slow)

No, you're just experiencing the full weight of FACE's programming prowess.

[Despatche]

Oh, please. This isn't even a Face game, and Nostradamus sure doesn't pull the kind of crap this game does. I don't think any other Face-made or -published game does.

[EmperorIng]

Calm down, Despatche, we're all salty about that shitty stage 3 boss.

[system11]

This is fun

Death to danmaku!

[pokemon123]

5 minutes in and i already dislike this game. Feels like i'm playing avoid the enemies lol.

can't even get past stage 1

okay i think i'm doing something wrong. can't even get past stage 1 after trying like 8 times in the first 15 seconds of the game. Those train things or whatever pop up and i can't destroy them in time before a helicopter crashes into me.

[trap15]

The massive slowdown is normal. It's just this slow on hardware.

[Shepardus]

okay i think i'm doing something wrong. can't even get past stage 1 after trying like 8 times in the first 15 seconds of the game. Those train things or whatever pop up and i can't destroy them in time before a helicopter crashes into me.

Use autofire if you aren't already, don't be afraid to not kill stuff and just fly out of their way. Stage 1 is pretty painful but it gets better once you've picked up some powerups (speaking of which, get blue and avoid green and red).

[pokemon123]

how would you enable to autofire then?

[Shepardus]

The game itself doesn't have any autofire setting, so you'll have to set up your own autofire, such as through MAMEplus's settings.

[EmperorIng]

Yeah, have a version of MAME that supports autofire: e.g., MAMEUIFX32, shmupmame 4.2, the latest mameplus, etc... The latter two even have configurations to have both autofire buttons and normal shot buttons at the same time. Without these conveniences, you're in for a world of hurt.

[pokemon123]

oh it was the autofire problem i see. I'm still terrible but the game is a lot more fun now.

[Macias]

A question to those of you, who may have recorded inps: can you play them back without any issues? Both test inps I recorded desync during 2nd stage. ShmupMAME 4.2

[ProjectAKo]

yep, inps are breaking there

[Squire Grooktook]

Honestly, despite how rickety, unbalanced, and unpolished is, I kind of like this game.

I like the super agressive Zakos that get in your face. The hitbox seems pretty fair for this type of game and leads to some pretty tense and visceral moments. Stages seem pretty well paced and varied (though the first one could maybe be a bit shorter). Point blanking and aggression is strongly encouraged, and there's some scoring tricks in there with killing all enemies being tough at times + blue scoprions + no miss no bomb.

Also the sprite work is great. Love some of the environments.

It's not something I'd put on my favorites list, but I'm glad to play it.

[pokemon123]

well now that i've gotten some time to play this game a bit more it's okay i guess. Not really a big fan of this style of shmup with recoveries and what not and even with games with recoveries and whatever i can somehow have more fun with truxton >_> I'll admit not really sure if i'll want to be playing this game though even for a week but i'll try.

[Illyrian]

Goddamnit there are a LOT of people already looping this game.

I have to mirror the previous comment about input lag during slowdown, especially on the 3rd boss when the corner pieces fire a big circle of bullets. Definitely got me killed a few times.

[Shepardus]

Like Metal Slug 2, this game feels a lot more bearable if you overclock the main CPU to something like 250%, but I'm assuming that isn't allowed for this competition.

[Perikles]

I would consider myself to be fairly generous towards quirky, unfinished and callow shooters, but I do have to record that the second loop of this game is truly awful. Perhaps the worst second loop of any shooter I've played so far - enemies (and their destructible projectiles I might add!) get such a massive increase in health that you either have to constantly bomb or die, it's terrible. I cannot fathom how anyone could release the game in a state like this.

[ProjectAKo]

Not only can 2-5+ destructible bullets and zako survive a full duration bomb, but they presumably expected you to use one of the full power weapons... which have no hope of ever killing anything on loop 2.

[Shepardus]

Not only can 2-5+ destructible bullets and zako survive a full duration bomb

This almost makes me want to savestate/cheat my way to 2-5 just to see this in action. Unless there's some super-power secret or some rank system none of us know about that pushes enemy health way up (Garegga autofire rank anyone?), I'm at a loss trying to imagine how the world record was achieved.