Once you have a template script it's really easy to adjust the firing rate and use a separate script per game. Different games read inputs in different ways, so sometimes simply a SEND script with a delay will work, and sometimes you need to SEND DOWN, delay, SEND UP, delay. Once you understand how it works it's quite easy. The majority of shmups are super easy to setup and adjust, and it's also obviously great for key rebinding for keyboard play on games with no keyboard rebind options.
The only really complicated script I've ever had to make was an autofire script for Phantasmagoria of Flower View to add a true rapid shot button (there's an alternate setting in the options that gives autofire but messes up the way focus movement works). It wasn't resuming rapid fire after a charge shot or bomb if you held rapid shot the whole time, and would behave oddly when using the focus movement. Wasn't playing nice with my usual AutoHotKey solutions at first until I made a probably really unnecessarily complicated script that basically checked each possible combination of key states for Shot, Focus, Bomb, and the virtual Rapid Shot to determine how it should behave.
I sometimes get twinges in my fingers so I wonder if I'll eventually get full blown arthritis or something. Either way, I'm grateful to AutoHotKey so older PC shmups without rapid fire don't turn into hours of repetitive mashing.
In this script:
$*z::
While GetKeyState("z","P")
{
Send {z down}
Sleep 10
Send {z up}
Sleep 10
}
return
The SLEEP command is what controls the delay (in milliseconds). You need the SLEEP command after sending the input (key down) usually because some games won't register properly if you immediately stop the input after (key up). Then, after the second SLEEP, that's the delay before repeating.
You can tweak the time in between each to adjust the rapid fire rate accordingly, and if you're playing something like the Mushihimesama PC port, you could setup multiple shot keys with different firing rates if you wanted (which is a sign the game's scoring is way too silly if it requires this, I still think Mushi's a fun game but I shake my head at that scoring).
