Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[Acid_Rain]

What's the difference between DFK 1.5 and DFK black label. And which one is the way to go?

[Skykid]

What's the difference between DFK 1.5 and DFK black label. And which one is the way to go?

Where to start!

They're really totally different games. Completely different compared to Futari and its BL for instance.

People find 1.5's scoring system finicky, and it is. In a nutshell you build combo by hypering like a loon for the first half of each stage and then holding the chain while not hypering for the rest of the stage post mid-boss. You need to manage your hyper rank effectively or it will become less resistant at bullet cancelling and screw you on bosses.

That's a real nutshell. Otherwise for pure survival it's perfectly good fun, and you can tailor the difficulty by choosing bomb (bloody easy) or power styles (pretty damn challenging.)

Black Label is much more balls out insanity from the off. It feeds you hypers incessantly and wants you to use them incessantly. In BL cancelling bullets increases your combo meaning you do a lot of camping while the storm rains in, and repeat. There's a new shot type: Laser Shot (SDOJ style) that drives up a visible rank meter in the HUD. The higher the rank, the more bullets on-screen, meaning more to cancel, and so on. It's generally tougher from the outset, simpler but more manic from a scoring/action perspective. And the soundtrack wants to facefuck you the whole way through.

Experts prefer 1.5's tactile system to 1.5's wade in camping madness (and less refined scoring system) but most average players seem to favour BL's overall experience.

Hope that helps.

[AntiFritz]

There's a new shot type: Laser Shot (SDOJ style) that drives up a visible rank meter in the HUD.

Err what? I assume you meant that in black label you can use the shot and laser at once (which raises the games rank). There isn't any difference in between 1.5 in black label as far as shot types or styles go (except in strong style in black label has harder patterns).

[Skykid]

There's a new shot type: Laser Shot (SDOJ style) that drives up a visible rank meter in the HUD.

Err what? I assume you meant that in black label you can use the shot and laser at once (which raises the games rank).

Yeah, that's what I meant. I just couldn't be bothered to spell it out, the post was long enough. I'm not sure if I've misunderstood SDOJ's laser shot (haven't played it yet) I just assumed it was a similar thing in that you hold A+C simultaneously, which is why I drew the comparison. Thanks for double checking with me though.

[Acid_Rain]

There's a new shot type: Laser Shot (SDOJ style) that drives up a visible rank meter in the HUD.

Err what? I assume you meant that in black label you can use the shot and laser at once (which raises the games rank).

Yeah, that's what I meant. I just couldn't be bothered to spell it out, the post was long enough. I'm not sure if I've misunderstood SDOJ's laser shot (haven't played it yet) I just assumed it was a similar thing in that you hold A+C simultaneously, which is why I drew the comparison. Thanks for double checking with me though.

Thanks for the quick answers. Helped for sure.

BTW. Are the bees the only way to cancel in BL? I really don't get this mode…

[ptoing]

When your rank meter is sufficiently high midsized enemies and bigger will also cancel bullets on destruction of said enemies. From what I remember they only cancel their own stuff tho, might be wrong, have not played it in a while.

[trap15]

It's not related to the rank. You cancel all bullets an enemy fired if you kill it with lasershot. Not all enemies cancel with that, but the majority of them do.

[ptoing]

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

[Skykid]

BTW. Are the bees the only way to cancel in BL? I really don't get this mode…

No, BL is all cancelling. As well as the aforementioned lasershot cancelling the bullets of destroyed enemies (and the hypers of course) picking up bees right in the middle of their switch from green to orange, when they flash white, will also convert on-screen bullets to point stars.

Basically in BL the more bullets you generate by driving up the rank offers greater scoring potentials. You should try to waste bosses with your rank in the red zone (peak) so they generate larger stars on destruction.

[BulletMagnet]

picking up bees right in the middle of their switch from green to orange, when they flash white, will also convert on-screen bullets to point stars.

If memory serves (someone correct me if I'm off), collecting a bee while it's gold will cancel onscreen bullets into small stars, while snagging one while it's flashing cancels them into large stars (and fills the hyper gauge partially, IIRC). But yeah, Skykid's got the basic idea right: raising the rank makes things tougher, but also gives you much higher scoring possibilities across the board.

[m0ng00se]

I searched, sort of, for how to pick levels in Sonic Wings 3 (MAME).

Sometimes after beating the first boss I go to a desert, and sometimes I go to some other place. Considering I can drop a bomb for a free extend in the bonus level after the desert (I picked the ninja guy), I want to go to the desert every time. What determines where I end up?

[trap15]

It's random.

[Tyjet]

What other names/pseudonym does Clover-TAC use? SWY?? Yotsubane??

[ciox]

What other names/pseudonym does Clover-TAC use? SWY?? Yotsubane??

Yotsubane yes, but definitely not SWY. (there are pics of both)

[Icarus]

What other names/pseudonym does Clover-TAC use? SWY?? Yotsubane??

Clover-TAC == Yotsubane.
Yusemi-SWY is a completely different person.

[jepjepjep]

I searched, sort of, for how to pick levels in Sonic Wings 3 (MAME).

Sometimes after beating the first boss I go to a desert, and sometimes I go to some other place. Considering I can drop a bomb for a free extend in the bonus level after the desert (I picked the ninja guy), I want to go to the desert every time. What determines where I end up?

It's determined by which side of the enemy ship you destroy first. The one that teleports out.

[ACSeraph]

In the PSP Gradius collection, what does the "tuned" option actually change?

PS: Gradius 1 is hard as fuck, I've been getting my ass kicked by it since I was in elementary school, and even with all my recent shmup-ing I still don't feel any more successful at it now than I was then...

[oboewan42]

Is there any sort of voodoo that I can do to get rid of the crippling input lag in ePSXe? Because right now it feels like my ship is underwater. I swear, it's outright ignoring my inputs at times.

pSX doesn't have quite as much input lag, but on the other hand, it doesn't have the sexy, sexy high-resolution rendering that ePSXe does.

(note: specifically trying to play Soukyugurentai, but the lag is noticeable with other games too, and appears to happen regardless of which plugin I use)

[Skykid]

^ I use PCSXR and there's no lag as far as I can tell. Maybe try that?

I got a couple of questions for yazall:

1: Yagawa was lead programmer for AK Shin, am I remembering that right? After finding out Ikeda didn't program DFK I'm checking my histories.

2: For all you techies (Trap15 and friends), seeing as the Guwange blue code was possible to take from the 360 game and apply to the PCB via rom burn, is it beyond the realms of possibility that one day SH3 boards might also be reprogrammable, and would it be possible to get something like SDOJ 1.5 off of the disc and onto the SH3 hardware? Or is that pure fantasy?

[ptoing]

I am not a coder, but I would imagine pure fantasy in terms of direct ripping stuff, because I doubt the code compiled for the 360 will do you any good on a PCB. Doubt there is any emulation going on here.
Doing something with it like trap15 did with his DDP or Ketsui Arrange stuff would be doable I guess, if you know all the values 1.5 uses and such, which probably would not be too hard to reverse engineer.

[Skykid]

I am not a coder, but I would imagine pure fantasy in terms of direct ripping stuff, because I doubt the code compiled for the 360 will do you any good on a PCB. Doubt there is any emulation going on here.
Doing something with it like trap15 did with his DDP or Ketsui Arrange stuff would be doable I guess, if you know all the values 1.5 uses and such, which probably would not be too hard to reverse engineer.

Yeah, I guess it's not like it's original arcade code is it. Even reverse engineering would be very tricky to get 100% accurately (although knowing Trap15 he would probably find ways to improve it.)

Do you know what it is about the SH3 hardware that makes them hard to reprogram? I'm assuming it's the lack of socketed chips?

[ptoing]

No clue about that.

In terms of making it the same as 1.5 but on PCB, that would depend on how much of the extra power of the 360 that version uses, tho I do not think any, really. So it would more or less be a matter of finding out the changed score values for enemies, all the other values that been changed, like timers for the hypers and such and how they fixed the score bug. Fixing the score bug might actually be non trivial depending how they did it on the 360 (probably easier to fix there than on SH3 natively).

But again, not really a coder, trap will know better.

[trap15]

The CV1000 games actually aren't all that hard to reprogram, sound chips aside... Those need to be desoldered, rewritten, then soldered back on (or you might be able to just hook wires up in situ and reprogram them there, but that would be tricky).

The CV1000 ports on X360 are not emulators running ROM images, so it's not possible to take anything from them. Guwange Blue was only possible because that was an emulator running ROM images.

Doing 1.5 on a PCB is probably more effort than you'd expect, since the CV1000 games are generally not the cleanest to modify (you'd be surprised that it took me about 6 hours to figure out how to change a single byte in the resulting code of a game, and that ended up being a total hack too...)

Additionally reverse engineering the X360 port to find the differences is a bit unnecessary too, unless you want a 100% 'port' of it. It's generally a lot easier to just play the game a lot and try things out to see what changed.

As far as Akai Katana: Yagawa did the main engine, and I believe Ichimura and Ikeda did most of the rest. Not sure what his affiliation with Shin is though.

[Skykid]

As far as Akai Katana: Yagawa did the main engine, and I believe Ichimura and Ikeda did most of the rest. Not sure what his affiliation with Shin is though.

Ah, for some reason I thought Shin was his doing, DFK BL stylee.

Thanks for the other info too, had a feeling it would be tricky/virtually impossible.

[cstle]

There's an interview where Yagawa clarifies his role in AK stuff but I'd have to find it.

e: http://www.sk8tokyo.com/shmup/translations/akai.htm
sheds light on Ikeda involvement too

First off, please tell us your responsibilities in Akai Katana.

Yagawa: In my case, I’ve been a part of this game since the initial conception of the arcade version. So the contents and the playability of the game had never been my concerns while doing the programming design. To explain my work assignment - I worked on the internal coding parts of the software and the others dealt with the parts which more directly have to do with the visual parts of the game.

Fujioka: I’ve been on the team since the conception of the Xbox 360 version of "Akai Katana Shin." Incorporating the surrounding areas of the interface, and the result and save parts into the game was my part in creating the game.

Koizumi: I worked on the player mechanics and most of the systems around scoring, and also directed the demo version of "Akai Katana". I am wholly responsible for the creation of "Zetsu・Akai Katana" - I made it all on my own.

Kimura: I’ve been on the team since the planning of the Xbox 360 of "Akai Katana Shin". I’ve been working on product management and the overall graphic/design matters. One of my responsibilities was to create the manuals as well as the initial packaging design. Once we all decided on the general framework and look of the game I made further adjustments.
[...]
Were the new game systems for the X360 version proposed on the designers side as well?

Yagawa: No - I think those were created by IKD...

Kimura: I think it all started when IKD said, "Once they complete regular mode, people will eventually want something more hardcore." After we completed the last fantasy-themed game for Cave, we decided to go back with the style of what we made in the earlier years... We knew we wanted to get back into the military genre, but we also wanted to include human characters as well that was absent in some of our previous games.

Yagawa: Uh... I don't remember haring about any of that (laughs). I thought it was going to be much closer in style to our other games. I remember that there was definitely a military flavor in it after seeing for the first time the screen samples in Mr. Nomura’s initial presentation. After a while, when it was actually beginning to be made into the game, the transformation of the plane to the human form became a fact.
[...]
Regarding the system and the difficulty in the original version, did the “shin” system take the same form as in the latest version?

Koizumi: We created the fighters and the human characters in advance, and then decided what we could do with them. First there was the demand from IKD that the game should attract new users... Not just the maniacs that usually play STGs. The current “shin” system was the result of us thinking what it would take to make a game in which anyone can play.
[...]
I'd like to ask you guys more about "Akai Katana shin," - what was the most important concept in this?

Kimura: The No. 1 sales point was for it to be the first time one of our games would utilize 16:9 full screen for home use.

Yagawa: Really? I didn't know that.

Kimura: Yes. There was a full screen compatibility in one of our 3D games, but this is the first time in a 2D shooting. Well, there is no dream in the info since it is not directly related to the game (laughs). Originally a game is started being made from such a aspect, and most of arcade screens' aspect ratio is 4:3 right? But when it becomes 16:9, density of enemies changes, Yagawa suggested the change saying, "it's simpler than you think." At the stage of discussing about remaking the order of the enemies, there was finally the talk, "do you want to change the system too?" Either way, what came up from IKD first was what was called first "in which hurricanes flies" introduced in the introduction in February. After tweaking that over and over again, it became "Shin mode."

Koiszumi or IKD, who was in charge of the Hagane system in "Akai Katana Shin?"

Koizumi: When I joined the developing team, it was the second half of the developing term...

Kimura: In the very beginning, the "hurricane" system was thought up by IKD. But a "hurricane" is like a wind - nobody knew how to differentiate the two yet. Being so flashy was good though. And to make it discerned clearly as, "katana!" Then katana was flying (laughs). And there were a lot of generic katana items spewed out, but they were all tiny in the beginning. The first plan was that small katanas got together in like a “juggling” form and throw big katanas. But more than we guessed, it was visually a bit too vague (laughs).

[Skykid]

^ Thanks! Not absolutely clear where all responsibility lies, but sounds like IKD was the main Shin design culprit.

[7711]

Hi, I've heard quite a lot about a superplayer called TZW but I still don't know who he is.
Could someone tell me something about him ?

[zendor118]

In the PSP Gradius collection, what does the "tuned" option actually change?

PS: Gradius 1 is hard as fuck, I've been getting my ass kicked by it since I was in elementary school, and even with all my recent shmup-ing I still don't feel any more successful at it now than I was then...

That's because the ship w/out speed power ups is cripplingly slow as molasses. That and your hit box is the entire ship!

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Tuned changes the game screen size. It also changes hitbox to small, difficulty to Easy IIRC.

No problem with keeping the screen size, but you should change it to Normal hitbox size and Normal Difficulty.

[Oniros]

I've seen many LEs of STGs contain a superplay DVD. Since I'm just starting to get into shmups, what are they?