STGT'12 planning thread

[FIL]

Finalburn Alpha runs Toaplan games with sound now as well. Never compared it to MAME though. I guess the performance is probably similar.

[Moniker]

With regard to Popular Series Week, it may or may not be interesting to prohibit the use of secret ships in each game. Taking out Fairy/Slave, X-63, and Flame Viper &co., may make the games a bit more fresh, since I'm guessing that most of us use these ships almost exclusively. On the other hand, it may hamper attempts at world records from the more skilled among us.

I'll leave it to more expert opinions to decide the matter.

[nZero]

use of secret ships

MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW
MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW
MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW

[njiska]

use of secret ships

MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW
MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW
MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW

Oh, Dangun.

[shadowbringer]

With regard to Popular Series Week, it may or may not be interesting to prohibit the use of secret ships in each game. Taking out Fairy/Slave, X-63, and Flame Viper &co., may make the games a bit more fresh, since I'm guessing that most of us use these ships almost exclusively. On the other hand, it may hamper attempts at world records from the more skilled among us.

I'll leave it to more expert opinions to decide the matter.

besides the Dangun Feveron example mentioned above, games are (so far) never repeated (in the same game mode, at least) in STGTs, and also putting such a limitation to new players could make them have a less comprehensive understanding of the games, imho.

playing for score sucks anyway.

scoring is several times funnier to me than 1ccing, because scoring mechanics and systems help differentiate games from each other more, and provide interesting mental exercises. 1ccing feels more "freestylish" and is easier, but to me it doesn't feel as rewarding.

mame.exe Daioh -record Daioh.inp

dude, thank you very much!!! (now I only have to remember about clearing the nvram folder before saving an input)
even though I actually just use shmupmame's GUI to save inputs and not worry with nvram and be happy

If, IF our organizers were such massive tighty-whiteys about this, I'd feel justified asking a couple extra miles from them as well.

you realize that the input file requirement is only for the week's top 5 or 10 (don't remember) scores of all players, right? Why would you worry about it?

Cast my vote in agreement that replays (for MAME) and photos (for consoles/PCBs) should be mandatory for everyone.

We need to also make it clear that images shouldn't be embedded in posts. Clutter/threadbreaks/more scrolling = bad.

Yeah, and be sure to hold up the day`s newspaper in the shot so we know it isn`t an old score. And a photo ID so we know it isn`t someone else`s score. And please submit a notarized copy of your drug test results, so we know you aren`t doping. STGT is Serious Business (TM)

funny thing is, somewhere in this year, I and other people played on MARP's K-9 tournament, which required not only that all players submitted input files, but said input files shouldn't exceed 48 hours (i.e. you couldn't sit on your hueg score and hide it until the last minute) and all input files would be verified (and rejected if they desynch or don't run). Everyone was fine about it, even people from Twin Galaxies. Are we farmers even worse than TG, regarding how only the high scorers would be required to submit input files? (seriously though, one of the TG players complained that Super Turbo sucked and said that Donkey Kong was a good game. #facepalm . Plus I didn't get the hate for Magic Crystal and the second week's game, forgot the name now. Absolutely hated trying to score in Cadillacs & Dinosaurs and DK, though.)

[ ] yes
[ ] of course

Btw congrats, The Pro, once again, for winning that tournament, and to the shmupsfarm people who participated too. (and wished that they were playing STGT instead)

[Ed Oscuro]

I am totally going to MARP and telling them to run a tournament without replays! I am also going to tell them the day after they start the tournament so that all the stragglers will be found out.

STGT'12: People Actually Hate Replays And Are Using Reverse Psychology On Us Because This Shit is Getting Ridiculous.

List of reasons why Mandatory Replays Are Awesome

1.) Fuck you, you think you've got some special scoring tactic? Not anymore you don't. From each according to his ability, to absolutely everybody!
2.) The tenor of this thread and the disparaging comments made about "less experienced people who would benefit" from replays (this is true, please share them) totally inspire confidence that all players will be respected and will not be subject to criticisms and ridicule if they upload a bad run
3.) Whoops, got drunk and uploaded a lemonparty instead of the replay
4.) Why are you even bothering anymore? You can't call this a serious tournament with that lazy attitude. If you don't even bother to upload a score that is at least 90% of the WR, go home and be a family man

[Aliquantic]

1.) Fuck you, you think you've got some special scoring tactic? Not anymore you don't. From each according to his ability, to absolutely everybody!

I like how the Japanese arcade standard is to watch each other's runs and share tips so you can actually come closer to perfection, and encourage other people to improve on your replays... but here sharing seems to be that big taboo thing.

Note that nobody is asking for replays to be publicly available *during* the week itself (save those for your team), or advocating that working replays should be mandatory for everyone, omission or desyncs being punished by excommunication.

[Illyrian]

I'll post replays. They'll be boring as shit but I'll post them. Then again I don't really care if people know I'm crap at these games.

Really if people want to make fun of me for posting a score then I'm hardly gonna burst into tears

[Nifty]

I remember when sik posted his Varth replay and I felt really clever because I could beat his stage 1 score every time

[Erppo]

If I would have to tell someone what this forum is like I'd just link them to this thread.

[Ed Oscuro]

If I would have to tell someone what this forum is like I'd just link them to this thread.

If I would have to tell somebody what smartass newbies have done to the Forum, I'd just link them to your reply. All some guys want to do is bitch and moan and accuse everybody else of bad faith and of course all your suggestions are either obnoxious or they are disguised insults. Let's not have any more of that, OK?

1.) Fuck you, you think you've got some special scoring tactic? Not anymore you don't. From each according to his ability, to absolutely everybody!

I like how the Japanese arcade standard is to watch each other's runs and share tips so you can actually come closer to perfection, and encourage other people to improve on your replays... but here sharing seems to be that big taboo thing.

Enough with the strawman attacks. Nobody is denigrating sharing. I'm arguing against sharing as a part of competition. If somebody wants to keep their strategy secret, so long as they're not cheating, that should be their (regrettable) right to exercise. I'm not saying they should do that; in fact, I think they shouldn't.

It makes no practical difference anyway, since many highscore players only submit at the eleventh hour anyway, too late to do anything in the tourney. If they don't want to share by then, you'll either get it later anyway, or you're SOL.

Christ, you guys are good at irritating natural allies.

[Illyrian]

Just link them to 2 girls 1 cup and they'll get the idea

[Erppo]

all your suggestions are either obnoxious or they are disguised insults.

Examples please. I don't seem to remember making any kind of suggestions.

[Ed Oscuro]

Obvious typo is inobvious. I don't have any example, but on the other hand you're fitting the stereotype up to that point, so please be careful.

[FIL]

Do all those asking for mandatory .inps also want this applied to the (arguably more important) Hi-Score forum?

[Ed Oscuro]

Do all those asking for mandatory .inps also want this applied to the (arguably more important) Hi-Score forum?

Shh, you might give away the secret of Shmups Forums!

In any case, that is the big question. It had occurred to me that the majority of players tend not to bother to put their (usually superior) scores in the appropriate High Scores threads. Arguably this gives some breathing room to those threads to explore from 0 points - although I do sympathize with people who cap their highscore threads (at a reasonable number).

[Aliquantic]

It makes no practical difference anyway, since many highscore players only submit at the eleventh hour anyway, too late to do anything in the tourney. If they don't want to share by then, you'll either get it later anyway, or you're SOL.

How would you get *anything* before the end of the week in any case? Again, the point is NOT to have replays publicly available before the week is over!

And replays/proof is expected for excellent/#1 scores on some leaderboards... it's up to the judgement of the leaderboard manager.

[njiska]

Yet again, this pointless debate is pointless as the rules of the tourney are already set and ARE NOT CHANGING.

The score validation works like in the hi-score threads. You just play the game on PCB, emulator or any console port and post your score which you don't need to prove. (However if you are a troll or have a questionable reputation, be prepared to be asked for snapshots or other forms of verification.)

[Ed Oscuro]

Aliquantic (guy whose name makes me think of water and which I have to check three times because njiska posted before I was done ):

How much of that has anything to do with STGT? Here I thought the point was learning from STGT replays so people could better their scores during the intense competition period. If otherwise, then yes, a good samaritan can always upload his or her scores. Apparently different people have different ideas about this replay rule. Hagane seems hell-bent on carding everybody at the door, and you're saying it's all for the 2lurning, and I say it's all for the lulz. One person might say they should be made available only to the official scorer, and (as you point out) others will say they should only be asked for at the discretion of a thread maintainer. Nobody ever asked roadrunner for proof of his scores.

This is why I mentioned springing new rules at the eleventh hour. You guys don't really have a cohesive story to sell.

I wouldn't mind a mandatory replays competition, but keep that as far away from the general philosophy of STGT and the High Scores forum as possible. On the Internet you're never going to get sufficient proof without more severe and obnoxious safeguards like locking in to specific software builds, and I bet some clever haxor could even fuck with WolfMAME if they really wanted to (by running with something like a debugger process or inputs recorder and editor). There are so many points of discrepancy in terms of disparate control setups, disparate software packages (ShmupMAME arguably might give some people a boost over even the PCBs in rare cases), and the like that it doesn't seem reasonable to attack that problem seriously.

By insisting that high scores be validated and "legitimate," you inadvertently create the kind of mystique that hasn't existed for those kinds of internet parasites to feed off. In my memory there have been one or two intentional fraudulent scores, and there have been occasional scoring trick withholdings (I recall asking the guy who consistently posted top scores for Hudson caravan games for some more info about his plays but he only ever posted scores; I also recall somebody who knew a scoring trick for Dead Moon and didn't reveal it for a long while). The bad guys, if they were, lost interest. It would be regrettable if good players stopped playing because of perceived indifference towards their scores, but Shmups Forum isn't here to validate your or my existences. If you upload a score you do it because you enjoy the game. The bottom line, in my experience, is that Serious Business and the Internet don't mix well.

If somebody wants to work to post a top score, I think it actually is better to keep it purely in the voluntary community spirit. But this isn't a matter of forcing them to do so - if they want to provide as many proofs of legitimacy as possible, more power to them, but it doesn't mean that it actually will stop somebody from sneakily leaving a dump on it.

Any Shmups Forum participant can be whatever they want to be, of course, but I think that means leaving some breathing space for a different approach than trying to make us a mini-MARP or (god forbid) Twin Galaxies. When you create arbitrary rules, you're creating great new tools for people to beat each other down with, and I don't think that's really needed. If you have a great score to be proud of, by all means share it with us and post the input to MARP.

Edit: I actually realized one last thing, rather belatedly. I'm sorry that I haven't been generous in acknowledging that everybody in this little debate has meant well.

[Paradigm]

Fucking hell Ed, nobody wants to read an essay.

Can't you just get your points across in a clear and concise manner? I'm forced to skip most of your posts since you can barely seem to string a cohesive sentence together and I end up having to read shit like this, wondering what the fuck you're trying to say:

Hagane seems hell-bent on carding everybody at the door, and you're saying it's all for the 2lurning, and I say it's all for the lulz.

By insisting that high scores be validated and "legitimate," you inadvertently create the kind of mystique that hasn't existed for those kinds of internet parasites to feed off.

if they want to provide as many proofs of legitimacy as possible, more power to them, but it doesn't mean that it actually will stop somebody from sneakily leaving a dump on it.

I don't know why everybody's even getting involved, basically ALL this boils down to is Touhou is Harder saying "we're going to record our runs and we want TCACTRM to do it too for the sake of fairplay"

That's it.

So people like njiska and Samurai Fox saying "I'm not gonna record on principle" or "What do I do if my replay desyncs or I can't record a doujin??" - WHO GIVES A SHIT.

Don't worry about it, this doesn't concern you anyway.

[Bananamatic]

official stgt banner

[shmuppyLove]

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg10/sca ... es=landing
official stgt banner

ALL the jimmies

[Zerst]

The archivist in me is loving the idea of everyone submitting replays as a demonstration of a wide variety of skillsets and strategies. Hell, someone could even convert all of them to AVI and make a Youtube channel dedicated to STGT performances. Despite the bickering that goes on here, I think a lot of us can be supportive enough to respect a wide playing field and not harass each other over not being as good as the professional Japanese superplayers.

However, from a practical standpoint, I agree that making them mandatory is a trainwreck waiting to happen. Desyncs, long game bootup times, thousands of different versions of MAME out there, witch hunts...and that's not even getting into the nightmare of verifying all of them. You can't say "only top 10 need to submit" because you risk creating a barrier between top performers and people who just want to have fun that is quite nicely blurred by the friendly competition vibe of previous years.

The reason it works for MARP's tournament is because creating replays is the backbone of the community. The tournaments are smaller, most of the players are already used to using standardized versions of MAME, and they have a streamlined replay upload and verification process.

Screenshots are fine here.

[Plasmo]

I like how the Japanese arcade standard is to watch each other's runs and share tips so you can actually come closer to perfection, and encourage other people to improve on your replays... but here sharing seems to be that big taboo thing.

Donpachi.

[Aliquantic]

Donpachi.

Did any information at all leak out after the recent improvements to the Arcadia score, or given how Arcadia validates their scores? It's... an interesting case to say the least.

Mind, figuring out how to actually score very well in some STGT games can be a rather interesting problem too! (I don't think I want to know how the P47 Aces WR was obtained, but I'm curious about certain other ones)

[Plasmo]

I'm actually most interested in P-47 Aces! What other interesting games were there last year?

[sikraiken]

Besides P-47 Aces, we don't really know the full execution for Varth, Xexex, 1944 (kind of), nor Omega Fighter (non-special). Phelios is another game where the source of some of the last points for the arcadia record are unknown. Even things like pulling off 920+ hit on ddp 2-5 aren't really too well documented/publicly known as far as I know. I'm sure there are others even if we only look at shooting game records.

[RNGmaster]

Couldn't resist.

1.) Fuck you, you think you've got some special scoring tactic? Not anymore you don't. From each according to his ability, to absolutely everybody!

I love this mentality of "my strategies are my own intellectual property, DO NOT STEAL". And by love I mean it makes no sense. In a good competition (which likely won't happen considering the huge resistance many players on this forum have against getting good; see "I PLAY FOR FUN") each player has access to the same information and the same scoring strategies - the only things separating us are:

a) the level of precision of our execution and
b) the efficiency of our practicing methods.

This might seem like a punch in the chest to the people who view shmup skills as some sort of beautiful organic construct, but high level play depends almost solely on these two factors.

2.) The tenor of this thread and the disparaging comments made about "less experienced people who would benefit" from replays (this is true, please share them) totally inspire confidence that all players will be respected and will not be subject to criticisms and ridicule if they upload a bad run

If you can't handle having a replay constructively criticized, you either have an unwarranted sense of skill and self-importance (honestly, no video game player should have a right to be smug IMHO), or you are insanely thin-skinned. In both cases, why are you on this forum?

Your mentality comes across to me as the closest thing on this forum to anti-intellectualism. You want us to play in what is essentially a digital black box, which would hurt the legitimacy of the tournament and slow the pace of forum-wide improvement by requiring us to focus on inefficient practice methods. That's a pity, since I used to respect you a whole lot.

-

I'm all for mandatory replays personally. This is a competitive tournament, yes, but I don't see why it can't be cooperative. As I see it, we could all be SWY-level players without having to forsake our jobs or commitment to undercarriage hygeine, we just need to do things more efficiently. I don't get this resistance to improving at all.

Also

Even things like pulling off 920+ hit on ddp 2-5 aren't really too well documented/publicly known as far as I know. I'm sure there are others even if we only look at shooting game records.

What evidence do we have that this has been done in the first place? I'm thinking it would only be possible with heavy abuse of C-S's shot at the final section before the boss.

[sikraiken]

Even things like pulling off 920+ hit on ddp 2-5 aren't really too well documented/publicly known as far as I know. I'm sure there are others even if we only look at shooting game records.

What evidence do we have that this has been done in the first place? I'm thinking it would only be possible with heavy abuse of C-S's shot at the final section before the boss.

I've done it with A-L. SOF-WTN had 926hit on his 748m record as well.

[RNGmaster]

-Have you released a public replay or was this just done on a savestate session?
-Is it possible in 1-5?
-Does it involve delaying the kills of the large ships so there's enough time to reach the tank on the top left?