Solo Shmup League: Rules, Guidelines & Game Choice Thread

[heisenbergman]

I'm really just diving in here now, just to see for sure if you all are willing or not.

Rules & Guidelines:

1. This is a purely individual competition. No teams or anything.
2. This will be a bi-monthly event (twice a month). One week of competition then one week off alternately.
3. No registration needed. If you want to join for that week, just submit a score.
4. To ensure the validity of a score, a screenshot will at least be required when you post your score on the thread.
5. General format of score submission:

   Code: Select all

   |SSL|<score>|<link to screenshot of score>

   • • • no need to include player name. user account used to post the score will be used as the player name by default
       • other information (e.g. - ship, stage, etc) will be included depending on what is applicable for the game that week
       • I plan to write a program that will automatically gather the scores from the game thread so the format for submission of scores will be strictly required

On Game Choice:

1. To start things off, vote in the poll above. The two games with the most votes will be the games that will be played for Weeks 1 and 2.
2. The Top 3 players of Week 1 will PM to me 2-3 games each. Those will be the poll choices for the Week 2 thread. The game with the most votes from that poll will be the game for Week 3.
3. The Top 3 players of Week 2 will then PM to me 2-3 games each to be voted on to be played for Week 4, so on and so forth.
4. If any of the Top 3 for that week have already taken a turn nominating games, the next highest placers for that week who haven't had a turn yet will be the ones to pick games instead.
5. You may nominate any arcade STG that hasn't been played for SSL yet.

On Scoring:

1. This might be a controversial subject, so I'm going to compute the points two ways to eventually see what works best.
2. The maximum points that could be had per week is 100pts, which will be given to the player with the highest score for the game that week.
3. METHOD #1: Points of players will be computed as a percentage of the winner's score
4. METHOD #2: Points of players will be assigned based on the number of total players
5. METHOD #3: An average of the two methods above
6. So, for example:
   
   R=Player & Score & Method #1 & Method #2 & Method #3 R=chum & 7993530 & 100.00 & 100.00 & 100.00 R=Zerst & 7373300 & 92.24 & 92.82 & 92.53 R=jepjepjep & 5883120 & 73.60 & 85.68 & 79.64 R=clp & 5872040 & 73.46 & 78.54 & 76.00 R=Erppo & 5362480 & 67.09 & 71.40 & 69.25 R=Nifty & 4932760 & 61.71 & 64.26 & 62.99 R=ciox & 4623620 & 57.84 & 57.12 & 57.48 R=TrippyCake & 4362410 & 54.57 & 49.98 & 52.28 R=shadowbringer & 3740900 & 46.80 & 42.84 & 44.82 R=chummademeregister & 3704530 & 46.34 & 35.70 & 41.02 R=Deca & 3696840 & 46.25 & 28.56 & 37.41 R=KevinDDR & 3622170 & 45.31 & 21.42 & 33.37 R=DocHauser & 3588030 & 44.89 & 14.28 & 29.59 R=trap15 & 3493280 & 43.70 & 7.14 & 25.42
7. Each participants' points will be accumulated and averaged from week to week to determine overall ranking.
8. Overall ranking will be computed using the following formula:

• • 

• • W = player's overall score for ranking
  • R = player's average score across all weeks/games they've participated in
  • v = number of weeks/games the player has participated in
  • m = minimum weeks/games required to be ranked (we can set this to 1 for the meantime)
  • C = the mean average score across all league participants

[cj iwakura]

I love Gunbird 2 and own the DC version, so count me in.

[Ed Oscuro]

This will be interesting. Just be prepared for a lot of needless bitching, and you'll be OK I think.

But still...this will be interesting.

I'm voting for an Ancient Aliens Week. Why? Because my hair feels like that guy's right now. brb, lighting myself on fire

Edit: I voted for Twin Cobra, although it's been in some kind of tourney a bit recently I didn't play it. Sengoku Blade is a fantastic choice too. Unfortunately I have the JPN versions of these boards - certainly TC has some differences with its Japanese version KT, but I'm not sure about Sengoku Blade aka Sengoku Ace Ep. 2.

Some of the others on the list look okay - I bet Image Fight would be quite good, but have we done In The Hunt, or would that be too easy? - and some might not be. I do think there's a tendency for STGTs to be overly heavy on games that seem proven to have open-ended scoring, but as not everybody will counterstop or roll-over every game, that shouldn't be a problem. That said, some games like Fire Shark just have the score counters roll over, so that will be strange to deal with. I think some players would raise hell if we counted loops in a game like that, but it might be interesting to have a week explictly themed on marathon scoring.

A good list of previous tourneys of various kinds and their weeks can be found here.

[heisenbergman]

btw: It was mentioned on the other thread that CV1000 games are divisive --- may I ask why? (I'm hoping I'm not opening a can of worms by asking this)

Just be prepared for a lot of needless bitching, and you'll be OK I think.

Yeah, I expect that there will always be that in stuff like this. I hope it doesn't get so unwieldy that it totally stops the competition though. Otherwise, I have a high tolerance for it, I think. Thanks!

[ACSeraph]

Sengoku and Image Fight because fuck new shit.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah, pretty much the needless bitching is just players slinging at each others' choices, and of course every now and then STGT uncovers a new exploit or something.

About CV1000 - basically, the games are considered too new to support in MAME by many. Best to leave anything with that driver alone for now.

[heisenbergman]

Ah I see, thanks. I consciously left those games out since DJ Incompetent advised against it, but I forgot to really ask why.

[sikraiken]

Doing scoring as a percentage of the top player's score gives too much strength to the top player's score for not only that week but also for overall ranking. This especially applies for games that do not have linear scoring systems. I think how it's been done in the past has worked well.

I think the idea of limiting autofire is unecessary. Some people have used Darius Gaiden as an example for this. During STGT 2007, many people did clear the game, but that isn't the point of the tournament. Scoring with a clear ranged from 3.3m to 12.5m. If people don't like the scoring system in Darius Gaiden, having a lower autofire or no autofire at all does not really fix the "issue". I think for most people, autofire makes games more enjoyable.

[Hagane]

For score validation, just set a standard emulator (most people here use shmupmame) and ask for a replay input or a vid. Recording inputs is easy on MAME since you can just start recording, and if you mess up you can SHIFT + F3 to reset both the game and the recording.

Hope Sengoku Blade wins so I can get depressed at how the TiH guys 2-ALL it in a week.

[KAI]

I don't like any of those games

[Hagane]

You dislike anything that's good.

[KAI]

But I like Ibara.

I thought Soukyuu wasn't working fine on mame.

[heisenbergman]

Doing scoring as a percentage of the top player's score gives too much strength to the top player's score for not only that week but also for overall ranking. This especially applies for games that do not have linear scoring systems. I think how it's been done in the past has worked well.

Thanks for the input. Can anyone explain how the previous STGTs point system worked? I can see the point distribution, but can't quite find the explanation of how it is calculated, exactly.

[ACSeraph]

Personally I thought the way trap15 did it in his previous tournament was pretty intuitive. Were determined by your place relative to the number of total participants. So if there were 100 participants and you were number 1, then you get 100 points. number 2 gets 99, 3 gets 98 etc. etc. As an additional suggestion though, lets say we play ten games total (just an example), how about only counting your top 8 or 9 scores, for people who can't play on a given week for some reason to still have the ability to play and compete.

[heisenbergman]

^ Yup, it could be done that way as well. I just thought that maybe people would like to award points according to score, but that's also an equally valid point system.

For score validation, just set a standard emulator (most people here use shmupmame) and ask for a replay input or a vid. Recording inputs is easy on MAME since you can just start recording, and if you mess up you can SHIFT + F3 to reset both the game and the recording.

Hope Sengoku Blade wins so I can get depressed at how the TiH guys 2-ALL it in a week.

I tried recording on shmupmame4 and it gave me a .MNG file. Is this what we're looking for? Or is it possible to record a video format like .AVI?

[Hagane]

You can record .avi from -> file -> record uncompressed avi output, or you can just right click the game you want to play and select "play and record input". That will generate a small .inp file, which is easy to record and doesn't consume many resources like recording .avi videos do. To ensure correct playback of .inp files, you sometimes need the nvram file too.

[heisenbergman]

Oh wow, I recorded a 2-minute AVI file and it ended up being 1.5GB lol

[wolfman24]

is this going to be a team contest or just a singles contest? either or I am in

[trap15]

Voted Fire Shark and Twin Cobra, but I already know DDP is going to be #1 and probably Gunbird 2 for #2. Prove me wrong, farmers!

[ACSeraph]

I implore everyone to choose Sengoku Blade because that game is seriously fucking great. Also Hagane has a huge detailed guide for it to help people new to the game.

[AntiFritz]

I voted dodonpachi and gigawing. Although I probably won't be bothered enough to participate.

[chum]

1. Gunbird 2
2. Twin Cobra
3. Fire Shark
4. Batsugun
5. Sengoku Blade
6. 19XX: The War Against Destiny
7. Terra Diver
8. DoDonPachi
9. Image Fight
10. Giga Wing

:3

[Aleksei]

how have I played Kamui but not Soukyugurentai, I chose that and giga wang.

[Eaglet]

Souky and Gunbird 2 would be awesome.

[Jaimers]

Personally what I liked the most about past STGT's was the team effort.
Where you come together with your team and support each other, as well as discussing strategies, finding secrets and trying your hardest so that your team gets a higher rank.

Tourneys without teams just don't really feel the same to me. There surely is a lot less motivation to do well and overall it's not nearly as fun than with teams.

[Eaglet]

Tourneys without teams just don't really feel the same to me. There surely is a lot less motivation to do well and overall it's not nearly as fun than with teams.

[Zil]

Teams sounds like a much cooler thing. It would make it more interesting.

and gb2 pls, i want to win.

[chum]

Teams sounds like a much cooler thing. It would make it more interesting.

and gb2 pls, i want to win.

But sikraiken will NMNB the game with a 3 digit coin chain.

[heisenbergman]

Teams are something that I totally didn't factor in when I thought of trying this out, tbh. Also, the main STGT series (ran by dex and trap15 I think?) already features competing teams, and I think there will be one ran by one of them again eventually... so it might be better if they would handle the STGT with teams while I would rather just keep track of individual scores. Sorry, teams - at least for this STGT series - are most likely not going to happen.

[coturnixx]

Voted Gunbird 2 and Giga Wing, i put quite an effort on the last one until a computer change stopped that. Now that the problem is solved i can´t get motivated enough to recover my previous level, so STGT could be the motivator.

Wouldn´t mind Sengoku Blade either, but i prefer Gunbird 2.