I got the most awesome Saidaioujou PCB !

[-S.L-]

For the little story, I bought my PCB back in December 2012, directly from Cave in Tokyo, it was their very last PCB in stock.

After a few games, I first thought some stuff were buggy while I play, because a few times I skipped the entire stage to the next one, without knowing why.
Then, I found out by doing some buttons combination with the start button, I could do some really crazy shit like stage skip, suicide, restart current stage or restart to stage 1, all this, in game. Good for training

That was the time I didn't connect yet the 4th button... And here it comes even more funny

In game, just by pressing the thumb button, i can load many hyper I want, anytime I want. Even better, by pressing that button + start, I can load 10 hyper in one time

But today I made another crazy discovery:

Check this out !

This is NOT in the test mode, I guess nobody in the world exepted Cave, and now me can access to this:



I let you guess what options do what Some stuff i have no idea what they can do as I just discover this 15 minutes ago !

So basically, I have the most unique PCB made for the programmers, before they locked it for a regular PCB

EDIT:

I can play the game just like normal of course, no problem, if I don't hit any buttons + start togheter in game, or (oops !) the thumbs button that gives you Hypers

Now I have even more crazy guys, get ready for some REALLY mad stuff :

I can see hitbox of enemies, mid boss, bosses (hello Hibachi), but also bullets hitbox
I can also see what are the vulnerable area of ANY enemies including bosses, where you can safely go on without crashing etc...

I painted the hitbox of Stage 1 boss, so you can see what I mean.














Any Dodonpachi players should know about that, but now it's confirmed, this is the exact area of your aura around your ship in LASER. Anything within this area with be touched by the aura.



And hitbox of normal shot in Yellow



I can see the exact size of all hitbox of the bullets on screen (it can be VERY messy on screen when really busy)

Here every center of cross is the hitbox of one bullet.








More random stuff, you can also see the hitbox of the items, you can play with bullets and stars items flashing black/pink, you can play WITHOUT ANY BULLETS (yeah... I just no miss expert mode killing INBACHI, I'm so cool)

Sorry for the blurry pictures....

EDIT:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

! HIT BOX SPECIAL !

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok here we go

First of all, I got news about your hit box.

In shot/Laser mode:

- moving up / down or standing by, your hit box is 6x6 pixels
- moving right / left (and therefor diagonals too), your hit box is 4x4 pixels




In Expert mode:

- moving up / down or standing by, your hit box is 4x4 pixels
- moving right / left (and therefor diagonals too), your hit box is 2x2 pixels




BOSSES

The green areas are obviously the hitbox, you dont want to run into it.

BOSS 1

Some parts are moving, you got the idea:










BOSS 2







MID BOSS 3

Why ? Because even thou it's a grounded ennemies, so logically no crash is possible, well, yes there is a gigantic hitbox in the middle where you can crash, happen to me too many times, now I know why.





BOSS 3











BOSS 4









MID BOSSES 5 - 1 & 2







BOSS 5

It seems that the ? area is safe.








INBACHI

I'm guessing Hibachi is the same.




shit this was heavy to do

[hnns]

nice discovery! congrats!

[SuperPang]

Fantastic. It does seem like someone at Cave raided the stock cupboard and accidentally sent you a test PCB. Can you play it like normal or does weird shit always happen?

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Make sure that sucker gets dumped for the sake of posterity. I don't think any of Cave's debug enabled boards have yet made it to MAME?

[-S.L-]

I can play the game just like normal of course, no problem, if I don't hit any buttons + start togheter in game, or (oops !) the thumbs button that gives you Hypers

Now I have even more crazy guys, get ready for some REALLY mad stuff :

I can see hitbox of enemies, mid boss, bosses (hello Hibachi), but also bullets hitbox
I can also see what are the vulnerable area of ANY enemies including bosses, where you can safely go on without crashing etc...

I painted the hitbox of Stage 1 boss, so you can see what I mean.














Any Dodonpachi players should know about that, but now it's confirmed, this is the exact area of your aura around your ship in LASER. Anything within this area with be touched by the aura.



And hitbox of normal shot in Yellow



I can see the exact size of all hitbox of the bullets on screen (it can be VERY messy on screen when really busy)

Here every center of cross is the hitbox of one bullet.








More random stuff, you can also see the hitbox of the items, you can play with bullets and stars items flashing black/pink, you can play WITHOUT ANY BULLETS (yeah... I just no miss expert mode killing INBACHI, I'm so cool)

Sorry for the blurry pictures....

[chempop]

That’s awesome! Reminds me of the special options in the saturn port of Radiant Silvergun.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Make sure that sucker gets dumped for the sake of posterity. I don't think any of Cave's debug enabled boards have yet made it to MAME?

This

[CStarFlare]

Why does this seem familiar? Wasn't there a similar board of another cave game that had some unexpected options posted a while back?

This very cool as well.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

I seem to remember somebody had a board which would skip to the next stage with the right input. There's a YouTube video if memory serves, could be a similar board.

[emphatic]

Wow! That's very cool!

[CStarFlare]

I seem to remember somebody had a board which would skip to the next stage with the right input. There's a YouTube video if memory serves, could be a similar board.

Oh yeah.

I'm a little disappointed there's not an overflow debug option.

[n0rtygames]

Very interesting stuff... So the bullets are pretty much just a single point. Always assumed there was a larger rect or radius check around the center.

Thank you so much for sharing this

[Bananamatic]

do us a favour and show all the boss hitboxes, especially the 1st form of the st5 boss
also, can you see your own hitbox? are hitboxes actually smaller in Expert or is that just a rumor?

[trap15]

Holy shit that's cool. It would mean the world to me at least if you got that dumped, even if you didn't share it. Backing up something like that is incredibly important.

[Cagar]

Please, PLEASE give us screenshots (if not a video) of all boss hitboxes! (remember different forms!)

[-S.L-]

I recorded some footage, takes forever to upload on Youtube right now.

Bananamatic, you will be disappointed with boss 5 hitbox, only the lower tail is free to go on it, the rest is only a huge rectangle block.

I was more interested into the boss 3 boss hitbox, last form, with it's famous top left corner spot, and now I got it more, I recorded a footage (without bullets) so we can clearly see why there was this tiny "crash free" area there.

Basically from what I saw, there isn't any safe spot on bosses we don't know, or if there are area you could eventually go on top, you will be destroyed by bullets anyway aiming at you, in exemple here, boss 1, at the very top you can go, but with bullets, it's of course impossible.

Here boss stage 3 first form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6z2hVebzZE

And the top left spot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q-I-WE8e8c

I'm uploading an epic fight with Inbachi as we speak

Please, PLEASE give us screenshots (if not a video) of all boss hitboxes! (remember different forms!)

Yep i'll do what I can, but unfortunatly, I can't put the game on pause

[n0rtygames]

Yep i'll do what I can, but unfortunatly, I can't put the game on pause

You can make your life easier with the no bullets mode

edit: which you've done, I'll get my coat... won't hear a peep out of me... no sir..

[Bananamatic]

I meant mainly the rest of the boss, what about the spinning cannons? Sometimes when you point blank it you get huge hyper gain, sometimes you get less and sometimes you get hit immediately without even being that far up, so I assume that the cannons have a pretty long hitbox that starts at a random position, meaning that when it points towards the middle of the boss they just spawn on you.

[-S.L-]

I just took a hundred of pictures with bosses "fight"

I need to check the best ones, as taking pictures on CRT monitor, you got aliasing.

And I got very incredible news for you about the hitbox of your own ship, you'll be like holy shit...

Soon...

[system11]

Yeah, this is cool as fuck. Nice find!

[50Hz]

And I got very incredible news for you about the hitbox of your own ship, you'll be like holy shit...

Soon...

Such a tease

[-S.L-]

Personnal best



Ok, give me an hour and you will know EVERYTHING about hitbox on bosses AND your ship in normal/expert mode, you'll be surprised

[Stompp]

Just wow! Thank you for sharing

[-S.L-]

Ok here we go

First of all, I got news about your hit box.

In shot/Laser mode:

- moving up / down or standing by, your hit box is 6x6 pixels
- moving right / left (and therefor diagonals too), your hit box is 4x4 pixels




In Expert mode:

- moving up / down or standing by, your hit box is 4x4 pixels
- moving right / left (and therefor diagonals too), your hit box is 2x2 pixels




BOSSES

The green areas are obviously the hitbox, you dont want to run into it.

BOSS 1

Some parts are moving, you got the idea:










BOSS 2







MID BOSS 3

Why ? Because even thou it's a grounded ennemies, so logically no crash is possible, well, yes there is a gigantic hitbox in the middle where you can crash, happen to me too many times, now I know why.





BOSS 3











BOSS 4









MID BOSSES 5 - 1 & 2







BOSS 5

It seems that the ? area is safe.








INBACHI

I'm guessing Hibachi is the same.




shit this was heavy to do

[lilmanjs]

This is just nuts. Now everyone will be a master of SDOJ!

[brentsg]

Holy shit that's cool. It would mean the world to me at least if you got that dumped, even if you didn't share it. Backing up something like that is incredibly important.

Dump it for trap15. Maybe he can figure out how to implement this for other Cave games.

[chempop]

Very useful info!!!

-S.L-, we really appreciate that you went through the process to share this knowledge with the rest of us!

[trap15]

Good shit, -S.L-, my man. For those who don't know, hitboxes that shrink while moving is a very common and very normal thing. Don't be alarmed.

Dump it for trap15. Maybe he can figure out how to implement this for other Cave games.

No point, I wouldn't bother anyway. This is worth dumping because it's an interesting look into dev process and is something worth preserving. If it takes 50 years for the dump to be released, I'm fine with that, I just want it to be preserved and backed up in the case that the board fails.

[-S.L-]

Good shit, -S.L-, my man. For those who don't know, hitboxes that shrink while moving is a very common and very normal thing. Don't be alarmed.

I didn't know that ! I thought I had a scoop here

I'm sure my board reserve more surprise, I didn't try all those options yet, scared to fuck things up

[waiwainl]

You got a development enabled board - very nice! Ultra rare
I see new strategies are already being developed. You should add *spoiler* behind the thread title.