Shmups

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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

Post by Stanshall »

I can only speak for DOJ but it's as much about when not to shoot if you want to keep your chain.

It's often about shooting things as late as possible to allow more waves to appear so you have something to chain into. In short, if you shoot stuff immediately, you definitely won't be able to keep your chain. I'd say that's my experience of Resurrection, too.

DDPR seems more generous, though, because you get hypers pretty easily and you can cancel bullets with the normal shot to build your chain combo, as well, you don't need to just shoot enemies.

Without plugging my video needlessly (maybe), if you look at the chain meter in the top left you'll see how tight some of the links are here and how sometimes I have to delay and delay by tapping shot to pick off one enemy at a time to allow a bigger ship to appear on screen. I can then laser that until some popcorn appear and I can immediately transition to destroying them once the bigger ship explodes and so on.

Also, unlocking a bee, collecting a bee and using your hyper all fill the combo meter. And finally, in hyper mode, your meter drops slightly more slowly and your combo increases more quickly. Therefore, try to resist the temptation to save your hypers, you actually want to be in that mode as much as possible.

https://youtu.be/DLofNBww9ZY

Trickiest moments where you can see the above in practice:

0:15 (you have to plink laser > rapid shot the moment the big ship explodes to chain the tanks you kept alive, timing is strict but plinking works best for me)

0:32 (almost dropped the chain here because I killed the second tank too quickly, got very lucky)

0:40-0:50 (hardest section in the stage, need to time everything as late as possible and use the edge of the spread shot to chain off multiple enemies without destroying the whole wave. Then grab bee to the right, chain across to the left, then lock onto the larger ship, plink laser > rapid again off the ship/turret into the popcorn, then collect dropping hyper, chain popcorn, unlock two bees, grab them and use hyper in quicker succession. It's a massive rush when you do it and then you have about twenty seconds to pretty much hold down laser and enjoy the carnage!).

1:12 (tricky timing but really satisfying to unlock bee, collect bee, grab hyper and use hyper within about a second, took me ages to figure it out).

1:30 onwards (I was very lucky to leave a half-destroyed tank in the bottom right corner next to the bee or I'd have dropped the chain there, I would normally try to leave a couple).
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Shmups

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Nice, I'll have to dig into all that as soon as possible. Thank you very much!

Made a dedicated thread here. Post everything over there from now on!
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Shmups

Post by KSubzero1000 »

Well, that's the section of the forum dedicated to this sort of stuff.

I don't think the picture is gross or anything...?

Please post everything related to the tournament over there.
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KSubzero1000
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Re: Shmups

Post by KSubzero1000 »

It's not bad, but I thought a vertical picture wouldn't really complement the board format when used as a header.

That gif is cool, I'll add it.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

clippa wrote: August 28th, 2019, 3:13 amthe more you play any genre, the more you get entrenched in the fundamentals, the less open you are to innovation.
There's definitely something in that with shmups. Since learning what I like most about shmups and internally defining the gameplay elements around that, I'm less likely to pick something outside of that, for sure. I doubt I'd buy Astebreed if I saw it now, for example.
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Re: Shmups

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clippa wrote: August 28th, 2019, 11:27 pmI think people are sick to death of me as it is.
I'm sick to death of the tiresome rhetoric that people are sick to death of you. Don't buy into it mate.

:thumbsup:
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

I don't believe it's the case, but if anyone has decided they can't be arsed with you they are the problem, not you. I enjoy your posts more than most here, you have your quirks but guess what, we all do. I'm an idiot sometimes. So is he, and him, and her. And they. And personally I find your slivers of vulnerability endearing as opposed to off-putting, and I think people should be cut slack as opposed to torn apart for it. But hey, that's just me.

If I ever saw such a memo, I'd quietly insert it up the rectum of whoever gave me it.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

BACK TO SHMUPS - I "finished" Soldner X2, but only 4 stages. Apparently I need to unlock the rest of the game by doing stuff in previous stages again. Not a fan of this model, but I'll persevere because it's fun.
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Chopper
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Re: Shmups

Post by Chopper »

Quick question, Clippa - asking as a noob, what software do you use for video capture on PC? I doubt I'll be sharing videos of me staring intently at a bunch of tiny numbers for 3 minutes before making a decision in a 4X game, but you never know.
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

Post by Stanshall »

Yo clips, I don't see anyone having a go at you here or deliberately ignoring you but I think I get how/why you might feel that way. I've asked myself similar questions in the past.

I'd say that the main factor is that it's just not a very big or very active community and it's 99.9% focused on the games and hardware. There's no drama, no cliques, no nuthin but games, which is nice. I'd say a consequence of that, however, is that it's also not especially 'chatty' or jokey even though I find it very friendly and chilled. There have been plenty of times in the past when I went off-topic or told some anecdote that I thought might prompt some further side discussion and got no/little response. That's no criticism of anyone here at all but over time my expectations changed and the way I posted changed. There was a discussion recently about whether the C&R team might be more active on here but the conclusion was that they pretty much all use Twitter and engage regularly on the there, and that's my experience, too.

It's also pretty moderate in tone and largely matches the tone and principles of the podcast. I've made some fairly ranty posts about this or that game in the past and I did perceive a collective wince that may or may not have only taken place in my mind. Nevertheless, I did start to find that when my posts were more moderate, I tended to get more of a response. I think it goes back to the point that discussion is motivated here by interest in the hobby rather than in each other's personalities.

Now, if you think I'm giving you some subtle advice here about how to post, I'm definitely not. I'm explaining why I used to post in a certain way, and why over time I changed tack a bit and it was partly because I was asking myself some similar questions. I'm still prone to hyperbole and feverish obsession more than most but I've found that if I focus on the games, someone is more likely to throw the ball back here. Sometimes I do that and get nothing, anyway. I think everyone does. I often feel for Scrustle who writes some belting long posts about what he's been playing and doesn't necessarily get much back. It's just not especially busy and the majority of posts are related to the podcast threads. That's how it seems to me, anyway.

This fantastic thread is an anomaly because it regularly goes off on various tangents and so on and goes through periods of intense fervour for various games but it very obviously has little appeal or interest for most of the forum and indeed for almost all of the C&R team. That's not a criticism of anyone else on here or saying people should do whatever or blah blah blah. It's just a fact. I wish more people were into these games but they're not. Does the tone of the thread and the relatively sprawling nature put some people off? I don't know, but the fact is that it's a thread like no other I recall on this forum and I think the tonal differences and diversions and exuberance are a big part of what sustains it.

Apologies to anyone I may have upset or misrepresented here. I'm just giving my perception of the forum.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Shmups

Post by ratsoalbion »

There’s certainly been no such ‘don’t encourage Clippa’ memo from us.

Humour and passion - and off topic tangents if you like - are all welcome here, encouraged in fact.

The only things we properly try to police are (of course) things like abuse and hate speech, and we take a dim view of opinions expressed as objective facts, because that’s how pointless arguments start.

People are completely free to be as wildly up or as dimly down on any game as they want to be, just don’t tell other people that they’re wrong, when they feel differently.

NB: I’m not saying I’ve spotted clippa, or anyone, ‘breaking any rules’ lately. Just reiterating the house policy - and reminding you all that it isn’t about being ultra reserved or an ‘echo chamber’, it’s just about respect, decorum, empathy and intelligence.
🙂
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Chopper
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Re: Shmups

Post by Chopper »

clippa wrote: August 29th, 2019, 4:35 pm I just use shadowplay - https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/ge ... hadowplay/

Nvidia gpu's (from GTX 600 up) come with an h.264 encoder built in so all the heavy lifting is handled away from the cpu.
It's really good, I never notice a performance hit, and more importantly for a shmupboy, no added input lag.
It's part of geoforce experience, the rest of that is worthless but it's worth installing and making an account for (I know, couldn't believe it myself) just for shadowplay.
Relive is the amd equivalent if you have one of their cards.

I record at 720p and just use the lowest bitrate (10mbps) at 30fps (capturing at 60fps, on my computer at least, watching the videos back, they can go a bit hiccupy at times, like stuttery like it's not quite 60fps at times so I don't usually bother with that, 30fps is really consistent so I just go with that), I have crappy internet and that tends to keep the videos relatively small so I can just drop them straight onto youtube without reencoding.
It's usually fine for the sort of games I play, but if you're playing an fps where the scene is almost constantly changing, you'd probably have to bump the bitrate up much further.

You can also use it for streaming directly to twitch or youtube, which I've never tried, but that might be an option for you. OBS studio is the only software I ever hear mentioned when it comes to streaming so that might be the way to go in that regard.

Before shadowplay came along I used dxtory with the default dxtory codec, the videos were huge and you had to reencode them, but it was the best of the bunch in terms of input lag and performance hit.
That program still comes in handy once in a while when I need to cap a games framerate without enabling vsync and there's no other option.
That's awesome, thanks very much for that. My heart sank when you said GeForce Experience, but after a mere 90 minutes I was able to get it to work without crashing :x :P . I haven't played around with the settings at all (I literally just got it working) but the 30 seconds or so I recorded looked great. Thank you very much, great information in this post!
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Suits
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Re: Shmups

Post by Suits »

I picked up Solar Striker on the Game Boy yesterday - been after this for a while now and it plays lovely 👍🏽.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

Suits!!! Yes.

JOIN US

STAAAAAAAAAAAY

:D

I might give this a go on my Shield if you recommend it.
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Suits
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Re: Shmups

Post by Suits »

hazeredmist wrote: August 30th, 2019, 11:42 am Suits!!! Yes.

JOIN US

STAAAAAAAAAAAY

:D

I might give this a go on my Shield if you recommend it.
😄😄😄😄

I very much doubt it will be up to anything like your lots standards or expectations - might be ok for me though 🥴.
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

Post by Stanshall »

Mate, the standards in this thread are the lowest on the whole forum. Don't worry about that! :D
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Suits
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Re: Shmups

Post by Suits »

😄😄😄
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Alex79
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Re: Shmups

Post by Alex79 »

Tried to get DDPR running on Vita MAME but it seems like the core that Retroarch uses is too old to run it. No luck with Final Burn alpha either. Would have been handy to have an easily accessible version to practice with. No matter, working fine on laptop, going to hit it up tonight and make Clippa cry.

Possibly out of laughter. Possibly out of inadequacy. Time shall tell.

:lol:

In other news, I seem to be getting worse at Danmaku Unlimited 3 on Switch! It's like once I worked out how to maximise scoring opportunities I'm too focused on that, and got better scores just trying to stay alive! I've not been able to beat my highest of 12 mill in days!!
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Re: Shmups

Post by Alex79 »

clippa wrote: August 30th, 2019, 3:41 pm Do you keep your laptop locked in a box under the bed in case it catches a virus or something?
What's more easily accessible that double clicking an icon?
I'm guessing you're more a console gamer and you've got your set up based around the living room telly. Could you not plug your laptop into the telly and slump on the sofa with a pad?
I can play on my Vita when the kids are still up. I can also take it to work to have a go at lunch time.
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

Post by Stanshall »

Alex, or anyone:

If you got a 360, I can send you a copy of DDPR.
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