Shmups

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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

Post by Stanshall »

Great work with the 1CC, mate! Great little game, isn't it? Really good fun. Since you got that under your belt, Rolling Gunner can't be too far off...especially if you're pausing for a breather every couple of minutes.

(You see? It's all nice as pie until you dare to succeed... :twisted:)

I'll keep looking forward to your RG clear vid, though. I had another go this morning and it kicked my arse once again. Got to the last boss for the first time in ages, just not enough resources to survive, though.
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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clippa wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 4:28 pm I suppose it's better than Stanshall doing his saccharine "ooh, aren't we all the bestest thread in the world" thing for a fourth effing time.
Pffft. Can't even show off about a triumphant 84-page thread around here...

I might give that X3rd or whatever a go now I've optimised my PC setup. I did try it once before but couldn't get it working. I feel mildly inspired to give it another go, though. I'm away for a few days though now so I'll see if I can still be arsed when I get back.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

"gonna play casual instead"

You guys realise I'm hammering my bracket against Novice right... I dream of stepping down to Casual! We truly are in different worlds :D
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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clippa wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 4:44 pm
Stanshall wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 4:33 pmnow I've optimised my PC setup
:lol: Is this the stool you're talking about?
We are the best thread in the world.
I said optimised, didn't I?
Spoiler: show
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Using one of those spine roller things because my wife said I had to put the stool back. 85 pages and counting of this premium discourse.

hazeredmist wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 5:07 pm "gonna play casual instead"

You guys realise I'm hammering my bracket against Novice right... I dream of stepping down to Casual! We truly are in different worlds :D
If it helps, Normal would melt me, I've been playing Casual. Once you get Novice cleared, and you know the levels, you'll defo be able to move to the next mode. What ship are you using, by the way? I found the wide and slow one is much more helpful for dodging because your movements are less jerky. I find even the regular ship too fast and twitchy for me.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

clippa wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 5:23 pm Sorry man, I don't think about that sometimes.
At least we can both agree that normal is taking the piss. That ain't normal in anyone's book.
Oh hell no, don't stop it doesn't upset me!

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However, this genre could do with a reality check with the naming conventions of difficulty levels. "Easy" usually means "face-meltingly hard" while "Expert" means "Honestly, fuck off. You can't play this, you pathetic scroat. Sell your laptop. Punch yourself in the face". When Big Shot Mark is doing tweets bemoaning the small amount of players this genre comparatively has, this is one area that devs could address. Let's make "accessible" actually mean accessible. Half the time I play an "accessible" game (hello Danmaku Unlimited 3) I find it's actually a right bastard to get through even on the lowest difficulty. I don't think that's doing the scene any favours with welcoming new people.

Honestly, I've only got to my modest standard / determination levels thanks to you guys being here and along for the ride as one. Because as Stanshall has said 4 times & will say many times more, it is the best thread ever. We should have a party when it hits 100 pages :lol:
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

Oh aye Stan - can you not just use your arcade stick with your switch? Just you mentioned it was rough going back to pro controller with rolling gunner... I thought I had the same adaptor as you, it works great with switch!
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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hazeredmist wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 9:23 pm Oh aye Stan - can you not just use your arcade stick with your switch? Just you mentioned it was rough going back to pro controller with rolling gunner... I thought I had the same adaptor as you, it works great with switch!
Yeah, I have been using the stick on the Switch, as well, and the adaptor seems quality. I can't tell any particular input lag or anything, seems very responsive. I found it tricky going back to the Pro Controller for tap dodging, but I also have a load of muscle memory built up with Rolling Gunner so it's a little difficult to adapt to stick! I'll probably stick to Pro for that one, in fact. Same with Ikaruga. I recently played it on an arcade cab and it's really tough to translate my experience of using a pad to a stick when the button inputs are different for missiles and stuff.

It's a hard knock life.
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hazeredmist
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

Ah right, yeah that makes sense. I did play Rolling Gunner with the stick for a bit, but I'm best with pad so I use that now for this.

Forgot to reply to your question - I was using the regular ship but I tried out the slow one and that's what I'm having the most success with. Do you understand the limit gauge thing enough to explain it to an idiot? Even going through the tutorial I don't understand it really. Where the gunfire goes massive and yellow. How to activate that without accidentally losing bombs...

Had another go yesterday, go to to Mr Rhombus (as I have christened him) again but with fuck all in reserve bombs / lives wise so lost the 1cc chance early in the fight. I need to be on top of my game the whole run to stand a chance.
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Re: Shmups

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clippa wrote: October 23rd, 2019, 3:44 pm Exceed 3rd
I presume that's this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2074 ... k_Package/

It's on my wishlist, probably from seeing you mention it... I'm sure I nearly bought it before but didn't for some reason. Is it "accessible"?
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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hazeredmist wrote: October 24th, 2019, 9:40 am Do you understand the limit gauge thing enough to explain it to an idiot? Even going through the tutorial I don't understand it really. Where the gunfire goes massive and yellow. How to activate that without accidentally losing bombs...
I think I get it but largely through repeating stage one for fifteen hours trying to grind for score. This isn't official or anything.

First thing is that the limit gauge counter fills up as you collect medals. You get more medals for destroying smaller enemies with rapid shot and more for larger enemies with focus shot.

When your counter hits 1000, you can enter limit break by pressing bomb, although this doesn't use a bomb. It also cancels all of the bullets on screen and turns them into medals. You'll see the green circle around your ship ticking down gradually. As you collect medals in this mode, you'll see a red circle start to expand inside the green one. This is your double limit break meter. There may be actual names for these mechanics but let's just use these terms.

Ideally, you would want to fill that red meter as quickly as possible by point blanking a boss or in an area with loads of popcorn enemies. That will get you loads of medals. In any case, if you don't trigger it before the green meter expires, you've lost it and you're back to filling up your counter again. Just as the green meter expires, you'll hear a whooshing sound and a yellow light closing in on your ship. That's the latest you can trigger the double limit break, basically.

In double limit break, you get increased shot power and you generate bigger medals so timing this and using it at the best moments of the stage is the basis of the scoring system. Again, when you trigger this, it also cancels all bullets into medals. This means that the limit break system is also a really useful defensive tool, it's like two free bombs, in a way.

I hope that's somewhat helpful. In Normal Mode, there's another score counter and I don't really understand how that works. I also suspect you might get more medals by point blanking and destroying stuff with your limit break meter circle but I might be imagining that. Generally point blanking is good though because you absorb more medals rather than letting them drop off the screen.
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

So I guess the reason I never have any of the big medals at the end is I never activate this double limit break... Thanks man, I will try this out. I use the normal limit break all the time, but the fact this double one also cancels bullets could really help me out if I can get it working properly by the sounds of it.
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Re: Shmups

Post by hazeredmist »

@Stan & clips thanks for the double limit breakdown & advice, it's really helped and I am now able to activate it at will :) I ran through the game yesterday as a training exercise and found it very useful, I got to Mr Rhombus and blew my old score out of the water despite the run overall being quite poor due to experimentation. So I think a serious go at this I stand a better chance now.

Fuck me, I love Rolling Gunner
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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clippa wrote: October 24th, 2019, 10:18 am Yer man, cool spot trying to sum up rolling gunner mechanics here. Not saying they're better than Stanshalls, just nice to have options - https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... 7#p1380197
Holy shit, he used my vid as a demonstration example! Proudest moment of my life!
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Re: Shmups

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Hey guys, Aero Fighters 2 (Neo Geo, also known as Sonic Wings) is currently half price (£3.xx) on Switch at the moment. I got it for less than two quid using reward points. It's pretty fun, nice oldskool vertical shooter, not bullet hell, but seems fun to play. Anyone else wants to grab it we could have a score battle?
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Re: Shmups

Post by Alex79 »

Ha cool, what you playing on? I've only had a quick go so far, I'm more familiar with the third game in the series.
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Re: Shmups

Post by Alex79 »

There actually are ten stages, then it loops. The stages are supposedly delivered in a random order, other than the final stage too. I've not played it enough to notice that yet. I've only tried it three times, and didn't learn about the randomisation until I was reading about the game after.

Out of interest, can you 1cc a looping game? Would you just take your score at the end of stage ten or something?
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Stanshall
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Re: Shmups

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You will see people referring to a 1-ALL or 2-ALL for games which loop.

Good game Aero Fighters 2, kind of a mix of Gunbird and Strikers 1945. The boss theme on AF3 is great, kind of naff 90s dub jungle chiptune.

https://youtu.be/f8toaCZbnz0

"Hey, you idiot, make a move or you will be finished. Show me what you g-o-o-o-o-o-t!"
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Re: Shmups

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Mine is nowhere near that yet! I discovered a neat thing though, when you collect the little points icons, the higher up the screen they are, the more valuable they are. You can get them as high as 10'000 points. I think my favorite character is the baby. I like the shot spread, but one of the girls is good to use too, not sure of her name, but she's got the Japanese flag behind her.

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I can get to stage four without losing a life, but then they all go very quick from there!
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Re: Shmups

Post by Alex79 »

That's interesting. A lot of high score competition wouldn't allow that kind of milking, but maybe its different in the shmup scene? When I used to play MAME competitions using 'official' rules, you couldn't (for example) in Ghouls and Ghosts just stand there rinsing the infinitely spawning enemies. You had to be making constant progress.
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Re: Shmups

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Alex79uk wrote: October 25th, 2019, 1:58 pm Hey guys, Aero Fighters 2 (Neo Geo, also known as Sonic Wings) is currently half price (£3.xx) on Switch at the moment. I got it for less than two quid using reward points. It's pretty fun, nice oldskool vertical shooter, not bullet hell, but seems fun to play. Anyone else wants to grab it we could have a score battle?
Thanks for the heads up!
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