Shmups

[ImmaculateClump]

  

4 hours ago, spatular said:

also got the 1cc on gunvein  medium difficulty, with the middle ship, ~4.2m. think i'll stick with it and try a different ship, or do more of the mission mode.

 

Yas man! Nicely done, Spatular!
That final boss is pretty intense, innit? Real heart in the mouth stuff that last pattern

 

If you can get used to the speed of the third ship, it can feel like cheat mode at times. You can drop your bombs where the enemies are going to appear and kill them before they get a chance to shoot.

 

When charging your bomb, the second beep means that you can fire it rather than dropping it. That comes in very handy during some of the boss patterns where you daren't get close to drop the bombs on them and want to stay down the bottom of the screen.

 

It's a really decent ship once you get used to it and you'll get through the bosses a lot quicker than normal. A lot of people seem to be getting their first expert clears with this ship.

[spatular]

^ thanks! Yeah that last pattern is really hard but i had enough left to bomb through it really, that max lives and bombs being set so you cant horde them makes it really tricky, i had a shield (you get a shield when collecting an extra life when your lives are full - pretty sure thats what was happening anyway) going into the fight, got hit, then collected an extra life so got another shield, think thats what allowed me to do it, although did have a life left at the end. Not sure what i think to that really, think i like to be able to 1cc stuff by hoarding lives/bombs!

 

yeah the 3rd ship seems really cool, ill definitely give the mission/caravan stage more of a go, the shortness of that gives me a chance to remember where enemies are, not sure i stand a chance at the main game my memory is really bad. 

[ImmaculateClump]

I used to think my memory was terrible, but either shmups have made it better, or I just play one enough that it'll eventually stick even if you're a goldfish.
I get the main points of the stage anyway, and shmups are usually dragging you around the screen, so if you've had a bunch of enemies on the left, chances are, the next bunch are gonna be over on the right.
I've got quick reactions (finger crossed, always feels like I'm tempting fate when I say that the older I get) that make up for my shaky memory, anyway. Like a nimble goalie, if I realise I'm going the wrong way I can quickly change course and dive the other.

 

With the 3rd ship, when in doubt, just stay near the top and keep dropping bombs left and right, and you can even just keep the button pushed down and touch the popcorn with it and do them in that way.

 

Yeah, at max lives, you get a shield if you get a 1up.
I really like how they've done the cap for lives and bombs.
There isn't much of a bonus at the end of the stage for having full lives so it means that dying isn't that big of a deal, you can always get it back and turn things around.
I think it's good that you can't just play it safe and hold onto your resources for the tricky bits, it makes you play risky and go all out and play for score all the way through the game because bombing and getting maximo puntos is the way you're gonna get those extends, and it forces you to git gud at those tricky bits instead of just bombing your way through.
Scoring=survival, which is always the best way to do it.
Now that you've got that first clear out of the way, you'll be way more confident and the next one will feel less about luck.

I feel pretty confident with all the boss pattern on intense now, except maybe that last one.

[mwaawm]

Played a bit more anger force today. 

 

Is there no remapping option for the buttons? The default control scheme leaves the x button unused and uses the left shoulder button for one of your specials. Would much rather have that mapped to x so that my left is only concerned with movement of the ship and all attacks are on the right. 

[spatular]

9 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

I used to think my memory was terrible, but either shmups have made it better, or I just play one enough that it'll eventually stick even if you're a goldfish.
I get the main points of the stage anyway, and shmups are usually dragging you around the screen, so if you've had a bunch of enemies on the left, chances are, the next bunch are gonna be over on the right.
I've got quick reactions (finger crossed, always feels like I'm tempting fate when I say that the older I get) that make up for my shaky memory, anyway. Like a nimble goalie, if I realise I'm going the wrong way I can quickly change course and dive the other.

 

With the 3rd ship, when in doubt, just stay near the top and keep dropping bombs left and right, and you can even just keep the button pushed down and touch the popcorn with it and do them in that way.

 

Yeah, at max lives, you get a shield if you get a 1up.
I really like how they've done the cap for lives and bombs.
There isn't much of a bonus at the end of the stage for having full lives so it means that dying isn't that big of a deal, you can always get it back and turn things around.
I think it's good that you can't just play it safe and hold onto your resources for the tricky bits, it makes you play risky and go all out and play for score all the way through the game because bombing and getting maximo puntos is the way you're gonna get those extends, and it forces you to git gud at those tricky bits instead of just bombing your way through.
Scoring=survival, which is always the best way to do it.

 

yeah definitely remember stuff over time but just a very long time for me!

 

i'm pretty much the opposite thinking, not a fan of the "git gud" stuff, i can see how games with a high skill ceiling like rhythm games or shmups might get some more fans if people were forced to play more harder modes or something but i don't think it's worth it locking people out of the game/gatekeeping or whatever. if the game is good people will play it more and maybe get better at it because they want to. trying to force people to play "the right way" i just don't like it, let them play however they want, maybe because i don't always engage with scoring systems in a big way often because they increase the memorisation, which is part of why i'm playing bullet hell games in the first place - because they require less memorisation, i'm having fun sitting at the bottom of the screen dodging stuff, leave me alone 😛 and different people are good at different things and this is just a hobby for fun yeah i'm just not keen on it. this game isn't too bad for it mind, it has an easy mode after all.

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, it's a fair comment. It's a bit regimented in how it wants you to play compared to other games.

 

I can see what you mean about gatekeeping and locking people out, though I think we'd agree it wasn't the intention.
It might have been a good idea to have a separate novice mode without the life cap, and then newer players could move onto easy after that.

 

The fact that you're used to credit feeding for practise and this game just straight up took that away from you. That's not a good start, and then the next best thing, resource hoarding, so you could get through and get a feel for the game before knuckling down and going for the clear, you couldn't even do that!

 

In it's defence I think the game does a very good job of remaining accessible while funnelling players into the mindset that scoring=survival, and that teaching yourself to get past the tricky bits can be really rewarding.
You get an extend every 600,000, so if you score 6 million, that's 10 extends!
4 million would be six extends.
I mean, that's way more than a lot of games give you.

 

The scoring is very simple, just bomb when there are lots of enemies on the screen, or bomb boss parts, or when they're about to run out of health and scoop up the stars. I think they've made it as intuitive as possible and there's no real memorisation involved for the scoring until you really start trying to push for it, finding the best places in the stages to use bombs, suiciding for extra bombs and so on.

 

It was interesting reading around the net people complaining about the stage 3 boss being a difficulty spike and how they were having trouble. Then later, the same people were saying what a highlight that boss was and that they enjoyed how unique it was.

 

10 hours ago, mwaawm said:

Is there no remapping option for the buttons?

 

On pc? I can't remember. You could use the controller config in steam to change controls if it doesn't.

Looks like you can reconfigure the controls in game judging by this vid - https://youtu.be/N17WllOAm5k?t=31

 

[mwaawm]

15 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

 

 

On pc? I can't remember. You could use the controller config in steam to change controls if it doesn't.

Looks like you can reconfigure the controls in game judging by this vid - https://youtu.be/N17WllOAm5k?t=31

 

 

 

Sorry should have said on switch.... the single joycon control configuration does use the x would be perfect if that could be the default for standard/ dual joycon controls.

 

 

On the reaction / memorisation discussion I thought I didn't like bullet hell games because they invoked too much memorising of the patterns and where was 'safe' and wondered why i couldn't have the simplicity of r-type which my recollection was of the first 3 levels at least being more about enemies shooting at you and you reacting to evade their shots and actively take them down. Also interestingly I've recently switched to using the players with more focused attack patterns as opposed to those with more of a wide bullet spread attack which again I think means more active planning and aiming is needed to eliminate enemies. 

 

Someone here pointed out that as I'd stated I liked guwange, dragon blaze and progear which were all protobullet hell shooters i should give some other bullet hell games a try.  Did so with mushi himesama and anger force  and really like both. They are different and currently depends on the mood as to which I'll play.  Anger force is currently being played and I feel its got a good mix of reacting to bullets directed at you and memorising bullet patterns.  Mushi I enjoyed but also struggled with till I tried the harder settings and found them actually easier as you are gifted with much more powerful attacks from the start to counter the increased level of bullets and enemies. 

 

I havn't played many others but from YouTube vids my impression is if a game veers too much into bullet hell mechanics it ends up looking like a rhythm action game to me as opposed to a "proper' shooter I'd want to play. 

[spatular]

8 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

You get an extend every 600,000, so if you score 6 million, that's 10 extends!
4 million would be six extends.
I mean, that's way more than a lot of games give you.

 

but you only get those extra lives if you die at regular intervals (and those scores are 1cc scores, you're in the top 10! so maybe not representative, but good skillz  )..  yeah i think we agree that the game is really really good just disagree on the stuff around the game, while i was moaning about that other stuff, the checkpoints and lack of continues are a much bigger problem for me. and while i've spent a lot of time moaning about it it's between gunvein and neon white for my favorite game of the year.

 

what i'd be interested to know is does this help or hinder people getting into these games, we can argue/disagree about it but i don't think these things are aimed at us so much, but more at players who might buy a shmup and play it through once or twice using continues and then quit, they may well enjoy it but they won't stick at it (i do this too because this is how i play fighting/action games) so yeah i wonder if the people it's aimed at will like it or not.

 

4 hours ago, mwaawm said:

Mushi I enjoyed but also struggled with till I tried the harder settings and found them actually easier as you are gifted with much more powerful attacks from the start to counter the increased level of bullets and enemies. 

yeah i prefer the harder modes in mushi but maybe for different reasons, the original mode is more like a cross between a cave and psikyo game so has much faster bullets, maniac mode is more like what i would call an normal/proper bullet hell game with slower bullets. i wouldn't classify any psikyo game as bullet hell personally because the bullets are too fast. but yeah i can see why people do, there are a lot of bullets to be fair. and yeah it's interesting i think a lot of people share your view that bullet hell games  require too much memorisation - and i see it the other way round, i don't know if this would be a reason but maybe a lot of youtube videos show high level play for high scores which usually involves much more memorisation, if you see me play hugging the bottom of the screen with more time to pick a path through the bullets maybe it would look more welcoming i don't know.

[ImmaculateClump]

3 hours ago, spatular said:

but you only get those extra lives if you die at regular intervals

 

Yeah, that's where the life cap kicks in. You do get a shield though. You can make lots of mistakes, is what I was getting at, but you're right, you're kind of punished for not making mistakes if you get an extra life and you've got a full stock.
Shields don't stack so if you already have one, you just get points. At that stage, you're better off suiciding (good luck with those hitboxes and that shield!) and grabbing the life so you've still got a full stock of lives, AND you get two free bombs which you can use to pump your score up further and get more lives.

 

You have to see the life stock as a safety net rather than a resource that you can hoard.
You want to keep your safety net in good nick, but once you get cocky, you can start to use it as another means for scoring.

 

It's there for balance reasons, making sure you can't just cheese through certain portions of the game, especially the end.

Rewarding people for lives remaining at the end can lead to scoring runs being worthless once you've made one mistake, the way it is now I consider the best design for the game, but I can totally understand someone not liking it.

 

3 hours ago, spatular said:

it's between gunvein and neon white for my favorite game of the year.

 

Did you not play Like Dreamer? That's amazing.

 

 

3 hours ago, spatular said:

what i'd be interested to know is does this help or hinder people getting into these games

 

Yeah, that's a fair point, I've seen a few newbies singing it's praises, but like you say, most of the people in the dark shmup corners of the internet are shmup folk so you're not gonna get a good feel for the general consensus from newer players there.

 

3 hours ago, spatular said:

a lot of youtube videos show high level play for high scores which usually involves much more memorisation, if you see me play hugging the bottom of the screen with more time to pick a path through the bullets maybe it would look more welcoming i don't know.

 

Yeah, that's definitely it! When you watch some mad-lad like Jaimers who's stuck to the top of the screen positioning himself where the enemies are gonna be, you're like "well this is just all rote memorisation!", if you watch someone who isn't a cyborg playing, you'll see that bullet hell gives you way more time to react and improvise than old school games do.
There are loads of bullet hell games, especially doujin games, that are made to be ad-libbed, designed to be easy so that you can clear them blind, and then the difficulty comes from exploiting the scoring system and pushing things as hard as you can.

There are loads of games I could recommend that are really fun easy games to play for survival if you're on pc. These games even have easy modes that make it even more chill and fun.

[Jamie John]

I've been playing that thar Mushihimesama on Switch on and off all day, in between bouts of coughing, sneezing and generally man-fluing all over the place, and it's been great. Admittedly, I'm playing on the novice difficulty and the 'Original' mode, but this is the longest length of time I've played a shmup before; I didn't really understand Ikaruga, Danmaku Unlimited 3 or Sine Mora, although I loved Geometry Wars on the 360, so maybe that counts. And Assault Android Cactus, come to think of it...

 

Anyway, I'm going to try to clear novice mode without using a continue (I believe this is what the kids call "1cc-ing" the game).

 

I will say, however, that for someone, like me, who doesn't really understand the genre at all, Mushihimesama does a pretty crap job of explaining how you should actually play it. I still don't really know what a lot of the terminology means, what all the buttons do, or what the differences between the various modes are; I've just stuck it on easy and gone for what looks to be the most basic settings. Finding beginner guides online that are easy to understand has been a challenge, too. I've figured out that the different classes of bug ship you choose at the start are more or less effective depending on how far away you are from the enemies (I've gone for the S-class one, which shoots in a straight line), and that pressing B instead of X (with Switch controls) slows you down and shows your hit box, which is useful when it all gets a bit hectic, but that's about it. The slowdown on the Switch when the screen fills with bullets is actually helpful, however (unless this is by design and not just a performance issue).

 

Does anyone have any hot tips for me? Beyond "Don't get hit", I mean.

[ImmaculateClump]

5 hours ago, spatular said:

you're in the top 10

 

Top three now! Rock on, Tommy!

 

 

1 hour ago, Jamie John said:

The slowdown on the Switch when the screen fills with bullets is actually helpful, however (unless this is by design and not just a performance issue).

 

Yeah, it's meant to be there. That's affectionately known as "cave time". It was originally a happy coincidence when the games were running on old arcade hardware.
Eventually, with too many bullets on screen the game would start to slow down.

In their later games, they actually programmed this in as players were used to the feeling of when things got ultra tricky, they'd enter a sort of bullet-time state of consciousness where everything was slowing down, making it easier to dodge the bullets.

 

That focus button that slows you down and shows your hitbox is your friend, especially with the ship you've chosen, which is the fastest ship.
When you're doing big sweeping dodges across the whole screen, you can just use autofire, but if you need to precisely dodge in between lots of bullets, hold that focus button down.

 

There's a hidden extend (extra life) on this boss.
You have to shoot both of his arms off first, and then shoot the head and it'll pop out.
Once his arms are off, he'll start firing a pattern that's quite hard to dodge, but it's worth going for if you're feeling brave.

 

 

Try the 1.5 novice mode as well. Go with the left weapon choice rather than "max" on the right.

The 1.5 mode is a really good in. It's a lot more lenient and slowdown triggers a lot more.

 

The scoring is far simpler, it's more about playing aggressively and getting in nice and close and point blanking the enemies and collecting the amber that spills out of them, and as you play harder for score, the rank rises and the bullets get faster.

To account for the fact that you're suppose to be getting right up close to the baddies, they make the patterns easier.

 

So if you hang back and just go for the clear, the rank will stay low and you'll have a much easier time of it.

Really fun mode, I think I like that one best and it's a great way of learning the stages and boss patterns before going for a normal clear.

 

Yeah assault android cactus is great fun! There's a steam sale on at the minute, you can get that game for less than 4 quid. Worth the price of admission for the endless mode alone. Was my favourite twin stick until nex machina came along.

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/250110/Assault_Android_Cactus/

[Jamie John]

Cheers @ImmaculateClump!

[spatular]

2 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

 

Did you not play Like Dreamer? That's amazing.

nice work on the top 3 spot

i saw your recommendation so its on my list of stuff to get on steam but not been playing shmups as much this year so not got round to it yet, tbh the err “graphics” are a little offputting too.

[ImmaculateClump]

Haha, yeah.
You can turn on gadgets that cover up the baps, and the other characters aren't as dodgy.

 

 

You can probably turn off the backgrounds as well, I didn't think to check.
Don't let that put you off when you come to giving it a go. The game is amazing.

 

They're bringing their previous game, cosmodreamer to switch soon, so hopefully this will end up on there as well eventually.

You can preorder it on the japanese eshop. Coming december 15th

 

https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000058438.html

[ImmaculateClump]

Beat my score on gunvein intense the other night. I really like the blue ship for scoring. I'm confident enough to try suiciding now.

 

 

I played again later on but after the first stage, I totally forgot about killing myself, but still got a decent score, so I reckon I can definitely go higher.

 

 

A2 Zygon coming December 1st. I enjoyed the demo for that.

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910490/A2_Zygon/

 

 

Everyone pumped for Akai Katana on the 14th/15th?

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2076220/Akai_Katana_Shin/

 

 

edit: Woohoo! Second place! I can definitely push that a bit more I reckon. The guy at the top has got nearly a million though.

 

[Sel Feena]

News seems to have dried up regarding the 2 new Aleste games? I know Senjin Aleste (sp?) was supposed to be arcade-only but I don’t want to believe it’ll never get a console port. And last I heard of Aleste Branch, I thought it was targeting Q1 this year!

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, not heard anything for a long time.
They've got one of their live streams coming around christmas so maybe we'll get an update then.

 

Quote

The M2 YouTube channel has over 5000 subscribers. thank you! I look forward to working with you

In fact, we are slowly preparing for the "M2STG Live Broadcast" around Christmas. If you are interested, channel notification Please turn it on!

 

https://www.youtube.com/@M2game/streams

[ImmaculateClump]

This is good fun! It's free.

Stix STG - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2207600/Strix_STG/

Only two stages at the minute. I think the idea is to kill enemies as quickly as possible, or there's proximity scoring, I'm not sure. Just play aggressively anyway.

Here's a score to beat.

 

 

Not sure why, but I really love those blue cog things you pick up.

 

A2 Zygon is out now. £4.49 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910490/A2_Zygon/

[sid]

Gunvein is out on steam and it’s very, very good 👍 

[Jamie John]

Motherfucker. Got to the last boss on Mushihimesama (novice mode) with one life left and no continues and the bastard got me with a quarter of his health left. I still had two bombs left, too 🤬

 

Next time...

[Jamie John]

2 hours ago, sid said:

Gunvein is out on steam and it’s very, very good 👍 

 

I've just been reading the Eurogamer review of that. Certainly looks good! I might wait for the Switch version for the OLED, if it runs well.

 

Speaking of the Switch OLED, does anyone have one of those knock-off Flip Grips that fit it which they'd recommend? The thing that lets you play vertically. There are a couple on Etsy, but they all look like 3D printed rubbish. Not that I'll notice that much when I'm actually playing, of course.

[sid]

It’s ace on pc horizontal they’ve got a cool zoom effect happening on the borders 👌

 

but it really is special , and very accessible 

[ImmaculateClump]

10 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Got to the last boss on Mushihimesama (novice mode) with one life left and no continues and the bastard got me with a quarter of his health left. I still had two bombs left, too 🤬

 

Aw man. Dying with a bomb in stock never gets any easier.
You're almost there anyway.

 

Yeah, the way Gunvein fills the sides of the screen is cool. I usually turn things like that off because I find them distracting, but didn't feel the need with this one.

Sid is right. Gunvein is immense. Jostling with Like Dreamer for game of the year for me.

[spatular]

On 27/11/2022 at 20:29, Jamie John said:

Does anyone have any hot tips for me? Beyond "Don't get hit", I mean.

 

bit late sorry, been meaning to try and find this, it's a nice tutorial/introduction to bullet hell games, might need to skip ahead a bit where the guy playing takes a while to do one of them at least, to be fair they aren't easy

 

also on gunvein background effect - turn that off for a performance boost if you need it, i tried it on a mini pc and it was running really badly with that background effect on, turning it off made it playable but it still stuttered occasionally so i've been playing it on the big pc anyway. 

 

[PikaStu]

21 hours ago, Jamie John said:

 

Speaking of the Switch OLED, does anyone have one of those knock-off Flip Grips that fit it which they'd recommend? The thing that lets you play vertically. There are a couple on Etsy, but they all look like 3D printed rubbish. Not that I'll notice that much when I'm actually playing, of course.

Apparently they do fit, it’s just a tiny bit tighter than with a regular switch. Not tried it myself though…
 

 

[Jamie John]

1 hour ago, PikaStu said:

Apparently they do fit, it’s just a tiny bit tighter than with a regular switch. Not tried it myself though…
 

 

 Oh, really? It says that don't fit on the official website.

[PikaStu]

R/shmups Reddit, there’s a few folk saying it fits snug, but there’s no “click”. 
I see folk sell 3d printed ones specifically for the oled model on Etsy. 
 

 

[ImmaculateClump]

15 hours ago, spatular said:

the guy playing takes a while to do one of them at least, to be fair they aren't easy

 

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, that bullet streaming bit took me longer than it should have.
I didn't notice that it tells you you're invincible! That would have made it a lot easier

 

I think it's possibly a great tutorial if you're new and it's not something you already do without thinking, because if you do, you kind of have to unlearn the way you've always done it in order to make the bullets keep hitting the target, if that makes sense.

 

Usually you're microtapping as slow as possible, trying to let the bullets come as close as possible so you've got more screen real estate to work with before you have to do your cut back, but if I'd read the god damn text like a good boy and noticed I was invincible that wouldn't have been an issue I came to shmup, not read! Cool kids don't read.

 

I know some you switch lads like your physicals. There's a double pack of dezatopia and mecha ritz up for preorder here - https://www.strictlylimitedgames.com/en-gb/collections/dezatopia-mecha-ritz

[spatular]

9 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

 

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, that bullet streaming bit took me longer than it should have.

 

yeah same here

 

bit OT but wondered what you use to record gameplay on pc?

 

i'm a sucker for physical versions of games i like so i'll probably order that mecha ritz. edit - glad i looked now they're selling out fast which i wouldn't have expected.

[ImmaculateClump]

2 hours ago, spatular said:

bit OT but wondered what you use to record gameplay on pc?

 

I just use shadowplay. My videos aren't the best, they can be a little stuttery at times, but it does the job for capturing 1cc's. If you have an nvidia gpu and it's not donkeys years old it should have that feature.

They have a chip on the gpu that does all the heavy lifting with the encoding. You don't get any extra input lag and it doesn't really hurt performance.

 

You can check if your card has an nvenc chip here - https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

 

You have to install geoforce experience, and make an account (I know!) to use it, but it's worth it - https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/geforce-experience/download/

 

I find these settings to be good enough for shmups and it keeps the file sizes down.

 

 

If you're going to be uploading to youtube, you can just go ahead and chuck it up there, but you might want to re-encode first to get a much better quality on youtube.

When they re-encode your video, they don't use a lot of bitrate for 720p videos and they really butcher the quality, so you can re-encode a video at a higher resolution before uploading if you like with xmedia recode. 2560x1440 is good enough, that'll trick youtube into re-encoding your video with a much higher bitrate and you'll lose less quality - https://www.xmedia-recode.de/en/download.php

 

These settings will give you more or less the same size as your original capture so it doesn't take ages to upload.

 

 

In the audio tab, just choose to copy the audio stream rather than re-encoding it, then change the resolution in the filters tab.

 

 

Then click "add to queue" and then "encode".