Jun 30, 2011 at 8:58 AM
Join Date: Aug 20, 2006
Location:
Posts: 2857
Age: 34
Pronouns: he/him
I'll try to keep this vaguely succinct 
Once a year this other site I'm active on gets teams together for a reasonably-friendly-but-reasonably-competitive shmup tournament over on this other other site. So, after spending a couple of years learning the ropes, I thought that this year I'd try to get a team together from the CS Tribute Site! The registration thread isn't up yet, but the tournament is supposedly due to start in mid July so I don't think I should put off making this thread any longer. Here I'll try to give you a good idea what to expect - and what I'll be expecting from you.
The setup is fairly simple: teams of at least five and up to seven people play five different shooting games over the course of usually six weeks; generally these are at least a decade old, so as to be easily emulated using MAME. The top three scores from the team go toward the team score, so less-experienced players need not worry about holding their team back. To give an example of this system in action, check out these scores and results from week 1 last year.
However, there is one especially important thing you should take note of before signing up:
These games are hard.
This isn't going to be a happy-go-lucky funfest like the comic contest. These games were designed to eat coins out of wallets and are generally very unforgiving if you aren't familiar with them. Moreover, you'll be competing against a forum full of people who play these on a regular basis. There's a decent amount of wiggle room, as I'll explain shortly, but I want to avoid having people sign up who will try the first game once, hate it, and stop playing (as has oft occurred in the past).
I wasn't very good at these games during my first tourney, but I persevered, and as the weeks went on it paid off. This is doubly important, as I've found that the competition becomes a lot quieter by week 3, and by week 5 everyone has pretty much given up. The scoring system is designed to reward consistency, so a slow start does not necessarily mean a bad finish - I finished 50th during my first year! And there are plenty of better Cave Story players here than me, so I am aglow with optimism
Some games from the genre you folks around here might be familiar with include Touhou, Warning Forever, Gradius/Parodius and Guxt (!!!). The games in the actual tournament are likely to be harder, but these should give a basic idea of what to expect. Because of how team score is calculated, I'd like to get at least a fairly solid top four together (that is, me plus three others... I also have a buddy who might be interesting in signing up, which may only leave two spare slots, if that even becomes an issue >_>). I'd expect around an hour of shmooping per day from my players (provided the game is halfway decent), to give you an idea of the workload. And I'll be sure to get on your behind if I think you're slacking off, while most likely being annoyingly encouraging at all other times.
If you've got the time and patience, feel free to sign up! If you're still uncertain, you could try some out for yourself. Guxt is fine, but if you want to try an old arcade shmup I would suggest using lagless MAME to play something like Strikers 1945 II (hard-ish but simple scoring), which you can find at your local ROM outlet. To get it working, go to Options -> Directories... and select the folder you've put the game in (don't extract the archive!). Enter is the "Select key", Tab brings up the emulator menu for setting up things like the controls and autofire, Escape is quit, Shift+F7 will let you save states and F7 will load them. I recommend exuberant use of savestates for practicing and learning, but obviously they are not allowed for 'proper' scoring runs. Don't hesitate to mention other games or challenges that you've beaten either - especially other shmups! - and of course feel free to bring up any questions you have regarding the tournament/what I've said here.
In conclusion, I declare applications open for
Team CAVE DESTROY
Banner possibly incoming at some point; if for some reason someone else wants to make one, note that it must be 200x50 pixels or smaller, in accordance with Shmup Forums' rules, which you should probably also read first.
Once a year this other site I'm active on gets teams together for a reasonably-friendly-but-reasonably-competitive shmup tournament over on this other other site. So, after spending a couple of years learning the ropes, I thought that this year I'd try to get a team together from the CS Tribute Site! The registration thread isn't up yet, but the tournament is supposedly due to start in mid July so I don't think I should put off making this thread any longer. Here I'll try to give you a good idea what to expect - and what I'll be expecting from you.
The setup is fairly simple: teams of at least five and up to seven people play five different shooting games over the course of usually six weeks; generally these are at least a decade old, so as to be easily emulated using MAME. The top three scores from the team go toward the team score, so less-experienced players need not worry about holding their team back. To give an example of this system in action, check out these scores and results from week 1 last year.
However, there is one especially important thing you should take note of before signing up:
These games are hard.
This isn't going to be a happy-go-lucky funfest like the comic contest. These games were designed to eat coins out of wallets and are generally very unforgiving if you aren't familiar with them. Moreover, you'll be competing against a forum full of people who play these on a regular basis. There's a decent amount of wiggle room, as I'll explain shortly, but I want to avoid having people sign up who will try the first game once, hate it, and stop playing (as has oft occurred in the past).
I wasn't very good at these games during my first tourney, but I persevered, and as the weeks went on it paid off. This is doubly important, as I've found that the competition becomes a lot quieter by week 3, and by week 5 everyone has pretty much given up. The scoring system is designed to reward consistency, so a slow start does not necessarily mean a bad finish - I finished 50th during my first year! And there are plenty of better Cave Story players here than me, so I am aglow with optimism
Some games from the genre you folks around here might be familiar with include Touhou, Warning Forever, Gradius/Parodius and Guxt (!!!). The games in the actual tournament are likely to be harder, but these should give a basic idea of what to expect. Because of how team score is calculated, I'd like to get at least a fairly solid top four together (that is, me plus three others... I also have a buddy who might be interesting in signing up, which may only leave two spare slots, if that even becomes an issue >_>). I'd expect around an hour of shmooping per day from my players (provided the game is halfway decent), to give you an idea of the workload. And I'll be sure to get on your behind if I think you're slacking off, while most likely being annoyingly encouraging at all other times.
If you've got the time and patience, feel free to sign up! If you're still uncertain, you could try some out for yourself. Guxt is fine, but if you want to try an old arcade shmup I would suggest using lagless MAME to play something like Strikers 1945 II (hard-ish but simple scoring), which you can find at your local ROM outlet. To get it working, go to Options -> Directories... and select the folder you've put the game in (don't extract the archive!). Enter is the "Select key", Tab brings up the emulator menu for setting up things like the controls and autofire, Escape is quit, Shift+F7 will let you save states and F7 will load them. I recommend exuberant use of savestates for practicing and learning, but obviously they are not allowed for 'proper' scoring runs. Don't hesitate to mention other games or challenges that you've beaten either - especially other shmups! - and of course feel free to bring up any questions you have regarding the tournament/what I've said here.
In conclusion, I declare applications open for
Team CAVE DESTROY
Banner possibly incoming at some point; if for some reason someone else wants to make one, note that it must be 200x50 pixels or smaller, in accordance with Shmup Forums' rules, which you should probably also read first.
