STGT '11 Team Thread - Contest over, we finished 14th!

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

The scoreboard is up! Don't fret over your positions, we're a couple of days behind the curve.

And, daily tactics update! I do hope you guys are taking the time to read these, unless you want to spend twice as long figuring them out yourselves >_> I can stream again tomorrow too, if you didn't catch the first one.

-The powerup-dropping enemies appear to 'cycle' what they drop, so getting as many drops as possible will result in more bells. This can be seen against the first boss, where destroying a large number of enemies on the double-spins or when he appears/times out can result in an extra bell before the end of the stage.
-On the second stage, don't try to kill the cat ships that appear just before you go underwater. Go for the bells instead (but do make sure they're knocked back properly first). It's fairly easy to grab them all and worth a heckuva lot more points.
-I'm currently budgeting to lose three lives on stage 3, because of the absolutely enormous rank decrease it results in, and the fact that the boss doesn't really get any harder because you can only hit it straight anyway (also, the little dudes will shoot a lone bullet when they die). As long as you get the wide shot before the rocket fish appear and can shoot behind you by the time the bird wall shows up, stage 4 becomes very easy.

Provided you can swipe a good chunk of score off the birds at the start of stage 3, it's pretty easy to reach 600k, and with some extra effort a good run could pull 700k+, which as you can see by the current scoreboard should all still fetch reasonably good positions by the end of the week. Beyond that I will be extremely happy, because unless I get a lucky run I'm calling it quits there

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

Last strategy update methinks.

-Bells really are the most important thing for score, if you're still struggling to get that up. Getting a good bell grab at the start of stage 3 gives a huge boost; same deal to a smaller degree on stage 4 (especially if you manage to beat the stage 3 boss but aren't confident about the rest of stage 4). Personally I don't deliberately go after the moai boss anymore, because I can easily lose all the score I gain from it with a shitty start to stage three.
-Stage 2 is a better place than stage 3 for a tactical suicide, because stage 3 won't really give you a chance to power up in time, whereas the fish on stage 2 give a huge powerup dump. The rank drop should let you power up to full (i.e. shield) and still keep it lower than it would be normally in stage 3, although it's up to you if you'd prefer to keep the extra life as backup. Remember that all you need to do is survive to the third boss, after which it and stage 4 will be markedly easier.
-Speaking of the third boss, it appears that it will always use its direct charge attack every third motion (and then sixth, ninth etc) which makes it much easier to know when to dodge out of the way.
-Lastly, and I really cannot stress this enough, remember to practice anything you are uncertain about with savestates. The bells are sadly unreliable, but if you can get a strategy down for everything else then all you need to do is wait for that lucky run.

I will stream again when I get up tomorrow, which will most likely be slightly over half a day from now. It's important that we get any remaining problems cleared up then, so that you'll have Sunday free to fly.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

Boy am I blendered

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

Live and alive!

Edit: Also Lace is now on the team; the OP has been updated to reflect this.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

15 hours now until week 1 ends (and consequently week 2 begins). I'm going to bed now, but I'll be back probably a couple of hours before time is up. Best of luck to you all

~PROVE IT TO YOURSELF~
~AND SAY~
~I WANT~
~I WILL~
~I CAN DO A-NY-THIIING~

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 1: Gokujou Parodius

My current best is still only 377,000, hopfully I can top that today, I'm shooting for at least around 400K.
And hopefully next week's game will be one I can get a little more excited about.

Edit: 384,400

 

Week 1 is complete! Thanks to an awesome score by Cranklecut and a solid last-minute dig by Noxid, the team starts off the tournament with...
14th position!
I didn't realistically expect anything better than that, so this is an ideal platform to begin from. Judging by the scoring gaps, we're punching just a touch below the 'strong' teams, but are ahead of the generally middling ones. It'll be tough to move up the scoreboard from here, so for now it's more important that we consolidate by shaking those stragglers off our tail. Fortunately week 2 appears to be much more suited to our tastes

Rather than making a huge post cluttered up with minor strategies, I'll explain how to go about playing this puppy. There are six (!!!) weapon buttons; three for weapons and three for bombs.
Button 1 - Red vulcan - Standard shot-type weapon that gains a modest amount of spread as it powers up. Does a ton of damage if you can point-blank with it, so it's great for taking out tough lone enemies quickly, and is otherwise the best weapon to use in general if you aren't confident about staying alive.
Button 2 - Blue lightning - Shoots up to four rays that arc through enemies. Not overly strong, but this is actually its main selling point; this game gives points for causing damage, so you should always attempt to use this where reasonable to do so.
Button 3 - 'Yellow' rockets - Not especially useful for dealing with normal enemies. However, they have a niche where they do more damage than the vulcan if you're stuck at the bottom of the screen. Because they take time to travel, they can also be fired 'pre-emptively' to take out some enemies as soon as they appear.
Button 4 - Red spiral bomb - Good for survival, but doesn't do a great deal of damage.
Button 5 - Blue laser bomb - Fires three vertical blasts around the point where you use it, doing HUGE damage provided that all three hit. Downside is that you do have to aim it properly, and it doesn't provide a great deal of protection, often letting a stray bullet slip through.
Button 6 - Yellow point bomb - Appears to do about the same amount of damage as a full-hit laser, but in one hit and with a wider range. You need to be pretty much sitting on top of the enemy when you want to use it, though.

If you don't want to use them all to start with, that's fine. In particular, don't feel the need to bind them in order; my current setup is button 2 (lightning) to X, 1 to C, 5 to V, 3 to Z (pinkie finger), 6 to S and 4 to D. I've found that they all have potential important uses, so mastering what to use where will be key to reaching the later stages. Also, this game has auto-autofire, so don't turn it on.

EDIT: I am a dummypants. If you'd prefer, you can just bind the three shot keys, and then bind the bomb keys by having the matching bomb go off when another button is also pressed (e.g. ZXC, and then bomb controls are Space+Z, Space+X, Space+C). This is done by pressing both buttons while setting the controls in the menu.


Scoring
Very simple. The 'eye'-medals give 5000 points a piece, while the speedups and powerups will do so when either are maxed out. However, getting these excess -ups will also cause the rank to go haywire, so I suggest against it. The "P" signs under the continues show how powered up you are at your current shot level, but max power can be seen visibly as four arcs of lightning shot, so you can try getting that far and then avoiding the powerups. Speed level is not shown, so at the moment I'm just grabbing them until the first one gives me 5000 and then stopping >_>

There is also a bomb bonus at the end of each stage, giving 5000 points for each bomb kept in stock, in addition to the 10000 x stage no. bonus. This is nice to get (and easy in the early stages), but it is always always always better to bomb than to die, aside from a couple of very specific cases which probably won't worry any of you for a long time (of course, not-using bombs has the obvious upside of allowing them to be saved for later). And again, use lightning wherever possible!

Oh, and the final boss gives like a million points for beating him, so my target for the week is clear, especially seeing as this game has a second loop I may end up just trying to keep the rank as low as possible, because that is way more than I would lose by doing so. It's a tall order, so I don't expect any of you to have to get it, unless Yakkers can routinely loop his Raiden games.


Survival
This is a sniper shmup, so the aim in general is to lead the bullets to go where you want rather than the other way around, and to learn where enemy waves appear so they can be removed with maximum efficiency and minimum risk. You should always be moving around screen to make sure your lightning is hitting everything, switching to the heavy duty weapons when tough enemies appear. As you learn the stages and grow in confidence, you will improve naturally and learn not to panic; there is no equivalent to last week's stage 3 which remains bullshit no matter how much you play it. Bullets can also be 'sealed' in some cases by sitting close to or on top enemies, which is useful for dealing with certain targets, e.g. the tanks that appear in the opening stages.

Enemies (I think at the start of one of the stages it's pre-set) will rarely drop purple powerups, which provide the ship with a shield that allows it to take a hit without exploding. The first extend is at 500 thou, and every million points after that, so there's a fairly consistent supply. Even more rarely enemies will drop random 1-ups, or even 2-ups (good grief), and the mechanics behind this will probably be revealed as the week goes on. If it's based on rank it'll probably better to grab every powerup after all <_<


Dying
Dying will reset your bomb stock to 3 (hence why it's important not to get greedy), decrease your weapon power partially and drop you to base speed (which isn't horrible, but is markedly slower and later will often result in you spamming all your bombs in order not to die again instantly). It also causes a small decrease in rank, but not nearly enough for tactical suicides to be viable. Dying on a stage will push you back (or sometimes forward) to a checkpoint, but thankfully it's never a very large gap. However, dying on a boss will not reset the fight, unless it's the last stage. Overall, it's not an enormous setback, but bosses can easily chew through your extra lives if they aren't close to dying the first time you cark it.

We pulled through during week 1, but this time I'd like to get the entire available team on board. This game will reward you properly for spending time on it and learning it properly, so take the chance while it lasts. You should all break 1 mil without a huge deal of difficulty, and it's all uphill from there - the trick with these games is to play them until you're too bored to die anymore

The DESTROY has arrived

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Now this is definitely more of my bag.
Just a quick note to everyone - stage 3's boss is a hell of a lot easier and more predictable than the second, so don't get discouraged by the second boss.

 

Hm, this game is actually kind of fun
Lots of buttons, though you only really need three frequently. It maps pretty well to a SNES controller.
Anyway, I can't really say much about strategy since I don't know anything about video games.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

My left arm is in a sling, but I can totally play
haven't began yot

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

My left arm is in a sling, but I can totally play
haven't began yot

It's all my fault

The official results are now up (don't know what the heck I missed regarding TCACTRM), as is, finally, the dynamic scoreboard, which directly tracks the individual and team scores. It's a lot more convenient, so you can bookmark it for easy progress checking.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

I will stream at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning, which is half a day from now, Yakkers. I may show up a bit late, but I have been getting up fairly consistently around this time lately. Stages 1 through 4 will be covered, so have any questions prepared and ready to launch.

In the meantime, quickie update:
-Purple shield powerups also max out your power, and picking one up while at full power will cause it to explode into a bunch of regular powerups and medals. One appears to always drop from a generic powerup enemy near the start of stage 4 at least. However, grabbing one of these also causes the rank to fly up, to the point where it may actually be safer even without the shield, so for purposes of longevity it may just be better to let them go (which is easier said than done, because they orbit around on screen for quite a while).
-Someone at Shmups Forum mentioned that avoiding the yellow medals can also help keep rank down, but I tested it and didn't notice a change at all. I did two runs up to stage 4, one grabbing every one I could and the other grabbing none, and there was no discernible difference in bullet speed or spawn rate.
-The monkey-like midboss with the dangly arms on stage 5 will always drop a 1-up.
-Pretty much every single boss has this movement pattern where they rhythmically move toward and away from you, and their bullets become deadlier the closer they get, so be wary of their movement.

There will probably be a heavy chunk of scores clustered around 1-1.8 million, so I would lowball a score of 2 million as being reasonably competitive come week's end, which generally equates to reaching somewhere on stage 6. This is easier said than done D: Daioh is one of those shmups you really have to -learn-, so doing full runthroughs of each stage/boss repeatedly until you have them memorised pays off hugely.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Tinychat is go.

Also I have just discovered that not-powering up to full also keeps the rank way down, and so I'll give more detailed feedback on this turn of events later in the day.

This gaaaaaaame

 

Okay, I'd forgotten that I actually have things to do tomorrow, so I won't be streaming. Crankee Doodle already has a kickin' score up (he subscribes to the Ralren Work Ethic, i.e. completing anything less than half a mod in a day is an abject failure), and I'm starting to make some headway on the later stages. It's the early ones I'm struggling with now >_> Finding the stage 2 boss to be really inconsistent, but I want to get to stage 4 without bombing.

Today in game mechanics:
-Powering up only to level 2 didn't lower the rank any further, and started to really inhibit actually playing the game, so stick to level 3. Picking up bonus speedups, however, doesn't appear increase rank the way that powerups do, possibly because there are so few of them <_< If you want to be really safe it's not a big deal to keep missing them. Also, don't feel the need to have to power up to just the right amount on the first boss every time, as it's not worth scrapping runs over.
-The third boss has a safe spot! Or possibly several. See here to get an idea of how it works. Or in words: sit at the bottom of screen, tap forward when it winds up for the spray attack, then quickly move back before it reaches you but after it fires. As long as you position it right, the boss will never hit you, but it takes some practice to get the hang of. Personally I like to line it up with my bombs, like so:

This isn't the same spot as in the vid, but it works.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Streaming at midday tomorrow, half a day from now again, or an hour later than last time

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Streaming again at 11 tomorrow. We made some crazy last-minute discoveries today:

-The stage 6 boss has a safe spot in the bottom middle of the screen, much like the stage 3 boss, except that you don't even have to move! Just bomb twice at the start to remove the rotating turrets and hold down the rocket button.

There is a way to quick-kill the final boss!!!! The method has been improved since the stream ended, so I'll break it down into components:
-Firstly, autofire for button 1 must be on, to up the vulcan's power to its absolute max. However, having it like this normally will make the rank go haywire, so set it to toggle and turn it on only for the final level.
-Sit directly on the boss's head firing the vulcan and spam yellow bombs (I set these to autofire too because this is the only place I use them). Without autofire he will fall after about 7 bombs; with it he falls after 3, or 4 if you don't get it quite right. Riduckulous
-This means that as long as you have at least one spare life upon reaching stage 7, or have at least 2 bombs going into the stage on your final life, he's pretty much a guaranteed kill.
-If you enter stage 7 with near to full power, you may want to grab the purple powerup if it appears (it only has a chance to do so the first time you reach it, so you may want to grab a couple of extra powerups before the sixth boss, seeing as it's also a joke now). Avoid it at first, and get the regular powerups the enemies drop, then take it for some extra bombs and bonus points.

Lace was kind enough to provide me with a visual representation of how he broke his arm:

Spoiler

I am a horrible curse upon everything I touch


That's all the important stuff I can remember at the moment, unless Noxid wants to correct me. Tomorrow is the last chance I'll realistically have to provide any proper help - after that, I'm going for the loop clear

~I KNOW~
~I CAN, I WILL~
~FULFILL MY DREEEAAAMS~

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Eatin' brunch

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 2: Daioh

Okay so I kind of don't see the point in posting up strat information in this thread anymore, but this weeks' game doesn't appear to need it anyway. From my small amount of prior knowledge and playtime so far, I have garndered that it is both very long and not very interesting, and you'll need MAME Plus! or another newer MAME to run it. Autofire is recommended, but the aerial "charge" shot requires the button to be held down without it, so you'll need to set a custom button. In the MAME menu, go into Custom Buttons and press the number key 1 to set it to the first custom button slot, then set the regular button 1 to autofire. This will give you one button for the charge shot and one for autofire, as well as button 2 for bombs. Just remember to switch back to autofire to use the charge shot. Beyond that I'm still learning.

This playthrough could prove helpful.

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 3: 1944

I will stream tomorrow at noon (12 hours + a bit) if it's wanted, seeing as it's the last opportunity, but really you will learn more about survival by watching the youtube playthrough I posted than you will by watching me, so don't feel as though you have to wait for me. Slow-tapping is extremely effective if you can lead the bullets right, because they are almost always fired directly at you and the screen is so wide, allowing you to build up the charge shot.

In terms of scoring targets, stage 5 is a big chokepoint, as is stage 7. I personally find stage 6 a little easier, so provided you can reach stage 7 you should be hitting something in the order of 4 million and beat out a good chunk of the field. I'm going to push on and at least try to reach stage 9/6 million, which I hope should put me around where I usually finish, particularly as we're up to week 3

I should stress again that survival is far more important than anything else. You will gain far more by staying alive longer than by trying to squeeze out an extra 100 thou from the early stages, especially if you can get them down without bombing.

Also I think I've figured out how the "Shot Power Up" items (spacesuit dude on stage 4, lion on stage 7 (8?)) work: If you are below full power, they will power you up to full (?), but if you get them at full power you will receive the 100k bonus. Getting hit lowers your power, so it literally is not worth it to try and make a mad dash for them (insofar as you can 'dash' with this pathetically slow ship). You can also repeatedly suicide your side ships after you run out of bombs!

 

Re: STGT '11 Team Thread - Week 3: 1944

So uh I have just realised that picking up side ships drains your gold supply by 10 each time cashes in all your large gold blocks at once jesus christ I don't know if it's worth it at this point to try and learn to avoid getting the side ships, because having them in reserve is very useful, but I might try and do it for the stage 2 stock-in. Do as you will if you think it will be helpful (or disregard this entirely if you knew it already).

I hope you have enjoyed this entire page of me