Yesterday's stream re-done. I forgot to turn on my system sound again, and also forgot to show a trick at the second boss (it's safe to fly straight up and sit on top of him until the first set of lasers fire - after they miss you, move straight down to the bottom again). Also, you will need at least two speed levels to do the crystal trick, because otherwise they will slow you down so much you won't be able to move.
There are two playing days left for all of you, so it's time to get stuck into playing if you have yet to do so. 400-500k is looking as though it'll still give a reasonable position come the end of the week; anything beyond that will be muchly appreciated
EDIT: Oh, and voting for next week has started. There's a (too high) possibility that we may have to play another Parodius-like game called Salamander 2, so if it does get chosen I apologise in advance
15.5 hours-ish until the week is over. So far, I have yet to hear anything from Wedge or Hate9, but the rest of you appear to be on-track for some good results. See you in the morning!
Okay, before I subject everybody to more Konami mediocrity, it's time for some feel good team results!
Team position: 16th this week, 21st overall (+5)
DavidThink: 31st this week, 29th overall (+11)
Professor Dave: 90th this week, 81st overall (+24)
Davegoose: 93rd this week, 114th overall (+50)
DavidTiger: 113th this week, 137th overall (+39)
Dave2403: Forgot to sumbit
Wedge of Dave: Lost at sea
Dave9: I still don't even know
This was a great effort from everyone who played, and we shall continue to climb as other teams fall by the wayside. Thanks you guys
Now, for the suffering Here's what we'll be dealing with. Several people have already mentioned problems with the game not running at full speed (you can see your game speed by pressing F11), in addition to savestate problems, so if you have trouble running the game please let me know immediately. Also, you will need autofire this week. From what I can see, MAME freezes when trying to load a savestate during startup, but will load okay as long as you load from a credit. If you find it too frustrating to get working, there's a Playstation port that may be acceptable to use instead.
Superplay:
-Removed-
The game looks piss easy for the first four stages, but turns to bullshit as soon as stage 5 starts. There are no checkpoints, at least. Most extra score will come from milking the bosses for as long as possible, which this video doesn't show. If you're going to CaveCon, please get into playing early before preparation starts eating up too much of your time. I'll stream tomorrow when I usually do, and follow it up with another info dump. Actually on second thought I'll just make a post, I haven't played enough to stream anything of use.
EDIT: Oh uh apparently button 2 is a charge shot that fires off the options. You have to pick them up again afterwards, but it's still useful. It may be more appropriate to watch this video instead:
SEBTi has informed me that you do in fact need the konamigx bios, which I'll give to you here. I'll edit this post soonish with game info so don't forget to check back!
Playing Tips
First of all, use the player 2 ship; it appears to have the ability to spawn powerups from the first boss's projectiles and may also keep rank slightly lower. This can easily be done by mapping the player 2 controls the same as player 1's, putting in a credit and pressing the player 2 start button. Second, using the option charge attack regularly appears to be a key element to scoring in this game. There are two types of options, full-sized ones and option "seeds" (?). An option seed will orbit your ship and fire on its own, and picking up two option seeds forms a full option, so it's only ever possible to have one at once. Every option used in a charge attack (as you can choose how many you want to fire at once) will downgrade into an option seed after being fired (so firing off a full four and then picking up the remains will leave you with two). A charge attack can only be used with an option seed if that's all you have left, in which case it produce a radial shielding attack that destroys bullets and can be somewhat useful as a last resort.
The 'trick' is that when your ship has no options, enemies will drop them more commonly, so firing off all your options before a powerup wave comes will (sometimes) get you more of them, in addition to slightly more points from item pickups in total. At the level we'll be playing at, this is only really worth it in a couple of places (like near the end of stage 1). The order powerups appear in can also be manipulated by the order individual enemies are killed in but screw that. The charge shot is better used in areas where hitting things with the main shot is too awkward, like stage 3.
Like last week, there are three types of weapon: Laser, twin, and ripple. The basic gist from left to right is more power -> more spread, but twin appears to be the best overall (note that it's not likely to appear before stage 2), because it has much better coverage than the laser but doesn't require getting close to enemies to do high damage like ripple does. Picking up the same weapon again will give you a temporary boost to its power, while picking up missiles will switch them between single and double fire (which is less helpful because you'll probably want to stick with double). I suggest picking up one speedup less than what you think you can handle, because if you're at that speed and then pick up another one you'll be screwed. Personally, I stick with two speedups. There's also a shield powerup that appears at random, but it's not that useful because it has a larger hitbox than your ship and so gets destroyed very easily.
Dying seriously lowers rank and lets you pick up your options again, but also leaves you with no speed, which can ruin your credit if it happens somewhere without any powerups (like the end of stage 2). It may end up being better to suicide than to risk dying in a poor spot.
Scoring
Aside from destroying enemies and powerups, the bulk of scoring comes from milking. As seen in the superplay, it's possible to destroy the large brain that appears on stage 1 for 100k points, but it's a pain in the arse to try and do because after it moves back far enough it stops taking damage. Failing that, it gives shot points, so try to shoot it as much as possible, both there and when it appears before the boss. Scoring on said boss involves little more than destroying as many of the snake things as you can. Both of these tricks are demonstrated in the video above.
It also demonstrates how best to milk the stage 3 boss, but it's rather tricky. A simpler way is to sit on one of the cell spawners instead of trying to cover both, which will still give plenty of points. There aren't many scoring options on stages 2 or 4.
Targets
Having played it now, I can say that it's not quite as simple as the first four stages being really easy, and stage 5 isn't nearly as hard after a death either. The first extend is at 200k, so I guess that's as good a starting target as any. You should reach that during the stage 3 boss if you milk it and the first reasonably well. It's hard to tell what will be a good target come the end of the week, maybe like 400k? If there's one upside to playing a shitty game, it's that nobody else will want to play it either
Older versions of MAME will run this game better than new ones, so if you can't run it at full speed in MAME Plus I suggest trying ThunderMAME. There may be further issues getting older versions like that to work on newer OS's, in which case you may end up having to run it in compatibility mode or something You're probably sick of hearing this by now but again, let me know if you're still having trouble getting it working or otherwise need assistance.
Oh right, um, stream tomorrow ._. I've now developed some useful strategies, and even made it almost to the end of loop 1 without trying very hard. Also, here are the official results from last week, confirming what I posted earlier.
I have now figured the hell out of the stage 1 miniboss trick, in addition to another one on stage 4 that works as follows:
-The large ships that appear near the start have two optional destructible parts in addition to the main body, which are the tail section and the thrusters
-If only the main part of the first and second ones that appear are destroyed, a third one will appear
-This time, if the optional parts are destroyed before the main body, a second 100k point bonus will be awarded!
I tried twice tonight to record some examples of me doing these, but the first time my microphone had muted itself for some reason and the second time livestream kept failing to transcode it, so I'm going to have to do my best to explain these in written form. The first trick works like so:
I have discovered that it is possible to destroy the brain with only one option and any weapon! So far, it was though to require two options, or one option with twin shot. The important part with non-twin is to get the options very close or inside the brain, so that the missiles are spawned at the full autofire rate. However, the ship itself also drops missiles, so provided you sit very close to it near the back of the top part, you will still be able to drop missiles quickly enough to get the bonus kill!
Still, having two options makes it easier, and the most consistent way I've found to get them is to fire off the first one as soon as you've destroyed the groups that drop the L and R powerups. Let the option seed drift, and then the next powerup ship that appears in the upper half will drop another full option. Immediately grab it and fire it off (leaving you again with no options) and the final ship should hopefully drop a third. Grab it and the two option seeds you fired and you'll have two options before the midboss.
And the stage 4 trick:
Move over to the right side of the screen as the first ship appears and kill it with falling missiles, well clear of the other damageable parts. Now, for the second ship, you will need twin missiles (so you can fire upwards); there will always be one and possibly two missile powerups that will appear before it, so you will have a chance to switch. Much the same as the first, shoot it with missiles from underneath from a safe place, and then remain there to destroy the next wave of powerup enemies that come. (Alternately, you can use the strategy shown in the superplay video above and move your options into place before they appear.) Now, if you've done this correctly, the third ship will appear. You will need to move back quickly, preferably without shooting, because you want to damage the main body as little as possible. Carefully target the tail fain and thrusters, then hammer the main body for that second bonus.
I really hope these explanations are clear enough, and I'll stream tomorrow at the normal time to show them off properly anyway. I suggest practicing both of these with savestates until you get the hang of them, especially the second, because they're worth a lot of points in total and aren't really that hard. I'd also like to see a couple of scores posted as well, before everyone gets distracted by Terraria/TF2/CaveCon/a cat or something.
I skipped the stream today because I didn't really have anything to add at the time, so now I have made a final empty stream showing stages 5 and 6, as well as a re-do of the stage 2 boss and stage 3. Another thing I have noticed that I didn't mention there is that if you have an option seed upon ending a stage, it will be converted to a full option for the start of the next one.
The dynamic scoreboard has received its first update this week, and I have to say 400k is looking pretty damn good for the end of the week, especially considering it's not particularly hard to get. More than that will, of course, be excellent It has also come to my attention that some of you aren't using versions of MAME that have autofire; if this is the case I seriously suggest switching to one that does because you are making things harder for yourself and your wrist than they need to be (not to mention making the brain kill trick basically impossible).
Next week was announced late, but it was only natural that Cave week would be happening during CaveCon. It won't take up the whole week, but nevertheless I'll be relying heavily on the non-goers while the others are busy. Still have my fingers crossed for ESPGaluda, it ain't gonna be pretty otherwise
I'm really sorry about this, but I don't think I'll be able to do this after all, a lot of stuff is coming up, AND my family's going camping again soon, I might be able to play eventually, but I'll have to quit.
Well thanks for thanks for letting me know, at any rate. For everyone else, here's a useful image I forgot to post yesterday showing where to shoot the ships on stage 4:
One day and four hours left. Noxid has posted a 500,000+ score, are you gonna let him steal all the glory and babes?
Time for another weekly team report, and I'm proud to say that one will be our best so far/ever! By my count, we have finished an excellent 11th overall this week, pushing us up another two positions to 19th. In addition to that, literally everyone who played this week reached a new personal best individual placing. Week 3 has always been a good one for the team I'm in, but I definitely wasn't expecting this. Looks like playing a game nobody could be bothered learning to score in properly wasn't so bad after all Thank you everyone, it means a lot.
Luck continues to go our way, with ESPGaluda getting voted in this week. While it was the most newbie-friendly pick, it's still going to require a good deal of understand and practice in order to get the hang of. You will need a fairly new version of MAME to run it (MAME Plus! should be fine) and it doesn't need autofire. Here is what I hope is the right version of the rom, along with another bios you may need. I'll try to outline the basics of the game in this post, before we start worrying about scoring:
Controls
Button 1: Tap for regular fire, hold it down for focussed fire + slightly slowed movement speed.
Button 2: Switch to 'Kakusei mode', which is the core mechanic of this game. Put simply, it slows down bullets (turning them from blue to pink) and lets them be cancelled for points. Knowing how to use it properly is essential to both scoring and survival. More detail below.
Button 3: Triggers the Guard Barrier, this game's version of a bomb. Tapping it one will fire a small beam and use a little energy, while holding it down will make it grow stronger and larger.
Resources
Gems: The key scoring resource. They are dropped by fallen enemies in varying amounts, based on several factors. These are used up slowly while in Kakusei mode and when bullets are cancelled. If you run out of gems while in Kakusei mode, you will enter into Kakusei overmode, which makes all bullets turn red and move much faster than normal (as well as preventing the cancelling of bullets for points). Up to 500 of these can be held.
Gold: Contributes to score based on value and may also influence rank. Bullets cancelled while in Kakusei mode turn into gold. it's also dropped by enemies in place of gems while in overmode. You cannot really use gold in any way, so it's more an indicator of how well you're doing at any given time. The maximum gold value is 1000.
Energy: The resource used by the Guard Barrier, shown as a bar at the bottom of screen. Uses up a minimum of 1/4 each use, after which it will deplete slowly if the button continues to be held down. As a result, it's generally more efficient to use a larger bomb than a smaller one.
Lives/Dying: Shown under your score. You start with three hearts, with extends at 4 and 14 million and a hidden one on stage 3, giving up to six in total. Note, however, that if you lose your last heart you will die, as opposed to most games which give you one more chance. Dying halves your gold but resets your gems to 250 and refills your energy bar. It also resets your overmode level; more on that in a moment.
Power Ups: It takes quite a while to power up to full, at which point these will give a small 1000-point bonus. Staying powered up is very helpful, so it also ties into survival.
Energy Refills: There are three of these in the game, on stages 3, 5-1 and 5-2, which refill half of the energy bar apiece (or give 10000 if it's still full).
Character Selection
There are two gender-switching winged options: Ageha (straight shot) and Tateha (spread shot). Ageha is generally easier to use because he's faster and still has plenty of spread with his main shot, so I suggest using him to begin with. If you find that speed isn't a problem but killing things efficiently is, it might be worth switching to Tateha.
Playing Tips
The basic way scoring works in this game is collect gems -> wait until you get to a part with lots of bullets on screen -> switch to Kakusei mode and destroy the enemies to cancel their bullets for big multipliers -> switch back before or when you run out and repeat. The bullet multiplier you will see appear maxes out at 100. It can be efficient to go for one big cancel at a time and keep it there, but there is another trick that can be abused, that being that the final enemy you destroy can only bring you down to 0 gems, making it possible to get a lot for the price of a few.
Kakusei overmode has one benefit, which is that staying in it will raise its level (shown by the ring surrounding the character in this mode). Doing so will make more gems drop in regular mode, allowing for more scoring opportunities. The other way to get more is to destroy enemies while they're near the top of the screen.
In addition to scoring, Kakusei mode can also be used for survival by slowing down tough patterns, although it's probably always better to use the Guard Barrier first because running out of gems = bad. Getting hit while in either Kakusei mode will fire off a minimum-strength energy burst automatically, but it will cost half a bar instead of a quarter (or whatever's left).
The best way to get an idea of how this all works is to watch it in action:
All in all, this game gives you a lot of resources, isn't too hard and isn't too punishing on death, so after you wrap your head around the scoring you should find this easier to make progress in than, say, Strikers. It also has some kickin' rad tunes to help keep up the enthusiasm Planning out where you're going to cancel on each stage is very important, as is knowing what enemies and patterns are going to come, because it's difficult to get back into a rhythm after dying. I will surely be streaming again tomorrow, to show off some good cancel spots on the first few stages. See you there!
Today's stream. My apologies for the frame dropping, I had no idea it was that bad because the game was running fine while streaming unlike last week I'll try to figure out a way to improve the quality. In the meantime, your first target for this week is 10 million/stage 4, which may seem daunting but should be manageable after some good practice/planning. Speak up if you find the stream video inadequate for helping to achieve that target.
Tomorrow will be my last chance to do another meaningful stream, so that's when I'll do it. I've planned out the whole game fairly solidly now, I just keep screwing up on execution instead
So uh I've decided not to do an empty stream because I'm kind of sucking this week. The mild but annoying cold I've had since last week started seems to have gotten worse over the last couple of days and my focus is totally shot. If you want me to cover anything, you're seriously going to have to specifically tell me this time, because otherwise I'm not going to flail around uselessly for an hour. That also goes for all of you coming back from CaveCon, though if you're too tired to play this week I'll understand.
Today (well, still tomorrow for me) is the last day before this week is over. The final week is going to be a doujin/indie week, featuring Mystic Square (a Touhou game) Super Star Shooter (a Blade Buster-like game) and Cho Ren Sha 68k (what I'm hoping will win, but thankfully there are no really bad choices this time). As for targets... the glut of scores are going to be in the 10-20 million range, so the aim for those of you playing this week is to get as high above 10 million as you can. I'm finally at a stage now where I think I can improve a bit more, but I'm no longer holding out any hope of a clear. I knew Cave week wouldn't have gone down well one way or the other
Week 4 is now complete. We've lost one position (back to 20th), which isn't that bad really. Dunc forgot to submit again, but thankfully Yakkers jumped in with a quick score near the end. Now that CaveCon is over, I expect everyone to participate in the final week, which should look familiar to those of you who followed week 5 last year
I am providing you here with the emulator + game. Provided it keeps the configuration changes I made, the buttons will be the usual z/x/etc in order and the movement controls will be numpad 8/4/5/6 (as opposed to the normal direction keys). Button 1 is select/shoot and button 2 is switch menu mode/change speed. We will be playing in 5 minute mode, so you will need to switch to that. The rom is loaded by clicking the "FDD0" option on the emulator menu. States have to be saved manually, and I suggest making one at the title screen for easy restarts (as well as ones for testing obviously).
The minimal playing I've done so far seems to indicate that this game is like Blade Buster but easier and also maybe not as good. It's a very similar system; enemy waves designed for destruction optimisation, the classic 'star'-type shot, boxes everywhere, collectible gems, score bonuses for performing certain actions and having time left at the end, etc. There's an 80,000 point bonus for destroying the pairs of round objects that appear (can be done up to three times) and medals that start appearing after the midboss (shoot to reveal) that can increase up to I think 100,000. The main difference between this and Blade Buster is that, when at full power, grabbing another powerup triggers a bomb, which is very important for speeding up those enemy waves. As a balance, getting hit only drops your power level by 1 (as opposed to I think 2 in Blade Buster). You only die if you get hit at minimum power.
You may notice that the rom comes pre-packaged with serious high scores. I have no idea how it's possible to get well over 2 million at the moment, but it should get explained somewhere shortly. This also means that it's very easy to skip over your score at the end of the game if you're mashing z, so be careful. For now, I suggest making a few runs to familiarise yourself with the types of enemies that appear and the aforementioned scoring tricks. A couple of quick tips:
-To get the midboss quickly, get all up in its grill so that all four frontal shots are hitting it and follow it across the screen while trying to avoid its lasers. It's not a big deal if you get hit once because there's a powerup right after it. Pointblanking also works very well on the medium-sized enemies that appear throughout the stage.
-The final boss kinda sucks because it's hard to damage and so takes forever, especially if you get hit. The best way I've found to dodge its purple spray attack at this stage is to move to the opposite top corner of the screen, then move back and start shooting it again. If the timer hits 0 it gives no bonus, but that's better than losing all your lives.
You're probably sick of hearing this by now but again, let me know if you're still having trouble getting it working or otherwise need assistance.
I'll do another full stream tomorrow at the usual time.
It has also come to my attention that some of you aren't using versions of MAME that have autofire; if this is the case I seriously suggest switching to one that does because you are making things harder for yourself and your wrist than they need to be (not to mention making the brain kill trick basically impossible).
