STGT '12 Team Thread - Tournament landslide leaves Daves in position 16

Small curiosity, but are we allowed to use the Wii Homebrew and/or GBA homebrew versions too?
I mean, it's severely minor, but it would be nice to play on something different to mix things up.

 

Not at this stage. There is some discussion going on regarding it, but from what I've seen there do appear to be slight differences between the versions.

In the meantime, there's been a slight change of plans now that new info has come to light. First of all, the thrust generated when switching speeds actually does damage, which in some places is essential to killing things quickly. As such, I strongly suggets switching to this emulator, which will allow you to autofire your thrusters by holding down the A key. I've set it to a rate that I hope will maximise both damage and range (it appears to do damage as long as it's visible, rather than doing more when fired more quickly, and max autofire means the flash is smaller). Also I forgot to mention last time that you should switch straight to speed 3 as soon as the round starts, and remember to make sure to check your speed after spamming it anyway so you can readjust it if necessary. The shooting and speed controls are switched on this emulator (that is, X is shoot/select and Z is mode/speed change) and I've remapped the movement to the direction keys. If my settings aren't working for you, this post may prove helpful; if not then please let me know ASAP.

NOTE: You will need to run and install (Y) all the vcredist executables that I've packaged with the emulator in order to be able to use it.

Another thing I didn't know yesterday was that leaving the title screen at the 5-minute mode title select for a while will play the 2.7 million high score stored on the rom, which is extremely useful. It shows off how to get the 80,000 point bonus off the orange circles (it seems that you must destroy them without getting hit), how to score off the enemies that drop the waves of missiles, where all the medals are and how to quickly destroy the final boss using the speed change (which is essential to breaking 2 million). The clear bonus appears to be 10,000 per second remaining and 100,000 per life (up to 5). Getting hit usually isn't too worrisome, but it will lose you a lot of score if it happens just before a missile ship appears and especially if it happens before the final boss.

Finally, you will probably want to select "No" when exiting the emulator, because otherwise it will save to the most recent state you had selected. The states in this emulator also save your configuration, meaning that you will need to save state again if you change anything or it will be lost upon reloading. I still have a bit of figuring out of my own to do (it's possible to get over 3 million), so I'll probably stream on Thursday morning.

 

Turns out you can get hit while shooting the orange circles; the important part is to be properly inside them at the time they are destroyed. I also haven't mentioned yet that if you find the emulator window too small you can increase it via View -> Stretch. There'll be a stream tomorrow morning, and it'll probably be my last for this tournament because there's not a whole lot of this game to show off. As a result, I may throw in a bonus or two, but you'll only get to see them if you show up

 

Le stream. You can ignore the bit at the end because I kept getting kicked out of my own chat and couldn't see what anyone was saying >_> I sort of covered strategies for each type of enemy, including a new one I discovered for the green ships that drop homing missiles (sit above them and shoot them from behind when they appear) and the final boss. The first target for all if you is 2 million, then 2.5, then as high as you can get. I suggest learning the easy bonuses (e.g. medals) before the hard ones, and maybe setting up a savestate after the midboss so you can practice the second half repeatedly (along with any other parts you want to practice ofc.).

 

This will probably be my last progress/early score post request. Based on the success of all the others, I'm sure it will be a great one too

 

I have discovered that dropping down to minimum speed and staying there when the orange circles appear makes getting the bonus (and avoiding a hit) much easier, without taking a lot longer to break them (due to no thruster spam). Thanks to this tactic, I was able to break 3 mil with little hassle this evening If you're having problems overshooting the missile ships, you might also find it helpful to bump down to speed 2 when they appear (tapping once at speed 3 will always drop you one level and you can probably stay there as long as they keep appearing), but I don't bother with that. I hope this proves reliable enough to give you all a consistent boost, as there are a lot of scores sitting just under 2.6 mil at the moment.

 

We have reached the final day of the final week. I'm not making any predictions, but considering how few people are playing, anything could happen. Catch you all tomorrow morning

 

@doublethink

can you give me one point warning,somehow,i can't beat cave story on easy mode because i have 45 HP

 

dex finally got around to updating the high score table and hahahahaha wow. Only 96 players participated this week, meaning we managed another 11th team placing. Combined with the removal of several 'false' scores from the previous weeks, we have been bumped all the way up to 17th overall. Behold, the power of democracy in all its glory! A handful of extra places would have allowed us to finish 16th, but we weren't to know that until the false scores were removed. Now... I believe some statistics are in order

First of all, the individual awards and achievements!
(Last years', if you have yet to see them)

There was nobody who beat me in a week this year As this is likely become a more and more difficult endeavour as time progresses, I have decided to create a new award - the Difficulty Selection award, for those who beat the team captain's worst result during one of the weeks:
Noxid

The Shovel Brigade award, for those aside from the team captain who played submitted every week:
SEBTi

The Missed The Best Ending award, for those who were unable to play submit every week due to work/study/travel obligations:
Hate9, Dunc2403, Wedge of Cheese, Noxid, Yakkers (even though he submitted during week 4)

The New Game award, for those returning to STGT for the second time:
Noxid, Yakkers

The Iron Bond award, for those who just missed out on getting a top 3 team finish despite some solid results:
Dunc2403

And the individual overall tournament achievements:
DoubleThink - Best placing of 17th (week 5), average position of 31.4, 18th overall, 1 2 3 4 5
Noxid - Best placing of 39th (week 5), average position of 71, 1 2 3 5
SEBTi - Best placing of 62nd (week 3), average position of 107.8, 78th overall, 3 4 5
Yakkers - Best placing of 92nd (week 2), 1 2 4
Dave2403 - Best placing of 64th (week 3), average position of 101
Wedge of Cheese - Best placing of 118th (week 3)
Hate9 - Best placing of 177th (week 1, not really a fair indication of effort seeing as the following weeks didn't even have that many particpants)
Only those who played every week get an overall placing, so I added in an average where I feel it's a fair indicator of the level of overall input somebody dedicated to the tournament (which it isn't in Yakkers' case because he played all the hardest weeks).

Finally, the weekly team results and comparison vs last year:
Week 1: 26th (-12, -138 points)
Week 2: 16th (+3, +6 points)
Week 3: 11th (+2, +40 points)
Week 4: 26th (revised; -12, -122 points)
Week 5: 11th (+7, +70 points)
=17th overall (-3, -144 points)

Total weekly team participation:
7 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 4 = 23 (+7 from last year!)

This year was always going to be harder than the last, but despite our lower team position I feel we've all improved as individuals and shown we have top-10 potential. Our participation and in-team communication has improved too, if marginally >_> Thank you all once last time for the time and effort you were willing to put into this; I may have the most experience, but I'm no team on my own. These games aren't easy and any serious input takes patience, dedication and a love of video games in general. Have a little pride, and together let us toast The Future and all it may bring.

Back to business as usual, I guess

 

Yaaaaay
These things are always a bit taxing but overall I had fun. It's a shame it had to happen during CC week because espuh-galooda looked like an interesting game and I didn't even get a chance to try it. But I'm happy with how I did overall, go team woo

 

So apparently more results were removed for some reason and now we're up to 16th. If this continues, we may retroactively win the tournament in a fortnight (I think they're finalised now, though.)