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Thread: Shmups New VS Old

  1. #21
    Kirby (Level 13) ubersaurus's Avatar
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    I'm not a huge Cave fan but they aren't the only game in town on 360, and honestly they've put out some damn good games on the platform too. Whether or not you like the size of the hitbox vs. the full sprite, Deathsmiles, Mushihimesama Futari, ESPgaluda 2, these are pretty damn good games.

    And honestly, claiming that shooters now are all memorization vs. before? I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the genre since, the mid 80s have wanted you to memorize the best way through a level. You can fly blind and try to bulldog through, or you can actually learn enemy layout, attack patterns, etc. it's really no different than it was before except that it looks more overwhelming. In actuality, it isn't. More bullets and a smaller hitbox effectively equal less bullets but larger hitbox (and usually more enemies flying around, too). The fighting game analogy is a silly one too, they are just straight out two different genres, and the instances where the hitbox doesn't match the sprite usually ends up with a broken character. Whereas you don't look at the ship from dodonpachi and say "oh, that ship is way too good, you can only hit the cockpit," because the game is built around that concept. And honestly, if you had a ship that matched the hitbox, you'd never be able to see yourself on screen.

    If you can honestly say that a person can sit down to R-Type, or Gradius, Life Force, or Rayforce, and plow through the game without knowing where things are in advance and the best way to go through a stage, then I will wonder who this super gamer is and when can I meet them.
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  2. #22
    ServBot (Level 11) TonyTheTiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    The fighting game analogy is a silly one too, they are just straight out two different genres, and the instances where the hitbox doesn't match the sprite usually ends up with a broken character. Whereas you don't look at the ship from dodonpachi and say "oh, that ship is way too good, you can only hit the cockpit," because the game is built around that concept.
    Just because they design a game around a concept doesn't mean it's a good concept. It's silly to pretend that shooters are so special that they should be exempt from basic game logic like the relationship between apparent vs. actual vulnerability of the player character (which is grossly different from boss vulnerability, btw, since the player character is asked to make it through obstacles using spatial recognition and hand-eye coordination while boss vulnerability is simply a matter of attacking the right area once identified).

    Imagine this same concept at work in Mega Man.



    There's no difference there. Who other than the crazy kaizo hack people would remotely tolerate something like that? Yet this is the exact same principle behind many bullet hell shooters.

    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    And honestly, claiming that shooters now are all memorization vs. before? I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the genre since, the mid 80s have wanted you to memorize the best way through a level.
    There's a difference, though. You're right that many old ones required memorization, too, although usually for reasons other than bullet patterns. R-Type was notorious for evil stage layout that often would just screw you over and things just jumping out at you without fair warning. I'm not saying that's any better. It's just as bad. But two wrongs don't make a right. Just because one game did something bad doesn't excuse another one doing a different bad thing. Regardless of whether or not bullet hell requires memorization, the sheer fact that the player has to think in terms of hitboxes rather than the relative size and shape of the sprites themselves is counterintuitive and violates some pretty basic principles people rely on when they play a game. Namely that the game isn't outright lying to them. And when a game says "you can fit through this even though it looks like you can't" that's the game lying to you. Many older shooters didn't do that. What you saw is what was legitimately the case.

    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    More bullets and a smaller hitbox effectively equal less bullets but larger hitbox (and usually more enemies flying around, too).
    I don't think that's true. Because "more bullets and smaller hitbox" = counterintuitive when you're being asked to fly a size X ship through a hole half that size. A ship with a hitbox that roughly matches its size and holes that accommodate that size makes more sense. It's not a 1:1 comparison because of that.

    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    And honestly, if you had a ship that matched the hitbox, you'd never be able to see yourself on screen.
    I don't understand this. Why would a larger vulnerable area (and obviously a game designed around the size/shape of the vulnerable area) result in an obstructed view?
    Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 05-25-2012 at 07:18 PM.

  3. #23
    Kirby (Level 13) ubersaurus's Avatar
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    If you're using the same size hitbox Cave does now, then if you made the sprite that size it would be very easy to get lost in the stage. Larger ship = easier to keep track of yourself. From that basis alone it makes sense to have a larger sprite. As has been pointed out, Cave usually highlights part of the sprite anyway to show the hitbox space, which further says to me the rest of the sprite is a visual aid more than anything. It may seem odd that bullets are just whizzing by your character, but it's pretty odd you're not moving into 3d space too to avoid them, so I mean... the whole thing is pretty well set into specific game mechanics rather than any sort of logic.

    I also like how your examples all seem to be outside of the shooter genre anyway, which brings radically different gameplay. If Mega Man had that tiny hitbox it really wouldn't matter for one; he'd still get shot or rammed into just the same (how often has anything ever gotten close enough to you with you having enough time to get out of the way?) And I'd imagine if Capcom was doing that for spikes, they'd just make bigger spikes. Once again it's how the game is designed. If you just don't like games with a lot of bullets you can just not like games with a lot of bullets in them, you don't have to make some argument about hitboxes not matching the sprites. It kind of comes with the territory at that point. I'm not a big bullet hell fan either, but that's just because I prefer having more interesting enemy patterns than bullet patterns. Still have fun with them, though :P

    Basically what I was pointing out with R-Type et al. is that memorization is a part of the shooter genre, and has been for a considerable amount of time. Not liking that sort of thing practically condemns the whole genre save for the really early stuff and maybe Raiden. Early vertical shooters had that sort of memorization, anyway: Galaga challenge stages come to mind, or something like MUSHA. Or even isometric ones like Viewpoint or Zaxxon... horizontal ones obviously are much more infamous for it, but it was there in the other styles.
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    ServBot (Level 11) TonyTheTiger's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    If you're using the same size hitbox Cave does now, then if you made the sprite that size it would be very easy to get lost in the stage. Larger ship = easier to keep track of yourself. From that basis alone it makes sense to have a larger sprite.
    And you're absolutely right. The sprite should be of decent size. But, you know what? Then there should just be larger holes in the bullet patterns to accommodate the sprite. If they want to make the game a challenge then they should do it in a more sensible way than using mangled collision detection as a band-aid mechanic to justify their tiny, tiny safe zones.

    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    As has been pointed out, Cave usually highlights part of the sprite anyway to show the hitbox space, which further says to me the rest of the sprite is a visual aid more than anything. It may seem odd that bullets are just whizzing by your character, but it's pretty odd you're not moving into 3d space too to avoid them, so I mean... the whole thing is pretty well set into specific game mechanics rather than any sort of logic.
    I don't know if highlighting the vulnerable area absolves them. Yeah, it does make it better. But it's basically an admission of guilt. It's like they're saying "yeah, we know this is stupid so we'll try to make it a bit less stupid." The fact that they felt they needed to show the vulnerable area (something they wouldn't have to do if the ship itself was the vulnerable area) tells me that they're aware that it's arbitrary and just a way for them to shrink the safe zones without having to make the ship minuscule. Well, from my perspective, if making suuuuper tiny safe zones requires doing one of two stupid things (stupidly tiny ship or arbitrarily small hitbox in a normal sized ship) then that tells me you shouldn't be designing your game in such a way that it requires choosing between the lesser of two evils.

    Quote Originally Posted by ubersaurus View Post
    I also like how your examples all seem to be outside of the shooter genre anyway, which brings radically different gameplay.
    The shooter genre is not magically exempt from proper game logic. And "visual representation of the player roughly equals the game's calculation of the player" is proper game logic. Otherwise the game is just screwing with you. The "gameplay" of navigating a ship through an obstacle course is fundamentally the same principle as navigating Mega Man through an obstacle course. Yet it's only shooters where the sprite that represents the player is a ludicrously different size/shape from what the game itself calculates it to be. I don't think saying "shooters are different" absolves them from basic spatial reasoning. Because they really aren't different.

    I realize people like bullet hell and that's fine. I just happen to think that it's possible to do bullet hell while also keeping the game intuitive (probably the #1 principle of game design). Games that don't use the ship's sprite as the measuring stick for the player's sense of space are not intuitive. People can still like them and learn to be good at them but it's kinda like unlearning everything you learned and then learning some alternate universe version of it in order to adapt. I admit I don't have the patience for that.
    Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 05-25-2012 at 07:44 PM.

  5. #25
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    I want to get the Touhou Project games, but I cant go to Japan, theres a torrent for them, but Im chicken and dont want a virus.

    I think theyre too influenced by the arcades quarter eating mentality, too many cheap deaths if yo udont know where to go, and a lot of the time there is no safe place to go if you want to keep hitting your mark. Depends on which title, but I really want a 360 now because of the bullet hell games they have which arent on the ps3.

  6. #26
    drowning in medals Ed Oscuro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TonyTheTiger View Post
    I feel like bullet hell shooters have become a sad self parody to the point where they're just not fun anymore.
    I don't feel that way.
    I think "good" difficulty should be based on the premise of "could a person conceivably complete this task without knowing in advance what to expect?"
    People do, actually - but just not many. I'm definitely not one of those people.

    Playing around with Cave games a bit lately, though, it seems to me that you can make some decent progress in them (if only towards the one-credit-clear). Playing them for high-level scoring makes them more difficult (sometimes vastly more, as in something like EspGaluda's kakusei mode) but that only seems reasonable.

    Ditto with the Raiden Fighters games - those actually aren't terribly difficult by the standards of some other games. I wouldn't exactly call them easy, but they aren't as bad as you might expect.

    I think that Cave, as far as their shmups goes, is in something of a trap - to keep the interest of the small group of people following their games, they feel like they have to cater more and more strongly to the wishes of the pack leaders (i.e. the people who are already out there at the leading edge). It's hard to say whether this is right, or whether this is mistaken because many people who were classically part of that group start to peel off and leave, perhaps for reasons you mention, perhaps partly just due to age. I am not sure, though, that there is anything to be gained from trying to have mass-market appeal though - what would that mean anyway?

    I will say that my favorite period is the Toaplan era along with the Raiden Fighters games, but I like games from every period in the genre, from really early entries like Scramble and Juno First to newer stuff. EspGaluda is fairly recent (about ten years old) but it is intuitive to play once you have some good information about what's going on.

    One thing that I don't miss from older titles is the lack of ship speed options. Flying Shark is almost entirely an exercise in trying to start flying in the right direction as soon as you see an enemy, because your plane is far too slow to twitch-dodge things. Newer games often have that "focus laser" type shot and they also slow down your ship while using it so you can precisely navigate bullets in boss sequences.

    The one thing I would like to see is something like a per-stage mode...I tend to do pretty well with scoring in single stages (my few scores that are competitive on Shmups Forum tend to be for 2- and 5-minute caravan mode games) and being able to tackle one at a time is really helpful. Starting up another game just to think about getting to stage 3 or 5 or whatever is just asking me to roll the dice to see if I can hold on without making random mistakes for too long, so that I end up playing a lot of stuff I can already do well repeatedly, to the point it ends up not being fun. I think this structure is a problem with many arcade games, and frankly it doesn't help operators either, because if you can't play well you might not want to play, and if you do play well, you might take the machine for too long. It might be reasonable to give people a reasonable window of time to finish up one stage, and make continuing either skill-based (hit a score threshhold perhaps) or even just a new credit (with scoring again being the differentiator between a "good" player" and a merely "adverage" one).
    Last edited by Ed Oscuro; 01-04-2013 at 12:03 PM.

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    They need to mix together the ease of the older games with the beautiful bullet/lazer patterns of the newer games. The solution is a big life bar, and a ton of 1 ups and energy on the field to get. Then you have different modes of playing. Just market the game to both groups with each difficulty settings.

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