Shmups New VS Old

[Retrocade Fantasia]

I've been playing alot of shmups lately. The 360 is now up there with the Saturn, PC Engine and the mega drive/Genesis as one of the great Shmup systems

But what do you prefer the speedy fast modern shmups where it rains bullets or the classic sprite based shmups which are still hard dispite the face it's not raining bullets.

I don't know I can't say I have a preference. I enjoy Star Soldier just as much as I enjoy anything Cave has put out. But at the same time
Cave Shmups hurt so good.

[TonyTheTiger]

I feel like bullet hell shooters have become a sad self parody to the point where they're just not fun anymore. 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?" And bullet hell shooters have essentially thrown that out the window with what is essentially a flashy exercise in rote memorization.

It's not so much the raw concept of "bullet hell" that turns me off. I think that a shooter with the premise of a swarm of shit flying at you is great in concept. I just hate the implementation. And since most shooters today are the "fake difficulty" style, I much prefer the ones from the 16bit era and earlier.

[Retrocade Fantasia]

The worst is Ibara Pink Sweets playing that was a chore. It was so brutally difficult it's not fun at all. Not like other cave Shmups that get it right like Do Don Pachi Resurrection and ESPgaluda. The key is knowing where your hitbox is.

It's a tough call, a Good shmup needs good graphics, balanced challenge and an amazing OST.

Darius always provided that.

But I'm torn I LOVE Cave but Darius, Star Soldier, Parodius all great and how amazing was Battle Garegga?

[Emperor Megas]

I feel like bullet hell shooters have become a sad self parody to the point where they're just not fun anymore. 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?" And bullet hell shooters have essentially thrown that out the window with what is essentially a flashy exercise in rote memorization.

It's not so much the raw concept of "bullet hell" that turns me off. I think that a shooter with the premise of a swarm of shit flying at you is great in concept. I just hate the implementation. And since most shooters today are the "fake difficulty" style, I much prefer the ones from the 16bit era and earlier.

I agree, completely.

[TonyTheTiger]

The key is knowing where your hitbox is.

Which I think is dumb and totally counterintuitive. I don't like the concept of "grazing" since it's more or less telling you "hey, see this thing that represents you? Well, it technically doesn't. This other invisible thing does." Imagine if they did this in a fighting game where fireballs passed right through a character's head.

It's nonsensical and from what I can tell the only reason they do it in shooters is because somebody said "uh oh, if we put that many bullets then the game becomes unwinnable. So let's just shrink the hitbox." The legitimate solution is to make the hitbox match the ship and then design a competent game with proper difficulty around that.

[Retrocade Fantasia]

But doesn't every shmup since the begining of time have a Hitbox?

[Aussie2B]

I'm not particular fond of bullet hell shmups, so old shmups for me. I like shmups where the developers think about the design of the whole stage and incorporate that into the gameplay, rather than having nothing but empty space where enemies are haphazardly thrown on the screen so they can spew some elaborate pattern of bullets. And for vertical shmups, I seem to fall for games that have dual planes, so I have to worry about both ground and airborne enemies. Dragon Spirit and the TwinBee series are among my favorite shmups. Gate of Thunder is probably my favorite horizontal shmup.

[TonyTheTiger]

But doesn't every shmup since the begining of time have a Hitbox?

Has a hitbox, sure. But the hitbox in size and shape should, within reason, represent the thing it's a hitbox for. Again, look at the hitboxes/hurtboxes for a fighting game and you'll see that, outside of specific moments of invulnerability during certain actions, they fairly accurately match the sprite on screen. To have a ship that's supposedly "you" but have the hitbox be an extremely tiny invisible square in the center of the sprite is just straight up arbitrary and silly. What the hell is the ship for, then? Why not just play a game of nothing but hitboxes flying around?



Compared to...

[RCM]

I don't know that I'd put the 360 up there with the other systems you listed. I don't see the shmups really pushing boundaries on that system in the way some did on Saturn and Dreamcast, but I do appreciate that the platform supports those games. Speaking of Dreamcast, I wish they'd release an HD version of Borderdown on 360.

[Parodius Duh!]

Yeah I was gonna say, 360 definitely does not have a ton of shooters (at least not comparable to the systems you listed) and half of them are crap anyway. Cave just dumps out shooters for the sake of dumping out another damn shooter, dont get me wrong its my favorite genre but Cave has gone overboard with their cutesy anime crap shooters. Want a modern system with plenty of shooters? ps2.

[fahlim003]

Bullet Hell or danmaku shooters are essentially just another step in the evolution of the genre. Perhaps some people take issue with the fact there hasn't been something new or beyond this. Personally I'm not fond of bullet hell, but that's mainly due to the time required to put in and actually become competitive, otherwise they can still be fun and of course have plenty of challenge.

I don't agree about shooters now (so bullet hell mainly from Cave) having rely solely on memory. Games like R-Type and Raiden which were released over 20 years ago both have emphasis on memorization as opposed to reflexes - moreso R-Type and IREM games to be sure. I cannot think of many or any shooting games from the last 26 years that truly give advantage to reflexes over memorization, perhaps Smash T.V., Total Carnage, etc..
At the end of the day there's going to be a fine line between memorization and reflexes all the same, in games like Raiden, Fire Shark, and Truxton 2 the bullets can really speed up and regardless if you memorized when it's going to occur reaction time can definitely help as often the onslaught has little reprieve.

As for hitboxes being mysterious and invisible...
Pretty much no Cave game pardon the Shinobu Yagawa directed ones (such as Ibara and Pink Sweets and then again his games are considered manic not danmaku) have "hid" the hitbox from the player since Mushihimesama which was back in 2004. Since then there has been the player sprite and within that a smaller orb/area that typically glows or stands out as to identify the smaller hitbox.
Akai Katana - (green orb centre of both ship and transformed character) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWkcRCC3WM
DoDonPachi Saidai Ou Jou - (purple orb) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_LINVT3_ec

Even outside of Cave, which is limited you have games like Under Defeat and Strania by G-Rev and the hitbox there is generally the same size as the ship so not everyone has followed the trend of micro sized.

If you're ape about this and would like to play a game with just hitboxes versus hitboxes I suggest noiz2sa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM42UidmZVE

[TonyTheTiger]

Visible or not, I just don't understand the point of having the vulnerable area of the ship be significantly smaller than the ship itself. If you want such a small area to be "killable" then why not just make the ship that size?

The reason it makes no sense is because the whole point of the sprite/hitbox relationship is to ensure what the player sees and what the game "sees" are essentially the same thing. That's why hitboxes are usually invisible anyway because the player should in general be able to trust the sprites without having to worry about what the game is using. In most genres when there is a discrepancy between the two, the game is usually said to have bad hit detection. Yet when shooters do the same thing it's considered a "feature" or just standard practice.

It's just counterintuitive because it forces the player to not really pay attention to what they're seeing. All those bullets that look impassable? They technically are passable because the comparative size of your ship is irrelevant to whether or not you can fit through. All that matters is some tiny (visible or otherwise) object. Well, again, why is the ship's sprite so big, then? What purpose does it serve? How does it help me?

Really, take the principles behind shooter hitboxes and apply them to another genre and it becomes readily apparent just how silly it is.

[jb143]

I have an old game programming book at home that talks about all this and I seem to remember it using shooters as an example. I forget what it says though so I'll have to see if I can find it tonight.

Fighting games, though, use multiple "hitboxes" to more or less enclose all the body parts. Still not pixel perfect but a lot better representation of the human shape than one big(or small) box. Modern 3D games do this as well. Instead of mesh perfect collisions, there will be invisible "collision meshes" that closely represent the objects but using far less polygons.

[TonyTheTiger]

Yeah, no doubt they aren't perfect and shouldn't be expected to be. In fact, some forgiveness is often a good thing. It's just that in most genres there's at least an attempt to make the hitboxes abstractly represent the player's character. Many shooters seem to go out of their way to do the exact opposite.

[Bojay1997]

Yeah I was gonna say, 360 definitely does not have a ton of shooters (at least not comparable to the systems you listed) and half of them are crap anyway. Cave just dumps out shooters for the sake of dumping out another damn shooter, dont get me wrong its my favorite genre but Cave has gone overboard with their cutesy anime crap shooters. Want a modern system with plenty of shooters? ps2.

Strongly disagree. Cave is only one very small part of the SHMUPS that have been released for the 360. While this list has a few that haven't been released yet or are Japan region locked, there are over 100 SHMUP games available on the 360 which is a ton if you think about it given that the genre is really a niche of a niche.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox360/list-83

[jb143]

Yeah, no doubt they aren't perfect and shouldn't be expected to be. In fact, some forgiveness is often a good thing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the book said something along those lines, I just distinctly remember an image of a ship with a box drawn "around" it...and by around I mean mostly inside. The only other option is to extend past the edges but then players would get mad that they got hit when they didn't. I don;t know what the logic behind making them super small is though. And, I know it's not actually part of the discussion but 360degree shooters are bound to be worse. The ship is able to rotate but the hitbox doesn't. Then what does and doesn't count as a hit can change based on your angle.

[TonyTheTiger]

I think the reason they make the hitboxes so small is to justify the extensive bullet patterns. Because if this:



were the much more reasonable this:



then they'd have to ease up on the shots and make the safe areas easier to see to accomodate the fact that now the majority of your ship has to avoid contact. But in this case "easier" isn't a bad thing because all it really means is that the player's spatial judgment is in line with what's happening on screen. The game can still be bitch hard for other reasons, just less silly ones.

For me, my preference in a shooter is "kill everything in sight" with dodging a somewhat secondary concern. Most bullet hell shooters seem to make dodging the primary focus which just baffles me since it practically changes the genre into one of survival.

My favorite shooters of all time are the likes of U.N. Squadron, Axelay, Abadox, Lifeforce, Legendary Wings, River Raid, etc. to give an idea of where I'm at.

[Gameguy]

Visible or not, I just don't understand the point of having the vulnerable area of the ship be significantly smaller than the ship itself. If you want such a small area to be "killable" then why not just make the ship that size?

Really, take the principles behind shooter hitboxes and apply them to another genre and it becomes readily apparent just how silly it is.

Why does any large boss only have a few select areas that can accept damage instead of the whole boss being vulnerable? Why not just make the boss small to be harder to hit?

[Aussie2B]

I wouldn't say that's quite the same concept. With a boss, the logic behind it is that the enemy is so strong and resilient that, even though you can land blows on any part of the body/machine/whatever, the effect would be so negligible that you need to target a weak point, its Achilles' heel. I don't think that level of thought or logic is going into the hitboxes of bullet hell shmups. I think it's just a result of developers trying to be as flashy as possible. They want to swarm the screen in bullets to make the player think "Oh shit, this is impossible to squeeze through!", but the developers don't want it to be literally impossible, even if it would be impossible going by visual appearances. So the player manages to squeeze through, and he/she feels all the more accomplished for doing so. It's all mind games in the end.

[jb143]

It's obvious...That's the thickest part of the ship, thus the easiest to hit. The enemies bullets aren't accurate enough to hit the thinner parts so they always go either over or under the rest of the ship.