Full Extent of the Jam - Revision history

Trilkin: Done. Needs some touch-ups/polish, but the content is completely copied now.

2023-05-02T14:27:33Z

Done. Needs some touch-ups/polish, but the content is completely copied now.

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Trilkin at 14:07, 2 May 2023

2023-05-02T14:07:11Z

Trilkin: One chapter left.

2023-05-02T14:03:21Z

One chapter left.

Trilkin: Chapter 3 complete.

2023-05-02T07:03:05Z

Chapter 3 complete.

Trilkin: Added the missing blurb at the start of the third chapter.

2023-05-02T06:37:53Z

Added the missing blurb at the start of the third chapter.

Trilkin: Format testing. Small part of Chapter 3 added.

2023-05-02T06:29:04Z

Format testing. Small part of Chapter 3 added.

Trilkin at 06:25, 2 May 2023

2023-05-02T06:25:59Z

Trilkin at 00:29, 2 May 2023

2023-05-02T00:29:32Z

Trilkin at 00:26, 2 May 2023

2023-05-02T00:26:59Z

Trilkin: Chapters 1 and 2 copied and formatted.

2023-05-02T00:22:27Z

Chapters 1 and 2 copied and formatted.

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@@ Line 67: / Line 67: @@
 <p style="text-align:center"><strong>And now, let&#39;s see how we can get those Shooting Games<br />
 totally <span style="font-size:22px">prosecutedt</span></strong></p>
-== Getting Started ==
+== I. Getting Started ==
 === Picking a Game ===
@@ Line 229: / Line 229: @@
 [[File:FEotJ_(6).png|frameless|center]]
-==Practicing==
+==II. Practicing==
 ===The Way Through===

@@ Line 444: / Line 444: @@
 <p><br />
 <span style="font-size:12px"><strong>Try to recognize those techniques being used when you watch superplay videos. It will help you realize the various situations in which they can be used and the various ways they can be performed.</strong></span></p>
 [[Category:General Guides]]

@@ Line 351: / Line 351: @@
 The bullets are emitted from a point at the top of the screen, so naturally their density is lower at the bottom. Many beginners will tend to stick to the bottom line of the screen to dodge this. It&#39;s not a terrible idea, if you&#39;re doing this, then you should know this cool little trick : when against the lower border of the screen, <u>if you input a diagonal downward command, such as down + left, the lateral speed of your ship will be lower than if you pressed left alone</u>. This means you can actually lower your ship speed as long as you stay against the bottom line !! This is very important, because <strong>the slower your speed, the higher your accuracy.</strong>
 |}
 [[Category:General Guides]]

@@ Line 231: / Line 231: @@
 ==Practicing==
-<p>[to be filled. testing formatting.]</p>
+===The Way Through===
 ===The Practice Mode===

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 All of that said, a lot of the actually important information, especially regarding efficient practice, how to approach a game, and specific play techniques and managing common patterns is still very relevant, with a good amount of helpful visual examples. It's also something of a historical document and was once a commonly recommended piece to read for improving one's game.
-The original thread is still up at the forum link below and the guide itself is still available in that post, or more conveniently, [https://goo.gl/Fi2zE here].
+The original thread is still up at the forum link above and the guide itself is still available in that post, or more conveniently, [https://goo.gl/Fi2zE here].
 <hr />
@@ Line 306: / Line 306: @@
 |-
 | [[File:FEotJ_(8).png|frameless]] || '''2-2 Boss Spread Pattern'''<br>
-The bullets are emitted from a point at the top of the screen, so naturally their density is lower at the bottom. Many beginners will tend to stick to the bottom line of the screen to dodge this. It's not a terrible idea, if you're doing this, then you should know this cool little trick : when against the lower border of the screen, if you input a diagonal downward command, such as down + left, the lateral speed of your ship will be lower than if you pressed left alone. This means you can actually lower your ship speed as long as you stay against the bottom line !! This is very important, because the slower your speed, the higher your accuracy.
+The bullets are emitted from a point at the top of the screen, so naturally their density is lower at the bottom. Many beginners will tend to stick to the bottom line of the screen to dodge this. It&#39;s not a terrible idea, if you&#39;re doing this, then you should know this cool little trick : when against the lower border of the screen, <u>if you input a diagonal downward command, such as down + left, the lateral speed of your ship will be lower than if you pressed left alone</u>. This means you can actually lower your ship speed as long as you stay against the bottom line !! This is very important, because <strong>the slower your speed, the higher your accuracy.</strong>
 |}
 [[Category:General Guides]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:25, 2 May 2023
Line 228:		Line 228:

	[[File:FEotJ_(6).png\|frameless\|center]]		[[File:FEotJ_(6).png\|frameless\|center]]
		+
		+	==Practicing==
		+
		+	<p>[to be filled. testing formatting.]</p>
		+
		+	===The Practice Mode===
		+
		+	<p>I will present to you here the way I think you should be practicing for maximum efficiency. The <strong>Full Extent of the Jam, so to speak</strong>. You will find this jam revolves largely around the use of model videos, and of saved states to practice. Many players refuse to use saved states, or even refuse to recognize their benefit. The later has puzzled me countless times. If you use « my » way of practicing, I guarantee your results will improve at least <strong>four or five times faster</strong> than if you were not using saved states.</p>
		+
		+	[[File:FEotJ_(3).png\|frameless\|center]]
		+
		+	<p>Since you first launched the game, chances are you have been playing runs, starting from the beginning and ending whenever your life count reached zero, or perhaps at the end of the first loop if you « continued ». You have now decided to score. The way you're going to be playing is going to change drastically. You now know you have to precisely memorize pretty much every second of the game, as you are going to play it, from start to finish. It's pretty much like learning to play a song.</p>
		+
		+	<p style="text-align:center"><strong>==========> <span style="color:#c0392b">Music Analogy</span> <==========</strong></p>
		+
		+	<p style="text-align:center">DoDonPachi is a song that's pretty easy to play in the beginning, and gets harder and harder. It's a song that lasts 45 bloody minutes. And the last few minutes are horribly hard to play.</p>
		+
		+	<p style="text-align:center">When approaching this kind of work with mastery in mind, you may naturally try playing the song until you reach parts that seem way too hard for you. Then you will start over from the beginning until you reach them again. And again. And again. After a while, you will realize it's pretty stupid to play through the easy parts every time you want to try the first part that is hard for you, so you will start focusing on the hard parts. Bar by bar, you will decompose and study the song. The hardest bars will be the bars you study and practice the most.</p>
		+
		+	<p style="text-align:center"><strong>=======> <span style="color:#c0392b">End of Music Analogy</span> <=======</strong></p>
		+
		+	<p>Decomposing the game and studying the hardest parts the most... This is when saved states come into play. Oh my, glad they're here, cause otherwise you'd be forced to practice so inefficiently, right ?</p>
		+
		+	<p><strong>Right !</strong> The poor Japanese players who played in arcades before DoDonPachi was playable on MAME had to practice this way. If they could have practiced differently, I'm sure they would have. But instead they were stuck with the most stupid practice routine ever, at the price of their time and money. And trust me, they would have reached those scores so much faster. Perhaps the world record would be a little higher, too (although the 749M one must be pretty damn close to perfection. I can't even imagine how big a chunk of that guy's life went into the game without saves. Nevertheless, he has my respect).</p>
		+
		+	<p><em>If you are practicing a different game than DoDonPachi, everything I'm saying here still applies, as long as you can practice at least with a console port that allows you to select which level you want to play. It is not as efficient, but it's quite all right.</em></p>
		+
		+	[[File:FEotJ_(3).png\|frameless\|center]]
		+
		+	<p>As a more modern player disposing of better tools, you will make good use of them. Start by making one save state at the beginning of stage 1. You could put it on the « <em>1</em> » key of your keyboard. You should also set up your key map for <strong>loading</strong> so you can very quickly load a save state while you are playing. My personal setup is <strong>loading</strong> on « <em>space bar</em> » and <strong>saving</strong> on « <em>ctrl</em> ».</p>
		+
		+	<p>Now let's go back to the superplay video. Play it and watch how the player deals with the first stage. After watching it once or twice, start watching it segment by segment, from the beginning, and memorize what's going on. You can try proceeding by chunks of 10 or 20 seconds. Hop back into the game and try doing the same thing that you've just seen and memorized. Some parts of the games are more lax than others, and will allow a little more room for « mistake », others will pretty much require you to be exactly at the same spot at the same moment as in the video.</p>
		+
		+	<p>For starters, see the order and timing at which the player kills the enemies. Shot or laser ? Where does he move and when ? As a result of his shooting and moving, how many enemy bullets appear and in which direction are they going ? If you copy precisely enough, everything can happen just the same, time after time, when you play.</p>
		+
		+	<p>It is all right to settle for something that isn't exactly the same as in the video, yet seems to work consistently for you, adapting things to your own playstyle. Just make sure none of your own ways are risky in some way and lead to death more often than they should, or score way less points.</p>
		+
		+	<p><strong>To save time, make saved states anywhere you judge useful inside a level.</strong> I will leave it up to you to find out how to organize and use saves, but let me tell you this : my keyboard has one save state at the beginning of each level, 1 for stage 1, 2 for stage 2, … 9 for stage 2-3, and some more for stage 2-4, 2-5 and 2-6. And then, « Y » is that part of 1-6 before the large planes. « U » is 2-3's boss. « J » is the 2-2 midboss. « E » is right before a difficult section of 2-4. « N » is a particular pattern of 2-6 boss that I found difficult...</p>
		+
		+	<p style="text-align:center"><strong>You guessed it, every single letter on my keyboard has a saved state on it.<br />
		+	Use and overuse saved states to memorize and practice everything !</strong></p>
		+
		+	<p>When your skill is not sufficient for execution, copying is damn hard. If you start trying to chain stage 1 right away with no prior STG experience, chances are you will struggle for a few days or more. But if you keep trying, your skills will improve so much faster than if you were just messing around randomly trying to one credit clear the game. You have gotten yourself on the road to becoming a great player. Stray from that road as little as you can to get better as fast as possible. If it's too hard now, it won't be too hard later. Your saved states allow you to repeat whatever section is hard for you as many times as it needs to be repeated until you get it right most of the time. <strong>Don't practice what you can do, practice what you can't do.</strong> If a hard section is preceded by 20 seconds of gameplay that you already kind of master, cut those 20 seconds out by saving after them and practice only the next seconds.</p>
		+
		+	<p>Don't be afraid to repeat a 10 or even 5 seconds detail many times in a row to get it down. That doesn't mean you should always work on 5 to 10 seconds segments, just vary the length depending on the needs. Sometimes work on a 5, 10 or 20 seconds detail, other times on a 40 seconds or 1 minute segment, and other times you should certainly try playing a whole level at once, many times, to check if you can do it right often enough.</p>
		+
		+	<p>Vary your work outs, and sometimes come back to things you already know and check how consistent you are at them. Improve your consistency. In the end, you will find it's important to be really consistent everywhere so that your runs don't consist of failure after failure in different parts.</p>
		+
		+	<p>Because dodging skills are a big part of danmaku games, practicing on bosses is a great way of increasing such skills. But even dealing with bosses requires method. Every pattern has one of two optimal ways to be dealt with.</p>
		+
		+	[[File:FEotJ_(3).png\|frameless\|center]]
		+
		+	<p>Afraid it won't be fun ? You needn't worry about that. I actually found it a lot of fun to play this way, because I could get rid of every easy moment and focus on the more interesting - although exhausting ! - difficult moments. When I wanted to have some fun trying to dodge crazy patterns, I loaded up Hibachi and went for some crazy impossible action. Then I would hop back and practice this 1-5 chaining that I couldn't seem to get right yet, fought my way through in many sessions until I got it. You can vary your workouts by practicing different sections every day. The best DoDonPachi moments for me happened during savestate practice, dodging and chaining all over the place, in my favorite levels or bosses, while listening to amazing music. Great times indeed, and I will forever come back to it every few months for some more fun.</p>
		+
		+	<p>I hope you've followed and understood me on saved states and video use, because it's going to make a <u><strong>world</strong></u> of difference. If you don't use them, I am confident you will not put my record in danger before very, very long !</p>
		+
		+	===Techniques===
		+
		+	<p>This section covers several very useful concept and techniques.</p>
		+
		+	<p>Learning them techniques will help you understand and adapt the superplay videos that you are trying to copy, as well as deal with any unexpected situations. I even use them a lot when I play a new game that I haven't memorized. The bullet herding technique is very effective at dealing with many stages' patterns, even when performed at random places, and can help you one-creditclear games you have barely ever played.</p>
		+
		+	<p><u><strong>Where to look while playing</strong></u></p>
		+
		+	<p>When you are dodging a pattern, your look need to stay away from your ship's hitbox. You cannot be sufficiently aware of what is coming at you if you stare at your ship. Instead, you must be looking at objects that will be dangerous for your ship in the next few seconds. Most of the time, those objects are bullets in front of your ship. The art of navigating in danmaku bullet patterns consists of identifying paths or positions for your ship in real time, then follow them as accurately as possible.</p>
		+
		+	<p>You can look very shortly at your ship to check it's position, but you won't be looking at it much, and yet you need to know accurately where it is all the time. To develop this ability, you need good knowledge of your ship's hitbox position. Check a hitbox picture if the game you play doesn't clearly show you where it is. Then, after you have more experience playing with your ship, you will develop a great feeling of it's movement speed. Once you have great feeling of your ship's hitbox position and of it's movement speed, you will keep very good track of it's position while you play, even if you don't look at it for a few seconds while you navigate through patterns.</p>
		+
		+	<p>To get better, you must develop the ability to look further away from your ship, and be aware of a larger area of the screen at once. If you are unable to look further away and occasionally at a larger proportion of the screen while dodging, then you will not be able to identify safer positions or paths, and will also lose reaction time.</p>
		+
		+	[[File:FEotJ_(7).png\|frameless\|center]]
		+	<p style="text-align:center"><strong>Ever noticed the Laser Dragon ? Bad ass !</strong></p>
		+
		+	<p><u><strong>Technique 1: Lower Speed On Bottom Line</strong></u></p>
		+
		+	{\| class=wikitable style="max-width:55em;"
		+	\|-
		+	\| [[File:FEotJ_(8).png\|frameless]] \|\| '''2-2 Boss Spread Pattern'''<br>
		+	The bullets are emitted from a point at the top of the screen, so naturally their density is lower at the bottom. Many beginners will tend to stick to the bottom line of the screen to dodge this. It's not a terrible idea, if you're doing this, then you should know this cool little trick : when against the lower border of the screen, if you input a diagonal downward command, such as down + left, the lateral speed of your ship will be lower than if you pressed left alone. This means you can actually lower your ship speed as long as you stay against the bottom line !! This is very important, because the slower your speed, the higher your accuracy.
		+	\|}

	[[Category:General Guides]]		[[Category:General Guides]]

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 * It is over 10 years old now. A lot of the information, particularly in regard to emulation and ports, is no longer accurate.
 * There is some occasionally rough language and the less occasionally roughly presented opinions. I've taken it as simply part of his sense of humor and it will not be censored for preservation's sake.
-* English is not the author's first language.
+* English is not the author's first language, but the title of the document and some other funky grammar/spelling are digs at Cave's notoriously silly early copyright warning translations.
 All of that said, a lot of the actually important information, especially regarding efficient practice, how to approach a game, and specific play techniques and managing common patterns is still very relevant, with a good amount of helpful visual examples. It's also something of a historical document and was once a commonly recommended piece to read for improving one's game.