Full Extent of the Jam

This space is for the as-titled guide by PROMETHEUS, originally posted in this thread over at System11. This is a very comprehensive and at least historically well-regarded guide to approaching and improving at shmups with a focus on danmaku shmups. The guide was written with DoDonPachi as the primary point of reference, but the information is largely applicable across the genre. Formatting for the wiki has begun for posterity and preservation. Care will be taken in making sure the majority of the original formatting is preserved and the text will otherwise by directly copied and pasted.

A few notes before reading this guide in any of its forms:

• 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, 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 It's also something of a historical document and was once a commonly recommended piece to read for improving one's game.

The original thread is still up at the forum link below and the guide itself is still available in that post, or more conveniently, here.

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The Full Extent
of The Jam

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A guide to playing Shooting Games competitively

Written by Dimitri « ProMeTheus » Aupetit
28/11/2010
 

The Full Extent of... What ??

This guide covers practicing and performing techniques, with scoring high as a goal, in Shooting Games (STG), also called shmups.

The supposed reader is a player of any skill level that intends to get into scoring, or get better at scoring.

One thing I would like to stress is how much more fun STGs become when you play them for score instead of survival. I absolutely love scoring ! Getting better and learning how to score means playing in a much, much more complex way. You will be playing with a plan in mind. Scoring opportunities will have to be balanced depending on how much risk they represent. You will have to develop understanding of how to navigate those seemingly unpassable bullet patterns. You will be using your brain at a much higher rate during play. And what you achieve will be recognized by other people.

Does it sound like work to you ? It certainly isn't relaxing. But I don't think relaxing is the best way of having fun. I always have a lot more fun when I play for score, not only because scoring high is generally satisfying, but because I think using the best of your ability to execute very precise moves and dodge mind bending patterns is simply exhilarating !

In that sense, scoring is, indeed, much more fun than mere survival, where you just go about with a vague plan and use bombs whenever you're in a difficult situation, in order to just reach the end of the game. Hopefully, this document will help new players realize the fun potential found in scoring in Shooting Games, and help them get good at that. If you are just looking to 1CC some games, though, the advice in this document will definitely help you. You will just adapt and use it to a different end.

Because I am first and foremost experienced with the game titled « DoDonPachi », I will use it as an example throughout the document. Every example from DoDonPachi is useful to illustrate how to deal with the same situation in another game. For example, how to choose your ship ? Your controller ? How to memorize the game ? How to dodge certain pattern types ?

I will not be explaining DoDonPachi's chaining system or the way it generally works. If you need that information, I suggest you check Bernard Doria's site (DoDonPachi @ Bee Preying) where I learned most of the game's rules. (Ed: The original site is missing most of its content, although it can be found on Archive.org. Alternatively, the DoDonPachi page on this wiki is also a good wealth of information!)

I, the writer, am Dimitri Aupetit, known online as ProMeTheus, and hold the occidental record in DoDonPachi, approaching some of the better Japanese scores. I have studied this particular STG extensively, and also performed well in a few others. I decided to write this guide to help people get better by sharing my experience. I have noticed many players go the wrong way about practicing STGs, and give bad advice to newcomers looking for methods to approach scoring at their game.

I have proven to myself that my practicing methods are extremely efficient compared to how most others proceed, notably when I took part in the Arcade Extreme tournament a few years back, on the Cave game Guwange. This tournament had a bunch of well known good players in it, with me being unknown at the time, and the winner was to receive a prize of 100 euros, encouraging players to do their best. The occidental record holder of the time was in the tournament. We basically had 2 months to practice and submit our best score with a MAME replay. I totalled 100 hours in those 2 months, using my practicing methods to the best of my ability, without wasting any time. The former occidental record holder increased his score from 21 million (21M) to 23M, while most of the other good players reached scores around 20M. To my own surprise, I came out far on top with a score of 49,8M, with virtually no
prior experience of that game.

I don't think I have a special talent to play STG (no one does), but I think many people could use some piece of advice about practicing from me ! So here is my nice big piece of advice.

If you read and follow the advice I present to you here, and have enough willpower and motivation to score as high as you can, I'm pretty sure you should be able to approach or even beat my scores by playing just as much as I have, or less.

I started from complete beginner level, and within 600 hours of playtime (including time spent in practice with saved states and in full runs), I've reached a score of 547M in DoDonPachi, clearing both loops and the true last boss with 2 spare lives. That's a pretty good score considering the world record is 749M, and from what I've been told there really isn't a lot of Japanese players who ever scored over 500M, although I'm not entirely sure how many.

You might get there a little faster or slower depending on your previous experiences and capacities.

But whoever you are, if you want it, I think you can do it. I really do.

Even for people who won't set their goals this high, this document should be of great help to improve their understanding of STG practicing and performing. Unless you have already made your way as far as I have into this matter, I'm sure it'll help you get good much faster.

This document is not particularly intended to be fully read from first to last page. Depending on your previous experience, you will probably want to skip some parts, or read the chapters in a different order. Don't worry about it and go ahead !

And now, let's see how we can get those Shooting Games
totally prosecutedt

Getting Started

Picking a Game

So you like STGs and you think you want to achieve a high score in some game ? You are probably aware that this means spending a hell of a lot of time on that one game you're going to choose, therefore the choice may not be that easy.

DoDonPachi's likely to be your favorite if you haven't bothered to buy console ports or PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) yet. It is certainly, indeed, the hardest and deepest danmaku available on MAME, and one of the most emblematic game Cave has ever made. It redefines the danmaku genre by pushing beyond Donpachi's limits. For the sake of picking an example, we will now pretend that you are considering DoDonPachi as your game of choice for scoring.

As you probably know, Cave has been making a lot of other STGs after DoDonPachi. One of them, Guwange, is playable on MAME. A couple of others are rather easily accessible as ports, mostly on Japanese Playstation 2 or Xbox360 : DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou which is essentially DoDonPachi 2, Mushihimesama, Ibara, Espgaluda, Mushihimesama Futari, Death Smiles, Ketsui... Not to mention some other awesome games by Treasure and other companies if you happen to be into them.

How does DoDonPachi compare to all those great games ?

First of all, you should realize DoDonPachi is primarily a manic (or danmaku) game : it mainly involves skills related to reading and dodging tight bullet patterns. You could also say it's partly methodical, because its chaining system will require you to make some very precise moves with excellent timing, not related to dodging a pattern. If methodical gameplay is what you prefer, DoDonPachi might not be the right choice as there are games offering more variety and depth for that kind of gameplay, while lacking the danmaku depth of DoDonPachi, such as Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun. If however you have decided danmaku skills is what you are most interested in, you are looking at the right games when considering Cave's productions, and will be fine ignoring others (although some Doujins might qualify as quality danmaku games as well).

Now is when DoDonPachi is in a tough spot. Many of the games Cave have been producing over the last few years have been improving on DoDonPachi in various ways. Some are targeted to a different audience or feature clearly different gameplay like EspGaluda or Ibara, but the others are extremely similar in both the audience they are targetting and the gameplay they feature. DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou, for example, is basically harder, better, faster, stronger. This might sound bad if you're not a good player yet, or if you're not into electronic music, but as you get better you will learn to appreciate that smart difficulty delivers great fun. Ketsui kinda gets rid of the too unforgiving, generally unfair scoring systems of DoDonPachi games, offering a more linear score progression and less punishment for a mistake. The Mushihimesama games banned the stupid loops and replaced them with cool difficulty modes instead that make the game last a little shorter than 2 loops of DoDonPachi, with interesting, difficult action starting from the first stage. Newer games also feature better graphics and sound, which do matter when you're going to spend hours on a game, as they will make your practicing
sessions much more pleasurable

Not much of a reason left to play DoDonPachi is there ?

You're right, there's little left -_-

But there's still a few important ones why DoDonPachi is not such a bad choice at all.

One : you can play it on MAME. Read the next section ("Which DoDonPachi ?") to know more about why I think you should consider this a major advantage. Half of what MAME does for you ports can do also, but you really want to avoid practicing on PCBs if you care for your time (and your money). At the time of writing, only DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou is a more recent, potentially better game that is also available on emulation with save possibility (through PSX Playground or something), although not on its improved « Black Label » version. By any means, choose a game that at least has a console port with level select.

Two : to this day, DoDonPachi remains one of the few most popular STGs around, because many people won't bother buying a Japanese console to play the ports. This means when you play DoDonPachi, you will have more people around you (well... online at least) competing, giving advice and cheering for your progress.

Three : even though many of the newer games are better, DoDonPachi is not so vastly inferior. And if you get good at it, it will be easy to get good at other games later !
So now you know about the other games and have potentially considered your other choices. In any case, here is a set of skills that practicing DoDonPachi (or any other danmaku) will teach you, according to me :

• Great coordination between hand and eyes
• Great ability to accurately anticipate movements
• Great accuracy of timings
• Great Reflexes
• Outstanding Memory
• Nervousness control
• Mastery of execution with your controller of choice
• Increased ability to focus

Nice little set, uh ?

I'm pretty confident about this list. There might be quite a few other less important skills that come into play, but the big ones are here and I'm quite certain that getting better at the game significantly improves those skills. Of course, nobody plays STGs for that sole purpose. Although most of them can be smoothly transfered to other game genres, quite a few of them are only very remotely useful for anything else in life.

Nevertheless, I believe they are a really nice bonus and have the power to improve you as a person in many ways (as long as you also develop other extremely important skills in other life activities ! For example, socializing is a great way of improving your confidence, which is an extremely crucial skill ! Prove people who think gamers are all nerdy and boring they're wrong, by showing yourself as a counter example ;)). Working out those skills is a great source of fun and pleasure. Can you imagine what it feels like dodging crazy Hibachi patterns using all of them at the same time ?

The thing that's great about skills is that they don't really ever go away. What you learn through repetition sticks, just like you never forgot to ride a bike even if you never rode one for years. This applies to DoDonPachi. Not only are my skills intact whenever I come back after 6 months of not playing, but I can't seem to even forget anything of the 45 minutes of precise action sequences I've memorized. This is because I've repeated them enough times for them to have entered long term memory. Sure, some little details may have faded a bit and your skills just might get a little rusty. But don't worry, as they always come back to full power infinitely faster than it first took to acquire them !

''Hey... why not play many games instead of just picking one ?''

That's a good question ! By picking only one game, you will be spending as little time as possible just gathering knowledge, and as much time as possible increasing your skills. Let me explain. When you start playing a new game, you have to get acquainted with its scoring system and various rules. You have to learn the differences between each ships, play around and pick one. And most importantly, you have to memorize scoring routes through each levels. There is a lot of memorization involved with playing STG well, just like with most competitive games. The only skill that improves when you are just memorizing is... memory. When you learn a new game, you will have to spend quite a few hours learning even the first levels, which are usually easy levels, meaning that they will not require you to improve
your skills, if your skills are already high enough.

Now if you stick to one game, you will be moving forward to harder sections that you cannot do yet, as soon as you are doing okay in the easier sections. At that point, why switch games and spend so much time re-learning easy sections of another game ? Stick to one game, get as far as you can in it, and your skills will keep improving. When you feel you are done with that game and you really want to play another, go ahead. If the new game you picked is harder, it will teach you new things and you will have fun with it in new ways, after you pass the phase of « getting acquainted, learning and memorizing » what you need to reach the harder challenges that this game has to offer. Just avoid hopping around between many games, if you want to get good.

''So if I'm following well I should perform well in a new game if I'm great at another game''

Yes ! After having spent enough time learning that new game, you will find you will improve so much faster than you did when you were a beginner and played that other game that you became great at. The more similar the gameplay of the new game you pick is, the easier it will be to transfer your skills to it. So if you're good at DoDonPachi, I have no doubt you'll perform well in DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou or Dai Fukkatsu given some time to learn them.

Picking a Version

If you ever hang out on some STG themed forums, you probably ran multiple times into the same topics of someone asking the world which version of game X is best. DoDonPachi is probably one of the most debated because it's so popular and because it comes into at least 4 different versions : you can play it on MAME (arcade emulator), you can play it on Playstation, on Sega Saturn, and you can play it on a PCB.

There is one important point to consider before choosing which version you want to play : the PCB version is what the Japanese players have been competing on for all this time, so if you want to know how your score compares to theirs, you need a version that is really close to the PCB version. Lucky for you, DoDonPachi plays exactly the same on MAME as it plays on the PCB, provided you use the right version and setting of MAME (more about that later). Oh, maybe some people will manage to point out some extremely minor difference in display or sound, but nothing that deserves serious consideration : the game plays the same, it is just as hard and whatever score you make with a correct MAME version and a correct configuration is a score you achieved and can compare to any PCB score.

If your mind is still troubled because you can't help but think you're not playing the authentic, real thing, then go buy a PCB, but still practice with MAME, and use the PCB only to perform your high scoring runs.

Here are the benefits of using MAME :

• You can use saved states (load instantly to practice a part many times)
• You can easily record replays (awesome to watch and publish your runs)
• You can easily play with a keyboard <(^_^o)~

The most important thing here is the saved states. A STG always requires a lot of memorization and DoDonPachi is no exception. In fact, being a danmaku, DoDonPachi will require much more memorization effort than most if not all old school memorizers. That kind of sucks because learning stuff by heart gets tedious really fast, but due to the very nature of those games, it is a required characteristic that you can hardly get rid of without making a boring, simplistic, or easy game.

Oh well, at least it'll be good practice for your memory.

Cave decided to further complicate the players' learning curve by making DoDonPachi overly long (a full run lasts about 45 minutes), with last stages that require very precise and very unobvious paths to both survive and score in, and first stages that seem extremely easy in comparison and that will bore you to death once you master them, yet have to play through them again and again when trying for a new record.

Saved states will allow you to learn at least 5 times faster by allowing you to skip those easy first stages, and isolating hard sections that need more attention. More on that later. For now, just remember it is a really crucial perk.

Being able to easily record replays is very nice. Replays are good for you to keep a nice record of your most beautiful runs, sometimes to analyze your mistakes, and also to show off your high scoring runs to other players. Releasing replays benefits the community for entertainment and educational purposes, and the community benefits you back by giving you credit and cheering for you, or giving you advice for improvement. There is nothing better for your motivation than receiving words of congratulations from other people, showing they care about what you're doing. If you were playing on a PCB, you'd have quite a hard time gathering the hardware necessary to recording videos of your runs and making it work. The end result would also be far less convenient to release and potentially of lower quality.

I haven't been talking about the console ports. Well, there is not much of a reason for you to use the console ports of DoDonPachi instead of MAME : they look and sound a little worse in general, they might play a little differently from the PCB (and MAME), they do have level select (I think) but no saved states (not quite as convenient but MUCH better than nothing), and they're still a pain in the ass to record a replay from. So if you can afford at least some old computer, don't bother.

By all means, avoid PCBs for practicing. They do not have either level select or saved states and are no good for learning. I cannot stress enough how important that is. I know the Japanese players who scored in the first Japanese rankings learned this way, but that's, indeed, only because they didn't have a choice. Believe me, if they could have used MAME, the MAME users would have come far on top of the others. PCBs are also very expensive. If you love PCBs, it's not a bad idea to play your final scoring runs on PCB though. Just find a way to set up recording equipment to record off the PCB.

If after reading all this you're still not convinced you should practice using MAME, you are an asshole !

If you are not an asshole, here are some informations about which MAME you should be using : MAME Lagless 0.99 works flawlessly with DoDonPachi (both for saved states and recording replays), and performs the best with 0 lag (all other versions have one frame of lag).

You can find it on this topic :
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=563842#p563842

There is one little problem with this version. You can easily cheat while recording a replay with the « frame advance » feature. I am still waiting for someone to release a lagless version that you can't easily cheat with. Because there are always a few cheaters that come around.

Anyway, here are the correct settings for MAME to properly get the game to be displayed correctly and run at the correct speed, you should probably check them : in the properties options of the rom, in the Display tab, check "Throttle", maybe also "Start maximized", and uncheck all the rest (you could check RTDSC timing system, not sure it makes a difference). Make sure Frame Skipping is set to "Draw every frame". In the Advanced tab, check Use DirectDraw, Switch resolutions to fit, Switch color depths to fit, and Stretch using hardware. Uncheck the rest. Make sure the ratio is equal to your screen ratio ! You can use Kreed's 2xSal as Image Enhancement for a nice rendering.

Picking a Controller

Stick, pad or... keyboard ?

You probably already know your weapon of choice but if you need some confirmation that it is a good choice then here it is : any of those input systems are perfectly fine for STGs.

Arcade sticks are what most people use due to arcade cabinets being equiped exclusively with that kind of input, but nothing makes them better than pads or keyboards at playing those games. The only downside to not playing with a stick is facing a handicap if you ever happen to go play in an actual arcade or at some convention or meeting with no pad or keyboard available.

Whichever controler you pick, remember that MrMonkeyMan has proved you can destroy a difficult Cave game with a crazy score using a pad and I proved you can do that using a keyboard. If you've been playing other competitive games with a pad or keyboard before, then you could stick with that input as you already are familiar and skilled at using it quickly and accurately. Just don't listen to the crowd of people who sing together how STGs are meant to be played with arcade sticks so arcade sticks have to be the best at it. They are wrong.

I personnally secretly believe keyboards are actually a superior input to arcade sticks. Oops, there I said it, it's not a secret anymore ! That's because they're much faster at changing directions, and they're also better at tapping one direction very shortly multiple times, which are very useful perks for STGs. Some people will point to you its easier and more intuitive to make circles with an arcade stick, but that's pretty much useless !! I might be wrong about keyboard being superior, I don't know shit about arcade sticks and I don't care. Keyboards rule anyway.

Picking a Ship

You should think a little bit before starting to memorize paths through levels with a certain ship. First try them all a bit and experiment to see what they look and feel like. Then try to grab superplays of each ship type to see what it's like to play well with them, what their style really is, maybe also check the difference in difficulty to play well with each (they aren't really supposed to be equally balanced).

I don't know other ship types so well myself (I only play A-L), so I can't really tell you which is a better choice, but here are a couple of things you should consider : I have already made a high scoring A-L occidental superplay and K.O. (japanese player) released a A-L 603M superplay before. People know A-L, they've seen it played really well, including by westerners, and you're not likely to surprise and captivate them as much with A-L as you would if you played another ship. I'm not saying you should not choose it, just take this into consideration.

Now B-L is quite similar to A-L in gameplay, yet different enough that you can look really cool if you score high with it. It can sure score high without much more trouble as K.O proved with his other video kindly hosted by superplay.co.uk.

C-S plays very differently from those two, and even though most people use this ship because it is easy to survive with without scoring, it is definitely interesting to use and no occidental scored over 149M with it, so if you could release some C-S replays scoring even higher, people would notice and I'd be among those who would watch and applaud.

I don't really know if A-S, B-S and C-L are much worse for scoring or not, so you go find out if you're interested in playing them. I've seen a A-S replay scoring 200M in first loop, which is optimal, so I guess this one works well.

There is something important you want to take notice of when choosing your ship. Figuring out paths through levels by yourself might seem cool and fun at first, but it's not exactly the fastest way to success and it probably won't be fun forever. You will improve infinitely faster and your paths will be safer if you use a superplay video as a model. So if you really can't find a high scoring, non-fake superplay video with your ship type of choice, I advise you to switch to another. Ask people on the forums for superplay videos.

Finally, you might be attracted to the player 2 version of your ship type because you like its color or something. Color is great, but as you may or may not know playing as 2P also changes 3 things in gameplay :

• You start on the right side of the screen. This is never a problem because you always have time to move where you want to be before the first enemies arrive, with the exception of stage 2-1 where you'll have to pull a slightly harder maneuver to begin the stage (no big deal).

 

• The star bonus is cumulated instead of reseted at the end of each stage : every small star you collect are worth a bonus at the end of the stage if you haven't died, but with 2P, every time you finish a stage, you will get a bonus for each small star you have collected since the last time you missed, or since the beginning of your run if you have never missed. Example : You collect a star in stage 1 and don't die until stage 5. This star would give you a bonus only in stage 1 if you were 1P, but because you are 2P it also gives you a bonus at the end of the next stages. This is cool but rather minor : if you no miss the whole game until Hibachi (12 stages) and collect stars normally, this will earn you about 4 million additionnal points compared to what you'd have got with 1P. Absolutely important if you're going for a world record, not so much if you are not.

By the way, I hope you are not.

• You cannot continue a chain after a laser-bomb when you are in MAXIMUM mode like you can with 1P. This is BAD and you're likely to waste much more points, due to not being able to do that, than you earned with the star bonus.

Unless you either are planning on doing a no miss no bomb of both loops up to Hibachi, or are really THAT attracted to the 2P ship's color, you do not want to use the 2P ship. It is likely to cause your final score to decrease by up to 20M.