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[SmiteOfHand]

1.5 is oversimplified; there are -six- modes within the 1.5 banner, from Original to Ultra MAX. I'd also slot the difficulty of Novice Ultra significantly lower than Normal Original. I also personally think Normal Maniac is easier than Normal Original, but that's mainly because I can deal with dense, slow patterns better than speedy bullets out of nowhere.

This is a good point, and something the OT fails to make completely clear. The part in bold highlights why these games can be tricky to rank by difficulty. People will struggle with different aspects of the game, and building a vocabulary of techniques can take time (where people will assume rote memorization is the only option.)

Tap dodging is one that I think once it unlocks in your brain, so that you know when to identify it, you'll just flat look at these games differently. But telling someone "just do a small tap to the side when X enemy shoots", doesn't always click at first. They are too busy trying to not die and the stress and the pressure of it all overwhelms.

Anyway, here is a shot at laying out the modes/difficulties a little more clearly. I think the OT is still relevant as a general overview. This is more complete and concise. So if you want to complete everything the game has to offer you have 13 clears available (even if cheevos don't track it that way.) Although in reality I think most people will be content with 9 clears. The Ultra warning screen is there for a reason.

(The line between Ver. 1.5 and Ver. 1.5 MAX will probably feel thin until you wrap your head around the ranking system and what it is doing.)

What is 1.5 MAX?

Is that another mode part of the 1.5 add-on, or that something that isn't included in this release?

When you select your shot type in 1.5 there are 3 additional shot types (maxed out versions of the 3 originals). If you pick one of them you will be playing in MAX mode. It makes the biggest changes to the game. Check it out, for sure.

 

[OmegaDL50]

What is 1.5 MAX?

Is that another mode part of the 1.5 add-on, or that something that isn't included in this release?

 

[StarCreator]

What is 1.5 MAX?

Is that another mode part of the 1.5 add-on, or that something that isn't included in this release?

It's part of 1.5. 1.5 keeps the Original/Maniac/Ultra modes but splits them in two, with each mode having a MAX variant.

 

[ArclightBorealis]

So I bought this game with the intention of playing it during Extra Life last weekend but didn't get around to actually playing it until this morning. Got through Original Mode after wasting a bunch of continues because I can never 1cc any of these kinds of games.

Having next to no knowledge of this game prior in any of its forms, I'm rather impressed. I'm more familiar with some of Cave's other titles like DoDonPachi and Esprade, but already I'm quite taken in by this game just on the aesthetics alone, just all the different bug enemies and the detail of the sprites. Plays well too, although the annoying part was that after using my first continue, the game switched me over to 2P and screwed up the button config on my HRAP3. Had to quickly readjust, and just going by some of the posts I've seen in this thread, controller functions leave a little something to be desired.

Still, I like that this is something completely new for me so I'm gonna continue playing it, give Arrange and 1.5 mode a shot and hopefully improve my dodging. I almost feel like I get long streaks of luck where I'll be able to dodge a hail of bullets almost on reaction, but then I screw up and move to the side a bit too far. Still feels good supporting this on the hope Cave will bring more of its catalog to the PC.

 

[Shaneus]

I've only had a chance to play a handful of games with this, but I'm still a little confused about the firing... what's the best way to go? I was hammering the fire button, then tried auto fire, then tried whatever is mapped to R2 because that seems to use auto fire plus laser things. This is in both Normal and Novice (the latter of which I found unusually difficult... I'm getting rusty ).

 

[Tain]

I've only had a chance to play a handful of games with this, but I'm still a little confused about the firing... what's the best way to go? I was hammering the fire button, then tried auto fire, then tried whatever is mapped to R2 because that seems to use auto fire plus laser things. This is in both Normal and Novice (the latter of which I found unusually difficult... I'm getting rusty ).

The game has two required buttons: shot and bomb. Holding shot will focus your fire and make you move slower. There's a third button that automatically fires without focusing (equivalent to rhythmically but not hyper-quickly tapping shot). Generally these are all you need, and you'll be holding the third button down almost all the time. When you want to focus fire and slow down, you can hold the first button on top of the third.

That said, to get better scores in certain modes, players in arcades found that you'd have to rapidly tap the auto-fire button in some situations. Arcade operators would even install autofire circuits for a button that's already doing auto-fire on the software end. This home port has options to recreate this behavior, but you probably don't need them unless you really want to dig into the Maniac and Ultra scoring.

 

[Knurek]

Onto Novice Ultra.

 

[demidar]

I keep losing track of my character -_-

 

[Knurek]

Always online (supposedly) removed.
60 fps patched in.

On that note:

 

[OmegaDL50]

I keep losing track of my character -_-

You might already know this but the small glowing dot at the center of your ship is your damage zone.

You can have bullets completely cover your character completely but as long as they don't touch that small glowing blue dot in the center you will be fine.

 

[demidar]

You might already know this but the small glowing dot at the center of your ship is your damage zone.

You can have bullets completely cover your character completely but as long as they don't touch that small glowing blue dot in the center you will be fine.

Yeah I know about hitboxes. It's more that the detailed background makes me lose track of where I am and I die to something I didn't even see.

Also the final boss seems like a pushover (on normal). I assume there's an optional superboss for 1cc?

 

[Knurek]

Yeah I know about hitboxes. It's more that the detailed background makes me lose track of where I am and I die to something I didn't even see.

Also the final boss seems like a pushover (on normal). I assume there's an optional superboss for 1cc?

Only on Normal and Arrange modes, TLB will not show up on Novice ones.
And yeah, 1cc needed.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Only on Normal and Arrange modes, TLB will not show up on Novice ones.
And yeah, 1cc needed.

TLB doesn't show up in Original or Maniac at all.

Does this look like a guy you want to face anyway? https://youtu.be/T6kwkFuACdY?t=1341

I mean look at that crap.
The worst part is the last 1/8 of his health: https://youtu.be/T6kwkFuACdY?t=1417

 

[StarCreator]

Apparently the new patch that dropped today makes a fundamental change to gameplay: rapid shot is now ignored when holding full auto. It is still possible to tap shot while using full auto, but the rapid shot feature has essentially been rendered completely useless - if it's not there to simulate the auto fire setups arcade operators rigged, then why is it even there?

No other port of the game functions like this one does now, and I think the statute of limitations on gameplay changes ran out a decade ago.

 

[ThePeoplesBureau]

Anyone using portrait orientation with GeDoSaTo, would you mind sharing your profile settings? My monitor is running at 1080x1920 but I'm not perceiving any changes in game when I attempt to push downsampling in the profile. I reset the profile so don't have any live settings to share myself, but if anyone has a working solution with the latest patch, I'd appreciate your help.

 

[Llyranor]

I use 3 buttons. Autofire for rapid movement, shot for slower navigation/concentated firepower, and bomb. I don't quick-tap, too lazy

I hate to admit it, but as much as I love shmups, I am a scrub. Normal novice is too easy, but Maniac/Ultra novice seem manageable, so I will work on 1cc'ing them first

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Apparently the new patch that dropped today makes a fundamental change to gameplay: rapid shot is now ignored when holding full auto. It is still possible to tap shot while using full auto, but the rapid shot feature has essentially been rendered completely useless - if it's not there to simulate the auto fire setups arcade operators rigged, then why is it even there?

No other port of the game functions like this one does now, and I think the statute of limitations on gameplay changes ran out a decade ago.

The change is so baffling I can't imagine why Cave did it.

 

[Palculator]

Up to date with all reported bugs and feature requests now.

Let me know if you're still running into any errors that should be fixed on V1.1.2.5.

It sounds like some users still aren't seeing 60 FPS yet, and VSync is causing some input lag. We'll keep working on optimizing the FPS and polishing the game in general.

Thanks for your patience and support so far.

Thanks for being so open about this! I'll finally try the game later (busy week) and tell you if anything goes wrong for me!

Cheers.

 

[Beckx]

I don't know if it was the patch or me changing my laptop to turn off the laptop display and only output to the monitor, but the game now goes full screen with no problems. And works great with Steam Link too.

 

[demidar]

3CC'd normal mode. It's not too hard I suppose, just gotta be a little more loose on the bombs and optimize my route a bit. Though Fallout 4 is around the corner so it'll have to wait.

 

[Tain]

Loving the frequency of the patches, excited to see if I get 60fps, confused at the autofire change.

 

[shockdude]

Anyone using portrait orientation with GeDoSaTo, would you mind sharing your profile settings? My monitor is running at 1080x1920 but I'm not perceiving any changes in game when I attempt to push downsampling in the profile. I reset the profile so don't have any live settings to share myself, but if anyone has a working solution with the latest patch, I'd appreciate your help.

Make sure all the GeDoSaTo settings are default. Reinstall GeDoSaTo if you have to.
Also Mushihimesama doesn't support portrait resolutions. You need to unrotate your desktop (so that your monitor is vertical and the desktop is sideways), then launch Mushihimesama and rotate in-game. Hopefully they'll add proper vertical resolution support in a future patch.

I don't know if it was the patch or me changing my laptop to turn off the laptop display and only output to the monitor, but the game now goes full screen with no problems. And works great with Steam Link too.

Yeah the game doesn't correctly fullscreen with multiple monitors, only with a single monitor.
A workaround for me is to open Mushihimesama.ini and set FullMode=0, then open GeDoSaTo and add "forceFullscreenMode true" to the Mushihimesama config.

Edit: I'm getting stable 60FPS with v1.1.2.7. Well done.
The game still doesn't run in exclusive fullscreen for me (it runs in borderless windowed fullscreen), meaning that there's still a little microstutter, but w/e.
Personally I'll keep using GeDoSaTo & RivaTuner since I get less microstutter that way.

 

[JoeyJungle]

Yeah the game doesn't correctly fullscreen with multiple monitors, only with a single monitor.
A workaround for me is to open Mushihimesama.ini and set FullMode=0, then open GeDoSaTo and add "forceFullscreenMode true" to the Mushihimesama config.

I haven't been following the issues, but for me on a single monitor, I've been able to go full screen by pressing alt+enter. If I change it from the settings menu of the game, it gets stuck in an endless loop flickering between windowed and full screen mode that just shows a black screen. Only way to get out of it is alt+f4 :\ . I have a 2560x1440 monitor, not sure if that's the issue. Haven't messed around with gedosato yet.

Also, I'm getting tons of slowdown, especially on stage 3 (where the whole stage is destroying one giant bug). I've got a 980ti and a 6700k so it's def not my specs. Running the newest patch that came out this morning 1.1.2.7

 

[danmaku]

I haven't been following the issues, but for me on a single monitor, I've been able to go full screen by pressing alt+enter. If I change it from the settings menu of the game, it gets stuck in an endless loop flickering between windowed and full screen mode that just shows a black screen. Only way to get out of it is alt+f4 :\ . I have a 2560x1440 monitor, not sure if that's the issue. Haven't messed around with gedosato yet.

Also, I'm getting tons of slowdown, especially on stage 3 (where the whole stage is destroying one giant bug). I've got a 980ti and a 6700k so it's def not my specs. Running the newest patch that came out this morning 1.1.2.7

The slowdown is meant to be there, unless you're experiencing framerate drops. The game should slow down but still keep 60fps. After the patch, I can play at 60 without Gedosato, but in certain points the game stutters, as if it was loading something. I don't remember the 360 version doing that.

 

[JoeyJungle]

The slowdown is meant to be there, unless you're experiencing framerate drops. The game should slow down but still keep 60fps. After the patch, I can play at 60 without Gedosato, but in certain points the game stutters, as if it was loading something. I don't remember the 360 version doing that.

Thanks, I thought the game was supposed to run at a constant speed. I just did a test and Rivatuner said that it was basically holding 60fps (it would fluctuate by up to .5fps, which is maybe a dropped frame here and there).

 

[ThePeoplesBureau]

Make sure all the GeDoSaTo settings are default. Reinstall GeDoSaTo if you have to.
Also Mushihimesama doesn't support portrait resolutions. You need to unrotate your desktop (so that your monitor is vertical and the desktop is sideways), then launch Mushihimesama and rotate in-game. Hopefully they'll add proper vertical resolution support in a future patch.

Embarrassed to say I didn't think of trying that in the first place! I'll give it a look and report back, thanks.


Side note, I have a spare Steam card to trade:

If anyone wants to trade (I'll take any card other than 'Young Reco' or 'Let my feelings reach the Koju') just drop me a PM here.

 

[Momentary]

The game is running just fine without the need of GeDoSaTo. Only reason for me to use it now is for 1920x1080 res.

Degica is such an awesome company to handle these games. They respond to concerns in a quick manner and follow through with their promises. This is why I never have a problem buying their games on day one. CAVE deserves props for actually taking the platform seriously and getting fixes out as fast as they do.

I have a feeling next year is going to be the biggest year yet for PC Shoot'em Up fans. Especially with Caladrius Blaze starting off the year for us.

 

[StarCreator]

The game is running just fine without the need of GeDoSaTo. Only reason for me to use it now is for 1920x1080 res.

Degica is such an awesome company to handle these games. They respond to concerns in a quick manner and follow through with their promises. This is why I never have a problem buying their games on day one. CAVE deserves props for actually taking the platform seriously and getting fixes out as fast as they do.

I have a feeling next year is going to be the biggest year yet for PC Shoot'em Up fans. Especially with Caladrius Blaze starting off the year for us.

I'm honestly surprised that you are not upset about the rapid shot change. That has far more impact on gameplay and the legitimacy of scores than the framerate issue ever did.

 

[Geraldo_Ray]

The latest patch got rid of the whole 56-59 FPS thing (now it's a constant 60 according to Steam), but local scores still get reset after closing and reopening a game mode (even with Steam Cloud turned on). Some of this stuff would've been noticeable during testing (even if it's a small team), but they're making progress. So kudos to CAVE and Degica for trying to be quick about it.

 

[The_Super_Inframan]

yeah, game is running at 60fps now but it's tearing really heavy... and still no saved local scores :/

 

[JoeyJungle]

So just to make sure this is what the slowdown's supposed to look like, I made a short video: https://vimeo.com/145414788

Slowdown gets really bad at around 50 seconds. Sorry for recording on the desktop, I couldn't get shadowplay to record when the game was in full screen.

 

[derExperte]

I'm honestly surprised that you are not upset about the rapid shot change. That has far more impact on gameplay and the legitimacy of scores than the framerate issue ever did.

Can someone explain what the problem is to someone who has never played a CAVE shooter before this one, has little experience with bullet hell shooters in general and gets easily confused by some of the talk in here?

 

[Mufti Nabiyu Erin]

I'm also getting a solid 60fps, but the tearing this patch introduced is tremendous for me.

 

[StarCreator]

Can someone explain what the problem is to someone who has never played a CAVE shooter before this one, has little experience with bullet hell shooters in general and gets easily confused by some of the talk in here?

It's actually something very, very specific to Mushihimesama in particular. In general: the arcade board provided three button inputs: Shot, Bomb, and Autofire. In most games, Shot and Autofire are mutually exclusive; you hold down shot if you want a concentrated fire and slower movement, and Autofire if you want the regular shot type and normal movement (as if you're just tapping Shot really fast). In Mushihimesama, this is a little different; you can hold Autofire and tap Shot to effectively get both shot types simultaneously. This wound up getting worked into players' strategy in order to kill things faster than possible with the two normal shot types. As such, arcades began implementing their own Rapid Fire buttons to add to the three the game provides on its own.

The port provides Rapid Fire buttons, and until this latest patch, things worked just as in arcade; you could hold Autofire and Rapid Fire simultaneously to get the extra powered shot. This latest patch removes that feature for the first time, despite the feature never having been removed from any other version of the game thus far (this is the third Mushihimesama port, followig the PS2 and 360).

 

[derExperte]

Very interesting, thanks for the explanation!

 

[ArjanN]

Can someone explain what the problem is to someone who has never played a CAVE shooter before this one, has little experience with bullet hell shooters in general and gets easily confused by some of the talk in here?

I think the way it worked is that you could hold one fire button and press another to shoot slightly faster, but I guess that was considered an exploit.

EDIT: see above for a more detailed explanation.

 

[danmaku]

Can someone explain what the problem is to someone who has never played a CAVE shooter before this one, has little experience with bullet hell shooters in general and gets easily confused by some of the talk in here?

The scoring system in maniac and ultra mode requires the player to tap the buttons at a certain frequency against certain enemies to increase the value of the counter in the upper left corner of the screen. Since doing it manually is tiring and sub optimal, arcade owners equipped the cabinets with custom autofire buttons to help the players to get better scores. The port has a similar option, but it seems like you can't use the custom buttons together with the normal ones, and sometimes you want to do it (holding the c button and tapping the a button fast gives you the strongest shot in the game). I think it's just a bug, there's no point in limiting the use of autofire in this way.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

So just to make sure this is what the slowdown's supposed to look like, I made a short video: https://vimeo.com/145414788

Slowdown gets really bad at around 50 seconds. Sorry for recording on the desktop, I couldn't get shadowplay to record when the game was in full screen.

Yes, that is intentional slowdown, not the game hitching up. You have some amount of control over it based on if you use Shot (the one that also slows your ship speed down) or Full Auto. Switching between them might be why it feels inconsistent.


re: patch. Not near my computer but will check it out soon as I can. Curious about the changes to the shooting.

 

[Momentary]

I'm honestly surprised that you are not upset about the rapid shot change. That has far more impact on gameplay and the legitimacy of scores than the framerate issue ever did.

Because I just noticed it now when taking down a boss didn't happen as quickly as before. Then I read the patch notes to see what was the issue to make sure I wasn't going crazy. Plus, I don't get upset at Degica.

And framerate has a huge impact on a shoot'em up and score legitimacy. It's more important because it's something that can be exploited in every Shoot'em Up. There are games that will literally not count your score if you run at even 2 frames off. Crimzon Clover being the most popular one that does this. When game logic is tied to frame rate you get an advantage from running the game at a lower frame rate, because it creates a slowdown effect through the entire game. This happens with a lot of games. One recent one is Tales of Zestiria. If you force it to run at something like 25 or 20 FPS the game moves in slow motion. Go ahead and use Durante's tool to lock Mushihimesama to 30, 40, or 50 FPS. You get a HUGE advantage for lower framerates on this game. HUGE. That's why your scores count for shit. Running this game at 56 or 55 frames a seconds gives you a huge advantage at dodging EVERYTHING in this game. Your survivability goes up tremendously.

There are probably people who use this method to cheat their way up the leaderboards by locking the framerate with a frame limiter tool. Then you watch their replays at 60fps and think they are awesome when they actually did that shit at 30 frames a second with the whole game moving in slow motion. Replay videos in these games, like most games, only record input data, so when you watch it at normal speeds you don't see people using the exploit during the run. THAT is why Crimzon Clover says NO to your score if it detects that your run wasn't done at 60FPS. I wish more Shoot'em Ups did this to people.

Now STOP poking me with the framerate issue. I don't know how else to make it clearer to you.

As for the issue shots issue, Degica will (might) change it since it is basically how the game has always been played. I don't know why they changed it though. CAVE must have really wanted to get rid of the glitch.

 

[KainXVIII]

Yeah, got tearing and huge slowdowns on 3 level.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

Yeah, got tearing and huge slowdowns on 3 level.

Slowdown worse than Joey's video above? It looks normal to me there for ver 1.5 but will have to compare to 360 when I can.

 

[-Gozer-]

This latest patch adds a lot of screen tearing and the microstutter is back. That last patch was perfectly smooth for me.

Edit:

Thankfully, forcing vsync in Nvidia inspector makes it perfectly smooth again with no stutter or input lag.

Edit2:

Actually. I take it back. There is input lag now with forcing vsync on. This is not ideal for me.

 

[Tain]

This latest patch adds a lot of screen tearing and the microstutter is back. That last patch was perfectly smooth for me.

Edit:

Thankfully, forcing vsync in Nvidia inspector makes it perfectly smooth again with no stutter or input lag.

Sounds like we just need an in-game vsync option, and even that is relatively low priority in my opinion.

Very happy to hear most are at 60fps now.

 

[Durante]

I'm honestly surprised that you are not upset about the rapid shot change. That has far more impact on gameplay and the legitimacy of scores than the framerate issue ever did.

As far as I understand, it only has any gameplay impact at all if you're playing for scores on a high level. I imagine that few people do that. Unlike the framepacing issue, which could affect everyone.

 

[Blackbird@Degica]

Continuing to monitor the patch updates and feedback.

Sounds like the FPS issues are resolved for most players, but now there is screen tearing. We'll try to get that cleaned up.

Concerning the removal of "Super Shot": I'm not sure why this change was implemented. If I had to speculate, I feel like it was probably breaking something else, and was removed for that reason. I will investigate the reasoning and explain why that this functionality needs to remain in the game for scoring to work properly.

Thanks for your patience.

 

[KAOS]

Mushihimesama on a surface pro 3.

https://youtu.be/5R5c-U9uVy0

 

[Shaneus]

Continuing to monitor the patch updates and feedback.

Sounds like the FPS issues are resolved for most players, but now there is screen tearing. We'll try to get that cleaned up.

Concerning the removal of "Super Shot": I'm not sure why this change was implemented. If I had to speculate, I feel like it was probably breaking something else, and was removed for that reason. I will investigate the reasoning and explain why that this functionality needs to remain in the game for scoring to work properly.

Thanks for your patience.

Best support ever.

 

[ghibli99]

Continuing to monitor the patch updates and feedback.

Sounds like the FPS issues are resolved for most players, but now there is screen tearing. We'll try to get that cleaned up.

Concerning the removal of "Super Shot": I'm not sure why this change was implemented. If I had to speculate, I feel like it was probably breaking something else, and was removed for that reason. I will investigate the reasoning and explain why that this functionality needs to remain in the game for scoring to work properly.

Thanks for your patience.

Great work so far. I was fine with the game right out the gate despite some bugs, but it's good to see continuous monitoring and improvement.

 

[Momentary]

Continuing to monitor the patch updates and feedback.

Sounds like the FPS issues are resolved for most players, but now there is screen tearing. We'll try to get that cleaned up.

Concerning the removal of "Super Shot": I'm not sure why this change was implemented. If I had to speculate, I feel like it was probably breaking something else, and was removed for that reason. I will investigate the reasoning and explain why that this functionality needs to remain in the game for scoring to work properly.

Thanks for your patience.

This is why Degica always gets my money. Fantastic customer service for their gaming communities.

For Cave's first foray on the PC market, this is a pretty good product. And seeing how fast they are at responding to issues, I think they are going to have a healthy future and obtain a lot more fans than before.

I hope they plan on giving you a raise sometime soon Blackbird. You've been putting in some work getting the Shoot'em Ups over to STEAM.

 

[mdsfx]

Best support ever.

.