How can anyone play SHMUPs with a stick?

[Barrakketh]

In a shump, if you want to move slow, you exploit the parts of the game where there is slowdown. =D There is also really no need to move “slow” since shumps gives you leeway with the character’s hitbox.

That’s not really true, for the bullet hell games there is usually the option of focused movement. For games like Touhou there is a dedicated focus button, Cave’s shooters (including the Dodonpachi series) let you focus by holding down the fire button (keep tapping it for unfocused movement and a different type of shot).

For instance, take [media=youtube]uG9COkH6QYs[/media] clear of Dai-Ou-Jou’s Hibachi (TLB). Towards the end when you see those scattered shots by the player he is temporarily un-focused to dash through the openings…he is focused for almost the entire fight.

[media=youtube]ROhoALqKpYA[/media] Dodonpachi’s Hibachi featuring focused movement and bullet-induced slowdown.

[FreezerB]

I just tried the 360 port of Ikaruga and wow, I did not know it had analog sensitivity.

Something new, everyday.

[The_Third]

Just so the OP knows, there is an analog joystick, the Seimitsu LS-64.

[Ubersaurus]

Really it’s just practice, just like with fighting games. I’m still maybe a little better for most shooters I’ve been playing for years on pads, but for cave stuff, I try to go with the stick. The movements needed are just too precise for a pad to be as good. That said, non-Cave shooters are generally easier to not get plastered with a wall of bullets, so those may be better for getting used to a stick.

Ugh, Ikaruga. I tried so hard to like that damn game…

[tech7]

That’s not really true, for the bullet hell games there is usually the option of focused movement. For games like Touhou there is a dedicated focus button, Cave’s shooters (including the Dodonpachi series) let you focus by holding down the fire button (keep tapping it for unfocused movement and a different type of shot).

Ah, right. Thanks for the correction. Now, I know what the term is.

[jUtmAN22]

Simply put … shmups and fighters are of the arcade genre and as such are meant to be played with sticks … simples. Playing a shmup with a pad is just pants and does not feel right. No purist on the planet would favour pad over stick. But as with all things, its down to preferance and you use what you feel comfortable with. I would however recommend using a stick for a week to experience the difference (you will probably find after this you would not go back to pad)

[Dracula_X]

[media=youtube]70iFdnI-xfA&feature[/media]
[media=youtube]sQZuidKexBQ&feature=related[/media]

[jUtmAN22]

What’s showing clips of Mushihimusama got to do with this topic??

(Mushi is one of my favourite games though!)

[Kyle]

My guess is the that OP is playing on a JLF. I can’t imagine playing shmups without a stick. Try an LS-32, LS-40 or iL Competition. You should have a much better experience.

[EVAWINGZERO]

Ahh no wonder playing on that port feels like shit sometimes. Still one of my fav shumups I still want a Seimitsu stick with a smaller throw though.

I love using the LS-32 with round gate but the pivot and throw irk me a bit.

Truth. I still prefer Ikaruga on Dreamcast and Cube. I actually found a used copy for Gamecube last week at EB for 10$ Complete.

[tech7]

What’s showing clips of Mushihimusama got to do with this topic??

(Mushi is one of my favourite games though!)

I think the two videos are showing how one can be very precise using a digital joystick because of what Barrakketh mentioned, the “focused movement.”

[d3v]

I’ll take your Mushihimesama and raise you a DoDonpachi DaiFukkatsu Black Label.

[media=youtube]1fouVSOAZ_c[/media]

[jUtmAN22]

LOL … I love this shmup chat!!! its totally off topic, but I got a big shmup collection

[MiniFoo]

I use my TE on Ikaruga all the time. Plays great as long as you switch to 4 way.

Good luck with not being able to move diagonally.

I forgot about that. I guess thats the reason why Ikaruga for Xbox Live Arcade doesn’t have slowdown and has analog joystick sensitivity instead. It all makes sense now.

The Dreamcast and Gamecube ports had analog support as well, just so you know.

My guess is the that OP is playing on a JLF. I can’t imagine playing shmups without a stick. Try an LS-32, LS-40 or iL Competition. You should have a much better experience.

This, absolutely. I love my LS-40 for shmups.

[Dracula_X]

Yeah those vids were done on an arcade stick. Most likely a jlf or ls-32. Meant to post that. My personal favorite sticks for shmups is an ls-56, works well for me when I play Mushihimesama on my ps2 (yeah i know that game is outdated now, but it’s still fun) I’ve tried it with touhou on the pc but for one reason or another it won’t recognize that i have a stick plugged in. And that vid is equally crazy d3v. I don’t have the time or patience to pull that off.

Edit: not shmup but still impressive. [media=youtube]H_tmFUWu9bI&feature=related"[/media]

[fokkusuhaundo]

I love shmups, too bad I suck ass at them so I wouldn’t know how much better using an Seimitsu joystick to play them would be over the JLF’s that I have.

[Barrakketh]

I’ve tried it with touhou on the pc but for one reason or another it won’t recognize that i have a stick plugged in.

My experience has been that if you’re using a 360 stick you have to use the XBCD drivers to get it to work with Touhou, and on the TE it also needs to be set to LS.

For PoFV you’ll also need to go into the key preferences and set it to PAD1 before it’ll work with the stick.

I love shmups, too bad I suck ass at them so I wouldn’t know how much better using an Seimitsu joystick to play them would be over the JLF’s that I have.

The LS-40-01 is a huge improvement over the JLF, though if you can’t play them better with a keyboard instead of the JLF I’m not sure whether it’ll help your game.

[Dracula_X]

My experience has been that if you’re using a 360 stick you have to use the XBCD drivers to get it to work with Touhou, and on the TE it also needs to be set to LS.

For PoFV you’ll also need to go into the key preferences and set it to PAD1 before it’ll work with the stick.

It’s a ps1/2 stick I built connected via a inpin adapter. It works fine with everything else on my pc, but no dice for touhou.

[Barrakketh]

It’s a ps1/2 stick I built connected via a inpin adapter. It works fine with everything else on my pc, but no dice for touhou.

I’m ignorant of what each adapter supports, but I think it has to report as a d-pad in addition to/instead of a POV hat (for example, the Chimp/Cthulhu sends stick inputs as both when connected to the PC) for the Touhou games.

Part of my adventures in getting my TE S to work with the Touhou fighting games (namely SWR and Histoutensoku) was trying Joy2Key to see if I could get it to register movements with the stick. This was far from ideal due to some big annoyances, but when I had bound POV hat movement to the directions (LEFT, UP, DOWN, and RIGHT in Joy2Key) it would let me navigate the menus, and if I started a match with the keyboard (was using Joy2Key map stick buttons to keys) I could control the characters just fine in the game. Without it didn’t work. The huge annoyance is that the games will see that you pressed a button on the stick while you’re in the main menu/config even when using Joy2Key, and after that it’ll ignore keyboard input from then on out until you’re back at the main menu.

The Touhou SHMUPs behaved similarly, so I imagine that your adapter is only sending POV hat inputs that the game isn’t looking for.

[d3v]

Yeah those vids were done on an arcade stick. Most likely a jlf or ls-32. Meant to post that. My personal favorite sticks for shmups is an ls-56, works well for me when I play Mushihimesama on my ps2 (yeah i know that game is outdated now, but it’s still fun) I’ve tried it with touhou on the pc but for one reason or another it won’t recognize that i have a stick plugged in. And that vid is equally crazy d3v. I don’t have the time or patience to pull that off.

Edit: not shmup but still impressive. [media=youtube]H_tmFUWu9bI&feature=related"[/media]

I believe the consensus is that DoDonpachi DaiFukkatsu Black Label is harder than Mushihimesama, heck the true last boss of the game has yet to be accessed, let alone beaten.

Also, Jin8 (guy playing TGM3 in that vid) is gdlk.