Post by PotatoHandle

Posted: 6/18/2012 7:00 PM

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Tseralith

Active player (459)

Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 183
Location: Sweden

Missile Launcher and Multi Cannon are the chosen weapons now, as well as a pair of Zica Flamethrowers as sidekick. Those flamethrowers have fast refire rate, do good amount of damage compared to what's available and penetrates everything, but has only limited range. So I have to be up in their faces to make good use of it. ^.^ This is another interesting, and difficult level. What makes it interesting is the constant supply of Mine Missiles (in lack of better name) which basically destroys anything they hit. Not the missile itself, but the mines that pop out of it when it hits something. Several mines pop from every missile, which allows me to both blow up what I shot as well as let the mines wander off to destroy anything else they hit. I make use of them as often as I deem helpful, though I've noticed the mines won't explode if they're too close to the top of the screen. Normally this level is troublesome with all the stationary turrets mowing you down in short intervals. By destroying them as soon as possible I eliminate that threat and the "biggest" problem I have with this level is just intercepting all those asteroids. There's no large asteroids fortunately so I just have to make sure my shots hit them. At the end of the level I can't use my Mine Missiles at the back row as they're too close to the top of the screen, and I kinda have to go backwards before the level ends. This game has an "delayed input" effect which, if I press too many keys in succession, will try to apply them several frames after I pressed them. I had to go lightly on my key presses to not fast forward through the "end of level" statistics and access the Data section in the menus afterwards. Despite everything I have now, I still don't manage to get 100% destruction... I'm not completely sure, but it could be because of enemies which appears "outside" the screen, but can still shoot at me, or asteroids also spawning outside the screen. And before you ask, yes, I have to do two shopping trips as certain weapons are only available before the bonus level. Encode here: http://youtu.be/lGMOpXBhVzs

"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."

Posted: 6/18/2012 8:10 PM

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Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Neato. :) I never tried the ammo-using weapons because I assumed they'd run out on me when I needed them most, so I hadn't realized that the game handed you refills mid-level like that. And the missiles certainly seem to have good firepower, taking out massed ranks of turrets like that.

Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.

Posted: 6/18/2012 9:31 PM

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Tseralith

Active player (459)

Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 183
Location: Sweden

You're not mixing my front weapon with the special missiles you only recieve in this level alone, are you? My ordinary Missile Launcher fires plain missiles like you'd expect. The Mine Missiles are pick-up missiles independent of my Missile Launcher and can be fired no matter what weapons you have.

"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."

Posted: 6/18/2012 10:00 PM

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turska

Experienced player (764)

Joined: 6/17/2008
Posts: 146

The "Mine Missiles" are clearly labeled as bombs.

So what do everyone think? If I made a real TAS with a little better gameplay and increase the total time by perhaps 4-5 times, would this be considered a publish worthy game, even though it's obviously inferior compared to using a mouse? I'll still be continuing this test run with my keyboard either way, though I'm curious what people, and judges, think.

I'd reject any keyboard-only Tyrian TAS. As for goal choice, the game's scoring system is largely useless so I wouldn't consider highest score a viable goal. Maximum destruction in Full Game and Arcade would require using a largely identical cookie cutter setup for most of the game. Aiming for fastest time would require nuking bosses and scrolling pauses with powerful weapons and sidekicks, which would once again mandate a cookie cutter setup. Since weapon choice isn't a concern in Super Tyrian, maximum destruction could be an excellent goal for it. The twiddles can deal extreme damage right off the bat and the difference between unassisted and tool-assisted play is enormous. For Full Game and Arcade runs, going for a full-out playaround would seem to be the only goal that allows omitting a cookie cutter setup in favor of greater variety.

Posted: 6/20/2012 8:08 PM

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Tseralith

Active player (459)

Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 183
Location: Sweden

Thanks for your opinion turska, I appreciate it. Score as a goal would probably be less interesting as the game progress, though I'd say it's more appealing to collect all the gems and such instead of just ignoring them. Though for the maximum destruction I've been alternating between new weapons every level to increase variety. But for Arcade mode I've thought of a "Weapon Hoarder" goal, which would mean I HAVE to pick up every weapon that appears in the game although that might end up sacrificing destruction % instead. I have only partly considered a playaround, mostly since I haven't considered how it would look like in the long run. Super Tyrian do indeed show potential to do great things with all those twiddles and I might look into that mode when I manage to learn how to do all those twiddles. And yeah, bombs... forgot they were actually labeled that.

"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."

Posted: 6/22/2012 9:09 AM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

turska wrote:

I'd reject any keyboard-only Tyrian TAS.

I wouldn't. Keyboard is one of the standard input modes of the game, so it strikes me as a valid approach. I do think a playaround is your best bet, because "maximum destruction" or "weapon hoarder" would probably be voted down by a lot of people as too arbitrary goals. Completing the game while showing off all the different weapons in the game would be fun to watch, surely more interesting than just maximizing speed.

Indie game developer

Posted: 7/4/2012 6:56 PM

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Truncated

Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (980)

Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3109
Location: Sweden

So, is this on hold because Turska said he would reject it for being keyboard-only? What if I promised that I would accept any keyboard-only run? ;) Seriously though, how's progress?

Posted: 7/5/2012 9:17 PM

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Tseralith

Active player (459)

Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 183
Location: Sweden

No progress at all unfortunately, been taking a little break from TASing. Not because of anything in particular, just felt like taking one, though I'll continue with this again next week.

"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."

Posted: 8/7/2012 2:06 AM

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PotatoHandle

Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16

I'm a huge fan of Tyrian, and a TAS of it would be amazing. I tried to do a Real-time run on Lord difficulty a while ago; and I picked up a few early tips which may help with a TAS. Firstly you can buy a Plasma Storm side-weapon before the first mission. It takes 8,000 of your 10,000 starting money, but it just about pays for itself by the end of level 1, because you can kill most of the spikes and the barriers before the boss; and before the spikes, one should hopefully increase your destruction % for the first level overall. It also will kill anything in a wide line this early on in one hit, and it recharges pretty quickly. It's also worth noting that you can't buy a plasma storm or anything even near as good after the first level for quite a while IIRC. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think that if you buy one for example for your left sidekick, it sort-of "locks it in" so that you can buy it for your right sidekick in levels that you normally wouldn't be allowed to. A couple of other tricks I learned of too, there's a point during Asteroid, can't remember if it's 1 or 2, where the scrolling stops and you fight a turret that spews small balls at you. You can shoot the balls for as long as you like and get 100 money per hit. Useful for Real-time, but prolly boring for a TAS, but it may be useful, you never know, mentioned for completeness. Also running the game on the lowest graphics setting removes the "headlight" effect, which may be preferable for a TAS, as to not obscure ~2/3rds of the screen to the viewer. Graphical perdiness lost by doing this is layered and transparent clouds and explosions, doesn't make the game look horrible by any means, but it may break the rules. And I think max Destruction % would be an awesome goal, for the record. If the worry is about "cookie-cutter" loadouts, by about half-way through the game for most levels it should be trivial for a TAS to get 100% with sub-optimal weapons on some levels, so the runner can vary things a bit as they will, I don't think there should be any rules holding them back other than their creativity.

Posted: 10/3/2012 3:55 AM

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samurai_goroh

Editor, Player (54)

Joined: 12/25/2004
Posts: 634
Location: Aguascalientes, Mexico

Suppose that since you haven't posted in quite some time Tseralith, there hasn't been any progress, right? Hope you get into this game again, this is one of the games in my wishlist to see it TASed :)

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Posted: 10/4/2012 11:15 AM

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Tseralith

Active player (459)

Joined: 11/12/2010
Posts: 183
Location: Sweden

Yeah... no progress, sorry for not mentioning anything the past months. I just lost motivation and couldn't find the will to try again. I'll maybe continue, but won't give any promises. @PotatoHandle: Apologies for the late reply, but I just hit a time where I couldn't bother replying at all. Now that Plasma Storm, I've never really considered it but after trying it out a little I realize it might actually be pretty useful. I haven't tested it in a TAS envoriment yet so I don't know how effective it can be with optimized usage (or if it's actually better than just buying normal front/rear/side weapon). As I haven't tried the Plasma Storm I don't know whether it can be bought the way you mention, but I'll keep it in mind I've actually also found that turret and abused it way more than necessary (I left the computer for an hour, just shooting balls), but doing this in a TAS is probably not that entertaining. I could do it for a few seconds just to show it's possible, but it'd be quicker to just destroy it and continue. Lowering the graphics would indeed "fix" the headlight levels, and considering how I make the TAS there's two solutions to change this. I could change it myself and be done with it, and perhaps even change it back on the next level and consider it a "speed/entertainment tradeoff". Or, in order to make the game sync I actually have to start the game once before TASing. I don't mean I have to run the game once every time I try to TAS, only the first time right after downloading it. And so the viewer themselves could lower the graphics before replaying the imput, thus eliminating the headlight. This won't help if it gets up on youtube though, so it'd be easier to do solution one, either with or without changing back the graphics. I'm a bit unsure whether a story mode TAS will be appealing enough both considering the "cookie-cutter" loadout as well as the sub-optimal weapons. Sure, I'd love to see a full TAS even with the same weapons, but that's coming from someone who's played the game a lot, but it might not be just as appealing to people who hasn't played the game. I'm actually considering to try the Super Tyrian mode and see how well it fares, both gameplay wise and entertainment wise. Though have no idea when I'll start. Maybe some time when I have both time and motivation.

"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."

Posted: 11/13/2013 1:49 AM

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Patashu

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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

I wonder if Tyrian is inspired by or related to this game... It seems quite similar in a number of ways Link to video

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 11/13/2013 9:25 AM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

Well, they're both shmups adhering to certain genre standards, but I'm not sure how they're otherwise identical. As I recall, there was an older shmup that was an inspiration for Tyrian, because they used some of the same songs as a homage.

Indie game developer

Posted: 11/13/2013 2:04 PM

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Prion

Joined: 2/14/2012
Posts: 73

I think Blazing Lazers (the North American release of the game in the video) inspired a lot of western developers around that time, although it would have been better if they'd taken more inspiration from the caravan (time-limited score attack) mode shown in that video than the stupidly long main game with its uneven difficulty. Re: older stg-- Zanac?

Posted: 11/13/2013 2:25 PM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

Prion wrote:

Re: older stg-- Zanac?

Yes, that's it. Googling it, I find the following: "Tyrian was clearly partially inspired by Compile's classic Zanac - in fact, that was part of the game's original sales pitch. A handful of sound (notably the "Secret Level" jingle) were taken more or less directly from Zanac, and some enemies seem to be lifted (or at least heavily inspired) by enemies from Zanac. Also, the power-ups appearing in Arcade Mode look and act similarly to those in Compile's later effort Gunhed/Blazing Lazers. The effect Tyrian uses to display your ship flying off at the end of a level is used in several Compile games, including both Zanac and Super Aleste. A number of stages in Tyrian use the "turret-mass" minibosses seen in Zanac; this seems to be more prevalent in the early stages, particularly the "Asteroid" stages. Judging from some prototype screenshots that have since surfaced, these asteroid stages were among the first completed."

Indie game developer

Posted: 11/27/2013 1:42 AM

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Patashu

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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

Episode 5 added in Tyrian 2000, on the highest difficulty levels, is some of the hardest stuff in the game. So a case could be made that 'Plays on hardest difficulty' should include playing on Tyrian 2000.

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 11/27/2013 4:02 AM

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Radiant

Player (26)

Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam

I thought episode 4 was the hardest? The one with Eye Spy and the player-loses-his-mind plot? Anyway, I would argue that Tyrian is a different game from Tyrian 2000, and that runs for both could exist side-by-side on the site.

Indie game developer

Posted: 11/27/2013 4:17 AM

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Patashu

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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

Radiant wrote:

I thought episode 4 was the hardest? The one with Eye Spy and the player-loses-his-mind plot?

Episode 5 is the hardest on high difficulty levels for two reasons: -Coral -Station

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 7/18/2014 6:06 AM

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Patashu

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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

For anyone who TASes this in the future, make sure to check out the list of twiddles here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/codes.html Twiddles being fighting game like inputs that produce abilities depending on what ship you are. A TAS, of course, should show off as many twiddles as possible as part of the gameplay, since many people have no idea of all of them. They also make playing in Super Tyrian mode really appealing, since as you can see in http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/engtwid.html this ship has the most twiddles by far, so tons of variety is possible here. Plus, I doubt many people who've tried Super Tyrian mode have even been able to beat it. I can't even remember if I got past two levels of it as a kid. It's brutal. I also never knew about the latter three tricks here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/general.html Clever!!

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 2/17/2015 1:24 AM

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Patashu

He/Him

Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

For fun, I made a mod of Opentyrian that lets you access difficulty levels HARDER than Lord of the Game. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56073318/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod.exe Nortaneous was already in the game - 8x armour and score, slightly higher speed. Nortaneous2 is my own invention - 10x armour and score, slightly higher speed, bullet velocity doubled AGAIN, and 'launchfreq' is doubled (meaning a lot of enemies that shoot physical projectiles shoot them twice as fast). I also thought about making shield regeneration slower/take more generator, making the ice beam wear off faster ('iced') or making hits in general do more shield/hull damage, but it seems hard enough already that I'm not sure if it's necessary :) EDIT: Fixed up the mod a bit, and provided alternate versions that always give 4x and 8x spawns: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56073318/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod.exe https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56073318/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod%202x%20spawns.exe https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56073318/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod%204x%20spawns.exe https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/56073318/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod/opentyrian%20nortaneous%20mod%208x%20spawns.exe

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 2/22/2015 11:43 AM

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Patashu

He/Him

Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045

Someone needs to reproduce this so it can be done in a TAS lol Link to video it was done in OpenTyrian, so maybe the code can be studied. Probably something to do with the variable 'enemydie' being set incorrectly, since it's coming out of a ship that should drop a powerup in this mode.

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

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