Post subject: Battle Garegga
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 3999
I personally haven't played the game, but I've been reading about it lately - supposedly it has a rank system built into it, that makes the game harder the more advantages you give yourself, and the only way to drop it again is to die (and the less lives you have left when you die, the greater the drop). Why this is important is because the highest rank is supposed to be nigh impossible to survive on, so learning to manage your rank is part of the game. You can read all about it, and in particular the mechanics of the rank system in post 5, here: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=351 What I want to suggest is that this would make a great TASing opportunity - playing around with bullet spreads that are supposed to be impossible. The goal would be one of two things: 'uses dirty RAM to play on max rank' (1) or 'achieves max rank as fast as possible on v.hard difficulty'. (1) Note that the game also slightly boosts the initial rank with each successive game, lowering it only towards its base value with every uninterrupted cycle of attract screens - so it's possible without cheating to play starting at the max rank, but recording the whole process of starting games and suiciding would be boring. Here's how the game looks on the max rank: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=battle+garegga+max+rank&aq=f I'm not sure if it's the max rank of the v.hard difficulty or of a lower difficulty, though. EDIT: Apparently, in addition to setting difficulty to v.hard and somehow achieving the max rank, you should also activate the 'harder' mode by pressing B, Start on the title screen. I'm not sure what this changes specifically.
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Joined: 12/22/2006
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On Harder mode, medals drop more quickly, there's more bullets, etc. Anyway, I don't think any cheats are going to be required to jack the rank up to max, anything you do in the game besides moving and changing your options (to a non-secret formation, that is) increases your rank, and the only thing that decreases it is dying. This is yet another arcade game I would be interested in doing if I could get fba-rr compiled or working in wine
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Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 3999
You don't need to cheat to increase the rank - after every consecutive play, the rank starts at a higher value. So you'd play and die until the rank is as high as you like then start the movie from there.
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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Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5769
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I'm a big fan of Garegga, and I've actually tried TASing it around two years ago for the exact same purpose. Unfortunately the emulation was highly unstable so I couldn't continue without FBA constantly crashing for various reasons. I wonder if it's any different now?.. Anyway, here's some more information if any one of you picks this up. 1. "Harder" mode starts off on a higher rank initially. I'm not sure of the exact differences in starting rank or rank caps. The cap might or might not be higher than the one set by "very hard" dip switch. That switch only regulates per-frame rank increase rate and the max rank cap. 2. The rank doesn't increase upon each consecutive play indefinitely, it just raises the starting value a little bit over the time and stops at a certain threshold that doesn't dramatically differ from the default. 3. Set the board region to USA via dip switches to increase the base rank increase rate. 4. A good trick to drive the rank up faster is to choose Gain as your starting ship, immediately increase the autofire rate to 30 Hz through a shortcut, pick up four options ASAP, and hug the top of the screen with straight option formation for as long as needed for the value to max out, going away from the top only to pick up power up items. This will bypass the "Space Invaders syndrome" Gain's options normally have (new projectiles can't spawn from the same source as long as the previous ones are still on the screen), allowing for an immense rank increase rate. 5. Make no mistake, the game will lag with lots of bullets on the screen. Kind of defeats the purpose at some points, since the game slows down enough to be able to dodge the bullets without tool-assistance if you're playing smart enough to leave wide openings in the attacks and not move around needlessly.
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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 334
Actually, the space invaders syndrome doesn't matter. even if the bullet can't appear, you will still get the rank increase! also note that preventing enemy shots by being too close to them itself increases rank, though it may not matter if the autofire is jacked to the max.