MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter

cyperghost

Yeah! Out of my way Alien!

GtBFilms

Excellent! Sorry I didn't get time to vote this week, but I did get a quick chance to try all three games and was going to vote for Raiga - Strato Fighter anyway.

All three were interesting games, which is why the ROW is great fun. I thought Halley's Comet was a bit too frustrating with it's high speed and crashing comets - all of these sorts of games are a test of memory to a certain extent, but I like to think skill also plays a part. Raigo - Strato Fighter seems to have less of the "unfair death/didn't stand a chance" challenge of Halley's Comet.

American Speedway seems to be a Super Sprint clone, but not quite so well implemented. Pickup collision detection seemed to be a bit random, not least with the points floating around the track - it's difficult enough to hit a stationary target with these sorts of games!

All three were good fun though, and worth taking a look at.

Right, now to set my Raiga - Strato Fighter high score!

Edit: here's my early attempt (74460), I'm sure it will quickly be surpassed:

The second level appears to be a nice homage to R-Type level 3, with the added feature that you can turn your ship around. Like R-type though, it suffers from the 'lose a life when fully tooled up and you don't stand a chance with your remaining lives without all the powerups' resulting in a rapid game over after that initial mistake.

Despite that, I think this is a pretty awesome game, look forward to getting a bit further.

meleu

I'm enjoying playing this game. Nice graphics and cool weapon upgrades... My arm is burning after a session, I think I've got R.S.I., but I'm still wanting to play more! :-)
My score was something near to 70k but I had to leave in a hurry to go to work.
Will try harder later and post my screenshot.

Edit: Totally agree with the @GtBFilms

it suffers from the 'lose a life when fully tooled up and you don't stand a chance with your remaining lives without all the powerups' resulting in a rapid game over after that initial mistake.

cyperghost

OMG! 70k ;)
That's a lot more than mine :)

meleu

I've been playing with a arcade-like joystick, my right forearm is burning, but I finally got 100k and put my name in the first place! :-)

I have to be honest with you, I cheated. But I'm not sure if it contributed to my score. My cheat was: after finishing the stage 2 I paused and rested my right arm for one minute. But as a side effect I think I lost my "warm-up"... I lost a life early in the stage 3, all the powerups was gone, and, as @GtBFilms said, I didn't stand a chance with no power-ups. Even with 3 lives remaining... :(

dankcushions

my score is 71380 so far. only had a couple of goes. this game rules!

doesn't seem to save hi score in FBA for me... let's see if i can do something about that...

meleu

@dankcushions
I've just realized that we can use the MAME ROW to enrich the mame2003 compatibility list spreadsheet.

I'm not sure if anyone can edit the spreadsheet and maybe I won't find time to keep it updated. But, if a kind guy wants to update the file, here is what I know since we started this all (I only tested on raspi2).

 ROM name | raspi2 status 
----------|---------------
phoenix   | working
nrallyx   | working
bosco     | working
kabukikl  | working
tdfever   | working (but I don't know how to play it)
lizwiz    | working
amspdwy   | working, but needs to configure the dpad
4dwarrio  | working
spacduel  | didn't test
halleys   | didn't test
stratof   | working

dankcushions

@meleu anyone can update the spreadsheet :) i don't even think you need a google account

R1n0X

My Score: 131330
OS: Windows 7
Emulator: MAME 0.139

meleu

@R1n0X
Damn'it! My forearm will burn again trying to beat your score!

R1n0X

@meleu This game is a destroyer of buttons and forearms!!!!

meleu

@R1n0X Maybe @dankcushions could implement some way to enable turbo. But it is cheating! :-)

lilbud

@R1n0X In response to your score...

alt text

mediamogul

@meleu said in MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter:

Maybe @dankcushions could implement some way to enable turbo.

I don't use it myself, but you can always add turbo to any controller with xboxdrv by adding --autofire BUTTON=FREQUENCY to a standard configuration. For example:

--autofire A=250

You can also tell another button to act as a separate turbo option like you see in lr-fceumm with a --buttonmap modifier like:

--buttonmap x^autofire:250=a

UDb23

@meleu Done! lr-mame2003 compatibility list updated.
I usually update the comp lists whenever I try new games.

dankcushions

@meleu said in MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter:

amspdwy | working, but needs to configure the dpad

no it doesn't, i already fixed this...

GtBFilms

After a lot of attempts, I got to the to of the leader board at last (111,030).

I did actually get a score of 124,000 as well but my picade crashed back to the menu and didn't save the score (honest!)

Those third level snake things are sneaky.

Still a bit off that 131, 000 high score though!

obsidianspider

The best I got was 131030 but didn't get a screen shot, so it doesn't count. Also, it seems that you can only have so many projectiles on screen at any one time, so if you are closer to something and they are hitting the object (and disappearing) your ship can fire faster. It means essentially flying closer to everything, but for big stuff like bosses it can be helpful if you memorize what they're going to do.

My Y button is tired.

GtBFilms

@obsidianspider that's an interesting observation. I'd noticed the same, on level 2 committing to going close to the large ship in an all-or-nothing attack seemed to get better results. Same on the level 1 boss, getting in close and hammering the fire button you can sometimes destroy it before it gets a chance to even fire that big ion cannon thing once.

I hadn't worked out the actual mechanics of why, but that makes sense.

twd

@GtBFilms it's called projectile pooling when shooting at the bottom of the screen the bullets will exit off the screen past a hit box and be cleared. It's a trick to use less resources on objects speeding up the game... To test go to top of screen then start shooting your firing rate will go like a Gatling gun. I only know this as I made a shooter in unity3d