MAME ROW #5: Raiga - Strato Fighter

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

R1n0X

My Score: 149760 ( I will need a new forearm!!! )

R1n0X

R1n0X

My Score: 178130 :)

GtBFilms

@twd That's interesting to know. I do database programming, where we don't have these sorts of performance tricks - so I find it fascinating to hear about them! The first time I heard about 'rubber-banding' in racing games, I thought it was very interesting too! (although that was a trick to improve gameplay rather than for performance).

I'm going to have another go, and see it this inside knowledge helps my score!

twd

@GtBFilms funny you talk about rubber banding my last project was a race sim I didnt program rubber banding in and wanted it to be a race game. One problem with that is you have to be a robot to win as the computer will never make a mistake unless you program that too which I did luckily. then unity3d 5 dropped changing the vehicle physics and destroyed all my physics since it took me a year to get to that point I gave up as I was doing it on my own... Moral to story back up important data :(. Sorry for going off topic

dankcushions

damn, the FBA version doesn't render the pink 'goo' correctly on level 3, so it's solid and impossible to see enemies/bullets! this video shows how it should look:

i logged it here: https://github.com/libretro/fbalpha/issues/104

does this same issue happen in mame2003?

dankcushions

@dankcushions confirmed problem does NOT happen with mame2003... damn, i was playing extra hard mode :)

meleu

@dankcushions indeed, it runs perfectly in mame2003.

I tried harder today but stayed below 130k... :(

Let's see what random.org reserves to us for the next week.

And congrats to @R1n0X and his Popeye-like forearms!

meleu

Link for the MAME ROW #6: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4880/mame-row-6

GtBFilms

@twd Now the 'backup your data' lesson is one we've all learnt the hard way at some point!

I didn't get as far as the purple goo, but I did check out a YouTube play through to see what to expect next, and someone played through with that goo making the ship totally invisible. I thought at the time, there's no way I am going to make it through that! Seemed a bit weird there was then a whole lot more levels (including 'PRO' mode going through them all again!) when I reckoned most people would have run out of credits getting through that purple goo.

The fact it is meant to be transparent makes a lot more sense!