Article - Indie Shmups Communicating Their Scoring Systems

Hi everyone,

For  the past year and definitely the past  month, I have been giving a good  deal of thought about indie shmups and  their continually growing  importance to the shmup community. As I am  sure many of you are aware,  the past few years have been a goldmine in  really stellar indie shmup  releases. Of course there are too many to  name, and I feel like if I  try and do so I’ll end up excluding a really  important one. So instead I  think I’ll focus this article on the three I  have been playing for the  past few months, which are Danmaku Unlimited  3, Crimson Clover World  Ignition, and ZeroRanger. I think these three  shmups are really good  cases to look at for what I am proposing.

Essentially,  the main idea of this article  is that I feel like it would be  beneficial for shmup players if indie  shmups regularly released with  some kind of game manual with basic  scoring information included (or  find ways to directly communicate this  information in-game). Of course I  do understand some reasons why people  may not agree with the idea, but  I think this is a good conversation to  have and hopefully I can offer  some helpful perspective at least.

I’ll  begin by outlining what I am proposing  exactly, and then I’ll go ahead  and give my reasoning for my ideas.  What I am proposing is that, with  the indie shmups that are popular or  being developed in the future, we,  as a community, simply encourage  these games to have a game manual, or  something equivalent, available as  a resource to new players. This  doesn’t have to be anything fancy or  elaborate, even a text file  gamefaqs style would be fine. Of course  having an in depth guide with  concept art, story information, along with  gameplay info and so forth  would be really cool! But that’s not the  focus of what I’m getting at.

I used to read the Starcraft game manual during math in middle school

The  information that I think is key is just  a basic overview of the game’s  scoring system. This overview does not  have to reveal every single  aspect of how the scoring system works (like  point calculation and  stuff) and completely demystify the game, but I  think a general  overview is important. I certainly respect the idea of  players having  to devise strategies to optimizing and abuse scoring, I  think that’s  really cool and a part of the genre. What I’m focusing on  more is just  the basic foundation to help them get started. Again I’ll  get to my  reasoning very soon.

The  information I would like to see is  straightforward. Does the game have a  rank system? How does the primary  score mechanic function? (Again,  just basic overview). How do the  secondary score mechanics function?  How does stuff like bomb bonuses,  boss bonuses, collectibles, and  bullet cancels work? (If these mechanics  are not the primary ways of  achieving score). How does the extend  system work? Basic 101 stuff, and  maybe some acknowledgement on any  esoteric aspects of scoring, which  some games may or may not have.

The  overall idea is that the developers  give the players just enough  information to get them started in the  right direction. I do think it  is important to leave some information  about scoring to the player base  to figure out, depending on what the  dev would prefer, but I also  think if a healthy baseline idea of what a  player should try to do is  given, that’s going to help get the player  base off the ground. It’s  also going to be useful for expert players who  have decided they are  going to push the games’ participation and  scores. That way a bunch of  players are not spending an excess of time  devising routes, only to  learn a hundred hours later that the general  approach is flawed.

Historically,  I do understand this is not  common practice. From what I understand,  when CAVE would release a  shmup, it would be down to the player base  and things like Gamest and  Arcadia Magazine to provide scoring  information, which is cool these  magazines existed. But I think there  is an important distinction between  that sort of example, versus what  is going on right now. Unlike the  Japanese arcade scene, the western  indie shmup scene has a much much  smaller player base of people  submitting scores. It’s actually kind of a  problem to be honest. For  someone like myself, who enjoys the  competitive aspect of hi scores,  this removes some motivation for really  digging into a game. However,  even for the players who don’t care for  the competitive aspect of  posting high scores, this still remains a  problem because it results in  a lack of knowledge and resources for the  game. In my opinion, and  here is where I could see others feeling  differently, there are fun  parts of exploring a shmup’s scoring system,  and there are not so fun  parts of exploring a scoring system. For me, I  think it is fun when I  have a basic understanding of what the game  expects and how it  functions and then sitting down and coming up with  meta strategies to  exploit or take advantage of these systems. I find  that to be very  enjoyable, especially since indie shmups aren’t as  heavily optimized as  CAVE games, where the players of the past have  mostly “solved” what  needs to be done.

An interesting  parallel could be something  like frame-data in fighting games. For a  very long time frame data had  to be extracted from fighting games by  either gaming magazines or  resourceful people on the internet. Today  though, there are more and  more fighting games in which the devs are  giving the players this  information directly. I think this is an  especially wise move for  smaller competitive scenes, like Dead or  Alive, where the number of  people trying to gather this sort of  information is smaller. Bigger  games like Tekken don’t need to cater to  the competitive crowd as much.  With iindie shmups, the crowd of  players is so tiny they could  definitely use the help, otherwise this  info may never even come to  light.

I think using some recent experiences can help illustrate what I mean.

In  February I took part in a scoring  competition for Danmaku Unlimited 3  on the main shmups reddit. Prior to  that competition, I had not  actually played Dan 3 for score, but had  done a few survival clears. I  thought the scoring competition would be a  perfect opportunity for me  to become more invested in the game. At  first I submitted a pretty  modest score and found that I had a few  people ahead of me. One of  them, Sh0, was greatly ahead of me. I kept at  it and kept improving my  score. The problem I was running into,  however, was that I couldn’t  find any concrete information on how  certain aspects of the scoring  system work. I ended up sacrificing quiet  a few runs doing trial and  error experiments just to see if I could get  a grasp of the scoring.

For  example, I couldn’t understand how the  bomb bonus and rank systems  worked. Even to this day I’m not entirely  sure. I feel like it would be  cool to return in the future and really  try to max the mode out as  much as possible, but I’m not looking forward  to trying to come up with  answers to these questions myself. I did try  to reach out to the Dan 3  dev a few times with some questions, but  didn’t get any response.

On the flipside these past few weeks I have been playing Zero Ranger in the r/shmupSTG team   tournament, and since there is more information about how the scoring   works in this game, as well as how responsive the devs are about   answering my pestering questions, I have felt like I can dig into coming   up with my own routes and stuff like that with more confidence and  less  frustration.

However, as  cool as it is to get the  information I need from the community or the  devs directly, I can’t help  but reflect on the player I was 3 or so  years ago. Yes I was playing  shmups back then, but in isolation. I  didn’t really have an interest in  interacting with the community, but  was still pretty invested in the  genre. So, in this case, I would again  have trouble accessing the  scoring information I need. From what I am  hearing from new players  joining my discord, this is not uncommon for  people to do. This is why I  think this information should be packaged  with the games themselves, in  one manner or another. I don’t think  shmups should continue to rely on  the community to explain how their  scoring works, at least on a basic  level.

Crimson  Clover, if you haven’t heard,  actually has a full on guide you can buy  for a reasonable price on  steam. I’d be fine with that sort of thing  if devs wanted to make a  little extra money. I’m actually really down  with that idea because I  could see the community getting higher quality  guides if the devs  themselves were creating them to professional  standards.

Bigger picture I can  easily imagine many  ways devs could integrate this information into the  games themselves, if  devs are wanting a more elegant solution than a  pdf or txt file. Stuff  like a gallery mode with the information and  screenshots, or a little  tutorial mode are cool ideas, I just imagine  that in game features are  also a bunch of extra work on an already  heavy workload for the devs.  That’s why a pdf file that can be put  together in an afternoon is at  least a more realistic request.

As  a side note, for the physical releases  of shmups, like Rolling Gunner,  having a game manual with this  information and some art and stuff  helps the release feel more complete  than just a disc and a dvd case.

An  additional reason why integrating this  information into the releases  themselves is beneficial is that it could  provide extra motivation to  players to start experimenting with scoring  mechanics, even if they  aren’t too focused on high scores. If you tell a  player how many points  he needs to get an extend and give him some  ideas on how to achieve  these points, I could see survival runs being  more mindful of scoring,  which sets up a nice foundation later on. Going  back to Dan 3, for  example, it wasn’t until I was playing it for score  and getting some  pretty huge chains that I learned that there are even  extends in the  game. When I was playing it for survival I believed that  there were no  extends, as i never achieved one until I played for score.

Overall,  I just think it is a good idea  these days for new shmups to directly  communicate their scoring aspects  to the player. Again, I don’t think  everything should be given away,  just the basics so players have a  foundation to work from.

Finally, I  would also like to see the  community making more scoring guides and  stuff like that as well,  especially for our favorite games. So, on that  note. I am going to put  my money where my mouth is and create some  scoring guide content for  ZeroRanger and Dan 3 in the near future.  ZeroRanger fairly soon, after  the competition ends and I get my hi  score and 2-all (I’m aiming for a  million). Danmaku Unlimited 3 will  probably be a longer wait, as I don’t  plan on returning to the game  until later this year.

Thanks for reading!

If something I wrote made you salty, try not to be too mad.

Sincerely,

–Mark MSX