ZUN interview on game development and danmaku scripting

[cuc]

There's this doujin book series on game development called "Game no Shuraba" (Killing Field of Games). The newest one "Game no Shuraba 6", published on C82, featured a ZUN interview. Apparently he mostly talked about scripting danmaku.

Sample page (click to enlarge):
The script of Futo's non-SC danmaku.

The part highlighted in gray affects the difficulty: each of the 4 numbers separated by colons is for one difficulty.

Editor's blog and site:
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/izmktr/20120702/1341243071
http://nijiken.sakura.ne.jp/gameassociation.html

Online retailer:
http://www.march-rabbit.jp/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=7435

[Flan27]

It's interesting to compare his code to the code of danmakufu.

When you look at something like this, it seems so silly for people to have completely different scripts for different difficulties, doesn't it?

[Stuffman]

When you look at something like this, it seems so silly for people to have completely different scripts for different difficulties, doesn't it?

Yeah, some of the later attacks I did started having one script with adjusted variables depending on difficulty level, it's a lot easier to go back and make changes to the card that way. It can be a little difficult to wrap your head around all four levels of math at once, though.

[Drake]

It really depends if it's feasible to keep track of it or not. Using Futo's nonspells as an example is trivial since they're literally the same thing but faster and more bullets in the circle, so clearly you only need one script for this. In fact, a nonspell almost by definition should be simple enough in design to be able to have one script for all difficulties. Spell cards, in the meantime, can change pretty drastically between difficulties, so it would make sense to have multiple scripts if it gets too complicated to modify.

[touhoumaniac]

Yeah, some of the later attacks I did started having one script with adjusted variables depending on difficulty level, it's a lot easier to go back and make changes to the card that way. It can be a little difficult to wrap your head around all four levels of math at once, though.

I've always been making bullet patterns, regardless of complexity, with difficulty dependent code. I find difficulty level dependence aspect much easier to code compared to achieving the exact overall behaviour of the bullet pattern.

[Drake]

It's just generally easier to tweak things if you have only a few numbers to change in order to balance any given difficulty. I would argue that giving yourself that constraint also makes it more difficult for you to drastically change the pattern between difficulties, which is usually unwanted unless you were going to change the whole pattern structure to begin with. I can see all sorts of positives for using this sort of system, but I'm still on the fence.

I bet the problem you're talking about is how to write all the multipliers and loops and whatnot so that it becomes easy to tweak, right? It's like you have to tweak the script twice, in that sense.

[cuc]

It contains nothing big or important, but for completion's sake, here's a photo of the first two pages of this interview:

http://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/img/ah/docs/582/337/html/imm22.jpg.html

[Helepolis]

Interesting, ZUN discussing scripting. That one I didn't see coming to be honest.

As Drake pointed out, Non-spellcards tend to follow the same pattern with more bullets added or at different angles. A good example I can only mention is Mokou in IN. Pretty much all all her non-spells are follow up versions with increased speed/numbers.

I use a healthy mix in non-spells with often trying to make them unique.