Why is this "Ask a Staffer" if SJ are not staff? :V
No idea. I think we had a discussion about this in the Janitor forum but I can't remember what the reason was after. Oh well, the person up next is even less staffer-y than I am so :V
Do you like any video games outside of shmups? If so what's your (other) favorite genre?
I enjoy RTS and FPS games. I used to play Command and Conquer a lot, particularly Generals: Zero Hour and Red Alert 2. I still actively play an online free to play FPS called Soldier Front fairly regularly. I go by "Suwako" on it :V
If I asked if you were a mage, Would you give me an adorable bunny?
...Yes.
Wait where the fuck is naut who is nuat what have you doooooneeee
All is lost!
Favorite quote from a vidya game? What about from a game thats not touhou?
I don't play videogames for the story and whatnot, so I don't read dialogues and whatever. For example, I've put several hundred hours into UFO and I still don't know any dialogue or story in it, other than Marisa says "What the hell" at the beginning of the stage 1 boss fight when you play as her laser shot type. So I guess that's my favorite quote, 'cause it's all I can remember
And finally, Are you a boy or a girl? ... A giiirl?
♥✿
~M~a~l~e~✿♥
If you had a choice between playing RSG or Ikaruga for the rest of your life, which one would you choose? (Suicide is a viable option too.)
Suicide, since it is obviously much more enjoyable. If I had to pick one, RSG: at least you have to dodge some stuff in it.
Wow you guys are still doing Ijiyatsu stuff. I must applaud the sustained effort. Who still works with it, and what have you guys accomplished so far?
Drake and I are the only contributing members right now. We had many developers a while ago, but everybody lost interest/whatever. We have most of the mechanics of the game completed, like the scoring system and gameplay elements like that. Five player characters are half finished (they have four power levels and they work fine, but don't have any bombs other than a simple testing one right now). Three stages have been planned out and have enemies and stuff populating them, but are subject to change considerably as we keep playing and fine tuning it to play like how we want. Anybody is welcome to drop by #Ijiyatsu on irc.ppirc.net to talk to us about it or whatever, though that channel is mostly used as ppirc's "shmups" channel due to the people who populate it right now.
If you could wish for any girl in the Touhou universe to be your companion/lover/always there person, who would it be and why?
Reimu, probably. Realiable, not crazy, relaxed, responsible. I don't really think of the Touhou girls that way so I apoligise for not having a more in depth or well thought out answer
If a giant hole opened up in the floor below you this second, how would you react?
"Fuck, not again"
What would you do with command of the Nautilus?
That is awesome. Travel the world, I suppose! There are lot's of places to explore in the sea, and exploring them in
that would be awesome.
Chicken or Sea Bass?
Chicken, don't like fish.
Chicken or Sea Boss?
Sea Boss. Obvious reasons.
If you could go back in time and change any one historical event to have the outcome of your choice, what would it be and why?
Favourite book, if any?
I know nothing about history (and am doomed to repeat it) and I don't read for pleasure. Of the few books I have read, I'd say Animal Farm was my favourite. But I probably wouldn't read it again or anything.
If you could strand Ruro in any historical period, where and when would it be, and why?
Ah, I know precious little about Ruro, but if I had to guess, maybe early 1600s london. Seems like a fascinating time to me, I hope she'd be somewhat interested in it as well.
This is a good question. We should all ask questions like this.
Ask it about people I talk to on a regular basis ;_;
Some people feel Ijiyatsu is polarizing, a "cool kids club", if you will. Thoughts?
This vvvvvv
<Naut> Drake: you should answer this
<Naut> my inevitable "i don't care" to that linked question isn't going to suffice
THIS MEANS LOOOOONG ANSWEEERRRRR PARAGRAAAAAPHS
To answer your question from the start, yes. When Ijiyatsu first came as an idea, it was entirely a joke, and was based on specific users because these people were picked by Rou due to their popularity at the time. At this point, it wasn't even "Ijiyatsu". It was a complete joke that began receiving positive input because it was easy to build upon, and everybody wants to make a game based on themselves; it was just fun. The fact that it was a Touhou reflection was completely irrelevant, it could game been any game genre/style; the main drive was that it was based on us. To this extent, hell yes it was a cool kids club. But nobody really cared.
More and more input was thrown in, which some actual serious suggestions, and some suggestions were taken as serious from intended jokes, because it worked. This thing we were creating was heavily malleable, the basic plot was covered very quickly and so the discussions led to the logical next steps, an actual system. I don't mean system as in generalmechanics alone, but system as in music ideas, aesthetic ideas, miscellaneous details, and more importantly the idea that "hey, we could actually do this". Note that "actually doing this", while a valid statement at the time, was incredibly naive and is an idea formed entirely through hype that goes through every kid's mind when he goes "yeah i could make this game and it would be awesome!". Even if we had the tools, we didn't know what making this would entail; the actual dev process was completely unknown. We actually started in the middle, without any base aside from "do touhou".
Anyways, at this point Slaves had already designed a lot of the cast. Which was balls awesome because we got art that represented ourselves. Getting that artwork was like a goddamn crown. I'm sure Slaves felt the same way when he started drawing members (incl. himself) and received praise for it. But even still, the characters were solidified and done with; there was no real cool kids club so to speak. Rou even popped out some music, which is where I signed up. The music we did make was another primary motivator to keep going; and without it I might not have joined. For that, Rou will always be a key contributor to the game.
Still, the actual cool kids club began with the invention of Embodiments. We already had our roster set up, and these people were glorified. And suddenly a new group popped up that many people could join. But because the game was based on the forum, we couldn't just have any random people join. Suddenly, a heavy bias is created. This is where things got very tricky, because even after the roster was confirmed, people tended to either complain about it, or insert themselves anyways, creating art and fiction: creating the world when we haven't even done anything ourselves. This to us (well, me and others) was a slap in the face, because it meant all our hard work amounted to nothing more than a scribble pad. This is why there were so many issues in the first place. This introduced many conflicted feelings that all parties didn't even know they had, and we had to figure them out and explain to each other in a short, heated amount of time. The conclusion of this was simply that Ijiyatsu had to be taken off the map somewhat. We already had the IRC channel, so we moved most discussion there.
With the forum-driven pressing and stress gone, we actually got some hardcore work being done. However, the focus evolved into "fuck, we are doing so many things wrong and we have no staff and this sucks and this sucks and we have to redo this and we actually have to learn things because we are developers now oh god". Most of our work we've revised fifty billion times, recoded at least two times, tweaked and then scrapped again; that or we're already planning on doing so eventually. To be honest, if you haven't been in the #ijiyatsu channel during active dev periods (lol active), none of you have any idea how difficult it is to make this thing. Saying "it is difficult" is a copout of an answer, and the long answer is too long to explain properly. This paragraph probably spanned at least half a year by itself.
Today, it is not a cool kids club. The forum-driven aspect is gone, it's going just by the efforts of Naut and I, really. We've set all the previous things aside and are working like game developers working on a game. But slower. Nobody really cares about the progress enough to drop in, #ijiyatsu has become its own social (circlejerk) channel that is pretty much dually-named #shmups (which is actually really helpful). Nobody argues about the choice of characters or bullshit like that, we argue why certain aspects of a certain mechanic don't work because players don't like to do X, and Y is a terrible decision and we should scrap it, but I want to keep Z so we build and rebuild constantly. It has nothing to do with circlejerking forum members anymore because the game has evolved to the point where it is a game and not a concept based on the forum, and that's how we treat it. The characters are based on members of the forum, but they are just that, characters. They have no integral meaning or function to the game; they have personalities, background stories, music and danmaku that represent their character, but this does not represent the forum member in any real way. Hell if we know, ZUN could base every Touhou character on a person he's met, and yet it wouldn't make any difference. Simply put, as Naut would answer this question much shorter than this, "I don't care and it doesn't matter". Even if forum members still thought it was a shoddy cool kids club, we would tell them to screw off, the end.
okay i'm done yw naut
This ^^^^^ also ilu so hard drakums mmwaahh~@@~#!$R`~~uguu~!@3~~
Sorry for 2 posts, but since it's last day:
-Did your sister ever learn the joy of spamming DFK hypers?
-How close are you two? Close thanks to a love of gaming, or the typical brother-sister mutual tormenting? :3
-Have you 2 ever played a shmup together/2P? (I can guess the answer, but still)
- Nah, she lost interest in the game, unfortunately. She plays Dodonpachi Daioujou now, whenever she remembers it exists (not very often, usually only if she walks by my room and sees me playing it).
- Pretty close. We torment eachother but not in the same way siblings around the same age would torment eachother (I am 13 years older than her after all). She mostly plays games typical for her age and gender on her DS more than shmups or the like. I still enjoy playing those childrens games with her though.
- Only a few times. DFK and Mushihimesama Futari are all we've played together, and Futari was only once (doesn't have autobomb and the novice mode is harder than DFK's so it's incredibly difficult for her to get anywhere with it, she loses interest because the game is too hard).
OWO OHAAAAAAYOO KAWAIII KAWAII NATO-CHAN~~~!@!^!%u$!@^#!@!!754742645!!!!!!!!OMG
OGENKYDESKARR?!
I AM SUGOKKUUUU GENKY DESUUUUUU SERKAN-COON^_)))))))))^__^^^^^^^^^^______xd________^ WHAT A KAWAIII NATSU WE'RE HAVING THIS YEAR NEEE?
??^___^^ XDxDXDxdXDDDXDd^_^^
Naut you're the laziest mother of fuck ever.
Hell yeah. Though if you're referring to me getting Drake to answer that question, it's primarily because I wasn't involved in Ijiyatsu until some time into the project, so I actually don't know about the history of the circle-jerking off or how it affected anybody. If you're not talking about that, then yes, I agree completely.
So, what's the deal with you and memorization/bullet cancelling in shmups? I don't think I've ever seen anyone dislike them as vehemently/often as you. :V
I accept memorization and bullet cancelling to a certain degree...
I play shmups to dodge bullets. If I am cancelling bullets, then I'm not dodging them. Essentially, I'm dodging the dodging. I
hate that. Now I know games like DFK have a purpose for cancelling the bullets and it's actually detrimental to your score to cancel bullets when you have a large chain going, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm cancelling bullets to avoid dodging them. This is particularly evident in games like Ikaruga, where you don't have to dodge anything at all. Then we have games like UFO, where you can still cancel bullets via killing UFOs. But it's hardly ever useful to do so since the timing is absurd and you'll probably end up using a bomb anyways, so cancelling using UFOs isn't a big deal to me since it may only come up once or twice and you'll probably screw it up anyway. You typically don't cancel bullets to avoid dodging them, they just happen to get cancelled when you kill a UFO. Same with capturing spell cards. You don't specifically end a card to cancel the bullets in it, you end the card to get the score/capture and the bullets just happen to disappear when you do so, so it doesn't bother me.
So, memorization. I actually don't mind memorizing. I just don't like it when there is absolutely nothing else I can do but memorize something to get better. Essentially, I don't like getting forced to do it. I want to play the game and get enjoyment out of it before I feel like I need to memorize anything to get better at it. I want to passively memorize stuff as I play, not play just to memorize. So games that have stupid memo heavy scoring systems like enemy chaining force you to play it to memorize all the positions of every enemy in the game, which is absurd for anybody to do if they were playing it casually or for fun. Yeah you'd remember big sections and whatnot, but games like DDP/DOJ don't give you enough chain time to just "roughly know what's coming" or "only know the basic stage layout." It's rediculusly precise and forces you to grind memorize it into your head so you don't fuck up. It's only until the second loop of those games comes that the chaining becomes fun and interesting, since you get much more time to make your chain so a basic knowledge of whats coming at you will suffice. It's much more about dodging the bullets around than it is precisely timing each enemy kill and movement, which, in my opinion, is a shitload more fun than sinking hours and hours into grinding and memorizing every enemy in the game.
Memorization also prevents me from dodging bullets actively. If I have memorized what's coming and where to be when it comes, I am not dodging the bullets, I'm just replaying a stupid route from my mind and not testing my dodging skills. I conciously try to not memorize bullet patterns and where to be when large waves of bullets come at me so I can use my dodging skills to get through them and improve, rather than my muscle memory (and thus miss out on improving my skills). For example, I have Murasa's third non-card on lunatic completely memorized, since it is static and repeats quickly. I do not dodge it. I see maybe three or four bullets, move twice and pass the non-spell with no effort. But it's fucking boring. I hate it. There are times in non-serious runs where I'll attack the wave of bullets from a different side just to spice it up and test my skills. When I use my muscle memory to pass bullet patterns rather than my general dodging skills, I become too relaxed and inaccurate, my mind slows down and I'm not ready to take on the next challenge as much as I would be if I'm constantly using my mind to make split second decisions and precise, sponanteous movements. In short, I improve faster the more I actively dodge, rather than memorize and not improve at all. Memorization also has the downfall of not being interchangable between shmups. What you memorize in one shmup is completely useless to you in almost every other one. Active dodging skills are useful in pretty much every shmup in existance. It is this which I view as actual skill, and how much you have memorized in a particular shmup means absolutely nothing to me.
tl;dr: Bullet cancelling and memorization stop me from actively dodging bullets. I want to dodge bullets.
what should i stream today? Or tomorrow?
DOJ and UFO. Why don't you play UFO anymore?
