Most annoying "feature" of any Cave game?

[brentsg]

I want to start a Skykid thread.

Taking into account all of the Cave games you have played, what is the single most annoying trait or feature?  This can be related to the hardware, software, storyline, marketing, gameplay, anything.

I'll start it off with Pink Sweets.  Having to vary ship speed to cancel a pending rose cracker drives me bonkers.

[Special World]

I hate that they always have this "using restart won't save your scores" bullshit. Who the hell is actually restarting these games on a level by level basis? That shit should always bring you back to level 1 with no repercussions.

Also, I hate hypering in DFK 1.5. Makes it without a doubt the most boring Cave game I've ever played.

[cstarflare]

Having to play a separate mode to post scores to the leaderboard

[gsl]

Having to play a separate mode to post scores to the leaderboard

Yes.

[MikeNeko]

To me, the most annoying feature is the collision flag of enemy bullets... it was a hardware limit for esprade as far as i know (i don't know the engine pre-esp, but 5th bit of bullet entry for esp and later version to be technical), and it has been kept for ages even in sh3 versions of the engine.
That means sometimes bullets won t hurt and sometimes they will. It introduces some "randomness" even though a replay with the exact same input will result in the very same play... what sometimes works by sheer miracle of hardware limit cannot be reproduced and that s sad when you have to cross thick patterns.

[SuperPang]

Deathsmiles 2's dying in transit feature.

[Backlashcop]

All the recent home ports have a bunch of annoying features.

1. It shouldn't offer to upload my high score unless I've beaten my local board scores.
2. There should be an option to set permanently - I don't want my replays saved unless their my highest score run.
3. Lots of us don't continue - there should be an extra button option on the Continue count down screen (like Y) to start the game again, same settings but from level 1. (Maybe a button combination fo safety..)

MMP was driving me crazy on Saturday because of all these things..

[neomoe]

i don't like how DDP DOJ on the ps2 will only tate in 1 direction (the direction that is opposite of how my monitor rotates).  Not a huge deal since I mostly play DOJ BLEX on the 360 anyway.

Actually, it is also the same case w/ DP and DDP for the psx too.

[sh00g]

No extensive screen options like futari m2 port. 

[emphatic]

No choice for auto-bomb on/off in DDP-DFK 1.5 

[Killer French Bread]

Lolis. Or just the way the style has gone really girly in general.

[hipgnosis]

In score attack modes if your internet connection pauses it ends your run. I've had this happen with a new high score and I can tell you I was pretty pissed when it ended my game and I lost that high score.

[ssfsx17]

Lolis. Or just the way the style has gone really girly in general.

This

I became a Cave fan because of the grim darkness of ESP Ra.De., Guwange, DaiOuJou, and Ketsui. Mushi Futari was better about it than Touhou and other typical moe/loli garbage, but the fact that Mushi and Deathsmiles are becoming the main franchises, and DFK's art style went the way it did, does not bode well.

[drunkninja]

To me, the most annoying feature is the collision flag of enemy bullets... it was a hardware limit for esprade as far as i know (i don't know the engine pre-esp, but 5th bit of bullet entry for esp and later version to be technical), and it has been kept for ages even in sh3 versions of the engine.
That means sometimes bullets won t hurt and sometimes they will. It introduces some "randomness" even though a replay with the exact same input will result in the very same play... what sometimes works by sheer miracle of hardware limit cannot be reproduced and that s sad when you have to cross thick patterns.

Wait, what?  I never heard of this....I always assumed that bullets had their own hitbox as well, which is why you can get through patterns that look unpassable (DDP Stage 3 boss, for example).  Unless you're talking about something else.

[cstarflare]

There have been a few rare occasions where an enemy will fire five bullets in what appears to be a straight line, I tap dodge, and apparently miss the first three by a pixel but get stuffed by the fourth.

Maybe that's the kind of thing he's talking about?

[jyumi]

You lose 30% of your overall counter in DSMBL. It will take 2 stages to build it back up if you're not doing lvl999.

[Aliquantic]

On the ports side, it's either the poor leaderboards implementation, or the inconsistent training options (no boss training being probably the worst offender there).

Laser riding in DFK 1.5 has always felt pretty weird to me for giving several thousand hits easily on most stages, which makes route planning almost a trivial matter (especially compared to DFKBL).

[Chempop]

"most annoying feature"?  That's easy, having to calibrate my 4:3 settings on a Tate CRT FOR EACH MODE of a game, drives me batty every time, but is a nice relief when it's over with knowing I won't have to mess with it anymore.

[njiska]

I hate that they always have this "using restart won't save your scores" bullshit. Who the hell is actually restarting these games on a level by level basis? That shit should always bring you back to level 1 with no repercussions.

For ports this is mine. For the games themselves, I have to agree with the rose cracker cancel. I'm also not found of the random medals that appear with shot in MMP and can be missed if you're not careful.

[MikeNeko]

Wait, what?  I never heard of this....I always assumed that bullets had their own hitbox as well, which is why you can get through patterns that look unpassable (DDP Stage 3 boss, for example).  Unless you're talking about something else.

For normal bullets in the default implementation of the engine, only the center of the bullet (one point, not a hitbox) is checked against a collision square of the player. Each bullet has a flag that change per frame basis.
A bullet that is on a *just shot* state is not checked, a bullet that is on a *destroyed* state is not checked, a bullet that has the 5th bit clear is not checked.
In memory you can see that easily, that means only 0x8A headed bullet entries are colliding.
I know it s weird, i give you an example, these large blue round bullets in DDP DOJ... yep only the center is colliding and only once every two frame. That means when you move you might go right through them, and anyway just avoid their center and you can go through a wall of these easily without getting hurt, i do that all the time.
Bullets that collide completely(like giant fireballs or chainsaws) are not bullets but ennemies in fact.

Esp Galuda 2 is special, it s another engine.

Anyway, i know reasonably well the cave engines, but that s quite useless, you guys already master all the scoring subtilties in the strategy guides (fantastic work) xD

[THE]

@MikeNeko

That's pretty normal, my Last Hope and Fast Striker engines are similar like that.

Only the center pixel collides. Otherwise I could never have 180 bullets on screen on NEOGEO with collision. The only hit every X frame thing is a bad design flaw IHMO in danmakus, but it gives you twice as much bullets for free. I only did this in Last Hope, but it's a slow game and there are not much bullets. In Fast Striker bullets collide on every frame.

I wonder how they did it in Pro Gear, it has amazingly much bullets for CPS2...

I guess you are the guy who programs the SH3 Emu? If so, do you think it would be possible to program unlicensed games for it? I would love, to port my new engine to it...just for the kicks ;-)

[MikeNeko]

>THE
Eh, you're the one behind these games engines, very fine work there ! 
Ahaha no no no, i don't do SH3 emulation So sorry i cannot answer that last question.

Progear... yep that's a good question, i never even tried to look at it... i ll give it a go to see how the bullets were handled, i agree it was amazing at the time, it could be interesting

[Iori Branford]

Hey CAVE, I love you, but if the fucking enemies can hide under the fucking bullets, maybe they shouldn't have fucking collision with the fucking player.

[Dave_K.]

To me, the most annoying feature is the collision flag of enemy bullets... it was a hardware limit for esprade as far as i know (i don't know the engine pre-esp, but 5th bit of bullet entry for esp and later version to be technical), and it has been kept for ages even in sh3 versions of the engine.
That means sometimes bullets won t hurt and sometimes they will. It introduces some "randomness" even though a replay with the exact same input will result in the very same play... what sometimes works by sheer miracle of hardware limit cannot be reproduced and that s sad when you have to cross thick patterns.

Although interesting to learn of from an engine perspective, I don't see how this is annoying.  It just means dodging patterns may be a wee bit easier, similar to making single point bullet hit boxes.  I can say for certain when playing ESPRade that I've never felt like it was "randomness".  BTW: Yagawa does similar tricks in raizing games to be able to render so many particle and explosion effects...they just render every 2 or 3 frames.

So which SH3 games was this design used in?

[MikeNeko]

For SH3, futari is where i experienced the most frustration.

The real issue of alternating collision is that some bullet angular patterns make me want to go "through" them, sometimes it passes, and sometimes not, sob. It is sad, i know, but i am not good enough  I know some people who think this is a blessing though, as if they were blessed to continue their journey despite what was supposed to be a colliding shot going through them.

That's the only "global" complaint i have.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

For me it's the sound quality on the SH3 hardware. It isn't terrible, but it isn't good enough for a platform coming out in 2004. The previous platform PGM had superior quality so it was a downgrade. SH3 sound is some kind of compressed mpeg samples like mp3, and that's just what it sounds like, an old mp3. The most annoying part about it is they have the best music composer and voice talent I've ever heard in the industry and probably the worst sound quality on any videogame system that has come out since it. Maybe it helped them sell CDs. 

[HVL]

Not necessarily the most annoying, plenty of people have already pointed some of those, but this is driving me insane:

I play Deathsmiles 2 with bomb mapped to A and whenever I pause and press A to resume, it fires a bomb right after no matter how quick I am. To my knowledge, this shit doesn't happen in any other ports.

[drunkninja]

Not necessarily the most annoying, plenty of people have already pointed some of those, but this is driving me insane:

I play Deathsmiles 2 with bomb mapped to A and whenever I pause and press A to resume, it fires a bomb right after no matter how quick I am. To my knowledge, this shit doesn't happen in any other ports.

That actually happens to me in DFKBL, except with hypers.  I have A mapped to hyper, and if I go to menus while hyper is stocked and press A to resume, the game immediately activates the hyper.

[HVL]

Not necessarily the most annoying, plenty of people have already pointed some of those, but this is driving me insane:

I play Deathsmiles 2 with bomb mapped to A and whenever I pause and press A to resume, it fires a bomb right after no matter how quick I am. To my knowledge, this shit doesn't happen in any other ports.

That actually happens to me in DFKBL, except with hypers.  I have A mapped to hyper, and if I go to menus while hyper is stocked and press A to resume, the game immediately activates the hyper.

Interesting. I play all variations of DFK with hyper mapped to A and I can't seem to remember it ever happening.

[drunkninja]

I'll have to verify it again later (been a while since I last played), but I'm certain it's happened to me multiple times.