Donpachi and DDP PSX port accuracy

[EOJ]

I have DDP for the PSX, and I just ordered Donpachi for PSX. I've played both in MAME obviously, but never dedicated much time to either. How close are these ports to the PCBs? I'm mainly thinking about things like overall speed, enemy and bullet patterns, and slowdown accuracy.

Just wondering if I should stick with what I have, or upgrade to the PCBs if I end up liking the games a lot (I'm liking DDP a lot now actually, the more I play it).

[PROMETHEUS]

(why not just play it under MAME then ? it's extremely close to arcade and more so than both the PSX and saturn versions from what I've heard, and you got save states and replays)

[Kaede]

Yeah, I'd also like to hear about the DDP port on PSone as I'm thinking of getting it too.

[EOJ]

(why not just play it under MAME then ? it's extremely close to arcade and more so than both the PSX and saturn versions from what I've heard, and you got save states and replays)

I don't have a setup where I can play MAME on my rgb monitor. I can't stand playing the games on my laptop.

[elf]

is it a laptop with flat buttons and a touchpad?

[EOJ]

It doesn't have an arcade joystick, so I don't play on it. I also can't stand the small screen.

[Kaneda]

One of my biggest pet peeves about the Western shooting game community is the constant hailing of DDP PSX's greatness over the Saturn port. Of the two ports, the PSX one is considerably off compared to the PCB (i.e. chains breaking in different areas, slightly altered enemy formations, completely changed slowdown). The fact that it looks a good deal sharper than the Saturn one has meant that it's been praised so much, but if you really want to play competitively you'll want to go with the Saturn one and just deal with the pixelly explosions. Still, these differences are only noticeable to folks that play a lot of DDP and there are still slight differences with the Saturn one too, making MAME the best alternative to playing the PCB.

As far as DonPachi goes, the PSX one is great from what I've played although I'm not a big DP player. The Saturn port, however, must be avoided completely as it's far and away the worst Cave port yet.

[GaijinPunch]

I don't have a setup where I can play MAME on my rgb monitor. I can't stand playing the games on my laptop.

If you remind me, I'll bring you a cable for your RGB monitor on my next trip.  Not sure if it still works or not, as I have no way to test it.  If not, you can send it to some Shmups user to build you another one.  There's apparently a piece of software out there that will allow just about any Nvidia or ATI card to output in 15khz (or 22khz for that matter, but your monitor won't handle it).  One of these days I'm going to pop this cheapy card in my MAME machine and see if it works.  Too busy touching myself and whatnot lately.

[EOJ]

Thanks for the info, Kaneda. Despite the PSX's crisp visuals, if it has the problems you mention then I don't really want to be playing it. I don't have a saturn any more and the last thing I want is another old system cluttering up my living room (not to mention I'd need to find some way to play an arcade joystick on the saturn, which would be pricey to say the least). So it looks like it's time to hunt for a DDP PCB. I'll keep Donpachi on the PSX unless someone tells me it has similar problems, since it was only $25. I know some people here have played Donpachi and know it inside and out (zlk, for one). Maybe they could chime in.

And yeah, I'd like to try out that cable, GP. Thanks for the offer. No idea if it will work, but we could give it a go.

[Kaneda]

To illustrate the anal differences with the DDP ports, I always noted the following example: on stage 1 when you chain to the mid-boss, you should be able to grab the power-up that's floating around and have it not break your chain (provided you're very close to the mid-boss). In the Saturn port it behaves in this way and will break if you grab the power-up and you're too far from the boss like in the PCB. However, in the PSX port, even if you're kissing the mid-boss and grab the power-up it will break your chain.

Absolutely anal and irrelevant to most players that want to enjoy the game, but I know EOJ enjoys the score hunting and will want to be playing the same version that SOF-WTN is. Granted, I haven't played the PSX port in years and drugs may have warped my memory, so there's always the chance that I'm talking out of my ass here. Still, the PSX port has a goddamn slowdown button and runs like Raine with the faster speed and less (or none) of the patented Cave slowdown.

[EOJ]

If you press pause and turn the "wait on", the slowdown comes back, but after watching some superplay vids, it still has less slowdown than the PCB. I guess they threw the slowdown button in there because they knew they couldn't get all the slowdown right, and wanted players to be able to put it in in the spots where it's missing. The deal breaker for me is the stuff with the different chains/enemy placements.

[freddiebamboo]

To illustrate the anal differences with the DDP ports, I always noted the following example: on stage 1 when you chain to the mid-boss, you should be able to grab the power-up that's floating around and have it not break your chain (provided you're very close to the mid-boss). In the Saturn port it behaves in this way and will break if you grab the power-up and you're too far from the boss like in the PCB. However, in the PSX port, even if you're kissing the mid-boss and grab the power-up it will break your chain.

So a power up breaks your laser chain even if you're quite close to what you're hitting?  I was thinking about getting rid of my saturn version and buying the PSX one seeing as my saturn has given up working, but I think I'll just hunt for a new saturn instead. 

Good graphics don't make up for widly different speeds and weird chaining rules.

[EOJ]

I'll have to try and test that st1 midboss powerup chain break he's talking about. I could have sworn I've carried the chain through the midboss before.

[ProMeTheus]

I'll update this thread with this info since I have finally got an opportunity to test both ports (they are both garbage, especially PSX one) :

We met up at Kiken and Minzoku's last week-end, my first American Shmupmeet !
It was awesome to meet American players, hang out, and meet DDP on PSX and Saturn for the first time.

Today let's rant about how terrible those two ports are ! And believe me, they really suck !

So first I had a run on DDP Saturn. I sort of got the hang of playing with arcade sticks now and can perform ok with them now most of the time I think. I guess an average stick run would get me 200M points to 2-5 or something (spectated runs). This first run I got a little over 30M and ended run at the end of first loop, not getting the requirements (they are messed up in the port). Impossible to chain, dying all over the place. Then I played a good bunch of PSX runs and couldnt get over 70M or something, many times finishing just the first loop too. After I figured those ports are actually very innacurate, I just played kind of for survival being very careful not to be surprised and trapped by unexpected differences and got to 2-4 or 2-5 with under 100M scores.

These are the ports innacuracies that I detected through my bunch of runs :

Saturn DDP :
- Of course, as it was known already I believe, the speed is off. Game seems to run a little faster by default (probably 60fps which makes it overall 4% faster). Slowdown occurs more rarely as more bullets need to be on screen to trigger it, so most of the game is even faster that it should on top of those additional 4%. However when slowdown occurs on massive bullet counts, it slows down too much, in particular Hibachi is much easier than it should.
- Horizontal width of play area seems a little bit off (too small), resulting in slightly different enemy placement.
- Damage seems dealt differently by your ship and some enemies have more hit points than they should.
- Bullet cancel lasts a much shorter time than it should.
- Enemies have different aiming.
- Your chaining meter might be a little slower to deplete (not sure).

PSX DDP :
- Slowdown is off similarly to Saturn even with Wait option ON.
- Damage dealing is messed up and many popcorn enemies have too many hitpoints or survive a little longer for some reason.
- Enemies have different aiming similar to Saturn DDP.
- Loop requirements seem wrong.
- When you uncover a bee with your laser, you don't get one hit worth of chain meter gauge filled (this completely messes up chaining).

There are probably more inaccuracies.

The results of those inaccuracies are :
- You cannot use your usual chaining paths with those ports, they will not work, not only because you won't connect but because enemies won't die when they should and some will shoot at different angles making survival very compromised. You can probably chain again if you learn adapted paths for each port, however I suspect the PSX port chains would really suffer from not getting a hit from uncovering bees : some parts might become simply unchainable, or very hard to chain, or require you to use a path where you ignore collecting a bee which hurts your score by around 7M for 1 bee-chain broken.
- The difficulty of the game is very altered, some parts will, upon adaptation of your knowledge, become much easier or harder.

I regard those ports as garbage, they look like DDP but they're not really the same game. For me the point of a port is to allow a DDP player to jump in and be able to play without major changes to his game knowledge, and with a generally unaltered difficulty. That's not even close to what they managed there. Mind you, I have played on PCB and MAME numerous times and have never noticed a single difference (including in speed) between them except for the fact that the PCB has a graphics bug that MAME doesn't, that doesn't affect gameplay.

I regard scores performed on PSX or Saturn as definitely non comparable to MAME and PCB.

That was my rant, over and out !

ProM

[TimingTripod40]

Wow, thanks for the detailed info man.

[Mullenkedheim]

I never had a PSX, not even a Saturn. So, the only DDP version I could try out was the MAME one... 

[ProMeTheus]

Then don't make a sad face because the MAME version is perfect.