This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3061: sparky's PSX Einhänder in 31:29.93

I'm waiting for encode... :P

will vote after encode

Nicovideo part1: http://winback.web.fc2.com/nicovideo/?sm13975671 part2: http://winback.web.fc2.com/nicovideo/?sm14026287 Sorry, this is not for April fool :(

Holy mother of God, I have been hoping for this for a long time. Unfortunately, I don't have a JP Einhander image, so also waiting on encode.

What is going on. why does everything die when I blink EDIT: Oh, 30Hz shooting. lawl

Good lord, Nico video is so obnoxious. I realize it's oft used in Japan, but there are so many better video services. I'm waiting for a decent encode to be posted somewhere viewable.

Unfortunately, Nico doesn't work for me; the video claims to load but I only ever get a dark screen. Looking forward to an encode somewhere where I can actually view it.

^ ^ Obnoxious? Do you mean because of the scrolling comments? Those can be disabled by clicking on the little speech balloon. In these particular links, there's even a "hide comments" button in English.

With this one I never even get video, just black screen.

About 1 minute was taken to start video in my environment. Now, the line may be breaking up. Normally, it finishes within 10 seconds at the longest.

The player doesnt start here, i cant watch it either. Youtube plz?

I had to watch it in a browser with all ad and script blocking disabled and everything wide open, and I found the quality of the encode rather poor. I'll wait for one of our crack encoders here to get their hands on it. What I did watch was fast, but relatively free of any kind of fun flying to fill the slow bits.

nicovideo doesn't work, so waiting for an youtube encode if possible

Sorry about the delay in getting to this thread, but I finally got nicovideo to work on a computer with a faster network connection. First, I have one simple question about the game itself. Are you normally supposed to see shots from the player's default weapon? With the video quality on Nicovideo, I didn't see any shots... it looked more like the Einhander destroyed other ships on contact. This can't be right though. This is a pretty game with awesome music. The ability to get enemy weapons is great. However, the game felt fairly slow most of the time (with the notable exception of the fights just before the final boss). Furthermore, the boss fights are over almost too quickly, especially in comparison to how long the boss death animations take. As for the run itself, I think it could be a lot more entertaining. Although you get a few different weapons, you play long stretches of gameplay with the same weapon. With a game where you can pick up enemy weapons and switch freely, it would be a lot more interesting to switch weapons a lot (examples include: Mega Man X2, Mega Man 8, UN Squadron). Furthermore, the player is very still a lot of the time. Since the game has good music, why not dance to the music every so often? Incorporate gun switching into the dances (so that the dancer uses an "arm" for dancing)? This is well-played, but I think this could be much better. I'm voting Meh.

When you don't see the shots, it's because he's killing enemies with the arm. The arm is a powerful weapon if you can get enemies in contact with it.

Encodes SD Stream (RadioKJ's server) SD Stream (YouTube)

Thanks for the encode, Mr. Epic! For people who haven't seen this game before: the player's ship has four ways to damage enemies. The first is a built-in machinegun. The second is to steal gunpods from enemy ships, which function in various ways (e.g. Cannon fires piercing shots, Riot penetrates armor). The third is to try to use the gunpod button when no gunpod is equipped, which causes the ship to kick with its manipulator arm. The fourth is to change speeds; the white flare from the ship's engines when this happens damages ships. The manipulator arm is also invulnerable, which is what lets the ship get shot without being destroyed (gunpods can also be used as shields but are destructible; sparky uses this sometimes to disarm by rubbing against the terrain). Technically, this is a strong run. Stylistically, I feel like it could have been better. Most enemies are killed with a minimum of playing around, often as soon as they enter the screen. The "lingering damage effect" glitch (which is what is killing enemies when the player's ship is nowhere near them and not firing) also really killed entertainment for me; I feel like this is one situation in which a glitch that makes the run faster did not improve entertainment. For one thing, it completely removes boss fights from the equation, and they're one of the strongest points of this game. Yes, it's faster, but speed isn't always the best thing to aim for. This is also petty of me, but I would have liked to see the out-of-plane enemies killed. It's not like there's a shortage of Wasp ammo. There are moments of brilliance -- the Blade use in stage 4, the use of the Mosquito...but there should be more. Grabbing gunpods (you get a score bonus for each one, incidentally) and using them briefly just to throw them away shortly later for a different gunpod would really spice the run up. In short, for the most part this feels like the kind of run a skilled player would make if he were using savestates. There's no actual mistakes, but there's little showing off either. Enemies are dispatched quickly, but mechanically. In the past we've seen that scrolling shmups have room to do better. I still think this is good enough to be published...but I also think that a run that pays more attention to entertainment, even at the cost of speed, could obsolete it.

Now that an encode is up, can we get more feedback? Great music, but I found the game pretty meh, as far as action goes.

I'll be part of the meh crowd. There's something about killing bosses w/o doing anything visible that's just so... lacking. And I was kind of hoping there'd be more going on in the video, but since I haven't played the game, I've no idea how feasible that is. At the very least though, it would've been nice to see the dropped items being picked up and used, even briefly.

How exactly do some of the glitches work? I have a vague idea of how to ACTIVATE the firepower glitch in stage 1 (upper left corner, vulcan?), but what in the programming leads to this? Same for the invisible lingering shots. Yes vote, but I would like some clarification.

Yes, the glitch is caused there. Some people have researched about this glitch, but nobody has been able to figure out definite principle yet. A thing is known for now, this glitch happens sometimes when player is shooting Vulcan on upper left corner in a place where is scrolling at a slant.

Watched the encode, and I have to give it a strong YES vote. My only real criticism is that there isn't enough daredevil maneuvering, but that's just a matter of taste. I loved the fancy blade usage and when the score counter would go nuts and show a seven-digit multiplier for a brief moment (maybe one of those moments could be the screenshot?).

This was thrilling to watch. Almost brought tears to my eyes, but that is likely due to how amazing Einhänder is. It's not the kind of game that is traditionally good for a TAS publication, but I think that it is still worthy, and I would like to humbly offer three reasons. Einhänder is naturally entertaining to watch. There is a lot of potential for a TAS of this game to be even more entertaining than this one, but at the very least this TAS is sure to be impressive to both anyone who is familiar with Einhänder and anyone who watches TASes to see a flashy game completed as fast as possible. Each weapon and method of defeating enemies is demonstrated. Those who have only played Einhänder casually will appreciate this, and those who haven't played it at all will get to see a shooter with what is likely a wider variety of weapons than they have seen before. It's more likely than other "unoptimized for entertainment" TASes to inspire somebody to try to make a TAS that obsoletes it. This is a stretch, but worth considering. Games from the shooting genre seem to appeal to TASers. One of the first TASes ever was a demonstration of what can be done with the game Gradius, which is obviously a fairly primitive specimen of the genre. The paradox is that shooters are games that aren't really ideal for TAS publications, mostly because the pace of the progress through each level is limited, causing the playthrough to seem like it isn't as hasty as can it be. Yet shooters offer gameplay that offers the opportunity for TASers to show off their understanding of it in an intriguing way. For Einhänder, even more so. It's certainly a deep game, maybe it's one of the deepest shooters ever. It offers an opportunity for a TASer to create a submission that is limited only by their imagination. If this submission is published, I think that most people who will watch the video will be pleased that the publication was there for them to select. It would be an intriguing display that has a positive influence on the prestige of TAS videos. Sparky, the skill and insight you have displayed in this submission does not go unappreciated by me.