Slowdown and pause buffering

[Jirachi]

Is it a bad or a good thing that i don't even know what pause buffering is?  :wat:

V

Pausing the game repeatedly (or at all) to gain additional thinking/reaction time.  Pausing once as Shou's lasers straighten out allows you to see where they're heading and move accordingly after unpausing, what I did on 10-4 was pausing every tenth of a second or so holding a direction that I wanted to move after unpausing.  (of course, actually doing it is a fair bit harder than it sounds, due to the semi-awkward hand positioning and the required timing-trying to re-pause too son results in the game not pausing at all).  No slowdown, no lag, just using the pause button for a bit more than intended.

Asking about it was merely an idle curiosity since it had come up (I wouldn't have considered using it on ISC if chirpy hadn't done it for 4-6 first).

[cactu]

Pause buffering is good. I do it all the time.

[Chaotic Phoenixma]

a little off topic, but for some reason I've never been against it in speedrunning but am against it in STG. I guess it's because while it can make a trick easier, it still would cost time over doing it without unless you kept failing it, but then you could fail even with it. While with STG it seems purely beneficial. Yet I'm pretty against the idea of doing it in a StB, DS, or ISC speedrun because well it's still going to help dodging a lot and the time pausing isn't factored into the time.

[Rei]

Relevant image (NSFW ads)

[I have no name]

StB, DS, or ISC speedrun because well it's still going to help dodging a lot and the time pausing isn't factored into the time.

For an IL (which would use the game timer), I would agree as you'd be confusing the game timer.  However for an RTA run I have no problems with it since the time pausing would still be counted-I know when I [rarely] do 108 scene DS runs I pause on 7-1 to not fail it.

[Drake]

It should be clear that there are two different sets of rules here. We have the community rules for STGs, which generally invalidate runs that have been pause-buffered or slowed down too much, as you've then not achieved the same standard of completion that everyone else is subject to*. And then you have the community rules for speedruns, which often change depending on the specific games and sub-community, but generally will allow anything present in the game to be abused in order to go fast. Pause-buffering in an STG like Double Spoiler is guaranteed to cost you at least a second in a speedrun, so that's entirely risk-reward anyways.

* (As said repeatedly, nobody should really care how you want to play as long as you aren't claiming something you haven't actually achieved; e.g. a 1cc)

[Ghost]

Pause buffered runs aren't inherently not legit, they're just incomparable to runs without pause buffering.

At least when we're talking about scoring/survival.

[PurpleTheGuy]

Yes, indeed, the pause buffering topic is a controversial topic that is discussed time to time throughout the many shmup communities in-general where, to my understanding at least, one pauses before certain attacks, then analyses them to figure out a strategy to get past certain attacks, it was around those lines. Many who are arcade traditionalists, among other competitive type peoples, and perhaps others, are against it, for the reason that it, as they say, destroys the arcade experience, as well as giving the player unfair advantages, up to where it gives the player time to "recover, or calm one's nerves or such," so to speak (Yes, that is actually even considered cheating by some) so I understand it as, and that's a couple of the arguments I've seen. These sorts of discussion about it really do get heated quite often. I, myself, didn't know that pausing in a game could actually be considered cheating by some until a couple months ago, it was unbelievable, let's put it that way.

On that topic, there was a thread I came across some time ago on another forum (shmups forum, I believe) where the topic of pause buffering was discussed as part of fair and competitive play, and at a certain point on that thread, it got really heated, and it descended somewhat into a flame war, so yeah, pretty serious indeed. It's a serious topic, you'd be surprised.

[Drake]

If you're talking about Vixy cheating a Futari clear, that wasn't even a discussion.

[PurpleTheGuy]

If you're talking about Vixy cheating a Futari clear, that wasn't even a discussion.

Yeah, I barely followed that thread, since that one jumped all over the place from the beginning. The part I was referring to in that thread was where this one guy in-particular, whose name went by as Third_Strike or something like that, talked about something around the lines like, "If you pause, you're cheating," "If you pause, you didn't beat me," and some other serious business stuff around those lines. That guy was a competitive type, indeed, and after that post, that thread really went down the pipes, and whew, man, was that quite a work afterwards. It even got Gus (To where Gus even self-exiled (or self-banned) himself from shmups chat, apparently, and one of the mods there carried it out for him), and some other people mad, and, yeah.

[Karisa]

Isn't the idea of pausing being cheating specifically regarding games that have no built-in pause feature, when played on something (e.g. an emulator) that allows pausing? I'm not at all familiar with those games' community standards, but it's understandable why people would consider any pausing to be cheating when it wasn't intended to be included in the game. If it's pausing in games like Touhou, though, I don't see why there would be any problem with pausing itself.

Though it does get questionable if pause-buffering is done for an entire pattern like in IHNN's 10-4 replay, especially given how the result is pretty much indistinguishable from a tool-assisted slowdown replay.

(I agree that pause-buffering would be completely acceptable in real-time speedruns, though, since it takes extra time to do.)

[I have no name]

Though it does get questionable if pause-buffering is done for an entire pattern like in IHNN's 10-4 replay, especially given how the result is pretty much indistinguishable from a tool-assisted slowdown replay.

This is why I thought of the question-I will say that I did 10-4 after with slowdown and it took 5 minutes to do, while pause buffering at that level is still very difficult-for anything easier or longer I wouldn't say it's worthwhile.  Getting that took me about 2 hours, and many times I would pause too soon resulting in no pause at all and a death.

It's a different kind of difficulty, though in that case it made the pattern much easier, for pretty much anything in a main series Touhou I wouldn't say buffering at that level is anywhere near worth it.

[Ghost]

Isn't the idea of pausing being cheating specifically regarding games that have no built-in pause feature, when played on something (e.g. an emulator) that allows pausing? I'm not at all familiar with those games' community standards, but it's understandable why people would consider any pausing to be cheating when it wasn't intended to be included in the game. If it's pausing in games like Touhou, though, I don't see why there would be any problem with pausing itself.

Though it does get questionable if pause-buffering is done for an entire pattern like in IHNN's 10-4 replay, especially given how the result is pretty much indistinguishable from a tool-assisted slowdown replay.

I'll repeat what I said earlier
Pause buffering isn't inherently cheating, it's technically part of the game after all.

The issue is pause buffered runs are incomparable to runs without pause buffering, (like really, pause buffering makes stuff like PCB stage 6 spam incredibly easy, lol).
So really it's up to the community to decide which is the standard, and imo pause buffering should be seriously frowned upon (it's not far from TAS or savestate abuse after all)

[cactu]

Can you tell the difference between pause buffered and legit? Here's 6 book captures, try and guess.
1,2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfRdUfxUMFU
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHGofKTwVeA
4,5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QczSuyH2wPE
6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9Q72iYwRk&feature=youtu.be

[Oh]

they are all TAS because books are impossible

[Chaotic Phoenixma]

Can you tell the difference between pause buffered and legit? Here's 6 book captures, try and guess.

Spoiler:

Legit, Buffered, Buffered, Legit, Buffered, Buffered

[Ghost]

Can you tell the difference between pause buffered and legit? Here's 6 book captures, try and guess.

Nah because I don't play EoSD enough to judge the dodging patterns
Though if I had to guess
legit, buffered, buffered, close enough to legit, buffered, buffered

/solution is to stream everything so things are proven legit xD

[cactu]

The answers are :

Spoiler:

Buffered, Legit, Legit, Buffered, Legit, Buffered