~Hakurei Shrine~ > Help Me, Eirin!

My first lunatic 1cc

<< < (8/9) > >>

Dreamleaf: --- Quote from: Lunatic_Reimu on June 21, 2019, 12:07:20 PM ---Yes true that about the versatility of the series, which is what makes it so fun! It’s not just always doing the same thing, lots of different characters and spell cards / stages which force you to learn new ways to adapt to them! I think you’ll enjoy Seihou also, you’ll notice it’s quite different from Touhou, yet also similar in ways, Vivit is a cute loveable little android too, so don’t let not having Reimu and Marisa as playable characters ward you off! Besides, that Extra is amazing, and soooooo difficult (it’s the only thing I’ve come across in the series so far which I couldn’t No Bomb, and can’t find anyone that did on Youtube, and would love to see a run where someone managed, Reimu has this RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT card with red and white Yin Yang orbs and these orange bullets which I just couldn’t grasp), you get to see a really different side to Marisa and Reimu in it, especially Marisa since she gets angel wings, and also uses duplication at the end, I don’t think she ever did that in the Touhou games, so it will have some nice surprises in store for you :) Yeah the No Bomb runs really do cut your resources down to 1/3 or 1/4 as you’re saying, while I appreciate the challenge it brings with it, it’s not the lack of resources which really makes me love them though, it’s facing the spell card fully, even at it’s hardest points. Regarding what you’re saying about Touhou 9 No Bombs, well it depends, Touhou 3 without bombs was very tough at the later stages (Chiyuri and Yumemi), cause it’s very difficult surviving those fights with just your 5 hearts! Those 5 hearts go down quite quick, especially as the fight progresses more and you take more damage as everything speeds up. And also, No Bombs on Touhou 3 locks off Charge Max for you (you activate this by pressing the bomb button when you have no bombs remaining and a full charge bar). Touhou 9 looks more refined than Touhou 3 though, so I’m also thinking it wouldn’t be as difficult as Touhou 3 (and it has focus thank god). Hahaha about Eiki and her free time, something similar happens in the Touhou 4 Extra with Marisa, she just wanders around into the Extra stage just to kill time xD Glad you finally got to experience Touhou 2 and am enjoying it! Don’t forget to try out the MIDI soundtrack! It has quite a nice arrange on certain tracks and well worth another playthrough with it! Damn, I forgot about the Touhou 2 endings, it’s been around 4 years since I played that one! Thanks for clarifying where it’s from! xD Haha good joke and reference to Touhou 2 about Reimu’s hitbox, yes Reimu’s hitbox is a tad smaller than the other characters’ in the Windows games, so this joke makes sense lol. Yes it will have an impact and make you bond with that character more, especially if you had never played a danmaku shmup before as I did and felt overwhelmed with everything around you! As I said in my previous post, Reimu saw some hardships being controlled by a newbie at shmups, let alone danmaku, but I was extremely happy when I finally cleared (no bombed) Touhou 2 (especially on Lunatic) for the first time, and she was with me throughout the whole ordeal! Oh yes true about Sakuya’s fight being memorable, everything about it is just ultra cool, the music really fits her, the time freezing, pointy knives as bullets . . . she just really fits the role of Remilia’s bodyguard and a Stage 5 boss :) Yes I too see Reimu as the icon for Touhou, it just fits as the shrine maiden ‘exterminating’ the youkai causing trouble. Ahh yes, while it requires more skill to work your way through the ocean of bullets to get under the boss, I appreciate needle Reimu and Marisa’s power (as you said the health bar melts), it’s like your reward for managing to work your way there :) A friend showed me the first 5 episodes of Heroes (we were out for a pizza, but were just glued to his phone lol watching that in awe). Yeah lots of people didn’t really click with GT overall, heard lots of negativity about it, but I heard there’s a cool fight against Shenron in it that’s not worth missing out on! Z Kai is drawn differently though, so I wouldn’t mind giving that a rewatch, especially since Dragon Ball Z is just epic all-round! Thanks for the heads up about Beerus becoming a main character, makes Super sound even better! Hopefully him and Goku will get a rematch again at some point!! Yeah you just can’t go wrong with the Beerus movie, that fight is just epic in EVERY WAY: ‘I will not let you destroy my WOOOOORRRRLLLLDDD!!’. Brr, gives me chills down my spine just thinking about it! Hahahaa yeah true that about Marisa, she’s your typical trouble maker, and it’s what makes her precious in her own way xD Haha didn’t know that about Marisa saying that to Eiki, definitely got something to look forward to then when I play 9! xD And yeah, completely agreed, ‘you’re not fooling anyone Marisa’ :P Haha yeah definitely a thief, poor Patchouli and her books lol, and who knows what else she steals that I don’t know about :P She’s such an amusing character xD Yes it definitely is fascinating as you’re saying that such a simple ability ‘float’ could become so powerful, makes you see what a genius ZUN really is to read into something so much and amplify such a basic ability! Ahhh the Last Words are amazing, I haven’t experienced them yet personally, but saw most of them on Youtube, and they look incredible! Touhou 8 is gonna be loads of fun!! xD Yeah I get what you mean, all my friends and coworkers just see it as ‘extra stress’ rather than mega fun like we do :( Even one of my biggest friends tell me ‘I want to relax and kill something in a game after work, not do something that’s more stressful than my work day!’. I really don’t get why most people see difficulty as stress, I believe a challenge is healthy and keeps you motivated, plus the sense of accomplishment and self-worth after beating these games is unrivaled by ANYTHING I have ever done in life. Thanks for the Arietta Incalzando album link, I’ll definitely have to give that a listen (been really busy these past couple of days). Yes I quite enjoy that Koishi arrange as it sounds eerie at points which I feel really fits her. I love Koishi’s theme, it’s one of my favourites, amazing how it could go from menacing to cutesy in a heartbeat. Plus Koishi is very special to me since I told you it was the first thing I had seen about Touhou, and started playing these games cause of her fight! Check this out if you like Koishi’s theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61-RF-q7RmI It’s called Paranoia by Digital Wing. I love the slightly warped voice, and how the song starts with the DJ giving that small introduction in English, to then just getting sucked into Koishi’s theme in Japanese vocals! Ahhh brilliant, the Ques Q Kourindou versions of Marisa and Reimu really are high quality figures! I love mine to bits, especially the Reimu one, she is just too damn adorable, and the attention to detail is astounding! (the creases in her dress, the stitching on her cute red and white shoes, her flowy hair, the small crosses on the ends of her hair bangs, real big well done to Ques Q on this one!). I’m hoping you’ve received yours by now and am happily enjoying her accompanying Marisa :) Yeah as far as scales go, that Reimu will compliment your Marisa, cause then the Reimu I have pre-ordered is huge at 43cm!! Really can’t wait for her to arrive!! She’s got such a cute face, and those beautiful long legs *rawr* ;) Ahh yes that Koishi is awesome too, almost all Ques Q figures are brilliant, I love how attentive they are to small details like a heart under her shoe for example! Haha I’ve been figure collecting for 3 years, you’ll get a collection like that in time don’t worry ;) Plus I have a VERY generous sister who while she doesn’t play Touhou, loves watching me play it and loves the characters, so she always dives in and gets me a couple of figures for birthdays and Christmas :) Plus I’ve got some of them that are dirt cheap, like the SEGA prize figures or the fuRyu ones, those only set me back like 30 Euros including shipping. The Ques Q ones then. . . go for like 150+ Euros as you already know. Doesn’t help getting slammed with an extra 20% duty/VAT from customs as well :/ The trick is to try pre-ordering when possible. If you miss the pre-order period, the prices shoot up on the second hand market then :( Ques Q have this *AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL* Yuyuko, but I could never find her anywhere for less than around 400 USD :( https://myfigurecollection.net/item/102204 I only found her cheaper used, but I’m scared she’ll come with a broken butterfly or something and I don’t want to risk that! Ahhh yes definitely about fireworks, I had read about it somewhere ages ago, and kept it in mind, and it really does fit (albeit being quite an easy and simple spell card compared to what we’re used to haha) :P Haha definitely accompanied by Touhou music, and the more colourful the better! xD Really happy to hear that you got the tooth pain sorted out! Now yes, you can get back to focusing on your original goals without that mind-numbing pain! Touhou is tough enough as it is, last thing you need is pain to distract you :/ Ahh that’s brilliant about the Touhou 7 Phantasm, and am also glad to hear you also cleared it in the Personal Message! I know Yukari is one of your favourites, and also it being one of your original goals, so it must mean a lot to you to have that cleared! (same as it would for me once I take down Koishi, so I truly get what you mean!) Well done on also using your own replays to learn the attacks that were giving you trouble, I do that too but with recordings instead of replays. I record every gaming session I do, and when something gives me lots of trouble I just sit there and watch my recordings and study the attack to see if I could understand how it’s working, which parts of it are aimed at me, why certain bullets act the way they do, etc. It really helps! Yeah your skills will definitely shoot up in a couple of months as you’re noticing yourself! That’s why you should never feel disheartened with the series, as you’re seeing for yourself, things you thought you were incapable of suddenly became reality in just a few months! :D Really happy for you my friend, I know this fight means a lot to you! Yeah the Last Word version of Yukari’s last spell card is amazing, so many different patterns in one card! It’s a really cool spell card which will take some good practice to learn it all (plus the Last Words have to be done Perfect if I’m not mistaken so no room for error!). Yes definitely understood on the adrenaline and rage and lack of focus, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes and the damn rage I produce, and the closer I am to beating the game, the more adrenaline is pumping through me (only 1 life left against a final boss, remember no bombs to fall back on, so it’s literally do or die here!!). It is a wonderful feeling at the same time though, kinda like what Goku was going through vs Beerus in the movie, alone in space fighting against a terrifyingly strong opponent!! True that about the overdetermination working against you, it can’t be helped though, cause it’s something that we want SOOOO MUCH, so no wonder we get so fueled with adrenaline! Ahh yes definitely, both the bullet spawning in rapid succession sound, and also the grazing sound I love, something so miniscule, but makes it so much more immersive at the same time! Glad to hear you didn’t find the transition to using more of the screen so difficult! That will really help you in certain parts on Lunatic, especially getting up closer to a boss when you see your openings to deal more damage! Yes a beginner might be able to pull off playing higher up on screen, but initial reaction of seeing all those bullets will be to stay at the bottom, especially if someone is new to bullet hell / started a new Touhou game and not knowing what to expect next. Yes definitely, that’s what makes Touhou extremely fun, you just keep playing and eventually you’ll see the solution to something that was troubling you before on your own. Like the ‘green wall’ in the Touhou 2 Stage 3 boss, at first I just used to get hit EVERY SINGLE TIME I get to that attack on Hard/Lunatic, one day I’m just sitting there waiting for my inevitable death, and I finally saw the gap!!! Trivialized it every time after that! xD Yep, as I’ve mentioned before, the stage portion actually gives me more trouble than the Flandre fight! (except her final spell card QED). Lots of Flan’s attacks are easily memorizable, so once you get to grips with them you could do lots of them perfect most of the time. Ahh yeah, I get you about the getting through the stage portion with enough resources, especially on Touhou 15 which is regarded as so difficult! Yeah I understand that about the bombs not being so useful, I’ve seen vids where Flan even turns into a bat if you trying bombing against her, and she doesn’t take damage in her bat form. Why better off losing a life for Virtue of Wind God rather than bombing? (cause your power drops with each bomb used?) You stated ‘That's incredibly impressive you've managed to do those though, I'd love to be able to play at that level eventually’, thanks for your compliment, I appreciate it that someone appreciates all that effort that goes into hitting these No Bomb 1ccs, well, you could play at that level whenever you want to! Remember, I had no prior experience to shmups or danmaku before, I just started off No Bombs instantly. I didn’t like the feeling of clearing everything off of the screen, and had seen someone do the Koishi fight PERFECT (my god what skill!!!), and Jaimers doing several of the games No Bombs, and as soon as I saw that these things are achievable by others, I just decided to start playing the games like that straight away. Sure it was a VERY difficult road (especially Lunatic for the first time), so don’t get me wrong, but all you need is lots of determination, patience, and practice! If anything, you’ve got an advantage over how I started, cause you’ve got almost all the games cleared on Normal I believe, and quite some Extra experience, so you’ve already experienced the story that the official games have to offer, plus also faced a variety of different spell cards :) So No Bombs might not be as far away from your reach as you’re thinking if it interests you that much. Ahhh, I could imagine crashing into the boss when going above the PoC being very frustrating, and rather than frustrating, feeling disappointed in yourself for doing such a silly mistake. Happens to the best of us mate don’t worry too much about it, we all get derp moments, thankfully you came back fresh the next day and got your clear ;) Ooooh so true about the game continuously crushing your ego. Someone in the comments on Youtube once said ‘Touhou is a soul crushing game’, and I greatly agree with that statement. But we keep at it, and eventually we trump over those bosses that gave us such heartbreaking failures :) Fully agree with this whole paragraph here. What’s worse than that though is going extremely well, and to ruin a run at Stage 5. I remember one of my attempts at Touhou 5, I lost my first life at Yumeko (the Stage 5 boss), so the run was going perfectly till that point, with a very high chance to get my 1cc, and that’s it, once I lost that life it’s like I snapped out of my zen state, and she r*ped my stock of lives. I just lost my flow completely. That is just soul-crushing and frustrating beyond belief. Really happy to hear about the tooth pain completely healed!! So now you’re back to focusing on the actual game without any external factors in the way! :D Ahhh, real life problems, everyone has some of those, and unfortunately yes, they will get in the way of HOW WELL you play, and HOW MUCH you play. Speaking of real life problems, life had to kick me where it hurts deepest, last week I was in the middle of a gaming session, and my TV suddenly got these green and purple lines, and *boom* keeps switching on and off every 3 seconds or so :’( So I’m Touhouless currently :’( I’m getting by watching anime on my laptop (15” compared to my 46” TV, not happy!!!), and getting some more time with Touhoumon on my PSP, but I *GREATLY MISS* bullet dodging (I play on my gaming pc which is powerful enough to record gameplay also, my laptop is just a weak i3 for casual emails and day to day stuff). It’s at the TV repair guy’s at the moment, got a call from him today morning, he thinks it’s the main board, he managed to procure one and is going to try replacing it tonight, and said if it was the problem I should have it in my hands this weekend / early next week. Fingers crossed. . . . cause I’m going crazy here and life feels so empty :’( Oh, about getting antsy when not playing for a while, 100% agreed there, I’ll be at work like a bundle of nerves, constantly tapping my fingernails against the desk, and my foot rapidly on the floor, all my coworkers notice something’s up and not right. Gaming does have addictive properties, cause they make us feel good. I mean let’s face it, in real life, I’m a clerk that deals with purchasing spare parts and invoicing *yawn*, in the virtual world, I’m a magical girl with powers flying around dodging hundreds of bullets in these ultra epic fights! . . . Which would you prefer??? :P Ahh that’s awesome, you’ve got some very nice progress in in 9 months, and there’s no shortage of things to learn, believe me, you’ll keep improving. I keep seeing growth in myself after every Touhou game I clear (most notably Touhou 3 and Seihou for me were my biggest boosters), so we’re constantly getting better and better! Especially once you start hitting more Hards and Lunatics, your skill level will shoot up too, all the Extras you’re doing (especially your 15 one) will also come into play ;) Same here my friend, no one I know (both in real life, and online) loves this series as much as you do, so I’m also happy that I found someone to talk to that just adores everything about it as I do :) Coincidentally I was talking to my sis about our posts yesterday, and I said it’s a real damn shame we live in different countries, cause we’d be mega good friends if we could meet up! Strange how you can feel so close to someone you never met, and in such a short time period too. No worries about the delay in replying, I know these posts got quite huge in a short time span, and yes, I’d want these posts to stay fun and reply when you feel like sharing, not ‘something you have to do’ against your will just cause it’s been a while since you last replied. --- End quote --- Geez, that must be pretty ridiculous if you can't even find videos of others doing a no bomb run of it either. I certainly can't remember Marisa ever using duplication in the main series! She no doubt stole the idea from Flandre XD And angel wings? Does she not use her broom then? It'd be pretty hard to imagine Marisa flying without it lol. I'll try to squeeze in a Seihou game sometime soon here! It's tough with so many different 1ccs I'm looking at doing but it could be a nice change of pace too. And yeah, when you put it that way I can completely see the appeal to the no bomb run as someone who wants to experience Touhou as much as possible. I think I had a misconception that it was how it limited your resources even more, but now I see that when you remove them you're making it so you need to give it your absolute all to beating *every* spell card in the game. I actually tried a couple no bomb runs in PCB normal yesterday to see how it'd go. Completely removed my bomb key from my keyboard just to make sure I wouldn't accidentally slip up and hit it by mistake >.> On both attempts I managed to make it into the Youmu boss fight in stage 5 so I think even on the games I know a little better at normal difficulty it'd still take a bit of work for me to get a no bomb run but shouldn't be too far out of my comfort zone for trying to get use to it. It makes sense that I started losing lives when I did considering I'm already used to doing stages 1-3 without bombs but I haven't practiced stages 4-6 in most games much without them so I'll need to adjust to that. I'm think for PCB normal I'd be best off use using the stage practice for 4-6 to practice until I'm more comfortable in those fights without bombs before I attempt more proper 1ccs. The saddest part of no bomb runs is having to remind myself not to feel excited at seeing a bomb powerup drop on screen, but I'm guessing that will fade in time. I'll make sure to try the midi soundtrack on my next playthrough of 2! I was hoping to work more on one of the other 2 Reimu shot types in normal this weekend but just got caught up doing several other things. I'd like to try and get them soon though well the game is still fresh in my mind. The ending I got only mentioned the scent bit so my guess is each of the 3 endings probably reveals one of the purposes of the orbs. Those first clears are always the most satisfying and memorable. Especially if it's something that feels like a milestone like your first 1cc or the first Extra or first Lunatic 1cc. Hell, even though it was only in easy mode I still remember just how proud I felt for that first 1cc in PCB with Sakuya. During those days even easy mode felt like I was being thrown into an ocean to drown in. Thankfully I've made a bit of progress myself on my journey since then :P Don't get me wrong with GT, it definitely has some good moments, I just feel Super goes with the story as the proper sequel to Z since it was done by the original creator so if you're planning on watching both eventually I'd go with Super first. Also you'd probably enjoy the follow up movie to the one you watched called Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'. It's worth noting that the movies also are basically just the first few seasons in the actual Super anime just condensed down. Ahhh sorry I probably shouldn't be spoiling those kind of moments for you as they're pretty hilarious when you see them in game XD It does seem like Patchouli gets hit the hardest from Marisa's 5 finger discount. I adore Marisa but good lord do I *not* enjoy fighting her lol. She has some cool spell cards but she's also extremely proficient at making me want to put my fist through my monitor :P 8 is amazing btw, it's absolutely in my personal top 3 favorite games in the entire series. I've done about half of the Last Words so far and they're some of the coolest spell cards in the series I've seen (Kaguya's "Tree-Ocean of Hourai" is simply incredible <3). My friends say the exact same thing  ::) The funny part is while I can't deny there is a lot of stress that comes with Touhou it can be surprisingly relaxing as well at times, especially when you really hit the flow and enter that almost zen kind of mode. It can be rare but I've had those moments where you're playing in lunatic mode or an extra and you're just so into it that even in a complex and dense spell card you can just feel completely calm, like abnormally calm and relaxed like a kind of zen state. Mind you those moments are rare and far between and I can't really control them but when they do happen my confidence and skill feel like they absolutely skyrocket. See it's stuff like this which is hard to explain to people who don't play. 100% agreed on the sense of accomplishment and self-worth you get from this being unrivaled. It's like you spend your whole life telling yourself you know what you can and can't do and this series comes along and showed me that I really had absolutely no idea of what I was capable of. I think the same goes for most people too, I think nearly anyone is capable of doing everything I've done or even that you've done as long as they have the determination. There's also something oddly addicting about challenging yourself that I can't say I ever truly felt in my life before playing Touhou but now has grown into almost an obsession too.  Oh that's a cool Koishi cover! I didn't think I'd like the vocal touhou covers much but surprisingly enough a lot of the ones I hear is actually pretty great. Bad Apple and Little Devils Apple are both fantastic of course. I also stumbled on one for Sakuya's theme by ShibayanRecords a while back I think is all kinds of fantastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNhw6bFVhD0 the 6 minute mark gets especially good. You know, I think Koishi is the most I've ever liked a character I've never even actually met XD I still haven't seen her in any of the games or printed works properly yet but I know a fair bit about her character just from reading on the series. Back when I started talking about Touhou to some of my other friends who knew nothing about it I'd send them Koishi's TV tropes page just to give them an idea of just how much depth there was to this series despite the more cutesy style and tone. Yes I got my Reimu figure in finally and she couldn't be more wonderful and adorable. Definitely had to pay a pretty penny for her and Marisa but well worth it for the high quality. Actually that's only half true, well the figure was pricey itself I only had to pay 25 bucks for the Reimu one since I had enough points on the site I buy them from to cover the rest of the cost of the figure and just had to pay the S&H :) (I use Tokyo Otaku Mode because when you buy figures during their sales you get a bunch of points back that can be used as currency for future purchases) This is my current Touhou collection if you're interested in seeing! https://i.imgur.com/PXyqhzH.jpg its grown so large that I had to temporarily put the figures on the shelf with my PMMM ones lol. Once I get a few more Touhou figures (also forgot to mention I *really* want the Ques Q Alice figure too http://honya-ch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ques-q-alice-margatroid-dx-type-11.jpg Pretty sure that will be my next purchase) I'll give them their own shelf to shine on too ^_^ That is an absolutely *gorgeous* Yuyuko btw! I absolutely want it eventually but at that price point I'd definitely wait a while. It's one of the unfortunate aspects about being a late comer to the series is some of these things which came out a while ago can be quite expensive to get my hands on. Same thing with the Reimu one you're getting (1/4 scale figure, that is pretty damn big!) absolutely beautiful, I also like the playful look they went with on that one. Also that's great your sister does that for you! Mine is wonderful for letting me talk about it so much and picked up a good chunk of the games for me when she was in Japan (so much cheaper getting them over there then it is buying them here). Thank you again! :D Yes I'm extremely pleased about beating Yukari. It's a big personal milestone for me and I'm still kind of savoring that feeling of accomplishment. I know now there's tougher things in this series then her but starting out with PCB her and the Phantasm Stage seemed like a distant dream. I really can't wait to see Yukari's Last Word but it seems like you need to unlock every other one first and I still have several others I need to unlock. There's extremely little room for error. Some seem a bit worse then others. Kaguya's took me like 70 attempts to get compared to Youmu's which somehow only took 2. Oh you use video capture software? That's perfect because that's exactly what I want to be doing. What program do you use for that? I have FRAPS but I feel that would eat up to much hard drive space. Do you need a powerful PC in order to do that? Sorry for the questions but I'd really like to be doing this too. I'd also say the comparison with Goku and Beerus is actually appropriate. One of the most important aspects to Goku's character is how he wants to keep pushing himself and challenging himself to go past his limits and this really gets explored in Super as well as you can see with the Beerus movie. As a Touhou player I feel you'll have a very unique appreciation for Goku's arc in Super. You're right about the overdetermination being something we can't fully help. I aim to remain centered while I play but when you're pouring everything you got into beating a 1cc you can't stop that adrenaline from going crazy, and tbh it's one of the things that makes this series so addictive to so I can't say I'd want to fully remove that aspect. It can make us play a bit sloppy at times but it's also part of what drives and motivates you too I feel. I love that feeling when you've been struggling on an attack for a while and then randomly on an attempt you manage to figure out the attack. Sometimes it happens right away, sometimes I'll be on my 50th attempt on a spellcard before I manage to figure it out. Makes me wonder how many spell cards in the series I haven't even actually really figured out yet without even realizing it. Like those moments when you realize that a spellcard that looks like a random clusterf*ck is really just a concealed streaming pattern. It feels so damn good when you do figure something new like that yourself though, especially when like what you said with the 3rd boss in the 2nd game it just completely trivializes something you previously struggled with. Oh yeah, it seems like most if not all the extra stage bosses are immune to bombs (9 being an exception), and I think in rare cases some bosses in the normal game can be too (I seem to recall Remilia going bat formed too during 1 or 2 of her attacks if you tried to bomb). Yukari takes this an extra step further as in some cases she'll even halt the timer while the bombs are active. In the case of Kanako's last spellcard part of it is yeah that it drains your power to bomb, also combined with the fact the boss immunity to damage from it lasts longer then the bomb does. If you drain yourself to 1 power during that attack you're going to be struggling a whole lot. There's actually a few spell cards in the series that will become extremely messy if you try and rely on bombs too much. Ah Jaimers, his videos heavily inspired me starting out. Seeing what an expert who actually knew the series could do... I'd love to be trying more of the no bomb runs myself, I just need to train myself to get in that mindset which will take some work and adjusting. The thing that made the Ran death so humiliating was there was nothing else on the screen, and it's not like she moved. She was just chilling in the middle of the top of the screen when I slammed myself right into her  :o Keep in mind this is after I did the first 95% of the Extra Stage extremely well too. I can laugh at it now but at the time I wanted to cry.  It's a good reminder for this series though that it's never over until it's over no matter how well you've done or how comfortable you think you are with what's to come. Ouch, that sucks with Yumeko! That's so painful when you've been playing perfectly right up until that point :( Having to restart when literally a minute ago you were killing it. Mistakes are incredibly common but everynow and then it just has this kind of immediate snowball effect and no amount of effort will let you recover and you just end up crashing and burning. This is why Reisen is the best stage 5 boss from any of the games, because most of the time I can actually catch up on her fight if I was already doing poorly from the previous stages. She's the one stage 5 boss that has saved more 1ccs than she's ruined for me. Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the TV D: The only thing that I find kind of helps me when I can't play is going for a walk, putting on some Touhou music and completely zoning out as my brain does its thing. Even then though it can't fully fill in the gap from being deprived of Touhou. Hopefully you've managed to get that fixed by now and haven't snapped in the process x.x On the plus side it's quite wonderful that first moment you can load up the game again and play properly. It absolutely is addictive! Especially MMOs or games like Touhou which is almost intended to be targetted at the obsessive crowd. I know several of my coworkers can generally tell how much Touhou I've been playing based on my mood lol. Hahahaha well I know which I'd prefer but I think I'm quite biased on that one ;) I find I have to actively go out of my way to push myself at work just to feel engaged because Touhou has accustomed me to trying to process so many things at once and anything that feels too boring it's easy to switch my brain off, although in those cases I'll usually just be thinking about Touhou anyways. I'd say you're absolutely right. I don't feel like I've come anywhere near hitting my skillcap yet and there's never been a significant period of time yet where I didn't feel like I was still improving or learning (even if standalone sessions sometimes make me feel that way). I kind of want to do LoLK Lunatic Point Device mode for that reason as both normal and hard difficulty in that mode really impacted what I was capable and comfortable with doing. I find anything that challenges me will help me improve to some degree though, and I think the things that push you the hardest also have the most impact on your improvement because you're constantly trying to push through your limits. I've definitely learned a ton from the Extra Stages I've done in the last few months I feel is going to be extremely useful pushing more hard and lunatic 1ccs. I still need to get back to working on 15s Extra again here as well which I'd imagine will just help me improve more. You know I think I've attempted 15s Extra more times already than I had on Ran, Yukari and both my 9 Extra 1ccs all combined  :V I've heard it's supposedly much easier with Sanae and Reisen but I've come so far with Reimu it just wouldn't feel right switching at this point. It is a shame! I'd imagine we would spend endless hours just gushing about nothing but Touhou ;) I'm so use to having to hold back around people irl too to keep from annoying them too much but if left uncontrolled I doubt I'd ever shut up about it. Aye I know what you mean, and all we really needed to know to become good friends was each others love for the series. That's the sort of genuine love that can't be faked. There's a few people who know I love this series but you're the only one I've met that truly gets to what extent and why. Even if you're far away I'm grateful to have at least one person to properly share the series with! If you ever find yourself on my side of the world though (I live in Canada, not sure if I mentioned that already) or vice versa then we can meet up for coffee and likely spend all day talking Touhou :D

Despatche: Belated congrats. Kaeiduka is a weird choice for a Lunatic clear at all, let alone a first one... it's a strange game that works in strange ways. So there's a lot of respect warranted here.

Dreamleaf: --- Quote from: Despatche on July 03, 2019, 02:10:51 PM ---Belated congrats. Kaeiduka is a weird choice for a Lunatic clear at all, let alone a first one... it's a strange game that works in strange ways. So there's a lot of respect warranted here. --- End quote --- Thank you! It certainly is a strange game and not one I would have expected to have been my first Lunatic (and Extra) clear but I found I was picking up on it significantly quicker than in the other games for some reason.

Lunatic_Reimu: --- Quote from: Dreamleaf on June 25, 2019, 05:31:48 AM ---Geez, that must be pretty ridiculous if you can't even find videos of others doing a no bomb run of it either. I certainly can't remember Marisa ever using duplication in the main series! She no doubt stole the idea from Flandre XD And angel wings? Does she not use her broom then? It'd be pretty hard to imagine Marisa flying without it lol. I'll try to squeeze in a Seihou game sometime soon here! It's tough with so many different 1ccs I'm looking at doing but it could be a nice change of pace too. And yeah, when you put it that way I can completely see the appeal to the no bomb run as someone who wants to experience Touhou as much as possible. I think I had a misconception that it was how it limited your resources even more, but now I see that when you remove them you're making it so you need to give it your absolute all to beating *every* spell card in the game. I actually tried a couple no bomb runs in PCB normal yesterday to see how it'd go. Completely removed my bomb key from my keyboard just to make sure I wouldn't accidentally slip up and hit it by mistake >.> On both attempts I managed to make it into the Youmu boss fight in stage 5 so I think even on the games I know a little better at normal difficulty it'd still take a bit of work for me to get a no bomb run but shouldn't be too far out of my comfort zone for trying to get use to it. It makes sense that I started losing lives when I did considering I'm already used to doing stages 1-3 without bombs but I haven't practiced stages 4-6 in most games much without them so I'll need to adjust to that. I'm think for PCB normal I'd be best off use using the stage practice for 4-6 to practice until I'm more comfortable in those fights without bombs before I attempt more proper 1ccs. The saddest part of no bomb runs is having to remind myself not to feel excited at seeing a bomb powerup drop on screen, but I'm guessing that will fade in time. I'll make sure to try the midi soundtrack on my next playthrough of 2! I was hoping to work more on one of the other 2 Reimu shot types in normal this weekend but just got caught up doing several other things. I'd like to try and get them soon though well the game is still fresh in my mind. The ending I got only mentioned the scent bit so my guess is each of the 3 endings probably reveals one of the purposes of the orbs. Those first clears are always the most satisfying and memorable. Especially if it's something that feels like a milestone like your first 1cc or the first Extra or first Lunatic 1cc. Hell, even though it was only in easy mode I still remember just how proud I felt for that first 1cc in PCB with Sakuya. During those days even easy mode felt like I was being thrown into an ocean to drown in. Thankfully I've made a bit of progress myself on my journey since then :P Don't get me wrong with GT, it definitely has some good moments, I just feel Super goes with the story as the proper sequel to Z since it was done by the original creator so if you're planning on watching both eventually I'd go with Super first. Also you'd probably enjoy the follow up movie to the one you watched called Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'. It's worth noting that the movies also are basically just the first few seasons in the actual Super anime just condensed down. Ahhh sorry I probably shouldn't be spoiling those kind of moments for you as they're pretty hilarious when you see them in game XD It does seem like Patchouli gets hit the hardest from Marisa's 5 finger discount. I adore Marisa but good lord do I *not* enjoy fighting her lol. She has some cool spell cards but she's also extremely proficient at making me want to put my fist through my monitor :P 8 is amazing btw, it's absolutely in my personal top 3 favorite games in the entire series. I've done about half of the Last Words so far and they're some of the coolest spell cards in the series I've seen (Kaguya's "Tree-Ocean of Hourai" is simply incredible <3). My friends say the exact same thing  ::) The funny part is while I can't deny there is a lot of stress that comes with Touhou it can be surprisingly relaxing as well at times, especially when you really hit the flow and enter that almost zen kind of mode. It can be rare but I've had those moments where you're playing in lunatic mode or an extra and you're just so into it that even in a complex and dense spell card you can just feel completely calm, like abnormally calm and relaxed like a kind of zen state. Mind you those moments are rare and far between and I can't really control them but when they do happen my confidence and skill feel like they absolutely skyrocket. See it's stuff like this which is hard to explain to people who don't play. 100% agreed on the sense of accomplishment and self-worth you get from this being unrivaled. It's like you spend your whole life telling yourself you know what you can and can't do and this series comes along and showed me that I really had absolutely no idea of what I was capable of. I think the same goes for most people too, I think nearly anyone is capable of doing everything I've done or even that you've done as long as they have the determination. There's also something oddly addicting about challenging yourself that I can't say I ever truly felt in my life before playing Touhou but now has grown into almost an obsession too.  Oh that's a cool Koishi cover! I didn't think I'd like the vocal touhou covers much but surprisingly enough a lot of the ones I hear is actually pretty great. Bad Apple and Little Devils Apple are both fantastic of course. I also stumbled on one for Sakuya's theme by ShibayanRecords a while back I think is all kinds of fantastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNhw6bFVhD0 the 6 minute mark gets especially good. You know, I think Koishi is the most I've ever liked a character I've never even actually met XD I still haven't seen her in any of the games or printed works properly yet but I know a fair bit about her character just from reading on the series. Back when I started talking about Touhou to some of my other friends who knew nothing about it I'd send them Koishi's TV tropes page just to give them an idea of just how much depth there was to this series despite the more cutesy style and tone. Yes I got my Reimu figure in finally and she couldn't be more wonderful and adorable. Definitely had to pay a pretty penny for her and Marisa but well worth it for the high quality. Actually that's only half true, well the figure was pricey itself I only had to pay 25 bucks for the Reimu one since I had enough points on the site I buy them from to cover the rest of the cost of the figure and just had to pay the S&H :) (I use Tokyo Otaku Mode because when you buy figures during their sales you get a bunch of points back that can be used as currency for future purchases) This is my current Touhou collection if you're interested in seeing! https://i.imgur.com/PXyqhzH.jpg its grown so large that I had to temporarily put the figures on the shelf with my PMMM ones lol. Once I get a few more Touhou figures (also forgot to mention I *really* want the Ques Q Alice figure too http://honya-ch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ques-q-alice-margatroid-dx-type-11.jpg Pretty sure that will be my next purchase) I'll give them their own shelf to shine on too ^_^ That is an absolutely *gorgeous* Yuyuko btw! I absolutely want it eventually but at that price point I'd definitely wait a while. It's one of the unfortunate aspects about being a late comer to the series is some of these things which came out a while ago can be quite expensive to get my hands on. Same thing with the Reimu one you're getting (1/4 scale figure, that is pretty damn big!) absolutely beautiful, I also like the playful look they went with on that one. Also that's great your sister does that for you! Mine is wonderful for letting me talk about it so much and picked up a good chunk of the games for me when she was in Japan (so much cheaper getting them over there then it is buying them here). Thank you again! :D Yes I'm extremely pleased about beating Yukari. It's a big personal milestone for me and I'm still kind of savoring that feeling of accomplishment. I know now there's tougher things in this series then her but starting out with PCB her and the Phantasm Stage seemed like a distant dream. I really can't wait to see Yukari's Last Word but it seems like you need to unlock every other one first and I still have several others I need to unlock. There's extremely little room for error. Some seem a bit worse then others. Kaguya's took me like 70 attempts to get compared to Youmu's which somehow only took 2. Oh you use video capture software? That's perfect because that's exactly what I want to be doing. What program do you use for that? I have FRAPS but I feel that would eat up to much hard drive space. Do you need a powerful PC in order to do that? Sorry for the questions but I'd really like to be doing this too. I'd also say the comparison with Goku and Beerus is actually appropriate. One of the most important aspects to Goku's character is how he wants to keep pushing himself and challenging himself to go past his limits and this really gets explored in Super as well as you can see with the Beerus movie. As a Touhou player I feel you'll have a very unique appreciation for Goku's arc in Super. You're right about the overdetermination being something we can't fully help. I aim to remain centered while I play but when you're pouring everything you got into beating a 1cc you can't stop that adrenaline from going crazy, and tbh it's one of the things that makes this series so addictive to so I can't say I'd want to fully remove that aspect. It can make us play a bit sloppy at times but it's also part of what drives and motivates you too I feel. I love that feeling when you've been struggling on an attack for a while and then randomly on an attempt you manage to figure out the attack. Sometimes it happens right away, sometimes I'll be on my 50th attempt on a spellcard before I manage to figure it out. Makes me wonder how many spell cards in the series I haven't even actually really figured out yet without even realizing it. Like those moments when you realize that a spellcard that looks like a random clusterf*ck is really just a concealed streaming pattern. It feels so damn good when you do figure something new like that yourself though, especially when like what you said with the 3rd boss in the 2nd game it just completely trivializes something you previously struggled with. Oh yeah, it seems like most if not all the extra stage bosses are immune to bombs (9 being an exception), and I think in rare cases some bosses in the normal game can be too (I seem to recall Remilia going bat formed too during 1 or 2 of her attacks if you tried to bomb). Yukari takes this an extra step further as in some cases she'll even halt the timer while the bombs are active. In the case of Kanako's last spellcard part of it is yeah that it drains your power to bomb, also combined with the fact the boss immunity to damage from it lasts longer then the bomb does. If you drain yourself to 1 power during that attack you're going to be struggling a whole lot. There's actually a few spell cards in the series that will become extremely messy if you try and rely on bombs too much. Ah Jaimers, his videos heavily inspired me starting out. Seeing what an expert who actually knew the series could do... I'd love to be trying more of the no bomb runs myself, I just need to train myself to get in that mindset which will take some work and adjusting. The thing that made the Ran death so humiliating was there was nothing else on the screen, and it's not like she moved. She was just chilling in the middle of the top of the screen when I slammed myself right into her  :o Keep in mind this is after I did the first 95% of the Extra Stage extremely well too. I can laugh at it now but at the time I wanted to cry.  It's a good reminder for this series though that it's never over until it's over no matter how well you've done or how comfortable you think you are with what's to come. Ouch, that sucks with Yumeko! That's so painful when you've been playing perfectly right up until that point :( Having to restart when literally a minute ago you were killing it. Mistakes are incredibly common but everynow and then it just has this kind of immediate snowball effect and no amount of effort will let you recover and you just end up crashing and burning. This is why Reisen is the best stage 5 boss from any of the games, because most of the time I can actually catch up on her fight if I was already doing poorly from the previous stages. She's the one stage 5 boss that has saved more 1ccs than she's ruined for me. Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the TV D: The only thing that I find kind of helps me when I can't play is going for a walk, putting on some Touhou music and completely zoning out as my brain does its thing. Even then though it can't fully fill in the gap from being deprived of Touhou. Hopefully you've managed to get that fixed by now and haven't snapped in the process x.x On the plus side it's quite wonderful that first moment you can load up the game again and play properly. It absolutely is addictive! Especially MMOs or games like Touhou which is almost intended to be targetted at the obsessive crowd. I know several of my coworkers can generally tell how much Touhou I've been playing based on my mood lol. Hahahaha well I know which I'd prefer but I think I'm quite biased on that one ;) I find I have to actively go out of my way to push myself at work just to feel engaged because Touhou has accustomed me to trying to process so many things at once and anything that feels too boring it's easy to switch my brain off, although in those cases I'll usually just be thinking about Touhou anyways. I'd say you're absolutely right. I don't feel like I've come anywhere near hitting my skillcap yet and there's never been a significant period of time yet where I didn't feel like I was still improving or learning (even if standalone sessions sometimes make me feel that way). I kind of want to do LoLK Lunatic Point Device mode for that reason as both normal and hard difficulty in that mode really impacted what I was capable and comfortable with doing. I find anything that challenges me will help me improve to some degree though, and I think the things that push you the hardest also have the most impact on your improvement because you're constantly trying to push through your limits. I've definitely learned a ton from the Extra Stages I've done in the last few months I feel is going to be extremely useful pushing more hard and lunatic 1ccs. I still need to get back to working on 15s Extra again here as well which I'd imagine will just help me improve more. You know I think I've attempted 15s Extra more times already than I had on Ran, Yukari and both my 9 Extra 1ccs all combined  :V I've heard it's supposedly much easier with Sanae and Reisen but I've come so far with Reimu it just wouldn't feel right switching at this point. It is a shame! I'd imagine we would spend endless hours just gushing about nothing but Touhou ;) I'm so use to having to hold back around people irl too to keep from annoying them too much but if left uncontrolled I doubt I'd ever shut up about it. Aye I know what you mean, and all we really needed to know to become good friends was each others love for the series. That's the sort of genuine love that can't be faked. There's a few people who know I love this series but you're the only one I've met that truly gets to what extent and why. Even if you're far away I'm grateful to have at least one person to properly share the series with! If you ever find yourself on my side of the world though (I live in Canada, not sure if I mentioned that already) or vice versa then we can meet up for coffee and likely spend all day talking Touhou :D --- End quote --- Yes it?s quite a tough Extra, and Marisa is merciless if going no bombs, it purely is down to luck sometimes whether you?ll lose a life or not as her attacks weaken (i.e. shoot less bullets) the less orbs she has around her, so the same attack could be easy to dodge sometimes, but a complete wall another time (this attack with lots of orange bullets and blue lasers is mostly the one I?m referring to, you?ll know which one it is when you play it believe me haha). Yep I never heard of the duplication in the main series either, still is a nifty trick she picked up along the way, quite fun dodging 2 Marisa?s shooting fast pink bullets at you xD Yep, angel wings, check it out on a Seihou Extra video, no broom as far as I can tell, doesn?t look visible on the sprite :) Yeah I understand that, so many Touhou games and so many achievements to hit, but I think Seihou will be worth your while, makes for a huge change of pace too with everything being faster. Yep that?s it mainly for the No Bomb runs, I just want to experience/try dodging every attack at it?s hardest possible moment rather than bombing at the point where it gets too tough. As we?ve been saying, it?s fun learning and discovering patters in Touhou, so a No Bomb run is basically taking that element of learning to a deeper level :) Yeah, as you?re saying, you need to give it your all to master ?every spell card in the game?, well, almost every spell card, that?s what you have lives for :P The complete mastery is for those gods that hit Perfect Lunatics *bows head in respect*. I see from our PMs that you?re giving quite a good shot at the Normal No Bomb runs for PCB! Your last message said you made it to Yuyuko?s final card which is *REALLY* damn close, I hope you?re enjoying the thrill a No Bomb run gives as much as I do! xD Yes Stage Practice will definitely help, avoids lots of time wasted from having to run through stages 1 ? 3 all the time, which by that point, you?ll be doing perfect almost all the time (or losing a life during stage 3 sometimes). The Lunatic Perfect Stage Practices really help me out for when I go for the actual No Bomb runs. I remember in Seihou 1, the stage 4 boss used to r*pe me so bad (ironically enough although she?s stage 4, she?s way tougher than the stage 5 boss), after I managed to do her as a Lunatic Perfect Stage Practice, I even managed to hit her Perfect twice more while attempting a No Bomb run!! So Stage Practice really is your friend! She literally was my 1cc killer, while I don?t die at her hands, she used to take so many lives for me that it makes it ridiculously tough to finish off Vivit (the stage 6 boss), which has 3 forms to boot! Hahaha yeah, seeing a bomb pop up on screen in a No Bomb run is just a useless item I guess, don?t worry, that excitement will fade in time if you keep up with the No Bomb runs ;) Yeah I liked the alternate MIDI soundtrack, make sure to try it out in Extra too! It?s not just for the main game! Sorry to hear about the busy weekend, more time for Touhou is always nice :?( Damn I?m completely blank about the endings mate, I only remember this stuff (the scent, not gaining weight from sweets, turn into a cat) just cause you?re mentioning it to me, it?s been about 4 years since I played Touhou 2 so I forgot this stuff, especially since I?ve only seen it a very few times when I cleared the game :( That?s why recording software is awesome, could have all of this archived to revisit when necessary or just feel like a nostalgia trip! Yeah I agree, it could be why I hold Touhou 2 in such high regard since it?s the first actual danmaku shmup I played (Touhou 1 isn?t exactly a shmup). Haha yeah I believe you, first time I faced Lunatic I was terrified of the damn game, literally feeling claustrophobic ALL THE TIME, not comfy in the playing field. We?ve come a long way since then :) Now it?s as you?re saying, blissfully dancing in an ocean of bullets where nothing is more fun xD You?ve made *A LOT* of progress since then, give yourself some more credit ;) Yeah I had heard that Super is the direct continuation of Z and that GT doesn?t fit in between them, which is why I was going to first watch GT, then Z Kai and Super after, so it?s like I got a refresher for Z with Kai before going into Super. Yes I also saw Resurrection F, I loved the ending, Vegeta f*cked up big time with Frieza, if it wasn?t for the gay guy that?s with Beerus (forgot his name) to rewind time, Frieza would have actually been victorious there! Ahh that?s awesome about the movies being a condensed version, so I get to see the Beerus fight again but in more length this time! xD No no, spoil away, I really don?t mind, if anything it gives me something to look forward to and keep my eyes peeled for when I start up that game :) I really don?t mind. Lol @ Marisa wanting to make you put your fist through the monitor hahaha, I completely get you, she?s so cheap sometimes. In Touhou 4 she has a random order of using her attacks, and sometimes it really works in her damn favour, like she?ll have left over bullets from her previous spell still lingering on screen, and she does this whip of stars which is quite tough to dodge when you?ve already got bullets around you from the previous attack still there :/ But it?s part of her charm I guess lol. Yes 8 really does look fantastic, both final bosses are cool, Eirin with her Hourai Elixir is extremely claustrophobic, and Kauya?s spell rush is just awesome and so colourful! Pair that with Spell Card Practice and Mokou?s really cool Extra, and 8 definitely deserves a spot as one of the tops! Damn, Tree Ocean of Hourai looks amazing! I only saw the wiki shot of it in the Touhou 8 wiki, but it does look awesome and sooooo colourful! So much amazing stuff still left in store for me to experience! xD Ahhh yes, the zen state, few and far between as you?re saying, but when that happens, you?re like a bullet dodging machine, it?s like I?m subconsciously dodging bullets without even thinking about it, I don?t know how to properly explain it, it?s like it just comes to me, and I?m one with the game, like a damn replay instead of an actual person doing that stuff in real time. Shame it doesn?t happen as often as I?d want it to lol. Yeah, you?ve got no chance of explaining that to someone that doesn?t play Touhou, hell, I play the game and can?t even explain it properly, let alone someone that doesn?t :/ Yes I believe so too, I think anyone is capable of doing what we do in Touhou, it just takes *patience* (lots of it), and determination, and basically a will to never give up :) Definitely agreed about it becoming an obsession to challenge yourself, I was at a friend?s place last weekend, and he?s always been a PC gamer, and he just bought a PS4 Pro, and he told me he?s finding it tough to adapt to analog sticks, so I went over and showed him the ropes a bit (from my previous PS gaming years). We booted up Horizon, and goddamn, while it?s an aesthetically pleasing game, it?s just too damn easy!!! I?m used to keeping my eyes on hundreds of bullets all at the same time lol, it?s a joke being ?surrounded? by a couple of enemies jumping around me all taking their damn time to attack. So yeah, it definitely becomes an obsession and an addictive feeling, felt no self-worth AT ALL on Horizon, like I?m playing a damn kid?s game. Glad you liked the Koishi cover :) I absolutely *LOVE* it, gets me so bouncy and hyper! I don?t think there?s ever been a time that I pressed skip when it pops up on my iPod?s shuffle. Which Bad Apple remix/arrange are you referring to? Bad Apple is an official theme in Touhou 4. Ahh Little Devil?s Apple is by Yuuhei Satellite, they?re brilliant, if I?m not mistaken they also do some of the OPs for the fanmade anime Fantasy Kaleidoscope. I checked out the Sakuya remix by ShibayanRecords you linked, and while I?m not really a fan of the first half of the song, *HOT DAMN* I just FELL IN LOVE with the 5 minute mark till the end, as you stated, it gets ESPECIALLY good there! This one is definitely going into my iPod as soon as I could use my gaming pc again (my iTunes library is on that pc and I can?t navigate without a TV :/). I?m making it a point to go listen to it at least once a day from my laptop, and I also LOVE the Sakuya pic they used in the video! Those menacing red eyes with those daggers drawn ready to be thrown. . . nice find xD Here?s an arrange of Touhou 7 Stage 2 for you, this one is by A-One. They have lots of techno/trancy/Eurobeat kind of arranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-yAo2BDrkU I just love her voice paired with the Stage 2 theme done techno-ized, she really could go soft during the normal verses and shift to high for the chorus which I really enjoy. Yeah TOTALLY AGREED on Koishi, she is just cool in every damn way, there?s something so appealing about her :D Hahaha she definitely is a little monster, despite the cutesy tone xD You must have scared your friends off good with her xD Awww I?m happy to hear you finally got your Ques Q Reimu! xD She really is adorable, and the detail on her is astounding. Sh*t that?s damn good getting the figure for free with the points you racked up! I?ll definitely have to check out Tokyo Otaku Mode! I use AmiAmi and Ninoma mostly, and their point system sucks, I just get a few cents off x_X OMG those Forbidden Scrollery books are amazing, I?ve never seen them from the side, always the front cover, I just love the character illustrations on the side of them! Well done! That?s quite a nice collection you?re building up! :) I assume the other books to the left are the art books you have by Miyuki Ruria? Nice PMMM figures too btw, I was gonna start collecting anime figures also (most notably Dragon Ball and the Precures), but figured if I do that I?ll open a rabbit hole, and there?s more than enough Touhou content and merch to last me a lifetime, so, better not give more stuff for my brain to go OCD about haha :P Ahhhh yes that Ques Q Alice is wonderful, she?s definitely on my list as well, she always retails for around 250 USD wherever I see her. Make sure you get the DX version (the one you linked), there?s another version which is the same Alice but without the dolls. Granted you can buy these separately thankfully, but extra hassle to come across and find available for a good price (considering they?re just add-ons to the actual figure). Yes definitely about that Yuyuko and other merch that got released a while ago, very tough to find at a suitable price, or find at all! Some of this stuff got released in like 2011 so that?s 8 years ago so availability isn?t always guaranteed, or you?d have to pay an arm and a leg for them :?( I knoooow, that 1/4 Reimu is simply amazing, she?s gonna be the pride of my collection! September is getting closer and I?m gonna be so hyped for that one while she?s making her way from Japan to here!!!!! xD Yes she?s definitely got a face worth killing someone for! (Harsh expression I know, but I?d do anything for my Reimu lol, think yandere in anime :P). Hahaha from the sound of it we both drive our poor sisters nuts on Touhou lol xD  Ahhh she was in Japan??????? <3_<3 I?m jealous. She must have seen some very wonderful things there! Haha happy to hear you?re still carrying your Yukari achievement with pride! Yes it definitely is a milestone, apart from being one of your starting goals, it?s also the only official Phantasm stage iirc :D Yeah getting through all the Last Words to unlock Yukari?s will take a while and lots of work, but you?ll get there eventually and savor the moment, I mean after all, it wouldn?t be Touhou if it didn?t make us suffer and work for our accomplishments would it? :P Yeah from what I?ve seen on Youtube it seems like some Last Words vary in difficulty from others. I expect most of them to be quite tough though seeing as they?re Last Words. Yep, as I told you in the PM, I use OBS Studio, I?ll post screenshots of all my settings tomorrow morning, you could use them as a starting point, then adjust where you see fit. I end up with a recording of around 18GB for an hour. File size could be *drastically* reduced if you use the Veryfast preset instead of Superfast like I do (talking maybe 8GB an hour instead of 13 - 15GB), but this will have a huge impact on your CPU, so make sure you could play the game well (i.e. check that the game isn?t stuttering and check the slowdown % at the results screen) and also that the recording doesn?t stutter. In my case, I could run Veryfast, but noticed that the recording is *very slightly* more jittery than it?s Superfast counterpart, so I went Superfast and live with the huge file sizes, stutter drives me crazy! I had tried FRAPS, didn?t really like the quality, I think you should see a definite improvement in quality with OBS. I?m not exactly sure on the requirements and how powerful a pc needs to be to record, but I?m sure that you won?t pull off 720/1080p 60fps with an i3 as I tried on a friend?s laptop and it was a complete disaster. I?ve got an i7-4790, GTX 980Ti, and 32GB RAM (I went a bit overkill on the RAM I reckon, I never see more than 20% of this being used so I think 16GB would be suitable, probably even 8GB). An i7 (or rarely some i5s) would help due to Hyperthreading, which greatly helps running two things (called threads) at once. On my GTX 980Ti, usage is only 30% while playing and recording at the same time, so you don?t need something as beefy as that I reckon to pull it off, but I?ve never tried one of the Touhou fighters, so these might push that 30% up a bit more. *Very important note*: Don?t record on the same HDD that you?re playing the game off of. Playing is a read operation, recording is a heavy write operation, you more likely than not will get stutters in either the game, or the recording if you use the same HDD. Oh, and never record onto an SSD, you?ll burn through it?s life with those constant big writes. SSDs like being read from, not written to frequently. For my set up, I?ve got 3 drives: an SSD for the OS, programs, and where the games are installed, a 7200rpm drive solely for recording, and a 7200rpm drive for storage. More info on this in tomorrow?s post! I?m alone at work on Saturdays, so I should have ample time to set up a neat post for you :) No worries about the questions btw, I?m glad to help if it could help you out :) Yes I could definitely see the relation to Goku as you?re saying, he?s one of the best fighters in the universe, so he always strives to become more and more powerful! Who knows what crazy forms he could reach now in Super! Yeah no control over the overdetermination I?m afraid, it?s just how our brain works when we?re trying to hit something that?s so important to us, I mean, it literally means the world to me, nothing is more important seriously, so of course my brain (and body) will react that way, especially at the later stages when you?re getting close to pulling it off! :) Yeah I agree, while the zen state is nice and calm and centered, I like the adrenaline rush more although it makes us play more sloppy as you stated. My legs start shaking, and my arms go numb sometimes, my breathing goes slow and heavy, and my heart feels like I?m going to have a heart attack at any moment, notably when I?m at the final boss and know I could do it!! It's things like these that make Touhou so wonderful, the immersion is totally unmatched by anything I have ever done in life before. Yes definitely agree on that, it feels so satisfying finally figuring it out xD Indeed about the clusterf*ck being a concealed stream, one thing I learned throughout this series is if something is really giving me trouble or looking impossible, try streaming first, or even NOT MOVING as you?ll see in a part in the Touhou 2 Extra. Sometimes something is MUCH more simple than it seems, and the clusterf*ck is just there to misdirect your attention. Ahh that?s cool about the Extra bosses being immune to bombs, I never knew that seeing as I never use them. Learn something new every day! xD Hhaahha that?s awesome about Yukari even halting the timer! She really takes it a step further! Yeah I thought that the power draining while using bombs might have something to do with Kanako?s last spell, damage out put must be miniscule if you drop the power level down to 1 :/ Yes definitely about Jaimers, when I saw that he was capable of No Bombing the games, I realized that these games are actually doable that way, so he did have quite an influence on me too. Hmm, about the Ran death, I think you were under a lot of pressure knowing that you?ve got a high chance of beating the Extra with the resources you had available, and yeah, that adrenaline takes over and makes us play sloppy sometimes or doing silly mistakes. As I said previously, don?t beat yourself too much about it, happens to the best of us ;) ?It?s never over till it?s over?, definitely so true, worst thing you could do is take it for granted and get overconfident. This also works in reverse though, getting to a final boss with just 1 life left, while it seems impossible, miracles do happen, so even there don?t give up and keep giving it your all! Hahaha yeah, painful and sooooo frustrating, Yumeko is quite a beast, you?re in for one hell of a hard time when you do Touhou 5. . . I?d love to see her and Sakuya face off. . . both are final boss bodyguards, one uses broadswords, the other with daggers. Would be a really cool fight, but it?s just wishful thinking I reckon seeing as PC98 doesn?t get so much attention anymore :/ Yeah the snowball effect of mistakes, it?s horrible, and the rage doesn?t help at all, which is why it?s important to try staying focused and centering yourself as quick as possible so you snap back into the game, easier said than done though. Ahh, so you?re saying that Reisen is an easy stage 5 boss? That?s new, usually stage 5 bosses provide quite a challenge, but yeah it happens sometimes, as I stated in the first paragraph, the stage 5 boss in Seihou 1 is way easier than the stage 4 boss. Aaaaannnddd finally I got my TV back late last night!!! :D Whooo this torture without Touhou finally came to an end. Been almost 3 weeks, and finally in 3 more hours I?ll get out of this prison (work) and happily be back in the Scarlet Devil Mansion :) Gonna get my a*s handed to me a couple of times after not playing for a while, but it?s still gonna be mega fun xD Didn?t get to play yesterday since the guy came really late with it (almost 9pm), but REALLY looking forward to it today! xD Hahaha I get you about your coworkers knowing how much you played by your mood. As we stated, we get a bit antsy without it xD To be expected though, its such a wonderful thing, and so much fun, and really releases those feel good chemicals inside me dodging through a hell of bullets! Haha I knew which you?d prefer about the clerk vs magical girl, just wanted to put it into perspective to really show the contrast of how dull real life is compared to the wondrous Gensokyo xD Oooh yes, I *completely* get what you mean about having to push yourself at work, it?s so mundane, easy, and repetitive, it?s literally mind-numbing, I?ll literally be operating on auto-pilot and most of the time don?t even remember that I did my work, cause I?ll just be off in my own little world while doing it without even thinking/paying attention. In 9 months, definitely haven?t hit your skill cap yet, you?ve got way more to improve without even realizing! Another year will pass, and you?ll look back at today, and realize just how much better you got! The way you snap in and out of focus quickly, your control, the understanding of how certain attacks work, the way you read and tackle certain cards, etc. Bullet dodging is like a journey, as we said above, lots of growth for the player, and the more you go at it, the better you?ll get, but it by far isn?t a short and easy journey. Now you?re attempting some No Bomb runs too, so that will greatly push the limit that you?re used to :) Yes definitely about Touhou 15 Point Device Mode and anything you find that challenges you, once you initially get over that hump, it?s like that skill level sticks inside you then, and you become an even better player than you were a few weeks ago! Yeah with all the Extras you?ve hit, Hard should be right up your alley now, if anything, I believe Extra is harder than Hard but easier than Lunatic, so maybe Hard won?t be as troubling as it might seem with your experience now :) Damn, that seems like Touhou 15 Extra is really tough! Noooo, don?t abandon poor Reimu now that you?re so close with her! She is what Touhou is all about after all :D Haha it truly is a shame, we talk in length over PMs and posts, let alone what we?d do actually conversing! Yep, same here about having to hold back, I start noticing that my friends are losing interest, or just not understanding what I?m saying anymore after a while, so yeah, I try keeping a lid on it, or brief at least, cause you could tell that someone just isn?t getting it anymore. Indeed, I see the same level of devotion I have inside of you, which just made us click so easily xD You look like the type that could go on about Touhou for hours non-stop, and I?m really glad we met, over something so simple like a congrats as well xD Ahhh definite meet up if we?re ever on each others side of the world! Would be my pleasure :) Sorry for the delay in my reply btw, it?s been a really bad week, antsy starts turning into depressed after a while, paired with OCD, it?s quite easy to start getting frustrating and depressive symptoms. Thankfully with the TV back in hand, suddenly my life got full of colour again! xD As soon as I get home, I?ll jump onto Touhou 6, it?s been wayyyy too long, and I?ll prepare all the screenshots for OBS Studio :) Tomorrow morning I?ll layer it all out for you in a neat step by step post :) Take care, and happy Touhouing!! xD Ok previewing this post, it turned out quite huge, I talk too much sometimes lol, feel free to cut corners where you deem necessary :/

Lunatic_Reimu: As promised, here are the settings I use for OBS, I'll try walking you through it as simply as possible :) First thing you want to do is make sure that Stereo Mix is Enabled in your pc's Sound settings to ensure you get sound in your recordings. Right-click on the Speaker icon in the Taskbar near your pc's clock, and click Recording Devices (or Sound if you're on Windows 10 and click the Recording tab in the window that opens), you should get something like this: Right-click and make sure that Show Disabled Devices is checked, Stereo Mix will appear, right-click on it, and select Enable. Right-click on Stereo Mix and choose Properties, a window will open, and navigate to the tab saying Advanced: In the drop down menu, choose 2 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality). Click OK. We're back on the Sound Properties, click the Playback tab this time, and right-click Properties on your Speakers, click the Advanced tab. That will take you to this image: In the drop down menu, choose 2 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality). Click OK. This is so that you'll be hearing at the same Hz (frequency) that you'll be recording at. Press OK on this window, and OK again on the Sound Properties. Now you should have Stereo Mix enabled and set up to record at 24 bit 48000Hz. So, on we go onto the actual OBS! Launch OBS, the first thing you'd want to do, is right-click on the Preview (that black screen), and make sure that Enable Preview is UNCHECKED: This should make the UI less laggy and slightly less CPU usage too. Click Settings in the bottom right. You'll be taken to General settings: IIRC I left all these at defaults, set them up like I have here. Next up, click the Stream tab on the left: I left all these at defaults too, we're not streaming, we're recording. so this tab is useless for our needs. Next up, click Output in the left pane, at the top where it says Output Mode, set it from Simple to Advanced, you'll get something looking like this: Notice that we're on the Streaming tab, you could just leave these on defaults, as stated above we aren't going to be streaming. Click on the Recording tab near Streaming, this is where the important settings are coming in: Those are the settings I'm currently using, just to give you an explanation of what everything does: In the Recording Path, set up the folder where your recordings will be saved to. Recording format is the type of file that will be output, I go for mp4 because it is the most compatible and simplistic format for lots of devices to read, you could choose flv or mkv if you want. Note that if recording in mp4 or mkv and a power outage / BSOD happens, the whole recording is lost. If recording in flv, it will save up to that point. I find this useless for Touhou though cause you'll want a full run recorded, so I leave it on mp4 for convenience. Check 1 audio track. Encoder is what part of your pc you're going to be using to do the recording. x264 is your CPU, NVENC is your Nvidia GPU, and there's also QuickSync which is Intel's onboard processor. I found the best results with x264. NVENC was slightly blurry with loss of detail when compared to x264, so I'd heavily suggest x264 if your CPU could handle it. *Very important* Leave Rescale Output UNCHECKED. We'll be doing this later in the Video tab with some extra settings don't worry. At the bottom window where it says Rate Control, select CRF, this means Constant Rate Factor, or basically a simplified term is consistent quality. In CRF, I have mine set to 10, but it could be a bit overkill. Here's an explanation of CRF. The LOWER you go, the BETTER the quality (more bitrate in your video). 0 is lossless (you don't want this, you'll be looking at around 5 - 6GB a minute!), 52 is the worst like these 240p crappy videos you see on Youtube. An acceptable range is starting from 15-20, and go lower if not happy with the quality. Note that file size will increase the lower you go! It's recommended to not go higher than 20. CPU Usage Preset, this is how many CPU cycles get used on the image, or a simplified way to explain it is how much time the CPU will spend on each frame to make it look better. So the FASTER you go, the WORSE the quality is. Start off with Superfast or Veryfast. I wouldn't recommend going slower than Veryfast, this will really tax your CPU, for very little almost unnoticeable gains in quality, especially on constantly moving images like Touhou. On my pc, going from Superfast to Veryfast increases CPU usage by around 30 - 40%, so each step you go slower greatly impacts the CPU (unless you have something like a threadripper with 16+ cores). Note: you could also go Ultrafast, but this isn't recommended as it turns off some of x264's features. You'd notice a slight hit in quality being on Ultrafast, and ridiculously high file sizes (over 20GB for an hour), but very low CPU usage. If going for Veryfast, raise the CRF from 10 to 14 or 16. Since Veryfast is a slower preset than Superfast/Ultrafast, not as much bitrate is needed to make the image look the same. So the way it works is, a slower preset could afford a higher CRF number, a faster preset will need a lower CRF number so it makes up for the preset by increasing the bitrate instead. Last thing is Profile. I have mine set to High. Important note, I'm not sure if you'd want to be showing your recordings to your sis or friends on your phone. If so, High might not work for the phone. I'd do a small 1 minute recording and copy it into the phone just to make sure that the phone could read it. If it can't, select Baseline or Main instead. These are my settings for when I was using Veryfast as a preset in case the big file sizes of Superfast are inconvenient for you, but I found it slightly jittery for my liking which is why I went Superfast instead: Next up, go to the Audio tab near Recording, not the Audio in the left pane: Set the track 1 audio bitrate to 320. You could leave the others at defaults, we're only using 1 track. Now go to the Audio tab in the left pane: Switch Sample Rate to 48khz, this is why we set it up like that in Stereo Mix at the beginning of this post. Next, go to the Video tab in the left pane: Base Resolution is the game's resolution that you want to capture, so 640x480 for the old Touhous, and 1280x960 for the more recent ones from DDC upwards. 1280x720 for the later fighters from ULiL upwards. Output Scaled Resolution is the resolution your video will be scaled up to (this is why I said to leave Rescale Output unchecked first, cause we'll do it from here instead). I have mine set to 1280x960 for the old Touhou games. Note, if you plan on uploading to Youtube, this might be troublesome because you'll get caught in their 720p bracket which is only 7,500 bitrate as opposed to their 1080p bracket which is 12,000 bitrate. You'll get some slight pixelation in scenes with lots of fast moving content. To get around this, you could go 1440x1080 so you'll fall in the 1080p bracket, but after talking with Agent of the BSoD, he recommended that it's better having the upscaled resolution at perfect integers rather than 2.25 ratio. Downscale Filter, you'll want Lanczos for this as it provides 32 samples for scaling as opposed to the other 2 options which are 16 samples. Edges will look sharper rather than blurrier. FPS is what FPS you want to capture at. I highly recommend 60 fps, 30 fps looks kinda stuck and jumpy. If using Windows 7, you'd want to leave Disable Aero UNCHECKED. It helps OBS perform better, especially on Window Capture, which we'll be using for the PC98 games (don't worry, you'll still be playing them fullscreen). Next is Hot Keys in the left pane, I left mine empty as all I do is hit Start recording from the main menu and stop the recording when I'm done, but you're free to add any if you want to for added convenience: And finally from the settings is the Advanced pane on the left: I left these at defaults too. Save everything, and now we just need to set up the sources. We're almost done :) Back at the main screen, ignore Scenes, and click the + where it says Sources, and you'll get a menu, we'll be using Game Capture for the Windows games, and Window Capture for the PC98 games if you're using T98 Next. Game Capture wouldn't work with T98, just outputs a black screen, so we'll get around that with Window Capture a bit further down. Let's do Game Capture first. Note, don't have 2 sources at the same time. Game Capture when you want to play the Windows games, Window Capture when playing PC98. You could easily delete a source by selecting it and pressing the - near the +. After selecting Game Capture, you'll get a window, press OK, and it will lead you to this window: All you need to do here is UNCHECK Capture Cursor and press OK. And that's it, OBS should hook to the Windows games on it's own. So you'll end up with it looking like this: Just hit Start Recording at the bottom right, minimize OBS, and launch the game and play :D When you quit out of the game, hit Stop Recording to save your video. Now I'll show you how to set up the Window Capture for the PC98 games: Launch T98 Next, and make it go into Windowed mode (press F12 and F10), leave the game running. In OBS press the + to bring up the Source Selection menu, this time choose Window Capture. Press OK, and you'll see something like this: Make sure to UNCHECK Capture Cursor, and make sure that Window is saying Next.exe Emulation Window. You should see a small preview too to show that it hooked. Press OK, and that's it, it's hooked now, so you could launch OBS and press Start Recording, and launch T98 Next in Fullscreen, and OBS will capture it :D Note you'll need to do this every time you delete the Window Capture source and add it again (i.e. switching between playing Windows games and PC98 games), but once you hook it it will stay hooked till the next time you delete it. Make sure to do this or you'll end up with a black screen. After hooking it and pressing OK, your main screen for OBS should look like this: That's it, you're all set up and could start playing and recording. The next session is just some info on how to make sure everything is running well. After a recording session, click View at the top, and Stats: That will open up this window for you: What you need to look for here is the box I highlighted in red. Make sure that those percentages are under 1.0%, or you'll be seeing stuttering and dropped frames in your video. The stats screen should also tell you if you're getting any encoding issues. I'd recommend playing for around an hour and then check the stats. That percentage might be a bit high if you quit out of the game after 2 mins since there are 31 frames missed till OBS hooked to the game. If after around an hour of playing/recording you have a higher percentage than 1%, then something is wrong with your settings (too high a preset, too low CRF, resolution in the Video tab might need to be lower, or FPS in the Video tab). Last thing, which shows you even more info than the Stats screen, are the log files. Play and record, then stop the recording, quit out of OBS, and launch it again, this is important so the log file gets saved and complete, not viewing the active log file from your active OBS session. At the top, click Help, Log Files, Show Log Files: A window will open with your saved log files, you need the one BEFORE the last one as the last one is for your current OBS session. It's usually around 10 - 13 kb in size. Around half way / 2/3's down in the log file, you'll find this info: Your text may vary slightly depending on what errors you are encountering. The closer everything is to 0.0%, the better :) Make sure that there's nothing above 1%. As before, make sure to play for around an hour before checking a log file to let that percentage drop and steady out since it's an average, and you'll have a couple of dropped / lagged frames till OBS hooks to the game. Final note, as I stated in the previous post, don't record on the same drive you're playing the game from, and don't record on an SSD. Oh, keep an eye on your temperatures while testing out recording, it could get quite hot in there. My CPU hits 55 - 65 degrees recording in summer. Just leave a program like Open Hardware Monitor or AIDA 64 running minimized in the background while you record and play and see what they report. Final final note, even if using x264 which is a CPU encoder, you will still see some usage on your GPU, this is normal and just how OBS works. Final final final note, Game Capture will only work if you're running the Windows games in Fullscreen. If you're using Borderless Windowed Mode or something like that you'll probably need to use Window Capture instead. Some other notes: -If encountering trouble, you might want to disable Core Parking, this helped greatly with OBS for me to perform better on Windows 7. I think this got fixed for Windows 10 but referencing it just in case. Set it on your High Performance Power Plan, it'll just stick to that Power Plan only, so you know you have High Performance with unparked cores when gaming and recording, and Balanced Power plan when using the pc for day to day stuff: https://coderbag.com/programming-c/disable-cpu-core-parking-utility You could check that the cores are unparked by opening Resource Monitor from your Start Menu and you'll see that all of them have some usage going on them, and none of them have 'Parked' written next to them. -You may also want to install inSpectre and disable the Meltdown and Spectre patches. These 2 vulnerabilities were discovered last year, and the fix that Microsoft issued for them closed off sections of the CPU which impacts it on heavy work loads. Important to Run as Administrator to make changes, and to reboot your pc for the changes to take effect. You'll know they're disabled because Performance will say GOOD in green: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/download-inspectre.html Kill the internet when you're without these patches active. A quick way to kill the net is by running this script as Admin, just run it again when you want the net active: https://www.labnol.org/software/disable-internet-connection/26235/ -Last thing, if you have a CPU with hyperthreading, do not rely on performance monitors' readings about CPU usage. Hyperthreading really confuses how these monitors could read CPU usage since hyperthreadng makes each core seem like it is 2 logical cores, so you'll be getting a false reading: http://perfdynamics.blogspot.com/2014/01/monitoring-cpu-utilization-under-hyper.html 'Very briefly, the OS is being lied to.' 'That register becomes visible to the OS when HT is enabled. However, the OS (and all the way up the food chain to whatever perf tools you are using) now thinks twice the processor capacity is available, i.e., 100% CPU at each AS port.' After talking with someone on Guru3d and some very rare research, best way I found to calculate CPU usage on an i7 with hyperthreading is to double what the performance monitors are stating (so if they're saying 40% CPU usage, in truth that's 80% usage), but hyperthreading allows the CPU to hit a higher threshold than 100% if the workload is similar, which for OBS it is. So calculate by doubling your CPU usage, and making sure it doesn't skip 120 - 130%. Whew, I think that just about covers everything! Really hope you could get it working and will be happy with your recordings! xD Let me know how it goes!

Navigation

 Message Index

Next page

Previous page

Go to full version