Touhou Blogging Thread

[Zarakava]

Well, I guess I'll post here.

Going for a lot of random Easy Clears right now. I made a spreadsheet that just shows what I've done or not, and getting more "green" on there would be great

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmIJfyr9AF-7dGJPeW9sVXNUWWtacW1TT3RvY0xTZ3c&usp=sharing

Touhou 8 tonight I think, try to get the solo players unlocked

[BT]

Dear Diary,

For a while I've been wondering about the progress curve involving shmup skill. Not talking about scores or anything, just raw skill. Every time I'd conclude that it has to be something like this:



Yeah, haven't been getting any better at drawing graphs by mouse. Anyway, I'd always assume that most competitive but lazy players (a.k.a. filth) such as myself have a similar growth pattern. Of course, goals keep on being broken, but that can also be attributed to effort and experience. For the past six months I felt like my own skill level was busy sightseeing somewhere.

Poppycock. The standstill is your fault. Give yourself some minor goals so you constantly see your progress, or else you won't see your progress. Because it's totally there. If coming back to the best stage in the series after a DDC-induced break only to find that you're pretty much consistent at Scarlet Meister doesn't show progress I don't know what does. I was close to giving up on competitive toho, though I'm sure that resolve wouldn't have stopped me from playing a few credits a week anyway. If anyone feels the same, rejoice, you're not a talent-less slob.

[Wriggle]

Dear Diary,

For a while I've been wondering about the progress curve involving shmup skill. Not talking about scores or anything, just raw skill. Every time I'd conclude that it has to be something like this:



Yeah, haven't been getting any better at drawing graphs by mouse. Anyway, I'd always assume that most competitive but lazy players (a.k.a. filth) such as myself have a similar growth pattern. Of course, goals keep on being broken, but that can also be attributed to effort and experience. For the past six months I felt like my own skill level was busy sightseeing somewhere.

Poppycock. The standstill is your fault. Give yourself some minor goals so you constantly see your progress, or else you won't see your progress. Because it's totally there. If coming back to the best stage in the series after a DDC-induced break only to find that you're pretty much consistent at Scarlet Meister doesn't show progress I don't know what does. I was close to giving up on competitive toho, though I'm sure that resolve wouldn't have stopped me from playing a few credits a week anyway. If anyone feels the same, rejoice, you're not a talent-less slob.

The graph = history of my 2hu life

[CyberAngel]

Decided to fire up StB yesterday. What a fun game it is. In a frustrating way, but it sure is. It feels like an exercise not only for skill, but for patience as well. If you can prevent yourself from getting angry and keep focused, finally completing scenes feels awesome.

That said, it feels very different from IN/TD Spell Practice. There, I can throw a few tries a spell, and if I didn't capture it, I can say "it seems there's a trick I don't get yet" or "RNG is not on my side today" and skip it, making sure to bomb the thing on my full run. It just feels like training, little more. In StB/DS, however, there is no full run, this IS the game. And the only choices are either to give up or to keep on trying to crack it. Former case, those pictures you've taken go to waste. Latter case, pictures rack up with no guarantee you'll get the capture this time. So, before playing those games, I have to make sure that I know what I'm trying to do. No half-hearted attempt will make it to where I'll be content to stop.

That means, this isn't the time for me to see how far I can go with my skill yet. Until we meet again, Aya.

[Zengeku]

Did some more practice with DDC today. Really ought to put in more time with this game. University is still not fully started so I should make good of my free time while i have it. So today i spent about 2.5 hours and all I managed was 10 captures of all spells in stage 3,4 and 5. I really got caught up on Recliner's final and Kagerou's mid.

Holy shit, i think Kagerou's mid is extremely difficult. Honestly thinking that it's much harder than Scarlet Meister. It feels similar in the sense that you have to take proper positioning to avoid the bullets but Scarlet Meister shoots waves much less frequent so I don't feel as rushed. For this reason, it's easier to handle it for me. Of course Scarlet Meister can do things I fail to handle but then again, so does Kagerou's. I'm at 15/200 on Kagerou's midboss spell and I think I've captured Scarlet Meister more than that within half or less the attempts. Not that EoSD will properly communicate this to me because it's history system is stupid.

Recliners... yeah, i dunno what the hell is up. I'm really at a loss for how to deal with it. I just make dives through the node storm but I've got no way to avoid the nodes randomly changing direction just as i pass by them and honestly Recliner-chan, that's not being a good girl. Pls stop doing it My capture rate is at a super unimpressive 18/150 :/

Playing MarisaB is way harder than playing SakuyaA but it's at least fun until the frustration gets to you The goal is MarisaB LNB and I think I have quite a bit of way there yet but then again, i've only just gotten started on playing this game. I only have about 16 hours on it.

[Drake]

mine's more like this

[chirpy13]

So I was messing around with some DDC easy mode spell practice.  Here's what I discovered.  Apparently you get 420 graze per wave from that spell oh yes!! I still can't get through the flipped waves though.  Oh and this too.

[Sakurei]

[02:55] <%Sakurei> .8ball play IN forever and ever?
[02:55] <godzilla> Sakurei: Concentrate and ask again.
[02:55] <%Sakurei> .8ball get 7b?
[02:55] <godzilla> Sakurei: Signs point to yes.

that's what I will be doing the next 10 years, guys. gg

but in all seriousness, lunatic scoring is far away, instead, I have turned to IN extra with youmu. for now, my goal is 2.5b, but I'd like 3b at least as an end-goal. the latter score is still quite far away, though, so for now, learn the basics!
the past week I have mostly been dawdling around in spell practice getting a feel for the spells and the supergrazes. the 2.5b run I watched didn't do xu-fu and failed HMD at 45 seconds left or something, died and made a lot of other mistakes - which reassures me that it's a good goal for now. nothing ridiculously overkill, but also still challenging enough that I will have to practice a good deal.
for now, I think I got the hang of keine's spells. all 3 of them. first one is ridiculously easy, the 3rd one is simple too. the 2nd spell took some time to figure out, but I believe to have the gist of it now. what's left is to practice the spell so I can survive it for the whole timer. mokou's first non is actually a lot simpler than I thought, even for the tighter gaps. some more practice is necessary, but it's definitely one of the easier grazes. xu-fu eludes me, but it's admittedly the attack I looked into the least. I'll probably see if I can learn it before I start doing runs. honest man's death is definitely the hardest part of the stage. the grazing is timing based and requires precision, but doing it is much harder than it sounds. I'd hesitant to include this for now, I'll have to see about this. maybe I'll practice is so much that I can capture it without timing it down. that'd be a nice compromise. the survival's grazing is actually less tight than I thought, but I'm unfortunately not consistent at it yet. definitely something to include. it's worth some tens of millions after all. I dunno if I should classify hourai doll as supergrazing, but once again, fairly simple, but I haven't tried the extreme timedown version yet. that is probably fairly hard to do - on a good run with shaky hands and then doing those tiny movements. I will probably practice this much more than I "need" to. imperishable shooting is an asshole, I will probably fail this w, but I can still practice it I suppose

now, I also tried my hand at the stage potion. it looked kinda simple to me. oh boy, was I wrong. fuck me and my assumptions. how do I cancel, I don't know. ASL has like 13.4k time at the midboss, my best is like 3k less. I already said I'd dedicate this week for the stage potion. it's mandatory to have a solid stage route to get all the items and...not die. I hope I'll be fit enough to do runs at the end of this month, or beginning of next at least, but I might need more practice even then.

Youmu is so fun to play with.

[CyberAngel]

Did an experiment. In case anyone else is curious, even if you get a full trance in Spell Practice, you can't activate it, even on death. Proof:

http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=30257

[Space Flower]

The titular Mountain of Faith is my favorite spell card. There's something extraordinarily epic about a final card you have to do unfocused. Even though in most other shmups it's just the norm, lol.

[Wriggle]

So while grinding Kanako for like an hour, I found out again I'm shit at this game and should have quit it already. But I've told myself and even other people that I WOULD actually quit. One was when I started playing Skyrim, other was at the beginning of 2013, other was when I perfected Yukari, and maybe have missed one. Why haven't I quit then? Because I'm a weak worthless cunt, really. I don't like this genre, for some weird reason I liked Touhou, but the former would make it not last for too long, and well, 1 year isn't that long, is it? After that year, almost nothing good happened. I took the last straw of what could have been fun in Touhou. Even when I want to play casually, I eventually impose me a challenge because I could've been wasting a good run. That way, I cut my last way of taking fun out of these games. I thought DDC would cheer me up. It did, of a few days. The Extra disappointed me, but was still better than TD's. I've occasionally tried timing out stuff, but only did a few actually good cards since it's not my thing. Won't even begin on scoring. So basically, when doing most games on Lunatic, I realized how the achievement I've coveted for months was worthless and I was a shit player, and had 3 paths: quitting, improving on survival, and learning scoring. The first didn't quite work, the second is what I've been going for but hasn't been giving me anything good, and I tried the third for a few Extras, only to realized it's beyond my capacities, including patience and time. This year most of my plays were to satisfact my addiction. What could help me would be getting into a long game that would take me so deep into it that instead of going to Touhou or IWBTG or whatever, I would go straight into it. I should stop myself from playing something I'm not supposed to like and actually don't really enjoy playing anymore. Or work around my greediness, take it easy, and play casually when the run is supposed to be casual. But this whole shit is no one else's fault but mine. I'm the weak one who lacks will, and after realizing all this I hope I'll get around to help my own person on that.

And I needed to spill that out. I feel kinda better now. Now I've gotta sleep, good night. :ohdear:

[chirpy13]

Are you secretly me?

[Zengeku]

If so, then I think i need to shower. 

[DATAMOSHLOLIRAVE]

this is what stripysocks thinks of touhou

[Lord Scalgon]

So I'm way overdue for a VoWG NBND timeout. Even though I truly want to accomplish it, I just don't have the motivation as I used to have in the past.  Despite this, my attempts have actually motivated a couple people to time it out, in which they succeeded.  The NB2D timeout I pulled two years ago...and that epic choke at 2 seconds left at a NB1D timeout exactly a year ago (I know it was this month, but I forget what day it was).

Yes, that feeling of an epic choke...though I don't know what's worse - this choke or choking a 1CC lunatic run (other than PoFV).

One day, I'll get back into it...but as of now, I'm too lazy due to other issues.  Examples include making a "dodging hell" game out of RPG Maker VX Ace which my playtesters are hooked up to, getting ready for an upcoming YCS event next month (or, in other words, Yu-Gi-Oh), and Photoshop.

On the other hand, I decided to attempt a ND run of TD Stage 6 Lunatic for the hell of it.  The pressure in the near-end is simply killing me......*sigh

[CyberAngel]

Another random discovery that doesn't fit anywhere else. Been playing around with Sakuya's "Deflation World" (boy, I love this card now). Turns out Alice's laser deals damage during timestop. Here's the proof. She even dies to it. Interesting thing to see, since timestop effect remains. This thing reminds me of how she can screw up her timestop in fighting games, and activate it during some enemy's attacks and prolong them. Poor maid doesn't know how to use her own ability sometimes, it seems.

[Elysia]

I'm starting to feel like Touhou just doesn't really offer me much of anything anymore. At this point, it's like I'm running out of stuff worth actually doing and just doing stuff for the sake of doing it. On top of that, all the stuff I try just makes me rage constantly. And I mean, actually rage, not just "ugh" but "AAAAAAH FUCK YOU", which I thought I'd long since passed where Touhou was concerned. Whatever subscribers I have left have probably noticed that my uploads have been beyond scarce lately - nothing in the entire month of September, a grand total of 2 videos in the latter half of August, to give some idea. Trying to work on videos just screams of "why even bother?" and even when I theoretically have time to do it, I'm exhausted from work and would much rather be doing things I actually, you know, enjoy.

TL;DR of above paragraph: I'm just not enjoying Touhou anymore.

So...I think it's time I go on hiatus. Might do a few things, will probably still hang out on #pc-99 since you all have been great over there, but really...don't expect that much from me in the near future. I don't really have any idea when I'll be coming back into the community here, but hopefully it'll be when I actually have new ideas, when stuff looks interesting to me again.

Until then, so long.

[Mesarthim]

I'm just under the impression I'll never be fully good at UFO hard (Lunatic is a pipe dream).  And by fully good I mean not suck as much as I do. UFO is hands down the hardest Touhou game for me (yes SA is hard but I can actually clear that on Lunatic with Reimu... sometimes!).

Nazrin: Both spells (and mid stage) are easy.
Kogasa: First is hit or miss, second is hit or miss, third is surprisingly easy. Midstage is easy.
Ichirin: Midstage easy. First spell I suck, second is easy, third is g@#$G@#$G# damn lasers. Screws with my mind by the second fist attack.
Murasa: Ignoring the stage, second and third nonspells kind of suck, first spell easy, second spell kind of hard and she never moves with me so they become diagonal, Ghost Ship Port = yeah no, normal is about my level for that, and the timeout is easy.
Shou: Nazrin isn't that bad but I have problems with bullets from multiple angles and directions. Everything about Shou sucks for me except the second spell. Rest is is basically RNG do I bomb or do I get hit. Last spell has a bad history for me.

...Byakuren. The only things I can do with any consistency is the first non, sometimes second non, second spell I need a strong shot type and I might clear it without a moron bullet clip, rest is death. Third spell is luck for me. Fourth is hard as hell. St Nikou's scroll is pretty mean for me going back to the whole multiple angle dense bullet thing. Final spell is basically: Lives in stock? Check no pressure. Bombs in stock? Check... do I risk it? Maybe. It's luck for me.

Hard mode ends with anywhere from game over on stage 6 or as many as maybe 3 lives (rare, usually 0-1).

UFO and I are best buds.

[Lreaper9]

Hrm... I don't think I've ever introduced myself, since I mostly just lurk on forums instead of posting.  I have been a fan of Touhou since 2009.  I am a normal mode player mostly, I have cleared all the games  on normal with Reimu A, although I do enjoy the quirky shot-types that Marisa provides.  11 was my first game, it was the game that made me delve into the world of shmups.  I had heard of Touhou in the year 2007, (Hello Iosys...) but then I promptly forgot about it after shrugging at the lunacy of overdrive.  In 2009, by chance, I heard Flandres theme, and decided to investigate. 

I was an avid fan, (actually more like rabid, played nearly everyday even though I was somewhat mediocre) from 2009-2012.  It seems in 2013 my passion for Touhou has slipped a notch.  I don't believe I'm all burned out, but it doesn't have quite the magic that it did those years back.  I still look forward to what Zun has in store, but I barely even touch the game once every two weeks now.  Maybe it's because I don't have many people to talk to about it.  There are some fans here and there at the college I go to at the moment, but the anime club is too ...quirky? (very socially awkward people, and not just because they don't like talking or rage about the item of their passion).  I have at most beaten Koishi and Mamizou, but I haven't seen either of them for months ._. .  I also skipped all the music from comiket 84!  That is beyond surprising!  In the past, I estimate the total amount Touhou remixes I've listened to is well over 1800 different variations, at least!  (My exaggerated answer would be 3000, but it's probably somewhere in the middle).

On second thought, I played DDC recently, and I find it fun....but once I beat it once on normal, I only tried beating Raiko 3 times before giving up... maybe I'm not being totally honest with myself in the fun factor.  However, I really do want to see how Zun reacts to AWA, and I sincerely believe that one day Touhou will again be as magical as it was in those years.

[Zarakava]

Been playing only 11 recently. I am so bad at it... can't beat stage 5 w/o continue (And due to the restart level continue system... I can't basically ever)

I will do it some day.

[I have no name]

[10:52:03 PM] IHNN: uhhhh....
[10:52:06 PM] IHNN: so that run...was something
[10:52:27 PM] IHNN: I came out of Stage 3 with 2 lives 3 bombs
[10:53:05 PM] IHNN: exited Stage 5 with 2/3 of a life and 1&7/8 bomb
[10:53:19 PM] IHNN: managed to work my way up to 2 lives for midboss Seija, still no bombs
[10:53:28 PM] IHNN: entered Sukuna with 1 life 1 bomb
[10:53:34 PM] IHNN: got to the survival with nothing left
[10:53:37 PM] IHNN: captured it
[10:53:42 PM] IHNN: captured Attack on Dwarf
[10:53:46 PM] IHNN: and then died to the final card
[10:54:10 PM] IHNN: on an unlock stages run, with 4 easily avoidable deaths
[10:54:18 PM] IHNN: ...maybe DDC isn't that hard after all
[10:54:50 PM] IHNN: but it would have been so epic to 1cc with nothing left by capturing the final 3 spells of the game in a row

[ARF]

I guess this would go here.

Made a silly video containing some random touhou stuff I played somewhat recently. I'll go into some detail on what is going on in case anyone cares.

-First thing is a lucky dodge from a no bomb MoF max graze run in stage 4 for Karisa's challenges. I scored ~20500 graze points in the end.
-Just a no dodge capture of Kagerou's second card, spell card history is accurate for this challenge.
-A lucky dodge from a no photo timeout of 8-3 in StB.
-Lucking out during Parsee's midboss spell
-Going through a bullet in DS 9-7?
-Some zany stuff from Miko's opener, using the boss rush patch, so the replay desynced after the very beginning. That took me only one attempt to get, which is why I thought it was nice. I experienced an otherworldly sensation of watching something uncanny unfold as I was playing it.
-Something I like to do sometimes, dodging out of the spawned kunai ring in StB 7-5 :3
-Having a random cluster of bullets spawn at an odd time in a bad place in DS EX-6. I believe stuff like this happens due to the timing of the camera induced slowdown, or the brief pause caused by actually snapping a photo, as similar weird things can happen in many other scenes if you take photos at certain times.
-Recent improvement to 12-3 for the IL speedrunning, it's quite a bit faster, and I took the opportunity to sit on Byakuren's head!
-Something at the end of TD midboss Nue's last spell card that freaked me out at the time.
-A sad end to a 9-7 attempt. I cry everytim ;_______;
-Timing out the second DDC extra midboss spell utilizing SakuyaA shenanigans for silly effects spell card history isn't accurate since I timed it out several times in that number of attempts.
-Timing out Social Upheaval Requiem for Minogame's challenges. This strategy seems pretty good to me, as the curving bullets go mostly around you instead of coming down right at you like they can do when you're lower and try to pass actively the note streams. Took me 370 attempts.

And while I'm at it, phat congrats to you guys over in the accomplishments thread, kicking ass! Looking forward to see more UFO from you Waah!

[Mino ☆]

So I've picked up a new hobby in Touhou, and one that I'm actually sticking with. That is, PCB Lunatic scoring. More specifically, with ReimuB. I haven't achieved too much yet. My highest is merely 1.5bil, but I just started, and hardly put a few weeks into it yet. I've been using the SpoilerAL tool to simulate going into stages with a certain amount of cherry and amount of spellcards captured. It's quite useful, and I mean VERY useful. I've found that in scoring, I learn something new everyday. Each minute I put into practice, I feel like I'm improving, little by little. I've never felt so productive in Touhou, before!

My current goal is to reach 2 billion. Eventually, I want to reach 2 billion with all shots. But that's not something that I expect soon.

Other games I'm interested in scoring are UFO, TD, IN, and potentially EoSD (You never saw that one coming, did you?) I hope to get a somewhat decent score in all of the games' Lunatics, though.

The reason I am doing Lunatic difficulty? Because it's the difficulty I've been playing for two years. It's the difficulty I know and love, and am very familiar with. And now, I can play those fantastic patterns except this time, trying for a new goal in Touhou. I never thought I'd actually see the day I'd pick up scoring. Back then, I used to think that I could never do it, and that it would be too unforgiving to start getting into. Now, here I am, exploring a new trade in Touhou.

As for my survival goals (I haven't given up on them yet), I play them between breaks in scoring. I'm currently trying to get a decent EoSD LNB. (My best is 7-miss so far. Yeah, needs work)
I'm also doing the occasional UFO LNBNUFO. (I still never got that ReimuA LNBNUFO yet)
And I hope to one day improve my 5-miss SA LNB run. (Can't seem to get a decent run in that game)

[cactu]

I'm a bit in a same position as Minogame, I've gotten really interested in scoring EoSD lunatic. I should be able to get 500M if I get a good run going, but my goal is 550M for now. Once I reach that I believe I should be able to NMNB the game, so I might do that.  I'm not sure whether I'll find time for it though, with school and all.

[ARF]

Maybe it would be good if I posted more in this thread.

I've been trying to time out 11-4 no photo on and off for a while now, my best is about 50 seconds left, but yesterday I figured that if I timed out the other Suwako scenes it would be a good motivation of finishing 11-4 and not just dropping it later. So I did that, finished them up, and someone on IRC told me to do them with all but one photo left instead so I tried it on 11-2 and 11-8, but it was a 2hard4me! BUT! I found that the only reason I was thinking the you couldn't camera charge out of the explosions in the final phase was because I always tried to approach Suwako while charging, which is pretty pointless if you're already high on the screen. So yes, it is possible to move sideways without breaking charge on the final phase of 11-8. So that's another 0.9 seconds saved for the DS IL table all of a sudden. Doing some IL's again made me remember a strategy which I hadn't confirmed on 1-5, so I went and recorded footage of me doing the new strat and put it side by side with the best run using the old method, and the results can be seen below.

old strat to the left, new strat to the right

It takes 0.4 seconds to set up, but should save around 0.05 seconds. I was pretty excited about having confirmed this.

Waking up today I went and finished a run with the new strat.

[CyberAngel]

I realized why Marisa's laser was nerfed so heavily in TD and on - to prevent another MAlice cannon!

EDIT: Thanks, Vee. Though that was an awesome typo, wasn't it? :V

[Seppo Hovi]

MAlice is always canon in my heart.

[Karisa]

I realized why Marisa's laser was nerfed so heavily in TD and on - to prevent another MAlice cannon!

It could be. Marisa's lasers in MoF-UFO existed both focused and unfocused, but instant piercing lasers in combination with the TD/DDC missiles/flamethrower probably could give a MAlice cannon effect...

Not that this prevented DDC from having its own MAlice cannon type effects. DDC ReimuA actually has two different uses of focus-unfocusing for damage: gohei repositioning (whenever the gohei leaves the enemy), and briefly unfocusing (not long enough to relaunch the gohei) to add the occasional homing amulets to the gohei damage. Then there's short-range SakuyaA...

[Chuckolator]

completed DDC hard and extra this week

the life of a dirty casual is good

also would I be wrong in saying this place is a lot less active than it used to be? seriously, this almost 24 hour post is the second most recent post in the main help me eirin forum, it was never this dead back in 2012

[ElDestructoe]