Hi guys! Before I start, I want to give credit to guys over at http://www.cave-stg.com and http://shmups.system11.org as without the guides posted on those forums, i'd have no idea where to even begin with most CAVE shmups. This thread is my attempt to explain the scoring system behind DDPR, in both the arcade and iPhone modes. Before You Start... Before you start playing for score, I would strongly suggest you turn on all the control options. If you're playing for score, you're going to want to be able to toggle the shot manually, as well as activate your hyper counter manually. Laser should be set to Switch, not Hold, just to make life a lot easier. Ship Types Your three ships are the same throughout both game modes: Type A is a straight forward firing ship with no spread on it's shot. Slightly more powerful laser/shot than the other ships. When cancelling bullets, HIT counter rises slightly quicker than other ships. Also easier to cancel bullets with. Type B is a all-rounder, with a wider shot that changes direction as you move. Strongest laser power of all ships. Type C is a wide shot ship with a huge firing angle. Very easy to cancel bullets with, and very easy to chain with. HIT counter rises slightly slower than other ships. iPhone Mode SM System - Menace. The iPhone mode has a very unique scoring system which CAVE have called SM. This system revolves around your ship being in one of two modes (Slaughter and Menace). As you graze your ship close to enemy bullets, this raises your Menace gauge. In this mode, you have a multiplier on the left hand side. This starts off at 1x and goes up to a maximum of 1000x. As you raise your Menace gauge, your multiplier will increase, and your Hyper Counter will rise. However, the multiplier does not take effect. Fully raising your Menace gauge will result in your Hyper Counter rising at a drastically faster rate. SM System - Slaughter. As you kill enemies, this raises your Slaughter gauge. As your slaughter gauge rises, your multiplier will take effect and begin to count down. Any enemies killed while in Slaughter mode will drop items which will give you points in relation to your multiplier. Fully raising your Slaughter gauge will result in your weapons being drastically more powerful. How To Score So how do you score with this SM system? Build your Menace gauge by grazing bullets. Stay in Menace mode to build up Hyper + Multiplier. Once you've built a multiplier, build up your Slaughter gauge and kill as many enemies as you can while your multiplier is counting down. It's that simple. Hyper Usage in iPhone Mode So, that hyper gauge you've been building up. When used, your ship cannot move. Instead, you can rotate your ship 360 degrees, and your weaponry gets incredibly powerful. Your shot can also cancel enemy bullets and, if in Slaughter mode, turn these into items. The main reason you'll want to use your hyper in iPhone mode, is to launch a Hyper Cannon. Once you've enabled your hyper, spin your ship round in circles as fast as possible to charge your Hyper Cannon through 3 levels of power. Once unleashed, your ship will fire a huge blast covering the screen that will annihilate enemies and bullets alike. Use this in Slaughter Mode to generate a massive amount of score items. Once a hyper has been used, it will force the gauge to reset. This makes this a very handy way to break out of Menace mode if you're stuck in it and can't raise your slaughter gauge fast enough. Tip: Unleashing a maximum level hyper cannon, while you've got a completely maxed out Menace gauge, will move the gauge all the way to maximum Slaughter, and give you a free Hyper Cannon to use immediately afterwards. Arcade Mode Unlike iPhone Mode, Arcade Mode is split into 3 different play styles: Bomb Style - A standard Dodonpachi style gameplay style, with a smart bomb count and autobombing. Power Style - No bombs. Instead, you cycle between Normal shot and Boost shot. Normal shot is less powerful, but will raise your hit counter much faster. Boost shot is much more powerful, but will raise your hyper faster and not your hit. Strong Style - The power of a boost shot, with the bomb system of bomb style. Ideal for Beginners. Each of these styles are slightly different to play for score. Basic Scoring In Arcade Mode, there is no score multiplier like in iPhone mode. Instead, the game works on a 'chaining' system. As you kill an enemy, you gain one HIT counter, and your chain bar goes up. Repeatedly kill enemies to build up your HIT counter and keep the chain bar from going down. If your chain bar goes down, your HIT counter resets to 0. As your HIT counter increases, so does your Hyper gauge, and so does your score. Keep the hit counter as high as possible while continuing to kill enemies to get your score as high as you can. Hyper Usage in Arcade Mode When a Hyper is activated, your chain bar goes down much slower. Your weapon gets more powerful. Enemy bullets travel faster, and are much more plentiful. Your HIT gauge rises much, much faster. Your normal shot will cancel bullets, and turn them into HIT counter. But watch out, as this may not raise your chain bar very much, and without killing enemies you may still lose your whole chain whlie bullet cancelling. Your laser shot will counteract enemy lasers. Tip: YOU WILL GET A MASSIVE SCORE BONUS DEPENDING ON HIT COUNTER IF YOU FILL YOUR HYPER GAUGE AND DO NOT ACTIVATE THE HYPER. Use one hyper to build up your hit counter as much as you can, maintain your chain, and raise a second hyper. Keep this hyper gauge full and your score will shoot up. Secrets Hidden Routes / Original Dodonpachi Minibosses At the start of the first stage, where you see large silos on the ground, and tanks driving sideways into them, destroy the silos before the tanks reach them. This must be done without dying. In arcade mode, you must also have a full hyper gauge before the midboss triggers. If done correctly, the background will shift just before the mini-boss. This changes the mini-boss on every stage to one of the bosses from the original Dodonpachi, and will completely change the last half of every stage. Second Loop / Taisabachi and Hibachi bosses Dodonpachi Resurrection is a 'two loop' game. In order to reach the game's second loop, you need to complete the game reaching certain conditions: Tsuujou/Open 2nd Loop (Arcade Mode and iPhone Mode) - Collect 35 bee items or clear the game in a single life using only 2 bombs. Ura/Hidden 2nd Loop (Arcade Mode) - Collect all 45 bee items and clear the game in a single life using 2 bombs or less. Ura/Hidden 2nd Loop (iPhone Mode) - Collect all 45 bee items. The 'second loop' is a much harder variant of the game with much more intense bullet patterns and much stricter scoring. The second loop kicks in as soon as you finish the game, and your score will carry over. If you can successfully beat the ura/hidden second loop, you then get a chance to fight the game's 'True Last Bosses' - Taisabachi, and the infamous Hibachi.
Great guide as always vally. I was wondering about the loops. Sadface that strong is apparently n00bmode. More buttons to press is more skill right? lol
lol The drawback to Strong Style is that your hyper gauge takes a loooooooooong time to fill up when compared to Power Style. I've 1-ALL'd with Strong and only got to 1-5 with Power, yet my Power style score is much higher. I'm more likely to hit 2nd loop with Strong though. And thank you by the way. Thank you too!
Figured I would post this in both topics because it will be helpful For URA midbosses there was another topic on shmups.system11.org that said No deaths(a warning mainly for power users, you CAN autobomb in the other two styles but you shouldn't be getting hit at all either way). Full hyper before midboss Collect the 3 bees Tanks run over none of the silos(one exception below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMAWEgY7VmA where the bees are in normal http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-...hatiomote.html where the bees are in the extended loop http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-...6/hatiura.html
Just thought I'd clarify - You do not need to collect the bees to get the ura bosses. I can now hit the ura bosses 100% and the only condition is to destroy the silos and tanks very quickly and get max hyper before boss. I've successfully reached hidden route on all 5 stages without collecting any bees at all. To reach hidden bosses on other levels, you just have to make sure you don't time out in a mid boss. If you destroy the ura boss, you will get hidden route on the next stage.
Does the counter/hyper building apply while in hyper mode as well? Like if I wanted to raise my counter more than building another hyper up again should I just switch to normal after I activate the hyper?
Yep. That applies to hyper as well. Ideally you want to use boost shot to get your hyper, then activate it and switch to normal shot and gobble up as many bullets as possible.
Nice job! However there're a few details you might want to change, Vally. According to Cave official guide, Type B actually has the strongest laser power among the three ships, Type A's hyper has the best bullet-cancelling capacity. Also according to the Cave official guide, in order to meet the hidden mid-boss in stage 1, you only need to meet the following conditions (Arcade mode): 1. destroy 3 silos (if the silos are destroyed by the tanks they don't count) 2. By the time that the third silo is destroyed, the hyper must be completely filled 3. no miss till you destroy the the third silo. For iphone mode, you only need to meet 1 and 3, you don't have to fill the hyper.
THANK YOU for posting this!!!! Cave's games have the most complex scoring systems I've ever seen in shooters. It adds so much to the re-playability! But it also confuses the hell outta me. This has helped clear it up quite a bit. =o) ----I'm off to try and see if I can move up a little on the leaderboards!!
could please someone explain why sometimes hit counter just decreases but sometimes drops to zero immediately, what is the difference? sometimes hit counter behaves quite strange, even if there are enemies it just drops to zero without a hit after defeating one of the ships.
btw here is a nice video of some great scoring on first level, seems like being on top of bots fills your hyper meter and it seems like green bees give it too, so actually it's possible to enter hyper mode and then get a new one before destroying all silos which leads to really nice counter values. but still the main problem is the f counter, it almost always drops on these tanks, even if there are other enemies next and laser shot is used. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMAWEgY7VmA
