A few more tips: 1. You don't have to look at your ship to know where it is. You can see where it is just from your shot alone, though this depends on how visible your shot is. The shot and laser in DDP are super obvious, whereas the CCWI shot is much less visible and I lose my ship much more easily using this method. 2. A general rule of thumb is the faster the bullets or the more spread out the pattern, the further ahead you should look. Very dense patterns tend to be slow anyway, and those patterns are the ones where you really need to look at your ship to make the tight dodges. Some familiarity of how much your ship moves when you make an input is required. A simple example is Reimu's final in LLS. The bullets spread out quickly and their orientation is random. So, I usually just look at Reimu herself (so I can see the expected trajectory of the bullets ASAP) and dodge based on feel: kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZnZtqsOGaJitpbQ.html. Note that the bullets linger around, so not only do I have to keep track of my position, but where the previous bullets are. 3. You can ignore aimed bullets for the most part. Just know how fast they are and how you need to navigate around them. A lot of patterns utilise an aimed pattern overlapping some other pattern, and it's that other pattern you want to focus on. For instance, for the section after the stage 2 midboss in FDF, I only look at the aimed bullets when I'm crossing the screen. For the most part, I'm looking at the big fairies (or anticipating where they will spawn): kzread.info/dash/bejne/oI2Mo8p9nNKtj5M.html. The midboss spell card is also a good example (ignore the bubble bullets, focus on the small bullets. And Cirno's second non-spell uses a similar concept (ignore the blue bullets, focus on the white ones). Then again, maybe you shouldn't listen to me since I still can't read half the patterns in Touhou :')

@CharlieCon

3 жыл бұрын

I’m pretty new at this, and your third point just blew my mind.

I spend most of my time looking at the game over screen and none looking at stage 5.

@MrBroken030

3 жыл бұрын

sounds pretty familiar :D

@gfslamguitar

Жыл бұрын

Literally, the most accurate comment when playing Strikers1945III

@markcollins2704

Жыл бұрын

@@gfslamguitar I can't even build up the awesome auto shot in that game consistently but it keeps bringing me back

@RUOK2000

Жыл бұрын

Haha me too bro

I always say its like driving through traffic. You look ahead and see whats coming and work through it.

Congrats on this clear man that very end was crazy. I'm still not used to such a tiny hitbox and often overdodging in dense patterns thinking something will nail me when it won't if I simply stay still. Thanks for this great video btw. You're doing important work and where I look when playing is something I have had to really practice as I started playing and enjoying more bullet hell. I'm used to dealing with ship placement in older games, moving in advance of enemies appearing on screen, as your shot is usually much more narrow, so I'm in the right position for quick kills and already looking to my next destination before the current enemy is even destroyed. In some ways it's similar as I'm not looking at my ship but where I need to be next, but it's more related to placing myself where I need to be, and not often at the incoming bullets. So being able to see through these dense patterns and focus on bullets instead is a work in progress for me. That and not being distracted by pretty backgrou... oooh squirrel! Sorry, what was I saying?

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Ha yeah the difference between classic shmups and bullet hell in this reguard can be really tricky to get used to! I hope my vid will help sort of illistrate the concept a bit for people :-) Also Mushi has some of the best backgrounds, I'm especially fond of the pond stage.

What really helped me was making the connection with target fixation and how to recognize it when it happens. Many times I would start staring down objects on screen and not even realize it. It wasn't until I started examining each time I died and made the connection that many times I would look right at the bullet I was trying to dodge and end up hitting it of course.

Look at those shades...Mark got celeb status! Future's so bright he's gotta wear shades! Keep goin bro! Love ya man!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Ha yeah I m probably going to wear shades in more vids because the green screen turns my eyes invisible

What I feel is very important in a good shmup is having a clearly visible shot coming from your ship that helps with knowing where your ship is positioned without directly looking at it. Mushi does this really well, and pretty much all Cave games (the toothpaste laser from DDP for instance). Whenever I have to stop shooting, losing track of my ships position happens more often.

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

"Most of the pattern won't affect you if you know what the weak point is." 👏 love this!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

@@100hundert yeah that s some thing I concentrate on a lot these days. Where is the pattern weak

The sunglasses are on, that's how i know this is some serious business 8)

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I have become machine now!

When i got into bullet hell shmups i tried a bunch of games to learn esp galuda is what worked for me. It does turn into a rhythm game. Muscle memory is key so you can move your ship while focused on the top of the screen

You do such a good job with these analysis videos. I don’t think you’ve done this yet but a fun video idea might be to take a look at your beginner/intermediate/expert level replays and pick apart how your play evolved. A lot of beginners especially would probably appreciate seeing the evolution.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I 've been thinking about doing this actually :-)

my glasses are old and weak, by the time i realized why i died, i died again

Glad to see someone else elaborate on this stuff as well. This is why I bought an eyetracker so I talk better about the moves I'm doing in Touhou. Can't watch entirely right now but will make for a good lunch break :3

"How can one become good at games?" -Shinya Arino

Great stuff and extremely helpful. Thank you for taking the time to make this series of videos.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I'm really happy to hear that! Yes I do hope it comes in handy!

Great video. I just saw a video with 2hu + eye tracking. It was very interesting. Would be nice to have more videos like that.

Very good explanation. Think most beginner (even myself) have this problem that you concentrate too much on yourself, rather on your surrounding. It takes some time and practice to dodge without looking at yourself. What I often use to orientate myself is my own shot to look where I am. Also nice sunglasses

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks!! Gonna be in shades because the green screen makes my eyes invisible

Now *this* is content. I'm sure this will prove to be very helpful with my own danmaku endeavors. Great video, Mark!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

thanks flo!!

Another super solid video, Mark!! Loved the way you illustrated this and all of the scenarios you ran through. Keep them coming!! Would love one dedicated to hitboxes like this one.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

oh that's a great idea! "How to Shmup, Understanding Hitboxes." I like it!

This is what the world needed. And you delivered. Well done sir.. well done.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I'm glad to hear it!! Yes I thought the eye tracker + zooms combo would help convey the info

Amazing sunglasses man.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Ha thanks! I'm going to be wearing shades in more vids probably because the green screen removes my eye color (I have green eyes) and I look like a demon or something

@mishikomishiko9088

3 жыл бұрын

That's rare. Only 2% of world's population have green eyes.

Wow, this is easily one of the most helpful and insightful shmup tutorials I've ever seen. So many clever observations. Here are my favorites: - "Focus on the space beetween the bullets, not the bullets themselves, because the space is your actual target." Once I discovered this mindset, everything changed. Suddenly your minds stops being so focused on the visual noise and instead sees the "Islands of safety" within overwhelming patterns.

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

I also loved your point about all patterns following a certain logic and having their own weak points, the rest being just visual noise. It's very similar to pinball in that way, where the game seems like unreadable nonsense that's completely uncontrollable, but once it clicks, you always see the options of how to proceed clearly in front of you. You're suddenly not drowning helplessly in a sea of seemingly random chaos, but "dancing with the game designers".

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

And man, those patterns in Mushi Arrange are so beautifully done, not just visually, but how they work mechanically. I've always wondered how the designers come up with these patterns, who these people are, where they get their ideas from, how many ideas for patterns they have. Or if there are multiple pattern designers for a given game. Even within Cave games, each game has its own rhythm and feel.

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

What I also love about how video is how interesting it is to think about / trying to describe perception. Playing a shmup and paying attention to what your instincts are focusing on is such a sweet feeling, and very close to mindfulness / concentration meditation. Sort of a meta - cognitive exercise. It's not that far removed from doing this with everyday activities, paying attention to where your mind and your senses wander and fixate on while doing the most mundane, routine chores.

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

So, yeah. I've been playing shmups on and off for almost 20 years now (never really being particularly good at them), and your videos really reignited what I love so much about this genre in particular. 👏

@100hundert

3 жыл бұрын

I also was kinda convinced you used some sort of eye tracking until you did that little victory dance right at the end with your mouse 😂 unless I'm mistaken and you just rapidly rolled your eyes!

15:07 Most of the touhou games already have an enemy position indicator at the bottom of the screen, no need to look up (The enemy indicator is a feature in touhou games from touhou 7 and onward btw)

Thanks dude, much obliged!

Holy hell; this is the one, Mark. I saw INSTANT improvement with my gameplay after watching this and taking your advice. Fantastic stuff!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I m really happy to hear that Charlie :-) yeah knowing how and where to look is really useful to pick up on asap

@CharlieCon

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheElectricUnderground yeah man, I’m in my late 30s and only this year really started digging into shmups so I have a ton to catch up on. Keep up the great work, it’s super helpful!

First of all grats on the the arrange clear, I popped in right towards the end so that was fun to catch live. But it's really nice to see someone actually explain the nuances of how to play these games rather than just say, "yeah just play a bunch you'll get used to it." I don't know if you already have more ideas lined up but I would love to see a how to on how to bomb properly, particularly in a resource limited game from a survival perspective. This is something I still struggle with and have never found a good explanation other than route it.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah bomb meta is next :-)

I have a strange analogy of being able to dodge shmups to being able to type fast on the digital pan keyboard. I used to find the letter then look at the letter while I moved the cursor to it but then I realised that once you have found the letter you start to move to it and automatically look for the new letter while moving to it. In shmups this is noting a trajectory of a bullet and trusting you know the trajectory so you can start to look for the next opposing bullet.

Great tips, well done

@TheElectricUnderground

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks!!!

dope video as always

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

:-D

Thank you so much for making this video. It is really helpful for us new shmup players. I am currently stuck on getting that extend without dying in stage 3. It is driving me to despair.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Glad to have helped!

Awesome video and great advice, thank you! I have been playing Schmups for many many years (I’m 43) and I tend to run out of talent on stage 4 of dodonpachi for example with 1 life. Always the same place. I’m obviously making the same mistake but I can’t seem to get out of it. I’m going to try what you said. Plus your game playing is godly! Great video really enjoyed it. 👍

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah that cave difficulty wall is no joke! I'm glad to hear the vid has been helpful. You'll take down ddp 1 all, I have faith :-)

@RuV9999

3 жыл бұрын

stage 4 DDP was a pain. so far.

I just recently started getting into shmups but i feel some of the spatial awareness and knowing where to look translates pretty well from fighting games to shmups imo. Its about pattern recognition and knowing where u are on the screen, what hitboxes cant extend to what point and how to avoid those hitboxes, having your eyes somewhere between the 2 chars on screen and knowing the given options on certain distances of what hitboxes could extend to is pretty much what i try to do in shmups too! Looking at the enemy ships, how fast do they travel, how fast do the bullets travel, knowing what patterns they spawn, is it an aimed shot or fixxed pattern and so on. I also know a bunch of fighting game dudes that seem to like shmups and play them on the side, i guess thats due to the arcade aesthetic but also the challenges and skills involved in both genres, it seems the genres are somehow connected for some people. Translating skills from one game to another is a pretty interesting topic on its own, maybe you could do a video on it or something, well anyway keep up the great work!

Thanks a lot for this very usefull video, and your glasses are cool

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Glad to hear it! Yes, the glasses will probably be returning more often due to my green screen ha

Very interesting video, to see how you read shoot em ups, i enjoy playing these bullet hell types, and I'm by no means a great player, I don't 1cc them that's for sure. I always found that my eyes kind of lose focus altogether, almost like looking at those magic eye arts, and I use peripheral vision a lot. Just how naturally I play these. Really interesting to see how you serious players do though. Nice looking channel too BTW, just found it from your MiSTer video and checked the playlist. Worth subscribing

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

yay I'm really happy to hear that!

Great video as always! It would be cool to see a video of a run by yourself or another high-level player with an eye-tracking software overlay, to see how the gaze darts back and forth in real time and such.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yes for sure!

Impressive. This Can Help Me Understand More On ESP-Ra-De, Better.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yes for sure!

Learn how to see into the future. Got it. lol but for real, this is super helpful!

Where to look at the screen reminds me of fighting games where you mostly want to look at where your opponent is moving rather than looking at yourself

This is really helping my noob ass out! Thanks man. I'll be watching this whole series. One game I've been liking as a noob to the Bullet Hell genre specifically is Gunbird(the first one). Bullets are slow enough for a poop-tier player like me! (Actually not sure if this is even Bullet Hell, maybe I'm just so bad that it seems like it) Also, your video made me think more about how important it is to build up that neural networking in this genre. I consider myself good at FPS's and thought shmups would be a cakewalk- dead wrong.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I'm really glad to hear that!! Yes I think the video is really helpful for understanding the genre a bit more, since knowing where to look is so important!

good stuff! 🧐

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you!

I noticed that with patterns that are more comfortable, I generally look at the origin / the upper half of the screen. But with difficult patterns or heavy rng I tend to look at the ship. So i guess it's probably part of the learning process. Like, first you figure out how to dodge on a narrow level and once the brain trained that part enough you tend to focus on the big picture. Would be interesting to see how it evolves over time and if there is some mechanism to speed up that adaptation more specifically.

Just like driving school. Don't look where you are, look where you're going.

@TheElectricUnderground

Жыл бұрын

Exactly!!

Ive been playing andros dunos 2 which i can start to see the bullets now that I got my eye adjusted to looking for those yellow bullets it feels i can navigate through them better I guess from practice but also being to focus on the bullets! But when I switch over to gley lancer the red small bullets get me alot which they are smaller! I think also it comes to kind of getting use to bullet sizes idk if it makes sense! Im by far no shmup master but have been giving it my all! Thank you for the tips i can see what your talking about so now to practice it!

Would be neat to see you record some with an eye tracker. They were kind of popular for streaming on twitch a few years ago. The tech has gotten really good and come down a bit in price as well. It's still a bit expensive to buy just to do a video or two but I wonder if there isn't someone in the shmup/yt community that might have one they could lend you? I think it'd make a neat complement to this vid.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah I might have to get one in the future, sounds like a cool idea :-D

i used to hate mugetsu's opener a lot in lotus land story's extra stage, and i'm not the only one with this opinion. it's one of the hardest patterns in that game. even jaimers bombed it in his video of beating mugetsu and gengetsu without shooting cause he got walled in. the wave and the mini double lasers are aimed, the diamonds are static, the blue rings and yellow balls are random, and she's a small target that has a lot of hp and teleports randomly. nowadays, i can timeout the pattern without dying or bombing (until it becomes impossible). look for the lanes between the mini double lasers. the diamonds are harmless if you stay below mugetsu. move away from her to avoid the yellow balls. the rings and the wave overlap, so find a spot where you'll dodge the rings and then tap left or right to dodge the wave.

@lunaria_stg

3 жыл бұрын

That reminds me, I still haven't played the Extra stage yet. Should go and get that cleared some time soon.

Thanks for this video. Question, when you are looking ahead, do you at times keep the ship in your peripheral vision or are you fixated on looking a head with full confidence your ship is where you placed it at that moment? I know you mentioned quickly switching between ship and looking forward and it's part of different situations when making visual focal adjustments so I'm wondering if you do some kind of reconfirming on your ship when looking a head. Thanks again for making this video!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, I tend to keep my ship just at the edge of my peripheral vision in the more open sections :-)

Have you though about getting an eye tracker? I think it would be interesting to know exactly where you are looking while playing!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I have! no room for one now but I could see that being really interesting in the future

Again: super useful for someone trying to make games. Does this game contain all set patterns or do some bullets aim at the location of the player when fired?

Mark lookin like he about to go throw down a boom box and some card board, break dance in da streets.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

I m a soldier of the rhythm, what can I say? ;-)

actually that's how i play bullet hell games. im concentrate my focus to where the gap that i can go through. but still. im always lose my ship a lot, because im sometimes focusing on the gap but my focus to my ship are blinded and somehow my ship was destroyed unexpected when i following the gap somehow. and when i focusing on "Near" ship that thankfully including my hitbox and the bullet near my ship, something unexpected bullet comes and make me dizzy and destroyed my ship even im already recognize the bullet pattern. sometumes im reading where the bullet comes from together where the gap that i can possibly go through and then after a few frames my eye focus are looking near on my ship to anticipate the bullet coming. and when dodging im usually got hit...

@RuV9999

3 жыл бұрын

Ah btw can i learn my blind ship focus in STG that has typical fast bullet thing like Raiden/Tatsujin?

I'll have a Sparkle Star; make it big with Karmotrine.

@DanielSavageOnGooglePlus

3 жыл бұрын

I appreciate the video though! "where to look" is always my issue!

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Good ears! 👂

I love this kind of content. This is super relevant to a video I'm making about visual design in shooters, do you mind if I reference it? Sent you an email about it but got no reply. Peace.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Oh no problem! Sorry I hardly check my email account. Discord is usually the best way to get a hold of me, or the comments section ha

@jalecoarcade

3 жыл бұрын

Awesome thanks!

I think we all owe a debt to Geriatric Donmaku

@TheElectricUnderground

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely :-)

I've been trying to play touhou 17 for a while, never got past stage 2,even with otter hypers

@God-ch8lq

3 жыл бұрын

Update: i got to stage 3 with 1 life left

Why not use Natsuki Chronicles as a beginning point for shooter fans?

I love shoot 'em ups. Call of Duty is class so it is.

@futureskeletons66669

3 жыл бұрын

J/K Mushihimesama Futari 360 arrange is my favourite thing ever.

I usually look ahead of my character and half the time i dodge like a pro, but half the time I guess I held left to much so I end up dying because I lost myself. I never had a problem with confusing patterns, but for whatever reason esperade the boss in the highschool that shoots these drone things that later shoot a bunch of bullets. For whatever reason, that pattern always ALWAYS makes me go cross eyed or dizzy or whatever. I’ve played games like danmaku 3 and never had this problem but for whatever reason those drones are hard for me

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah there are some patterns like this that get me all confused as well ha. A big one for me is the 2nd pattern on the CCWI stage 5 boss, the blue bullets have a wierd 3d effect that always gets me.

@Victor-mc1sz

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheElectricUnderground Regarding the high school boss, are those satellite attacks- are they RNG? Or is there a way to trigger certain pattern? I prefer the fast pattern, since you can easily dodge by going left and right if you start it correctly. The other wide spread patterns are a pain, but doable. Probably not the best game as my first 1cc playthru in this genre, but I love this game and don't mind doing the work.

Shmups are the only games that I'm bad at. Also the only games that make people ask questions like, this, at least that I can think of. Maybe it's a strange thing to say, but I think any shmup is harder than pretty much any game that isn't a shmup (unless it's something like Touhou on easy, with normal being more on that level but not necessarily above it). Which is funny, because they are also some of the simplest games out there (if you remove the graphics, you are just a cursor on the screen dodging a bunch of dots). If you tell me to beat Ninja Gaiden, I can do it, not a big deal. If I get good again I should be able to do it many times in a row in one sitting. Contra without dying? I'm kinda rusty, but it shouldn't take that long. If it's 1ccing a shmup, though, it might take a few years of dying on the same boss for a few months each. With a few exceptions. I got far in some games before. Got to the final boss in Deathsmiles not that long ago, and got annihilated every time and intended to practice with save states but never got around to it because that just such a pain and it doesn't always help all that much anyway. It doesn't help that I have to do it with the keyboard, and that's just not very comfy.

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Yes absolutely, shmups are on a whole extra level when it comes to difficulty

@yours_truly_

3 жыл бұрын

If practicing with save states is too much of a pain and you are still interested in the genre, i would recommend doing restarts of the stages when you mess up the stage. It is very practical if you are playing the PC ports, like i suppose you are with DeathSmiles. Besides, if you beat the final boss first phase without bombing you gain lives, so that should give you resources for the rest of the fight.

@censoredterminalautism4073

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheElectricUnderground It's interesting to hear that from someone that is actually good. That's the impression that I always got. They also take a lot more patience because you can't go faster. In other games, when you get good, you can run through them really fast, and I happen to be someone that plays everything like it's a race.

@censoredterminalautism4073

3 жыл бұрын

@@yours_truly_ I play every arcade game on MAME, and my stick doesn't have enough buttons for save states, so save states are very inconvenient. It will be better when I build a new stick, but that's not happening that soon the way things are going. Anyway, the way that I play games is dumb because I have been incredibly lazy about replacing emulators. I'm only trying out RetroArch right now. I play on a pretty old version of MAME, because my full set of games happens to be for that version. And I do it through Wine too (I only use Linux and BSD at this point) because building it would be a huge pain considering that there would probably be a massive amount of dependency hell issues and I would have to find a way around that. Finding all the dependencies and making an "appimage" for it would probably be the ideal choice (even though I'm not a huge fan of the concept), but I really don't feel like going through the effort of doing that for something that I shouldn't be using anyway, and I think I remember hearing that MAME runs better in Wine than it does in actual Windows, so I have that excuse too. I'm moving to RetroArch. Slowly but surely. Already played a PS1 game on it a little bit today (because my PS2 is not doing too well, having multiple issues), so we're finally making some progress here.

how hard is crimzon clover arcade mode compared to mushi arrange?

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Pretty equivielent actually :-)

Flow state and pattern prediction. Eyes looking to where you want to be. Or towards your waifu in the corner. Whatever you're into

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Hi a quick look at the waifu for +100 motivation bonus ;-)

@crispybits6737

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheElectricUnderground its where you look when you do your big exhale after a long focus section

This is an interesting topic to analyze/talk about but I'd be careful about presenting it as a beginner's tutorial because IMO breaking down something that develops organically and intuitively will just overcomplicate things for beginners. God forbid someone will try to recreate the patterns you describe consciously, that'll distract them from learning more important skills that lead to these kinda "sight patterns" developing. The only piece of advice I'd give to noobs is to not worry so much about looking at the bullets and worry more about memorizing spawns & killing enemies efficiently. What this does is give a pretty easy to understand and simple structure to their dodging since they'll know where they will want to be. On top of that since they'll be focusing on moving to a certain spot, they will rely on peripheral vision and develop a lot of reading skills as a result. Things get trickier for boss fights though.

Speaking of eyetrackers, TwilightEX recently posted another Hellsinker record with tracking. Quite entertaining and insightful. It's an interesting watch studying it, just given how "weirdly" that game is played. kzread.info/dash/bejne/ipx7tZiag8myZtY.html

@TheElectricUnderground

3 жыл бұрын

Oh that s awesome

New to the genre, I appreciate the video! Also, what game is the ship in your title card from? It looks cool.