Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story/Advanced Mechanics

From The Danmaku Gameplay Wiki

Bullet Cap[edit | edit source]

The bullet cap in LLS is not actually determined strictly by the number of bullets on the screen. It's determined by the number of specific types of bullets on the screen. There's bullets that come in two groups essentially: bullets with a sprite of 8 by 8 pixels and bullets with a sprite of 16 by 16 pixels. 8x8 bullets include pellet-bullets only. Every other bullet type is 16x16. Both of these groups have their own bullet cap. The bullet cap for 8x8 bullets is 240 and for 16x16 bullets it's 200. This means that theoretically the bullet cap is 440 bullets. This can include bullet clouds as well. This basically explains why some patterns seem to cap it's bullets much more easily than others. This is because some patterns only use one of two bullet types.

Bullet Cancels[edit | edit source]

Bullet Cancels[edit | edit source]

Bullets can be canceled by bombing, getting a score-based extend or finishing off a phase of a boss. Every bullet that gets canceled gives 1,000 points of direct score per bullet. It appears that when a bullet cancel is in effect, if any bullets are being spawned in, they cancel as soon as they appear, but they give less points. They seem to give 100 points per bullet in this situation but it's not been confirmed yet.

Boss Phase Bonus[edit | edit source]

After a phase of a midboss or boss is cleared by dealing enough damage, the player is awarded with a fixed bonus which is seperate from the cancel bonus. This is displayed by a fixed number of yellow 12,800s depending on the boss you fight. The following table displays the static bonus received for beating a phase of a boss or midboss:

Stage Character Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6 Phase 7 Phase 8 Phase 9 Phase 10 Phase 11
Stage 1 Bewitching Lotus Flower 64,000
Stage 1 Orange 64,000 64,000 128,000
Stage 2 Kurumi (midboss) Varies [1]
Stage 2 Kurumi 128,000 128,000 128,000 256,000
Stage 3 Dark Mirror 204,800
Stage 3 Elly 128,000 128,000 128,000 128,000 512,000
Stage 4 Hikariko (1) 358,400
Stage 4 Hikariko (2) 358,400
Stage 4 Reimu Hakurei 128,000 128,000 128,000 128,000 128,000 512,000
Stage 4 Marisa Kirisame 128,000 128,000 128,000 512,000
Stage 5 Yuuka Kazami 192,000 192,000 192,000 192,000 192,000 192,000 192,000 0 192,000 0 112,640[2]
Stage 6 Yuuka Kazami 256,000 256,000 0 256,000 0 256,000 256,000 240,640[3]
Stage EX Mugetsu 614,400 614,400
Stage EX Gengetsu 614,400 614,400 614,400 614,400 614,400 614,400
  1. ↑ The static bonus is for currently unknown reasons varying between 25,600 and 192,000
  2. ↑ The static bonus on S5 Yuuka's final pattern is bugged. The number of 12,800s suggests you should get 512,000 but instead you get 112,640
  3. ↑ The static bonus on S6 Yuuka's final pattern is bugged. The number of 12,800s suggests you should get 768,000 but instead you get 240,640

Cancel Bonus[edit | edit source]

Whenever you kill a midboss or finish off the boss' final pattern, a bonus is awarded based on the amount of bullets on screen when they get canceled. As one would expect, the more bullets, the higher this bonus. However it increases in some kind of exponential way. The first bullet that is canceled, gives a very low amount of score, and it exponentially increases for every bullet afterwards, until it hits a bullet value cap after a certain amount of bullets is reached. Every extra bullet that is on screen after the bullet that capped the score, will give you the same score for each one of them. The following list will show the score you get from each bullet for each difficulty:


A bullet cancel containing 72 bullets

Easy

1. 10 2. 20 3. 60 4. 130 5. 230 6. 360 7. 520
8. 710 9. 930 10. 1,180 11. 1,460 12. 1,770 13. 2,110 14. 2,480
15. 2,880 16. 3,310 17. 3,770 18. 4,260 19. 4,780 20. 5,330 21. 5,910
22. 6,520 23. 7,160 24. 7,830 25. 8,530 26. 9,260 27. 10,000 >27 10,000

Adding up the first 26 bullets adds up to 81,510. Every bullet after this will give you 10,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "1,510". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 4,221,510.


A bullet cancel containing 77 bullets

Normal / Hard / Lunatic

1. 10 2. 20 3. 60 4. 130 5. 230 6. 360 7. 520 8. 710 9. 930
10. 1,180 11. 1,460 12. 1,770 13. 2,110 14. 2,480 15. 2,880 16. 3,310 17. 3,770 18. 4,260
19. 4,780 20. 5,330 21. 5,910 22. 6,520 23. 7,160 24. 7,830 25. 8,530 26. 9,260 27. 10,020
28. 10,810 29. 11,630 30. 12,480 31. 13,360 32. 14,270 33. 15,210 34. 16,000 >34 16,000

Adding up the first 33 bullets adds up to 169,290. Every bullet after this will give you 16,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "290". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 6,681,290.


A bullet cancel containing 103 bullets

Extra

1. 10 2. 20 3. 60 4. 130 5. 230 6. 360 7. 520 8. 710
9. 930 10. 1,180 11. 1,460 12. 1,770 13. 2,110 14. 2,480 15. 2,880 16. 3,310
17. 3,770 18. 4,260 19. 4,780 20. 5,330 21. 5,910 22. 6,520 23. 7,160 24. 7,830
25. 8,530 26. 9,260 27. 10,020 28. 10,810 29. 11,630 30. 12,480 31. 13,360 32. 14,270
33. 15,210 34. 16,180 35. 17,180 36. 18,210 37. 19,270 38. 20,000 >38 20.000

Adding up the first 37 bullets adds up to 240,130. Every bullet after this will give you 20,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "0,130". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 8,300,130.

Boss Timers[edit | edit source]

Invisible Timers[edit | edit source]

Despite there not being any phase timers on screen when facing a boss, like there are in the Windows-era games, the timers in this game do exist. They are invisible. Every boss has a specific timer for each phase. However, Marisa is the only boss in the game that does not obey this rule. While she does have an invisible timer and multiple phases, she has only one timer. This timer lasts for the entire fight. The reason for this is because just like in Story of Eastern Wonderland, she has 2 different states she can be in. In one state she has no orbs and the other state she has one or more orbs active. Both states have their own set of attacks. For this reason it can be said that it was most likely too hard to program multiple phase timers for this boss, because Marisa can exist in more than one state. To add to this, her attack patterns never change, regardless of what phase you're on. Whenever you clear a phase, her attacks don't get interrupted either. It simply clears the screen of bullets and if she was still in the process of attacking, that attack will just keep going as if the phase didn't end. Below the timers for each boss and each phase will be given (noting that these might be 1 or 2 seconds off).

Midboss Timers[edit | edit source]

Stage Character Phase 1
Stage 1 Bewitching Lotus Flower 12
Stage 2 Kurumi 31
Stage 3 Dark Mirror 24
Stage 4 Hikariko (1) 37
Stage 4 Hikariko (2) 37

Stage Boss Timers[edit | edit source]

Stage Character Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6 Phase 7 Phase 8 Phase 9 Phase 10 Phase 11
Stage 1 Orange 32 29 12
Stage 2 Kurumi 38 38 41 14
Stage 3 Elly 33[1] 26 23 24 Varies[2]
Stage 4 Reimu Hakurei 26 55 40 36 42 18
Stage 4 Marisa Kirisame Varies[3]
Stage 5 Yuuka Kazami 23 10 23 10 23 10 18 7 18 7 18
Stage 6 Yuuka Kazami 36 87 6 60 6 60 50 45
  1. ↑ The tile survival phase is not counted as the first phase
  2. ↑ Elly times out based on how long the entire fight has lasted. The timer of the last phase is determined by how quickly you reached the last phase. The entirety of the boss fight has a timer of somewhere between 2:25 and 2:42
  3. ↑ There are 4 phases, but the timer used is applied to the entire fight and is based on the number of attacks Marisa does. The number of attacks she does before timing out is either 50 or 52. The respawning of the orbs is also counted as an attack.

Timeout Phases[edit | edit source]

The Extra Stage bosses in this game are the only bosses in the PC-98 era to have special timeout phases if you purposely time them down. Although similar to many EX bosses having one of these on their final attack throughout the rest of the series, Mugetsu and Gengetsu take it further. Not only do they have a timeout phase on every phase, their timeout phase patterns are pretty much designed to be impossible to dodge, as they are all blindingly fast. Presumably this was made as an intentional trap to punish the player for not shooting the boss. These two bosses will go in this seperate table to also note the timers for their timeout phases.

Stage Character Phase 1 (+Timeout Phase) Phase 2 (+Timeout Phase) Phase 3 (+Timeout Phase) Phase 4 (+Timeout Phase) Phase 5+6 (+Timeout Phase)
Stage EX Mugetsu 72 (+10) 58 (+17)
Stage EX Gengetsu 67 (+14) 62 (+15) 63 (+14) 62 (+15) 26+54 (+35)

Glitches[edit | edit source]

Elly Phase Timeout Glitch[edit | edit source]

Elly seems to be the only boss in the game to have inconsistencies with how much health she should have between phase transitions. This inconsistency occurs between clearing her phase and timing her phase out. As seen in this video, if you don't shoot Elly at all, more of her health bar will be taken away than if you cleared a phase normally. This is especially noticable at the start of the fourth phase. Supposedly by this point, if you time down her phases up to phase 4, then timing out phase 4 will cause the next timeout to do enough damage to kill Elly. Now because she dies one phase too early, the self-destruct is also not programmed correctly. If timing down all of her first 4 phases, she will self-destruct, but you will still get a bonus for a bullet cancel and get a clear bonus as if you just depleted her health bar by shooting. Normally when you time out a boss' final phase, there is no bullet clear during the boss explosion and your clear bonus is multiplied by 0. This is likely the result of Elly dying on a phase she's not supposed to, so the voided bonuses don't take effect.

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5
Shooting down
Timing out
Self-destructed

Divide Error Crash[edit | edit source]

As soon as the last orb is destroyed at the very end of certain orb-patterns, with extremely exact timing (frame 152-155 out of 160), the game will crash

There's currently two instances in which Lotus Land Story is known to crash. This can happen during the Marisa fight and it is caused by destroying the last orb during two certain bullet patterns during a specific frame window. Due to the precise timing and this problem only occuring on two patterns, this crash is very rare. The reason for the crash has to do with how Marisa is supposed to move while she's doing the equivalent attacks without her orbs active. Marisa has a braking mechanic that lets her stop moving as the non-orb attack ends. When killing the orb attack between frame 152 and 155, Marisa ends up having to brake from a standstill and the game crashes from this. More specific details about this instance of the Divide Error Crash can be found in this blog post. There is also a video of this crash. The pattern it crashes on is the second pattern where a crash is possible. The first pattern being displayed in the image.

This crash can also happen during the Kurumi fight, but only when playing on Easy. When you're on Kurumi's third phase, her attack coming from her lines (when she's firing lines both left and right at the same time) is a 3-way pattern. However, if you bring your rank down as low as possible, this same pattern turns into a 0-way pattern, causing the game to crash. There have been reports of this crash still being possible outside of Easy, but there is no confirmation about this yet.

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