THIS PETITION IS TO FORECAST THE DEMAND FOR TECHNIQUES IN IMPROVING SHOOTING GAME PERFORMANCE. YOU MAY SIGN IT ONLY IF YOU TRUST THE METHODS I USE TO IMPROVE MY PERFORMANCE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS, PLEASE CONTACT ME. I would like to improve the performance of shooting game players. The goal is to raise their skills such that they can do at least the equivalent of clearing Strikers 1945 II\'s first round in one credit. To do so, I will provide efficient methods of outsmarting the enemy by controlling their bullets and working on the right problems. I find that many players have a deficient understanding of how the enemy works. Although they have some intuitive understanding of how enemy bullet barrages work and how to dodge them, they have yet to master how they can gain total control over the enemy\'s behavior. Because of this, the player lacks enough confidence to manage a difficult situation consistently--the player\'s approach would vary too much. To reduce the variability in their approaches, I will show players what techniques they can use to (1) exploit enemy weaknesses (particularly the bullet barrages) and (2) reduce the chances of dying by some random error in movement. For example, to deal with enemies located on either side of the screen and firing aimed bullets, the player must consider the following: can I start high up the screen and circle slowly around the perimeter of the screen, or must I cut back and forth about the bottom of the screen--and if I do the latter, how do I minimize the number of cutbacks performed to reduce the risk of dying to a stray bullet Once the player understands how these techniques increase the chance of survival and applies them properly, the player will enjoy complete control over the enemy. I find this to be one of the pleasures of shooting games, and I hope the player think so, too. There are plenty of situations that the player must control, though, and I find that most players work on the wrong situations. They stem particularly from having vague goals. Some struggle to find a balance between scoring higher and surviving longer--eventually, they lose interest in the game because they failed to find that magical balance. They can also stem from unreasonable goals. Some refuse to use bombs because they think they are better off having confidence dodging a difficult pattern--they tend to be stuck after a while. It\'s silly to treat a shooting game as a balancing act or as a one-way road with roadblocks to overcome. I want players to realize how much freedom they have in a shooting game. I propose that players just learn how to survive by any means necessary. Ignore those gold bars, use those bombs in tough spots. This way, they can discover what situations threaten them from meeting their goals and then work on the easiest situations first. One way to help players discover these situations quickly is through the bomb distribution (if the game allows it). The player would know how many bombs he has, so he can use them on the most difficult situations in the game. This allows the players to work on the easier situations first without letting the more difficult ones hamper them from making progress. If the player learns to take advantage of the game\'s generosity first and slowly learn to give up this generosity for satisfying greater goals, then the player will likely make more progress. And I consider making progress towards some huge goal to be an enjoyable experience--I hope the player thinks so, too. In one year, I want to develop more rigorous techniques in controlling the enemy and maintaining good progress towards a well-defined goal. Perhaps I will teach people these techniques by using an ongoing case study, the strategies I use for Strikers 1945 II. Of course, I will use the bulletin board systems to help me make these techniques accessible to the shooting game amateur. In the second year, if enough people have a competent understanding of these techniques, then we can continue developing more mature techniques to help us conquer shooting games with fewer deaths, fewer bombs, and with higher scores. Although such high-level play will give rise to new problems, I hope we can determine their root causes and revise our techniques to solve them. It is my wish to elevate the skills of the shmups community to that comparable of the shooting game experts in, say, Japanese arcades. The problem is that I\'m unsure if there\'s enough motivation in the shmups community for this change of mentality. Review my diary entries. Review my capture guides, particularly the one for Strikers 1945 II. Then decide, by signing this petition, if you trust that my methods of making progress in a shooting game will help improve your game. Even if you discover that these methods are ineffective, you will never realize how effective these methods can be if you fail to put enough trust in them first. If you are, for example, unwilling to give up your balancing act between score and survival, don\'t sign this petition--my methods would be of no use to you. But if you allow yourself to play as far as you can without any constraints, then you can evaluate properly whether this method of progress works and adapt it for your own purposes. Regardless of the number of signatures on this petition, I will continue to develop my techniques and write about them in my web site. But if there are enough signatures, then I will make these techniques more accessible and easier to understand. All I ask is whether you put trust in my methods.

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