project proposal: beware's simfiles

hello, i am beware, creator of various DDR simulation projects, such as "beware stepmania extreme".

i'd like to make ddr sim packs for stepmania, starting with 1st-8th mix, using my expertise and experience in the matter, to help the community and to preserve the ddr songs.

highlights:

- i have lossless versions of ddr songs from 1st-8th mix, which i've collected from lots of sources, such as the "analog" DDR mixes, OST's, v-rares, etc, and (milisecond accurate) cuts from IIDX soundtracks as necessary, to get lossless versions of as many DDR songs as possible. they pass careful listening for sounding the same as DDR songs. i did this work a few years ago, under the name "beware lossless", and incorporated it into beware extreme. the importance of using lossless sources instead of the (later) game rips is that these already lossy compressed with ADPCM, which introduces noise/artefacts into the songs, which degrades the quality and wastes bits in the final ogg or mp3 encodes.

- i will be encoding as ogg/vorbis, a modern, advanced, and free (libre) audio codec with superior performance over mp3 and free from it's (timing) problems. ogg/vorbis has also been used in ITG, both the arcade and PC versions.

- i have my own method to achieve syncing with a highly accurate BPM and and variable BPMs and stops, and a gap/offset which is free from system or person specific (subjective) global offset errors, which is important for compatibility with other simfiles.

i intend to base the work on former DDRUK sim packs, but correcting a number of errors in them that i know about. step files will be in .sm format. this work mostly continues from/shares with my extreme simulation.

i intend to start by producing and making available a pack of one mix as a pilot to get opinions and feedback. if problems are found i want to discuss about them and make improvements as necessary. important will be if the syncing is ok.

open issues, what are preferences here?
- bitrate/quality of the audio files. beware extreme uses ~128 kbps (-q 4), to keep the whole simulation under 700 MB. i could use a higher bitrate (-q 6) for these packs.

- i can make the volume of songs match up with the volume of other sim files, ADPCM game rips, etc

- should the stepfiles contain BG scripts? i think not.

i want your opinions on stuff.

I have yet to hear about "beware stepmania extreme".
Show us a sample of yourself.

He means this mod of SM 3.9.

Would you also happen to have the lossless versions of the club mix songs? And the solo versions?

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yes, i have club and solo lossless, because they were also necessary for extreme.

as for a sample of my work, that would be my extreme simulation, also commonly known as "beware's ddr extreme"

the official thread with my opening post is on bemanistyle.

That is good to hear.

My preference of audio quality is to have them at the highest quality.

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I'm curious about the possibility of creating some simfiles that are hard to find in most places through this project, like the Club Version files that weren't in Extreme (OVERDOSER, GAMBOL, and many others). Would that be possible?

Hey beware, I had your DDR Extreme, but my computer detected it as malware.... is this normal or was AVG acting up?

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This thread is now auto-awesome.


You must be joking... Actually it may have been before your time (The haydays of DDR:UK and DDRManiaX). In short, Beware's StepMania EXTREME was the best attempt made by anyone to rip the background videos from the MAX~EXTREME era games. This included him writing the scripts for each song by sight. The whole thing started with a fan in Japan screencapping the videos frame by frame from CS releases of 6thMIX and 7thMIX and posting them on his website. Mario-something was his nick. I also remember Saotome2U lending a hand on this.

Must I point out that DDR:UK's old Extreme simfiles include such subtle inaccuracies as Aoi Shoudou Heavy is wrong and Sakura's ending is badly offsync.

Also, don't use Bewares to claim real DDR Extreme scores, kids.

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true. Personally i'd convert and use SSQs, although that is a task in itself.

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yes, i intend to release complete solo/club packs

as for the virus report, i've scanned it with virustotal.com, sha1 ecc481efde8e6e666ceceafc019caaa81a6daf3b, nothing found a virus. including AVG.

mario-something is MagMarioX. i continued the community BG videos efforts, ripping a number more videos, reorganizing the videos (eliminating lots of duplicates, renaming videos according to the then current standard, etc), and converted bg scripts to use the updated video filenames. i believe i've also made more scripts, i'm not sure. i released the beware background videos 2005 pack. this was a simulation project of mine (like beware lossless is another), this all ended up in beware extreme.

i'm aware of a number of errors in ddruk packs, and i will be fixing those to the best of my knowledge. the Aoi Shoudou Heavy error is known to me, and was fixed in the last update of beware extreme. the sakura ending syncing is not. i can sync about anything to the music, but the question is if it's arcade accurate.

other examples of simfile errors i fixed:
- the timing of the ending of HVAM
- the timing of the stop in tsugaru
- the positioning of the stop in the maxes

i intend to fix any error that is pointed out to me.

This makes no sense, ITG has had TONS of timing issues, there's nothing magical about an .OGG file GlobalOffsets still need to be set on each machine.

Please enlighten us, do you use software or sorcery?

I've collected my simfiles over the years and I'm more than happy with what I have. I'm quite the syncher myself and synching all OFFICIAL files was an enormous task years back but it's complete and highly accurate. I also have many lyric files and scripted backgrounds (why not include them, it's just lines of code on the .SM file, it would only make the final product like 100KB larger). I'm also content with my lossy audio files, never had a reason to complain about any songs although I did some volume normalizing years ago...

And capitalize your I's please.

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You should most definitely include the background videos. Why has no one decoded the MotionJPGs straight from their source before?

OGG sounds cooler than mp3.

hellrazor: i'm aware of ITG's timing issues. but they're neither caused, nor fixed, by OGG/vorbis. a particular problem with mp3 is that stepmania loads mp3s with an offset of ~25 ms (1 frame) different compared to LAME - so, the offset of MP3 is ambiguous.

i use self made software based on a principle of visualizing how the stepchart's 4th notes align up with the music. this gives absolute confidence and accuracy over the BPM, and allows for following BPM changes and stops, but this syncs purely to the "sound energy" beat. sometimes, the "phychological beat" seems to differ, which gives an uncertainty as to if the offset is correct, so it requires testing after syncing still, just to be sure.

as part of its development, the software has of course been tested against generated test sound files with an exactly known BPM and gap (0 means first beat immideately at the start of the sound)

I only have the ones included on SM Extreme, right down to the badly compressed linesin.avi. Do you have any of the videos that were not used on DDR Extreme (or are they in your BG Vids torrent)?

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beware stepmania extreme includes only videos referenced to by any song. all videos (more of them) are the bg videos 2005 pack.

well, it seems like a good idea, i'd like to download packs & not have to hit f11 & f12 all the time :3

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