project proposal: beware's simfiles

Does it matter if StepMania lags a .mp3 more than an .ogg? Well I guess it may if you use something other than StepMania to determine your offset for the song, I've never noticed but I don't use any other software.

I know what you mean about the "psychological beat" thing, but I've found that to be either people who like fast songs to be EARLY and slow songs to be LATE typically. There's also the aspect that people play by hitting the arrow when it reaches the target rather than stepping on-beat (playing by eye rather than ear). You need to be able to avoid doing any of those to become a good syncher.

I'd like to know your opinion of some of my very difficult to sync simfiles, such as if you see any errors.
Guyana, Achilles, What's This, How Deep, Killer Klowns, Star Trekkin', or plenty of others. I did them all in StepMania completely with nothing more than the editor.

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ok i could download 5 of these songs (not How Deep. how deep is your love? it lacked an mp3).
i have improved sync of one of these (the one which was the easiest for me), star trekkin'. various things were really more simple than you made them. most notably, the range between 121 and 208 is a constant bpm.

#OFFSET:-0.725;
#BPMS:0.000=141.480,72.000=152.280,88.000=153.500,100.000=160.000,104.000=149.920,121.000=159.2,208.000=163.000,209.000=160.000,
210.000=164.000,211.000=164.000,212.000=164.000,217.000=174.500,231.000=176.000,234.000=197.000,246.000=196.000,247.000=198.000,
248.000=200.000,249.000=203.000,250.000=205.000,251.000=207.000,252.000=208.000,265.000=211.000,266.000=214.000,267.000=217.000,
268.000=220.000,269.000=235.000,270.000=245.000,271.000=260.000,273.000=275.000,278.000=631.579,294.000=142.000;

edit: long lines get cut off; i split up the line.

I fixed How Deep (my original file was a .mp3.MP3 and that's probably why it didn't upload). You sure picked a tough one, I'll give you credit for having balls and I think your right about 121-208 being constant, it feels strange to me now that you mentioned it... What make this song tough are constant speed-ups throughout the entire song, a HUGE speed ramp toward the end, a sudden slow-down at the very end, and two song-cuts to make the song shorter which causes the sync to move to faster sections suddenly. You'll never come across anything in an official DDR game nearly this hard to sync, the worst you'll get is a random-bpm song (What I'd Say I swear Ray Charles has NO rhythm his timing is ALL OVER THE PLACE), or a song with lots of perfect BPM changes (deltaMAX), and very rarely a song that has a noticible song-cut error (I think I found only 3 or 4 spanning all 1300 official simfiles).

Okay I installed your BPM's (not the OFFSET since that's machine specific) and ... your good your tolerance seems to be within 7ms. Seems like the first step became early so I should have changed the offset a little, but that's quite okay there is absolutely more than 1 way to sync a song without affecting the timing. I need to look at 121-208 closer but overall it seemed like the original sync had a tighter tolerance (I actually pasted your data without saving and I played through it and I was amazed at how very precise your data was, then I realized I still had the .SM file open, so initially I almost shit myself because it seemed like your synching was better than mine). Sorry if this seems arrogant, I try not to be, I'm very detail oriented and I'm my own biggest critic by far.

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offsets in songs are not intended to be machine specific. the definition of the offset in a song is to be the amount of time between the start of the sound file, and the first beat, which is an objective and constant property of a song. my own syncing meets this ideal, and is not dependent on my hardware or my own judgement. a stepmania setup should be calibrated, using the global offset setting, to compensate for a system's characteristics and have the correct standard global offset. on this premise, sim files can be exchanged between different setups.

ddruk packs had a correct global offset (as in, they were correct on average)

When I have THREE computers in my house running the same build of StepMania with the SAME simfiles and they all require a DIFFERENT GlobalOffset, then YES the OFFSET is dependent on the machine. This will be true unless you choose a standard such as the standard included in StepMania4, which is what I offset all my files to match.

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you're just rephrasing what i said. the machines need a different GLOBAL offset. but if that's done correctly, *song* offsets will be the same across all machines (as it's the time between the start of the sound file, and the first beat). that's the whole point of the global offset.

to phrase it differently:

global offset correction = -system offset

system offset + global offset correction = corrected system offset = 0 <---

corrected system offset +song offset = song offset on system

0 + song offset = song offset on system

song offset = song offset on system <--

guys,

dance games

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Hellrazor is the greatest simfile critique ever. Just saying.

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i giggled to myself :3

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thanks, telperion, that pic says what i'm trying to say.


so which mix (from 1st to 8th) would be preferred for me to make a pack for first, that can then be tested/given feedback on?

do 8th & 3rd :V

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4thMIX

Max1

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when are you releasing the pack / s

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i have test packs of 3rd mix and max, feedback welcome

http://ddr.bircd.org/beware_test_Dance_Dance_Revolution_3rd_Mix.zip
http://ddr.bircd.org/beware_test_Dance_Dance_Revolution_6th_Mix_-max-.zip

all seem to be very much on sync with the global offset that i have :3

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