[SM5 THEME WIP] DDR 2014 ~Beta 1.0 release

It does, Gene's DDR 2013 theme had cut-ins of characters.

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GREAT!!

I just hope that this theme is not another recycled theme from gene (that is also another recycled theme from earlier themers) being passed from generation to generation. We'll never know when will all the bugs, crashes and errors be completely fixed brought by the said theme because the themer itself can't fix them.

The code itself is based on Risk's own DDR Next Generation theme with new parts written to handle all the new features As for the graphics, I'm in charge of that and it's all brand new made from scratch. Outside of the Results screen, we used placeholders for the alpha 1. The next version will include the graphics for ScreenSelectMusic and more will be added along the way.

This Awesome lol I can't wait until the next verison

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get cut-ins working, the userprefs stuff worked but I just couldn't get them to trigger at the right times no matter how much research into them I did. So at the moment they won't be included, sorry guys. But if I am able to get them working I'll definitely include them (in DDR NG too).

This theme isn't recycled from Gene's theme, initially (before pkwp became involved in the project) I did use some of the graphics but they have since been replaced. All known errors have been listed and fixed where possible.

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hey its all good risk we all appreciate the time and effort you have put into your themes! When will the update be rolling out??

im also wondering if anyone knows how I can edit the background of my song folders that arent't like ddr X3, like if anyone doesnt know what im talking about, theres a pic below, but like how the DDR X group is yellow and DDR Extreme group is green. if anyone knows how to edit that, let me know!
pic:
http://i57.tinypic.com/x59jsz.jpg

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Update in the first post! I think this it's been just over a week so sorry about that.

The 2P error is fixed and there are some snazzy new graphics by pkwp, check out the music wheel sorts (Up,Down,Up,Down).
Course mode is also included.

@Towlesy27 I added a tutorial in the Mediafire folder that explains how to do what you're requesting. If you have any trouble with it let me know.

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Thank you so much for the update Risky , i'm glad

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Hey, thanks for the theme Risky, and everyone else that has contributed to it! I'm sure that I, and many other will use it. I love it. <3

Thank you for your update! Does this only support widescreen resolutions? I'm trying to run this at 640x480 on my arcade cab and a bunch of the graphics are misplaced.

I'm just imagining you leaning forward to hold the menu buttons then trying to reach back and hit the pad buttons for the special stuff on Select Music and laughing at how awkward it is.

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how is the progress on this theme going? beta release was excellent! (:

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It's going well! We fixed a lot of issues since then and added some new features here and there such as the workout (calorie) system which is now exactly like the AC version. We'll release a new beta when we are ready

thats excellent im glad to hear! (:

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DJ OMiY encouraged me to check out this theme again, so I did.

My thoughts:

1. You have a TON of png files that raise warnings because their dimensions aren't multiples of 2. I can't possibly fix all these for you, but the warnings are annoying for players who don't use fullscreen mode, so you should consider fixing them.

2. In your ./Scripts/ directory, I deleted:
02 Branches.lua
02 Colors.lua
02 Sprite.lua
03 Gameplay.lua

These had been (mostly) copy-pasted directly from the _fallback theme, so you there is no need to re-include them. I say "mostly" because there was a single function in 02 Branches.lua that isn't already in _fallback. You don't need to overwrite the entire file if you're only adding in one extra branch. Here's what your new 02 Branches.lua should look like:



That's it. That's the entire file. All it does is add one additional branch to the Branch table that already exists from _fallback

3. On ./BGAnimations/ScreenTitleMenu background/default.lua I noted that you were using a graphic to display the beta version number. (It was brought to my attention because the png file had dimensions that weren't multiples of 2 and I got a warning.) That seems tedious (to update and export from photoshop constantly) and prone to error/inaccuracy. Why not use a BitmapText?

You can safely replace the LoadActor("Version.png")..{} code with this:



In order for that to work, I relied on your ./Scripts/00 ThemeInfo.lua file, which you weren't really using anywhere in the theme yet. I updated that file to delete indices you likely didn't need and add one you did.



4. Since you mentioned in the README.txt that you realized there was a bug on ScreenSelectMusic with a "diff" variable being nil sometimes, I decided to look into that. I fixed it, and largely rewrote several files along the way...

In ./BGAnimations/ScreenSelectMusic decorations/default.lua you load two distinct files, difficultyP1.lua and difficultyP2.lua that basically did the exact same thing but with different pn values. I deleted both, and condensed into a single, new Difficulty.lua file.

So, in ./BGAnimations/ScreenSelectMusic decorations/default.lua you no longer need to load two actors. You can write a loop that loads the same actor ( Difficulty.lua ) twice, but pass it a different player number each iteration. Like this:



That Difficulty.lua file now looks like this: http://pastebin.com/JQqpkVC4


I changed/fixed a TON of it, but I'll try to summarize the key (useful) points here...

4.1 The pn you passed into the file via LoadActor comes is acquired with the ... syntax. See the first line.

4.2 You had a bunch of functions that were never called. I removed them. The overall lines of code could still be pretty drastically reduced, but I'm not sure it matters enough for me to bother.

4.3 You had a custom function that mapped numbers to the Difficulty Enum. As I note in one of the comments I left for you, this is not necessary. All of StepMania's Enums have a reverse() method for this purpose. So, in this case, if you have a difficulty string, like Difficulty_Beginner you would do Difficulty:Reverse()["Difficulty_Beginner"] which would evaluate to 0. Check Lua.xml for to see what each difficulty evaluates to. (Hint: beginner is 0 and edit is 5)

4.4 I commented out a lot of code I didn't understand that didn't seem to be being used and left you notes in comments where I could.

4.5 The error should be gone. I don't think I broke anything new along the way, but it's possible.

My final suggestion: consider version control! If you don't want to use a public-facing host like GitHub, BitBucket works fine. Just, please, put the project under version control (Git, preferably) and back it up somewhere. You'll have peace of mind, you'll be vastly more organized, and it will be vastly easier for people like me to pop in from time to time and submit pull requests.

These fixes/notes took about 6 hours total. Good luck with the rest of this theme!

hugs,
dbk2

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Back with some new stuff, going through cleaning up some graphics, also I noticed that the transparency on the Versus and Doubles info on mode select is darker than Singles so you should look into that.

Anyways, here's a HQ version of the Result screen music.
http://inori.s-ul.eu/P2evqp0h

Here's HQ "ScreenStageInformation Sound Event" You should be able to just re-insert the announcer voice or I could do it for you.
http://inori.s-ul.eu/fhCxLDAP

Woah, thank you very much dbk2! A lot of really great feedback and fixes. I think the idea of using Git is nice and would benefit everyone. Most of the multiple of 2 errors are my fault, I'll take it into account when I'm making the graphics now.

Inorizushi, thank you again for providing HQ music! For the graphics, the Select Screen use placeholders from the 2013 version. I'm currently in the process of making a brand new one with both Afro for P1 and Emi for P2. The other placeholder screens are everything related to the game play (the two gates and the main game interface) and the profile screens. Eventually, everything will be replaced

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone! I'm fairly sure it'll be tomorrow for most people here but nevertheless,
There's an update in the first post.

@Ninevolt we've made a 4:3 version for arcade cabinets and switched the codes around so it's a little easier to use.
@dbk2 thank you so much for the help, I looked around in other themes and in online and offline docs and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. All the comments really helped a lot as well I've started using GitHub for version control and I must say it's amazing so thanks for that too.
@Inorizushi The HQ music is really great, thanks for contributing

Enjoy the theme everyone, the next update will be coming soon.

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I definitely appreciate that ensuring your theme works for 4:3 and 16:9 is a hassle, but if you're going to bother at all, I'll discourage you from maintaining two different versions of the theme as you seem to indicate. It's prone to errors and inconsistencies.

There is a function IsUsingWideScreen() that returns true or false appropriately that you can use.

Here's a simple example usage in Simply Love: https://github.com/dguzek/Simply-Love-SM5/blob/master/BGAnimations/ScreenSelectMusic%20overlay/banner.lua#L2-L10

If you have any questions, just ask!

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