DDR Difficulty?

crunc, a good number of Hottest Party's Beginner charts emphasize left/right arrows.
If they have real difficulty with most Beginner modes, I'd recommend making some easy edits so you can train them for Beginner. Yeah you won't be able to play on your difficulty at the same time, but your edits can give them more practice on a wider variety of songs. If you can teach them to pass Beginner songs then that should solve your problem.

(Of course, I haven't worked with a 5-year old before unless you count the ones that preferred watching the arcade pads light up over actually playing the game, or the ones that walked off halfway because they saw something shiny, but the concept works on paper)

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I hadn't even thought of making my own edits to make the songs easier. That's a great idea. I've never done any edits, so I'll have to see how much of a pain it is. Am I reading what you wrote correctly, though, and they can't play one of my easy-mode edits while I play a higher difficulty level? If so, dang. Still, I'll try it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

Nope. In order to access the edits, you have to go into the Edit folder and select the song, which includes only the Edit difficulty.

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Licenses.

The ONLY good licenses are

JERK IT OUT (SN)
Heaven (MAX2 US)
EternuS (SN2)

and...

ALL OF THE DANCEMANIA SONGS.

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Oh come on, how can you group a marvel like EternuS with a piece of trash like JERK IT OUT? I think you need your head examined.

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The song was great. The steps were average.

Anyway, All the Things She Said and Jacques Your Body were BRILLIANT licences.

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Edit mode should be fairly straight-forward. You can even start with the song's Beginner chart and take out arrows if you don't want to start from scratch.

Any of Square-X-Triangle-Circle will place an arrow on the line where the cursor is (L-D-U-R, respectively). If you hold a direction and move up or down you can make freeze arrows. L2 can be used to mark the start or end of a section (basically selecting a part of the song) and R2 can be used to Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete those sections. You can then hold L2 to remove both the start and end markers.

Start lets you play the chart from the beginning, or from a section if you've placed a marker with L2. You can hold Start to stop early. L1 changes the arrow denomination from red->blue->yellow and back to red. You'll probably just be using red arrows unless you want them to play Chaos There's also triplet timing available if you press Select.

And I haven't used this feature, but there's a way to write the steps in real-time while the song is playing.


...Hey, I like Jerk It Out's steps. I'd rate it up there with Centerfold.

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I didn't understand much of that.

On SM, you press the number keys to add steps and left and right to change the denomination. To play the song (or a section of it), select it in the menu or use a certain shortkey.

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For edit mode on the PS2, just look at the manual for the game, and go into edit mode and fool around. It'll take you about 5 minutes to figure out nearly everything. The edit mode has a bit of help built into it in game, in case you forget what's in the manual right next to you.

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Unless you're like me, and you don't read the manual except for a casual readthrough before you play the game.

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Well, most games are dirt simple, so you don't need the manual, but edit mode isn't so simple, so that's what the manual is for. And it's more detailed than anything we'll tell you.

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My main beef with DDR lately is that there has been no curve for most difficulties. Overall, it's pretty much the same number of a "x" difficulty, the same of "y" difficulty etc. And the standards for difficulties haven't really changed. If they had put Freeway Shuffle on DDR MAX when it first came out, it would still be considered a pretty solid 7, as it is now.

The only difficulties that HAVE evolved really is 10s. Not that I'm finding fault with that, it's just that only the VERY top tier is progressing and the other difficulties remain stagnant. SN2 sort of feels like it was trying to go in this direction with songs like CaptivAte, and SUNKiSS DROP basically setting a new bar for their respective difficulties, but those seem irrelevant when placed next to songs like AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH and Venus, which seem to set a LOW bar on their respective difficulties.

As for oni charts, I'm all for more: just not EVERY song. Look back at Extreme 2/STR!KE. They made great use of oni charts, but didn't go overboard. Love is Orange, DoLL, Heaven is a Place on Earth all made great candidates for oni charts. But now, they seem to be reserved for boss songs, which often time don't even need one! I'm looking at you, NGO and PR.

What they need to do is increasing the difficulties of charts (More 8s-9s, less 7s). But there are lots of songs that make great songs for those starting out on heavy but would also make great 8s or 9s (Raspberry Heart for example) those would make good candidates for oni charts.

They also need to start pushing the limits of what players consider 7s, 8s etc. Look at the SN CS songs: Those 7s and 8s actually seemed to make an effort to expand the difficulty of 7s and 8s.

So basically: Start making a curve like you do with the other bemani games.

Quote: RoyBoyCF
I didn't understand much of that. On SM, you press the number keys to add steps and left and right to change the denomination. To play the song (or a section of it), select it in the menu or use a certain shortkey.

You didn't? That's unexpected o.o
On the home versions you use the face buttons instead of 1-4 to add steps. In Stepmania you select sections by pressing Spacebar instead of L2, and your context menu is Enter instead of R2. Also instead of holding Spacebar to deselect a section, you hold L2.

Home versions also use the analog sticks; the left one changes the spacing 1x->2x->4x, and the right one scrolls quickly through the chart. In Stepmania you do this with Ctrl-up/down for the 1st and PgDown/End for the second.

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Quote: TimeSpaceMage
And I haven't used this feature, but there's a way to write the steps in real-time while the song is playing.

I've been wondering if you can do this for quite awhile...does anybody now how to use that feature, or how to get to it?

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In the Recording menu, there's an option that's defaulted to Judge2. Set it to Over Input (overwrites previous steps) or Save Input (keeps previous steps).

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sweetness!! wow, that's going to make editing SO much easier, thanks Oni!

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Quote: piepiepie75

The only difficulties that HAVE evolved really is 10s. Not that I'm finding fault with that, it's just that only the VERY top tier is progressing and the other difficulties remain stagnant. SN2 sort of feels like it was trying to go in this direction with songs like CaptivAte, and SUNKiSS DROP basically setting a new bar for their respective difficulties, but those seem irrelevant when placed next to songs like AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH and Venus, which seem to set a LOW bar on their respective difficulties.

It's like half the 8's held a contest to see which could be the easiest. >_<

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DDR SN2 has less 9 footer songs. I wonder about the Konami stepchart maker, they all make horrible stepchart for specific songs because they have different point of view about the song characteristic. For example, when you noticed Sync on Oni difficulty, it called 9 footer? 9 footer doesn't feel like that becoz that too easy for 9 footer. The music characteristic is complicated, maybe high Chaos but for some Konami stepchart maker they make another simple stepchart but not challenging. I dunno, they hear carelessly or they are too lazy make serious stepchart again and again because they afraid that songs was too hard so they make easier and not challenging. And the big mistake for making stepchart is Healing-D-Vision. HDV is 12th note song but Konami stepchart maker think that song 16th note songs and then they make stepchart with wrong notes. So, who do you think was make bad stepchart? Japanese Konami staff or American Konami staff?

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Wha?? Sync Oni is too hard to be an 8, especially the part with the chaos. You have to step those patterns while turning around.

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I found the chaos in Sync to be just normal...I've always thought it should be an 8.

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