Help Me Undergo A Crazy DDR Challenge!

I've been without a computer capable of playing Stepmania for the past few months, so in order to get back into DDR, I've set myself a silly challenge :

Pass every song under 17-feet in DDR X3, before the end of July.

I did a similar challenge a few years ago when Pump It Up Pro came out, but since this has to be done in Stepmania, I need some advice in setting it all up. I'm reasonably happy collecting simfiles and setting a GlobalOffset, but I have no clue which life bar and timing window settings I need to get a "fair approximation" of the arcade machine's difficulty.

I'm going to use :
Windows XP
Stepmania 5
KENp's DDR X2 AC Preview4 Theme
Chewphoria's "All X-Rating" fixed simfiles
Cobalt Flux + Arcade Mod (no bar)

So 3 questions :

1. Which timing and difficulty settings should I plug into the ini file, to best re-create the difficulty of DDR X2 / X3

2. Do the DDR Ultramix / Festival songs from SuperNOVA currently use the original Ultramix steps, or the "fixed" stepcharts from Festival? I'm 99% sure Chewi's files have the correct steps, but I just wanted to double-check.

3. Which songs are going to kick my ass? :{

Lifebar difficulty can be set in each machine, so it's up to you. Maybe it should be 4.

Timing difficulty 6 is the closest you can get to AC feel.

I can't answer no 2 and 3 for sure... Some songs in the 15s are pretty crazy and the 16s are pretty varied.

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Supernova uses the Festival charts, as well as adds beginner charts them.

As for what songs are going to kick your a, it depends on your strenths as a player. The good news is that nothing is going to be harder than PSMO, and that there are plenty of songs which are faster which also have crossovers (or awkward steps) in the 15 and 16 brackets. Perhaps attempting to atackle some 17s (even if you don't pass) might help in passing some 16s.

Um.. I'm good at handling complicated crossover patterns, I guess. I've passed NGO Oni on my first attempt, and Pluto Relinquish without a bar on my first serious attempt at it on an AC machine (after days of learning the chart)

My big weakness is reading arrows at speed. I usually play on 2.5x, but have to drop to 2x for anything above 170BPM, and 1x for anything over 200BPM. The reason I had to practice Pluto Relinquish so much was to memorise the high speed sections, because I couldn't reliably sight-read them as I was playing.

I'm personally terrified of Legend Of Max (I've never passed it), and Max 300 Jondi & Spesh Remix, which has a fuckton of jumps (I'm too short to bracket them).

My logic in tackling the 15s and 16s is that since I'm going to be playing over 400 songs anyway, I should probably plan out troublesome songs, and play them every 5 songs or so. That way I can learn them slowly, and I'm not demoralising or tiring myself out, by playing the same hard song back to back?

This is probably a dumb suggestion but have you been practicing to pass Legend of Max on Extreme US? Back when I could pass 10 footers, I could pass Maxx Unlimted and Paranoia Survivor but not LoM because of EXUS' stupid default option (which can't be changed unless you have Instant Replay) that if more than two arrows are pressed, then no arrows will be read. Perhaps you might have better luck practicing LoM if your playing on Stepmania.

I also have the same problem with reading high speed charts in DDR. I could read at best 400 bpm in DDR, but 550ish in Stepmania/ITG.

I've only ever played it on Extreme AC. Since that got replaced by SuperNOVA 2, I've never really wanted to go back and try it again.

The main reason I want to nail down a "fair" degree of accuracy, is so that I can try and pass every song under the same conditions. Right now, I can say to myself "Oh! I can always pass Pluto Relinquish!..... If it's on UK DDRX cabinet, Betson pads, and I get to the end with enough bar to cheese my way through the last stream!" and "I can pass Be In My Paradise Doubles, but only at home, or if the sound is loud enough that I can hear the piano!".

I'd rather be able to say "Yeah, I can pass all of this stuff under one strict universal condition I've set myself!"

If I can get back in shape quickly, I think I could realistically pass Legend Of Max now, but that doesn't make it any less scary ^^;

You should probably try to practice reading at higher speed mods; it'll help you with the boss songs.

As for the difficult <17s, I'd say the tough ones will probably be

Paranoia Hades
Paranoia Respect
Trigger (I actually think is easier)
PSMO

No barring these is a very ambitious task, so good luck!

(I wish I could be more helpful with the technical stuff. :/)

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Urgh, this is hard. I decided to knock out all of the 5th Mix folder first (because it didn't seem to have any "hard" songsin it), and realised that my little legs don't like playing 13-foots anymore. All the songs were absolutely knackering, and I gave up before Paranoia, because I wanted to use what little energy I could muster to get at least one 15-foot out of the way, so I can go to bed with some sort of tiny moral victory.

... Anyway, I now have one tiny moral victory!



The one 15-foot I was absolutely sure I'd pass (because it's secretly also the best 15-foot).

I played a couple of X3 songs as a cool-down, and noticed I could AAA quite a few of them, but couldn't AAA some older, slower songs. Is this a common thing, or does it seem like I have a sync issue?