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 LOVE TROPICANA DELUXE / Sister Mayo
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  Stepped by Xythar for DDROSC BoNG

  PLEASE NOTE: If you are using Stepmania 4, please see the "Graphics & Video"
  section for important information about the banner!

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 Quick Details
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   Song Title: LOVE TROPICANA DELUXE
  Song Artist: Sister Mayo
  Song Length: 1:32
   Song Genre: Anime Opening / J-Pop
        Album: Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu Deluxe OP Single

     Steps By: Xythar
  Graphics By: Xythar (Source images taken from "Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu")
    Videos By: Bandai Visual

 Author Email: gmmazz@hotmail.com
Other Entries: Gotta Get My Groove On (TM5)
               Collision Chaos (OSC3)
               Born To Be Bone (TM6)
               Taratta Dance (Cheesemix 2)
               Mei (OSC4)
               Snail (World Tour)
               Shake It Down (OSC5, DDR division)
               Gradation (OSC5, ITG division)
               Vairocana (OSC5, KB division)
               Momoiro Kataomoi (Cheesemix 3)
               Freestyler (90's Mix)
               Coco Jamboo (90's Mix)

Readme Format: Now I'm no longer centering headings in consideration of people who don't necessarily open Notepad in a maximised window. That being said, in order for this to display properly, you'll need to have word wrap on, considering I can't put in line breaks myself since I have no idea what size your window is.

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 Introduction
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haha you entered an anime file

Oh wait that was me :(

Actually, I wanted to do this. I went through a bunch of songs I liked from previous OSCs (since I don't think I could make a good file for a mashup :/) and while there were a lot of good songs, most already had good steps and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I picked this one because out of all the songs I liked which didn't have that good steps already (well, the steps for this back in OSC2 were okay, but a bit boring) I felt that this one had the most fun potential. :) Plus, I've done a couple of anime files in the past for the hell of it (Hare Hare Yukai and Uchuu de Koi wa Rurun Ruun, both available from Bemanistyle's sims DB) and they were pretty well received by the general public - so I thought I'd see how one would do in a competition. I'm carrying on PlatinumHawke's work with this attempt to prove that anime files can have good steps, okay :)

This entry is really not much like Shake It Down (which got 1st place in its bracket, albeit 6th overall) at all, but I wanted to try something different. That's important, I think - trying new things. I will also have more files like Shake It Down in the future! But maybe in different competitions, like Late Night Love With DDRExtreme.co.uk or Tournamix Supernova (yes, the next Tournamix is going ahead, see ddrei.com for details). But enough plugging and onto the details!

Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu Deluxe is the rather lengthily named sequel to the almost as lengthily named Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu, a wacky comedy anime. I haven't actually watched it properly, but the episode I downloaded to get the video from was funny. :P Maybe I'll watch the rest someday! The anime is by Bandai and the original was shown on TV, whereas Deluxe was released as an OAV. You can read more about it if you like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_wa_itsumo_Hale_nochi_Guu_Deluxe
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2024

The steps are a bit harder than what I'd normally do, but I still like them. They're catchy. I wanted to do challenge steps and either doubles or solo but in the end I just didn't have time :( Considering how much extras are worth in this competition, I don't really expect to win on numbers but I'm hoping that at the very least, people will enjoy the steps. Speaking of which...

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 Steps
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Made in Stepmania's editor, etc etc etc.

 BEGINNER: 1 foot, 94 steps,  82 combo
    LIGHT: 4 feet, 164 steps, 185 combo
 STANDARD: 7 feet, 271 steps, 295 combo
    HEAVY: 8 feet, 328 steps, 342 combo

Beginner makes pretty heavy use of repeated steps on the same arrow (on adjacent beats) and has a few jumps too, so it's pretty hard for a 1. But I rated it the way Konami does, which is dependent on the BPM for beginner steps - and at 137 bpm, it's a 1.

Light is fairly hard for light - it starts off fairly easy and has some easy freeze sections later on as well, but soon starts throwing stepjumps around fairly liberally and ends with a long stream that contains many jumps with no breaks. Hence the 4 foot rating, although it contains no corner jumps. Despite the difficulty I think it's pretty fun for a light chart. (It also contains one blue arrow to match the music more appropriately)

Standard is basically one of two ways I could have done heavy (the other being the actual heavy, of course). It's pretty similar to some of my more recent files - many short 8th streams punctuated by some 4th (step)jumps. Throw in some crossovers, a few longer streams here and there and the occasional yellow arrow and you have yourself a fairly decent 7, I'd say, although it's further from heavy in difficulty than the rating difference would let on. It does not follow the music as closely as heavy does, preferring instead to go with simpler beat-based steps (although there is some karaoke stepping in parts, where it felt appropriate)

Heavy is difficult, but I feel it is still appropriate and also pretty fun. Lots of chaos here, but despite how it might look, no part of the song has "yellow arrow syndrome". That's just how the music goes - the arrows match it fairly accurately, as I verified at a slower music speed.  Steps follow the catchy main vocal melody for the most part, simplifying it to 8ths when necessary. Crossovers are again used fairly liberally along with freeze arrows.

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 Graphics & Video
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I put the graphics together in Photoshop CS2. The background and still banner both use frames from the video (captured with VirtualDub) with text added by me. There's not much more to say about them, really.

However, by default the file is set to show the video banner I made for it (3 second loop of Hare and Guu dancing from the video, synced to the songwheel sample, with the song title and artist overlaid over it). The video banner should work perfectly in Stepmania 3.9 (and presumably 3.95?) although it may get out of sync if you load the songwheel and this file is selected by default, or if you go back to it after playing. You can just fix that by moving off this file to another and then back after a couple of seconds. Earlier versions of Stepmania that don't support video banners (and DWI) should automatically fallback to the included still banner in PNG format, which was included for this purpose and to satisfy the rules.

However, there is currently a bug in Stepmania 4 that causes it to play video banners as fast as it can, rather than the correct FPS as defined in the AVI file. So, if you are using SM4 and are getting sick of watching Hare and Guu go into seizures then you can work around the bug (until they fix it, anyway) by replacing the video banner with the still one. Just open the SM file and change the line:

#BANNER:LOVE TROPICANA DELUXE-bn.avi;

to

#BANNER:LOVE TROPICANA DELUXE.png;

That's it. Or you could just use a version of Stepmania that actually works properly, such as 3.9 :P

The CD title is the Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu Deluxe logo captured from the video and isolated from the background in Photoshop (man, I love the magic wand tool).

Speaking of the video, I took it from a fansub of the first episode and edited/encoded it in VirtualDub. I regret having to use a fansub, but I spent *ages* looking for a raw and couldn't find one. Sorry :( I also don't know why it didn't compress that well compared to the videos I usually do, it was plenty high quality enough. :/

Well, anyway, it should smoothly switch from the background to the video to the 'ending background' at the end. Unless you're using DWI, in which case I just disabled the video because I didn't have time to fight with DWI's background scripting system long enough to make it work. It will probably load up the ending background as the song background too because its filename appears later in the alphabet. I guess that's a shame but I don't really want to rename my files just for this - it's a pity DWI doesn't just let you specify what background image to use without forcing you to use a filename with no spaces in it, but such is life. If you use DWI and it bothers you, I recommend renaming the files yourself (change 'eg' to 'ag' or something) or just delete the 'eg' one. But after all, it's the steps that are important and not the video's DWI compatibility, right?

Because the fansub has its own karaoke I didn't put in a lyrics file, because it'd look weird. Unfortunately the fansub's lyrics are a little hard to read, so again I apologise.

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 End
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I would've liked to have more time to spend on this, but I'm hoping that I've put together a solid entry anyway. I hope you enjoy it and forgive me somewhat for this heinous song choice ;)

See you next competition (if it happens!)

Xythar
