Post #1 · Posted at 2023-12-25 12:27:52pm 4.1 months ago
 magallanes2023 | |
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Member |
| 5 Posts | |
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| Reg. 2023-06-22 | |
Hi everybody and Merry xmas.
"Thanks" to the co-vid, I returned to play Stepmania at home. I've not played DDR in years, but I still remember a lot of songs.
Now we live in a new era, and it is time to admit that the Arcades are gone practically everywhere. They will not return (and thanks to the co-vid, the few arcades alive are now dead or turned into ufo-catches or betting slots).
But we could still play at home.
However, Stepmania & clones, and the whole community in general still try to resemble the old arcade and it does not make any sense anymore. Everybody loves old songs and that is nothing wrong with it, but it is not the same about the gaming style. For example, when Stepmania gives you 3 songs per coin (default config), we could change the mode to "free mode", or "unlimited songs", but the default feature is 3 songs per coin. Maybe the younger dancers will not even understand what it means at all.
Control
My main gripe is the use of the mat everywhere and not only for stepping. Why? We are not in an arcade anymore, we have a keyboard and mouse (or joypad), so we don't need to select songs using the dance mat, and truly using the dance mat to select songs is unpractical, especially when we have more than +1000 songs and it
I changed my "game" with this inexpensive keyboard
They are sold everywhere (and it costs $10 bucks) and I can control Windows and the game, without using the dance mat anymore. But, what about the real-arcade experience? gone and we never needed it.
I wish games could have a more keyboard-aimed experience, for example, to find a song by name instead of the rollout, which is a PITA if you have more than 1000+ songs (and I bet I am not alone on this one).
Maybe we need a more Excel-style experience and less, bell & whistle one, especially when we are hoarded with a lot of songs
(ok, maybe not as so ugly as excel but it a way to easily find songs)
Also, the GUI (afaik), does not have favorites (without some weird keystrokes), search by typing, etc.
duration
We don't need short songs as mandatory anymore. Short songs (radio/ddr edit) are cool but now we could game with long songs, which could make it easy to add new songs and to obtain the videos without cutting part of it. IMHO, a long song should be the standard, while we could leave short versions for original arcade or hard-intensive songs.
most wished feature is missing: most played songs
Amazingly, one of the most wished features is still missed. I discard the "most played song" in extended mode because this mode is weird: it allows us to play some songs in random order, with no mods, and non-stop.
I did some script to collect the most favorite songs from Stat.xml (what is that file? It is where all the statistics are stored), and created symbolic links with new "groups". Since those new groups are not real files, then don't use space and we could play as any normal song.
I wish to share this script but since it is done in PHP, then maybe I should put it as a website instead of a script.
So far, I've found that from the +10k songs that I have, I've only played 600 songs, and from that, I've played 150 songs only once.
It is the feature that I like the most because it doesn't disturb my experience by spending time finding songs.
For example, it is one of my groups: (Knight of Knights is my favorite song by far).
randomize songs/change level
I wish I could generate steps from the song automatically. An old Java program could do that but the result is horrible at best.
So far, I've managed to create a script to change the level of some songs, I am not young anymore, and since I freestyle + nobars, every song over 10 is a no-go for me, so I decided to create another script to reduce the difficulty of some songs. I too want to share it but it needs some fixing up, and maybe I will share it as a website instead of a script (PHP).
I wish I could put any mp3 and the game could generate its steps but it could retain the mood and style and not just random steps. So, far I have experienced it and it is possible but it requires a lot of work. I wish somebody liked vib-ribbon but the mood and style are important.
A game like vib-ribbon does that.
"Thanks" to the co-vid, I returned to play Stepmania at home. I've not played DDR in years, but I still remember a lot of songs.
Now we live in a new era, and it is time to admit that the Arcades are gone practically everywhere. They will not return (and thanks to the co-vid, the few arcades alive are now dead or turned into ufo-catches or betting slots).
But we could still play at home.
However, Stepmania & clones, and the whole community in general still try to resemble the old arcade and it does not make any sense anymore. Everybody loves old songs and that is nothing wrong with it, but it is not the same about the gaming style. For example, when Stepmania gives you 3 songs per coin (default config), we could change the mode to "free mode", or "unlimited songs", but the default feature is 3 songs per coin. Maybe the younger dancers will not even understand what it means at all.
Control
My main gripe is the use of the mat everywhere and not only for stepping. Why? We are not in an arcade anymore, we have a keyboard and mouse (or joypad), so we don't need to select songs using the dance mat, and truly using the dance mat to select songs is unpractical, especially when we have more than +1000 songs and it
I changed my "game" with this inexpensive keyboard
They are sold everywhere (and it costs $10 bucks) and I can control Windows and the game, without using the dance mat anymore. But, what about the real-arcade experience? gone and we never needed it.
I wish games could have a more keyboard-aimed experience, for example, to find a song by name instead of the rollout, which is a PITA if you have more than 1000+ songs (and I bet I am not alone on this one).
Maybe we need a more Excel-style experience and less, bell & whistle one, especially when we are hoarded with a lot of songs
(ok, maybe not as so ugly as excel but it a way to easily find songs)
Also, the GUI (afaik), does not have favorites (without some weird keystrokes), search by typing, etc.
duration
We don't need short songs as mandatory anymore. Short songs (radio/ddr edit) are cool but now we could game with long songs, which could make it easy to add new songs and to obtain the videos without cutting part of it. IMHO, a long song should be the standard, while we could leave short versions for original arcade or hard-intensive songs.
most wished feature is missing: most played songs
Amazingly, one of the most wished features is still missed. I discard the "most played song" in extended mode because this mode is weird: it allows us to play some songs in random order, with no mods, and non-stop.
I did some script to collect the most favorite songs from Stat.xml (what is that file? It is where all the statistics are stored), and created symbolic links with new "groups". Since those new groups are not real files, then don't use space and we could play as any normal song.
I wish to share this script but since it is done in PHP, then maybe I should put it as a website instead of a script.
So far, I've found that from the +10k songs that I have, I've only played 600 songs, and from that, I've played 150 songs only once.
It is the feature that I like the most because it doesn't disturb my experience by spending time finding songs.
For example, it is one of my groups: (Knight of Knights is my favorite song by far).
randomize songs/change level
I wish I could generate steps from the song automatically. An old Java program could do that but the result is horrible at best.
So far, I've managed to create a script to change the level of some songs, I am not young anymore, and since I freestyle + nobars, every song over 10 is a no-go for me, so I decided to create another script to reduce the difficulty of some songs. I too want to share it but it needs some fixing up, and maybe I will share it as a website instead of a script (PHP).
I wish I could put any mp3 and the game could generate its steps but it could retain the mood and style and not just random steps. So, far I have experienced it and it is possible but it requires a lot of work. I wish somebody liked vib-ribbon but the mood and style are important.
A game like vib-ribbon does that.
Post #2 · Posted at 2023-12-25 02:04:25pm 4.1 months ago
| eataninja | |
|---|---|
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Member |
| 810 Posts | |
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| Reg. 2011-05-05 | |
The Etterna community (branch of Stepmania that focused on KB play) has most of these features built into their fork of Stepmania:
https://etternaonline.com/
Unfortunately there isn't really a pad/index equivalent to this, so the most played songs, and the songs in their search engine, are going to center on popular 4k and 6k packs. But it's a start and iirc most of the main ITG packs are on there.
https://etternaonline.com/
Unfortunately there isn't really a pad/index equivalent to this, so the most played songs, and the songs in their search engine, are going to center on popular 4k and 6k packs. But it's a start and iirc most of the main ITG packs are on there.