Making the "Ultimate/Premium Best DDR" for Stepmania?

Lots of talk about new DDRs, and what we want from it has been bouncing around in my head, and given the traffic there, I'm sure I'm not alone. And it's also kind of unobvious, a lot of creators around here have been in a bit of a lazy gear, and it's not mystery we all want to do as little as we must to make something work. Finally, the last thing is that there's a *some* kind of intrinsic polish and substinance about playing real, official DDRs (or ITGs if you'd rather) that Stepmania just doesn't compensate for.

There's also plenty of on-the-table features that seem to be picking up *some* momentum around here - mini megamixes, long versions, 6-panel and new charts, choreography mode... that sort of stuff.

So herein lies the challenge! How much of that could we actually accomplish with Stepmania right now? What exactly seems to be missing, and what can we do about that? As far as adding new charts like 6-Panel/ - it's pretty ludicrous to be doing that with all 1500+ DDR songs right now, but which ones would be worth doing that for - absolute, universal MUST-PLAY favorites, and a good enough variety thereof to make a decent "premium package" with? Then there's the long/medley stages, that sort of thing.

Should we flesh out our present Stepmania setups to produce/include in this experience, or keep our fingers crossed and hope Konami picks up the ball somehow? Maybe even a better, more polished one even, perhaps?

Also, I'm surely aware of the SM version conflict; but there should be a way to work with every build of Stepmania to at least create a complimentary experience.

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I'm actually been working on something like this over the summer and although I'm not too sure for 6-panel play I can direct you to some step artists who have consistently made some pretty solid charts for DDR songs.

nykhoddr
Nemesetup
TimeSpaceMage (His category are not all necessarily created by him but he has compiled a pretty good selection of edits)
Kingoflight (his files are not on the site but you should be able to find them on the internet without too much trouble. PM me if you want a link)
Silenttype01
EDIT:
XeneSyS 87 (I really wish he made more charts though. Some nice Mario Mix edits.)

There are also some challenge chart makers who I would mostly avoid, but I won't post them for the sake of not butthurting some people. PM me if you wan't to know who they are.

Everything from 1st Mix - DDRMAX has fan-made and Konami-endorsed "harder-than-maniac" charts contained on the CS version of 5th Mix. There was a collection of these charts in .DWI format, but it's long-gone from the internet, and I doubt anyone still has a backup, so you'd have to pick and choose and then code them in from 5th Mix again.


Anything that's fan-made isn't going to have that polish, especially when it comes to things like 6-panel / 3 panel / Couple charts, because those charts haven't been made in over 12 years, and while a small handful of people kind of understand how to create authentic-looking 4-panel charts, nobody has any idea how 6-panel works. Anything made by fans would bear no resemblance to the real thing.

Think back to when DWI came out, and how bad fan-made simfiles were, for the first 2 years of it's existence. That's how bad 6-panel files would be :{

Umm... I do. ;) I made a big bunch of appendable 6-panel charts for songs up through EXTREME; although they too may be perhaps lost to the void. I LEARNED DDR on a Solo cab.


But I guess the first thing to wonder about is... what even IS that polish that fanmixes are lacking? I know a lot of them disregard course mode entirely, but that's just one piece of the formula. Is it characters? Is it theming? Is it really an announcer pack? BG videos? What little touches do we need?

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I'm not gonna lie, I'm flattered that you mentioned me. I didn't think anyone really paid attention to my simfiles. (I know that a lot of my older ones are terrible, though)

If something like this were to happen, I would definitely be up for helping out. However...I can not since the sound drive in my laptop decided to be nonexistent, hence why I haven't made one new simfile in the past year or so.

As far as simfiles go, it's that we don't know what thought process went into creating the official charts. I could make a passable Oni chart for a DDRMax song, but making something that looks authentic and polished would be beyond me. I know what people want out of an Oni chart, but I don't know what Konami think people want out of an Oni chart.

Another problem is that since ITG came out, the general consensus of what makes a "good" chart is definately not in line with Konami's chart creation pilosophy, and since the SuperNOVA series, we now have people other than MR DOG and D-Crew making official charts, which really shows when you can look at something like A Geisha's Dream Ruffage Mix or Max300 Jondi & Spesh remix, and see that they clearly stand apart from similar songs from the pre-Supernova era They just aren't created with the same mind-set.


I think "moving backgrounds" add a lot of polish. If I were to tell you which dancing games look the most polished (to a by-stander walking past a machine which is being played), I'd say :

Pump It Up (unique, hand-animated backgrounds that are choreographed to the music)
Stepping Stage (unique live-action music videos and dance routines)
Pre-max DDR (unique artwork with terrible animation overlays)
DDRX Series (real-time dancing models with no noticable diversity between songs)
Pump It Up Pro (terrible hand-animated backgrounds)
In The Groove (short video clips that have no correlation to the song)
Pop'n Stage (notes move up a screen while nothing interesting happens)

With the exception of Pump It Up Pro, I think the correlation is that the most polished games are simply the ones that the most people have spent the longest amount of time working on. IIDX, DJMax Technika and Pump It Up are all simply miles above every other music game in terms of presentation, because each song has it's own distinctive video, which is choreographed to the music.

If you look at something like Xepher, which is probably the most iconic videos in any music game, it's actually really cheap. It's a couple of hand-drawn pieces of art, which are overlayed on top of each other, and moved across the screen. Most people don't realise that Xepher's video isn't actually an animation, because the drawings all look amazing, and the video flips between them in time to the music. All of the Pump It Up videos are made in the same way, and it just looks amazing, because of the amount of effort that paid professionals have poured into making single video, for every single song.

If the whole forum pulled together, could we make Xepher? Could we make background dancing models? I don't think we could ever make an authentic-looking DDR game, without using or cloning the assets Konami have produced, so it's really a matter of what we actually want to aim for. It would personally aim for cloning the assets, and compiling official chart data, rather than trying to make your own.

I don't think we're trying to replicate CURRENT Konami trends in stepcharting! At least, not necessarily in the Ruffage Remix example you give. YOWZA. What I DO gather is that each mix gives a certain trend in it's charting - 3rd Mix has a lot of double-taps, step-jumps, and pivot-streams in them. 4th Mix has a lot of simple streaming sequences. 5th Mix adds some more complexity in the patternwork, but is still very stream-oriented. DDRMAX tried to REALLY fit the music, minimize difficulty, and maximize difficulty (which I believe is one reason it's REALLY popular). Ultramix 2 really did that to some extent, as well.
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Well, being in the process of a simplistic BGA package, here's a few things I've gathered from it:

-Unless your songs have a predetermined script, it takes longer to load and generate the "random" ones than it does to load a AVI video, even. So scripting for a pack like this would be a must, unless everything is gonna be videoed. Another potential advantage to scripting (a few fanmixes have demonstrated this) is that you can have song-specific assets that are included.

It *could* be a recommended step that each song has at least ONE distinct artwork like this, outside of the banner/jacket/BG.

-They aren't hard to generate even reasonably impressive ones. For a solid one, all it takes is one background layer (and sometimes even using the default song BG works just fine, in moderation), and then a foreground layer with high transparency. I'd like to get a transparent sakura blossom pic to layer in front of a couple of my WIPs (the cherry trees, the samurai with the full moon), but I've been lazy (and mostly working in MSPaint, and on occasion, Game Maker 8's internal image editor).

Heck, one of them is just the B4U (B4-ZA BEAT) background from Universe, layered with stock NAOKI Tigerzord art tile-scrolling in the foreground.

-Stock art, and things normally associated with DDR, IIDX, and certain songs in particular are awesome for that. Other good things include line/spiral art (IE: script for spinning), stuff that looks like it has a natural, directional flow (IE: script for scrolling). Wallpaper sites are also really good for this.
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I'll level with ya - I always kinda viewed characters as an extraneous feature, but there is certainly a following for them. So I don't really know much/a lot about them, never really installed any on my SM setup; but I have used Poser before. Also, while *I* like the DDR Ultramix/Universe thing where they're recolored and tweaked in with the background effects, I'm not sure how popular that is all-around. Plus, wouldn't it be better to have some kind of... I dunno, artistic consistency about them?

I could do attack sets for them, maybe even default mods, and if push comes to shove, I could even make "vs. Character" courses; although finding a way to implement something gameplay-wise?

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Have them. They were included in the very last DDRUK bumper release, appended in the .dwis of their respective songs, commented out. Fair warning though, some of the charts could be entire measures off.

I avoid Stepmania in part due to the fact that it's just layers of piracy but it's also just not as fun without the characters. But if this "game" were made to keep the community alive rather than split it into other directions as the overwhelming amount of simfiles do now, I'd feel less bad playing it.

The special mode (whatever Subspace Emissary was to Smash Bros. in some sense the Maser modes) strikes me as the main attraction to a new DDR. You still have a bunch of people who are going to play it solely for the songs and charts, and for that reason, I wonder... would having everything unlocked from the start would be a good thing? Hence why I'm avoiding the term "unlock mode." The special mode, then, would just be for fun, completion's sake, and to introduce people to other songs.

Wasn't one person trying to solo model all the SN+ characters? Which was lovely... except I only remember Jenny, Emi?, Alice, Yuni, and Rage, who all have older models to use... there is not, however, a Zero at all. xP Not trying to gripe; if it was easy, I'd do it, but it is definitely work.

... and I kind of really want a story based on Rinon. Or Devil Zukin, but that wouldn't make a lot of sense right now... unless you're Konami of America and think Devil had anything remotely to do with RDA.
Dibs on writing the next story mode. Assuming this isn't going to happen and I don't actually have to make it good...

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Not sure if this is what you're talking about...

http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/viewsimfilecategory.php?categoryid=507

I actually have 1st-5th mix, solo & club mix, and DDRMAX & DDR Ultramix done. I'll upload them at some point.

Sorry if this isn't what you mean.