The dance pad. Does it count as a toy?

Very few people will respond. Most step charters are very active and then disappear forever. That doesn't mean a certain kind of art shouldn't exist. We are already subverting the dominant paradigm by pushing forward and stepping music without permission from the musician. If you don't push forward with your art somebody else will in a different way. It is unlikely somebody will create your idea for you. Musical games are usually not brought up in discussions about artistic games. It won't happen without finding ways to advance the art of Stepmania. If you keep your game in storage nothing is added to the process.

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I don't know... To me, stepping music without permission from the musician doesn't serve as a threat. No one who steps other people's music profits from these simfiles. However, re-releasing other people's simfiles that they took the effort to create without permission is wrong. And if you plan on profiting (taking other people's hard drives counts as this), you might get in actual trouble for scamming.

What I'd recommend;

*Determine, without ANY music videos, what simfiles are the best. Including songs and stepcharts. If you're unsure on what would satisfy at least 60% of players, ask for opinions.

*Get permission. Snagging someone else's simfile without permission and distributing it is wrong. If a simfile qualifies for the best, it couldn't have been computer generation (autogen steps never work).

*Ask for help. Having testers who are experienced with simfiles give you advice might help you in the longrun.

*Learn how to animate. Why? Because then you can animate your own videos that, as you said, reflect on the song's influence, audience, and meaning. That way, we won't have severely unfitting videos (like that one I believe in miracles video) that can actually distract the player from enjoying the pack.

*Compress your videos. You said you would need harddrives shipped to you because the pack is around 20 gigabytes. I am 100% sure this is because of the music videos. If you can squash your video size (and maybe song count) down, then the size might improve bigtime.

*If the previous 2 steps fail, use generic movies. Now, I know you think that it might be lazy, but it might be your only chance at making this work. Not that many people care about videos playing in the background (although I like having generic videos play to my songs). Take this script a former Zenius -I- vanisher made for CAPTAIN JACK's THE RACE;



This is actually good, and we don't have a bunch of CAPTAIN JACK-themed animations (like DDR 3rdMIX did with this song). Using the correct combination of videos and permuting them to go to the music can be enjoyable to watch.




As demonstrated in your last two threads, your idea is broken, but it has potential to work. I think following the advice I gave might help you actually come through with this.

we should stop attempting to make rhythm games 'artistically sophisticated' because they aren't and never will be, at least not when you throw in a dumb AMV or anything with adolf fucking hitler

and are you still going "hey this file is huge so send me your HD if you want it" because that's going to kill it immediately

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Not gonna lie, he's got a point here.

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There is nothing artistically sophisticated about just adding a video in the background of a stepchart. Thousands of people have done the exact same thing with anime OP/ED songs for years; it is nothing original.

You know what probably is? Actual dancing. Make freestyle charts or something at least then you can be creative with how people play a stepchart.

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Hitler FGChanges would take this project to the next level, and would truly be art.

That would be my recommendation. You could always make your own charts but that's no fun

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It is wrong to obscure the author of the steps. You are not posing a threat by making an existing Stepmania package better. But to hide the author's name, you wind up taking credit for their talent. The way it has always been is to divide the Stepmania packages into author collections with the name of the author clearly visible. The hard drives BTW are just for transportation. I do not want to profit.


Good idea.


Bad idea. I have Stepmania packages from the Bemanistyle 5 days. Your art is very limited to them responding.


Good idea.


I do want to make more original videos. Good idea.


STEPMANIA isn't going to be limited in size. It is not something like TrotMania or FoonMix. STEPMANIA is only going to get bigger.


Only if there is minimum artistic value. I did a lot of experimenting with generic videos a long time ago. Now I want the song and the video to always be related.


And at that point there is no chance we can agree. I strongly believe video games can be high art. It just takes experimentation and work. Stepmania complicates the argument of are video games art by functioning as a platform for music and music videos.


With the except of Skittles (in bad quality) I rarely see anything other than the official music video used for the background. Fan made music videos are mostly unexplored territory. The Spanish comic I Believe In Miracles music video was an amazing discovery that makes me wonder what else is out there.

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Do they qualify for the best, though?


Can't you split it up into mixes? Like, STEPMANIA 1st mix/style, STEPMANAIA 2nd mix/style, and so on? Having to download, say, 500 songs at the same time might be hectic.

And there's something else... Should you call it STEPMANIA? It sounds as though you are trying to be the... "President"... of STEPMANIA by releasing packages under the same name.


What DDR platform do you use? I'm pretty sure that DDR Extreme (and the mixes that came below it) didn't have music videos, but rather the generic videos that Gabe's THE RACE video uses.


I don't know... Continued below;


The I Believe In Miracles music video is...ahem....peculiar. I'm confused on how the comic is, in your words, related to the song.

But I'm personally very concerned about the inclusion of Hitler. I mean, I don't see harm in including ANY characters for fun (it might be the source of gossip, but at least it's not harmful), but it's Hitler. We're talking about the disgrace that could have costed millions of people today from even existing. I don't know if you should use that video.

Also, I noticed you made a demonstration for Afronova...



Something about this is also rank... In fact, there's one part where gameplay of DDR 3rdMIX IS the background movie. Combine that with your simplistic interface, and the arrows against arrows is going to be distracting, occasionally make the player mess up, and will cause massive headaches. I think DDR Extreme 2's video fit the African tribal feeling better.




What this post comes down to is I like your idea, but your execution is poor and needs work.

yeah. video games *can* be art, but this is a game about frantically stepping on four arrows, you are simply grabbing files that other people made, putting it in your 'pack' and claiming it to be art because there's a stupid video in the background. if anything, you make the experience worse because you're trying to make visuals more important than gameplay.

this isn't limbo, this is fucking DDR. y'know, the game that's full of cheesy j-pop that really is no good outside of the game (imo) that we play simply to have a good time. not to marvel at the stupid bg videos. music games are about music. there are video games that are fucking beautiful in an artistic sense (the original bioshock comes to mind first) and give a strong sense of people putting their heart and soul into the thing.

but you're making a "fan expansion" on an outdated game with BAAAAAD visual enhancements that obscure and even ruin the gameplay, what's the point? when this is, and I dread to think it will be, 'released', you'll get nothing but these same complaints that you heard from the moment you first started, and people will probably simply get rid of what they downloaded and grab something much, much better.

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I thought we were talking about dance pads...

can someone lock this thread already

Art is dead.

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