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[mrkgoo]

You know, Dance Dance Revolution isn't the most technologically advanced game out there. In fact, it really annoys me how Konami can charge full price for these games. Sure, when the first, perhaps second, maybe even third game to come out on home console, they can charge high so they can recoop development costs, but surely by now, they're using the same old engine, just with a a few hours put in by some rhythm guru to choose steps. I understand that song licences aren't free, but still, it can't amount to the same kind of expense required to fund a major title such as Halo 2, Zelda, or what have you for how ever many years.

Anyway, that's not what I want to bring up - The game is simple, right? Consoles are fairly powerfuly, right? So is it possible to have some kind of DDR game, which is stored in RAM, maybe even the memory card, or for XBox, the hard drive, and allow you to put in your own music CD, have the program read selected tracks, and come up with beats and dance steps to the music? - Maybe an algorthim that detects the major beat in a track (afterall, that's where the main steps come from), by 'listening' to the frequency levels and such. Don't know, I'm not really a music buff - perhaps it's already been done... (You know, kind of Vib Ribbon style, but with a smarter aI so that it can come up with cool steps, or utilise step templates, not just random generation). At the very least, have an editor to allow you to come up with your own steps ON YOUR OWN MUSIC CD.

For me this would enhance the longevity of these titles to a near infinite replayabilit,y if it were incorporated well. Then again, that's not exactly what a business wants now, is it?

 

[bjork]

They already have something like this on PC, don't they?

 

[Overseer]

Do what ultramix 2 did, have XBOX Live and get more songs.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Possible? Sure. But as you say, they'd rather continue to sell more discs. The closest you'll find is probably something like Dance With Intensity for PC.

 

[Justin Bailey]

You know, Dance Dance Revolution isn't the most technologically advanced game out there. In fact, it really annoys me how Konami can charge full price for these games. Sure, when the first, perhaps second, maybe even third game to come out on home console, they can charge high so they can recoop development costs, but surely by now, they're using the same old engine, just with a a few hours put in by some rhythm guru to choose steps. I understand that song licences aren't free, but still, it can't amount to the same kind of expense required to fund a major title such as Halo 2, Zelda, or what have you for how ever many years.

Well companies don't sell stuff at a price that covers their costs, they sell stuff at the price that the market is willing to pay for it. It's not Konami's fault people still buy these games at $40 a pop.

 

[Asskicker064]

Possible? Sure. But as you say, they'd rather continue to sell more discs. The closest you'll find is probably something like Dance With Intensity for PC.

DWI is shit. Use Stepmania.

Also, randomly generated steps would probably be uncomfortable. If it went through and made a step chart, then you edited it, it might be better.

 

[miyuru]

Konami I believe released a disc like this for PSX that did what you're talking about, though it didn't work out so well (IIRC, don't flame me if I'm wrong!).

IMO randomly generated steps would be all right, but they're only average fun to play. If you have an individual working on a specific set of steps for a specific song, you'll get really cool sequences that match the smaller nuances of the song on harder difficulties. Randomly generating the steps will result in the same general sequences at different tempos.

 

[BuddyC]

I actaully talked to Jason Enos about this at E3. I really don't have the time to go into detail on it, but there are numerous reasons as to why it's not very likely. Only a very small chunk of people would actually take the time to create a worthwhile set of steps for a song.

They've actually made games that detect the music and makes steps based off of that, check out eXxy's article, The Dance Dance [R]evolution, for some info on that.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

DWI is shit. Use Stepmania.

I don't have a PC pad, so my use of it has been pretty minimal. What makes Stepmania so much better?

 

[Laurent]

The rights for licensing songs themselves justify the price of the game. Can you imagine, if an album that contains arround 10 songs costs 10$, how much can a soundtrack of 80 songs cost?

Anyway, DDR RULES! I can't understand people that want to dance on their own music... It's not that kind of game!

 

[vireland]

Also, randomly generated steps would probably be uncomfortable. If it went through and made a step chart, then you edited it, it might be better.

Confirmed. We tried some random-step generation tests and it was pretty annoying and not much fun at all. The current DDR games have song/step pairings that are good to godly. Random doesn't come close. It *might* be interesting to have specific step sequences that are swapped out on a block-by-block basis, but not individual steps. Maybe even have a new mode called "dynamic" that senses how you're doing and begins swapping in step-blocks (sequences) from the next harder difficulty until you're seamlessly able to do the next level entirely.

 

[VariableTerry]

*hugs stepmania x on modded xbox*

 

[M3wThr33]

Stepmania is open source and much more updated than DWI. SimWolf stopped updating DWI over a year and a half ago. Stepmania is still being worked on everyday. DWI is more of a quick way to play songs and get into playing it fast. Stepmania is MUCH more robust.
I originally preferred DWI because it ran faster and had the same feature list, but that was a YEAR AND A HALF AGO. Now I keep up with SM, have about 20GB of songs and bg vids.

SM also supports more indepth customization. You can make XML-based skins and even game mods. Just download an smzip and it's installed. I have Ez2Dancer, Pump It Up, Technomotion, and Pop N Music simulators also installed inside SM. SM also includes an auto-gen program, so steps for any format can work on any other format and the conversion works pretty well. It even can try to add in higher or lower difficulties.

 

[Tain]

Maybe an algorthim that detects the major beat in a track (afterall, that's where the main steps come from)

This is generally not all that accurate.

But, yes, Stepmania + Xbox is bliss.

 

[bobbyconover]

Konami tried this long ago, and the result was the Japanese psx game "Goo Goo Soundy." It sucked. Honestly, I've never played an insert-your-own-disc game with beat matching capabilities that has pulled it off even remotely well, though Internal Section and Vib Ribbon were OK. Just not OK enough to work for a game based around very precise timing with the music.

 

[Agent Icebeezy]

someone explain this stepmania and modded xbox, mine is modded too

 

[miyuru]

It's called StepmaniaX. I'll probably install it onto my Xbox after exams. On that note, can anyone post a link to a good tutorial on how to do so?

 

[Belfast]

What bobby said. They tried it and it sucked. Its not just about matching the beat, its about contructing the steps in a certain way so that your own motions feel natural. The more you play DDR, the more you identify certain steps with certain songs, something which would also be lost with this technology. Its honestly something that can't be reliably reproduced by a simple algorithm.

 

[mrkgoo]

What bobby said. They tried it and it sucked. Its not just about matching the beat, its about contructing the steps in a certain way so that your own motions feel natural. The more you play DDR, the more you identify certain steps with certain songs, something which would also be lost with this technology. Its honestly something that can't be reliably reproduced by a simple algorithm.

Surely not... I mean, we have AI in console games that allow enemies to gang up on you, or friendly units to undergo various tasks at your bidding. We have advanced computers able to play chess, or bots to combat you in FPS. We have speech recognition. and so on and so forth... can we not have something that tries to stitch together 4 keys in a non-random, smart way? Even if it required waiting a few minutes for the computer to calculate, or required some feedback.... (maybe as someone suggested, blocks of steps).

I dunno - I think it's not so much a matter of whether developers can do it, but whether they want to.

Then again, I'm no techno-boffin, so what would I know?

 

[Belfast]

No, it can be done, it just isn't going to be any fun. Its hard to say why, exactly, but if you play rhythm games with any sort of regularity, there's just this *feeling* to the flow of the notes/steps/etc. that cannot be reproduced reliably by an algorithm. It can be done, it just wouldn't be as entertaining as it sounds.

 

[Teknopathetic]

I understand what Belfast means. Imagine a song like Bag being recreated via some weird algorithm. It'd be really, really boring.

 

[Tain]

I mean, we have AI in console games that allow enemies to gang up on you, or friendly units to undergo various tasks at your bidding.

But all of these actions are completely pre-defined or assisted through pre-defined waypoints. This is why AI isn't exactly as scalar in quality as some people tend to think.

Even though DDR relies on something as simple as four arrows, I'd have to agree that the result would be ugly. Besides, how would it break down 1/2 beat steps and the like? 1/16ths? Those just wouldn't work without being nonsensical.

 

[mrkgoo]

Of course, one would want to have it as flowing as possible - so with this in mind, you're saying it can't be done?

No algorithm could detect tempo, break down a song into repeated parts, have a double arrow here, a set piece there?

Maybe the techonology to be 'creative' just isn't available in console power at the moment - I guess it's like asking a computer to come up with a new piece of music.

 

[miyuru]

Well, yeah, exactly what I've been saying.

You can have a program detect the BPM and different sections of the song. Though the steps will never be unique from each other, in the sense that an experienced player would be able to tell which steps were randomly generated, and which ones were created specifically for that particular song. Even though they are randomly generated, all steps are the result of a single application, unlike the limitless creativity of a human mind.

 

[Tain]

No algorithm could detect tempo

That's just the thing, though. I've never seen any software that does a half-decent job at detecting tempo. If someone could manage to implement a useful BPM detector in a console game, though, I'd be all for the ability to at least vaguely autogen a stepchart and have the player fill in the rest.