When's BM6?

[Jezendar]

A January start sounds good to me. It'll give me (and I suspect some others) time to de-rust before we start this.

[lrxevan2]

Should we set up a discord? That could be fun

[MixMasterLar]

I'm not entirely against Discord, it's super convient but I'm fine giving this page a little traffic haha

[BLueSS]

I'm curious what we're building this on or what the intended release version is. Last I played heavily was on 3.95+ and I wasn't a big fan of SM5 at the time I dropped out of the game.

I'm leaning towards SM5, with an old-school theme recommended. I think I'll open a poll.

Are there any specifics I need to keep in mind for that, graphics (i.e. resolutions of images, do I need a jacket file, etc.)? I mean we can go back to old low-res like it used to be back around the turn of the century if you want to keep it really DDR EX-esque.

TBD. I'm thinking that we stick to banner/bg only; and jacket could easily be resized from the BG.

Also, did you have any theming suggestions for songs in mind since we're sort of basing this on old stuff in general or were you more or less going open season on any and all songs?

I'll keep it simple like I used to: NO songs from any version of DDR.
Anything else is free game, except songs meant to inflict harm or pain on others.

[Hiryuu]

I'll have to take a look into the recent builds of 5 then and see what the story is then.

Should we set up a discord? That could be fun

Yea, I'm down if you want.

[MixMasterLar]

Honestly everyone not rocking SM 3.9 needs to look into ArrowVortex for their charting needs.


The first version of SM5 Online was painful to me

Later versions are better but I don't prefer the editor over 3.95. Like the stable release of 5 doesnt even let you copy and paste whole sections of a chart as far as I can figure out.

OutFoxy is the current one and on the user end it's nice, but I have limited playtime on it and haven't seen the editor.

[Juub005]

Hey there folks :)

I did release a file during one of the Z-i-v competitions a year or so ago. Not sure if it got any points, but it had plenty of double stepping and spins, so maybe it was coincidentally in fashion as #Infinity seems to indicate?

No idea what the modern stepping style is. I have played DDR in arcades (including with sanchny!) over the past couple of years, but I don't have any of the equipment at home, and I haven't seen the most recent games. Zumba is more my thing these days :)

FYI BlueSS, your email went to spam for me :/ You might want to send another one as January draws nearer.

[Hiryuu]

...No idea what the modern stepping style is...

Well, if the 3 Challenge charts that comes with SM5 are any indication...

[Oni-91]

I did release a file during one of the Z-i-v competitions a year or so ago. Not sure if it got any points, but it had plenty of double stepping and spins, so maybe it was coincidentally in fashion as #Infinity seems to indicate?

I dug this boy up, and it was Battle Royale 2017. You got kinda dunked on because the voting system was a bit mangled and everyone only had five sets of points to give out from a list of 40+ entries.

I remember BR2017 as the one I won whilst teeeeeechnically cheating. Statute of limitations is 3 years, right?

[MixMasterLar]

...No idea what the modern stepping style is...

Well, if the 3 Challenge charts that comes with SM5 are any indication...

I'll say for pad files, Gpop (or DDR_F4n if you're real old school) is probably considered one of the most polished charters around. Check out his newer packs (Touhou/Vocaloid/Variety Pack 2) for an idea of what people want in pad rn. I personally love them for Keyboard, but a lot of that is due to the fact I dont have a pad.....

It's that and then 1100 arrows of pure staminia draining 16ths as far as I can tell.

[lrxevan2]

Some format suggestions, feel free to disagree:

I think jackets are fun and could be included because many new stepmania themes use them even if they weren't in classic DDR. IMO jackets are one of the best new additions to DDR after Extreme, they look great and give you more room artistically than a banner.

Banners are 512x512, bgs 1280x720 with a bias towards text in the center to make them backwards compatible with old Extreme themes, banners 512x160. Any smaller and they look crazy bad on newer monitors. Most of us were still using 4:3 aspect ratios in 2006.

Song length is tricky because I know many folks really dislike the shorter song lengths of DDR Extreme. In the nDDRo days we went with the max length of the longest DDR song, which I believe was Kakumei at 1:51. However generally I think we grew to agree that it was okay for the steps to end at the 1:51 mark, rather than the length of the mp3 to be 1:51 at most.

All of this is fairly conservative I think because I'm a boomer so whatever

[Chmurek]

Hello there fellow TRICK and MANIAC players! :D

I'm still alive and stomping, we're keeping DDR active in Poland with help of newer generations of players. Crazy to think that some of them weren't even alive then DDR 1st Mix was released.

I'll gladly join any kind of reunion that's gonna happen here! I'd love a contest in the general vibe of "party like it's 2004 and SuperNova is not released yet". Something that utilizes the modern technical possibilities (jackets, high-res graphics and videos) but still celebrates those old times.

I'm all for keeping the anonymity of the main contest. It makes things easier when it comes to judging, at least for me. It also introduces the element of speculation who entered what and the surprise at the end when the results are finally revealed. I personally always loved the anonymous nature of this contest because it felt like everyone is always on equal footing and the focus is on the simfiles only.

PS. I found that I still have the original source files for my Vodka video, maybe it's a good time for a 4K Ultra HD remaster?

[Hiryuu]

I'll say for pad files, Gpop (or DDR_F4n if you're real old school) is probably considered one of the most polished charters around. Check out his newer packs (Touhou/Vocaloid/Variety Pack 2) for an idea of what people want in pad rn. I personally love them for Keyboard, but a lot of that is due to the fact I dont have a pad.....

It's that and then 1100 arrows of pure staminia draining 16ths as far as I can tell.

Oh I still talk to him...

https://twitter.com/Gpop119/status/1318728829582610432

[Moonside]

...No idea what the modern stepping style is...

Well, if the 3 Challenge charts that comes with SM5 are any indication...

All of those files are at least seven years old by now lol, I wouldn't use them as a benchmark of anything

stealth edit: I'm excited to participate in this, I was in the last ZIv Summer Contest as Silver Spirit and while I didn't make great files I'd be excited for more contests to be in!

[Telperion]

...No idea what the modern stepping style is...

Well, if the 3 Challenge charts that comes with SM5 are any indication...

I have yet to see or hear of anyone playing those charts in real life XD

I think it's absolutely reasonable and smart to make BEST-mix 6 a DDR styled tourney (I'm down for the format BlueSS described last page). The ITG communities are pretty well covered these days with competitions like Technical Showcase and Stamina Showcase, and Z-I-v is generally very permissive about chart style, so there is an opening for a purely DDR style tourney even after Freestyle Showcase runs.

As for graphics I'm with lrxevan on including jackets, 16:9 BGs, and 512x160 banners. Think of jackets as "future proofing"...and it's easy to crop a BG in a pinch haha