Busy, Busy, Busy...
It's been more than a month since my last LJ update, so I figured it's about time I made one. As the title indicates, I have been pretty busy as of late, primarily with Stepmania related projects. So here is what I have been, and soon will be, doing:
DDRExtreme.co.uk's World Tour competition has finished.
My entry, which was "Il changeait la vie" by Jean-Jacques Goldman, didn't do so well. It finished in 14th place out of 20 entries. I was not surprised by this result however, because I wasn't pleased with the way the simfile came out. This song was very difficult to edit, as each verse and chorus starts shortly before the start of each measure of the music, and thus contains a small piece of the preceding music section. This fact, as well as my insistence on retaining the song's final chorus, resulted in the final edit's length being 2:23. This was much too long, as most DDR songs are around 1:15 to 1:45 in length. Of course, an excessively long song edit will end up with excessively long stepcharts, which began to feel repetitive by the end of the song. Thus, the scores I got from the judges were reduced both directly and indirectly by the edit's length. On the plus side, most participants in this competition had a high opinion of the arrow patterns used in the stepcharts, which makes me wonder where this entry would have ended up if the edit had been shorter.
An update pack will be released for the World Tour competition on July 31st.
I have already completed the update for my own entry. I tried to keep that final chorus in the edit, but I could not do so without either making the edit too long, or making it sound like crap. Ultimately, I bit the proverbial bullet and dropped the final chorus from the edit. This new edit has a total length of 1:43, and sound pretty good. A better sounding edit is theoretically possible, but, counting both the original and new edits, I have spent a total of eight hours just trying to edit the song itself, so I'm sticking with the current result. The stepcharts, of course, have been recreated to match the new song length, and I created a new banner for the simfile as well.
Bemanistyle's next competition has started.
I had thought that this contest would be some sort of themed competition, with DDR OSC 5 coming later, but I was mistaken; this competition is DDR OSC 5. I had considered entering either Anthem Apocalyptica by Machinae Supremacy and/or Mortal Kombat by The Immortals, but I will not have the time necessary to make either one, due to the amount of time I spent updating "Il changeait la vie".
The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort is subsiding.
My sister recently bought the online RPG "World of Warcraft", which we have both been playing. The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort is a special event which happens only once on each server. This event takes the form of a series of repeatable quests that require you to collect groups of various resources, such as Copper Bars and Linen Bandages, and bring them to the war effort suppliers. As of this point in time, the suppliers have met their quotas for most of the needed resources, which means the game world will return to normal shortly. As for what exactly the Ahn'Qiraj War is, I couldn't tell you.
As a side note, the locations in my 'Current Location' listings have actually been the current location of my character in World of Warcraft.
DDRExtreme.co.uk's next theme competition, CheeseMix 3, has begun.
As the title clearly indicates, this competition will feature 'cheesy' songs. The entry rules for CheeseMix 3 say to reference CheeseMix 2 to determine what may be considered 'cheesy' for contest purposes. The entry rules for CheeseMix 2 say to basically think of songs that might be played at a child's party. (It also says to keep the porn to a minimum, which makes me worry about the original CheeseMix...) All in all, this should be a particularly entertaining competition.
Finally, as is normal for this time of year, I have been getting more hours at work. This, combined with my desire to enter more than one song into CheeseMix 3, should ensure that I will be busy for a good while longer.
Current Location: Ratchet, The Barrens
Current song stuck in my head: Various potential CheeseMix entries.
DDRExtreme.co.uk's World Tour competition has finished.
My entry, which was "Il changeait la vie" by Jean-Jacques Goldman, didn't do so well. It finished in 14th place out of 20 entries. I was not surprised by this result however, because I wasn't pleased with the way the simfile came out. This song was very difficult to edit, as each verse and chorus starts shortly before the start of each measure of the music, and thus contains a small piece of the preceding music section. This fact, as well as my insistence on retaining the song's final chorus, resulted in the final edit's length being 2:23. This was much too long, as most DDR songs are around 1:15 to 1:45 in length. Of course, an excessively long song edit will end up with excessively long stepcharts, which began to feel repetitive by the end of the song. Thus, the scores I got from the judges were reduced both directly and indirectly by the edit's length. On the plus side, most participants in this competition had a high opinion of the arrow patterns used in the stepcharts, which makes me wonder where this entry would have ended up if the edit had been shorter.
An update pack will be released for the World Tour competition on July 31st.
I have already completed the update for my own entry. I tried to keep that final chorus in the edit, but I could not do so without either making the edit too long, or making it sound like crap. Ultimately, I bit the proverbial bullet and dropped the final chorus from the edit. This new edit has a total length of 1:43, and sound pretty good. A better sounding edit is theoretically possible, but, counting both the original and new edits, I have spent a total of eight hours just trying to edit the song itself, so I'm sticking with the current result. The stepcharts, of course, have been recreated to match the new song length, and I created a new banner for the simfile as well.
Bemanistyle's next competition has started.
I had thought that this contest would be some sort of themed competition, with DDR OSC 5 coming later, but I was mistaken; this competition is DDR OSC 5. I had considered entering either Anthem Apocalyptica by Machinae Supremacy and/or Mortal Kombat by The Immortals, but I will not have the time necessary to make either one, due to the amount of time I spent updating "Il changeait la vie".
The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort is subsiding.
My sister recently bought the online RPG "World of Warcraft", which we have both been playing. The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort is a special event which happens only once on each server. This event takes the form of a series of repeatable quests that require you to collect groups of various resources, such as Copper Bars and Linen Bandages, and bring them to the war effort suppliers. As of this point in time, the suppliers have met their quotas for most of the needed resources, which means the game world will return to normal shortly. As for what exactly the Ahn'Qiraj War is, I couldn't tell you.
As a side note, the locations in my 'Current Location' listings have actually been the current location of my character in World of Warcraft.
DDRExtreme.co.uk's next theme competition, CheeseMix 3, has begun.
As the title clearly indicates, this competition will feature 'cheesy' songs. The entry rules for CheeseMix 3 say to reference CheeseMix 2 to determine what may be considered 'cheesy' for contest purposes. The entry rules for CheeseMix 2 say to basically think of songs that might be played at a child's party. (It also says to keep the porn to a minimum, which makes me worry about the original CheeseMix...) All in all, this should be a particularly entertaining competition.
Finally, as is normal for this time of year, I have been getting more hours at work. This, combined with my desire to enter more than one song into CheeseMix 3, should ensure that I will be busy for a good while longer.
Current Location: Ratchet, The Barrens
Current song stuck in my head: Various potential CheeseMix entries.