GridStream Productions

I recently decided to risk public embarassment and give Dance Dance Revolution a try. Through this, I heard about an emulator called Stepmania(found at www.stepmania.com), where you can put your own songs into the program and give it your own steps. This of course, lead me to one train of thought.

"Dude, I want to DDR to Epicine."

Easier said than done, though. I'm not any good with notes or anything(I'm told I could be a musician, but I just don't have the drive), so actually making a step file thing would be rather disasterous.

The good news: It's relatively easy to do this if you can get the steps timed to the music(an important part of it, as any DDR player will tell you). The DWI file(what tells the game what steps to do, and when) is nothing but a text file. The steps are just numbers. Basically, in the file you tell it how many beats per minute are in the song(Tarryk, you should know...I mean, you DID make them), and then tell it, beat by beat, what steps should be done. I'm sure that a good number of GSP listeners are probably DDR players, and this'll probably be pretty popular...if, uh, someone can get it to work.

Heck, Tarryk, if you can give me an idea how many beats per minute are in the Epicine songs, I might even screw around and try to do it myself.

For those interested, I found a basic guide to DWI file making at http://www.ohioddr.com/ddr/dwifiledeveloping.php and the Stepmania program can be found at http://www.stepmania.com

Ok, just real quick...I already began messing around a bit. I took a wild guess with Without Epicine and went with 160 beats per minute...I'm sure it's way off, but hey it's a start. I just grabbed the steps from another DDR song, and threw them to Epicine...they didn't really go well, but hey it worked.

Even if you don't intend to do this seriously, you might want to look into it...it's kinda fun. Besides, just seeing a listing of "Gridstream Productions" and "Without Epicine by Epicine" on the song select screen is a riot.

Edit: Each time I try timing it now, I get an even higher bpm on the song...I can't freaking count. HELP

Edit Edit: I'm horrible at this. There's actually an editor included in the program itself. Someone else is BOUND to get this right.

Edit Edit EDIT: Yeah, ok, now I just timed it at 110...fuck, this is why I don't do music. I'm like, stopping now, ok?

Off the top of my head, I have no idea what the BPM on the epicine songs is. Although I'm leaning towards the believe that Animosity is either 130 or 140 on the original layout...can't remember if I rendered it with the same beat count though...hm...

Anyhow, you have too much time on your hands (lol).

Tarryk wrote:Anyhow, you have too much time on your hands (lol).

Yes, yes I do. Without Epicine ALMOST works right at 110 bpm...but at that speed the step list I "borrowed" is longer than the song, which is a bit odd. Still, I'll have to get a screenshot of the song on the selection screen...it's a riot. I even mocked up an Epicine banner and background for it.

Defintely too much time. Why are you messing with all that stuff when you could be playing AO? Some people, I swear..

Hey man, leveling gets old. Besides, I've got a lot of friends who don't play AO(yet...I've managed to convert two, have another taking the trial, and yet another already tried and may come back someday) and this might get some of them going "Who is this Epicine of which you speak..?"

I'm sorry to say.. if you have two (and a half cause one on the trial ^.^) playing AO and they haven't figured out who Epicine is, they need some serious education.. or get beat down. Like. A. Punk. lol

Well, for me, GSP is an integral part of my AO experience. I first started on AO around a month or so after inital release (yes, I know many people have been beta).. and found AO just completely dull. Bugs, profession problems, everything technical aside.. there was just no life to the game. Took me a few days, but soon as I found out about GSP I went from 95% DAoC player 5% real life to 95% AO player 5% real life.

Oh no, the ones who play AO fully know who Epicine is...I mean everyone ELSE in the chat I go to. They're almost all DDR fans though, and I'm sure this would be funny as hell to unleash on them.