Community Fire Pit #001: Have too many of today’s simfiles become no-fun gimmicks?

Published on September 24, 2009 in Community Fire Pit. 0 Comments

Starting with the older DDR arcade games containing the PlayStation memory card port which would allow people to play edited stepfiles from their home version of the game in the arcade. While there were quite a few custom DDR simulators being released, Dance With Intensity and StepMania were the two biggest names which really started to push the custom-simfile community. With the ability to play and create any custom simfile on these simulators, the custom simfile community began its rapid growth. Originally, it was very difficult to make simfiles. The programs weren’t robust enough to do much with your files, and there generally wasn’t enough interest in the community for these kinds of projects to be very large. While right now, there are complete games being created out of custom and licensed songs, these types of expeditions were unheard of back in the early days of the simfile community.

Simfile tournaments eventually popped up and quality was a big reason for the success of those tournaments. The judges were tough and the best of the best simfiles moved on into the final rounds of the tournament bracket to be featured in the finishing pack. Sites like BemaniStyle.com were still new around the time of the simfile tournaments and didn’t have the huge over-arching presence they do now. After the release of the R21 patch for the arcade version of In the Groove 2, the simfile community grew even larger because anyone could now make a custom simfile and play it at their favorite arcade. More sites began hosting single simfiles specifically designed with this newer In the Groove 2 R21-patched audience in mind. The largest of whom was GrooveStats.com which is currently one of the leaders of this new movement.

Dalton “BlueChaos” starts off with his opinion of what’s become of the simfile community. Are there just too many artists or have people just resorted to using only repetitive gimmicks?
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New server hardware finally

Published on September 12, 2009 in Site Update. 0 Comments

As of September 8th, we’ve been on some new, more efficient hardware. Dreamhost promised to move us to a new server whenever they wanted to in exchanged for us to receive unlimited storage space and bandwidth, as if what we already had wasn’t plenty in the first place. This was back in October of 2008 and is also the reason the site was a blank page the last few days. The file structure on the new server differs from the old one so WordPress didn’t know what was what. Since our caching plugin relies on what WordPress knows, as of yesterday, it started creating its own blank-page blog. Thanks to the speedy service of the Dreamhost Customer Support team, this was resolved within an hour.

Community Fire Pit #000: Detailed and reasoned community discussion

Published on September 10, 2009 in Community Fire Pit. 0 Comments

The whole concept of Community Fire Pit dates back to an old 15-article run on FiringSquad where two people would take a side and discuss some topic related to PC hardware. I’d been trying to throw around a similar idea for years now, even trying to integrate it into DDR Pulse Radio. Because of a few recent discussions with Chris “Kurisu” of KuriMix from the Xadara Entertainment Group and Terrence Chan of the DWI Extreme series, I finally found an outlet for these sorts of discussions in Community Fire Pit.

After we pick a topic, I write up a question and then begin the post with a paragraph describing the question as well as some background information about it. I then begin by taking a side and writing out a paragraph in favor of that part of the discussion. This is followed up by another person taking an opposing side and throwing his or her comment into the fire pit. The process repeats until the discussion can come to an end.

Calling it a fire pit comes from a fire brewin’ in the community. We’re throwing things into the fire to keep it going symbolizing a heated discussion. When one side can’t throw anything in anymore and the fire just dies out, signifying the end of the discussion. While we might sound extremely ignorant at times, it’s only because we’re trying to cover all the bases associated with their side of the argument.

Moving to a new server

Published on October 8, 2008 in Site Update. 0 Comments

This site and anything else I currently host like will be moving to a new server. The upgrade really isn’t needed, but we’re gonna have to move anyway. Instead of 7TB/month of bandwidth, we’ll be getting unlimited. Instead of 360GB of storage space, we’re getting unlimited + 50GB! The extra 50GB is kinda useless though; plus, I just made it up.

DDR Pulse Radio needs content audio editors

Published on September 25, 2008 in Netcast. 0 Comments

Original post linked from BemaniStyle

Content Editor

  • Giving the audio a listen and deleting the fluff conversations
  • Adjusting any phrases that would otherwise not make sense out of context
  • Correcting misspoken words if possible

Audio Editor

  • Create conversation flow from the content-edited version
  • Aligning tracks of audio so pauses or latency is unheard of
  • Remove awkward pauses

Contact me if you’re interested

Hiatus for DDR Pulse Radios

Published on March 20, 2008 in DDR Pulse Radio and DDR Pulse Radio Squared. 0 Comments

All three of the DDR Pulse Radio netcasts are on hiatus until further notice. We are still in dire need of an audio editor.

Website Updates Finally!

Published on December 28, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio Squared and Site Update. 0 Comments

I finally opened up the page for DDR Pulse Radio2. It’s a sister netcast to DDR Pulse Radio. The basis is that it’ll have little to no editing so it’ll come out very quickly and will be 10-15 minutes per episode. The release schedule is still in the works, but one episode is already getting close to recording time. While making the DPR2 logo, I noticed how busy the first one was. I’ll go ahead and tweak it a bit to fix that issue.

The power of Cat compels you!

Published on December 7, 2007 in Site Update. 0 Comments

Because everyone’s been asking for it, Mike hooked us up w/ some cats.

Episode Two: A New Semester for the UMKC DDR Club

Published on November 10, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio. 0 Comments

Thanks to Titus Hilton for stepping in to edit this episode. Episode Two is only the start of what is now a backlog of unedited recordings. This netcast goes over the UMKC DDR Club. Much has changed since this recording, but it gives a fairly good look at what goes into running a DDR Club or any club at all.

Site is back up

Published on November 8, 2007 in Site Update. 0 Comments

The site was up and down all morning so I e-mail Dreamhost, and they fixed it. Here’s their response to my e-mail (which came in under 5 minutes):

Sorry about that! It looks like crenshaw was having some issues so our admins have rebooted it. I just checked your sites and it looks like things are back to normal.

Please let us know if you are still having trouble getting to your sites!

Thanks!
Leon

Planned power outtage today

Published on September 19, 2007 in Site Update. 0 Comments

Mike sent me an e-mail informing me of a planned outage of our server. This includes everything I’m hosting at the moment.

Looks like we’ll have 15-20 minutes where the server is offline tomorrow.

DDR Pulse Radio: Episode Two finally has a release date

Published on August 24, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio. 0 Comments

We’ve decided to change things around in our release schedule. Instead of releasing the netcasts in the order we recorded, we’re going to release them as separate entities. I’m not gonna spoil it for you, but I am gonna say that sometime this Sunday, the newly-named Episode Two will be released.

DDR Pulse Radio gone live

Published on August 20, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio. 0 Comments

Along with the MP3 version, I made an M4A version which is a third of the filesize and still sounds pretty good, but there are no chapters or images. Episode 2 should have a release date for Sunday, September 2, 2007, but we’re not for sure on that one yet.

Arch0wl @ the Midwest Music Showdown ‘07

Published on August 15, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio. 0 Comments

I interviewed a very famous person in the Stepmania community, Arch0wl, as well as many other very good DDR players at the Midwest Music Showdown ‘07, but I wasn’t expecting a thank you note back.

Here’s an edited-for-readability version of what Arch0wl said to me:

Kevin, your interview was unexpectedly professional and, to me, you are by far the most articulate person that attended. It was a pleasure talking with you and the UMKC DDR Club as a whole. Your conversations were refreshers from what was normally a sea of music game or internet-related conversations. I’m definitely glad you came.

I have to say, I’m touched. Thanks Arch for such a great interview and to everyone else I interviewed.

Arithmetic & Stepfile Making

Published on August 15, 2007 in DDR Pulse Radio. 0 Comments

Yet another DDR Pulse Radio recording is done. Terrence and I recorded a netcast on arithmetic and its effects on stepfile making for him. We might not end up having one and will just randomly record this follow-up to the Calculus & Stepfile Making episode. For those of you that don’t quite understand the Calculus method, this should be a bit easier to grasp, but it just shows how you really have to know your stuff to make some intense stepfiles like those we’ve seen in the Glistening to Infinity (GTI) series. I fell very privileged to be working with Terrence. Who knew you could use arithmetic to make stepfiles?