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sfxazure
April 29, 2016, 05:13:25 PM - ORIGINAL POST -

S.M.H. 2: Stepcharts Made Doubly Horrible!
Brought to you by Ben (sfxazure) with help and hosting from Scott (Suko)
July 24, 2016, Starts at 11am sharp.
Entry Fee: $5.00 if you preregister, $10.00 at the door.

SMH2 is a tournament held in the PNW every summer with a ruleset inspired by various customs tournaments. Entrants can submit up to four songs that, once approved, comprise the tournament pack. The pack is frozen after a cutoff date, and the tournament is a (mostly) standard double-elim bracket played with the competitor-submitted pack.

Download the pack HERE!

What’s new this time around:
  • I’m adding a new phase for chart revisions! Since a large part of the Seattle ITG community hasn’t had easy access to an ITG machine with USB support, people submitted untested charts with sync issues. This time around, you have a chance to tweak and/or revoke your submissions (but not make new submissions) for a short period (TBD) after the cutoff. Once the cutoff has passed, the pack is FINALIZED and will not be changed before the tournament. This includes song removals; if you want to remove your song from the pack, you MUST do so before the pack is finalized.
  • Song/Side choice is now determined with a game of Rock Paper Scissors (just like DOWNS/UPS) instead of registration order.

Otherwise, the tournament’s ruleset is identical to S.M.H.’s.

The Rules

Phase One: Preregistration and Stepchart Submission
Ends June 18, 2016


Preregistration will begin immediately and will run until the end of Phase One. Attendees who preregister will pay a discounted rate ($5.00 instead of $10.00). Reach out to me either by PM, in person, by carrier pigeon, etc. I’ll be accepting payment through PayPal (username bkirz), Square Cash (send to $bkz), Google Wallet (PM me for my email address) or in person.

You will have from today until the submission cutoff to submit up to four songs (one stepchart each) to be included in the tournament pack. Make sure to identify yourself by name/forum name somewhere in the file. I’d prefer for you to create and submit new stepcharts, but any are fine as long as you had a hand in their creation. Submitted songs/stepcharts will be rejected if they do not conform to the following rules:

  • The chart must be to a song which does not exceed three minutes and thirty seconds (3:30) in length. This keeps the tournament moving and makes it so people don’t to have to pay more to practice “long song” charts.
  • Songs must be appropriate for play in public venues such as ACME Bowl. Please avoid profanity or find some way to work around it (clean versions, comedic censoring, etc.) Any content deemed inappropriate for a public venue will be rejected.
  • Songs must be ITG Arcade Ready. If your song is over 2 minutes, DO NOT .OGG PATCH IT. OGG only; songs submitted with MP3 audio will be rejected.
  • Stepcharts must have at least 50 hittable arrows. While there may be ways to make an interesting chart with under 50 steps, it would increase the likelihood of ties and slow the tournament down.
  • The stepchart must be Expert difficulty. This is to ensure that we can use the ITG machine’s built-in Random selector to pick tie-breakers. Submitted songs can have any number of stepcharts, but only the Expert chart can be picked during the tournament.
  • No charts that have been submitted to a previous SMH/SPERGIN tournament can not be resubmitted. Make some original content! If you’re not sure what counts as “the same chart”, ask me.
  • Don’t be a dick. Don’t crash the machine. If you do some fancy LUA scripting, clean up after yourself.

If a song is rejected for any reason, you may submit a replacement; cleaned-up versions of rejected submissions can be submitted, as well as completely different songs/charts.

As soon as a stepchart is accepted into the pack, it will be made available for download.

I can’t stop you from preregistering, submitting charts, and then not showing up. But you should totally come to this thing. It’ll be fun, I promise!


Phase Two: Validate and Revise
Ends June 26

After the submission cutoff, I’ll see about getting the pack on the ACME machine ASAP. I’ll set a cutoff date for pack finalization, probably around a week after getting the pack on the machine. Until then, anyone who tests their chart and notices issues with song volume, sync, gimmicks, etc, can send me a modified version of the chart. If the chart can’t be fixed, let me know and I’ll remove it from the pack. This is your LAST CHANCE to change or revoke your submissions.


Phase Three: Practice
At this point, the pack is finalized and preregistration is CLOSED. After aggregating the finalized submission results, the pack will be released and installed on the ACME machine. At this point, songs will not be changed or removed from the pack.


Phase Four: TOURNAMENT!
July 24, 2016

This will be a double elimination event. Only songs from the SMH2 pack will be playable in this tournament.

Seeding:  Seeding is based on registration order to encourage early registration.

Matches:  Both players play a game of rock paper scissors! Winner gets first choice of machine side or pick order, other choice goes to the loser. Each player will then pick one song of their choice to play against the other player.   Whoever gets the highest percentage (as calculated by the machine) on a given song wins that song. (You know how this works by now.) If both players are tied at the end of two songs, a third song will be chosen randomly from the SMH2 pack. If both players are still tied, keep picking random tiebreakers until the tie is broken.

Song Selection:  Each player may only use a song as their “pick” once over the course of the tournament. Because this is not intended to be a serious tournament, either player may fail any song throughout all tournament rounds with no additional penalty - once you fail, your percentage is “locked” as your score.

Prizes:  Once preregistration ends and we have a better idea of how many entrants we will have, we will determine a prize structure based on 100% of the entry fees.

« Last Edit: July 05, 2017, 05:12:02 PM by sfxazure »
 
Suko
Read May 02, 2016, 09:08:12 PM #1

Here's some helpful info for those participating and writing stepcharts for the tournament.

First, here's a video showing what mods I have available on my machine. I try to be accommodating, but I might not have EXACTLY what you prefer, so check this out ahead of time and prepare as much as possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2mrI7KALc
Edit: My pads are stock. They are not raised, they are not "flush", they don't have spinners on them and the screws are pancake head, but NOT recessed. The pads will be working great when you get here, but don't expect to play air hocky with your feet on these pads. You will actually have to raise then an unfathomable 2 cm or more when moving between panels. I'm sorry for this discomfort and my inability to "get with the times".

Compatibility with my machine:
My machine is running OpenITG Beta 3, but the hardware in it is completely stock. Yep, that machine is over a decade old. As such, it is not going to run your 1080p 120FPS background videos. Here's some advice on what to do with your stepcharts.

1) Make sure your file is OGG format and compare your music with other well known stepcharts to make sure it's not ridiculously loud or whisper quite. This program can help convert a stepchart to the correct format that will work on ITG2.
www.techno-hut.com/danceguru/content/Files/Programs/SM2ITG.zip
Edit: If you are using SM5 to write your chart, I HIGHLY recommend you open, edit, then save your FINAL version in OpenITG. SM5 stepcharts have a lot of extra complexity in them that may not translate onto OpenITG as you intended.

2) Background videos are REALLY finicky on this old hardware. To prevent jittering the arrows in game, I recommend converting all BG videos to the following:
Quote
Frame size: 320 x 280
Frame Rate: 20 (People are watching your steps, not the video...so unless the video is critical to some LUA script thing, I recommend NOT going past 20 FPS)
Bitrate: 512


3) PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE fill out all the relevant info in your stepchart. Especially the following:
Quote
#TITLE:Red Zone;
#SUBTITLE:Guitar Remix;
#ARTIST:Naoki;
#BANNER:RedZone-bn.png;
#BACKGROUND:RedZone-bg.png;
#MUSIC:Red Zone (Guitar cover).mp3;
#DISPLAYBPM:165.000;
I cannot stress the importance of DISPLAYBPM. If your chart has intentional stutters or speed ups, but the chart feels and should be played as if it was a certain BPM, this is where you specify that. If this isn't clear, ask and I'll elaborate.

4)
Similar to #3, make sure to put your name in the correct field of the chart and give it a difficulty rating. This makes it easier for me (and Ben) to identify what charts are made by which people while on the Song Select Screen in-game.
Quote
//---------------dance-single - S. Philipp----------------
#NOTES:
     dance-single:
     S. Philipp:
     Challenge:
     10:
     0.859,1.000,0.246,1.000,0.699:


5) Syncinng. I think most people know how to sync a chart (regardless of what machine it will be played on), but if you need some help, please see this post from 2 years back. It should be marginally helpful at least.

http://www.pnwbemani.net/events-meetups/(tournament)-s-p-e-r-g-i-n-4-july-19th-2014-(tentative-date)/msg30176/#msg30176


That's all I got for now. I'll add any other tidbits of info later if they come to mind.

« Last Edit: May 02, 2016, 09:57:30 PM by Suko »
 
Suko
Read June 05, 2016, 05:26:02 PM #2

Here's my two current submissions for SMH2. I don't expect to change anything between now and the deadline, but ya never know.

Red Zone (Guitar Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCNrlsB35wE

Sakura Saku (Love Hina). I think this video might get blocked by YouTube because of copyright bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdYSQh5Yp4s
 
sfxazure
Read June 15, 2016, 08:25:48 PM #3

Reminder that the cutoff is coming up very soon! You have until Saturday night to preregister and submit charts!
 
sfxazure
Read June 18, 2016, 12:50:02 AM #4

This is the last day for submissions. If you want to preregister and submit charts, now's your chance!
 
Dr.Z
Read June 18, 2016, 01:33:05 PM #5

My only submission this year

Charts Made Horribly
(download link)
 
sfxazure
Read June 19, 2016, 11:05:41 AM #6

Alright, preregistration is closed! This year’s pack is 38 songs submitted by 12 entrants.

Download the latest BETA version of the pack here!

I’m aiming to have the pack on the ACME machine this afternoon; please come test your charts! Once the pack is on the machine, you’ll have ONE WEEK to test and revise your submissions. During this week, if you find any issues with a song you submitted (sync, volume, gimmicks, chart ratings/credit, graphics, etc), send me a revised file and I’ll update the pack. If, for whatever reason, the submission is unfixable, let me know and I’ll remove it from the pack.
Once the revision period ends, I’ll release the final pack, which will be frozen until the tournament.
 
MaxSatura
Read June 19, 2016, 04:14:04 PM #7

Everything looks pretty hype, but the bg vid for Tremolo Treble crashes my SM3.95 every time. it does work if i remove the bg change.
 
Suko
Read July 21, 2016, 02:40:09 PM #8

Here are general directions to the tournament location. If you don't have the exact address, PM Ben or me (or both) to get it. We will be very busy on the day of the tournament. If you PM us that morning, there's a chance we won't see it on time.


And for the love of God, PLEASE don't turn at the intersection with the McDonald's. Everyone does this and it confuses the !@#$ out of them. Go past the McDonald's intersection until you get to the one witht he Walgreens. Turn LEFT at that intersection and go about 1/2 mile. You will pass a middle school on your left and soon after you will see 51st Pl (with the Habour Pointe sign) on your right. Go down that road.

TL:DR = If you don't have a GPS, PLEASE pay attention to the map I've included. A little pre-planning can save you a lot of trouble.

General instructions on how to get to Suko's Groove Shack

1. Head northwest on I-405 N  
2. Continue onto State Route 525 N/WA-525 N  
3. Turn left onto Harbour Pointe Blvd  
4. Turn right onto 51st Pl W  
5. Continue straight (road curves a bit and turns into 101st)  
6. Turn right onto 53rd Pl W
7. Go to my house address

« Last Edit: July 21, 2016, 02:43:24 PM by Suko »
 
Suko
Read July 24, 2016, 09:31:35 PM #9

So, that was a fun event. I hope everyone had a good time! See ya next year.
 
 
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