In regards to pad mods. ACME would benefit from new arrow panels. They're sunken in from years of hardcore dance games. Maybe convince everyone to turn the arrows inward so the least sunken part is near the middle panel.

So Simply Love is a very good theme and should be given a shot.
As for foam modding you just need to get some think weather stripping and throw it on top of the brackets and on top of the L corner brackets and then compensate for sensor sensitivity. Pretty simple stuff and everyone will play better and things will feel more nice overall.
Rotating and or getting new panels will also make a world of difference.

Would it be possible for me to rotate the arrow panels in myself?  

I have the tools to do so and I'm not someone to ruin the machine. I'm asking for permission before I even think about touching it, I go almost everyday so I can get on that ASAP, especially if it will help out the entire community!  


As far as "foam modding" goes, I would love to do this for us as well. I'd be more than happy to purchase the weather stripping and volunteer my time to do this if the community would agree on such a change. Just need someone to help with the sensor sensitivity, that is a world I do not know... 

I don't want to be "that guy", but I would like to note that foam modding does make getting sensor balancing a lot more of a P.I.T.A. It's not too bad if it's a private machine, or a machine that gets only moderate use by a select group; but something in an arcade as active as Acme could cause trouble.

Remember how hard it was to get the machine tweaked right this last time (just about 1 month ago)? The thing with foam modding is you need to be sure that the newly raised panels don't push too hard against the brackets once modded. Also, the foam will compress over time, requiring more tweaks/modifications on the fly.

I'm not saying it won't work, but I get the feeling a lot of these mods that come from AIJ are by private machine owners, not public arcade owners. The two situations are not one and the same and the pros/cons of both need to be considered.

If modding the machine with foam/rotating arrow panels will help regular players play better and make the machine feel better, I'm all for modding it.


How would modding the machine to perform better cause trouble at an active arcade?

If the foam does compress overtime, I am more than willing to take time to reapply new foam. If we want our machine to be the best it could be, of course we need to put in the effort and if it means getting the sensor balanced to get there, why wouldn't we do it?

I find that there are more pros than there are cons to this proposed change. Pros include: better performance, simply process, and overall better feel. Only con I can think of is that, it might take all of 1-2 hours to balance the sensors.

IF ANYTHING, at least we need to rotate the arrow panels.

This would be your best short term option. It's been working great on Null's machine

Null's machine was like, brand new 2 years ago. Have you worn those panels down THAT much since then Keby? =D

GrooveNights rebel here.

In response to Scott's response I just have to say look at the scene from the Harrisburg Mall Dedicab.
That machine is WHORED with people playing on it everyday with an assortment of people playing 8-10s all the way up to Phil, Bryan, Little Matt, and Ian getting 99's on 17's and 18's and beasting 19's.

If need be we can PM someone like Bryan who I know practically lived at that machine for months and was doing stuff like 99.5ing Moonearth back to back.

It's fairly simply to maintain pads and with the way Bill lets the community maintain the machine, there is no reason a few select people could be chosen to be allowed to maintain/calibrate the pads on a regular basis.

Our machine only needs to be remodded once every 4-6 months and with this wonderful weather seal foam ($3 at home depot) and a pair of scissors and maybe 20 mins of time you can have the both pads remodded and checked for miss fires and then re calibrated.

Also Groovenights is not a great arcade theme/but Simply love does have the noteskin to make people happy, and without functioning USB's Groovenights loses it's overall feel.

hey Chris it looks like you're really looking to beast/improve at this game.
one you should get a fucking facebook.
two you should post more scores on PNW.
three you should come to Gresham and beast on our awesome pads.

video's of the maintained dedicab
You'll notice the damage this thing can take and still perform extremely well all year round.
you'll see the the arrow panels are rotated and not just inwardly but in suchs a way that the arrows are most flush in the center reguardless of direction.
And in the last video's you can see how damn flush the pads are and how people don't have to crazy stomp in order to score well.

Moonearth (17) 2x in a row - 99.52 / 99.03

How NOT to fix your ITG bar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2Tjl4Zdff-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=doZ0vZNQrg8

also for the love of god rotate or get new arrows. It's time and would change the overall feel of the machine.

Suko, nice post a ways back.  He hit it on the head, we have problems with overly sensitive sensors on this machine for some reason.  During the process of trying to get arrows not to stick after Sakuracon, we found that most all the previously used paper shims under the sensors had to be removed.  These were put in years ago, to tweak the stage and make it more sensitive.  Well, when the problems began of oversensitive sensors, the shims had to be pulled.  The thought of that foam tape, OMG, on this cabinet, I think it would be your worst nightmare.  You thought the sensors stuck before, this could be a real nightmare.

Rotating the arrows sounds like a good idea, go for it next time you guys are there and see if you like the result.  I would have our techs do it, but you guys are way are more up on what arrow would work well and at what place.

If that's the case then it should be an even more simple fix. Over sensitive sensors are either do to degraded materials residing with in the sensors it's self causing it to over fire at the slightest touch, do to wear and tear/lots of constant pressure. (which can be repaired by splitting the sensor and taping over active spots)
Or faulty housings/bent brackets that no longer function properly.

Here are some photo's of the simple work I've done to create optimal performance out of our pads.
Materials used. Both rolls are more than enough for an entire pad.




Arrow from above with panel

What the insides look like.

Note the three smaller pieces placed on all the L shaped corner brackets.
those are there to remove tension from the bracket and lift the arrows up higher.
Generally this is a problem because now your arrows do not touch the brackets at all.
This creates a great deal of under sensitivity.



This is the money shot right here.


Obviously you can see how supportive the three pieces are in the corner and you can see just how far the arrow will be over the bracket(if there were no foam already on top of the bracket)

In order to get the sensitivity back onto the sensor you have to add back the tension in the form of foam on top of the bracket.

at this point you're essentially recreating the original concept that the arrow has to sit on the corners and give JUST ENOUGH give to that a nice tap will bend the bracket and trigger the sensors.

In my case I felt that just the thicker foam on top of the bracket did not create enough tension and so I placed the thinner foam on top of the thicker foam to create more density.

 

The two combined look like this and they sit very flat.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND that this stuff goes on and off very easily and you can even pull the smaller foam from the bigger foam and add smaller amounts if the tension/density is to high.
It leaves no broken pieces of foam and no mess to clean up.

In the case of the dedicab you could simply rotate the arrow and add modding to the corners, giving the pads a great overall flush feeling, and you're feet will REALLY thank you for how comfortable it feels.
If there were any under sensitive spots at that point you could simply add tini tiny amounts of foam to brackets if it even needed it. If the pads are really that over sensitive then this should be a very easy fix because you can just uses scissors on the foam to create the perfect tension and then they things will feel great for quite a while.

Here is the end result on a more "recessed" side
 

Oh, for sure Andy! Heard a lot about you through Tuan, you and Evan seem like monsters! 

Yeah, been playing a ton of the Sharpnelstreamz stuff, just passed World Sound with a 93% on our recessed pads. Nearly impossible to do 240 bpm stuff on the pad here without feeling like dying, even with a handful of baby powder on the pads.

I can't wait till I'm able to foam mod the pads at ACME, I know the community here will love it! Just need Tony's cooperation in terms of handling the sensor balancing.

Going to go rotate the arrow panels tomorrow...will help some, but still...foaming ugh, I NEED IT! 

Thanks Bill. I've always tried to look at maintenance and modding of DDR/ITG machines as a fine line between what players want and what is best for the owner's business.

I remember years back when people across the nation were hacking ITG machines without the owner's consent. That pissed me off so much. Sometimes players feel like it's their machine and that they know what's best, but they forget that their unauthorized actions could hurt the owner's business in indirect ways.

UUhhhhhh.......
no comment...

So just rotated the arrow panels and it feels incredible! However, the sensors aren't cooperating with us so we turned them back around. If we could get Tony to help with the balancing if we rotate them again the entire community will benefit from it guarantee!

One more thing! The background is still very distracting, I know Tony adjusted it but its still hindering game play. I'm having to play without the background so I haven't been able to post scores. If the background can't be fixed could we implement the Simply Love theme so we can score with the background off?

Thanks

Chances are the the sensors are that sensitive that a warped arrow is causing the slightest misfire then that sounds like a big issue BUT I knew rotating those would make a HUGE difference.
Tony is currently working on getting simply love to work but I guess you're build of OITG with the way Tony has it running isn't work out :/ most likely it's going to take some time.

My machine doesn't handle Simply Love well, either. So I don't know what's going on.

You have to remove "wendys" from the vocal file. OITG doesn't like it.
Tom got it to work in 3 mins. The theme was designed for SM3.95 as most of them are.

I'm finding that people get different errors, but yeah when Tom looked at it one of the fonts wasn't being called so he just removed it all together.

Tom tried doing that fix on my machine, but it didn't work. He tweaked with it for 10 minutes but we decided to actually play the game instead of continuing to fuss over a theme.

I think this sensor may be dead.

Yeah I think that's why I was getting a lot of greats last night.

I get a lot of misses from it on fast songs, and it's kinda impossible to do these:

Just posting to see if there will be any response to the foam modding for the machine. Been waiting to see if someone could help me with the process.

Went to play today and the right side up arrow is really recessed. Cant really play any of the harder 15-17 experts with the arrows so recessed. Tried to rotate the arrows but the sensors weren't cooperating with me. I'm pretty sure it's going to be Tony who could help me with this so I guess I'm waiting to see if he'd be willing.

If I had access to the machine and the knowledge to balance the sensors I'd do it all, but I have little to no idea on how to touch the sensors.

I want our communities machine to be the best it could be and I could use all the help I could get!