Suggestions!

[The Doctor What]

Me and my wife played a couple rounds of pyDDR this morning, and
these are the problems we had and suggested fixes:

1) Since the monitor is small (though we had similar problems with
the PSX) and we can't be exactly be in front of it, the second player
was having trouble telling which arrows where theirs.  The right
arrow for player 1 would occasionally cause confusion.

Suggestion: Different colors or styles for the second player.
Maybe, per-player themes?  Or maybe a vertical divider.

2) Since only player one can hit start, sometimes player one would
start the game before player two was ready.  Or, sometimes player
one or two would need time to get from the computer to the dance
pad.

Suggestion: A Ready Screen.  Maybe using the "Ready?" "Go!" of DDR,
or just have a screen that waits for both players to hit "start" to
confirm in (with select canceling their ready).

3) Sometimes while using the keyboard, I would hit escape expecting
it to return to the song selection screen (which is, if you think
about, the main screen for the game).

Suggestion: Make Quitting an explicit button on the option screen.
Perhaps pressing left then select would select a quit button on the
lower left of the screen.

4) Someplaces, such as after finishing a song, my mat would send
double 'start' when I meant to send only one 'start'.  This is
a defect with my mat, but it is common in the soft mats.

Suggestion:  Eat double taps of buttons that do actions from the
mats.  Start for example.  Basically, have a cool off period for
buttons from the mat during the navigation screen.


The following items are just feature suggestions:

1) Song Ratings and a Weighted Randomize feature.

iTunes with the iPod has a feature where you rate your songs on the
iPod, then this rating is sync'ed back to iTunes.  iTunes can also
rate songs.  Then you can set the iPod to pull a random selection of
songs, giving preference to the higher rated songs, selecting less
of the lower rated songs and no lowest-rated songs.

Suggestion:  Allow rating from the end song screen by both players.
Store as a running average.  Allow editing of the ratings from the
play list screen, but only via keyboard (since the interface would
be more complicated than the pads could allow).

(See 6 below)

2) Review Song Mode.

It would be helpful to be able to fast forward and rewind through a
song (and it's steps) to help plan a strategy for tough parts of a
song.

3) Play the whole song on the song choice page.

Play the 45 second offset clip, but if left on that song, then just
play the whole thing.  No needed to have silence. :-)

4) Friendly Competitive Mode

Don't show the 'boo-bar' (the bar that shows how well you're doing),
but show instead a 'tug-of-war' type bar across the whole top of the
screen.  This would allow people to compete against each other
without having someone fail/autofail.

If autofail is turned on, then have if one person wins decisively
it'll end the game.

Maybe have a best of <n> mode, with this, too.

5) Options on a per-player basis.

Lots of options would be better as a per player deal.  Badknees,
autofail, arrow themes, etc. would make more sense if you could set
them differently.

However, since this is a lot of options for a 'party' game, this
leads us to....

6) Dancer Profiles.

If options, like arrow choices, autofail, badknees, and ratings
could be done per person, then they'll need a way to store and
switch them.  There should be a 'guest' profile that essentially
copies whoever the guest plays against.  In single player, guest
would just be the defaults as set up by the owners of the system.

This could be used to track best scores per song (like the max
number of perfects ever gotten on bumble bee) and such.

7) Horse Game.

A mode where one player does steps, and the other person has to copy
them.  Depending on the level of difficult selected, it'll only
accept presses from one player if they match the beat, 1/2 beat, or
1/4 beat.  Then the other player must copy them.

8) Tetris <send a combo> mode.

During 2 player, allow the completion of combos to make it more
difficult for the other player, perhaps jumping up the difficulty
level of the steps or adding in an extra step or two.

9) Grouping of options.

Sets of options will generally be set together at the same time,
such as turning off autofail and the score display.  It's nice to be
able to have the option to control them seperately, but only
advanced users will want to be able to do that.  So hide the
advanced stuff and make "mode" selectors:
Have Fun
DDR Clone
Serious Mode
Training Mode

etc.

Anyway, hope this is all helpful.

Ciao!

-- 
If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z.  X is work.  Y is
play.  Z is keep your mouth shut.
		-- Albert Einstein

The Doctor What: Guru to the Gods                http://docwhat.gerf.org/
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