[pyddr-devel] Suggestions!

[theGREENzebra]

> Suggestion 1: Different colors or styles for the second player.
> Maybe, per-player themes?  Or maybe a vertical divider.

Per-player themes could be a good idea, but a vertical divider would be 
easier to implement. Of course, most DDR players will just tell you that you 
shouldn't look at the other players' arrows....

> Suggestion 2: 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).

Originally this was planned, but I think a reason we don't have a 
"double-confirm" is to encourage the players to talk to eachother. We're 
geeks, but we can be social. The common etiquette at arcades is to agree on 
who will choose what songs (alternating who picks the songs is common) and 
then the person picking the songs will say "is this song okay?" to the 
other... etc.

Having said that, Pump It Up has double-confirm, and I'm not against the 
idea, but I think it should be optional.

> 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).

Do you mean from the main menu? This is kind of confusing, but I can 
understand frustration that might arise from quitting the game and having to 
have it start up again. The CVS version starts up a lot faster, thanks to Joe.

> 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.

So far, the game should be completely controllable using a mat. The arrows 
are your arrowkeys, the start button is enter, and holding left and tapping 
start is your escape. Last but not least, holding right and hitting start 
should totally terminate the game. This was done not only so keyboardless 
machines could play pyDDR (or so I can unplug my keyboard at cons), but 
because I think most would agree it's good to have a game completely 
controllable by its controller.

> 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.

A few well-placed pygame.event.clear's should take care of this one.

---------feature ideas---------

> 1) Song Ratings and a Weighted Randomize feature.
> 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).

This is a neat idea, there's something like this in DDR called "player's 
best" that basically shows the songs that the players have done well on, and 
some arcade machines also have a "most commonly played" list as well. I know 
this isn't quite what you mean with weighted songplays, but it might be 
feasible sometime in the future.

> 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.

This would probably be best suited for the song editor, once we have one. I 
have some pretty good ideas for it. Though, part of the 'fun' of playing DDR 
(IMHO at least) is playing a song and then saying "WHAT?" when you see a 
weird part come up. Some people might disagree with me on this one, I 
realise.. =]

> 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. :-)

I'm not so sure about this one, I mean, you've got XMMS, can't you just 
listen to the ogg or mp3? I love music as much as (if not more than) the 
next guy, that's one of the reasons I love DDR so much, but I think this is 
designed to be "just a sample" so that people will be encouraged to pick a 
song, and also be encouraged to pass it.

> 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.

I really like this idea. That would be fun. Implementing it could be.. 
interesting.... but let's bounce ideas back and forth in the channel or on 
the list about it.

> 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.

Agreed, this is something I've been toying with for a long time....

> 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.

....and this is a perfect way to solve it. I really like this idea too.

> 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.

This would get kind of weird, but I can see where you're going with it. 
You'd definitely have to pair people up that are equally matched in this 
type of game, but then again, that should be done anyway.

The only catch is that the game would have to regulate the players somehow. 
Maybe they would only get two bars to do their dance, and then the other 
player would instantly have to match it? That way the game could keep track 
of where one player's dance ends and another one starts..

I was going to write a step "recorder" for the song editor, which we could 
probably reuse some code from for this.

We should note that PIU allows different arrows depending on whether you 
play player1 or player2. And some songs do a very "horse-like" thing where 
one person will do a jig, another person will do a jig, etc, but also the 
game will do something like having both players dancing opposite steps at 
once, EG. they're the same steps but the players are facing eachother, or 
facing opposite directions, blahblah, getting off topic.

> 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.

This has been in my head for tournament play for a long time. I'll make sure 
this one gets in.

> 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

This sounds....friendly....maybe we can make (or just call them) mode 
"presets" and that will set the options accordingly, or something? I have a 
gumption that lots of people that play DDR are going to want all the options 
at their fingertips, but we could probably do something about the "Advanced" 
options. I think Joe was also pondering how to split off the options that 
people wouldn't want as much into another menu or something.

> Anyway, hope this is all helpful.

I like a lot of these, and though I might sound a bit criticizing of the 
others, they're not bad ideas. A lot of them will require the game to be a 
bit more cleaned up and mature to be implemented, but that could happen 
quicker than we think.

You guys keep playing, and we'll keep talking!

B
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