Category Archives: Machine update

Memory Card Update

Posted on by wellian

Fixed the outstanding memory card issue today, so custom songs are back in business. Technical details after the jump.

Please note that P2’s port has been squashed at some point, so be careful when inserting or removing the card.

Fixed the outstanding memory card issue today, so custom songs are back in business.

The actual problem was rather bizarre – for some reason OpenITG didn’t want to read the memory card settings which has worked perfectly. Even though you are explicitly instructed to use a rather logical format – say S:\ for any card going into S drive – this didn’t want to work. I had to drop the trailing forward slash. No, I don’t understand it either.

Please note that P2’s port has been squashed at some point, so be careful when inserting or removing the card.

New Year update

Posted on by wellian

Christmas is over, 2012 is with us, and Isis is also back from holiday. That means it’s time for Gold Rush to reopen for a new year of gaming.

Specific to the machine, there’s now a new graphics card in there, which will hopefully alleviate those horrible lag spikes whenever there’s a fading background. Also gone are a large number of songs – too many to mention here, but but about 300 got chopped, mostly because nobody played them all year.

I will post some data about the year past in the future, but in the meantime head back down the seafront to get playing again.

Machine Update

Posted on by wellian

A significant machine is being applied over the next couple of weeks. It will include significant upgrades to hardware, software and gameplay.

We were due to upgrade the machine over this week and install a number of new features. However, only half of it got done today, and we aren’t quite sure what went wrong.

The following changes were applied to the machine on February 12th:

Cabinet

The hard drive got upgraded to a SSD. Load-up time in the mornings – including Vista’s whinge about not shutting down properly – is under two minutes, and SelectSongMusic loads substantially faster.

The box should (from Sunday) be running off the DVI port rather than the VGA port. This will (hopefully) make the images a little bit sharper.

Theme

There is a new revision of the theme, but it didn’t apply because I’m a spork. Not that it matters, because I expect by next week the revision will have a revision of the revision.

Songs

arceast + 1

Hot: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: Beginner 1, Easy 3, Medium 5, Expert 9.

Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix

Zenius-I-Vanisher updated their packs for the two Korean mixes. The update provided a full set of doubles charts for all songs, improved mp3s and better quality graphics. We added both the packs on, so this means five returning songs (Byul, Gaagai, Gamyunwi Shigan, Sung Suk, Tell Me Tell Me) and ten more with extra charts and/or better quality music and/or better quality graphics.

Dance Dance Revolution 7th Mix – MAX2

Break Down: Fixed the error on the song wheel, and added background videos while I was at it.

Dance Dance Revolution UNIVERSE3

Songs starting with A, B and C have had their backgrounds modified so that they don’t appear as a small image with a huge black border around it. (They’re now 688 by 516, in case you care.) However, I don’t think they’ve been updated.

A Fifth of Beethoven: Offset and sample start suitably modified.

Rave Until The Night Is Over (Universe Edit): An updated banner has been included.

Dance Dance Revolution X

An extra 50 songs were added. Unfortunately, the difficulties are in the new 1-18 notation, because we haven’t had a chance to fix them back to 1-14.

Dancing Stage EuroMix 2

The files are of a better quality, like with 3rd Mix’s, but I forgot to add them to the patch. I’m sure somebody out there will appreciate this when it gets done.

In The Groove 1 and 2

Miscellaneous offset adjustments to 5 ITG1 and 18 ITG2 songs. Almost of all of them are within 0.015ms, so you’ll barely notice them.

Deleted songs

64 songs got deleted, mostly because nobody was playing them. I’ll try and get a list together at some point this week.

Machine Update

Posted on by wellian

A small machine update was applied today, just in time for the tournament. A brief summary of the update:

  • Modifications were made to the theme, which was actually installed this time.
  • There is an indication of a personal best for USB profiles during the evaluation screen.
  • Three new songs have been added.

The following changes were applied to the machine on September 18th:

Theme (revision 14a)

An unfortunate bug was fixed, where none of the fixes in revisions 13 and 14 of the theme would apply for a small number of players. And by a small number of players, we mean absolutely everyone. Whoopsies!

The gameplay instructions screen now has the song credits in the bottom-right of the screen.

An extra screen was added into the attract sequence.

Songs

arceast

The following songs had legacy edits which have been removed: Celtic Cross, Dreamin’ Sun, EXOTICA.

In The Groove 3

VerTex³: A “feature” which meant that the song title was always displayed as VerTex3 has now been resolved.

SuperRay

Bagpipe (Extended Version): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 4, medium 6, hard 8.

hora de verdad: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 5, medium 7, hard 9, challenge 10. Difficulties on double: easy 5, challenge 10.

USB Instructions

Posted on by wellian

We wrote you a guide to using your memory card. We hope you like it.

 

Getting a profile

There are two ways in which you can generate a profile for saving your scores:

  1. You walk up to the machine, insert your USB device into the machine, play a credit, let the machine save a credit, and go home.
  2. You download the default profile which has all the folders set up for you.

Either profile should work immediately and start saving your scores. You will notice that your personal best will now be shown as well as the current machine record.

Device compatability

Any standard USB device which can read and write data should work fine. We would recommend that you use a device of at least 128MB in size (which is less that any memory stick you can buy now!), or 1GB if you intend to include custom songs.

Exceptions to this are:

  • Devices which require more than one USB port to function, such as power-hungry hard drives. As you only have one port per player, there goes that plan.
  • Devices, such as U3 sticks, which have require two drives mapped. There’s no way of reliably forcing these to map to the right place, and I’m not going to put the effort into doing so.
  • Encrypted devices. You won’t be able to run the software to unlock them, so you’ll never get to write data to them. Simples.

Understanding the profile

Your profile has lots of directories and files. This is what each of them do.

root folder

There are three files related to your scores: Stats.xml, which holds the raw data on your play time, and two stylesheets which format this document, Stats.xsl and Common.xsl. You can get a lot of info from Stats.xml, but the more you play the longer it will take to load!

Additionally, there are two more files. Editable.ini allows you to specify three pieces of information about yourself: “Display Name”, a nickname which appears on the bottom-left (or bottom-right, if you use player 2) while you play and also appears on your screenshots; “LastUsedHighScoreName”, which can be up to five characters long and is your default name for the high score table; and WeightPounds, which is your weight in lbs and used to (completely inaccurately) calculate the amount of calories burnt. LastUsedHighScoreName updates after every credit, so if you change your high score name it will update on your memory card. DisplayName and WeightPounds can only be updated offline. Extra.ini has two options: “AdditionalSpeedMods” is currently disabled but will in future allow you to choose your own speed modifiers for use, which “UseCatalogXML” will allow you save the machine song list to your device. But we recommend you keep that at 0, because there’s nothing of interest there and it’ll just make your game take longer to play.

LastGood

Don’t <em><em><em>EVER</em></em></em> (is that enough emphasis?) touch this folder. If for some reason your profile gets messed up, the game will use LastGood to allow you to revert to a working backup.

Screenshots

If you have a score you’re particularly proud of, why not get a picture of it? Press both menu (left and right) buttons and you’ll hear a camera shot. This is where your screenies will end up!

Songs

This is where you get to play your own songs on the machine!

Each song must be contained within its own folder, and optionally songs may be grouped within folders, nested <em>one</em> folder deep. Each song folder needs to contain just two files:

  • The music file. This must be in <em>OGG</em> format (and not mp3 or wma or aac or flac or wav or flv or swf or any other format you manage to pull from the innertets), and should be encoded at 44.1kHz or 48kHz.
  • The step file. This must be the in standard SM step chart format. If you made your file in the editor, that’s not something to worry about.

And that’s it. It will not read backgrounds and banners, nor will it read movies or movie scripts.

There are generous restrictions on both folder size and stepchart file size (as in if you’re breaking it you are most likely being an ejit) and further restrictions on song length:

  1. Any sound file which is less that 2:30 in length will take one song to play.
  2. Any sound file which is more than 2:30 in length but less than 5:00 in length will take two songs to play, and therefore must be played as first or second song.
  3. Any sound file which is more than 5:00 in length but less than 7:30 in length will take three songs to play, and must be chosen as your first and only song.
  4. Any sound file which is more than 7:30 in length will not load.
Courses

Apparently you can set your own courses up to play. Good luck getting this working, as I believe it doesn’t.

Machine Update

Posted on by wellian

A fairly significant machine update was applied today. A brief summary of the update:

  • 15 new songs have been added to the machine, and 18 songs have been removed from the machine.
  • 24 other songs have had some form of modification.
  • Credit is now given for chart authors before a song starts.
  • There is an indication of a personal best for USB profiles during the evaluation screen.

The following changes were applied to the machine on July 25th:

Theme (revision 13)

The advertisement screen was re-enabled, this time with information regarding Gold Rush Devolution. This screen’s music has been changed from Gold Rush back to the default song of Who, at the request of the arcade staffs’ sanity.

“Always on My Mind” from Dance Dance Revolution X is now a candidate for the randomly-chosen first song.

Information on the author of the chart is now displayed during the pre-gameplay screen. For edits, the name of the edit is displayed instead. Unknown credit is is also displayed as unknown.

There is now a small indicator on the evaluation screen when a player using a USB stick has recorded a personal best for a song.

The end of game credits text has been updated.

Wellian tidied his scripts up.

Songs

arceast

Abyss -The Heavens Mix-: The offset has been very slightly changed.

Aerodynamic: The sound file has finally been fixed, so that it actually has a hope in hell of being on sync. It only took me four years to get a decent copy of the song in the first place…

BAMBOLEO: The volume of the audio has been (yet again) increased. Hopefully this time you’ll be able to hear it.

Foundation of our love: The offset has been changed.

MEI: The Doubles Easy chart is no longer missing the opening 12 bars of steps. It remains a 6 in difficulty.

Number One: The offset has been substantially changed.

smooooch・∀・: The volume of the audio has been increased.

Z: New difficulties on single: beginner 3, easy 7, medium 9, hard 10, expert 10.

arceast +1 (NEW FOLDER)

Chung Hwa Ban Jeom: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 2, medium 5, hard 7, expert 10.

Go: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 3, hard 7, expert 9.

月雪に舞う花のように: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 3, medium 5, hard 8. Difficulty on double: hard 7.

Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix

WONDERLAND (UKS MIX): Difficulty change on double: easy 5⇒6.

Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix

Removed 1 song: Get me in your sight (AMD CANCUN MIX).

Dance Dance Revolution EXTREME (PS2 US)

Removed 2 songs: Planet Rock (Swordfish Radio Edit), Simply Being Loved ‘Somnambulist’.

Dance Dance Revolution SUPERNOVA 2

Removed 5 songs: AM-3P(CHAOS Special), B4U(VOLTAGE Special), BRILLIANT 2U(STREAM Special), DEAD END(GROOVE RADAR Special), D2R(FREEZE Special), DYNAMITE RAVE(AIR Special).

Fixed subtitles for: Blind Justice ~Torn souls Hurt Faiths~, Bloody Tears (IIDX EDITION), CaptivAte~CHIKAI~, Every Day Every Night(NM Style), 木星～組曲『惑星』より, L’amour et la liberte(Darwin & DJ Silver remix), PARANOiA (HADES), Raspberry♥Heart (English Version), STARS★★★(Re-tuned by HΛL)-DDR EDITION-, SUNKiSS♥DROP~Alison Side~, SUNKiSS♥DROP~Jun Side~, SUNRISE(JASON NEVINS REMIX), Trust -DanceDanceRevolution mix-, Votum stellarum -forest #25 DDR RMX-.

PARANOiA (HADES): Difficulty change on double: easy 10⇒11

Dance Dance Revolution Universe

Removed 8 songs: All Up In My Face, Don’t Play Nice, Less ‘Yap Yap’, ON THE JAZZ (Smooth House Mix), Precious (Sasha’s Gargantuan Vocal Mix), PUT YOUR FAITH IN ME (Steve Porter Mix), White Hot, Wraith.

Dance Dance Revolution Universe

888: The offset has been very slightly changed. Middles of charts have been quantized to 12ths. Difficulty change on single: expert 10⇒11.

Dance Dance Revolution X (NEW FOLDER)

A Geisha’s Dream: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 4, medium 6, hard 8. Difficulties on double: easy 4, medium 6, hard 8.

Always on My Mind: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 2, medium 4, hard 6. Difficulties on double: easy 3, medium 4, hard 6.

Koko Soko: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 2, easy 3, medium 5, hard 7. Difficulties on double: easy 3, medium 5, hard 8.

ポリリズム: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 3, medium 5, hard 7. Difficulties on double: easy 3, medium 6, hard 8.

U Can’t Touch This: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 1, easy 3, medium 5, hard 7. Difficulties on double: easy 3, medium 6, hard 8.

Übertreffen: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 2, easy 4, medium 6, hard 9. Difficulties on double: easy 4, medium 6, hard 9.

Xmix1 (Midnight Dawn): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 5, medium 7, hard 9. Difficulties on double: easy 5, medium 7, hard 9.

Xmix2 (Beats ‘n Bangs): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 3, medium 5, hard 7. Difficulties on double: easy 3, medium 5, hard 7.

Xmix3 (Stomp Dem Groove): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 4, medium 6, hard 8. Difficulties on double: easy 4, medium 6, hard 8.

Xmix4 (Linear Momentum): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 4, medium 6, hard 8. Difficulties on double: easy 5, medium 6, hard 8.

Xmix5 (Overcrush): NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: easy 7, medium 9, hard 10. Difficulties on double: easy 8, medium 9, hard 10.

零 – ZERO -: NEW SONG. Difficulties on single: beginner 2, easy 4, medium 6, hard 8. Difficulties on double: easy 4, medium 5, hard 8.

In The Groove

Removed 1 song: Training.

Full USB support on the way

Posted on by wellian

USB Devices at Gold Rush? It’s finally going to happen. Read on…

For two seasons and two cabinets, there have been one set of high scores. (Well, two actually, but I can’t get the data off Isis…) Those scores lived on the box, and nobody except me could have them, mwahahaha. But we thought that couldn’t last, and so very soon we will be finally enabling USB support on the machine. However, it will work slightly differently to that normally seen with In The Groove.

We do not use the In The Groove or In The Groove 2 folders at all. Instead, we use our own folder called “Gold Rush” that follows the standard USB save convention. However, your data is compatible. If you make a duplicate of your In The Groove or In The Groove 2 folder and call it “Gold Rush”, you’ll have already imported your data ready for Gold Rush.

As a result, we aren’t signing profile data. There are obvious disadvantages, for example people can create a profile of 100% scores for everything. However, with an unsigned profile the scores will not be transferable to a site like GrooveStats. Moreover, the ultimate arbiter of high scores on our machine will be the machine’s very own profile, and so a person parading 100%s on their profiles who cannot then achieve the scores will be vociferously mocked by all.

We did consider using the ITG data. However, there are two reasons we chose not to. Firstly, we do not want to be able to even potentially interfere with data from original saves and then be blamed for the loss of data (where are your backups people?) from using OpenITG. Secondly, there is no confirmed standard for what OpenITG cabinets are to use as their folder name. Some use OpenITG, others In The Groove 3, others random stuff. By using Gold Rush, you know that any data in that folder came from our cabinets. Unless you edited it of course, you dirty cheater you.

Custom songs will be enabled, but reasonably time-limited. If you get caught trying (and failing) to play 75-minute songs on our machine without permission, don’t expect to be welcome in the arcade in future. Additionally, we kept custom speed modifiers disabled for the time being due to ongoing problems with OpenITG being overzealous in its caching of custom modifiers. Once we know it’s stable, it will be re-enabled when possible.

For those who never had an In The Groove save to work with, one will be uploaded with instructions soon.

Posted in Machine update | Tagged | Comments Off on Full USB support on the way