IIDX/Bemani Spin

OK, so the other thing I've been working on is a new front end for all my bemani sims.

This may sound like gibberish, so I'll do some clarification:
Bemani is a sub-brand of konami that only makes Music/Rythm games. They produce, beatmania/IIDX/III, Dance Dance Revolution, Pop'n Music, Jubeat, Guitar Freaks/Drum mania, and a slew of others. They all have the same basic premise, Music plays, Notes/Arrows scroll on the screen, and you hit them in the peripheral when they come to the proper place on the screen, normally a bar of some sort, which is also in time with the music. You are then graded on how well you stayed in time with the music. There are some differences between titles (differences in peripherals, some are key sounded, song selection, and over all feel and session play). I really like these games, because I feel like they've greatly increased my sense of timing when it comes to playing music, and provides a nice non-combat oriented game that is still very very engaging. They're also very cool for people who just love music, but feel weird just sitting down and listening (me).

So anyway, I was picking up beatmania IIDX again, so I wanted to install a simulator for it. Lunatic Rave seemed to be the best choice, but I really wanted a way to have individual mixes with their own skins. What I thought would be cool, is if whenever you picked a song from a different mix, the skin would change to the appropriate mix. This wasn't really possible with the software I was using, but I wondered what else I could do.

Then, I remembered: Hyperspin! Hyperspin is a front end for all manners of emulators (programs which run console software on other hardware, ex: playing nintendo 64 games on your PC) and is a way to easily jump from one system to the other, and pick from every game in that system. Check it out!

Now, though it may seem that way, Hyperspin doesn't just give you all the games in these systems, you have to set up all of the background programs and games, and hyperspin is just a way to navigate them a little bit easier after you have them running. It also can be a cool front-end for running PC based games, I.E. bemania sims, (and HDD rips for that matter) so I decided to see what I could do.

So, I created my necessary XMLs, folders and files, and pointed everything to the right places.
Since then, I've been working on themeing art, and have the main menu looking passable, and a default screen for the sub wheel. Also all of the Wheel art is almost done! (I just have to grab some good looking images for spada and substream)

There are still some things I need to do -
Individual themes for all mixes,
Skins in Lunatic rave for 1st-8th (We'll see how hard this is)
AHK Scripts for clicking the play button and pressing any key
a transition screen to mask the loading/AHK script?

and that's pretty much it! I'm planning on using the intro videos from the mixes themselves, since lunatic rave does not support those, and they'll all say "press start at the end. Hopefully, with hyperspins transition system, I'll be able to do the fade out that happens when you do press start.

My end goal is to create themes for all/most bemani games (anything that has over 5 mixes) and just release a whole front end for just music sims, using hyperspin. I'll probably call it bemani spin, or something similar.
I hope to make themes for/Support: (in the order I plan on doing them)
IIDX through Lunatic Rave and HDD rips
original beatmania through MAME
Pump it up through PC mixes and Stepmania?
DDR through Step mania
GF/DM though mame and any other good sim ( I haven't checked this one out in a while)
Pop'n music through Lunatic, and any other good sim (Never even tried this guy, just aware of it)
maybe I'll make one for Jubeat, but Since it's mainly a touch interface, it might not be the smartest thing.

Anyway, that's enough text with no pictures or videos for now. I'll post again with screencaps and details when I have a better build.
Stick around!

Cyber Punk 2020 - An Introduction

I started getting interested in this game when I was in highschool, while doing a lot of dungeons and dragons. Just downloading some pdfs, it seemed cool. I didn't get any books until much later, but i finally started running a game last week. If you've never heard of cyberpunk, here's the skinny:

-It's a pen and paper Role Playing Game (RPG), much like the above mentioned D&D
-Based heavily on William Gibson novels, namely the neouromancer
-Compared to other RPG's, it's futuristic, very dark, gritty, and kinda just mean. It's a rough world out there man.

So, the game work around two kinds of players. There are the Players, who play roles in the world, and the Referee, who controls what goes on in the world, and the non-player characters. A lot of things are determined by dice rolls, and play happens through conversation. Think of it as a few people making a story within a set of rules.

I started playing with two friends last week, and to get them familiar with the game, I decided
to just let them roam around in the city and see what kind of trouble they could get into. The first companion book I've ushered in this week is the Night City sourcebook. This guy is hefty!
Basically, from a referee's standpoint, I can pair it with The core rulebook, and provide some interesting random encounters, depending on what the Players want to do. This thing is packed! The map is expansive, and every building has a description.

If you're interested in this game, I would recommend looking into both of these books to get a feel. they're great introductory pieces, and can provide some good reads, even if you don't play the game.

Core Rule Book
Night City Sourcebook

Next week I might throw up some of the stories the Players are experiencing. We'll see haha

Hello! My name is hal, and I do a lot of stuff. I'm in two bands, run a record label, work full time, and have a lovely girl friend. I recently moved, and I'm still figuring out things about the new city I moved to three weeks ago. With all that going on, I still have a lot of down time. There are a lot of things I like to do, but most of all I like working on and making things. This blog will be mostly about that! If you scroll to the side, you'll see links for some of the things I like to post about. Current Projects, old stuff that might never have gotten done, and maybe even some cyberpunk2020 stuff (if you came here based on the name haha). I hope you enjoy!