What does this game bring to veteran StepMania players?

[nikals]

I've been playing StepMania for 10 years and although I'm glad to see an upcoming rhythm-based game on Steam I can't imagine what would be needed to get a person like me to buy Pulsen (especially for the price of 18,99€).

What new stuff are you bringing to the table? I have literally several thousands of stepcharts (and even more hours poured into the game) in my StepMania library and although not all of them are of a high quality step-wise, a very good portion of them are (500 songs or so are definitely of professional quality even surpassing the quality of stepcharts in DDR and ITG).

Do you guys have a lot of experience with making stepcharts? Do you have any public simfiles a SM-junkie like me could try out?

I can see this game maybe introducing new people to the genre, which would be awesome. But what does it offer me and other hardcore StepMania players?

[Vegaetalus]

As a long time SM player myself who just stumbled upon this game (disclaimer: I don't know much about it yet, especially the gameplay itself), it looks like it will be offering a more complete "game" experience than SM. Leaderboards, story/challenge modes, richer chart features tailored to the songs.

It's not aiming to do what StepMania does but better, as far as I can tell. The point is to deliver a good packaged experience and not make you rely on finding good charts yourself.

I'm interested in the game because I want to apply my SM skills into a game that gives me a little more back than SM does. Progressing in a story mode and doing challenges feels better than just seeing a score screen at the end of the song. Also interested to see how I rank in the leaderboards.

If you're purely interested in the gameplay and you're all set up the way you want in SM, and you don't care about the "fluff" of a more fleshed out game experience, perhaps it's not for you.

[Sawtaytoes]

Man, after that post I don't know what to say. @Vegaetalus summed up most of it already.

I'm also a long-time StepMania player since 2002 so I know what you're talking about @nikals. I originally had charts made for my personal use and then heard a lot of people wanted a game outta that stuff so I started work on Pulsen. My original mindset was "this is what casual players want". About a month in, I got a lot of comments from pro-level players and added all of these extra features you can enable in the options. This way it gives a good start to most and a nice detailed view for players like us who really wanna see more.

The question I'd ask is, if you have 500 songs you believe surpass DDR and ITG, wouldn't 550 (or more) be better? Instead of spending all that time looking around for potentially good charts; most of which will probably let you down (I know from experience), why not get them in a nice package specially designed for them?

I completely stand behind the charts in Pulsen. There's been a lot of work that's gone into them and in future builds, we're changing up a lot of things, adding some charts where large gaps between difficulties exist, fixing every little detail I missed when most of the content was originally made, etc. You can even switch branches in Steam to test those changes out yourself.

I'd like as much feedback as possible before the full release. If you like these kinds of games and really wanna see what Pulsen has to offer, go ahead and give it a try. If you don't like it, please refund it using Steam's refund system. You could also follow the project and wait for our full release then determine if it's up-your-alley. Also, the price at Early Access launch will be 15% off. Dunno how long that lasts though.

Originally posted by Vegaetalus:

Also interested to see how I rank in the leaderboards.

Since I'm assuming the global leaderboards are going to be filled w/ 100% scores, I don't know how useful those'll be.

I used to have a whole system where you could check your scores online (not just in the game) and compare against everyone, but I have to re-code all that now for the Steam transition. Haven't had a chance to go into it yet. If it's important for you, I could prioritize it. In fact, I'll probably make it a separate site so I can develop it a lot quicker.

Just made a thread on it so you could post your ideas here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/340960/discussions/0/535151589895203808/

[Sawtaytoes]

Update: spent some of today rebuilding the online leaderboards. It's working on my local machine so I might put up some screenshots on Twitter; not quite ready for everyone else to use just yet.

[Xiupan]

I really like your reply developer! It's honest and full of good info. I'm also a veteran SM and DDR player. I eagerly await the early access release so I can try this game :)

[SaMRoSs]

i want to play this on my metal pad. but i would like something like stepmania arrows. it can be changed?

[SaMRoSs]

i mean the note skin

[Sawtaytoes]

I didn't know music games get abandoned, but I can completely understand why you'd be concerned if you were seeing other games do that. I also bought Rhythm Zone and was wholly disappointed at its lackluster performance and minimal features. I didn't know they advertised that they were going to make a good product though; back then, I saw a rhythm game on Steam and thought it'd be fun.

I used StepMania Online years ago and actually talked to the author about it when I was developing Pulsen. I did things a little differently, but I hope it's just as good if not better :). I'm willing to make improvements where necessary. One of the major things I wanted to change is that you couldn't play live against another player. I added a replay mode so after someone plays, you can play against their ghost as if you're right there with the person. Now that we have async stuff working, we could also do live online matches; but I haven't implemented anything like that yet. If you'd like that kind of play, I'll go ahead and put it in my list of to-do.

Knowing those concerns, Pulsen was originally released in 2011. This new 2015 version is a major revamp. I have a good track record for keeping it working; never once shut down the servers until last month when I converted all the old users over to the new Steam system and gave everyone Steam keys.

The game's in Early Access now bc I'm adding a ton of features. Some of which already exist, they're just not hooked into all the fancy new Steam API calls. I've invested years of my time and effort (and money) into this game and do not intend to let it fail.

[D_Nowitzki]

Originally posted by Sawtaytoes:

Since I'm assuming the global leaderboards are going to be filled w/ 100% scores, I don't know how useful those'll be.

What are the timing windows like? (I assume they can't be tinkered with in an .ini file).

[Sawtaytoes]

Originally posted by D_Nowitzki:

What are the timing windows like? (I assume they can't be tinkered with in an .ini file).

Currently no Ridiculous timing and yes, you can't edit the timing windows.

Pulsen on the left, ITG arcade on the right.

Fantastic  = 0.022500 vs 0.021500
Perfect    = 0.045000 vs 0.043000
Great      = 0.090000 vs 0.102000
Good       = 0.135000 vs 0.135000
Almost     = 0.180000 vs 0.180000
Attack     = 0.135000 vs 0.130000
Mine       = 0.090000 vs 0.070000
Hold       = 0.500000 vs 0.320000
Roll       = 0.350000 vs 0.320000

Originally posted by Lazenite no sound:

Regarding the online multiplayer function, If you've played StepMania Online, you know that it is a well developed and one of it's best features. There are actual chat rooms where you can communicate with others, and the games are not strictly head to head matches. I don't remember the maximum number of players, but it would was quite a bit more than two. For this game, I would think it would make sense that live multiplayer is included, given your stress on the importance of a well developed song library. That is one of StepMania biggest problems. Not everyone has the same song packs, and not everyone knows it exists or how to set it up, especially for non-English speakers. (I'm sure you know this, Rhythm games are most popular in non-English speaking countries.)

I asked James to look into online multiplayer. I might have to get another server to even be able to do it. We're gonna mess around w/ stuff, see if we can use Steamworks to make this process easier. Steam covers chat rooms and matchmaking.

Replays are my only alternative for now. They'll tentatively be in a beta build soon as they're working again w/ Steam now, but they'll take up a large amount of space on the server if a lot of people are uploading so I have to solve that problem as well.

[Maid Mint Ch. ミント・ファントーム]

nothing good.