This thread is to continue a discussion we started via email with Reed and Nicole, talking about the best way to go about generating stepfiles for the DDI-specific songs we're going to choose. Nicole will be making the files.

The story so far, in a nutshell:

Standard duration for DDR songs is 90 seconds or thereabouts, we >can< do longer if we want to but Reed recommends that we not, especially since each game will be three songs long (standard).

Since most songs out there are longer than that, trimming will be needed. If this just means editing mp3s then there are probably a bunch of people (myself included) who could do it.

Difficulty: Standard DDR songs come with four difficulty levels. I suggested we could get away with two. Not all songs will be good for all players (beginners vs. experts) but as long as we have something for everyone we should do fine. I recommend we err on the side of too easy, since even experienced players will be dancing in a rather, ummm, unusual situation. Plus, we'll be able to fuck with people in different ways to make it arbitrarily hard.

All the conclusions above are subject to the results of actual testing, so I think we don't want to get too many stepfiles made until testing confirms that chosen song durations, difficulties and so on are working well. This may mean that we use mostly built-in songs at the FAF, which would be fine. The FAF incarnation of DDR will be operational and safe but relatively basic since we've only got a month to finish it.