ARTILLERY
Infected Mushroom


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>>> !WARNING! PLEASE READ THIS FIRST! <<<
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This is a gimmick simfile. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT read anything beyond this warning because it'll ruin your fun playing it. This file is a real treat the first time you see the tricks and the background animation. So please play it first, and then check back here to read "what I was thinking".

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SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!




Alright, so, here we are with a gimmick chart. Yes, I realize that this is a very dangerous and unsafe entry, and it's going to be a hit or a miss. I'm submitting it as an experiment to see if I am able to make a proper gimmick simfile that would do well in a DDR contest. Let's say that I was bored with all that stale Dancemania/J-Pop stuff and annoyed with crappines of the other "wannabe" gimmick chats. I wanted to create something which is tricky but still enjoyable and not stupidly difficult.

The song is plain awesome, but it's quite different from the other stuff from Infected Mushroom. So, if you want to check their other songs, you'd be probably quite surprised. It's still worth it though, especially if you like unorthodox sounds backed up with strong psychederic trance beats.

The simfile took quite a long time to prepare. One day for stepping synching that madness, and two more days to prepare all of the graphics, effects and their synchronization. However, I'm quite satisfied with how this simfile turned out, so It was worth it. It was supposed to be a small project first, but then as I progressed I got more ideas and expanded it to a full BGA script.

I've decided to go with greyscale for the first part of the song, I think really emphasizes its gloomy mood. As for effects used, the flashes combined with BPM doubling are there to stress the drums, and the progressive blur is there to increase the tension. :) The "anything..." part has to be my favorite, where I remove all of the notes using a negative BPM change make the whole screen black. This was done to emphasize the sudden beat drop and whisper. The second part uses footage from the song Final Audition, from Pump It Up with random ratatas added for fun. :D I think it suits the song perfectly.

I apologize if BGAs seem a bit pixelated, but they need to be 320x240 (otherwise Stepmania suffers from choppines on slower machines, yay for outdated codecs). Additionaly, the 15MB per-entry limit didn't allow me to encode the videos in higher bitrates. If you, for some reason, can't use 3.9 to play this, I've included a Stepmania 4.0 friendly version (no negative BPMs) in a separate directory. On the 3.9 version it is not possible to get a 100% score, due to skipping arrows. So if you're aiming for a perfect score, use that version also.

Now, onto the steps:

Beginner:
There is no point in making a beginner chart for such song.

Light:
All of the jumps are simplified into L+R or U+D, so they are not extraordinary difficult for beginners. I've rated this chart a 3, because it's very slow, and there are no 1/8 notes whatsoever. All of the tricky moments are covered by a freeze arrow or by easy 1/4 notes. Only the main beat is stressed.

Standard:
Many 1/8ths are added, but the song is still only 100BPM, so I guess that's okay. This chart contains a lot of stream starting with 1/8 arrows, jackhammers, tricky freezes section and sone stepjumps. That's why it's rated as 6, it will probably cause some problems for people who can't undestand all of them properly.

Heavy:
The main deal. First, it doesn't look like a 9 footer, but then the hell breaks loose :). Be prepared for an assault of 1/16ths drills, and crossovers with jumps in between. Oh, and please don't complain about the ratata jackhammer, it's exactly the same speed as Paranoia Eternal from 5th mix, and it's doable on pad.

Well, three more hours left to the deadline, I should be finishing this now. Thank you for reading and playing. I hope you've enjoyed it, because I sure did enjoy making this file. ;)


Credts & Thanks:

http://ichobi.deviantart.com/art/Cage-10998471 - the art used to create background and banner

Thanks to BlueSS - for hosting the contest and managing all of this mess.

Thanks to all of my testers for their feedback, thanks to the friend who helped with the fonts, and thanks to another friend who made a certain simfile, that inspired me. You all know who you are! :)