Dancing Monkeys: Automatically Generate step files for DDR

[erich666]

I'm happy to announce a new, great front-end for Dancing Monkeys v1.02: Gorilla, written by David Flink. Go to:

http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page

to download it. It includes output directly to the proper StepMania directory, drag and drop input, and many other excellent features. It's also tiny to download, just 40k (though if your machine is pretty "clean", you may need to also download the DLL installer).

As far as v1.02 differing from v1.01, I'll check that out. The only thing changed as far as the algorithms go is that code was added so that songs without the default output length of 105 seconds would have a reasonable step density. In other words, the bug in v1.01 where long songs had very few steps was fixed. Other than that very little was touched.

Note that random numbers are indeed used in Dancing Monkeys, so output can vary from run to run in any version of the program. Run it twice on the same song and you'll likely get fairly different results. I've run v1.02 on about 480 songs and so far they seem pretty much like v1.01, for good or ill. I hope to find some time to dig in and improve some of the problems 1.01 has (e.g. if it doesn't have a strong bass line, Dancing Monkeys won't convert it).

Eric

[Minger]

Didn't work for me - Tried loading a few songs, hit go, and it just started, then the screen disappeared and went back to the first screen.

[erich666]

[danil_d_]

well maby i think it did not work couse i`m using the bacth utility

o i do not know


and what is that o Gorilla (what for )
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[danil_d_]

ok ok Gorilla is cool but what the /$(()(&//( y DWI directory
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[erich666]

[danil_d_]

right dance with intensity is cool , i already downloaded it and its easy
too use

but theres a problem there is no spanish version anouncer jajajaj
(why i'm saing this? cause im mexican jejeje

so i already understood thanks bro and i think the thing bout the song steps of 1.02 I think Gorilla fixed it and its cool the you can make 3 min songs jajaja thanks a lot man

you could talk to the stepmaia page producer and can make a very good arrege cause dancing monkey its a real cool progam

and now with the gorrilla and all the its AMAZING

thanks for everything and no more cuestions i think jajaja
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[erich666]

New version of Dancing Monkeys is now available, it's v1.03. Get it here:

http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page

Why new? Because I somehow futzed the compilation of the v1.02 version, making it much slower (2.5 times slower) than v1.01 - no idea how that could happen. This new version, v1.03, is back to normal (i.e. pretty slow, vs. dead slow). It also includes some minor bugfixes, general cleanup, and uses a bit less memory.

If you have v1.02, you just need to download the v1.03 executable. For newcomers, Gorilla is now packaged with Dancing Monkeys, so it's just one simple download.

Thanks for the feedback, those of you who've written with bugs and suggestions. We're working (well, mostly David Flink is working) to integrate Gorilla better with Dancing Monkeys and improve its interface considerably. That release will probably happen in about two weeks.

[Joshua B]

I'm a first-time user (tonight). Nice job with the program and the frontend!

I had to make a slight Offset adjustment but then the steps were great. Interesting that the program creates a totally new set of steps for each Difficulty level.

I noticed that the program compressed and trimmed my MP3 so I set Length to 1000 and Output format to <original>. My mp3 file size is still cut in half. Can I get some help on making sure my music file isn't rewritten?

[jzero]

[danil_d_]

ok lets check out 1.03 version
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[danil_d_]

its cool
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[Gorilla_dude]

[eaglefan101]

i cant open any of the .rar or the .zip files. they are invalid or corrupt.
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Formerly known as "piemaster"



Yeah this is the end of my sig. You can stop reading it now.

[Gorilla_dude]

[erich666]

[danil_d_]

monket page does not work why i can dowloas dancing monkeys and gorilla
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[DDR_mulletman]

Yeah, i can't get the page to work either, and my version of Dancing Monkey's has started acting funny (it truncates songs that are 5 minutes to some random number)
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DDR_mulletman
a.k.a Ron Daman
'All you'll see is the mullet while i'm playing DDR'

[Suburban Knight]

I downloaded this program a while ago. Have they:

A. Incorperated BPM Changes
B. Made it do more than just 4th and 8th notes
C. Gotton rid of the annoying stops that don't really fit anywhere?

jw
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[erich666]

The site http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/ is up, guess it must have been down for a bit.

Like the pages say, we've mostly just cleaned up the input and output problems in versions 1.0 and 1.01. Gorilla is a much friendlier front end.

By default it trims the songs to 105 seconds long. If you used the patched 1.01 version, simple set the song duration for the new version to 9999 seconds (option "--length 9999") and it won't trim the length of any song. This can also be set in Gorilla.

To get rid of pauses, just use "-ons" to never generate pauses. Alternately, you could put "-es 1" and if one or more stops would be generated (which often means that the steps file generated has gaps in it anyway), which tells Dancing Monkeys to not generate a step file if it would otherwise make a pause. Again, Gorilla can set this.

Someday we hope to improve the beats per minute algorithm and the steps generation itself. Personally, I find about half my own music doesn't convert at all, and that maybe half the songs that are generated are flawed or boring. It's the one out of 10 or 20 that are good or great that are worthwhile. Easier for me to dance through 9 bad or fair songs in 20 minutes and delete them, than spend a few hours writing my own steps to a single song.

Eric