Dancing Monkeys: Automatically Generate step files for DDR

[Suburban Knight]

hello, everyone, i use Dancing Monkeys in a different way i'm sure other do this as well, but i think that Dancing Monkey's is a great tool, and i use it to properly sync and find the BPM of song and then i write the steps it is a lot easier than trying to find the BPM and just get stnc right myself. so congrats on making a program that helps users create steps for stepmania or does the whole job, if you'd like
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[erich666]

Yet another new version of Dancing Monkeys and of Gorilla is out: http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page

Gorilla's majorly improved, the interface is much better overall and is more tightly integrated with Dancing Monkeys. David Flink rewrote almost all of it from scratch. For example, when something goes wrong with converting a song you can now examine the log from within Gorilla itself.

The major change in functionality is a few more frills, and some minor bug fixes. If you've imported album images into your MP3's with iTunes, or added album art to your song directories with the Windows Media Player, this art is now used for banners and backgrounds for the step files.

Sorry, no other great changes - me, I've been at a conference and on vacation. As it is, I'm getting sucked into a book project (new edition of "Real-Time Rendering", buy a copy and earn me a beer), so I probably won't get to do any major changes in the near future. If anyone else with Matlab skills wants to step up to the plate, now's your chance. Latest source is up at the site, and I'm happy to help advise you.

Eric

[fripping]

any other in the person in the world would have been happy with their school project, and if it weren't for you such a useful tool wouldn't exist. so I thank you once for making it and twice for actually having the grit to go into fine-tuning it.

with your help a very lazy man is expanding his ddr collection beyond sappy japanese pop and techno music into things he actually likes, like reggae and funk. honestly dissatisfaction with the usual genres was starting to turn me off to ddr (and make me fatter) but i just couldn't be arsed to make my own stepfiles. it really is just a giant pain in the buttocks, and the scarcity of quality music reflects this. i hope you keep working on dancing monkeys.

[erich666]

[fripping]

ohh yeah, different screen names. but thank you anyway, and kudos to karl.

[danil_d_]

hello there the program is really cool and i also dislike the Fuc(k)ing stops

and in gorilla when you set it to 0 stops it makes an error if the song has 1 stop and it does not make the steps for that song

im used to it but if there cuold be a way to make no stops would be great

thanks

Aki EL MAchucon Lopez desde cananea Sonora Mexico
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[erich666]

Feh, the forum software seemed to hang, so I submitted my post again; now I see a double post, so am deleting this one.

[erich666]

[erich666]

After much quality assurance testing by us both, a few weeks back and forth of bug finding and fixing, David Flink has released an official version of Gorilla, 1.0.0. This version is much more stable, and there are some enhancements:

An installer now sets up both programs, desktop icon, etc.
Tight integration with Dancing Monkeys, and source for both programs is distributed in the package.
Song conversion is now set as a low priority task, so the program can now be run without sucking down all available CPU.
You can stop processing a song partway through and restart later.
There is now an estimated time for when processing for a song will finish.
The beats per minute gets a slight refinement after it is computed.
Songs which are reconverted are done much faster, as the beats per minute value computed earlier for each is reused.

Sorry, no real changes to Dancing Monkeys itself, other that some tiny bug fixes and the new "refine" mode. I'm afraid I've run out of time and am off to other things, but at least Gorilla is now much easier to install and use "out of the box".

As usual, it's at http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page

Enjoy!
Eric

[shurf]

Well, I'm finally gonna give this a shot!

Here's hoping it works amazingly!

Thanks Eric.

[erich666]

Yet another new version of Dancing Monkeys (1.06) and Gorilla (1.0.1): http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page as usual. Mostly just embarrassing bug fixes of features most people don't use:

* The "no stops" feature didn't remove all stops generated - oops; fixed.
* Gorilla's "save song list" feature somehow got broken in the 1.0.0 release - fixed.
* Other obscure Gorilla features have been added. My favorite is simply that if you load a directory into Gorilla, you can double-click on it and it'll expand to its subdirectories and songs. You can then delete what you don't want to process.

I'd love to tell you that Dancing Monkeys itself has been improved in functionality, but sadly it ain't so - I don't have the time, and no one else has taken up the reins. That said, I just tried the commercial product "Dance Factory", and so far Dancing Monkeys makes much more challenging steps (when it doesn't fail ) than Dance Factory. Still, I need to try more songs with Dance Factory to be fair.

[fripping]

wow, dance factory got an awful review on gamespot, how ironic that a free program can do it better. . . but I wouldn't be too surprised if somebody started using dancing monkeys to make money. in fact i kind of hope they do in the expectation that the profit motive will make it a really robust program. but this is a "give a mouse a cookie" sort of situation.

[danil_d_]

what you are saying is that you will leave the program , you know if you made it really good you can make it even better-

Give it a shot and don`t leave it in the middle of the way
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[erich666]

You can download free step files created by Dancing Monkeys for 18 songs from http://www.mediafire.com/?czwndzk5jil. Just unzip the file into your StepMania\Songs directory. All step files were created by Dancing Monkeys; my favorite is group_inou's "BPA". These tracks are free to redistribute and remix, for noncommercial use, under the Creative Commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/. They're from the Diesel:U:Music 2006 competition; see the ReadMe in the zip file for more info.

If the download link does not work for you, try using Internet Explorer (I had problems using Firefox). There's also an alternate download site at RapidShare http://rapidshare.com/files/8406027/Diesel_2006.zip.html, though they have queuing, verification, etc. Enjoy!

By the way, if you have problems running Dancing Monkeys on your system, please go check the Tutorial page at http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/tutorial. I've added some new solutions to common problems. For example, in countries where "," is used as a decimal point, Dancing Monkeys will fail, but there's a workaround. See the page for details.

Eric

[Gorilla_dude]

Greetings all DnacingMonkeys/Groilla fans.

A new version of the DancingMonkeys package is now available
HERE

The only change from teh previous version is that dreaded "Runtime error 13" that effects many computers not set to UK or US language.

Have fun, and be sure to let me know (Contact details on the Dancing Monkeys website) if you find any other bugs or have any feature requests.

[erich666]

If you downloaded version 1.0.2 of Gorilla and it works for you, you don't need this update - it's mostly concerned with international language issues and bugfixes. If you had problems running Gorilla, please do give the new 1.1.3 version a try. As usual, it's at http://www.monket.net/dancing-monkeys/home-page

Eric

[erich666]

Gorilla 1.1.4 is out: fixes some problems with checkboxes and how VB interprets them. Get it if you've had any errors with checkboxes.

[nikoboivin]

Since the site has been down for quite some time now, I am wondering if anyone still have a version of the programs and / or the source for those projects.

Thanks

[erich666]

Yes, sorry, we just noticed ourselves that the Dancing Monkeys "monket" site is toast. Seems the ISP upgraded their PHP software, which was not backwards compatible with the wiki software monket was using. Karl's currently on some tropical island in Indonesia (poor stiff) and a satellite internet connection is pricey, so he'll fix it eventually...

In the meantime, I've bundled up the latest distribution, along with some semi-recent docs files (I wish I had grabbed copies of the latest one). So, the whole thing is at: http://www.mediafire.com/?4mrdognlt3e

Download it, run the .exe to install, read the docs to understand the nuances or fix problems. Personally, I have problems attaching to mediafire, so I also uploaded to (the more annoying but dependable) rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/61822574/DancingGorilla-1.1.4-1.06.zip - just follow the minefield of buttons and typing to get the download for free.

As usual, feel free to write me if there are problems.

Just to leave a few more breadcrumbs: http://www.stepmania.com/wiki/Auto_Generate_Steps should normally have the latest info on where to get Dancing Monkeys and Gorilla, and if all else fails try http://home.twcny.rr.com/haines/

[erich666]

Monket is back! So Dancing Monkeys is pleasantly downloadable from http://monket.net/dancing-monkeys-v2/Main_Page again.