dr4b: (emi)
Deanna ([personal profile] dr4b) wrote2003-10-26 06:59 pm

OK, so I went to IZ to try out ITG

Yeah, so I was at work and I caught up on email from Friday, answered some stuff, did a quick fix to a web page, and then I headed to Illusionz for an hour or so to try out the new dance game.


1) I called first to make sure In The Groove was working. If you don't know what that is, it's an American-game-company made DDR-type game. Two of my favorite people to play DDR with in Seattle (Chris Danford and [profile] kyleward... well, and I guess three, really, 'cause Foy did some stepcharts) have been working on it for months and months and now they have a prototype machine of it at IZ! They put it in over the Disney's Rave machine. Yar. Anyway, long story short, the front desk said ITG was working, so I headed out there. You might want to call ahead if you hear rumours that it's broken.

2) ITG is neat but it's still kind of weird. It is a lot like Stepmania and the arrows look kinda weird and the default mode seems to be Reverse scroll, Hallway style, which was a little weird at first.

3) My favorite song so far is Dawn (which ironically enough is by said Kyle guy, so I'm sure he'll be glad to hear that). It's a cool song music-wise and I really like the steps. If you've played it, you'd probly know why.

4) Most of the songs are electronica, or standard dance type music. I liked the songs by Missing Heart, though. I honestly forget most of the songs I played, although I also did play Kagami, and that Jam Jam Groove or whatever the heck it's called that sounds like La Senorita, kinda, but it scrolls at 98BPM. I think that it honestly should be a 200BPM song and have the steps match that. It's not bad at 2x though and I did think the steps were really cool... it just seemed weird to hear a fast latin song and have it scroll at 98 BPM. If you know what I mean.

5) Rest of the time there I basically played one game of PNM, one of PPP, one of KBM, and 2-3 of DDR. For the record, and this is a short shameful confession, I passed Bag Heavy today for the first time ever. Keep in mind that the last time I had actually TRIED to play Bag Heavy was sometime around... uh... January. I just don't play it. I blame James. So I decided to play it on a whim today, and it was pretty easy. Yeah, so that's two 10-footers I can pass. Whatever.

After an hour at IZ I called it quits and headed back here to work. (IZ is only 15 mins from work... sigh... need my own car...) I did see [profile] animegothgrrl playing DDR on my way out of IZ though! Her blue hair braids look really fucking cool. It was good to see her, but I was just getting IZ-apathetic. Going to IZ makes me miss Mark ([profile] rkane), oddly enough. Good thing I'll see him and everyone at CMU in a few weeks :)

[identity profile] ddrknight.livejournal.com 2003-10-26 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Roxor software did not make Abuse unless Crack dot Com has come back from the dead and called themselves Roxor software.

Actually

[identity profile] tanuwa.livejournal.com 2003-10-27 01:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Roxor games does arcade game publishing, not console/PC publishing, so that's probably why. They actually are helping design/dev in the groove though most of the other titles on their site are being published by them only.

Re: Actually

[identity profile] ddrknight.livejournal.com 2003-10-27 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
But see...

Crack dot com released the source code several years ago, so it shouldn't be for sale by ANYONE.

Re: Actually

[identity profile] deeptape.livejournal.com 2003-10-27 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
FYI,

Crack released the code and the shareware art, but not the full version art. Everything we're distributing is under license from the original authors. Not only that, we are turning around and funding new open source projects with the profits.

Generally speaking, open source licenses do not prevent sale, only _closing_ of the source. Not the issue here with our games, but still. The Free Software Foundation sells GNU software all the time, it's just that you can _also_ download. That's what whole "Free as in beer" / "free as in speech" distinction is about.

This tripped someone up on DDRFreak, too. We really need to update the website to explain our relationship with the original authors. : )

Jason Asbahr
jason@roxorgames.com

Re: Actually

[identity profile] ddrknight.livejournal.com 2003-10-28 08:24 am (UTC)(link)
I just realzied I live about 20 mintues away from you guys (ie - San Marcos). It's a small world after all.

Re: Actually

[identity profile] ddrknight.livejournal.com 2003-10-28 08:26 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, I am aware what is under their free license. Although open source does not prevent sale, it'd still be good to make mention of the original creators; as you mentioned in your post.

My question now is, what is an arcade publisher doing releasing this game?

Abuse 3D Arcade! :D

Also, I do know what the GNU license entails. :P

Dea - It was only partially written in LISP so it would be easy for people to mod the game. The bulk of the core engine is in C++/Assembly.