Dancing Monkeys: Automatically Generate step files for DDR

KarlOKeeffe · Basic Member Joined: 31 Oct 2003

I thought some of you might be interested in my University project for automatically generating step files for StepMania and DWI, called Dancing Monkeys.

Given an arbitrary piece of music, Dancing Monkeys will analyse that music to extract the BPM and gap value. It will also extract the structure of the music in terms of repeating sections, find pauses and find suitable locations for freeze arrows.

Using this information it will generate a single step chart for that music at any given difficulty level. It will do all this without requiring any input from the user.

It generates both StepMania and DWI step files.

More information is available at:
http://www.monket.net/dancingmonkeys/
including the project report, and source code.

Let me know what you think. The current implementation is very slow, but with some work could be made many orders of magnitude faster. But before I put in that work I'd like to know if anyone is interested.

Karl

k//eternal · Trick Member Joined: 10 Jun 2003

That sounds really, really cool o_o;

Is that even possible?

(By the way, the current version isn't working for me, it just says "ERROR: Sorry. No help in figuring out the problem...")
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FirebirdGM · Trick Member Joined: 24 Mar 2002 Location: Calgary, Canada

Nice!

About how long does it take for a song?

Ebisumaru · Trick Member Joined: 06 Jul 2003

Wow I used this last night. Amazing. It used a lot of lefts, but who cares. It's still amazing. Takes a while for a song, but it's worth it.

KarlOKeeffe · Basic Member Joined: 31 Oct 2003

OK, I'm going to need some help figuring out the source of this error. If you get the error can you let me know which OS you are using, and copy all the output that Dancing Monkeys gives you. And any other relevant information.

Thanks.

Ebisumaru: Glad you liked it

Karl

[S4U] Evo · Trick Member Joined: 21 Oct 2002 Location: El Paso, Tx

i keep trying and i know i am doing it right but it keeps giving me the same error

KarlOKeeffe · Basic Member Joined: 31 Oct 2003

Evofusion: Can you copy and paste all of the text in the command line window when you try and run it. This will make it much easier to figure out whats wrong.

Make sure that you are in the

[S4U] Evo · Trick Member Joined: 21 Oct 2002 Location: El Paso, Tx

KarlOKeeffe · Basic Member Joined: 31 Oct 2003

Ahah!

I've spotted the problem. You have run DancingMonkeys.exe directly from the C:\ drive. This is a very subtle difference from changing to the "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Cookies\Desktop\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32\" directory and running the exe there.

Try:

TOTALdude · Trick Member Joined: 28 Jun 2003 Location: East Yorkshire

I can't figure this out at all >_<

I just click on the program, then the window pops up for 0.001 seconds and then exits.

I dun understand what to do x_x
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k//eternal · Trick Member Joined: 10 Jun 2003

Cyan Garamonde (Nosaj) · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 7:46 pm Post subject:

Interesting. This is what people have been asking for for some time now. I'm going to run the executable on my laptop tonight, and I'll try out the MatLab version tomorrow when I have access to a school computer.

Edit: damn. Same results:

PlatinumHawke · Trick Member Joined: 18 Mar 2002

Interesting program and all, but it leads to my one, big complaint. Can't people actually MAKE their own steps? I do all my encoding by hand, and I somewhat tolerate people that use the record feature in SM/Xstep, but completely letting a program do all the work? I have to frown at that. I can really see this being used in some future TournaMix. And we all know that paint-by-numbers anything isn't good.

Phrekwenci · Administrator Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Location: New York, NY

I want to see setting for difficulty by DWI artist. Like:

Vivaldi Amuro (some what easy but fun)
MJE & Udderdude (a bit more difficult)
BemaniRuler (I can't pass that on my feet)
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KarlOKeeffe · Basic Member Joined: 31 Oct 2003

I have uploaded a new version of the program (http://www.monket.net/files/dancingmonkeys/Dancing%20Monkeys%201.01.zip) which *should* fix the crashing after normalisation bug, although I can't be sure as I haven't managed to recreate this bug on my own system.

Those of you who know what you are doing can download the changed exe (http://www.monket.net/files/dancingmonkeys/DancingMonkeys101.exe), and save yourself bandwidth.

Otherwise just download the whole caboodle from: (http://www.monket.net/files/dancingmonkeys/Dancing%20Monkeys%201.01.zip)

'Dude with the Japanese Name': In response to your complaint, no I don't think people can actually just make their own steps. There are a lot of people in the world with varying talents, and very few of those people will have the talent (or the time to spare) to make their own DDR steps.

My project gives them the power to create steps automatically, to whatever music they want, without needing a talented fellow to make the steps for them.

But you did hit the nail on the head, the computer generated step files my project produces are good, but they will never have the quality and flair of hand generated step tracks. They will never be a challenge in a TournaMix.

Phrekwenci: I'm not sure I understand what you're after, you can already specify the difficulty level in feet (1-9), but are you requesting some sort of system whereby it generates steps in the style of an existing step track?

Phrekwenci · Administrator Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Location: New York, NY

PlatinumHawke · Trick Member Joined: 18 Mar 2002

Cyan Garamonde (Nosaj) · Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 12:22 pm Post subject:

Oobrakadoobra · Trick Member Joined: 03 Apr 2003

For some reason when i try it on songs it says this

_______________________________________________________
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>"C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32\DancingMonkeys.exe
"
Dancing Monkeys by Karl O'Keeffe - 28/06/03

Arguments are:
* Filename of music to create step file for.
e.g. C:\Music\Prodigy\Firestarter.mp3
* Easy difficulty rating (in feet)
* Medium difficulty rating (in feet)
* Hard difficulty rating (in feet)
* Directory to output results e.g.
e.g. C:\StepMania\Songs\Dancing Monkeys Group\

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>Cd..

C:\Documents and Settings>Cd..

C:\>"C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32\DancingMonkeys.exe" "C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\wi
n32\balzac - sad nos. 99.mp3" 4 6 9 "C:\Program Files\StepMania\Songs\Dancing Mo
nkeys Group\"
ERROR: Unable to find LAME mp3 decoder.

EXITING

C:\>cd "C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32"

C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32> DancingMonkeys.exe "C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32\b
alzac - sad nos. 99.mp3" 4 6 9 "C:\Program Files\StepMania CVS\Songs\new\"

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
Initialised.
input: C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32\balzac - sad nos. 99.mp3
(44.1 kHz, 2 channels, MPEG-1 Layer III)
output: ..\..\Temp Music\Temp Song.wav (16 bit, Microsoft WAVE)
skipping initial 1105 samples (encoder+decoder delay)
Frame# 2595/2599 128 kbps MS
Decoded Mp3 / Copied Wav
Loaded song.
Normalised song.
WARNING: Unable to Output truncated version of song. Please copy original to out
put directory.
Outputted truncated normalised song.
Monoed song.
Smoothed song.
Normalised mono and smoothed data.
Thresholded data
Found peaks and troughs.
Found beat positions.
Calculated peak to beat offset.
Brute forced the interval tests.
Calcualted Gap and BPM.
ERROR: Unable to confidently find BPM.

EXITING

C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32>
C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32>
C:\Dancing Monkeys\bin\win32>

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It is unable to confidently find the BPM, what gives?
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spoonsman · Trick Member Joined: 01 Dec 2002

I just scanned through the project report and it says that it currently doesn't take tempo changes into account.

With that out of the way, The program got pretty far until it crashed for me. I don't know how to copy and paste code from a command line so I just took a screenshot.