A new beginning for our SM community.

[Shikari]

Well, since I got a few good reviews for this idea, I'm making a thread so people can give opinions better:

Originally Posted by Shikari

I was thinking about a whole new Stepmania community, like ODI is/was back in the days. I know we have both KBO and FFR, but a full community, centered only on Stepmania, from playing to stepping, would be cool to gather new and old people. A place where we could discuss everything about this game we play, and come up with "solutions" to keep Stepmania alive and make it more popular, bringing even more people. I don't care if we are going to have pad files, keyboard files, anime files, just a place for Stepmania, with subforums for each file "category".

Originally Posted by Shikari

Sadly, I wasn't a ODI active, but I do know how much that site was active and a good place to hang out. I was thinking about this new forum today, and we have material for that: The old project of Stepmania classes, posted here on FFR, where prolific step authors were giving real lessons on how to use some stuff, like X-mod (JenovaSephiroth was the "teacher") and Color Theory (moches and GD), and your SM Wiki and World Records database. Sadly, the Stepmania classes project was forgotten during the FFR's big crash.

I don't know, maybe a fresh start for Stepmania community is what we're missing, and who knows how big our community can grow with a new place to focus and hang out.

Stian Kristensen 8:07 pm
it's a good idea, we get a domain, a webhost and i'd buy a vbulletin lisence and then we'll set up a forum or something, but we need to be sure that more than us (me, you hawke) is into the idea, and would help out

We have the idea, we have Stian willing to buy us a vBulletin license, we have a few people interested in this new forum: Me, Staiain, Hawke and Razor.

Now, we need your opinion as a Stepmania player/stepartist: Is this possible? Would you give any kind of help?

Thoughts, opinions, suggestions, everything is welcome.


Edit, and I really appreciate if you readed it:

Okay, guys, after these 2 days of thread, here's what we have in terms of ideas and possible features:


- New and unificated forums

Since the SM-SSC dev team offered full support to this idea, they gave access to the stepmania.com website, so we can redesign everything to be more user-friendly, with new forums and subforums for all Stepmania "categories": Pad, KB, Solo and Anime. If you have any contact with the "heads" of each of these communities, reason with them so we can unity Stepmania communities once and for all.


- Scores Database, new Difficulty Rating system and Tier Points system for KB

Yes, Tier Points, one of the most attractive features for many players. If you check Kongregate, lots of people go there for badges, achievements. Me, Halogen, Staiain and Rubix come up with some ideas for this diff/TP system. Here's the project:

Instead of having multiple packs with multiple difficulty systems (Xoon with the 1-10 system; Older pack with a somewhat random method of rating), we want to remake all these difficulties to match a 1-100 system, 1 being the easiest easiest and 100 being the hardest, mind-blowing, mortal shit ever conceived by humanity. For difficulty 100, we have Chik habit Beginner as a parameter.

Here, we need your help, player: We need you to play whole packs and give these rates to the files. Then, we gather all the information and discuss a fair system to please both newcomers, who can't even C/B files like Shind Bad and Air, and the best players around, like Alex, Staiain, and Dossar. So far, we have the following players helping:

AlexDest (LCP1, LCP2, FFRCP3, Xoon 3, KBC3)
samurai7694
Xx{Midnight}xX (SMBPack, KBC2, Xoon 1, FFRCP1, HSMP1)
TC_Halogen
Staiain
sakura080789 (VGMP1, VGMP2, VGMP3, DCP, FFRP2)
Shikari
Bluearrowll
Ziergdsx18 (Xoon 4 Red, Xoon 4 Blue, Xoon Drama 1, HSMP7, Midare 4 )
AsphyxZero (SMG1, SMG2, RF, CKM1, CKM2)

If you want to volunteer on this task, and it's important that you do, since the list of packs used in this new system is HUGE, talk to me via Comment Wall, PM or AIM.

Once we finish this new difficulty method, we will work on tasks for the Tier Points, and record these achievements, and players scores, on a new database, similar to what FFR has, having even a rank for these TPs. The SSC dev team said they want to try this idea, so we can expect great things from them.


- Stepfile Making Classes and Encouraging

Biased idea? I don't think so. I know you might think "But, people shouldn't tell people what to do", but this is different. Around 2009 or so, before the big FFR crash, if I recall correctly, there was a project going on here in FFR, where prolific stepartists would give "classes" about various methods and technics of file making, suc as Color Theory and X-modding. Well, I want to revive this project. JenovaSephiroth, who was the Xmod teacher in this project, said he'd help with this, and since Oni-Paranoia said he wanted a subforum for Course Modding, we could create a subforum for this "Stepmania University". Here, we need help from stepartists that want to share their technique and ideas to new authors. If you want to help, lemme know by the same ways mentioned before. The list so far is:

- JenovaSephiroth
- Oni-Paranoia
- who_cares973

About the encouraging part, in this subforum for stepartists, we could come up with ideas for new packs, such as leonid's Single Song Pack, and encourage new and old authors to produce files, keeping the community in movement.


Later, I'll add whatever more we come up with, and add names to helping lists. Thank you all, supporters and helpers, for trying to make this idea happen.