Actually, tomorrow works too. Let me PM that guy and see if that can work for him.

The Supernova 2 machine at the Beaverton Big Al's is actually still in pretty good shape!

Other than that...............


"not having new songs packs to play" is such a First World Problem. People really take for granted how good they have it with moddable machines.

also hijack pls lel

Went to ACME and started totally rebuilding/remodding the pads.

- As of right now, we desperately need new sensors, and I am waiting on those from Bill, but they will be installed as soon as they're in. Until then, don't stress about a couple of misses. These are the sensors.

- The pads are way more flush than they used to be, and I don't love it, but they weren't high enough with less modding, and apparently they're going to compress dramatically with play, so don't stress about that either; if they are still too high after a couple of weeks, I'll find a hack to fix this.

That said, please play as much as possible and report any and all problems to me via PM ASAP. I can't fix the pads if I don't know what the problem is. Also be as specific as possible.

One more thing: If you hear a song with offensive lyrics, inform me IMMEDIATELY via PM, and include the name of the song and pack. We are on thin ice with ACME and if we don't remove every such song immediately, the machine could get pulled.

Thanks!

This makes me remember when Extreme was out and there was no sign on the horizon of a new game. A very good point, for sure.


Fun times (not). It might be in the community's best interest if someone took a look at exactly what was installed on the machine, as if there is problematic material still on the machine, it might get played while none of us are around to hear and report it.

I plan to sort through the content myself, BUT there are over 2k songs on the machine, and listening to all of them all the way through would take way too much time for that to be practical. I can catch things that seem obviously inappropriate (we already removed "N*ggas in Paris") but it's just not possible to catch every lyric of every song.

Laura, how possible would it be to remove all added sing packs until proven to be appropriate?

This could help get the community involved, as they could inspect song packs to get them added again... Just throwing out an idea.

Time to remove Little Bitch from DDR. =D

Jon, that's more of a question for Tony, but I'll link him to the thread.

Also, to be clear, ACME is still a PG-13 establishment - the music they play over their own sound system isn't completely clean - so I'm not looking to remove every song with the word bitch in it. We're just looking for obviously offensive stuff like racial slurs and f-bombs. Even the word shit is probably fine if it happens once in the lyrics.

Whoa, what happened to the machine?!

Yuri and I came by for our regular Thursday thing, and everything was way weird.

First, the theme was reset back to what it was like a year ago, so no more fine-grained speed adjustments. Also, all the records are gone. ;_; Is this part of the maintenance that happened the other day? Because it would be nice to go back to how it was...

Lastly, the pads are a *lot* worse. It might be affecting doubles/couples more than versus, but 7 and 8s that were easy full-combos now can't be done with less than 5 misses. P2-up is particularly bad, but also the middle arrows are totally non responsive on the middle edge.

I get the impression the pad issues are known, but new sensors are not available to remedy the problem. The theme stuff might have been done to remove the problematic judgement text that was mentioned earlier in the thread.

Hey friends! Just as a heads up to all of the modders:
I get it that you guys are moving on from ITG now that you can't have new songpacks 5 minutes after release but please don't shave Round1's IIDX keys to be flush.

Thanks,

-A Friend

Hello!

1. I've gotten reports that the pads did not hold up to testing, so I'm going to go work on them on Friday. There should be new sensors, which means we can remove a layer of the foam modding to make them much less flush but hopefully much more responsive.

2. The theme was indeed removed to deal with the FP judgments, which were going to get the machine pulled. Tony is working on a fix.

3. Tony also removed the high scores file temporarily because it was making the machine lag and is working on a fix for this too.

Sounds like a score for everyone if you catch my drift!

Thanks,

A Friend

Guys, we need to talk.

I've heard through sources that there are way more complaints about the pads than I've been hearing or seeing here, meaning that people are complaining about the pads to others, not telling me, and then somehow expecting them to get fixed.

I hope we all see the problem with this.

I try to be as responsive and friendly as possible with every maintenance request I receive, but if I don't receive them, I will never know there's a problem. I play tech 8s-11s, so while I can test the pads myself, I'm not very likely to have the same kinds of problems that higher level players are having, or really any problems at all. I am well aware and not dismissive of this fact, which is why I ask that people who have maintenance requests try to meet me and play a couple of (free) games so they can test the work I've done.

Please... if you have a problem with the pads, just message me and explain nicely! If the problem you have is very very playstyle specific, the issue may not be addressed (the pads need to work for a wide variety of playstyles because this is a public machine,) but I promise if you give me a friendly report about what is wrong with the pads I will at least take it seriously and investigate it. If you give somebody else a less friendly report about what is wrong with the pads, it will be cheerfully ignored, even in the event that it does make its way back to me.

To be fair, it's possible that they didn't know about the forum, or knew but didn't care enough to go make an account.

Or they may have assumed that since the issue was already reported, there's no need to post duplicates - I've seen that a lot in my day job.

To make this a useful post, here's my assessment of where new/adjusted sensors are most needed based on my play and watching others:
#1. The up arrows
#2. P1 left

And for doubles/couples, the inner edge sensors. (Right edge sensors for P1, left edge sensors for P2)

Today I went to ACME to work on the pads, and guys, I figured out why they were so bad when I left them in pretty good shape a couple of weeks ago. Somebody literally RIPPED OUT ALL THE MODDING WE SPENT HOURS ON.

Rather than rant myself, I'm just going to quote a Facebook post from Tony:

"More detailed post from Laura coming, but here's an Acme ITG update: someone yanked all the modding work out of the pads.

Let me tell you what is wrong with this: EVERYTHING.
- Laura and I are Masterman Vending employees and Acme management would rather pull the machine than let "non-employee players" open it up. Whoever did this risks the machine disappearing because they just had to be as entitled to a machine they do not themselves own, like the rest of the godforsaken ITG community.
- Those who reported pad issues to Laura got an immediate response. Work was quickly planned around the known state of the pads, and you made our jobs harder by doing this. Laura had to cancel fixing the pads today because she got there and found she no longer had the necessary materials on hand.
- And you wasted Bill's money by throwing away materials and labor he paid for. Send him a reimbursement check along with your picture, so he can make damn sure Acme stops letting you in the door for the foreseeable future because neither of us want you on this machine anymore if you can't behave.

If you were the one responsible, never do it again and avoid letting me find out it was you. I promise unpleasantness to whoever the fuck got it in their head that "walking into a private business and tampering with private equipment without permission" was not directly against the law."

Congratulations, guys. You're the scum of the earth.

Nobody other than our employee's are allowed to be fiddling with the pads at Acme.  Tony and Laura are it.  Sad that someone has undone all the work that went in to this.  Maybe it's time to haul the machine away, unless there is a promise that people will stay the #^&# away from those pads.

Hahaha Washington fucking owns

Maybe the modders will remove the "lock mod" on the back of the cabinet to credit load again.

Reminder that against good advice these people were actively given a chance by the community.

Haha, reminds me of when people say "In Before Lock" on forums! They really got in!

Can we just recap what maintaining this In The Groove machine is like.

- People yell at me all the time saying people are "leaving the scene because the machine is poorly maintained" but refuse to tell me anything specific or actionable and can't find the time to meet up with me to test things when I do go to work on the pads.

- People complain that the pads are too flush and too recessed, and don't seem to understand that the other half of the community is complaining about the opposite thing.

- People get really mad when they don't have a new, up-to-the-minute theme to play on, but when we finally caved and installed one, we got yelled at because it had an inappropriate noteskin on it that we didn't know about, because we were pressured to put it on the machine by angry players.

- We have a specific procedure for requesting packs, which involves sending a download link to a full, complete pack to me via PM - we don't update existing packs because that requires us to clear the cache. Almost nobody successfully sends us a download link to a new pack, but we still get shit for "no new packs." Also, sometimes when we do put properly requested packs in there, it turns out one of the songs has the N-word or something and then we get yelled at by ACME.

- People seem to enjoy messaging other members of the community with these problems instead of me and then wonder why I haven't heard about them yet.

- When I do finally address the problem by spending a shitload of time and Bill's money on fancy new foam modding that was going to hopefully eventually be a good medium between completely flush pads and completely concave ones, it gets ripped out a week later.

I will admit that Tony is not terribly communicative and difficult to wrangle on the content side, but I've been nothing if not communicative whenever I've had something to say. I don't check the forums very often, but my email account is rigged up so that PMs, which are the only way people are supposed to contact me about the pads, send me a notification that I receive as soon as I check my email, which is several times a day. Unless something glitches, which has only happened a couple of times, you guys can seriously expect really fast response times, although I can't guarantee an immediate service trip to ACME.

I am fed up and angry with the current community, but I'm still going to do my best to keep ITG going strong, because I know something you guys don't: It's not just about you.

That said, I plan to go back and redo all the modding on Sunday. We also have four new sensors I didn't install yesterday, and several more on the way. Getting this machine in good condition will be a LONG PROCESS, because so many people have fucked with it in so many different ways, but we plan to do it.

I ask that if anyone wants to help me with this process, they keep the fact that it's a work in progress in mind over the next few weeks and report specific problems without judgment - that is to say, if the 1p left is weak, please tell me that, but dispense with the commentary about "OMG THIS MACHINE IS SO BAD." We know it's bad. It's bad because 5 different people have tried to take it in completely different directions over the years and without weeks of repairs and new sensors it's not going to be good. Just name a specific problem so we can fix it and eventually make ACME Bowl a good ITG location again.

And if you see somebody whose hair is not pink tinkering around in the pads, please ask them to stop.

I haven't played in months and finally made a trip out of my way to come to play today. Since Laura has been put in charge of the pads, they've been GREAT, and I mean seriously Tony the Tiger style, and she's gotten on it as soon as any complaint has been registered.

Now they don't work and I've observed the reason is some asshole ruining it.



So,

Dear person who ripped out the modding without the owners permission:

FUCK YOU. You're a fucking selfish, childish prick.




That is my 2 cents after this failed visit to play a game I once loved but now can't play. Laura and Tony, as usual, thanks so much for all you do for the community, we wouldn't have any of this without you guys.

Sincerely,
Allan

I want to go back to 2004. Dance gaming was so much easier to understand back then.

Spent all morning redoing the modding and replacing a couple (not all, due to lack of parts) sensors. Some things to note:

1. The pads are not as low as stock pads, but they are not flush either. Even if we wanted to flush them, which has been a huge debate for a long time, we couldn't pull it off right now, because the new sensors are currently so overly sensitive that you would hit mines just by stepping on the center panel. Players who are used to a more stock feel will probably love these, but if overall players don't like the level of flushness, we can add another layer of foam after all new sensors have been broken in, which brings me to #2...

2. Because of the OVERsensitivity of new sensors before they're broken in, it's going to take a few weeks to get all the sensors replaced, because we're going to have to put some new ones into places where there are no sensors and leave them unconnected for awhile so that players help reduce the sensitivity because they're usable.

That said, they seem to play fine for now, at least on tech 9s/10s, which is all I could test by myself, and I'm hoping some players will be able to come and test later today and give me reports.

Please be patient. The stage was in REALLY bad condition, and it's going to take a month or so of weekly visits/tweaks to make them play really well again.

Also, please don't steal the foam this time.

Thank you so much Laura!  I just found out about both ACME and this forum not too long ago and have finally been getting back into ITG after a several-year break because I didn't know there were any machines here.  I stopped right after Konami won the lawsuit, if that gives any indication.  I wouldn't have known about this place except the very first day I showed up there was someone on the machine and they mentioned it.  Since then I've gone every weekend or every other weekend and always been alone (save for the extremely brief cross with kloc).  I just found out that doubles is 1 credit so I finally have a chance to try it, which is pretty exciting as far as 4-panel goes.

First up, I have to say I was really impressed with the pads once I got used to it again!  I've played on a lot of shitty pads in my time and these were quite the opposite.  I can't believe someone ripped out the mods; that's insane!  I went on 10/25 and the pads were still fine, but on 11/3 I found it hard to play (almost failed "pick me up and tango" o_O).  Maybe that'll help narrow down who messed with it?  I just want to say thanks for keeping up with the machine!

Oh, is it possible to update the first post of this thread? http://www.pnwbemani.net/western-wa/acme-itg-issue-tracker/  It mentions having to report an issue through that website, but if we are supposed to message Laura it won't help (I tried reporting a small issue a while ago because I didn't know I needed to message Laura).