Plaguemix Antique Addendum

It seems that the Plaguemix Antique package is missing a piece or two—namely some Medium steps. I'll be going over the collection again before posting them to a new Plaguemix Series website, and when that's done I'll make sure the version on the StepMania website is updated as well. Until then, I apologize for the oversight!

Plaguemix Antique

The new Plaguemix Antique collection has been released on StepMania's main site. It is not available on the Plaguemix Series page, so hop on over to stepmania.com to get it!

Plaguemix Antique contains five songs that I started writing simfiles for back before even Dance With Intensity was released. The tools used were CoolEdit and BMS Creator. The simulator was Delight Delight Reduplication. And the files were crap.

I have since gone back to those songs to recreate them as they appear today. Many of the original step design ideas used were maintained in these new versions, but (obviously) new things like hold notes have been added.

The songs are as follows:

• Fox on the Run by Touch of Joy
• Juke-Joint Jezebel by KMFDM
• Rice & Curry by Dr. Bombay
• Stars by Roxette
• Who the Hell Are U -Illicit Mix- by Madison Avenue

All of the songs are designed with pad-style play in mind—they're not going to give keyboard players a sweat on their own. For fun, though, try playing them at 1.5 or 2.0 rate! Each song has a full set of Easy, Medium, and Hard steps in Single mode.

Have fun!

Plaguemix Three

Hey everyone! Plaguemix Three has been released for a while at the Plaguemix Series official website, but Chris Danford recently added it to StepMania.com's very own list of song data. That's awesome. :)

If you'd like to find out more about each song included in the Plaguemix Three collection (or any of the other Plaguemix collections) please check them out at the "Plaguemix Series Original StepMania Content" site! And write me at plaguefox@gmail.com if you've got any particular feedback.

Plaguemix "Antique", a collection of songs that I was working with back when all the community had was Delight Delight Reduplication and a few other sims, should be released ... eventually. I have to get around to finishing that part of the website, and ITG is keeping me awful busy these days. Maybe I'll pass Antique along to Chris instead. :)

The History of Gamecast.org

This domain has for the most part been home to the "Gamecast" internet radio station. While that isn't the case right now, it's possible that some day in the future we'll see a return to that form. Before In The Groove and even before the Plaguemix Series of content for StepMania and Dance With Intensity, I took pride in a fairly different hobby: deejaying an internet radio station. The show—which I would describe as a "mashup of video game tunes and awkwardly humourous guests with a live host"—was the first of its kind and quite potentially the least successful. However, I had a blast hosting the show and continue to enjoy reminiscing about the good old days of "DJ McFox's GameCast".

The show went on for an amazingly long time, and it took full-time education, full-time employment, and a part-time job to put a hault to the broadcasting. Now that the majority of my time is spent taking care of a lovely wife and helping create the future of In The Groove, I haven't had a chance to revisit my old hobby. Maybe some day?

Until then, Gamecast.org will be limited to a simple weblog about some guy working on some game. Hope you don't mind!

The LiveJournal

On June 14, 2001, I began my second foray into weblogging. LiveJournal was not just an ordinary blog, though; it had one hell of a sense of community about it. Even back then!

Over the course of the last four years, I've only written about sixty entries in that journal. I know people that have written sixty entries this month alone! It certainly lets you know how dedicated I am about things like that.

One of the most interesting posts to the LJ, at least in how it pertains to this weblog, was made on July 11, 2001. The contents follow:

"...I've been on a sort of DDR binge. Not to say I've been dancing a lot to the game—I have no pads of my own—I've been mixing some of my favourite songs down into 1:40 mixes so they can fit into the DDR engine. I'm currently using .BMS files and the 'Delight Delight Reduplication' simulator to test out these mixes. In fact, I tested all of the six or seven songs I did -- and none of them keep the beat save one: 'Who The Hell Are U' by Madison Avenue. But I did make a fantastic background picture for that song and Dan's Old Skool Mix from Street Fighter Alpha 2 Remixxes 'Da Sounds of Spazm'."

This kind of entry reminds me of how much web logging can help me deal with my terrible sense of time; if I would not have wrote that down, I never would have remembered just when I started writing simfiles. And what a task it was back then, when all we had was BMS Creator and Delight Delight Reduplication.

There weren't many resources, but I am thankfor for those that existed -- like the early iterations of The Melting Pot. This place began as "DDR for the PC" on February 7th, 2001, just a few months before I stumbled upon the simulators. I'm glad it was there; otherwise I never would have found my way around the sites I scoured for .bms files! I also never would have had the guts to give BMS Creator a try. But I'm digressing here. Back to LiveJournal.

It still sits there, primarily so that I can reply to other people's daily lives via the power of LJ's community features. But once in a great while I'll make a post advertising a pot-luck or another get together of some kind. The last few posts make it clear that it isn't often: two Christmas pot-lucks only five posts apart, an engagement post and followup I'm-getting-married post nearly a year later all within view without even scrolling down the page. The last post? April 1st, 2005, only 21 days before I got married. To think that no one thought I was serious...

The Very First

The very first time I decided to try my hand at the Blogging Experience was on September 15, 2000. At that time, I was busy courting a wonderful girl in a "long distance relationship" and we spent our free time discussing how we were going to bridge the gap and end up in one location. Somewhere along that line we decided that it would be interesting to blog our tumultuous experience rather than keep it to ourselves.

That web log was called "Angelus Errare", which—according to the game I swiped the phrase from—meant Where Angels Lose Their Way. In that overdramatized journal it meant "The trials and tribulations of two young souls fighting their way towards sanity in the old-age industry town of Joliet and its surrounding communities."

In any case, it lasted just over a year. The last post was on November 24, 2001. But I'll have you know that Jennifer and I are now happily married and living in our new home in Oswego, IL; we certainly accomplished our goal!