NEW RELEASE v0.3! Rewrote engine + Mac version added!

Hello everybody, it's been a long while since the last update. I haven't been neglecting Amazing Dance Star, rather I rewrote the engine for the 2nd time now!

I've completely revamped it -- I know exactly how the video plays and why. I didn't like having media file playing up to some black box anymore. I know the technique isn't maximally efficient but it's something I can work with, fix, and optimize, and it gives me exactly the main features I want: seeking (done), replaying (also done), looping a specific portion of the video (TODO). Even regular rhythm games don't let you seek to time (the ones I know are osu!, and DJ MAX Respect, so maybe there is one out there).

Another HUGE change is that now I have a Mac version!

Now, I've released two versions: one Windows and one Mac version. These are the current feature list (for both):

• Drag and drop video, Amazing Dance Star will analyze it for any dance moves. This means you can even drag and drop lizards, but let's just say the neural network was not trained for things with 2 arms, 2 legs, and a tail....

• Seeking to time
• Scoring your pose
• Pause/play
• Repeat button

What is the point of this alpha?

Proof that I have the barebones working for a great game (again), and that all it needs is a lot of love and polish.

Here are a lot of pros going for Amazing Dance Star vs other rhythm and VR based games in general:

• Custom engine is fast and responsive (for doing so much ml work in real time)
• Analyze ANY video for dances
• Very cheap to run (uses only cpu), you just need a webcam.
• Now that I did most of the engine work all that's left is making it pretty and getting art/music assets together.
• The engine is actually so good, if you really wanted to, you could just download a youtube video showing exercise poses and have it score you on that instead of a dance.

How do you play this alpha version?

• Pick a song you wanna practice. You can search using terms like "<song> choreography" or "<song> mmd"
• Download the video onto your pc
  
• Drag the file onto the Amazing Dance Star window
• Turn on the repeat
• Play and practice (with looping on)!

• Here are some songs you should check out, just download them with your favorite Youtube downloader and drag and drop them to the Amazing Dance Star window. The drag and drop feature works for both Windows and Mac.

  
  

  • Cynical night plan miku dance
  • Live action cynical night plan dance
  • 【モーション配布】うちゅうだいばくはつ【オリジナル振付】
  • 【cycles/4k60FPS/mmd】RIN. ココロ
    • (download this at 720p)
  • Literally impossible btw:

How  scoring works:

Scoring works by showing you a pose 2 seconds in the future. This is so you can dance by reflex and to learn the song. As long as you match the pose at the correct time, your score will be high. Make sure to keep your entire body visible as limbs being out of camera view will decrease your total score possible.

• Future plans:
  • Need some ui person/ come up with a sleek ui myself
  • Need a splash screen
  • Need a song chooser/file chooser
  • Might need like a video flip option, (just need a button to cv2.flip basically (horizontal flip ))
  • I literally can do most of these, it's just a time investment....

• The next stage is doing a small kickstarter just to gauge interest and to see more feedback. Sadly, if this doesn't get traction I can't really justify working on it as much I have been doing for the past 2.5 years. I'll only just finish the game, without any of the highscore server, community challenges or any other dreams.
  • The goal will always be to finish a complete dance game, in my mind this includes:
    • Steam page
    • Art
    • Splash screens
    • Song chooser/previewer (play/stop/ffwd/reverse )
    • Local high score list
    • Options screen
    • Camera switching
    • At the end of your dance, you can review yourself side by side, similar to this video:
    • Sharing to social media
    • If any other things come up they'll be completed but basically I want to emulate the completeness of osu! features.
  • Things that definitely require funding:
    • "beatmap" creation since I gotta make my own format
    • Online high score list (gotta pay for servers)
    • Personalized skins of the game (gotta work to make the game moddable)
    • Modding the game
    • Multi person analysis, ex: kpop dance groups
  • Without kickstarter or any sort of funding I can't hire artists, modelers/experienced mmd makers, figma/ui/ux drafter, etc. Such is life but as long as I finish Amazing Dance Star in a way that is complete and the way I like it I'll be satisfied.
• If you would like to support me, here are a couple things you could do:
  • Join Discord: https://discord.gg/bawj3ZPtk5
  • Support me on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pengindoramu
  • Most of all, have fun!
• Thanks for reading, peace!
• Known bugs:
  • Drag & drop doesn't reset the slider to 0
  • Mac fullscreen crashes
  • Mac image on start is not fullly sized
  • Sound doesnt work when you change volume before it starts playing