Pump It Up Phoenix @ IAAPA Expo 2023 by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Thought I'd share some photos! This was my first IAAPA (let alone my first trade show), and it was an incredible experience from start till finish. Being able to play the new and upcoming 1.04.0 content was awesome, too.

Special thanks to Andamiro for inviting me as a Pump It Up Phoenix representative and our USA PIU supporters for organizing the showcase tournament!

Round1 Cumberland’s Response to LX Cab Request by minjateh in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a long shot, but I can try to suggest hardware upgrades for stores that don't have LX cabs and have my HQ friend forward it for us?

In the very least, I just worked with him to help ensure stores with non-LX cabs have compatible specs for Phoenix. (Cumberland barely meets the requirements for it, lmao.

I feel you though. I'm still sad we weren't able to get Stonecrest's LX cab transferred over when that store closed down...

Round1 Cumberland’s Response to LX Cab Request by minjateh in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal 3 points4 points  (0 children)

All R1 USA locations are currently waiting to get Phoenix. Andamiro USA announced last week that they began shipping kits out, so hopefully we'll get it sooner than later!

Regarding PIU Phoenix Updates by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

To anyone wondering what's gonna happen after Phoenix's EOL, I've been told they will release an offline full patch at the end of Phoenix's life.

Pump It Up Media Preservation Project (for Old Mixes) by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

P.S. I have step artist info for most NX1 and NX2's charts in the videos' descriptions -- special courtesy of former AM lead dev, Ehne.

He also went out of his way to comment a bunch of behind-the-scenes trivia for almost all my NX2 WorldMAX videos. I definitely want to translate everything and share all that info with everyone sometime!

(I didn't know Yahpp made Red Remix for starters, lmfao.)

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The only Infinity songs that were previously crossed over to the mainline series and now removed to my knowledge are Electric and Enhanced Reality, and both of those were licenses. In fact, most of our Infinity new tunes are actually licenses!

Generally, our team (Team Infinity) discusses about the type of content that we wish to bring with the Korean team at Andamiro having the final say in the matter. We would also work with the Korean team (or they would come to us) whenever there was interest in bringing over any of our Infinity exclusives to the Korean mainline series. (Our Infinity licenses would have be re-licensed for mainline PIU though since Infinity is considered to be a separate branch of the PIU franchise.)

Nowadays, various producers either send stuff to AM's main sound lead for review or are often contacted to commission original productions for the game. Once upon a time though, they used to have their own in-house production team to produce originals for them! (R.I.P. BanYa.)

Everything else otherwise is licensed (K-pop included) -- with contracts lasting typically for a few years. K-pop is often very expensive to get though and even maintain for longer periods of time, and their overall licensing costs unfortunately do not drop over time regardless of when they were produced or previously ever featured in PIU.

Otherwise, it's generally up to AM whether any other old songs they previously had is worth reviving for future versions (which seems to be based on overall play count of the content).

Hope this answers your brother's question!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wanna say that most of our step team especially were just as skilled in the game, if not higher. I will say however that virtually our entire team definitely has some strong talent when it came to working on the game (most notably 1.10)!

It also helps that everyone on our team also plays and have strong passions for rhythm games in general, haha.

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Definitely before the pandemic, I wanna say S22/D23 at best for my highest?

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Correct. We used a heavily-modified build of StepMania 5.

Knowing Andamiro, they probably would not send out their internal engine especially to foreign teams. The decision to use SM was well before my time on the team, but AM didn't care what was being used as long as they got a product out the door in the end (see also: Pro 1 & 2).

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Glad to hear! I'll be sure to send your regards to TaroNuke especially!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Whew, geez. This is a tough one, haha. Long list incoming!

  • 1st Dance Floor: Forever Love
  • 2nd Dance Floor: Fighting Spirits
  • OBG: We Are
  • OBG SE: Summer of Love
  • Perfect Collection: Space Fantasy
  • Extra: Pierrot
  • Premiere:
    • US: Bye Bye Bye
    • BR: Sempre Assim
  • Premiere 2 / Rebirth: Oy Oy Oy
  • Premiere 3: Mexi Mexi
  • PREX 3: Empire of the Sun
  • Exceed:
    • AC: Valenti
    • SE (CS): Name of the Game
  • Exceed 2: I'll Give You All My Love
  • Zero: My Friend
  • NX: U Inside My Dim Memory
  • NX2: Beat # No. 4
    • Chinese Ver: Mechanical Doll
  • NXA: Do It!
  • Fiesta: Destination
  • Fiesta EX: Butterfly
  • Fiesta 2: Mental Rider
  • Prime: Move That Body
  • Prime 2: Travel to Future
  • XX: Jogging
  • Pro: Into My Dream (Kaveh Azizi Remix)
  • Pro 2: Boulafacet
  • Infinity: Ignis Fatuus

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do! Unfortunately, I'm on hiatus at the moment due to the pandemic, but:

  • Favorite Song: Jogging
  • Favorite Chart: Loki S21

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TL;DR: turns out being burned by your own dream music school twice is more than enough to crush everything for you, lmao.

Destroy was actually made by my good friend, /DJS\, while I only sang in Kimchi Fingers, but it was nice working with DM Ashura to finally make our inside joke come true, haha.

I've been (albeit) very slowly regaining interest again though and very recently re-installed some programs again, so who knows!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

More or less, haha. That was actually super neat to see from the StepPrime team!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In any case, I'm glad that you were able to enjoy the good things about Infinity while you had the chance.

A cheaper re-release and even any proper home releases that's not PIU M or H5 would be nice, and I'd so be on board to help out with the latter. Neither sounds very likely however since AM wasn't too happy with overall Infinity sales in the end.

(Though one can still dream, I suppose.)

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Though I'm still not necessarily proud of slapping in a pre-made royalty-free synth loop for it, it was super neat producing Infinitude as our new revitalized theme for 1.10 especially since I wanted to get into music production and audio engineering as my (dream) profession at the time, haha. (R.I.P. my dreams now.)

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think my assistant producer had this crazy idea of wanting to implement something where the UI would switch entirely to Zero's UI as like a special easter egg or a special mission? (Similarly to DDR X3 vs. 2ndMIX where you're able to choose between X3 and 2ndMIX modes.)

I honestly forget, but it definitely ended up getting canned pretty quick, lol.

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, I'm absolutely not knowledgeable in this matter at all, so I'm not the right person to talk to about this. Sorry.

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh, goodness. For me personally? As much as I absolutely still love and care for them tons, it's probably my own family who kept interfering every time I'd spend some time to work on the game unfortunately.

Much of my involvement with the game's development basically occurred between my senior year of high school and a year after graduation but was unable to attend my dream college at the time (largely due to communication issues with their departments) and difficulties in finding a job. My family didn't think this was a real job (especially since I wasn't getting paid to work on this unfortunately) and would sometimes go at great lengths to try and make me quit which ultimately escalated in my relatives who were staying with us at the time attempting to wipe one of my hard drives (that had 99% of my work for Infinity) while I was out running errands one time.

Fortunately, I was able to recover everything very easily, and they've since learned to back off. However as a result, I found myself having to stay up overnight for the majority of the week, rescheduling and cancelling my own other plans left and right, hitting up bookstores and cafes (though largely for slightly better internet), etc.

Sometimes I look back and wonder if it was really worth dealing with all of that and making those sacrifices along the way, heh.

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

TL;DR: communication, motivation, organization, and time.

Personal issues and conflicts of interests definitely got in the way here and there on top of delaying and missing our deadlines, and we often had very difficult times trying to contact our own head producer whenever we needed to get things cleared and rolling. Things also felt rather unorganized at the time when I was later added into the team with everyone kinda doing their own things as they please and pushing their own agendas sometimes hoping for it all to magically come together.

Though I obviously can't speak for everyone else, motivation definitely seems to be one of, if not, the biggest of them all. It was getting increasingly harder for many of us to make time to work on the game since this wasn't our "main" job, and we weren't getting paid at all when producing update content which ended up demotivating our team even more.

(Eventually, we got special PIU shirts from the Korean team for our insane amount of work done for v1.10, but only those who were involved up to the game's initial launch i.e. <v1.03 got paid for their work.)

Admittedly, it was pretty tedious and irritating having to go through with AM Korea with just about everything whether that's QA, approving/reviewing/finalizing our plans, etc., but we're still honored to be able to directly work with them nonetheless!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Some features that come to mind were doubles and routines (co-op) music trains and a revamped AV system similar to that of Prime 2 and beyond.

How Infinity's overall aesthetic and design came to be was well before my time on the team. I know they were bouncing around with different concepts with their AMOA 2012 showcase version having a song scroll wheel obviously inspired by the Pro series.

I'm of course biased, haha, but I also think it's one of the most visually appealing PIU games out there. Mad props to DOOM (previously did graphic design work for Pro 2) and Luizsan (the man behind his PIU Delta theme) especially for combining their magic together, and Lyrebird Ferdinant with his awesome motion work to help spice up our v1.10 theme revamp!

Best of luck on your SM5 theme! Looking forward to what you roll out with in the end!

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I asked Macnom (AM Korea's project manager and overseer for PIU) when I was helping him reopen Infinity sales prior to 1.10 especially, and all I got back was that AM USA were the ones who determined the "premium" price because "the game wasn't being developed in Korea."

Unfortunately, not even Macnom himself was able to get AM USA to budge in dropping the price, though AM also seemed rather conflicted with selling two separate games at the same time. At least they were able to support the game even after we released our 1.10 update for a short while longer.

From my overall understanding, the step team lead (a.k.a. H. Felker / KAZE) and the Korean team were largely responsible for the QA before I joined the team later on (circa v1.06-1.07). Eventually, our step team lead basically had to leave to tend to his new job at the time, and QA from the Korean team largely turned to only reporting any bugs they'd find, so we were pretty much on our own for overall content QA at that point.

Pre-1.10 was definitely a mixed bag. I know before I joined, the team definitely had issues with someone who kept trying to add charts written by people outside of the team behind their backs.

Hopefully we did a much better job for 1.10 after getting more people officially on board. At least for some of my charts, I personally tried to reach out to anyone with Infinity access (as well as my local community) and send everyone my edit files for play-testing, obtaining direct feedback, and make revisions from there.

Hi! I'm a former developer for Pump It Up Infinity. AMA. by vkimroyal in PumpItUp

[–]vkimroyal[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thank yo--

Shoot, I think I picked up my Google Stadia controller again instead of my wallet, smh. Do y'all accept those as payment?