IndyDDR.com

Ho wrote:

Fluffyumpkins wrote:"Latitude 39 includes a game room with over 70 interactive video & redemption games..."

Did it? I'm not sure it had half that number.

Hmm. I think it had more than half that, but I agree that it may not have hit the 70 number. What was more disappointing (to me, at least) is that they had zero that I actually wanted to play. They had maybe 2-3 that I would play if I was there anyway but none that I would go there specifically to play.

I did not purchase a card nor play any games while I was there last night.

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I watched someone play it last night. The volume is turned down really low. I think D&B's machine is up too loud, but this one was practically inaudible unless I leaned in a little bit farther than I wanted to considering I didn't actually know the person playing. And even then, I just *think* I heard the game.

blackcat and WhiteDragon reported a Pump It Up Infinity cabinet at Latitude 39 on Teh Facebuk last night. I'll crosspost the news here since neither one of them frequents IndyDDR anymore.

TX cabinet is big.

Why the fuck is it so big?!?!

Everything is bigger in TX.

Damn that was genuinely a good pun!

Such big! Many pixel!

The Good:
- Infinity's look and feel is MUCH better than Pro and Pro 2. WhiteDragon actually was surprised to find out that it actually was running on Stepmania.
- It actually plays like real pump and handles freeze arrows correctly.
- Allows the player to choose between mainline scoring and pro scoring.
- The timing on this cabinet is very close to my SX Cabinet which is extremely impressive.
- MUCH better songlist than Pro 2.
- Speeds can be adjusted by 0.25x, 0.5x, and 0.75x in this version.

The Bad:
- The cabinet is expensive! (10 points, which is $2 essentially, but given how much this thing cost I am not surprised)
- Apparently, no widescreen option and VGA graphics only. (WTF ANDAMIRO!)
- Lost the capability to sort songs by difficulty, a casualty of using a theme similar to modern pump releases.

So, this machine is in good shape (being new), and Infinity is much more faithful to classic/mainline PIU than the Pro line was.

The screen is honestly too big given that the game does not properly handle aspect ratio. When playing double, it's easy to miss quick transitions where a stray note can appear on the other side of the screen from where you're looking. The low res graphics are also annoying on such a big screen, and the Infinity theme seems to handle the low res more poorly than mainline on titlecards during song select (they are harder to read), but this may just be a result of the monitor attempting to upscale rather than the inherent small amount of blurring you get on a CRT.

The real issue is that the game is impossible to hear if there's a band on stage in the bar which there apparently is most evenings. The facility has fairly little noise damping, and the game is right behind the bar. Some bands even go so far as to set up a little shield in front of the drummer which makes things better in the bar area but just reflects it all right back onto the PIU machine. Enjoy playing sight-only. You might as well bring earplugs if there's a band since hearing nothing while playing this game is better than hearing different music. I'll have to see if I can rig up some sort of wireless audio system and get some in-ear monitors or similar to block out the ambient noise.

MonMotha wrote:So, this machine is in good shape (being new), and Infinity is much more faithful to classic/mainline PIU than the Pro line was.

The screen is honestly too big given that the game does not properly handle aspect ratio. When playing double, it's easy to miss quick transitions where a stray note can appear on the other side of the screen from where you're looking. The low res graphics are also annoying on such a big screen, and the Infinity theme seems to handle the low res more poorly than mainline on titlecards during song select (they are harder to read), but this may just be a result of the monitor attempting to upscale rather than the inherent small amount of blurring you get on a CRT.

The real issue is that the game is impossible to hear if there's a band on stage in the bar which there apparently is most evenings. The facility has fairly little noise damping, and the game is right behind the bar. Some bands even go so far as to set up a little shield in front of the drummer which makes things better in the bar area but just reflects it all right back onto the PIU machine. Enjoy playing sight-only. You might as well bring earplugs if there's a band since hearing nothing while playing this game is better than hearing different music. I'll have to see if I can rig up some sort of wireless audio system and get some in-ear monitors or similar to block out the ambient noise.

Indeed MonMotha nailed it. (Also was good to see you there.) Something that hasn't been mentioned is that the new platform design they used is a double edged sword. The reason why I say this is because the non-panel area on that thing is just barely higher when compared to the classic platform. If the new platform could be purchased for older machines I would be interested, but I don't see it happening sadly. The other thing I noticed based on playing on the cabinet and the footage I saw from WinDEU is that the scrolling speed somewhere in between Pro and modern Pump, but fortunately BPM handling and freezes are handled like true Pump. (Do note though that the freeze combo will count towards money score (which IS in this release), but not towards percentage score.)

Last, but not least, Mission Mode is pretty terrible. I know how messed up WorldMax can get, but this goes from zero to WTF on the fourth mission of Zone One. The worst part is that some of the unlocks are tied to it which is nothing short of annoying. (Thankfully song unlocks are tied to number of games played and so far there is nothing to suggest any weird unlock codes.) I would say F*ck Nexcade like Yeehaw McKickass, but they had nothing to do with this.

The best time to go in and play is Monday-Thursday and it would do them a favor since those days are extremely slow whereas the weekends they get a considerable amount of business. One last thing I should note is that I got a black membership today and the manager who signed me up for it mentioned that if they had a large enough list of people who would be interested, they would be up for holding a tournament. Honestly, after talking to a couple of people I think doing a special exhibition event would be better since none of us really play seriously.

A bit of an update on infinity itself. I have noticed that on the first song of a set, when using the speedmods (which consist of 0.25x, 0.5x, and 0.75x) the first song of the game does not adhere to the 0.25x and 0.75x mods. When I am able to get footage to confirm this issue, I will send it to the PIU Infinity facebook fan page so that hopefully this will be fixed. In the meantime, I will play songs that I don't need to use the speedmods menu for the best readability on the first song.

Are there charts where you actually want the arrows to move slower?

On PIU, it's actually +0.5x (and then Infinity has +0.25x and +0.75x, too). This ADDS to your existing speed mod, so you can select e.g. 3x + 0.5x, and you get 3.5x. It's a little bit of a menu quirk that's somewhat historic from before they had the +0.5x option and wanting to keep the classic speed mod code working reasonably (though it doesn't seem to work on Infinity in full mode), and, well, PIU has always had a quirky interface.

There's no way to make the arrows go slower than normal speed. Even just turning on the +0.25x option will give you 1.25x.

Basically, you can almost continuously variable high-speed on Infinity, which is nice. The jump from 3x to 4x on classic PIU was a bit large sometimes. Moonlight NM (180BPM, which is right at my normal cutoff for going from 4x down to 3x), for example, is best read at 3.5x for me. 4x is a bit too fast (though it's fine on CZ), and 3x makes the slowdown part hard to read.

http://www.groupon.com/deals/latitude-39-50

$11 for a $20 card if you're into Groupon.