DDR Hottest Party 3 Brilliant 2U Expert PFC AAA with gimmicks on.

[Fairy7red7hime]

That is truly amazing work, man! :D Congrats to ya!

[blueapple128]

Just wondering, when you are trying for an AAA and a Great shows up, what do you do? Do you quit out of the song or keep going?

(I've gotten FIVE 2-Greats-or-lower on a song in a row, and it's really really annoying)

[darknight068]

Depends on how far I'm into the song. If it's the middle toward the end I'll finish it out. If it's at the beginning, forget it, I'm starting over.

[blueapple128]

Is there any way to tell if a song in HP2 and HP3 requires hands and/or gimmicks to AAA without actually PFC AA'ing it?

[darknight068]

Not that I know of. I think something like that is preset into the scoring algorithm of that particular song and it's point values on individual notes. It's something you'll have to figure out through trial and error.

[darknight068]

Come to think of it, with HP3 I may have a hunch as to when a song requires gimmicks and WHY. I've noticed that in ALL of the AAAs that require gimmicks, these songs usually have double stomps notes tied to jumps. Normally landing a jump only counts at one note and you get points for that one note, but when one of the notes is a gimmick note, a jump counts as two notes in a combo and in scoring. This is why the ending scores on these songs don't even out when gimmicks are off.

[darknight068]

The way the game sees it is similar to the loss of total point values when you turn freeze arrows off.

This also goes for songs in HP2 with hand requirements. The reason for that is because on double hand markers, each hand counts as a separate note and gets a separate judgment. When hands are off, you're essentially cutting one note off of every jump in the song. Double/Triple Stomps work the same way here as in HP3 too, explaining why We Will Win The Fight and 5 O'Clock required gimmicks.

[darknight068]

Now it seems like if two double stomps are used together as a jump, the jump is again counted as ONE note in a combo. Knowing this rules out Pluto The First from ever having a gimmick requirement. This also rules out Walking on Sunshine on HP2.

HOWEVER, Roppongi Evolved has jumps on the diagonal arrow gimmick. As with hands and double stomp those jumps count as two notes, meaning ROPPONGI EVOLVED REQUIRES GIMMICKS TO AAA!!!! I'm gonna have to look into Kimono Princess now.

[darknight068]

In short, whether something requires gimmicks or not is entirely based off of whether it affects how many notes are counted in specific jump situations in a chart.

[blueapple128]

Wow, you figured out HP2/HP3's AAA system!

How come HP1/Disney Grooves never needed hands or gimmicks to AAA?

Just so I understand this clearly:

- If a song has two hand notes at the same time, it requires hands to AAA.

- If a song has two gimmick notes OR a gimmick with a non-gimmick note at the same time, it requires gimmicks to AAA, *unless* the two gimmick notes are Double/Triple Stomp.

[blueapple128]

This also means that there might be a song in HP2 that requires only Foot+Gimmicks.

It also means that there was never a score requirement for Foot+Hands in HP2 (example: Black or White with a PFC with hands = AAA, regardless of hand combos/score)

[darknight068]

Nope, I've tried that before with Five O'Clock and that didn't work.

As far as the minimum score requirements, they still very much matter in HP2 when it's hands. Otherwise, I'd have been able to AAA a lot of songs LONG time ago. I've PFCd Walking On Sunshine a million times with hands only, but it wasn't until I crossed that 70 million threshold when it actually counted sans gimmicks. Hand combos outside of hitting hand notes do matter on a lot on songs like that.

[blueapple128]

Interesting.

Are you sure Five O'Clock had absolutely no instances of 2 hand markers at the same time?

[darknight068]

It does have have ONE instance of double hands. I'm gonna have to take a second look at the charts on that game now. There MIGHT be songs where feet and gimmicks alone will do it, but I'd just have to look through it again.

[darknight068]

Just looked back through it all, and from what I've found there's no song that seems to fall into the gimmick alone category. They all either have a hand/foot note combo, or double hand somewhere. As for those with Wild Cards, if there's a jump with wild cards in it, it's forced Hands and Gimmicks. Forced hands since Wild Cards don't show up without hands being on, and Gimmicks because Wild Card jumps count as two separate step irregardless of how you do it.

[darknight068]

I'll be updating the HP2 score video sometime soon to reflect this. I may also do a separate score video for HP3 to reflect this too.

[blueapple128]

Something I just found out:

It *might* be possible to get an AAA without a true PFC, if and only if:

- Gimmicks are on, and there are Minimizers

- The only Misses/Boos are Minimizer hits

I haven't actually done that, but I went to Training Mode and played 1 measure (3 notes) from a song with Minimizers in.

Attempt 1: 3 Perfects, 0 Misses

Attempt 2: 3 Perfects, 12 Misses from Minimizers only

I got the same score both times, so it could be possible to get max score even by hitting Minimizers.

[blueapple128]

Scratch that, I just did it.

Love Again Basic (Friendship Mode), with a final result of 84 Perfects and 1 Miss.

Final Score: 24 million exactly

Grade: AA

Note that there are only 84 steps in the song.

This means that you can pretty much have the maximum score yet not AAA it.

Picture proof:

tinypic [dot] com / r / 10nuq0l / 6

(Remove all spaces in link)

[blueapple128]

If Gimmicks are Off and Hands are On, do Wild Cards show up as feet or hands?

[darknight068]

They're feet, which when put together counts as a one note jump.

[blueapple128]

How come HP1/DG never requires hands or gimmicks for a PFC?

[blueapple128]

"...where it actually counted _sans gimmicks_..."

Does that mean Walking On Sunshine PFC hands+gimmicks _without_ 70M points = AAA?

Any idea why score requirements are necessary for some songs like this? I don't understand it.

[darknight068]

On Walking on Sunshine, yep that would be a AAA simply due to everything being on, and my guess as to why is because when you think about it that's the default setting of the game. Concerning score requirements, what constitutes that is still a mystery.

As for Love Again, that should be fairly obvious why that's a AA. You stepped on a minimizer, which in turn counts as a miss. Irregardless of the score, that's still technically a miss meaning instant AA.

[darknight068]

As for HP1 and DDRDG not having these requirements, my best guess is that it's because HP2 uses a completely different scoring setup and HP3 just uses what remains of that after hands are gone.

HP1/DDRDG is still largely using an enhanced version of the Mario Mix engine, scoring and all. Mario Mix had separate scores for gimmicks and no gimmicks and counted every jump as 2 notes. HP1 counts a gimmick note within a jump as being 2 notes as well, but regular jumps are one.

[darknight068]

However, that game wasn't programmed to penalize you for not having gimmicks on as the score will even out irregardless of whether you have them on or not. The decision to do this on HP2 and 3 had to be intentional, as there's no way they would've done the same thing for two games if it was a mistake.

The only thing funny about the Love Again situation is that it doesn't take points away from the total score for hitting one of those. With HP1/MM it did.

[darknight068]

On another note with HP1, I now understand why some Gimmick and hands AAAs counted as a new record even though I've AAAd it beforehand foot only. There's technically more notes to hit individually.

[blueapple128]

I wonder if all songs with Double/Triple Stomp require gimmicks to AAA. (So far the only exception is You Are a Star, right?)

(If this is true then Pluto the First is going to be horrendous)

[darknight068]

I'm not even trying to think of that. *lol*

Yeah, I've noticed that a while ago when trying to explain this to someone else.

[KnuxSonic8]

I actually messed up a FC run because of the end stream's gimmick usage. Can't believe I STILL can't FC this song. Something always goes wrong...

[darknight068]

It is sorta tricky. It's either you do the turns with the song, or do some rather interesting hop stepping. With this run, I went with the hop stepping method.

And that last part was the reason I couldn't PFC the song for the longest time.

[HikozaruBl]

@darknight068 I AAA this my first try! I was happy! I was like how did I do that. It's weird when you have energy. I PFC Keep on movin' and I'm 13....

[darknight068]

Proof or it didn't happen. Talk is cheap.