Dancing School: Advice for left footers

Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

First of all, lets clear up the meaning of the icons. The big heart is your overall score toward impressing her. If you don't mess up, this heart will grow larger throughout the dance. If you mess up, it will shrink.
The small surrounding hearts are awarded for flourishes (when you do a fancy spin instead of simply stepping in the right direction). If you end the dance without a single misstep, she will be overcome with lust for you and instead of just pecking her hand, you will be allowed to plant one on her smacker and sweep her over backward, providing a camera shot straight into her cleavage.

Controls: Do NOT use the mouse, and do NOT even bother to look at the inscreen at the bottom right! If you have been doing this, it may take a few dances to iron out your bad habits, but using the mouse and inscreen will get you nothing but a roll of her eyes and a dissmissive wave of her hand.
Instead, use the numeric pad as the game designers intended, and you'll do much better. Make sure the heel of your palm is 'grounded', or resting on a stationary surface (i.e. the desk). Only your fingers should move. Keeping your palm grounded will help your fingers stay oriented.
Secondly, keep your fingers on 'home base'. Your middle finger should ground on the 5. Your middle finger should ONLY be used to execute backward and forward moves (8 and 2), and afterward, should always come back to rest on the 5.
Your side fingers should always ground on the 4 and 6 and should only leave to execute a diagonal step (1 and 3). The same rule of returning to home base applies.
With correct fingering, your rection time will increase and you will avoid hitting the wrong key, and consequently, being embarassed.
_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

Once your fingering is down, time to master the steps. As I said, do NOT watch the inscreen in the bottom right corner. Instead, pay close attention to her hand gestures.

* If you have trouble telling a diagonal gesture from a side gesture, remember: she points with her finger when making a side gesture. For a diagonal one, she uses her whole hand.

Timing is everything:
Yes, you can make it through the dance even with bad timing, but you won't execute those neat flourishes that really make her naughty parts tingle.
In order to execute them, your timing needs to be impeccable. It will help if you count to your self--I even tend to bob up and down to the rythm and tap my foot. 1-2-3- BAM-2-3 (remember, some dances have 3-beat rythms and some have 4 beats). When you hit the key exactly on beat, you will do a flourish, and a small heart will appear over the big one. Each subsequent flourish you pull off without missing one will make another heart appear. If you're good enough, the little hearts will start overlapping and you can surround the big heart miltiple times. If your timing is off, they all dissapear and you start over.
While you don't exactly need the flourishes to impress her, they're like money in the bank. If you stumble with enough hearts 'in the bank', the hearts will dissaper, but the error will not count against your over all score.
The real trick to performing flourishes, as I said, is timing. If you're high-strung, you might even react too quickly to her gestures, hitting the key before the time is ripe. The best way to avoid this is by counting to yourself, and just as importantly, relaxing. Just be cool. Cool

_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

If you intend to frequent the ballroom, the best investment you can make is in a pair of fancy dancin' slippers. (Remember, you usually have to get the calfskin boots before you will happen across an upgrade.)
The effect of the dancing slippers is that there is more leeway in your timing and some of the simpler moves will even be executed automatically if you miss the beat. Even with the more difficult steps, he will usually start the move, giving tou a brief grace period to press the right button. And since there is more leeway, you will often perform flourishes even if your timing wasn't perfect.
_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

Great advice there, Bloody Chuck!

I trust you've also read Gun Pierson's ballroom dance school in Cutlass Isle's "Guide" section?

You both seem to be able to follow the rhythm of the music in you minds and know when the "key rhythm" (when you should press the button) happens. At best, I can hear the notes, but I have no idea which note is supposed to be the key note (some kind of a rhythm marker) when I should press the key... So I just follow the gal's hands...
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It is much better to be armed with a sword that has two edges than with an estoc [...], which is nothing more than a stick with a point. (Rapier Master G. Morsicato Pallavicini, La Scherma Illustrata, p. 14.)

fossaman · Gunner Posts: 726 **3515 Gold** -

Do you sing or play an instrument? That can be a big help in most rythm stuff. I just keep up a three beat or four beat count in my head, so it's ONE two three ONE two three ONE two three...hitting the key for the gesture as soon as I hit the ONE.
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Like my fossa? He's a pirate! Razz

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

The problem with that approach, for me, is that I don't know when I'm supposed to start counting... Should I start by "one" at the time I should make the first movement (strike the key for the first time) and then count one two three from there...

As you can see, I have not the faintest idea how rhythm and beat works... And no, I don't play any instruments either. I think it would be rather horrible if I did... Wink

_________________
It is much better to be armed with a sword that has two edges than with an estoc [...], which is nothing more than a stick with a point. (Rapier Master G. Morsicato Pallavicini, La Scherma Illustrata, p. 14.)

Hunter · Swabbie Posts: 73 **139 Gold** -

One error I find, you do not need the hear completely encircled by little flourish hearts to get the clevage shot as far as I know. You simply need not make a single stumble, at least I think so.
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fossaman · Gunner Posts: 726 **3515 Gold** -

I've gotten the perfect rating on a dance even with stumbles, it's the size of the big heart that matters. It has to reach almost to the edge for a perfect score. The flourishes just make it go up more than regular moves. Multiple flourishes in a row will make it go up even more. I think the best I got was 17 in a row.
_________________

Like my fossa? He's a pirate! Razz

Trazom · Powder Monkey Posts: 35 **78 Gold** -

I'm not sure on this...but it seems to me that if you reach a whole circle of flourishes you're allowed to stumble once and still reach a perfect score. But I have also experienced the same thing as fossaman describes.
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Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

Swabbie is right about the hearts. Allow me to revise that.
The large heart is indeed your overall score. And you can get the cleavage shot without the little hearts. All you have to do is not stumble once.
However, with enough little hearts, you can even stumble a few times without it affecting your overall score.
You see, when you're doing things right, the large heart grows with each pulsation. As far as I can tell, one little heart equals one pulsation. One stumble detracts ten pulsations. (I don't have access to the game right now so I'm not sure if it's ten, but anyway, it's the number of small hearts required to completely surround the large one. For our disscussion's sake, I will say ten for now. Feel free to correct me.) So: stumble = -10
Therefore, if you have the big heart completely surrounded when you stumble, the mistake is completely voided and counts 0 against your overall score. If you have five little hearts and you stumble, only five pulsations will be detracted from the big heart. 5 hearts + stumble = -5.
Using this simple scoring system, it's easy to figure out how many mistakes you'll be allowed. Problem is, you can only get the little hearts if you can consistently do flourishes. So people with a good sense of rythm can afford to make more mistakes.
_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

I don't know any easy way to develop rythm. Piano students are required to spend countless hours with a metronome clicking away just to perfect it.
For me it always came natrually. The first instrument I learned was the drums. I play guitar and piano now and I have never used a metronome. So if you just don't have a sense of rythm and you can't keep a beat, I don't know what to tell you except go take some piano lessons.
But if you're just confused about which beat you're supposed to hit the key on, it's simple: the one that comes after she gestures. For you gamers with lightning-quick reflexes, the trick is to not hit the key too soon when you see her gesture. Wait for the beat.
As far as figuring out the beat count, it helps, but is not absolutely necessary. You can count from 1 to 347 if you want, as long as it is in time to the music.
If you can't figure out how many beats there are per measure (how fast or slow you're supposed to be counting), watch her hands. Notice how in the start of the dance, she stands for a moment with her hands rising and falling in time with the music. Count along with the movement of her hands and you'll have the rythm. There are both 3 and 4-beat rythms in the game, but the 3-beat is much more common.
_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

fossaman · Gunner Posts: 726 **3515 Gold** -

It's actually eight hearts for once around the big one; the same number as sets of dance moves usually come in.

I figured something out the other day; if you don't like the four beat songs, just delete them from your game folder and they won't be played. I find that the songs in 4/4 are much more difficult to flourish on, because there's a pause after each move.

And I recommend getting a pendulum clock that makes ticking noises for developing a sense of rythm. I've had one in my house for years, and now I can start a 60 beat per second rythm at will. Of course, I also hear the clock ticking even when it's not running. Razz

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Like my fossa? He's a pirate! Razz

Bloody Chuck · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **305 Gold** -

That's what a metronome is. Its a small clock-like instrument with a right side up pendulum that can be set to different speeds. I believe the max speed for a mechanical metronome is 32-beat.
_________________
"I'm not addicted. Seriously, I'm not."
-Bloody Chuck

rstuart160 · Powder Monkey Posts: 6 **217 Gold** -

Though I can occasionally get a perfect dance without the boots, I have found a better method of getting the perfect dance. When I come across a beautiful daughter and need Monty's location or a piece of an Inca city map, I get my wife to do the dancing. I have found that she is much more adept at this practice, and much more intrigued by the process of dancing. Are all women better at the dance sequences?

Vandy · Powder Monkey Posts: 1 **65 Gold** -

Howdy! First post, I just picked the game up a few days ago, fun stuff. Anyhow, Chuck is definately right about the metronome. I took 12 years of piano lessons and still play a bit, and I do enjoy the dancing, Ive had a few dances where I didn't miss a spin. It's really quite nice on the higher levels where the moves are coming fast and you get a lot of spins it starts to get really cloes up and the camera sways, its really nice.

Anyhow, my trick to getting the flourish on every move is simple and hard at the same time. Being a piano player for such a long time it came naturally to me, but its not something I can teach. I use the base with my right hand on the keypad just as chuck says, and I put my left hand on my desk in front of my keyboard. With my left index finger I constantly tap out the meter of the song (thats the hard part is identifying the meter and keeping it, you either have it or you dont as they say). I do that really without thinking about it, and focus on the girls hand movements and what im doing with my right hand to follow the dance, but something about the way the brain / body works makes it so that my right hand will hit the keys in time with the meter my left hand is tapping on my desk. Also, if you have the meter correctly, the girls hand movements will always coincide with a tap from the left hand, so if they arent syncing up you have the meter wrong.

Not sure if that will make any sense at all to someone who hasnt played piano, but if it helps somebody then good enough. Arrr!