Creator guide

Everything you need to turn a piece of music into a song for Dancing Every Night, the community rhythm game for PS Vita: the editor step by step, how to make a chart fun to play, and how to share it.

1What a song is

A song is one folder that holds a piece of music and one or more difficulties (EASY, NORMAL, HARD, EXPERT, or names of your own). Each difficulty is the list of notes the player hits, timed on the music. A song can also have a background image and a video that play behind the notes.

You share a song as a single .zip file. Players copy it to their console (or their computer) and the game installs it the next time it starts.

The editor runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded. Your songs are saved in this browser, on this device, so export a .zip to keep a copy. Chrome, Edge and Firefox work best; older versions of Safari cannot read Ogg audio.

2Your first song

1. Create a song. On the editor's home screen, click Create a song and drop your music, or a video clip: any common audio or video format works, it is converted in the browser (the converter is downloaded the first time, about 31 MB). With a clip, keep Also use this video as the song's background ticked: the editor takes a picture from it for the background and converts the video for the game. Give the song a title and an artist.
2. Set the tempo. The tempo (BPM) and the offset (where the first beat is, in milliseconds) place every note in time, so they matter most. Click Detect the BPM (the first time, the editor downloads the analysis tools, about 30 MB), or tap the tempo with the T key. If the result is twice or half the real tempo, use ×2 / ÷2.
3. Check it by ear. Click Listen with the metronome: the clicks must land right on the beats. If they are early or late, adjust the offset with −10 ms / +10 ms. Take the time to get this right: every note depends on it.
4. Pick the first difficulty. Start empty, or choose Automatic draft: the editor analyses the music and writes a complete difficulty you can then fix. It's a good way to start, not a finished chart.
5. Place the notes. Click in a column to add a note, press Space to listen. See Placing notes.
6. Add the other difficulties with Add a difficulty in the left panel: empty, a copy of another one, or an automatic draft at another density.
7. Finish. In the Finish step, fill in Author (your nickname, shown to players) and Licence (see Sharing).
8. Export and play it. Export the .zip, then copy it to your Vita or to the PC version (see Playing your song).

3Placing notes

Notes fly towards two arcs of targets. The player uses the left hand on the directional buttons and the right hand on the face buttons:

The grid (top bar, or [ ]) sets where notes snap: 1 beat, 1/2, 1/4, triplets… Preview (P) shows the song as in the game, next to the timeline. Press ? in the editor for every shortcut: selection, copy and paste, undo, moving notes, and more.

The START bar on the timeline is the offset: drag it to shift the whole grid against the music. The END bar sets when the results screen appears; by default, just after the last note.

4Making it fun

A good chart feels like playing the music. A few principles, from playtesting:

Follow what you hear

• Put notes on sounds the player can hear: mostly the vocals, and the drums in the intro and breaks. A note on silence feels random.
• Use holds on long vowels and sustained notes, doubles on strong accents and section starts, not everywhere.
• Let the height follow the melody: higher notes on the top buttons, lower ones on the bottom.
• When the music repeats (a chorus, a riff), repeat the pattern, or mirror it between the hands: players love recognising it.

Think in hands, not in buttons

• Alternate the hands in phrases (call and response) rather than switching on every note.
• What players feel is what the hands do: a repeated note, one hand rolling, the two hands answering each other. Swapping which buttons you use without changing the movement doesn't make a chart more varied.
• Give fast passages to alternating hands; keep a single hand's bursts short.

Respect the difficulty

• Leave at least an eighth note between two notes on the same lane: on fast songs, closer notes overlap on screen.
• Don't leave more than a bar without notes while the music plays, but give the player short rests between intense parts.
• A harder difficulty doesn't need many more notes: it gets harder through the kind of notes (off-beats, doubles, holds with the other hand still playing).

Play it

Watch the preview, then play the song for real on the console or the PC version, at every difficulty. If you stumble on a passage you know by heart, players will too.

5Difficulties

• Names. EASY, NORMAL, HARD and EXPERT are suggested, but any name works (up to 23 characters). Two difficulties of the same song can't share a name, because best scores are stored by name: the editor suggests EASY 2, EASY 3… when you want several levels of the same kind.
• Order. Use the ↑ / ↓ buttons in a difficulty's settings to choose the order players see in the game. By default: EASY, NORMAL, HARD, EXPERT, then other names.
• Note speed. How long a note takes to reach its target. Leave it empty for the game's normal speed (1500 ms).
• Shared settings. Title, artist, music, BPM, offset, end and background belong to the song: changing them changes every difficulty.

6Music, background, video

• The video is silent: the sound always comes from the music file. Use Video offset and Test the sync if the video starts later than the music.
• Darken dims the background so the notes stay readable.
• Keep files reasonable: a 3-minute video at the default settings is about 20 MB.
• Browsers can't play the game's MPEG-1: in the Background step, Show the video prepares a playable copy for the session (about a minute), to preview it and test the sync.
• Recent YouTube downloads are often in AV1, which the online converter can't read: you still get the music and a background picture, but convert the video to MP4 (H.264) first if you want it in the game.

7Playing your song

On a PS Vita

1. Export the .zip (File → Export the .zip).
2. Copy it into ux0:data/dancingeverynight/import/ with VitaShell (USB or FTP mode). The folder is created the first time you launch the game.
3. Launch the game: it installs the song while loading, then it shows up in the list. Installing a new version replaces the old one and keeps your best scores.

On a computer

The PC version (Windows, macOS, Linux) installs songs the same way, through an import/ folder: in the save/ folder next to the game on Windows and Linux, in ~/Library/Application Support/Dancing Every Night/save/ on macOS.

8Sharing

• Author: your nickname, shown to players.
• Source (optional): where the music comes from: album, show, game…
• Licence: the rights you have on the music and the media, for example CC BY 4.0, my own music or artist's permission. Be honest: it is shown with the song.
• Version: increase it when you share an update of a song you already shared.

Respect the artists: credit them, follow the terms of their licence, and when in doubt prefer music that is free to share. The song library, where you'll be able to submit your songs, is coming; until then, share the .zip directly.

9When something goes wrong

10File format

You don't need this to make songs, but it helps if you want to edit files by hand. A song is a folder <ID>/ (letters, digits, _ and -) containing audio.ogg, optional background.jpg and video.mpg, and one text file per difficulty, for example normal.chart:

FORMAT 1
ID my_song
VERSION 1
MAPPER your_name
LICENSE CC BY 4.0
TITLE My Song
ARTIST Some Artist
DIFFICULTY NORMAL
ORDER 2
BPM 120
OFFSET_MS 500
AUDIO audio.ogg
BACKGROUND background.jpg
END 276

4 TRIANGLE TAP
5.5 CIRCLE TAP
8 CROSS HOLD 2
12 TRIANGLE DOUBLE UP
16 SCRATCH CW

Times are in beats from the offset (0.5 = an eighth note). Each note line is beat LANE TYPE [length or second lane]; notes are sorted by time. Optional lines: PACK, SOURCE, APPROACH_MS (note speed), VIDEO, VIDEO_OFFSET_MS, BACKGROUND_DIM (0–100), PREVIEW (start of the menu preview, in beats). Lines starting with # are comments.