Okay, I've been planning a series of beatmaps with a storyboarded story linking them all together for a while. What's kept me scared away is my complete inexperience with storyboarding, both in and out of the editor.

The first, and most important question, concerns intros. I know that it's possible to storyboard 1 intro ahead of the song MP3 that can be skipped that leads to the regular intro of the song that can also be skipped (Don't Stop Me Now is the only example of this that I can think of), but I know so little about editing it in notepad and have so many different pictures and animations planned that it would take me eons of trial and error to pull this off. What I want to do is this: I've added the intro music and sounds directly into the song's MP3 file before the music starts. This lets me pull off a single intro in the editor, and while the double intro option would be nice, I don't think I can pull it off. So basically, what I'm asking is that is it within ranking criteria to modify a song's audio file in that manner?

The second question is much simpler: I'm not really sure how automatic scaling for storyboard files works concerning window size. What is the default size for images to be displayed at their original resolution?

First Question: Well, I don't think I've seen what you did done before, but it seems likely that you'll end up with an mp3 that's large for ranking standards. Gameplay-wise, one could easily skip the intro, but I think it would benefit everyone if you storyboarded a double intro. Unfortunately, I'm not experienced enough either with SBing to do a double intro, but I'm sure that at least one person here would be able to help you with that.

Second Question: The storyboard editor is 640x480 at default; thus, you can use images that are up to 640x480 in size without needing to scale them down.

To make a double intro, you simply just need to have ms within the negatives, accounting lead-in time. So, say, if you have 2 seconds of lead-in time, a double intro will trigger if you have SB content before -2000ms. At default, since we have 0 lead-in time at default, anything below 0 should create a double intro of some kind.

For your scenario, I think you'll have to do some number crunching and assuming within this grey field of before-the-map-starts. So, say, if your .mp3 is 40 seconds long, then make sure the .mp3 launches at -40000ms (Assuming your Lead-in time is 0) (Also note that you'd probably need to have it a little more than 40 seconds to have that good short pause, kind of like that whole HEEEALP!! scene in EBA, but let's just use -40000 for this case). Every 1000 ms is 1 second, so it surprisingly is easy to do some of the math if you crack out a program like Audacity to see what certain offsets to go from.

So we have our .mp3 playing -40000ms from the starting point. You pretty much have the freedom to do whatever you want, and since it really isn't synced in rhythm or whatever, you just don't need to worry about having off-rhythm offsets. All you just need to do is make sure you can deliver your message within 40 seconds, at least in this particular scenario.

Just note that since we're in negative land, everything will go closer to 0, meaning that the number will, you know, get to 0. So where 3000ms when the offset was at 341 would make 3341, having 3000ms from a start point of -40000ms would make -37000ms. I'm sure you knew that, but sometimes some of the simplest errors can come from not being familiar with the situation.

But what I'm mainly thinking is that you should be pretty familiar with what you're trying to script in the .osb, or at least have a general idea of how offsets work in there. o-o

I haven't actually used double intros before, but I'm assuming this is how it works. If someone can kindly prove me wrong, feel free.

Starrodkirby86 wrote:

But what I'm mainly thinking is that you should be pretty familiar with what you're trying to script in the .osb, or at least have a general idea of how offsets work in there. o-o

Like I said, I have no experience with using the editor or Notepad to edit. I have no clue how I'd go about placing objects at a precise location or making animations out of them outside of the actual editor.