You sit on a bench patiently waiting for the shuttle that was supposed to whisk you away to fame and fortune. They say when it rains it pours and that exactly what it�s doing now, it�s pouring rain. The only protection from the driving rain is some beat up paperback you found on the bench. Clutching the book over your head you try to make yourself as small as possible under it. Whose stupid idea was it for you to become a dancer anyhow? Oh that�s right you tell yourself, it was yours. It�s all that flyers fault from the local dance school with its promises of fame and fortune. That�s when the fever hit you. That�s when you decided you were always meant to be a dancer. You certainly weren�t meant to be well dressed though, just look at yourself; an old dingy shirt that is now shades of grey thanks to some idiot using the local public wash machine to dye something black, a pair of lose fitting white pants that used to not look so bad until you let your novice tailor friend �fix� them. Now they have some furry diaper sewed onto them to cover up the huge rip you put in them the last night of dance school. Let�s not forget the red pumps you thought were pretty sexy with your black dress. Sadly the person that stole your clothes from your locker at school is now wearing your black dress and lucky you, you still have the pumps. Here you sit here in the rain looking like an orphan wearing dumpster diver hand me downs. The school did teach you two dances Basic and Rhythmic, but then a lot of people know those dances. The shuttle finally arrives so you board and taking the only empty seat. The smelly bald guy you�re forced to sit next to looks at your clothes and the soaked book in your hands and snorts. The book! You forgot all about your makeshift umbrella. Turning the book over you see the title �Sultrina�s Dance Academy�. Ya right, you�re a professional dancer what do you need with some stupid paper back telling you how to dance? Oh well, you think it should be good for a laugh, and you could sue one about now. Flipping open the cover you start to read �.
Hi my names Sultrina and I�ve been dancing ever since beta. I�m writing this book because there are a lot of little things about the dancer that aren�t well known that make the dancer both fun and challenging to play. The topics I�m going to cover are complex and if you want to get the most out of them you will find dancing is harder and more challenging then combat ever was! You will also find if you took on this profession to simply be social and kick back you can still find a lot of toys for your imagination here. Don�t ever feel you are too casual of a gamer too contribute to serious entertainment. Diana Ross wouldn�t have sounded as sweet without the Supremes. So weather you want to take charge of the floor or be a backup dancer I hope you find this guide both fun and informative.
This guide does not replace the documentation on dancing that came with the game it builds on it. So if you haven�t read the manual do that now.
The majority of techniques discussed here can be practiced by a novice entertainer. That�s right a complete novice can do most of what is in this guide. That means you can start enjoying your dancer today! For that reason I will give examples of each topic using Basic and Rhythmic when possible.
I doubt anyone will ever master the techniques I am showing here. I know I haven�t! You can always look smoother, gain more polish or develop a new routine. You can never master dancing I don�t care what your tag says. As you go through the guide don�t try to finish a lesson try to loose yourself in a lesson you will have a lot more fun and learn more that way.
You need a good place to practice and you need to practice often. Busy cantinas are a great place to show off, but they don�t make for good places to practice because of the extra lag and the overwhelming urge to chat. The IDEAL spot to practice leaves you in solitude for and hour and then one or two customers trickle in so you can try out what you learned on them. It takes a bit of research to find these places but it is worth the effort. Remote cantinas like this tend to be desperate for entertainers and you can find yourself well cared for during your stay. For the dancer on a budget theaters and hotels can offer good spots to practice as well. I am very fond of dancing on the beach too it offers a nice view of the ocean and helps me work on my tan.
Let�s begin.
Lesson 1 (Getting the Boogie On)
Terms:
Base Dance; The dancing your character does when it is not flourishing.
Flourish; A special dance move the player can call on demand.
Command; One of the games slash commands. I enclose them in braces for clarity but don�t type the braces.
[/smile] means type /smile
So you just got your dancing shoes and are eager to try them out?
Use the command [/startdance] to bring up a list of dance styles. At this point you have Basic and Rhythmic, click basic and then OK and you will start dancing. Now watch your character dance for a few minutes. You will notice that each base dance is really a few seconds of dancing animation that loops. See if you can find the pattern and anticipate when it is about to loop. This is very important as timing is the building block of everything we will do here at the academy and it may seem like a small thing now but what you just learned is more then a lot of people know about their dancers at master level.
Under the Abilities & Commands menu click the other tab add the flourish 1-8 commands to your quick bar slots F1-F8. Now press the F1 key and watch your character boogie! Do flourish 1 a few times and watch all the movements you do. Watch the hands, feet and overall body language of a flourish. Now start a dance card. It�s simple really just write down what you see. Yes write in the book! There is no wrong answer; I won�t even be collecting your papers. A dance card lets you find a flourish you like at a glance. When your done with Basic use the command [/stopdance] to stop dancing and then the command [/startdance rhythmic] to start dancing Rhythmic without having to pick it from the list. This time use the command [/flourish 1] to do your flourish. Now alternate doing each flourish with the command [/flourish 1-8] and the function keys and see which you like better.
Ok this may seem like an easy first lesson, but we learned a lot today.
1. Our hot bar is set up to let us flourish at the touch of a button
2. We learned the /startdance,/startdance , /flourish 1-8 and /stopdance commands
3. We know what each of our base dances looks like and can anticipate when they are about to loop.
4. We learned what the 16 flourishes look like and can find our favorites on the dance card
Lesson 2 (Got Ryhym?)
Terms:
Part; A recognizable sub routine in a flourish or base dance
Today we are going to take a good look at Rhythmic.
Repeat after me �clueless/skip rope/chicken flap/slow hands/left 45�.
Now start dancing rhythmic and watch the base dance closely, �clueless/ skip rope/chicken flap/slow hands/left 45�.
When the dance starts we look �clueless�, then a bit like we are �skipping rope�, then a short version of skipping rope I am calling �chicken flap�, then the �slow hands� and last we turn 45 degrees to the left �left 45�. We just broke Rhythmic down into its parts so we can talk about them. Watch the base dance some more until you can recognize each of these parts.
Ok now let�s have some fun with it.
Exorcise 1:
Wait for �Chicken Flap� to start then do flourish 5. If all went well you came out of your flourish into the �Left 45� position. If this did not happen play with your timing a bit until you have it down.
Why did this happen? Always remember no matter what you do the base dance is always running. That�s right your flourish doesn�t interrupt your base dance it rides on top of it. Think the base and the flourish as two pieces of film. The base dance film never stops we just cue to another piece of film (the flourish 5 film in this case) when we cue back to the �base dance film� it has still been running all this time and we happen to be at the �left 45� part of the film.
Ok so why should we care? Well in the above example we used it to toss a little flare to the end of our flourish the �left 45� move gives it a little ta-da sort of ending. At the same time we are learning to look at our dancer in a different way so we understand why they behave differently at times. Once we understand our dancer we have more control over our dancer.
Exorcise 2:
Wait for �left 45� to start then flourish 3. When Flourish 3 ends wait for left 45 to start again and flourish 3 again. Repeat three more times. Hey! Wait a sec what happened to clueless?
We didn�t like that part so we got rid of it. We are now using what we know to eliminate a part of the dance we didn�t want. Ok now try it with other flourishes.
NOTE: I don�t want you freaking out over how many seconds a part is or how many seconds the flourish runs. I want you to concentrate instead on what things look like and go by feel. Visual cues are not only more reliable but they will make your dancing more fluid. In dancing timing is everything not time.
Ok what did we learn today?
1. Base Dances are made up or Parts that can be used or discarded with timing.
2. The Base Dance is always running
3. Watching our dancer and not the clock can make us more fluid
Lesson 3 (Changing Gears)
TERMS:
Changing Gears; Switching quickly from one dance style to another.
Ok today were going to talk about changing gears obviously so let�s get right to it.
Click on the bottom of your short cut bar and drag it down so you have two sets of bars.
Now make the following macros (if you don�t know how to this read the manual)
This macro gets you dancing basic fast.
/startdance basic;
This macro allows you to shift gears fast make one for each of your styles.
/changedance ;
Example:
/changedance rhythmic;
This macro will always result in an error message if you are already dancing �You canot Start Dancing while Skill Animating�. You�re the only one who sees this error though and it lets you use one button to either start the dance or change to it if already dancing.
/startdance basic;
/changedance basic;
Ok that�s simple enough but I have a tip for you do NOT arrange the dances on your hot bar in the order you learn them arrange them like this; basic/rhythmic/popular/poplock/footloose/formal/lyrical/exotic. This is a more logical progression of styles in my opinion and lets you find a complimentary style much faster.
Now you can play your dancer much like a piano, fingers on the function keys and mousing over the bottom row for gear changes. The advantage of this method is you can plan ahead with your mouse and easily do two things at once (flourish/gear change). There is another way called �aliasing� it basically lets you create your own slash commands. I do not recommend this unless you are a very fast typist and for that reason I�m not going into it here.
What did we learn today?
1. We learned a little bit about macros (I hope it didn�t hurt too much)
2. We learned how to change gears
3. We learned a logical way to arrange our change gear buttons
Lesson 4 (The dancers office)
Today we�re going to learn how to set up our screen to get the most out of our dancer.
Before we even get started this is a lot of technical mumbo jumbo and might be a little hard to get the first time through. It does make your life a lot easier so please bear with me.
Ok our dancers are supposed to be social animals and chat, at the same time we are supposed to thank our tippers and our healers, at the same time we are supposed to be dancing and putting on a good show. wheeeew that�s a lot of work! Well today we are going to mess around with our chat window to make it work for us.
1. Were going to get rid of the stupid system messages on screen if you haven�t already. Click on �options� then select �misc� no uncheck �show system messages on screen.
2. Read pages 83 � 84 of manual, or the Chat System section of online manual.
3. Right click the �spatial� tab and select �modify� now remove �system messages� and click �done�
4. Right click �spatial� tab and select �add tab�
5. Right click �none� (the name of the new tab) and select �modify� now add �system messages� and click done. It will automatically rename �none� to �system messages�
6. Left click and drag the new �system messages� tab just to the right of your chat window.
7. Now click �options� and select �chat color� in the window near the bottom type the sentence �tips you� and pick a color you like in the color palate box above. Now click �add sentence colorization�.
8. Now click �options� and select �chat color� in the window near the bottom type the sentence �heals you� and pick a color you like in the color palate box above. Now click �add sentence colorization�.
9. Now click done
Ok now all we have in our main window is chat, hey that�s good were supposed to do that. In the smaller window too the right we can see our EXP ticking away, hmm that�s good we like EXP. We can also see in the same smaller window highlighted in the color of our choice any incoming tips and healing so we can thank people for them.
What did we learn today?
Well hopefully we learned to make our life a lot easier
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