DWI - Frequently Asked Questions
v2.10

Below are answers to commonly asked questions. For more information, please read the README.HTML file distributed with DWI.

Why won't the program recognize my songs? or
When I'm at the song-select screen and select a song, I get taken right back to the select screen - why?

First of all, make sure that the song files are in the right folders. For the sample song, "Not My Battle", you should arrange your folders like this:

       <DWI Folder>
         + Songs
            + Default
               + notmybattle
                  + notmybattle.dwi
                  + notmybattle.png
                  + notmybattle-bg.png
                  + notmybattle.mp3

After you've organized all your songs this way, restart DWI. It should find the songs when it searches for new files at startup.

NB: You can have the MP3 or WAV file in a different folder if you like, but the DWI file has to point to it correctly - open it up in a text-editor and set the "#FILE:...;" tag to the correct path.

I've connected my Playstation dance mat/controller to my PC using an adapter, but DWI won't recognize the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons - why!?

The directions must be viewed as separate buttons by Windows, not axes. DWI requires this as otherwise certain button combinations are not possible - specifically U+D and L+R jumps and freezes, as it's impossible to have an axis in both positions at the same time.

Two things could cause the directional buttons to not map to separate gamepad buttons in Windows:

- Your adapter itself - unfortunately some adapters just don't seem to have this behavior, unless "Analog" mode is turned on in the controller itself. Since dance mats don't have this mode toggle, the desired behavior is hidden.
- Your gamepad driver - some drivers work better than others, and some require some extra configuration before the gamepad behaves correctly in DWI. The DirectPad Pro driver, for example, needs to be set to "Left Analog" mode to map the D-pad to separate buttons.

For more information and a list of working adapters, please check out PS-to-PC Adapters for DDR.
(Thanks to Junta for compiling this list!!!)

When I get a 100+ combo, the flashes for Perfect and Great are all one colour each time - is there a way I can make them change?

Yes - the colours for flashes after a 100 combo are just randomly chosen from a list of colours in the skin definition file. To change the default behavior, open 'Skins\Default\dwi2-skin.cfg' in a text-editor, such as Notepad. Change the two lines with the same tags to something like this:

    ComboPerfect=0x0091ff,0x002fff,0x4d00ff,0xb600ff,0xff00cd,0xff006b,0xff000e,0xff3a00,0x00ff91,0x00ff2f,0x4dff00,0xb6ff00,0xfff500,0xff9b00
    ComboGreat=0x0091ff,0x002fff,0x4d00ff,0xb600ff,0xff00cd,0xff006b,0xff000e,0xff3a00,0x00ff91,0x00ff2f,0x4dff00,0xb6ff00,0xfff500,0xff9b00

After saving and restarting DWI, the flashes will be different colours. Try different hex-values for different colours.

At the song-select screen, the highlighted song is off by one and the banner image seems off - how can I fix this? or
When I try to run DWI, I get a message saying "A certain .DLL file, D3D8.DLL, was not found". What's wrong?

You don't have DirectX 8.1 installed. Get it from Microsoft's website

Why does DWI crash when it searches for files?

Crashing when searching for files usually means that a DWI file is badly formatted. To detect which, use the "/log" command-line argument (see below) and examine the "dwi2.log" file in a text-editor such as Notepad. The last lines in the file should tell you what DWI file it failed on. This file probably is missing ";"s after a tag somewhere, or has freeze arrows that don't end correctly. Either fix the problem or remove the song, and try rebuilding your songlist again.

How do I run DWI with command line arguments?

Right click on the .EXE file, and select "Create Shortcut". A new file called "Shortcut to..." will appear in your folder. Right-click this file and go to "Properties". You'll see one text box labelled "Target:" that points to the .EXE file. Go to the end of this text and add the command line arguments there. So to run the program in SDL, fullscreen mode, add " /sdl /fullscreen".

Click "OK" and start the program using the Shortcut. You can rename the shortcut if you like.

Another method is to use a batch file. A sample one, "DWI-sdl.bat" is included. You can view it in a text-editing program like Notepad.

I have a Voodoo video card and DirectX 8.1, but the program crashes on startup in DX mode - why?

Some Voodoo card drivers don't seem to create textures of the right size for some reason. Try running DWI with the '/v5hack' command line option.

I have a Voodoo video card and DirectX 8.1, but the graphics look poor. Why?

Most Voodoo cards can't support large textures or textures with translucent pixels, so graphics quality will be lower. But framerates should be better. You can still use SDL mode if you prefer, by using the "/sdl" command line option. This keeps the graphics at full quality, but because it's software based, it's not as fast as DirectX mode.

The program crashes at startup / No songs found / Controls are screwed up

Try deleting 'dwi2.rec', 'dwi2.sng', 'dwi2.cfg', and 'dwi2.inp'. These files may be corrupted or out-of-date. There may be a problem with DWI - but it helps to try this step first.

There are no sound effects or announcer comments, just music during gameplay and the song-select screen. or
The program won't run, I get a message box saying "FREEIMAGE.DLL" or "BASS.DLL" is not found.

You've not extracted the archive properly. You should have files in \Skins\Default, including 'dwi2-skin.cfg'. Some files (particularly DLL files) may be hidden in some un-zipping programs if you have system files hidden by Windows.

How do you select drop arrows / left-right-mirror-shuffle / speed multipliers?

Press 'select' on the song-select screen and you can move a curor over various icons with Left and Right, and change settings by pressing Up and Down. When finished, press 'select' again. Alternatively, hold down 'start' when selecting a song to be taken to another screen where you can set the options in a menu-based format.

Are .dwi files the same as .msd files?

The formats are very similar. When we were adding in the new features of DWI (Hold Arrows, Solo Mode, Background animations, etc.) we knew we needed to change things in the file, which meant choosing a new extension since the stepfiles were now proprietary. You can rename a .msd file to a .dwi file and play it in DWI, but GAP values from .msd files will not work very well with DWI; so if you're converting your old MSD files you'll have to Use The Force and set new GAP values for each file.

I have graphics files for songs - what do I do so DWI will show them correctly?

DWI uses PNG format to display graphics. There are many programs available to convert files to PNG format including IRFan Viewer (freeware) and Adobe Photoshop. The bmp2png program included with the program is actually used to convert a whole bunch of bmps to a png to be used for animation, and we apologize for the confusion that may cause.

Background files should be 320x240 in size (although in v1.20 and higher they can be of any size), and banner files should either be:

- diagonal, in a 175x175 image, with that special Magenta colour around the outside (Take a look at the 'default' PNG files for the backgrounds and the banners to see how they need to be).
- horizontal, in a 254x79 image.

The arrows are not in time with the music during the game, how do I fix this?

The GAP tag in the .dwi file controls the sync of the arrows for each song. If the arrows are already going past the target arrows at the top before the beat hits then increase the GAP value to a larger number. If the arrows haven't quite reached the target arrows when the beat hits then decrease the number. Changing the number by 30-70 each time is usually a good idea, unless the arrows are far out of sync. To make sure the GAP value is just right try playing the song with a 2x arrow modifier - that will help show you if the arrows are off.

I own more than one mix of songs, how do I put them into different collections?

Create another folder in the 'Songs' folder for every collection you have, just like the Default folder. It's also a good idea to also have a separate folder for each collection of Music files. DWI will display the files in separate collections in the song select screen.

Can you play DWI with a dancepad? How is it configured?

Absolutely! In fact it's alot easier to set up a dancepad with DWI than with other simulators. You don't have to run Joy2Key, and you don't have to re-map the buttons (but if you've already re-mapped the buttons for another sim that shouldn't be a problem). All you need to do is have the pad's driver set up correctly; we'll have a section on doing that set up later - in the meantime check out the forums on The Melting Pot if you need help setting your pad up.

Once your pad is set up correctly go into the Options menu and select Gamepad Configuration and select which player's controls you want to define. As it asks you for Up, Down, etc just step on each of the pad's buttons. Most dancepads have 'Select' and 'Start' buttons on them, so set those as well.

More questions/answers can be found on the DWI forums, linked to from our website.

SimWolf, Noveber 2002.