So, last time I talked about what O2Jam is. Now, how do you go about playing it?
To get start with, there are three ways to play O2Jam. On this post, I'll talk about: O2Mania. To be more specific: How to use/play O2Mania.
O2Mania is an O2Jam offline emulator, without all the hassle of the "MMO" element of the original game. It allows you to play the music (called notechart, or chart) directly.
Contents:
0. O2Mania Download Link
O2Mania 1.0.1 English: >>Download Link<<1. Starting O2Mania
To start O2Mania, simply run O2Mania English.exe
When starting O2Mania, you will be met by a loader, which is linked to a website where you can download more user-created notechart. Note that the site is in Chinese, so you might not be able to navigate that place unless you can read it. I'll talk about where you can find charts later.
You can ignore this and immediately click start, which will lead you to a screen as shown in the following image.
This is the bare-bones of O2Jam. You have the playfield, and... It's pretty much the same as the original interface.
Once you see this, we can now set our O2Mania up.
2. Settings
Take Note! Some Keyboard doesn't allow specific key presses, so after pressing "OK", make sure to check if you can hold all those 7 keys down simultaneously. Most keyboards plugged in with USB only allows up to 6 simultaneous key presses, excluding modifier keys. Shift is an example of a modifier key, so with a USB Keyboard, using the settings on the image would work for most people.
Ticking the Auto Key on the "Cheats" makes the computer hit those keys for you. You don't want to use that unless you want to fool someone.
Under Settings, the Skin Settings can be found. If you don't like how O2Mania looks like, you can change the Skin Settings on that tab (Alt+F9). Experiment and see which fits you!
Now let's go to the Play tab.
You will see under the Play tab the same thing as the image shown above.
Survival Mode. If you click on this, a check mark will appear on the left side of that option. Setting the game to Survival Mode means that if you lose HP, you will die. I have Survival Mode off as it doesn't really affect my gameplay. It's quite annoying when the music abruptly ends too when you die.
Judge. The perks of O2Mania allows you to choose the difficulty of the Judgement. You have three choices, Easy, Normal, and Hard. You should leave this to Normal, unless you want to kick it up a notch and go for Hard.
Note: Never ever ever choose Easy Judge.
Now, there's only two things left to do. Configuring where O2Mania looks for the song, and how to choose a song.
3. Loading Songs in O2Mania
For you to be able to choose songs, O2Mania must first know where to look for them.Under the File tab, you'll see Configure Folders. Click it and a window should appear, the as shown on the image below.
You can leave the last two directory. You only have to set the O2Jam Tunes path. Pressing "..." will open a folder picker, and you can navigate to the place where you store the O2Jam songs. Pick the folder that contains all your O2Jam songs, and press OK to confirm. It will tell you to refresh the music list if it is not your first time in setting the path.
Note: Check the end of the post to find download links for songs.
After that, still under the File tab, choose the Open... option (or press F8).
If this is your first time in setting a directory, O2Mania should do the refreshing for you. If it did not, you will have to refresh the song list manually. The Refresh button can be found on the lower right portion of the Music Selection window.
After refreshing, songs will appear on the "O2Jam" Tab.
Look at the 3 check boxes below the song list. On my O2Mania, I only have the Hard diff checked. That means I can only see the Hard diff of all the songs that I have. If you are just starting out, you should also check the Easy and Normal checkboxes to find songs at your level.
At the bottom of the window, you can find Effects (rings). These are basically the "Skill" rings as I have mentioned on a post before. I will talk about them on another post soon. For now, you don't have to use it. If you want, you can experiment on it and use them. Try them out!
Now that you can select songs, just click song that you want to play, and press Enter (Or the OK button on the lower right of the window).
On the picture above, I have selected Pure Ruby. As you select songs, the loading screen will appear on the upper right box, and the song info below.
Name:Pure Ruby
Lvl: 38
Note:1789
BPM:178.00
Time:02:04
Genre:Dance
Comp:SHIKI
BGA:无
Looks pretty good. 2 minutes long, 1789 Total notes at 178 BPM (Beat per minute). I got this!
After selecting a song, the title bar of the O2Mania should display the Song name and the difficulty you selected.
After confirming the song, Press F6 (Or under the Play tab, click Start) and you should be able to play that chart now!
Note: F5 is Auto play, while F6 is Play. Please don't be confused why it's automatically playing. You might have accidentally pressed F5.
After starting, the loading image should appear on the O2Mania, and the music will start playing!
But wait, I can't read the notes! They're going down too fast!
The scroll speed multiplier might have been set too high. As shown in the image above, I have mine set at 3.5 Speed. This would translate to X3.5 in O2Jam. In order to reduce or increase scroll speed, press F1 or F2 respectively.
Try to play a song and experiment which speed is comfortable to you!
For reference, here is my selected speed for each bpm range
120bpm~130bpm: x5
131bpm~145bpm: X4.5
146bpm~175bpm: X4
176bpm~200bpm: X3.5
200bpm+ X3
Find the settings you feel comfortable with!
4. Summarized O2Mania Instructions
If you only want the instructions, here's a step by step guide on how to use O2Mania.
1: Settings>Keyboard keys to set your key bindings.
2: File>Configure Folders. Under the O2Jam path, set the directory that contains all your O2Jam music files.
3: F8 to open music list.
4: Select a music and press Enter
5: Press F6 to play, F5 for autoplay.
6: Configure Scroll speed by pressing F1 or F2.
5. Music Download Links
To start off with, you can download the song packs from an O2 Private Server. I will make a post about Private Servers and O2Emu soon, so stay tuned!
I recommend downloading packs level 1~29, as those contains most of the official songs. Extract them all in one folder, and enjoy jamming!
P.S. There are other places where you can find song packs. You can easily google them to look for specific charts. Most release their charts in youtube. Koreans tend to release their charts in naver, so if you are korean, go check the O2Jam section of naver!
If you want to know more, check out these guides!
What is O2Jam?: http://ecilasworld.blogspot.com/2014/06/o2jam.html
O2Jam Gameplay Guide: http://ecilasworld.blogspot.com/2014/07/o2jam-gameplay-guide.html
O2Jam Skill Rings: http://ecilasworld.blogspot.com/2014/06/o2jam-skill-rings.html
O2Private Servers: -Coming Soon!-
O2Emu: http://ecilasworld.blogspot.com/2014/06/o2emulator-o2solo-o2china.html
Feel free to comment or ask any questions!
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