Feet of Fury was a dancing-based rhythm game developed by Cryptic Allusion and published by GOAT Store Publishing for the SEGA Dreamcast. The kicker for this release was that it was an independent commercial release that began sale on June 7, 2003, just more than two years after SEGA discontinued its support for the console.
Feet of Fury came together due to the enthusiasm of multiple independent development communities, and free toolkits were eventually made available so development could continue on the Dreamcast. Even today, the Dreamcast remains a fan-favorite for the occasional new game release.
Feet of Fury was a sort of pioneer in this regard, and it got a lot of attention when it was announced in 2003. Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of information online about the game and Cryptic Allusion. This entry will serve as an FAQ for the game should anyone be curious about its game mechanics and unlockables. However, GemuBaka also features an entirely different entry that details the history and development of Feet of Fury. I recommend checking it out, as I feel it’s a story worth telling!
Feet of Fury (Dreamcast)
GemuBaka FAQ
Written June 17, 2023
Sections: I. The Story; II. Characters; III. Gameplay; IV. Unlock Menu; V. Feet of Fury Song List; VI. The Swap CD Feature; VII. General FAQ Information
I. The Story
The following is the background story for Feet of Fury, and this text is directly from the in-game options information:
The underground of the future revolves around dance clubs like gladiatorial arenas where contestants fight each other with their dance steps in an arena – Feet of Fury!
A mysterious and very black-box computer system controls this dance arena and orchestrates the fight. The computer system can project what seems to be an extremely realistic holographic overlay on the arena so that they see and feel the things in the playing field (such as the arrows).
Each of the really good players additionally has some attack which they can seemingly launch using only their mental strength when they are really “in the zone” in their dance, and these have become the trademarks of the big stars over the years.
The competition is, for lack of a better word, furious, and over the years the top stars of the arena have started discovering what gives the arena computer its powers – tryptonite [Ed: this shares the name of another game project developed by Cryptic Allusion], a powerful crystal of unknown origin which, when energy is applied to it in a certain way, can warp reality around it in all sorts of interesting ways (for example, showing an arena with dance steps in it).
It is rumored that the top contestants each possess a piece of tryptonite themselves, and this is how they launch their mental attacks. It is also believed that these contestants travel around and battle each other in an attempt to obtain more tryptonite. No one really knows what their end goals may be.
II. Characters
A. Immediately selectable
Daron Veldan and Sydney Veldan: These are two different selectable characters, but they are siblings and share the same story. They have an all-purpose story of competing for fun and wanting to be the best. Daron’s innate technique is drunken arrows and Sydney’s innate technique is the elixir.
Kiwi: A creature accidentally summoned to the real world from a role playing game. Kiwi was then drawn to Feet of Fury in this new world. Kiwi’s innate technique is the arrow bomb.
Pedro Villanueva “The Mambo King:” Pedro is attempting to bring the music genre of mambo to the Feet of Fury arenas. Pedro’s innate technique is reprieve.
B. Unlockable characters
Metal Junky: A robot that appeared shortly after the first arena control machine was deployed. It is unknown where exactly he came from. Metal Junky’s innate technique is turbo.
Charlotte Montabelle: A ghost that haunted clubs and decided to personally participate in Feet of Fury. Charlotte’s innate attack is the fireball.
Vengeance: An evolved fish that rose from the waters to avenge sea creatures destroyed 5,000 years ago. He has confused modern humans with those from Atlantis and battles them in Feet of Fury. Vengeance’s innate technique is vortex.
Pico: A human that was somehow turned into a snowman through an accident. Pico’s innate technique is phasing arrows.
Sedary Gatisan: A dancing dragon rumored to be from the same game Kiwi was summoned from. Sedary’s innate technique is dispel.
As the player unlocks new characters, that character’s new special attack/item then gets added to the pool of overall items. This means players will only see five different items in battles by default (the reversal is a general item that is not character specific), and this will then expand to 10 different items when all of the characters are unlocked.
III. Gameplay
The gameplay of Feet of Fury is virtually identical to DanceDanceRevolution. There are four panels – left, down, up, right – and the player hits a matching panel when an arrow icon scrolls and meets the stationary markers at the top of the playfield. For example, if an up arrow is scrolling up the screen, the player needs to hit the panel/command for up when it meets the stationary up marker at the top of the playfield.
Dance pad accessories can be used to play Feet of Fury, but a standard Dreamcast controller can also be used. If the standard controller is being used, the directional pad can be used to press the individual directions, or the face buttons can be used: Y is for up, X is for left, A is for down and B is for right.
The default game mode is the “Item Battle,” which matches the player against an opponent. This can be done with two players, but if only one player is actively playing, a CPU opponent will be added to the game.
The basic game mechanics are the same as the other modes, but arrows with icons pictured on top of them will also scroll onto the playfield. If the player successfully hits one of these arrows, an item is activated that will help the player or interfere with the opponent’s gameplay. A furiosity meter also fills as the player successfully combos accurate commands – when this fills, your character executes an innate attack against the opponent.
Upon entering a song, the player can choose to enter automatic mode or manual mode. If the player chooses automatic mode, an item is used the instant it is obtained by the player; otherwise, the manual mode has a “use item” key (right trigger by default on the controller, but this can be set in the options) that must be pressed to use the item when the player chooses.
Something to note: The player can choose to ignore an arrow/letter with an item icon. They are not given a Miss rating as a result. This can be done as a strategy, such as ensuring you have more arrows to hit by not triggering a reprieve eraser, or not triggering an attack when the opponent has a reversal item in play.
The items in Feet of Fury are:
Arrow bomb (bomb) – offense – Replaces a block of arrows on the opponent’s playfield with a pattern of green arrows. This esentially puts the opponent in a temporary “flat” mode, so no differing colors are present to indicate whether the arrows fall on 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16 notes.
Dispel (magic wand with a blue slash over it) – defense – Removes any status that may currently be on your playfield.
Drunken arrows (yellow frowning face) – offense – Causes the opponent’s arrows to wave horizontally as they scroll to the top of the playfield.
Reprieve (eraser) – defense – Removes any arrow currently on your playfield outside of every other 1/4 note to give you a brief breather from the arrow patterns.
Fireball (flame) – offense – Directly causes a small decrease to your opponent’s health.
Elixir (potion) – defense – Directly causes a small increase to your health.
Phasing arrows (blue/green swirl) – offense – Causes your opponent’s arrows to phase in and out of view. These arrows must still be triggered, or else a Miss occurs.
Reverse (red/green arrows) – defense – For a limited time, one item triggered by the opponent has its effect done to the opposite target. This means an opponent can place an offensive item effect on themselves or place a defensive item effect on you (i.e., the opponent can heal you with elixir or damage themselves with the fireball). If the opponent triggers a dispel, though, it removes the effect of reverse. This is strictly an item and does not serve as any of the characters’ innate technique.
Turbo (red arrows pointing upward) – offense – Places a 3x scroll rate on the opponent’s playfield, similar to the 3x speed modifiers in other rhythm games. The arrows scroll at three times the BPM rate, but the arrows are also spaced out to maintain their timing within the song’s arrow chart.
Vortex (black/white swirl) – offense – Causes the opponent’s arrows to rotate 360 degrees as they scroll upward. This makes it more difficult to determine which direction is supposed to be pressed to trigger the note. The correct command is based on the lane in which the arrow is scrolling (from left to right, the first space is left, second is down, third is up and fourth is right).
Again, certain techniques won’t be avaialble until characters with the innate ability are unlocked. Reverse, elixir, repreive, drunken arrows and arrow bomb are available by default when starting the game. This means dispel, fireball, phasing arrows, turbo and vortex will not appear in the battle modes until the associated character is unlocked.
If a character’s health completely drains, a victory is awarded to the winning player. If both players reach the end of the song, the game awards a victory to the player with more health remaining. If there is a health tie at the end of the song, a victory is given to the player with more furiosity. In the case where all of these criteria result in a tie, the round is declared to be a draw, and it is restarted. Also note the options allow players to toggle the song end condition to only occur at the end of a song, instead of ending instantly if a player is “KOed.”
Much like a fighting game, the goal is to win best two out of three rounds against the opponent.
Feet of Fury also has a signature Typing of Fury mode, which is controlled by using the Dreamcast’s keyboard accessory. Again, the basic mechanics of the gameplay are the same. However, all of the game’s arrows are changed to letters the player needs to type out on the keyboard in time to the music. Yellow letters are 1/4 notes (on the beat), blue letters are 1/8 notes (in between the beat) and red letters are 1/16 notes (in between 1/8 notes).
The practice mode lets players participate in a mode similar to the traditional dancing rhythm game – each player does their own thing without attacking each other, and they can focus on getting the highest scores or practicing individual songs. This mode comes with individual features to disable backgrounds and toggle visual and audible assists if players really need to focus on the gameplay. If this mode is played with only one player, the game does not insert a computer player into the other playfield.
Every individual input in Feet of Fury is given a rating. A “Perfect!” rating is given with precision timing, and other ratings are awarded as the player’s timing becomes more offbeat – Great!, Ok … and Ungh! If a player completely fails to make an input during the step’s timing window, the rating of MISS is given.
At the end of each song, a performance statistics screen will be shown that provides a tally of how many of each rating the player received. This also includes a score awarded to the player. The best I can calculate, this is how the score is broken down in Feet of Fury:
Perfect = 3,000 points
Great = 1,000 points
Ok = 250 points
Ungh = 100 points
Feet of Fury also awards cumulative unlock points that are used to obtain secret features in the game. The number of unlock points awarded is based on the song score received by the player. The formula used to determine unlock points is a little tougher for me to crack, but in every case, it seems like the game is taking the overall score and then multiplying it by .00003. Unlock points are awarded in whole numbers, with no decimal points, so the rounding done by the game to give a final unlock point total is probably what keeps throwing the exact modifier off.
You can earn unlock points through the practice mode, and the game even combines earned unlock points if two players are playing. The key factor to note, though, is that the winner of an item battle or Typing of Fury competition is given a 2.5 multiplier to their score if they are the winner.
Playing the harder songs in the battle modes and winning will allow a player to earn between 800-1,000 unlock points per song. Playing solo, I was able to achieve the number of unlock points needed to access every secret in the game at approximately three hours (thanks to CT and KRoo for helping score a chunk of points as well). As such, most players will be able to put a handful of hours into the game while seeing new content slowly introduced, before they see everything Feet of Fury has to offer. Not bad for a console dance/rhythm game for the time.
IV. Unlock menu
Most rhythm games at the time had set unlock conditions, such as playing x number of songs or playing for a specified period of time, but Feet of Fury was among an early batch of rhythm games that gave players some form of control in what they unlocked and when.
The game’s options menu features an unlock store, where players can cycle through a 7-by-7 grid of squares to pick out unlockable game features. This means there are 49 unlocks the player can achieve over the course of playing the game. As a general rule, new songs playable in the game cost 2,000 points and new characters cost 2,500.
The remainder of the unlockables are neat little design notes that cover how the game was planned out and some of them have preliminary sketches of features cut from the game. The other unlockables are extra audio features the player can listen to, but they do not have step charts that make them playable in Feet of Fury.
Feet of Fury Unlockable Contents
A0 – 2,500 points – Metal Junky playable character (turbo technique)
B0 – 800 points – Aquatic, unreleased track from DJ Geki
C0 – 2,000 points – Dreams2, by Kudos, playable in-game
D0 – 800 points – Design notes, tray card layout
E0 – 800 points – Cereal Experiments (Plain), unreleased track from DJ Geki
F0 – 2,500 points – Charlotte Montabelle playable character (fireball technique)
G0 – 800 points – Design notes, song menu math
A1 – 800 points – Design notes, gameplay layout
B1 – 800 points – Fonky Scramble, unreleased track from DJ Geki
C1 – 800 points – Got No Clue What I should Do (A-Kon Mix), unreleased track from DJ Geki
D1 – 800 points – Design notes, in-game arrows (1)
E1 – 800 points – Radio For Help (early mix), unreleased track from DJ Geki
F1 – 2,500 points – Vengeance playable character (vortex technique)
G1 – 800 points – Artwork, DC Man, sketch from Dan for original MWC DC flyer
A2 – 2,000 points – Ramp by Aaron Marks, playable in-game
B2 – 800 points – Nostalgia, Beat Fighter, in-game screen shot
C2 – 800 points – Design notes, Tube Math
D2 – 1,000 points – Roddy as Movie Guy, “voice outtakes” from a scrapped plot intro
E2 – 2,000 points – BHedU by DJ Geki, playable in-game
F2 – 800 points – Design notes, in-game arrows (2)
G2 – 1,000 points – Random Voice Funnies, “voice outtakes,” intro samples
A3 – 800 points – Come on Everybody, unreleased track from DJ Geki
B3 – 400 points – Funny audio bug, bug in early version
C3 – 800 points – Design notes, Technique Icons
D3 – 2,000 points – BuffLog Logarithmic Sine Remix by DJ Geki, playable in-game
E3 – 800 points – Design notes, Cryptic Allusion’s logo
F3 – 2,000 points – Me N U by Kudos, playable in-game
G3 – 800 points – Deserted Town, unreleased track by DJ Geki
A4 – 800 points – Nostalgia: Old Main Menu
B4 – 2,000 points – Those Damn Noodles Late Night Mix by DJ Geki, playable in-game
C4 – 5,000 points – Casino of Fury, slots mini-game unlock point gambling
D4 – 800 points – Artwork, Yuki, CA mascot
E4 – 800 points – Design notes, fury battle
F4 – 2,000 points – House by Aaron Marks, playable in-game
G4 – 800 points – Design notes, new game flow
A5 – 800 points – Design notes, character select
B5 – 2,000 points – Loungin’ by DJ Geki, playable in-game
C5 – 800 points – Design notes, new menu layout
D5 – 2,500 points – Pico, playable character (phasing arrows technique)
E5 – 800 points – Design notes, fury cube
F5 – 800 points – 2ndMix Extended, DC Tonic track from DJ Geki
G5 – 2,000 points – Quickly by ChoJin, playable in-game
A6 – 800 points – Design notes, extras layout
B6 – 800 points – My Heart, unreleased track by DJ Geki
C6 – 800 points – Design notes, gameplay background effects
D6 – 1,000 points – Japanese train announcer voices
E6 – 2,500 points – Sedary Gatisan, playable character (dispel technique)
F6 – 1,000 points – Recorded message from DJ Geki
G6 – 800 points – Design notes, wave banner math
A player will need to accumulate a total of 63,100 unlock points over time in order to uncover ever single square in the unlock store.
If you want to prioritize the unlockable songs you can play in Feet of Fury, you’ll want to target the following squares:
C0 (Dreams2); A2 (Ramp); E2 (BeHedU); D3 (BuffLog Remix); F3 (Me N U); B4 (Noodles); F4 (House)
***I’ll note that, for some reason, even though the songs Loungin’ (B5) and Quickly (G5) are marked in the unlock store, these songs are available in my track list by default. If I load the game with no VMUs in the controllers and start from a fresh file, these songs are playable for me from the start. That’s also why I was confused that the FAQ information originally available on Cryptic Allusion’s website indicates there are 13 default songs and nine unlockable tracks. Every time I boot up the game, I have 15 default songs and then seven more that unlock.
So, if you only need the seven unlocks like I do, you’ll only need to cash in 14,000 unlock points overall. Otherwise, if you need nine unlocks like intended, it will cost you 18,000 overall unlock points. If anyone happens to have any input or experience with this, it would be greatly appreciated!
If you want to prioritize the unlockable characters, you’ll want to target the following squares:
A0 (Metal Junky); F0 (Charlotte); F1 (Vengeance); D5 (Pico); E6 (Sedary Gatisan)
This means picking up all five unlockable characters will cost 12,500 overall unlock points.
Adding up the points needed for the songs and characters, it will cost you 26,500 (30,500 if you need to unlock Loungin’ and Quickly) points to activate all of the features in Feet of Fury that directly impact gameplay.
One last note regarding the unlock store is that one of the unlock spaces curiously has a cost of 5,000 unlock points. When the player unlocks this square, a new feature in the overall options menu is opened that offers players a “casino.” If you’re willing to take the gamble, you can cash in 50 unlock points at a time in the hopes the in-game slot machine will line three icons in a row and pay out a bonus of additional unlock points.
When you unlock the sound-based features, the overall options menu also has a sound section that acts as a music player for any of these features currently unlocked. Also note that, in some cases, you can press the Y button while viewing art or certain sound features to access a pop-up window that provides more information on the item.
V. Feet of Fury Song List
The song lists include (from right to left) song title and artist, the song’s speed as measured in Beats Per Minute (BPM) and then the difficulties of each arrow chart. Each song features an “easy,” “medium” and “hard” chart that are ranked in difficulty between 1 to 9 stars.
A. Default song list
Allusions by Aaron Marks – 150 BPM – Easy (1); Medium (5); Hard (8)
Man in the Moon by Kudos – 134 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (5); Hard (7)
BuffLog by DJ Geki – 200 BPM – Easy (5); Medium (6); Hard (7)
Pryo by Aaron Marks – 150 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (4); Hard (6)
Got No Clue by DJ Geki – 150 BPM – Easy (5); Medium (7); Hard (9)
Run the Ridge by Aaron Marks – 140 BPM – Easy (4); Medium (7); Hard (8)
The Higher You Get by DJ Geki – 140 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (4); Hard (7)
Catchup by Chojin – 140 BPM – Easy (4); Medium (6); Hard (9)
Laptop by Chojin – 140 BPM – Easy (2); Medium (4); Hard (7)
Tisonits by DJ Geki – 150 BPM – Easy (5); Medium (7); Hard (8)
***Quickly (Acoustic Mix) by Chojin – 115 BPM – Easy (2); Medium (6); Hard (8)
Trickster by DJ Geki – 154 BPM – Easy (4); Medium (7); Hard (9)
NRG by Kudos – 134 BPM – Easy (5); Medium (6); Hard (9)
***Loungin’ by DJ Geki – 120 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (5); Hard (9)
Watoo by Kudos – 134 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (6); Hard (8)
*** See the section on the unlock store and the song unlocks for more information on the inclusion of Loungin’and Quickly in this default song list, also marked above with “***.”
B. Unlockable tracks
B Hed U by DJ Geki – 140 BPM – Easy (4); Medium (5); Hard (9)
House by Aaron Marks – 130 BPM – Easy (3); Medium (5); Hard (8)
Me N U by Kudos – 132 BPM – Easy (4); Medium (5); Hard (8)
BuffLog (Logarithmic Sine Remix) by DJ Geki – 201 BPM – Easy (5); Medium (7); Hard (8)
Dreams2 by Kudos – 130 BPM – Easy (2); Medium (5); Hard (6)
Ramp by Aaron Marks – 280 BPM – Easy (7); Medium (8); Hard (9)
It’s Those Damn Noodles (Latenite Mix) by DJ Geki – 170 BPM – Easy (7); Medium (8); Hard (9)
C. About the artists
DJ Geki is Roddy Toomim of Cryptic Allusion, and he serves as the “in-house” musician with nine playable tracks in Feet of Fury. According to an interview done with Dreamcast Scene, he produced approximately 20 tracks and loops used in the game, along with multiple sound effects. It adds that DJ Geki also served as the lead in sourcing the outside music included in the game. The unlockables section in Feet of Fury also features multiple unfinished tracks from DJ Geki as small bonus features. DJ Geki’s information included in the game featured Crypitc Allusion links that are no longer available online, but there is an archived DJ Geki YouTube channel still available on the platform.
Aaron Marks is a video game audio veteran who wrote the book “The Complete Guide to Game Audio.” He has created music and audio for numerous game projects and, at the time of Feet of Fury, was part of On Your Mark Music. On the last update I could find, Aaron Marks was operating Aaron Marks Audio at http://www.aaronmarksaudio.com. This website includes Feet of Fury in Aaron Marks’ credits section, as Aaron Marks produced “original slammin’ dance tracks for this very cool dance game with emphasis on player vs. player combat. Released in June 2003 for the Dreamcast – yes, the Dreamcast!”
Kudos is a duo out of the United Kingdom that was working on an album project at the time. Some of Kudos’ tracks in Feet of Fury were written specifically for the game. The game’s information states the cut of “Man in the Moon” featured in Feet of Fury is an edit of the 13-minute original track. The game featured an email contact for the duo, and a current web search returns a ton of music-related hits under the name Kudos, so I am currently unable to determine if Kudos has a current presence in music.
Chojin has an eclectic music style that included use of guitars, bass, drum machines, samplers and sampled voice clips. The Feet of Fury game information included two web addresses for Chojin, but neither is a valid web site today. Similar to Kudos, I am unable to find any sort of current web hits specifically on this artist.
VI. The Swap CD Feature
Feet of Fury does offer a Swap CD feature, but I have to admit I haven’t figured out this feature set. The intent of the mode is to allow players to burn a Swap CD disc and play custom songs and step charts. Being in the early 2000s, it appears the simulator Dance With Intensity was used to create these step files. StepMania has served as the dance game simulator of choice for many years since that time.
There are files still archived online, such as those found at DC Evolution. However, in the couple of attempts to get the feature to work, I was unsuccessful.
The developers admitted the feature was difficult to use, with Dan Potter at one time calling it an “ill fated” feature. It was anticipated at the time that more authoring tools would be made available for players to use.
“That just never happened and few people were willing to wade through all the technical difficulties to make a Swap CD. So it just never really took off,” Dan Potter said in a 2009 interview with me. You can read way more from this interview in GemuBaka’s general feature recognizing 20 years of Feet of Fury.
The online manual included in Feet of Fury indicates there may have been an intent for Cryptic Allusion to release its own physical Swap CDs, similar to how append discs were used at the time, but this also never materialized.
So, while I can’t be much of a help on this topic at all, what I can do is copy and paste in some information that was previously available from the Cryptic Allusion website that was live when the product released.
The following is information that was originally on Cryptic Allusion’s website in regard to Swap CDs:
Preface
Beyond a few minor changes, this section of the site hasn’t been updated for a little while. We are planning to release a full set of step editing and Swap CD compilation tools on the web site for free. At that time we’ll update this for the new tools. Until then, though, we’ll leave this old version of the guide up here.
In this document we may talk about an “alpha channel” in graphics. Images are composed of Red, Green, and Blue “channels”, each of which contribute towards the color of a pixel. When transparency is desired, a fourth channel is added, called “Alpha”, that determines how transparent that pixel is. We’ll use the terms “alpha channel” and “transparency” interchangably.
Also note that DWI here refers to the dance game simulator for PCs, Dance With Intensity.
Intro
So you’ve got this game, the built-in songs are cool, but you’re jonesing to try it out with your DWI songs. Have no fear, this guide will show you how to create a Swap CD!
But first off, I need to give you the bad news: FoF’s GAP values are not necessarily compatible with DWI’s gap values, probably due to differences in the way DWI and FoF are written. No source or coding info is available about DWI, so we can’t mimic its behavior. However, we’ve observed that newer versions of DWI (2.0 and above) seem to be considerably closer to FoF’s timings. Still, any step files you pull from DWI will probably have to have their GAP value adjusted by a little bit.
To solve this problem in the future, we’re actually planning to release a step editor that can show you the timing of your arrows with the music in a preview mode, and build the whole Swap CD image for you. This editor has been started (and in fact was used for over half the songs in the game), but isn’t of a quality for public consumption yet. So for the moment, if you are brave enough to try this, we recommend you work with CD-RWs (if your DC works with them), use multi-session CDs for multiple retries, or download adjusted step files from others.
A Sample Swap CD
Before you dive into the explanations below, it might be helpful if you grab the sample Swap CD image I put together. This includes two sets, each with one song from FoF itself. It’s about 2.5MB. As we have limited bandwidth, please only grab it if you are planning to try making a Swap CD.
ZIP Archive
The “sample” directory into which it unzips would be the root of the CD.
Anyway, without further ado…
The Basic Layout
Swap CDs in Feet of Fury are designed to simply replace whatever we have on the CD with what you have on your CD at runtime. Due to limitations of the hardware, our user interface was designed for a practical maximum of about 50 songs at once, but that’s really not very much if you’re going to blow a whole CD on it.
So Feet of Fury allows you to build a Swap CD with up to 12 “sets” of up to 50 songs each. These are selectable somewhat like DDR 4thMix’s genres: you can choose one set at Swap CD menu itself, and then you’re using that set until you exit back to the Swap CD menu and select a new set.
The root directory of a Swap CD consists of an arbitrary number of directories starting with an underscore (these are completely ignored and can be used for anything you want), one directory named “SwapCD”, and up to 12 normally named directories. As you have probably guessed, each normally named directory is a set.
The SwapCD directory contains a version file and a thumbnail for the full CD. This thumbnail will be shown rotating in the background of the Swap CD menu just like the FoF CD’s image is shown by default.
The “SwapCD” Directory
As of the current version of FoF, you’ll need two files in here.
The first is a file called “Version.1”. This file can be completely empty, but it needs to be there for future versions of FoF to recognize that this is a version 1 Swap CD. We may add more features later (such as a skinning ability) but they aren’t in place yet.
The second file is “thumb.png”. This is just a basic PNG graphic file that has a thumbnail for the background of the Swap CD menu. Preferably you’ll want to make the image contained in this file circular and use PNG’s transparency to chop off the edges (i.e., 32-bit RGBA). The texture in the background is scaled up (or down) to 256×256 no matter what size the thumb.png file is on the CD, but we’d recommend sticking with 128×128 or 256×256 for best results. In any event this file and all other graphics in the Swap CD must be a power of two in size (8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512) on both width and height! Additionally, all images should be in “true color” mode — 24-bit or 32-bit (for transparency).
This file is optional — if you don’t include one, there will simply be no image in the background of the Swap CD menu.
Set Directories
Also in the root of the CD are up to 12 “Set” directories. These will appear in the Swap CD menu in alphabetical order (assuming your CD image creation program puts them in that order).
Before I go any further, I should explain the concept of a “song ID”. This is basically a short, machine-readable string which represents the song. In the FoF built-in songs, we use strings like “djg_bhedu”. The only requirement is that your CD burning program can burn it to the CD in such a way that FoF recognizes it. (See the section below on CD burning instructions.) This concept of a song ID is important because you’ll use it in creating several parallel directory structures later.
Anyhow, the root of each set directory contains four files/directories depending on the method you use to make the Swap CD:
“info.txt” — this file contains a brief description of what is contained in this set. You should keep each line in this file under about 30 columns of text, and make sure to end each line with a newline (i.e., make sure the file doesn’t end at the end of the last line).
“thumb.png” — same exact thing as the thumb.png in the Swap CD directory. but this one is for the individual set on the Swap CD menu. This file should be 64×64. Transparency will be honored but is not required since each option in the Swap CD menu has a background built in. This file is optional — if you don’t include one, there will simply be no image for the selector for that set.
“songs” — this is a directory which contains all of the actual OGG files. Under “songs”, you’ll have one directory for each song ID, and under each of those directories, you’ll have two files: sample.ogg and song.ogg. The first is a ~10 second sample of the song which will be looped in the song menu as long as the user is hovering on it. The second is the actual song itself. Feet of Fury standard is to use a VBR 96kbps Ogg Vorbis encoded file, but you can probably get away with raising or lowering the bit-rate somewhat. Don’t go too high, though, or the game my have trouble keeping up with decoding it. Also make sure you are using a fairly recent Ogg Vorbis encoder version — we have had reports of earlier versions causing game failures.
“song_meta.pak” — this is a packed version of the directories containing your song graphics and step files. The structure of the contents will exactly parallel that of “songs” — a directory named after each song ID. Under each of those dirs, you will have two files: steps.dwi, and thumb.png. The step file is a standard format DWI file, with the exception of the weird GAP issue I mentioned at the top. The other is — you guessed it — a thumbnail texture. This is what will be shown in the song selection menu, and so it should be circular like the Swap CD thumbnail, and sized 128×128. If the thumbnail is not included, a stock image will be used.
You can include up to 50 songs (and thus you’ll have up to 50 song IDs) for each set. Note that due to an oversight in the Swap CD code, the release version cannot use a custom background image like the in-game songs.
I mentioned PAK files above. As you can guess, it’s going to take a while to load the steps.dwi and thumb.png for 50 songs straight from the CD. That’s why we use a PAK file. This is somewhat like a ZIP file, but without compression. (For those in the know, it’s an uncompressed Linux romfs filesystem.) It’s created using the “genromfs” utility. Let’s say you’re sitting in your set directory at a command shell. You’d issue a command something like this:
genromfs -f song_meta.pak -d song_meta -v
This will read the contents of the “song_meta” directory recursively and write the contents into a PAK file called “song_meta.pak”. You can then remove the song_meta directory or move it elsewhere before making the CD image if you like. You can also leave it there if you want, it will be ignored in the game during load time.
As I said above, we’ll eventually automate this whole process with a pretty GUI app, but this isn’t done yet. So if you want to make these things, you’ll have to go through a bit of pain. 🙂
Burning it
Now that you’ve got a Swap CD tree created, how do you get it to your DC? This is somewhat platform specific, but I’ll try to give a basic overview of the concepts.
You’ve got a number of options here, since this doesn’t need to be any sort of specially formatted CD like most DC “self-boot” games. It just needs to be a standard, single-session ISO image. Multi-session images will work fine as well; FoF will just use the last session.
The important thing is to make sure your filenames are compatible. With the final release version of the game (unlike the preview/beta), it is possible to simply turn on Joliet extensions. You may also use “Rock Ridge” extensions, or if you are sure you’re ok, plain ISO filenames.
Because it may take you a few tries to get the Swap CD right (especially with issues with the GAP value between FoF and DWI), you may also use multi-session CD burns. To do this, you basically just tell your CD burning program not to “fixate” the CD (this is also called “leaving the CD open” and other such terms). You can then come back later and add new sessions with changed data, new songs, etc. FoF will automatically use the last session on the CD.
Conclusion
I hope this guide has been helpful to get Swap CDs up and running for you. If you have any experiences (both good and bad) with this info, please drop me an email and let me know! I’m always happy to hear suggestions on how we could improve the directions.
Also, if you create Swap CDs with legally redistributable songs (either you are the copyright owner, or you have permission from the copyright owner) then please let me know and I can start a link section to Swap CD images! If you make legally redistributable step files and/or thumbnails for a Swap CD (i.e., you created them yourself from scratch, or the author of the original image gave you permission) then we can also link to them.
Also directly from an FAQ on Feet of Fury:
6. I’m trying to use a Swap CD and the game drops me back to the ROM menu unexpectedly while testing it.
This shouldn’t happen as much as with the preview/beta version, because in the release the texture loader failures will fall through and load a default texture. However, it’s here just in case…
Generally what this means in practical terms is that FoF can’t find a texture on the Swap CD that it needs to find in order to function properly with it, or your texture is unpalatable to the loaders. This could be caused by a variety of issues:
Bad color format (e.g., paletted)
Non power-of-2 size (e.g., 150×150)
…other things we don’t know about!
Basically while we can strictly control and thoroughly QA all the data that is included with Feet of Fury itself, we can’t guarantee that it will work with things that are introduced by others.
For our texture preparation, we use The Gimp in RGB color mode and save as a PNG (for most textures) or JPG (for song backgrounds). For textures which need transparency (like CD thumbnails), you’ll want to make sure the image has an alpha channel (RGBA, aka 32-bit) and for everything else it should not have one (RGB, aka 24-bit).
A similar problem may occur when you enter the song selection screen and half a second later, the game boots you. This is generally caused by using an old OggVorbis encoder. We recommend that you upgrade your encoder to one using the release version of liboggvorbis (many use a “release candidate” version), and encode with variable bitrate, 96Kbps nominal.
Several people have also reported issues when not using the “genromfs” method of making Swap CDs.
Also if you burned your CD without Joliet or Rock Ridge extensions then the game may not see the right filenames.
The bottom line here is that if you’re having a lot of troubles, you may want to just wait until we’ve got the nice tool set out that takes care of all this stuff for you. Once that’s ready, it’ll simply be a matter of dropping your pictures/steps/oggs in place and burning the results.
VII. General FAQ Information
This Feet of Fury for SEGA Dreamcast FAQ was created by DJ Tatsujin (@djtatsujin) expressly for GemuBaka (www.gemubaka.com).
Feet of Fury was developed by Cryptic Allusion and published by GOAT Store Publishing. The GOAT Store is still active today, and sells retro-based video games online at http://www.goatstore.com, and also organizes the annual Midwest Gaming Classic.
GemuBaka 
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