StepMania

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Stepmania spin-the-disk.jpg StepMania is a free, open source rhythm game for Windows, Mac, and Linux created by Chris Danford. It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's popular arcade and console video game series, Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a wide variety of rhythm-based game types.

1 Gameplay
2 System requirements
3 Features
4 Availability
5 Similar PC rhythm games
6 See also
7 External links

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Gameplay

The primary gametype features the following gameplay: as arrows scroll upwards on the screen, they will meet with a stationary set of target arrows. When they meet the targets, the player should press the corresponding arrow on his keyboard or dance mat. The moving arrows will meet the targets based on the beat of the song, so the player's sense of rhythm plays a great role in the gameplay. The game is scored based upon how accurately the player can trigger the arrows in time to the beat of the song. His efforts are awarded by letter grades that tell him how well he's done; AAA is the highest award and D is just barely passing.

StepMania allows for several input options. You can use your keyboard to tap out the rhythms using the arrow keys, or you can use one of several specialized adapters that connect console peripherals like PS2 and Xbox controllers or dance mats to your computer.

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System requirements

These requirements are only the minimum needed to run the game, and having just the minimum does not necessarily result in smooth operation.

Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux, Mac OS X

Pentium II or higher, Celeron, Athlon, or compatible processor, 266MHz minimum (400 MHz recommended)

64 MB of memory

Video card that supports High Color (16-bit color) and has 16MB video RAM and OpenGL drivers.

DirectX 7.0 compatible sound card with drivers

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Features

Owing to its open-source development, StepMania has a number of features, both based upon various rhythm games and introduced in StepMania. Some of these include:

Custom Songs ("Stepfiles"): StepMania allows users to create their own custom dance patterns to their favorite songs. The program includes a comprehensive Step Editor to aid the creation of these stepfiles. Note that while stepfiles can be shared and copied, it is a violation of copyright law to use or distribute a stepfile package with copyrighted songs if one does not own their copyrights and/or have a license to use them.
Background Animations: Support for many types of animations behind the arrows onscreen, including sprite-based animation sequences, a single full-motion video or multiple FMV visualization overlays.
Modifiers: Visual mods that affect the scroll of arrows and either increase or decrease difficulty. StepMania includes multiple modifiers featured in Dance Dance Revolution as well as dozens of additional modifiers created exclusively for StepMania.
Mines: An object that scrolls onto the screen along with the arrows. The player must avoid triggering the mines on the screen or have his dance gauge penalised by having it reduced. This step type was developed for the StepMania-based arcade game In The Groove, and was ported into StepMania itself during development of that title.
Multiple Game Types, including partial simulation of other dance games like Pump It Up, ParaParaParadise and EZ2Dancer.
Real-Time Lyrics, which display on the lower half of the screen for stepfiles that include the .LRC filetype.
Custom Themes: users or create their own skins for Stepmania.
Dancing Characters: 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.

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Availability

StepMania has been used as the base engine in a variety of commercial and non-commercial products. It has also been ported to several platforms.

There is a version of StepMania available for modified Xbox consoles. This port is considered illegal in the United States because it was compiled using an unauthorized copy of the XDK.

There have been many arcade dance game cabinets retrofitted with a PC running StepMania.

A new type of multiplayer version of Stepmania is also being worked on by a company called Positive Gaming in Norway. At The Gathering 2005, they demonstrated a version that let 20 players play the game simultaneously. The primary application for this version is for fitness centers, but more applications are being considered.

In The Groove (ITG) is an arcade dance game developed by the core StepMania developers. To prevent unauthorized copying, StepMania was re-licensed under a less restrictive license (changed from GPL to the MIT License with the agreement of all coders, in exchange for their names appearing on the ITG credits screen), not requiring source code to be published on derivative works, and thus allowing ITG's copy protection to remain closed source.

DanceTrax is an arcade dance game based on StepMania currently in development by PulseNetwork and Paper 2 Production Inc..

Neon FM: Dance Radio is an arcade dance game based on StepMania developed by Pop'nKO Music & Entertainment, LLC.

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Similar PC rhythm games

Other rhythm games, typically considered DDR Simulators, include Dance With Intensity, pydance, and Flash Flash Revolution. A particularly novel DDR simulator called Text Text Revolution can be displayed on text-only terminals.

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