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StepMania

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File:Stepmania spin-the-disk.jpg
StepMania playing 'Spin The Disc' from Dancing Stage EuroMix 2 & DDR Max 2

StepMania is a free, open source simulator of the popular arcade and console game, Dance Dance Revolution.

Gameplay

You can use your keyboard to play StepMania. It is also possible to play using a PlayStation-compatible controller or dance mat, using a specialized adapter that connects to a computer's USB or PS/2 keyboard port.

The concept is simple: as arrows rise to the top of the screen and pass a certain point, press the corresponding arrow on the keyboard/controller/dancemat. You are scored based upon how close your arrow presses are to the right moment. Sometimes this is easier said than done and takes some practice. See Dance Dance Revolution for a more in-depth description.

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

Features

Owing to its open-source development, StepMania has a number of features, both based upon Dance Dance Revolution and designed by the programmers. Some of these include:

  • Dancing characters: 3-dimensional rendered models, drawn behind the arrows onscreen but in front of the background graphics. During normal gameplay, they dance according to a pre-defined routine; in older releases of StepMania they were portrayed standing on a dance mat in the style of Dance Dance Revolution Extreme, but this feature is no longer supported.
  • Background animations: Support for many types of animations behind the arrows onscreen, including sprite-based, full-motion video or FMV visualization overlays.
  • Step editor: Allows the user to create custom steps to existing songs.
  • Gameplay modifiers: Visual modifiers to either add or take away from difficulty. Many modifiers from Dance Dance Revolution are included, as well as modifiers original to StepMania.
  • Mines: a type of step new to StepMania, wherein the player is penalized for leaving the indicated sensor active.
  • Support for other rhythm game formats such as Pump It Up and EZ2Dancer. SM displays the symbols used for these games, but does not emulate their unique scoring system.
  • Lyrics support.

Availability

The popular Debian GNU/Linux distribution currently will not provide an official package for StepMania because the artwork in the default theme is very similar to the original Dance Dance Revolution game. Because the artwork is not available under a free license, the game cannot be officially packaged with Debian until a unique theme is created.

Other DDR simulators include Dance With Intensity and Flash Flash Revolution. A particularly novel DDR simulator called Text Text Revolution can be displayed on text-only terminals.

In The Groove is an arcade version of StepMania. To prevent unauthorized copying, StepMania was re-licensed under a less restrictive license, not requiring source code to be published on derivative works.

External links

(see also Dance Dance Revolution External links)

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