StepMania
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| StepMania | |
 StepMania using a custom graphical skin. |
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| OS: | Cross-platform |
|---|---|
| Use: | Rhythm video game |
| License: | MIT License |
| Website: | http://www.stepmania.com/ |
StepMania is a rhythm video game for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Linux created by Chris Danford. It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's popular arcade 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.
Released under the MIT License, StepMania is free and open source software.
Stepmania was included in a video game exhibition at New York's Museum of the Moving Image in 2005.[1]
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[edit] 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 or her keyboard or dance mat. The moving arrows will meet the targets based on the beat of the song. Stepmania strongly utilizes a player's sense of rhythm in its gameplay. The game is scored based upon how accurately the player can trigger the arrows in time to the beat of the song. The player's efforts are awarded by letter grades that tell him/her how well they have done. An award of AAAA (quadruple A) is the highest award and indicates that a player has triggered all arrows with "marvelous" timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings). An E indicates failure for a player to survive the length of the song without completely draining his/her lifebar. Scoring and grading for Stepmania is identical to scoring in Dance Dance Revolution, however, timing and scoring settings can easily be changed.
StepMania allows for several input options. Specialized adapters that connect console peripherals like PS2 and Xbox controllers or dance pads to one's computer can be used. Alternatively, the keyboard can be used to tap out the rhythms using the arrow keys. Players using the keyboard found on Stepmania Online servers are able to pass songs otherwise impossible to pass on the pad.[citation needed] This, in turn, makes Stepmania somewhat of a quasi-Beatmania simulator with the traditional Dance Dance Revolution style of gameplay.
There are four common techniques to playing Stepmania using a keyboard:[2]
- Index: Players press the arrow keys using their index fingers. This technique best emulates dancing on a pad. Players are reported to get superior timing using this technique.
- Spread: Players press keys with the index and middle fingers of both hands. Unlike index, the arm and wrist do not need to move, as one specific finger is assigned to one specific key. Players change the key configuration of Stepmania to have a more comfortable "spread pattern", to keys such as d-f-j-k, a-s-k-l, and q-w-o-p instead of the arrow keys. This is where spread gets its name, as the players hands are "spread" across the keys, rather than being all in one place on the arrow keys. The keys in spread patterns are usually congruent to the positions of arrow columns on the screen. Players are reported to get superior speed and ability to pass harder songs using this technique.
- One Hand: Playing one handed bears no technical advantage other than impressiveness unless doing duel mode. Tapping keys with one hand in rapid succession quickly wears out that hand.
- Four Finger: The four finger style is one of the most common. Players use the default arrow key setting, or they use the arrow keys on the num pad, and use their index and middle fingers, one per arrow. It is essentially the Spread technique with the "spread pattern" assigned to the arrow keys.
[edit] 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/Me/2000/XP/Vista, Linux, Mac OS X,.
- Pentium II or higher, PowerPC G3, 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 8MB video RAM and OpenGL or Direct3D drivers.
- On Windows, DirectX 7.0 compatible sound card with drivers
[edit] Features
- 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 in some localities to distribute a stepfile package with copyrighted songs if one does not own their copyrights and/or have a license to distribute them. These files can also be known as "Simfiles".
- 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.
- Rolls: A special freeze arrow (now colored green by default but originally colored purple) which requires a rapid tap on to keep alive. This step type was developed for the sequel to In The Groove - In the Groove 2, and was ported into StepMania 3.95 CVS builds.(Now Stepmania 4.00 CVS.)
- Lift: a special type of arrow (colored Gray by default) which requires the key (or panel) to be held down before the note passes and released when the note passes the target arrows. This is different from freeze arrows in that the timing of the press is not important, only when the note is released
- 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 can create their own skins for Stepmania.
- Dancing characters: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.
- Network play: support for lobby-based online play, dubbed StepMania Online. Typically, users connect through the StepMania Online centralized server.
[edit] Availability
StepMania has been used as the base engine in a variety of free software and proprietary products. It has also been ported to several platforms including Xbox.
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 proprietary/closed source.
[edit] References
- ^ Museum of the Moving Image article
- ^ Playing Styles. SMO Wiki (28 December 2006). Retrieved on December 29, 2006.
