Oct 19, 2014 🔴Peaceful Relaxing Music LIVE 24/7: Music for Deep Sleep. Music for Spa and Massage. Yoga Music Meditation Relax Music 1,201 watching Live now. Now, you should have two files. One that is 'Play Stepmania 3.9' and the other that is 'Open Stepmania Program Folder' Place these files somewhere convenient (such as your desktop) The first one is the place where you will have to install the song files. The second one runs the game. Most of the time, you wont even have to do anything with the first folder to get more songs. First of all: If you have downloaded Stepmania, you'll have a very big folder where all the data of the game is found. Inside this folder (presumably called 'Stepmania 5') there are many sub-folders. You have to head straight up into the 'songs' folder and click twice. What you will see are many sub-folders, each one representing a song.
A screenshot of StepMania 5.0.5 gameplay. | |
| Original author(s) | Chris Danford |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Chris Danford, Glenn Maynard etc. |
| Initial release | 2001 |
| Stable release | |
| Preview release | 5.1 beta 2[2] / July 23, 2018; 13 months ago |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++, Assembly, Lua |
| Operating system | Windows XP and later, Linux, Mac OS X 10.6 and later |
| Type | Rhythm video game |
| License | Expat |
| Website | www.stepmania.com |
StepMania is a cross-platformrhythm video game and engine. It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a variety of rhythm-based game types. Released under the MIT License, StepMania is open-sourcefree software.[3]
Several video game series, including In the Groove and Pump It Up Pro use StepMania as their game engine. StepMania was included in a video game exhibition at New York's Museum of the Moving Image in 2005.[4][5]
- 4Availability
Development[edit]
StepMania was originally developed as an open source clone of Konami's arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). During the first three major versions, the Interface was based heavily on DDR's. New versions were released relatively quickly at first, culminating in version 3.9 in 2005. In 2010, after almost 5 years of work without a stable release, StepMania creator Chris Danford forked a 2006 build of StepMania,[6] paused development on the bleeding edge branch, and labeled the new branch StepMania 4 beta. A separate development team called the Spinal Shark Collective forked the bleeding edge branch and continued work on it, branding it sm-ssc. On 30 May 2011, sm-ssc gained official status and was renamed StepMania 5.0. The version 4.0 tree was later abandoned. A Patreon-exclusive beta build of 5.3 will be available in September 2019, and the public build of 5.3 will be available in 2019.
Gameplay[edit]
The primary game type features the following game play: as arrows scroll upwards on the screen, they meet a normally stationary set of target arrows. When they do, the player presses the corresponding arrows on their keyboard or dance mat. The moving arrows meet the targets based on the beat of the song. 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 and a number score that tell him/her how well they have done. An award of AAAA (quadruple A) is the highest possible award available on a standard installation and indicates that a player has triggered all arrows with 'Flawless' timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings) and avoided all mines and completed all hold (freeze) arrows. An E indicates failure for a player to survive the length of the song without completely draining their life bar. Default scoring and grading for StepMania is similar to scoring in Dance Dance Revolution; however, timing and scoring settings can easily be changed.
An as-of-yet unofficial patch adds 'Max Flawless' timing (also known as 'Ridiculous', 'Critical Flawless' or 'Blue Fantastic', within 0.01125 seconds under default settings), and an award of AAAAA (quintuple A) will be given for all Max Flawless. This timing will be made official in 5.3 under the name 'Wicked'. [7] It is also planned that there will be an option to turn on 4 more timing levels (each level is half of the previous level) stricter than this 'Max Flawless' timing, making the 'strictest' timing window to be only 0.000703125 seconds under default settings. [8]
How To Install Stepmania Song Packs
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 arrow or other keys. Many song charts designed for keyboard are unable to be passed using a pad. In addition, the game possesses the capability to emulate other music games, such as Beatmania itself, o2Jam and DJMAX's 7-key arrangement, Pump It Up and Techno Motion - scoring however, remains identical to DDR-style play by default.
Features[edit]
- Custom Songs ('Stepfiles') also known as 'Simfiles': StepMania allows users to create their own custom dance patterns to any song in .ogg or .mp3 format. The program includes a comprehensive Step editor to aid the creation of these stepfiles. Many Simfile websites exist where users share and distributed Simfiles for songs. Additionally, official DDR and In The Groove songs with their original steps are commonly available for StepMania.
- 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 but are disabled if the song contains exclusive video.
- 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.
- Multiple arrow types:
- Mines ('Shock' arrows in DDR X): An object that scrolls onto the screen along with the arrows. If a player triggers the mines, they will be penalized by having their dance gauge reduced. However, the mines in StepMania are different from the Shock Arrows in DDR X in that the latter also turns the notes invisible for a brief period of time and breaks the current combo chain that the player had going. This step type was developed for the StepMania-based arcade gameIn The Groove, and was ported into StepMania itself during development of that title. There are several variations of these objects that effect scoring in different ways.
- Holds (also called Freeze Arrows): A long arrow that requires you to keep your feet or finger on the corresponding panel for its duration.
- Rolls: A special hold arrow 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.
- 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 rhythm games like Pump It Up, ParaParaParadise and beatmania IIDX.
- Real-time lyrics, which display on the opposite side of the screen for stepfiles that have accompanying lyric data.
- Custom themes: users can create their own skins for Stepmania. StepMania themes can vary from simple replacement of images to drastic changes that can be implemented by scripting its Lua backend.
- Dancing characters: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.
- Infinite BPMs: an official implementation in StepMania 4 of a bug in the 3.9 series that could be exploited to create 'warps' in stepcharts using negative speeds.
- Network play: support for lobby-based online play, dubbed StepMania Online. Typically, users connect through the StepMania Online[9] centralized server. Support for network play was added to the StepMania tree in 2005 and is available in all later builds. All players must have a copy of the song chosen by the host in order to play.
Availability[edit]
Some versions of StepMania will run on most common operating systems (Microsoft Windows98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7/8, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X), as well as the Xbox console. It has also been used as the base engine in a variety of free software and proprietary products for various platforms.
Use in products[edit]
Several StepMania-based commercial games have been released due to its open nature:
- In The Groove (ITG) is an arcade dance game series developed by the core StepMania developers, and is based on 3.9 and a CVS build of StepMania often known as version 3.95. To prevent unauthorized copying, StepMania was re-licensed under a more permissive 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 control to remain proprietary and closed source.
- Pump it Up Pro is a spinoff of the Pump it Up series headed by former ITG developers and musicians. The game utilizes a build of StepMania 4 for its engine, which also led to improved Pump support in StepMania itself.
- Pump it Up Infinity is another spinoff of the Pump it Up series aimed primarily at North American audiences. Unlike the Pro series, however, it is managed directly by Andamiro. The game is based on StepMania 5.
StepMix[edit]
StepMania developers conducted StepMix contest for step builders to create stepcharts/stepfiles that can be played using StepMania. StepMix 1, 2, 3, and 4 were run successfully. Participants need to have a song to be used in the stepchart/stepfile. The song must be under a compatible license for distribution or be authorized for use in StepMix 4, or the entry is automatically disqualified.[10] Additionally, if the graphics used in the entry are found to have been copied from another artist and used without their authorization (as happened once in StepMix 2[11][12]), the entry may be disqualified.
How To Install Stepmania
The scoring is determined by the overall quality of the song, steps and graphics.[13]
Reception[edit]
StepMania became a quite popular free software game; the game was downloaded alone over Sourceforge between 2001 and May 2017 over 6.3 million times.[14]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'StepMania 5.0.12 released'. StepMania. holo. 30 Aug 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
- ^'StepMania 5.1 Beta 2 released'. StepMania.com. 23 Jul 2018. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
- ^'Rock Bands, Guitar Heroes, Recriminations and Comedy Litigation'. Sprong. 2007-04-04. Retrieved 2008-11-02.
- ^Museum of the Moving Image article
- ^'Museum of the Moving Image'. 2005-10-24. Archived from the original on 2005-10-24. Retrieved 2017-05-11.Cite uses deprecated parameter
|deadurl=(help); Cite web requires|website=(help)CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link) - ^Danford, Chris. 'StepMania project reboot: opinions wanted'. StepMania.com. Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 15 August 2010.Cite uses deprecated parameter
|deadurl=(help) - ^https://projectmoon.dance/index.php?id=12
- ^https://projectmoon.dance/index.php?id=12
- ^Stepmania Online Official Website
- ^StepMix 4 Contest Entry requirementsArchived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^My art is in a song...but I dont know who took it! - StepMania ForumsArchived 2007-10-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ^StepMania Forums - View Single Post - 20070310|Dokodemo KawaiiArchived 2008-12-16 at the Wayback Machine
- ^StepMix 4 Contest JudgingArchived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^stats 2000-05-12+to+2017-05-18 on sourceforge.net