StepMania

StepMania
	Advanced rhythm game
	A screenshot of StepMania 5.0.5 gameplay.
Original author(s)	Chris Danford
Initial release	2001
Stable release	5.0.12 / August 30, 2016;7 years ago
Preview release	5.1 beta 2 / July 24, 2018;5 years ago
Repository	github.com/stepmania/stepmania ;
Written in	C++, Assembly, Lua
Operating system	Windows XP or later, Linux, Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Type	Rhythm video game
License	MIT
Website	www.stepmania.com

Last updated October 13, 2023

StepMania is a cross-platform rhythm video game and engine. It was originally developed as a clone 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-source free software.^[3]

Development

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. Development on the upcoming version, 5.1, has gone cold over the past few years after a couple of betas were released over at GitHub.^[7] Project OutFox (formerly known as StepMania 5.3, initially labeled as FoxMania) is a currently closed-source fork of the 5.0 and 5.1 codebase originally planned to reintegrate in StepMania, however further in development, it was decided to become an independent project due to its larger scope of goals while still sharing codebase improvements to future versions of StepMania.^[8] These improvements include modernizing the original codebase to improve performance and graphical fidelity, refurbishing aspects of the engine that have been neglected, and to improve and expand its support for other game types and styles.

Gameplay

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 given a letter grade and a number score that tell how well they have done. An award of AAA+ (triple A plus, formerly AAAA or 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 gauge. Default scoring and grading for StepMania is similar to scoring in Dance Dance Revolution; however, timing and scoring settings can easily be changed.

During a song, if the player successfully triggers all arrows with "great" or better timing, the player will receive the message "Full combo" alongside their grade. Players can also achieve "Full perfect combo" for completing a song with all arrows triggered with perfect timing or better, and a "Full flawless combo" if all arrows are triggered with "flawless" timing.

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 TechnoMotion - scoring however, remains similar to old DDR-style play by default (i.e. more weight is given for later notes).

Features

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, including custom SPEED options.
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 and, customizing a theme, breaks the current combo chain that the player had going. 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 game In 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. 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

StepMania-based arcade machine in a Chinese amusement park Stepmania-arcade.jpg — StepMania-based arcade machine in a Chinese amusement park

Some versions of StepMania will run on most common operating systems (Microsoft Windows 98/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

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.
StepManiaX is a spiritual successor to In The Groove, with the addition of the Center panel and other features.

StepMix

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.

The scoring is determined by the overall quality of the song, steps and graphics.^[13]

Reception

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]

Related Research Articles

Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance genre in video games. Players stand on a "dance platform" or stage and hit colored arrows laid out in a cross with their feet to musical and visual cues. Players are judged by how well they time their dance to the patterns presented to them and are allowed to choose more music to play to if they receive a passing score.

Pump It Up is a music video game series developed and published by Andamiro, a Korean arcade game producer. The game is similar to Dance Dance Revolution, except that it has five arrow panels as opposed to four, and is typically played on a dance pad with five arrow panels: the top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right, and a center. Additional gameplay modes may utilize two five-panel pads side by side. These panels are pressed using the player's feet, in response to arrows that appear on the screen in front of the player. The arrows are synchronized to the general rhythm or beat of a chosen song, and success is dependent on the player's ability to time and position their steps accordingly.

A dance pad, also known as a dance mat or dance platform, is a flat electronic game controller used for input in dance games. Most dance pads are divided into a 3×3 matrix of square panels for the player to stand on, with some or all of the panels corresponding to directions or actions within the game. Some dance pads also have extra buttons outside the main stepping area, such as "Start" and "Select". Pairs of dance pads often are joined, side by side, for certain gameplay modes.

<i>In the Groove</i> (video game) 2004 video game

In the Groove is a rhythm game developed & published by Roxor Games, and is the first game in the In the Groove series. The game was shown in an official beta-testing preview on July 9, 2004, and was officially released in arcades around August 30, 2004. A PlayStation 2 port of In the Groove was released on June 17, 2005, by RedOctane.

DDRMAX Dance Dance Revolution 6thMix is the 6th game in the Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released in the arcades by Konami on October 19, 2001, and for the PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, in Japan. 6thMix contains a total of 42 songs, all which made their first arcade appearance on this release. 11 of these songs debuted in various console releases prior to 6thMix. All arcade songs from Dance Dance Revolution to Dance Dance Revolution 5thMix were removed in 6thMix, although many of the Konami originals from those games would later be revived in future arcade releases.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix</i> 2000 video game

Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix is the fourth game in the main Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. It was released as an arcade game by Konami on August 24, 2000 in Japan. 4thMix features 136 songs, of which 37 are new songs available and 12 are new unlockables that require an operator code. Dance Dance Revolution 4thMix Plus is an update that unlocks these 12 songs without an operator code, while also adding 14 new songs of its own, for a total of 150 songs.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution</i> (1998 video game) 1998 video game

Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is a music video game, developed by Konami, released in arcades on September 26, 1998, in Japan. Dance Dance Revolution is a unique game involving dance and rhythm that defined the genre. It involves timing and balance by having players use their feet instead of their hands like typical video games. In March 1999, the game was released for North American arcades, and for European arcades under the name Dancing Stage. Players and game critics were caught off-guard by the game's addictive qualities winning the new franchise many merits to its design.

This is a comparison of dancing video game series in which players must step on panels on a dance pad in time with music. Step placement and timing is indicated by rising arrows overlapping fixed targets.

In the Groove 2 is the sequel to Roxor Games' 2004 arcade game In the Groove. It was released to arcades officially on June 18, 2005. It was available as an upgrade kit and as a dedicated cabinet developed by Andamiro. The price for a dedicated cabinet was $9,999 USD and the upgrade kit was US$2,999.

Dance Dance Revolution ULTRAMIX 3 is a music video game developed by Konami and the tenth entry of Dance Dance Revolution released in the United States. It was released on November 15, 2005 for the Xbox. About 70 songs are available in total in this version. The game was announced in a press release by Konami on May 17, 2005, and unveiled at the E³ expo in Los Angeles that same day.

e-Amusement The card to playing Konami’s arcade game

e-Amusement, stylized as e-amusement, is an online service operated by Konami, used primarily for online functionality on its arcade video games. The system is used primarily to save progress and unlockable content between games, participate in internet high score lists, access other exclusive features depending on the game, and access the Paseli digital currency service.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova</i> 2006 video game

Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova, released in Europe as Dancing Stage SuperNova, is an arcade and PlayStation 2 game in the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) series of music video games. It was produced by Konami and released through Betson Enterprises. The game was released in Europe on April 28, 2006, followed shortly by a North American release on May 15 and a Japanese release on July 12.

Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party, known as Dancing Stage Hottest Party in the European and Oceanic regions, is a video game released by Konami in 2007 and 2008 to several countries for the Wii console. Konami took the game beyond the traditional setup of Dance Dance Revolution by incorporating the Wii Remote and the standard dance pad into a full body motion game. It has two sequels, Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2 and Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution Extreme</i> 2002 video game

Dance Dance Revolution Extreme is a music video game by Konami and is the eighth release in the main Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) series. It was released on December 25, 2002, for Japanese arcades, on October 9, 2003, for the Japanese PlayStation 2, and on September 21, 2004, for the North American PlayStation 2. This game is the ninth release in North America, but despite having the same name as its Japanese counterpart, its gameplay and soundtrack is significantly different and won the Video Music Awards in 2005 on MTV for Best Video Game Soundtrack.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution X</i> 2008 video game

Dance Dance Revolution X is a music video game developed by Konami. A part of the Dance Dance Revolution series, it was announced in 2008 for Japan and on May 15, 2008, for the North American PlayStation 2. The arcade version was announced on July 7, 2008, July 9, 2008 in Europe, and July 10, 2008, for North America. Released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dance Dance Revolution, DDR X sports an improved interface, new music, and new modes of play. The arcade release featured an overhauled cabinet design with a widescreen display, e-Amusement and USB access, and an improved sound system. Despite such new design of its arcade cabinet, upgrade kit to change the edition of DDR on its first generation arcade cabinet from SuperNOVA2 to X is also available. The PlayStation 2 release has link ability with the arcade machine, multi-player support over LAN, and other improved and returning features such as EyeToy support. DDR X was called a "truly global version", with a multi-regional release by all three major Konami houses.

<i>Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3</i> 2009 video game

Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 3, released in Japan as Dance Dance Revolution: Music Fit, is a rhythm-based dancing game for the Wii. It is a video game released by Konami in 2009. The game can be played using a dance pad, the classic controller, or the Wii Remote and Nunchuck combination. It has two games preceding it: Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party and Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party 2.

Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is a music video game, the 14th installment of the Dance Dance Revolution series, and the sequel to Dance Dance Revolution X3 vs. 2ndMix. The game was revealed by Konami on October 24, 2012. Public beta testing commenced on October 26, 2012. It was released in Japan on March 14 and 21, 2013 for dedicated cabinets and upgrade kits, respectively, and in Asia on March 21, 2013. A limited test release occurred at select locations in the United States, beginning on August 4, 2015.

The music of In the Groove includes 136 songs for arcade and home releases. A few additional songs were confirmed to be present in the now-cancelled In the Groove 3. Some artists are common to Dance Dance Revolution. In fact, a few song revivals can be found in In the Groove, but with different stepcharts.

StepManiaX is a rhythm game developed and published by Step Revolution, a studio formed by former developers of In the Groove, ReRave, and Pump It Up Pro. It is considered a spiritual successor to the In the Groove series. The name is a nod to the legacy of the open-source simulator StepMania, as many of the original StepMania developers were involved with the project. StepManiaX is derived from the same codebase, with modifications made to support the new game types, lights, touch support, connectivity, and the custom Android operating system and hardware that dedicated units run on.

References

↑ "StepMania 5.0.12 released". StepMania. holo. 30 Aug 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
↑ "Release StepMania 5.1 beta 2 · stepmania/Stepmania". GitHub .
↑ "Rock Bands, Guitar Heroes, Recriminations and Comedy Litigation". Sprong. 2007-04-04. Retrieved 2008-11-02.
↑ "Museum of the Moving Image article". Archived from the original on 2007-01-02. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
↑ "Museum of the Moving Image". 2005-10-24. Archived from the original on 2005-10-24. Retrieved 2017-05-11.{{cite web}}: 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.
↑ "Releases · stepmania/Stepmania". GitHub .
↑ "New community policies".
↑ StepMania Online official website
↑ StepMix 4 Contest Entry requirements Archived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
↑ My art is in a song...but I dont know who took it! - StepMania Forums Archived 2007-10-13 at the Wayback Machine
↑ StepMania Forums - View Single Post - 20070310|Dokodemo Kawaii Archived 2008-12-16 at the Wayback Machine
↑ StepMix 4 Contest Judging Archived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine
↑ stats 2000-05-12+to+2017-05-18 on sourceforge.net

External links

Official website

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[stepmania5012-1] "StepMania 5.0.12 released". StepMania. holo. 30 Aug 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2016.

[2] "Release StepMania 5.1 beta 2 · stepmania/Stepmania". GitHub .

[3] "Rock Bands, Guitar Heroes, Recriminations and Comedy Litigation". Sprong. 2007-04-04. Retrieved 2008-11-02.

[4] "Museum of the Moving Image article". Archived from the original on 2007-01-02. Retrieved 2006-12-26.

[5] "Museum of the Moving Image". 2005-10-24. Archived from the original on 2005-10-24. Retrieved 2017-05-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)

[Danford08-10-6] Danford, Chris. "StepMania project reboot: opinions wanted". StepMania.com. Archived from the original on 22 February 2011. Retrieved 15 August 2010.

[7] "Releases · stepmania/Stepmania". GitHub .

[8] "New community policies".

[9] StepMania Online official website

[10] StepMix 4 Contest Entry requirements Archived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine

[11] My art is in a song...but I dont know who took it! - StepMania Forums Archived 2007-10-13 at the Wayback Machine

[12] StepMania Forums - View Single Post - 20070310|Dokodemo Kawaii Archived 2008-12-16 at the Wayback Machine

[13] StepMix 4 Contest Judging Archived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine

[14] stats 2000-05-12+to+2017-05-18 on sourceforge.net

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