| StepMania | |
|---|---|
StepMania 5.0 preview 4 playing Rave mode. |
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| Version | 3.9 (stable), 5.0 preview 4 (under active development) |
| Platform(s) | Cross-platform |
| Release date(s) | 1 November 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Rhythm video game |
StepMania is an open source and cross-platform rhythm 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 wide variety of rhythm-based game types. Released under the MIT License, StepMania is free software.[1]
Video game series In the Groove and Pump It Up Pro, among others, 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.[2]
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StepMania 4.0, based on a 2006 CVS build of StepMania, better known as 3.95, was in the beta stage of development. [3] Shortly after the announcement of StepMania 4 beta, StepMania's CVS/SVN fork has been unofficially branded by the StepMania community as version 5.0[4]. A separate development team called the Spinal Shark Collective forked Stepmania 4 Alpha, calling it sm-ssc. sm-ssc added more features and made many bug fixes. In Mid-2011 sm-ssc merged into official branch of StepMania and thus, The alpha development stage of Stepmania 5 ended.[5] Development of Stepmania 4 beta also discontinued.
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 his or her keyboard or dance mat. The moving arrows meet the targets based on the beat of the song. Stepmania strongly utilizes a player's sense of rhythm in its game play. 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 "marvelous" timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings) and avoided all mines and completed all hold arrows. However, a patch is available that provides "ridiculous" timing (within a window of 0.01125 seconds, or half the timing of marvelous) and a top grade of AAAAA (quintuple A). An E indicates failure for a player to survive the length of the song without completely draining his/her life bar. Default scoring and grading for Stepmania is almost 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, and most popularly, 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 - but scoring however, remains identical to DDR-style play, although some have found a way to change the scoring method to a Pump it Up style.
StepMania runs on most common operating systems (Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/7, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X), and has also been used as the base engine in a variety of free software and proprietary products. It has also been ported to several platforms including the Xbox, iPod (running Linux) and cell phones.[7]
Several StepMania-based commercial games have been released due to its open nature:
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.[8] 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[9][10]), the entry may be disqualified.
The scoring is determined by the overall quality of the song, steps and graphics.[11]