The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => Hobbies and Recreation => Gamers Zone => Topic started by: action9000 on June 06, 2007, 05:59:09 PM
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Hey all!
I wanted to bring this rather amusing game to everyone's attention. If you have ever seen the game Dance Dance Revolution before, this game should look Very familiar! :p The title of the game is Stepmania (http://www.stepmania.com/). It has been an ongoing project for many years (I downloaded it back when it was 3.0. 3.9 final is out now and 4.0 is available in beta form).
Their site has a link to the game program, which is only 15 MB or so. Songs can then be downloaded for the game by checking around the forums or asking me (ask nicely and I'll share :p). The official DDR songs and steps (exactly the same as the arcade and console game series) were available last time I checked and thousands of custom songs and steps are freely available around the community through sites like http://www.bemanistyle.com (http://www.bemanistyle.com)
The controls for the game are whatever you want them to be: The arrow keys are the most obvious choice. If you really want to get into it, you can buy actual floor-standing dance pad controllers such as These moderately cheap ones (http://www.redoctane.com/ignitionpadv3.html) or these high-end ones which will basically survive an earthquake (http://www.cobaltflux.com/site/products_cobalt.htm). Even with the keyboard though, the game is free and can provide large amounts of amusement. Iv'e become quite addicted to Stepmania for years. :P:
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I'm trying this one! :D My sisters are experts on the DDR scens....200 combo things.
Oh yeah, they're dancers for real, competitions and all that so... :p
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Heh heh heh. :lol
Hey Petrie, did you get those latest songs running yet, that I sent you? What do ya think of my song collection? I know it's a little on the random side. :p
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Advice Column:
Play Controls tutorial:
Don't think there is only one "best" way to set up the controls and your hands. Here are a few techniques I've heard of in the past:
One handed, using 3 fingers on the arrow keys (Left, Up/Down, Right)
One handed, using 4 fingers on the arrow keys (one on each arrow)
One handed on the number pad.
Two-handed on the arrow keys. One index finger on each hand (representing the left and right legs)
Two-handed on the number pad. One index finger on each hand
Two handed on the arrow keys. Two fingers from each hand, one finger per arrow.
Two-handed on the number pad. Two fingers on each hand, one finger per arrow.
Two handed spread across the keyboard, assigning LEFT to A, DOWN to S, UP to K, and RIGHT to L. Left middle finger on A, Left index finger on S, right index finger on K, right middle finger on L.
One-handed in the middle of the keyboard (F,G,H,J).
Two-handed in the middle of the keyboard (F,G,H,J).
There are probably others which I haven't heard of but I have seen All of these techniques for playing Stepmania on keyboard. My personal preference is:
Two hands on the arrow keys. One index finger per hand, occasionally using a 2nd finger from one of the hands to reach a certain arrow easier.
Don't limit yourself to a single technique; try a few and get one that works for you.
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Tim I found something else. I went and installed this on an older machine to see if it could handle it, and I found that using a parallel port keyboard was a heck of a lot more accurate than any laptop keyboard. My c's and d's went to a's and b's. :D Looks like if I want to keep using this with my laptop I'll have to get one of those usb number pads.
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Well awesome! :D :wow
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I knew I wasn't that bad. :lol:
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I have a bit more of an advanced tip for you too, which may help your grades:
Fine-tuning the synch of the arrows to the music
F11 and F12 keys control the "Offset" of the arrows to the music.
Pressing F11 "Pushes" the arrows back by 20 ms
Pressing F12 "Pulls" the arrows Forward by 20 ms.
If you hold ALT while pressing F11 or F12, you can adjust in 1ms increments.
These techniques can be used while playing a song. When the song is over (or failed) you can save the new timings. I tend to do this with any new song before I play it for real. This is because synching is based on the hardware of the computer (CPU, sound card, video card, keyboard latency, etc. etc. etc). Not every song will be properly offset for every computer. By default, the "Perfect" window timing is 45 ms (Edit the Stepmania.ini file to change the timings as desired). A descrepancy between when you hit the key and when your computer thinks you hit the key can cost you points. A descrepancy between where the computer generates the music and when you hear the music can cost you points, if you haven't tweaked the timing for your computer. Tweak the timing until your keypresses are RIGHT on the beat and you are getting PERFECTs consistantly. Feel free to turn on "Marvelous" timing to make your synchronizing even tighter.
Be careful NOT to save your new timings if you break something! it will be an interesting challenge to get the timings back to being playable if you're not used to synching songs.
Play with it and see if you can improve your grades on the laptop too! B)
By the way, the arcade machines use a Perfect timing of only 33.3 ms (at least they did a couple of years ago now; this may have changed, I don't know). If you want your Stepmania to be arcade-tough, edit the data/stepmania.ini file and change
JudgeWindowSecondsPerfect=0.0333
By default I think it's
JudgeWindowSecondsPerfect=0.045000
I set my game's to
JudgeWindowSecondsPerfect=0.036500
(36.5 ms)
It's tougher than Stepmania's default but it's not too tough. I'm used to having a lot of people of different skill levels playing my Stepmania game, from back when I had the floor dance pads, and I just never changed the timings since.
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I had a little free time before work last night, so I made a few videos of myself playing Stepmania. :lol
(You may have to right click and say "save target as...")
Pokemon: 2.B.A. Master - Double Trouble (8.5 Difficulty) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Double%20Trouble.mpg) (Challenge steps: These are part of an update which I havent' sent you, Adam. Let me know if you want them)
Sonata Arctica - Revontulet (10 difficulty) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Revontulet.mpg)
The Legend of Max (10 difficulty) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Legend%20of%20Max.mpg)
Cross Time (approx. 12 difficulty) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Cross%20Time.mpg). This song gets out of synch at the end so my score starts to fall really fast :p
Gaussian Blur (insanely hard! (maybe 14) Download this if you're tired of me showing off :p) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Gaussian%20Blur%20(Ouch!).mpg)
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Wow. I'm getting 22kbps. It's gonna take 15 minutes! I hope it's good!
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Wow. I'm getting 22kbps.
My server, my bandwidth, my transfer rate :p :lol
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I want to see how you do with Double Trouble. :D
Actually, you need to show me how you do to that Remember the Magic music clip I sent you.
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you need to show me how you do to that Remember the Magic music clip I sent you.
I'll make one for that song right away! B)
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Here we are, just for Petrie :P: (anyone, feel free to download this, of course LOL)
Disney - Remember the Magic (Difficulty 7) (http://action9000.homeip.net/Backup/Shared/DDR/Videos/Stepmania%20-%20Action9000%20-%20Remember%20the%20Magic.mpg)
It can be done. B)
(oh heh, ignore the dog barking in the background :p My neighbour's dog loves to yap aall day LOL)
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I officially cannot say what I said on this board when I watched those videos. :lol :lol You obviously have way too much time on your hands to nail a 460 step combo. :DD
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Well, it looks like this was fun for you, but it isn't my cup of tea. :p
Why were your video's so blurry?
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Why were your video's so blurry?
I took the videos with a digital camera in "movie mode". My camera doesn't take the best videos; it's the best I could do.
I officially cannot say what I said on this board when I watched those videos. You obviously have way too much time on your hands to nail a 460 step combo.
HAD: way too much time on my hands. I basically lived off this game in high school :lol . I don't play near as much now but it's like riding a bike; you don't forget how to mash arrow keys :lol: B)
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My camera doesn't take the best videos; it's the best I could do.
LOL. I suppose that would explain it. I have a camcorder, but I'm too lazy to get it out. My 20 megapixil camera takes better videos anyway. The videos I have posted have been made by my camera too. :)
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I officially cannot say what I said on this board when I watched those videos. You obviously have way too much time on your hands to nail a 460 step combo.
You haven't seen my 10,000 combo on Extravadance Megamix LOL! :D :p
I'm not a nerd, really! :lol: :lol
Actually, while I'm "good" I'm not "really good" by any means. I've seen videos of player who can get perfect scores (AAA) on songs that I can barely pass, or maybe even fail. I know Gaussian Blur (the song I died on above) has been AAA'd more than once.
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You're still really good compared to me. :p
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Tim, I've got to wonder if I'm hitting a brick wall with my equipment. On all the songs I've sent you to make dances of, I cannot score higher than an A on all of them. I've nailed 150 combos on The Typewriter and it doesn't matter a bit...there must be always something that misses at just one point each time to make that much of a difference, and this is the "light" level. :o
Maybe I have slow fingers or something. Maybe I'm the brick wall. :lol:
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Tim, I've got to wonder if I'm hitting a brick wall with my equipment. On all the songs I've sent you to make dances of, I cannot score higher than an A on all of them. I've nailed 150 combos on The Typewriter and it doesn't matter a bit
What sort of grade is usually breaking your combo? As you may know, you will lose a combo with a "miss", "boo", or "good" step. Combos only continue with "Perfect" or "great".
When you lose that 150 combo, is it usually a "good", a "boo", or a "miss" that causes you to lose it? "The Typewriter" is one of those songs that absolutely dreadfully difficult to synchronize the music to the steps. I'm pretty dang sure the song never goes out of synch enough to cause a "good" or worse rating, but if your offset isn't set properly, it might.
Press F11 and F12 to adjust the offset while you're playing. Play with it until you're really happy with the offset of the arrows to the music. Ideally, the arrow should be in the center of its "Perfect Point" zone right on the beat. If this isn't the case (you'll have to feel for it to see if it's right), use the following controls while the song is playing to adjust it:
F11: Move the arrows back 20milliseconds
ALT-F11: Move the arrow back 1ms
F12: Move the arrows forward (later) 20ms
ALT-F12: Move the arrows forward 1ms
I'd be surprised if your equipment is causing you to have poorer scores. This game is fully playable on basically any keyboard as far as I know(my laptop keyboard works fine too). If the arrows seem to be jerky or laggy, you may need to lower the graphics settings (lower resolution, lower texture detail, etc). The higher you can get the framerate, the easier this game is.
It sounds to me like either my song is out of synch on your computer (which is very possible. I synched the song for my computer, not everyone's computer), or your computer is jerking or lagging around causing you to mess up at certain points.
Maybe I have slow fingers or something. Maybe I'm the brick wall.
If you're consistant messing up the same part, maybe you need to re-read it more carefully and make sure you're playing the right rhythm. I think you mentioned to me before that you use the speed modifiers to space out the arrows a bit more, as I do; they're always useful.
I don't know what else to say without more information, except maybe play songs until you can AA them. An AA means you have 93% or higher of the maximum possible score; if you score an AA, it means that you are keeping your Perfect count up and your Great/good/boo/miss count down. If you can get your perfect/great ratio really good on easier songs, it will help you get the feel for getting better scores on harder songs.