OK, new to stepmania, I have some questions.

Fox643

So, I'm under the impression that Stepmania is basically DDR on your computer yes? Here are my questions:

1. If I have a metal pad at home, is there a way I can hook it up to my computer? Where woudl I find an addaptor?

2. Where do I get the program to put DDR type games on my computer? is it free?

3. Does it have DDR songs, or are they totally different?

Thanks

DJzen · Trick Member Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Location: near Philly

What is Stepmania? Stepmania is a dancing game simulator. It currently supports DDR, Pump It Up, EZ 2 Dancer and Para Para Paradise. No support for Techno Motion or Dance ManiaX yet, but it may have 3DDX support, I can't remember. It uses files that use the extension .dwi or .sm to work with an mp3, wav or ogg to create a "stage". So basically, yes, it's DDR on your computer, but there's more to it than just that.

1) I hear lik-sang has some that were designed with such thing in mind. However, if you want to use a PIU pad, they're natively supported by Stepmania. Look for a PSX->USB adapter. As if this weren't enough, look in the documentation that came with Stepmania, it lists some options.

2) You already have it, it's called Stepmania. It's very free.

3) It doesn't come with any songs. Why? A little thing we call "copyright laws". If they gave out songs for free the website would be shut down pronto. Also, they don't give out stepfiles either. These are considered the intellectual property of Konami.... I think. However, they have a VERY handy link section where you can find pretty much anything you want.
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DJX · Trick Member Joined: 30 Jun 2003 Location: CA

Well DJzen did a good job of explaining most of what you need to know, but it also helps to know about the song files. The official DDR songs are actually somewhat difficult to find in a nice, large bundle amymore...the only place I know of that currently has almost every official song is www.ddrstylin.com, (the site is in Italian but still fairly easy to find the downloads

) but still I've heard that some of their files are out of sync (the steps and the music don't match time-wise). If you want official DDR songs, go to www.ddruk.com and find the information on their IRC channel...that's the place to go.

The other important thing to know is that a lot people design their own step files (generally always referred to as DWIs) for songs not seen in DDR. These are easier to find, and you can pretty much just search google for them.

Finally, the place to find a specific DWI file is here:
http://www.ddrfreak.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=56255

Peace

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Fox643 · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2003 4:36 pm Post subject:

So with stepmania, I can use .dwi files? Or do I use .crs files?

DJX · Trick Member Joined: 30 Jun 2003 Location: CA

.dwi files work fine. I believe you can use either.
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Frinky · Trick Member Joined: 12 Mar 2003

.dwi and .sm files can be used for the actual songs. .crs files are for Nonstop and Oni courses.

Fox643 · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 6:06 am Post subject:

So what files do I actually need to run a song? Where do I put the files? Is it all in the readme? When I looked in there, they had like 6 different files to run one song, but when I tried to download a song, it only came with three files.

Phrekwenci · Administrator Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Location: New York, NY

Fox643 · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 6:34 am Post subject:

I heard the music file can't be in mp3 format..... but all of the sites that I have been downloading zip files from have the music in Mp3 format. Do I need to convert it to wav sound?

Mikeh · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 10:10 am Post subject:

Kenjiisgod · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 10:29 am Post subject:

DJzen · Trick Member Joined: 28 Oct 2002 Location: near Philly

I can't quite remember exactly what the readme says or which 6 files it talks about (I'm away from my computer that has SM on it at the moment), so I'm going to paraphrase. Here's what goes into a song/stepfile.

The song itself: These can be .mp3 or .wav or .ogg format. A lot of people really like .ogg for its high quality, but you're MUCH more likely to find a .mp3. .wav's take up so much space that their extra quality doesn't really make them worth using. Heck, I challenge someone to tell the difference between a .wav and a .mp3 of the wave encoded at 192 kbps.

The stepfile: You also need this. If you do not have it the song will play but there will be no arrows. The song will then stop probably 5 seconds or less after it starts. These come in .sm (stepmania) and .dwi (dance with intensity, another highly praised simulator). The syntax (language used for coding the file) is very similar, and stepmania's internal step editor will save any step chart to both formats. I can't remember positively, but I'm fairly sure that both will use ALL step charts (light, standard, heavy, doubles, etc.) in the same file, as well as other info about the song (name of song, subtitle, artist, whether or not the song is available to select or hidden, etc.).

The marquee/banner/whatever you call it: This is the graphic that is displayed to show what song you are selecting. If you don't have one of these you can still play the song, but the title graphic will be displayed as a default banner (the skin I use says "SMMAX2 no banner"). I remember that you can use .jpg and .png files for this, but I know there's others I'm forgetting. Many people include these with the song, but some use this weird DWI method of using the background image as the banner, which brings us to...

The background: This is the picture that is displayed in the background while you are playing the song. These, like all pictures/graphics/textures in stepmania can be .jpg or .png. You can play the song just fine without one, they just help with the overall polish. The default graphic that is used when no background is present is actually kinda cool though...

CD title: I LOVE these. This is the little title of the CD that the song came from that spins around in front of the song's banner. You don't need this at all, it's a frivelous little extra, but I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!! Very few people include these as they're so unimportant (and I think they're exclusive to stepmania, so if I'm right about that, people using DWI wouldn't have any use for them, but don't quote me on this).

animations: There are 4 different kinds of these. The first is just called animation, I think. It's basically what DDR used for background animation before they used movies (a la DDR MAX), many different sprites fly around. I have no idea what goes into making these. Next is movies. These are movies, and I forget what format you have to use (I never use them, they take up a lot of space and most didn't impress me much). Then there's visualizations. I could be wrong but I think these are just really shot movies or animated pictures that loop. I can't remember the last type. These are COMPLETELY unnecesary for playing, but they make the screen less boring (for the player or anyone watching the screen). You can actually put all these in a seperate folder in the main SM directory so that instead of preset animations for every song, you get random animations each time. *shrug* most people don't bother including these. You'll have to search long and hard if you want the official animations, but if you just want something to start with, there are a few generic animations available at stepmania.com.

Now, you're going to ask what to do with all these things once you have them, right? A song and all the other things that go with it (this includes the animation if it's meant to go with that specific song) go into a folder. Call this folder whatever you want, but it helps to name it for the song (I sometimes use abbreviations, for example "CSFILSM" for "Can't Stop Falling In Love (Speed Mix), just preference though). Next, this folder must go inside another folder. I forget what these are called but let's call them "group folders" for now. A group folder goes inside the songs folder in the main stepmania directory *whew*. This way, you can separate songs to make the song select screen less cluttered (helpful if you're trying to include every song ever used in DDR). I don't remember what happens if you just put a song's folder inside the songs folder. Anyone wanna answer this for me? This is all in the readme, but I had nothing else to do, and I like helping people better understand things

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Fox643 · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 8:40 am Post subject:

Hey, thanks for your info. It was very helpful. One more question though. Are you able to find songs with the same steps as they have in the arcade? For instance, I found the song kakumei, but the steps were different. What's the best site for offical songs and steps?

Mikeh · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2003 9:38 am Post subject:

Currently, some of the main simulators download sites are down, so it is very hard to download official bumpers (a pack of DWI, music, Background, and Banner files for a specific mix) off the internet. Although you can try using mIRC and join the DDRUK channel to get your files off their fserves, or try turtleddr.com

Phrekwenci · Administrator Joined: 27 Feb 2002 Location: New York, NY