First Steps

August 7th, 2006 at 05:53pm Grey

I’m pathetic. I’m useless and worthless and utterly wretched. I have the reflexes of a zombie sloth and the balance of a giraffe on ice skates. My co-ordination is awful, my timing is completely out and I have all the skill and grace of, well, me. In short I really really suck at this game…

But before we discuss that properly, let’s have a look at Stepmania itself. Stepmania has been out for about 5 years now, and is currently on version 3.9, with v4.0 currently going through the test release stage. It’s a very professionally put together program with excellent graphics and interface, and a huge range of customisation options. For those interested in extreme RSI you can play on your keyboard, but the real experience of the game comes from getting your own dance mat, such as the many available for the Playstation series. The Stepmania web-site very handily gives helpful advice on which pads and converters work best, and I was pleased to see a picture of my own PS controller converter on its recommended list.

Dance mats can vary in quality, from the basic plastic ones that tend to come with any Playstation dance game you buy, to far more expensive metal framed mats that more closely resemble what you’d find in the arcades. Being the scrooge that I am I went for the cheapest option, finding a £5 plastic mat in Virgin. It looks like clown vomit and smells like poison, but I figured it would suit my purposes. These mats actually seem to be quite rare here – it looks like the only way to get a half-decent one is to order online.

Stepmania is compatible with a range of song files, including .mp3 and .ogg, as long as they have an accompanying .sm file to give the program instructions like what moves you should be making at what times. Each song can also optionally include backgrounds and banners, including the ability to display video backgrounds. You can use the program to make your own .sm files for your own songs, and there is a huge range of thousands of these put together by fans of the genre, which can be downloaded from numerous web-sites dedicated to the game. From what I’ve seen I’ve been very impressed by the effort put in to make these. However, I do have to wonder just how many hours of their lives people have put into this sort of thing…

Installation of Stepmania is extremely quick and simple – choose your directory and it’s done, pretty much. Step packs (.zip files containing the necessary songs with their .sm files and backgrounds) are easy enough to find, and can simply be unzipped into the Songs folder. .smzip files are available for certain packs, which when run will nicely put everything in the right place for you – no thought required! Packs are available of all the different mixes from the various DDR-style games, as well as a horde of songs fans have made steps to themselves. These mostly consist of modern American dance tunes, video game and anime themes, and a number of J-Pop or J-Rock songs. A few songs are hosted on the Stepmania web-site itself, which also has links to many other sites more dedicated to downloading step files. The best of these tend to require registration. There are a number of strong torrents going which offer the Stepmania program bundled with a number of DDR packs – something I wish I’d gone for in the first place.

Stepmania is set up to emulate DDR in a variety of ways. From what I can tell you choose difficulty levels and songs much like in the arcade games. By default set-up you have to press the Insert Coin button to have credits to play, and you have three lives which you can lose by dancing poorly. You have to pass several “stages”, for which you get rated and put on a high score list. After this the game then resets to the title screen and you can start again. I turned off many of these options when first playing, seeing them as being rather pointless emulation of something I’ve never touched.

To be honest I found the number of options available to be extremely overwhelming. From what I can see there’s little or no documentation to the majority of it, and it’s mostly quite incomprehensible to someone new like me. Some of the defaults seem ridiculous for if you want to just play the game instead of pretending to be in an arcade. This game really seems designed specifically for major DDR fans. For whatever reason they didn’t design it for sad losers that decide to play it just as a challenge for some dumb web-site. That’s such a terrible oversight, don’t you think?

I searched for songs that I might like, or at least recognise, and downloaded a number of game tunes, as well as some old 80s pop songs and TV themes. I was also pleased to find some classical music pieces, and I downloaded them gladly, knowing I’d like the music and thinking they’d be really easy. So, after getting things set up, and switching the options to how I figured I’d like them, I got started. I chose the Beginner difficulty level (the lowest of 8 modes) and figured I’d begin with Chopin’s Etude in C minor since it was classed as 1-foot difficulty.

It was then that I realised two terrible things. Firstly, some of the people making these step files are too lazy to bother putting the right difficulty level on. Secondly, classical music is not suited to this game. For each and every note a step appeared – a mass invasion of arrows flooded my screen, flowing upwards like a river from a burst dam. I tried in vain to keep up with the entourage, but as the screen began flashing DANGER! I collapsed whimpering, utterly defeated as Chopin’s soft piano strokes washed over me and the game rated me “FAILED”.

Further attempts at “1-foot difficulty” pieces produced similar results – I’m guessing it’s the default rating if the person mixing the step file hasn’t specified a difficulty level. So I decided to move on to songs that had been specifically rated 2 or 3 foot difficulty. I started with the FF1 battle theme, a nice spunky little tune that I figured I could really groove down to (see, I’m starting to pick up the dance language now – ain’t that totally funking, dude?) After a try at this I realised what a clumsy, stupid oaf I was.

I figured downloading stuff based on my interests had been a mistake, so I went and found a generic pack of songs that had recently been put together, figuring that it would be better for a beginner. I tried some slow songs, and began to get a bit more used to the pad and controlling the game. However, I was still crap. My co-ordination was pretty awful – I often found I was missing the buttons entirely, or was accidentally standing on the buttons in between steps. My timing was absolutely atrocious – I was usually stepping far too early (when I was even stepping in the right direction). Worst of all was my speed, and my ability to switch quickly between different directions.

Feeling dismayed I decided to go back and at least try some songs I recognised. I tried out “Another One Bites The Dust” and “Billie Jean”, and suddenly found I was doing a lot better. Billie Jean especially was very easy to dance to – the step times match the rhythm of the song so perfectly, and the beats in the song are loud and clear. It seems my problem with the more generic pack of songs I don’t know was that I was trying to follow the arrows on screen, which I’m basically crap at. When I can listen to the song itself for the timing and just watch the screen for the directions I suddenly do a lot better. I practised more and more, and tried out a few more songs too, and found myself improving my co-ordination a bit. Eventually on “Billie Jean” I was stringing combos in the 30s, and I managed to get my rating in it up to a B – I was pretty pleased considered how bad I’d been an hour earlier. On “Another One Bites The Dust” I managed a D.

Some problems though – this pad sucks. It slips around a lot, and during one song it managed to turn round a whole 90 degrees. When my co-ordination is already bad this makes it far worse. Also, I have a lot of trouble telling where the buttons are, and keep stepping on them accidentally, or missing them when I aim for them. This is especially a nuisance with the down arrow, which is out of my field of vision. I can’t keep looking down to see where to step whilst following the screen, and I can’t feel where I am with my feet. So, I figure some DIY work with styrofoam and masking tape may do the trick, whilst also making it slip less (hopefully). If that doesn’t work, and this becomes too much of a bother, I’ll look into buying a better pad online. I can’t let my cheapness get in the way of a fair review of this game. Also, I want to get good enough to dance to the Captain Planet theme…

Many people have commented on my disbelief that this game is any good for exercise. Well, in spite of numerous testimonials, I’m still an unbeliever. I’m going to have to see for myself how much good it really does. I’ll admit though, after my 90 mins or so of playing I was fairly sweaty, and I did need a couple of drinks of water throughout play. At higher difficulty levels it seems obvious this would be more taxing to play. Still, at 75 kilos I don’t see this as being able to do me much good. Obviously my full judgement on this can’t come for another while.

Positives: I feel I’ve advanced quickly. I haven’t had any advice or instruction from others, but still managed to pick up how to play quickly enough and get a decent grade fairly early on. Hopefully this will keep up.
Negatives: I feel silly. This whole game just still feels so pathetic. I’m just glad no one’s watching… I’ll take some webcam pictures to laugh at myself at some point, but I can’t promise to show them.
Overall so far: Stepmania is a very good program, I really can’t fault it. The only problems I have with it are from my own preferences and lack of knowledge or experience of the genre. Being able to choose your own songs is great, especially since you can find some rare and weird stuff that you could never dance to in a club. I can’t really say I’ve enjoyed myself, but I’m certainly willing to carry on. The challenge to improve my scores is compelling. But would I be willing to continue if it wasn’t part of this project? I’m not so sure I’d bother…

To come in future: Obviously I’m going to get more songs – I’ve received some helpful advice on the best web-sites to register with for downloading step files. If I can find some Bee Gees I’ll be very happy. I’ll keep practicing and improving my skills, and hopefully be able to advance up the difficulty scales in due course. When I’ve had enough experience I will try the proper arcade machines and give my opinions on them. I’ve also got to try this as a drunken party game some time (a couple of friends have already expressed an interest), and possibly even give some of the break-dancing style songs a shot. I’m not getting my hopes/fears up for that for a while though… Maybe after a while I can see how hard it is to create my own step files. There seems to be quite a bit of flexibility to this game, so I’ll be trying to get the most out of it in the coming weeks.

Entry Filed under: StepMania