Help for a clueless dad?

[Gilliland]

Hi, all.

Before you all jump on me saying, "Man, you haven't got a clue", let me just beat you to it:

Disclaimer: I haven't got a clue.

Please answer some questions for me. My 16 year old daughter has asked for DDR for Christmas. She played it (sorry, no idea which game) at a friend's house and liked it a lot.

So I'm tasked with acquiring it for her. We do not own a playstation, XBox, Gamecube, or other such device. And frankly, I'd rather keep it that way.

However, we have lots of PCs, including a fairly up-to-date one that's already hooked up to a good sized TV with a solid rec-room floor in front of it.

I've downloaded StepMania and installed it on my laptop here, and it seems to be a great game. I installed some of the music from the SM site, and that seems to be suitable to the game as well. So I'm strongly inclined to go this route, and put my money into a good quality game pad rather than spending a bunch of money on a playstation.

The real question, then, is what am I missing? If I set up StepMania for her instead of a "real" DDR, is she going to be disappointed? Does the real game have capabilities that she can't get in SM? I realize that each game has its own collection of music, but is the SM-available music inferior in some way to the music that comes with the other games? What other drawbacks might I be overlooking?

She is not generally an enthusiast for the techno/dance music that tends to accompany these games, so I don't think she's going to be watching for any particular favorites. More likely, she'll want to take advantage of the ability to bring in her own music and build dance patterns to it. She is a bit of a computer hacker, so this will likely appeal to her.

I'm thinking about buying the RedOctane Ignition 3 pad for her. It seems like a good compromise between cost and quality. I don't want to spend a fortune on a fancy pad without knowing for sure that it won't be gathering dust in a month. But I don't want to buy the cheap entry level pad either. So the Ignition seems like a good choice. Comments?

Thanks for any help that you can provide to a clueless dad.

[IHYD.Blake]

Yeah.
You know how the regular stepmania theme looks like, right? You can download other themes that make them look like other arcade/console games, such as DDR Extreme arcade, or Ultramix xbox.(http://www.ddrfreak.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=98447 Also, if you can find the right sites, (see http://www.ddrfreak.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=73627) you can put whatever songs you want on stepmania, not just the ones on the official stepmania website. You can actually get more song selection out of stepmania than any console game they have ever made.

About your pad choice, the Ignition is a good first pad. It will last a while, and isnt that expensive, compared to other pads. I say go for it.

About putting her own music on the game, at first I think you guys should just play already made songfiles and experiment/explore stepmania before you decide to start making your own simfiles. Thats just my opinion though.

I see no reason that stepmania would dissapoint you guys compared to a console game, if you can everything to work. (That includes making your pad actually work with your computer, I had some problems with that.)

For starting DDR, stepmania is a much better way to go rather than buying a new console, game, and pad.

I hope this helps
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[chaosemerald]

what you get with ddr only is traning mode,lesson mode.mission/challenge/DMM,workoutmode,and with UM3 you get questmode,freestyle,andbattlethings.jukebox on um3 and sm are different with um3 you pick songs and everything but a dancer and arrows are there.
With sm you get jukebox mode and magicdance wich is a crasy mod battle(unless you buy disneymix).and solomode which is 6 panels
(unless you buy konamix).

but with sm you can put in songs (your own songs and konami origanls),different themes,noteskins,annousers,dancers,courses,and actual step patterns which you rate and have a radar.


for pads you coud get an arcade pad. though I hear the pannels and sensitivity can break preety fast.

trust me she'l fall in love with sm
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[Odyssey]

I was LITERALLY about to post the same thing (computer errors, feh...)

As for the original songs, definitely work with them before writing your own tunes. They take a while, and though they're rewarding, they're difficult to finish well, especially for beginners.

But that's okay. www.ddruk.com has a HUGE amount of songs... in fact, you can download the entire library of original mixes from the arcades from this site, as long as you have Bittorrent.

Definitely try this out. She shouldn't be disappointed.
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[2016] Came back to see what a huge weeb I was. loloops

[I play css naked]

original songs as in ur own stepcharts?
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[ahkem]

Assuming you mean the red octane ignition pad that has the multi platform plug (xbox ps2 and usb) then you wont need anything else besides your pc hooked up to the tv (and I assume also hooked to the tv's or an external speaker setup).

If you are not looking at the multi platform ignition, you will need a ps2-> usb adapter, there is a list on http://www.stepmania.com detailing the performance of alot of common adapters in stepmania.

I have the same setup currently with pad/tv. I would strongly suggest having this pc networked (if its not already), and having stepmania on another pc to be used for trying out/creating songs, while having the tv pc with its songs folder shared so you can easily drag-drop songs and just hit the reload songs option in stepmania.


Good luck!

[Laundry]

You might want to get foonmix on top of the DDR mixes too.

[Cadillac Daddy]

I prefer stepmania. I can have a much broader range of music to dance to. I keep getting sick of the songs I have on PS2.

[Gilliland]

Thanks for all the help! To answer a few of the questions:

The PC in question is already hooked up to a TV that is part of a small home theatre system. So yes, there is a good audio system available for SM.

And while I think my daughter will want to tinker with creating some of her own dance tracks, that's likely to come much later. Initially, I'm sure she'll be quite happy with the wide range of stuff that can be downloaded. Thanks for all the pointers to music sources. I'll try to track some of this stuff down before Christmas.

And yes, the PC is networked. There are other machines available that can be used to download and install music tracks.

The multiplatform Ignition pad is on sale at the moment for about $80, which seems pretty reasonable. Is there a better pad that I should consider for not too much more money? I'm not willing to spend $300 on a pad, but $100 to $150 might be OK - if there's a significant advantage over the Ignition pad. Based on what I've read so far, it seems like the Ignition is really an ideal choice. But obviously, I have no direct experience with this stuff.

[Odyssey]

From what I know, the only SUREFIRE thing to be better than an Ignition is a metal pad, which falls well into the $200-low (meaning just a metal pad), $2000-high (meaning two pads with the bars and interlocking) levels, unless some guy on eBay sells it for less.
For now, especially for a beginner (I assume) like your daughter, the Ignition is totally perfect. If you have a choice between it and a different soft pad, get the Ignition.
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Used to be Zoupzuop2. Now I'm not.

[2016] Came back to see what a huge weeb I was. loloops

[kamron_1]

although i didn't read a lot of the above, i'd recommend you stick with Stepmania and basically just download the songs that you'd like onto it, padwise, there's an entire forum dedicated for that, so you could ask around there, for songs, some good sites are http://www.bemanistyle.com/ and http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/
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[thisismyoldusername:P]

I'd agree that the ignition is more ideal for a beginner, I'd have to say 80$ is awfully expensive for a soft pad, and you can actually get a metal pad for only a little more. lik sang is a japanese website that sells all kinds of videogames and equipment. Main site: http://www.liksang.com Ignition pads aren't nearly 80$ so forget that! http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=237&products_id=2171 Like I said, you can just get a metal pad for only a little more than what you planned on spending (maybe 100$) http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=237&products_id=3221

[dm_perKeceT]

dude ur daughter will like sm better cause its pretty much a ddr machine at your house where u choose what songs r on it. AND!!! u can take songs that u like and make a .sm file and she can play the music that she likes in the game... how sweet is that

[paranoidmaxxmachine]

DDR/ITG = $$$Games$$$
SM = Online capabilitys, over 25,000+ songs, and best of all its free.
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[paranoidmaxxmachine]

[L.]

[gust0208]

[Gilliland]

OK, so we opened the Ignition pad and we hooked it up to Stepmania and everything is working fine. Except for one problem - every time we restart the game we have to completely redefine all of the dance pad key mappings. Stepmania doesn't retain them, and I can't find an option to save its settings.

How do I get Stepmania to keep the Ignition mapping as its default?

There is an option that tells Stepmania to "Automap", but it doesn't work. We've been manually mapping the pad, but everytime Stepmania starts up, the "Automap" setting is turned back on. So that may (or may not) be why the mapping is getting lost.

I've gone through all the FAQs and other stuff on the Red Octane site and the Stepmania site, but I can't find the answer to this simple question. It seems like all the complex arcane options of the program are documented, but not the basic stuff.

Related question - there are four columns of mappings in the program. I understand that they can accommodate two separate pads, but that still doesn't explain why there are FOUR columns rather than just two.

[yagsimit69]

hmm thats a wierd problem, ive only had to do mine once. about your other question. most people play stepmania with there fingers on the keyboard and play different styles depending on the difficulty and type of song there playing, its good to be able to have that many sets of keys rather than remap them everytime you want to use different keys,on my laptop i have 3 different key setups that i alternetly use