Dance Maniax Project

[Crevolous]

I have been playing Dance Maniax at my local arcade and have become quite fond of the game, but with a limited amount of songs available, it has become a little jaded. I was wondering if anyone has ever thought of adding support for Dance Maniax to StepMania and if it's even possible.

I understand that some major programming would need to be done to impliment support for hand sensors, but beyond that, it doesn't seem like a daunting task. And to make things better, didn't someone produce support for Para Para? Would anyone be interested in helping me figure out a way to impliment support for Dance Maniax to StepMania?

I have a few ideas to get the development process going, but I would love to hear what others have to say before moving on from this point.

- CREv.

[Ridge]

Dance Maniax support has been added to SM already.

[Crevolous]

Thanks for the input. Now that I know it exist, I'll try looking around for it starting with the official site.

I'll let you know once I have everything set.

- CREv.

[Ridge]

To make it easier for you: GameTypes - SMTheming Wiki

[WaltzingMouse]

Originally Posted by Ridge

To make it easier for you: GameTypes - SMTheming Wiki

You have no idea how happy that link would make me if it worked.

I have been seriously looking into making a "Stepmaniax" out of our old J append cabinet.

Resources on the interwebs have been slim to none, however I have enough leads to imply that there have been several attempts to make a Dance Maniax for stepmania, and that Dance Maniax simfiles exist for stepmania already along with noteskins etc.

Originally Posted by jammitch!

DMX_GrooveStyle.rar

I'm helping!

First of all I can't figure out how to enable dance maniax support in stepmania, as this thread implies I can. Second, if I were able to do this some how, what version of stepmania would I need to use in order to get the noteskins in the previously quoted post to work.

Originally Posted by HioMrSan

I have simfiles for Dance Maniax 1st and 2nd mix. I'll upload them in a second. I remember seeing a video of a hacked DMX machine with stepmania running on it. They were having fun playing ITG Dmx style . So I guess if you took the time to track down those sensors and hooked it up to your computer...

EDIT: Here ya go.

RapidShare Webhosting + Webspace

Again frustrating. A banned user had the simfiles needed. If anyone else has these please let me know! I really would like to preserve the songs we have on the cab now, so I won't stepmania it without having these and the J append charts (Be together is the best!)

The wiring is easy, hardware no issue. We have built mame cabinets in the past and have been working with our arcade games for years. So I would like to offer my advice to anyone having trouble with the hardware aspects of the "Dance Maniax project". I am mostly looking for a Dance maniax 2nd J append theme for stepmania, or to make one, aesthetics and stepcharts.

But Yea, if anyone has leads on dance maniax for stepmania related anything, please let me know. I'll try to doccument what I find here for all the other people who have tried to build a decent stepmaniax cab.

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by Ridge

Dance Maniax support has been added to SM already.

Yup and I think a youtube video of it somewhere demonstrates such (like the one for the bananaphone video).

The sensors though seem to be a proprietary design and as of the moment may be hard to find (as the game is no longer in production). However, I think it is possible to find some optical sensors out there that mimick the sensors in the game (if of course, you're willing to do a D-I-Y kind of project).

[WaltzingMouse]

Let me re-itterate.

Originally Posted by Ridge

Dance Maniax support has been added to SM already.

How do you enable this support? Where is it documented? I have been looking everywhere. No videos show this. No wikis explain it.
I have many clues supporting the idea that it can supported by stepmania or that it has been in the past. But no actual explanation, just speculation.

Again this was a big clue

Originally Posted by jammitch!

DMX_GrooveStyle.rar

I'm helping!

Implying there is some support for stepmania but no one has been able to explain how to get this file to work.
Where to extract it to in stepmania. What version of stepmania it runs in. How to enable it in stepmania.

Originally Posted by Blackraven

Yup and I think a youtube video of it somewhere demonstrates such (like the one for the bananaphone video).

The sensors though seem to be a proprietary design and as of the moment may be hard to find (as the game is no longer in production). However, I think it is possible to find some optical sensors out there that mimick the sensors in the game (if of course, you're willing to do a D-I-Y kind of project).

Well where is this video. Google, yahoo, youtube etc. have only found mention to this video on Bemanistyle. And the only mentions of Dance Maniax Project videos are on bemanistyle. But no actual videos. No links. It would be super keen to actually see these videos rather then just reading about them. im sure they would be very helpfull.

To prove that I am very serious about documenting all data I can find towrds stepmaniaing a dance maniax cab, I offer this:
Dance Maniax 1 & 2 stepcharts
Which I found after hours and hours of searching. Still The special J paradise charts are not on there (be toghether for example) are missing! So if anyone has Append J paradise charts please let me know!

So I am still searching for:
#1: How to enable dance maniax in stepmania, and particularily use that file (the DMX_GrooveStyle that I'm assuming is noteskins)
#2: A dance maniax Theme for stepmania, (or image resources so I can try to build my own)
#3: The Dance Maniax 2nd Mix append J paradise stepcharts (particularily be toghter <3)

Thanks for everyones help and understanding! I'm looking forward to trying to help other people do this dance maniax project as well!

[I Am Rey Pinyoko!!!]

Just put it in the NoteSkins folder of your StepMania. It supports SM 3.9 and Plus Redux or Final. So if you want to change it to DMX notes, just go to the game type mode of your default SM theme and change it to MANIAX.

[sinh(Lily)]

I don't think there are any Dance Maniax themes for Stepmania, partly because the theme style of DMX couldn't be emulated in SM 3.9. However, someone might be interested to do it for 4.0, since it's very likely that it could duplicate the theme perfectly.

[I Am Rey Pinyoko!!!]

Yeah you're right. Only the noteskins are available but the theme doesn't exist for now..

[WaltzingMouse]

La la.

Okay so we have some progress.

Check it out I found official documentation on stepmaina forums

Originally Posted by AJ 187

Did you know? StepMania may already support your favorite gametype!

Here's a list of currently supported gametypes:

dance - DDR and other four panel dancing games
pump - Pump it Up
ez2 [3.9] - Ez2Dancer
para [3.9] - ParaParaParadise
ds3ddx [3.9] - DS 3D DX
beat [3.9] [4.0] - beatmania (and IIDX)
maniax [3.9] - Dance ManiaX
techno [3.9] - Technomotion
popn [3.9] - pop'n music

In addition, there are more gametypes being worked on for StepMania 4 such as guitar (Guitar Hero) and karaoke.

If you've ported one of the above gametypes/noteskins to SM4, let us know in this thread so I can add a link.

So there are the official "supported" games for stepmania.

What I did was downloaded a fresh copy of stepmania 3.9
downloaded the "maniax_3.9.smzip" and extracted it to the appropriate locations.
Extracted the songs of course...

In stepmania, on the main menu screen, I selected "select game" and chose "maniax"
Then in the main menu I selected "options" apperance options" then selected "maniax"


And this is what I ended up with


The channels are a static image. This is really odd. I would have assumed that the notes would load where the channels are for one player default. But then again this I guess would be a theme issue.

So three theme questions/considerations.
I would have to make the notes load on different sections of the screen. In Dance maniax a single player can play on the left, middle or right. I would have to make an option menu for this at the start screen. Also I would have to make three static channel sets to go with these accordingly.
For two players I would have to make the notes load simultaniously on the left and right, with the appropriate static channels. Though the notes load with versus mode, the channels do not.
For doubles play I would have to have a different static channel.



So were off to a good start!

If anyone knows any really good stepmania themers that wouldnt mind some cash thrown at them please post!!

[WaltzingMouse]

OH I found the hidden item this morning as well!

Stepmania Dance Maniax from 2004

[Blackraven]

Originally Posted by Blackraven

Yup and I think a youtube video of it somewhere demonstrates such (like the one for the bananaphone video).

Originally Posted by WaltzingMouse

OH I found the hidden item this morning as well!

Stepmania Dance Maniax from 2004

Yup that's it (the bananaphone vid). Heh and it's already been years since I've first seen that vid (of a custom project hehe)

[TornadoTK]

It's a crazy coincidence that I found this thread. Just last night I put up a topic (I'll edit that in later, it still hasn't been moderated) about making a custom DMX cabinet. If you're still around, I'd be glad to combine efforts, as I also need a working DMX StepMania.

On the hardware side, I've found a hollowed cabinet for under $80 USD. That and this topic were awesome finds.

[Elixxme]

BUMP.

Actually a friend and i are about to embark on something similar. i will be going for the official game where he is gonna make a semi supergun out of his ( bemani only supergun if thats possible ) he wants to hook a ddr mat up to it and use the DMX sensor prongs to put IIDX and popn controlers on it. but he will probably do it through a pc so he is gonna do SM for DMX. now i don't know how far you got with the simfiles for dmx but when i get mt cab ( well ill be working on this as soon as i can get an iso of the games ) ill be making the sim files. unless someone already knows where to get them.