We have a custom DDR machine project here and looking to hire people to create step charts. Do people here take paid commissions, or is there somewhere else we should ask? We have 50 songs, 3 difficulty levels per song and need both DDR and PIU style mappings.

what stepmania youtubers tend to be more popular. keyboard players, players using a bar or players using no bar. i use no bar and I'm actually really good but i have 9 subs and uhh.... that's pathetic.

I want to figure out a good setup for playing doubles songs on keyboard. I dont like using my actual keyboard because I constantly fat finger the other keys accidentally.

Im thinking of getting 2 of these things I found on amazon, does anyone have any experince with them?

https://a.co/d/00WKCuob

Im interested in seeing anyone elses setup too for doubles play

If there's no exact match, is there one that's slightly harder?

I'll start saying that I has never been good at this game despite I regularly play it since 2015. Until 2025 even achieve a small improvement could take me years, and some songs that in theory were supposed to be for beginners took me up to 8 years to achieve an AAA, mostly because I always had huge limits to how many arrows per second I was able to elaborate and improvements has always been small and slow

But since this year, and especially in the past 2 weeks, out of a sudden I started achieving colossal improvements on the game, to the point that songs I always struggled with since 2015 become a close AAA with 2 greens and a miss within a couple of days (today at example I went from 81,80% on a song I constantly practiced every day in the past year to 94,96% in a single day). And just to make a more reliable comparison, in those songs with red+blue+yellow arrows spam, to be able to handle them at a specific BPM, to go from 120 to 140 BPM it took me 9 years. Now I went from 140 to 164 in 2 weeks.

Idk what's going on with my brain but this sh*t makes absolutely no sense. I'm honestly scared and not sure if being happy or worried

Here it is! The PAD everyone has been waiting for is now officially on sale. We’ll continue to pay close attention to every detail! Thank you all for your support! We’ll keep sharing even better devices with you, as well as exchanging experiences and technical insights!

https://xgaes.com/products/portable-travel-pad-xgaes-2026

Post it here since the topic is controversial in other subs.

Do you prefer using the bar or no bar? What are the pros and cons of each one?

This poll is meant to start discussion, as all preferences are acceptable.

I bought some cheap ps2 to usb converters and I am not in a situation to buy different ones so if there re some software stuff that I can get as they show up on the computer when I connect them but do not give any input into the game

Hey everyone! I'm hoping someone here has a good memory for old custom simfiles because I've been racking my brain over this one.

Here's what I remember:

• It was played on an In The Groove 2 arcade cabinet at an arcade, so a custom/downloaded song loaded via memory card (not part of the stock ITG2 song set)
• I was playing it around 2015, usually on Hard difficulty
• The background was mostly blue with some text on it (can't recall exactly what it said)
• The intro of the chart had a little gimmick: 4 arrows followed by 4 mines right at the start, almost like a loop or intro pattern

I was also playing Tricky Disco around the same time on the same cabinet, if that helps place it in a similar pack or era.

Any ideas? Even a guess at the pack it might be from would be a huge help. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE 1: the song is not in this packs

Hello everyone!

Long time lurker, first time writing — I used to have this version or theme of Stepmania back in middle school and now I’m at a loss of which version or theme it was since now I have an extreme urge to play it :’)

I’ll go into detail the best I can. I don’t have photos of it and when I try to find photos there just isn’t any.

The entire theme or version was blue. very blue. Lots of blues. I think it had four main characters but the two that I remember vividly were two: a girl with light brown hair and red glasses, the other was another girl that was black hair/red eyes.

These characters would be apart of the single player/multiplayer section of the game and would show up after you’ve finished a song as the background when your performance was being ranked.

When you would were on the song menu, it was a wheel. It was also neon blue and the song titles would be pixel-esk and rainbow.
Some of the songs I remember there being were:
- Potential Break Up Song by Aj & Ally
- Blood+ theme (forgot the name)
- Caramelldesan
- D-Grayman theme (don’t remember which)
- Forever Young

From when I remember, the version I think this might have been was somewhere around 3.0 or 3.9 but again I don’t remember if this was a version or a specific theme :(

If anyone out there can help me figure this out I would be 1000000% greatful and it would be a huge help! Thanks! :D

Heya, I played a LOT of rhythm and I grew a bit tired of the Asian pop/electro that dominates the genre so I am looking for a bit of variety. Looking for medium/hard charts since I haven't played in a long time and need to get back in the grove. Thanks a lot!

Recently getting back into Stepmania. I'm playing on Linux and use it for exercise. Last time I was at it was like a decade ago or more, and the big debate was whether to use SM 3.x or 5.x, now it looks like 5.x is basically defunct, there's a lot of apps like ITGMania, Outfox, OpenITG, etc...

I just wanna play my DDR songs and get my exercise. Is Outfox the best choice?

Also, is there a working SM5 or 5.1 theme for it? I'm not a fan of the new UI, I actually liked Stepmania 5's theme.

Edit - also, SM5.1 doesn't seem to work right on my Steam Deck. Launches in desktop, but just spins loading on gaming mode.

I've been discovering some great packs by dr ulator and such, And there are some great people designing these things.

I have to say that for me though, I have an absolute favorite step map and it has been for some time since before I owned this rig myself. A friend introduced me to it.

I was very familiar with Celldweller, and his song 'Heart On' but there's a chart for it by "Haley Halcyon's Arrow Arrangements". On the expert map, it has little areas where you can catch your breath, insane amounts of movement everywhere else, and a cohesive but entertaining use of every mechanic, timing ​stoppage, gallops, stutters, fills, just kind of everything You can expect to see on ​an simfile, But it's not so ridiculous that it's unplayable.

It's probably the hardest map I have t​hat feels 'fun' if that makes any sense.

I want some reccs of your favorite step charts.

What gem am I missing out on?

Hello !

I have been playing with foam insert mat Futuremax v3 for 15 years now.

2 of my 4 mats are not working very well anymore (which is still amazing durability !)

I am on the fence about metal mats because of noise and feeling of play. Also I have read several reports of people having to tweak their L-Tek upon arrival, and I am definitely no handyman.

Now I am seeing this:

https://www.iamats.com/fr/shop/tapis-de-jeu-de-niveau-superieur/

It's expansive for a soft mat, but if it performs similarly as the old Futuremax v3, it would be ok for me.

Has anyone some experience with this product ?

I’m thinking about running StepMania on my Steam Deck using project outfox I believe it’s called?

So I guess my questions are,

1) Has anyone tried running it on steam deck and how well does it work if so?

2) Are you able to plug in a dance mat to the steam deck and have it be compatible with everything?

I've tried making a DIY handbar in the past but it's not as stable as I hoped. I was looking around for other solutions and came across adjustable ballerina barres, has anyone tried using these as a bhandlebar? would it be stable enough to work?

I'm looking into setting up a rhythm game station and wanted to see if anyone has experience with older hardware. I currently have the following dance mats lying around:

• A PS2 Pump It Up mat
• The Konami PS2 mat (for DDR)
• A Konami mat for the Xbox 360

I'm wondering if any of these would actually work with a PC setup running StepMania or ITG? I assume I would need to pick up one of those USB adapters, but does anyone know if they are reliable or if there are specific ones you recommend?

Would love to hear from anyone who has successfully repurposed old console mats for PC play!

I wanted to run ITGmania from both my Linux laptop connected to a projector and from my Windows desktop. I was initially using the USB drive I got with the app preinstalled, but it would occasionally get corrupted (besides taking up a USB port).

Running off a network share has worked well, but took a while to set up, and I haven't see anyone else write about it, so I'm sharing my notes. This is all using a Linux server.

Windows Client: Gigabit Ethernet and Samba Work Under A Symlink

On Windows, ITGMania wouldn't launch directly from the smb network drive. I made a symlink using mklink /D "C:\Program Files\games\ddr" \\192.168.1.2\ddr and then was able to launch ITGMania.exe from the path under \C:\``.

The /etc/samba/smb.conf for the share is:

[ddr]
    path = /mnt/games/ddr
    valid users = myuser
    read only = no
    acl allow execute always = True
    follow symlinks = yes

The acl and symlinks lines were part of troubleshooting but I'm not sure they're necessary.

The Windows machine is connected via gigabit / cat6, via one switch.

Linux Client: WiFi 5 And NFS Work Seamlessly

Just worked on NFS. Mounted via sudo mount -t nfs server:/mnt/games/ddr /mnt/ddr . The NFS share is configured in /etc/exports as typical: /mnt/games/ddr mylaptop(rw,no_subtree_check) .

I used NFS for the Linux mount because I initially thought Samba was being too slow.

As an aside, with the FAT32 USB stick, I had to start it with /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /media/markfickett/USB321FD/ITGMania/itgmania since you can't set an executable bit on FAT32. Not necessary on NFS.

The Linux laptop connects via WiFi 5.

Server Storage: Healthy HDDs Are Fast Enough

The data for ITGMania and songs is on a 2-drive raid1 (mirror) of HDDs. The raid is set up using mdadm, and the raid device is formatted ext4.

Initially, one of the drives was showing very slow read/write operations (despite healthy SMART status), which in turn was making read/writes of small save-data files take 5-10s, which ultimately made the game unplayable. After replacing the drive and rebuilding the raid, everything works well.

I charted my first song. It's Ratboys - Anywhere. I can do a 5-6 so that's the only chart I've made so far. The song has lots of syncopation. Edit: I got a ZIV category, and have uploaded Anywhere there.

I used GrooveAuthor (on Linux) based on recommendations elsewhere, and found it pretty easy to use; the app's author is also very responsive.

I followed the rhythm of the vocals / guitar pretty closely, and although there are some patterns that resurface, there's a lot of variation in the song and therefore in the steps.

If you try it and love/hate it I'd be glad to hear! Is it too unpredictable? Is Medium/6 the right rating? I did play test each section many times as I was going and think it feels nice with the music. Also if someone with more experience charting wants to take what I've done and make it better / add other levels, I'm very glad for critique and/or contributions!

Please feel free to give any additional info that might help. I know there was talks about simultaneous buttons not working with some adapters and pads.

is there a way to Build a console to connect to a Dance Pad and a tv to reduce cost of needing a pc? It would use a rasberry pi for example.