The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
DDR at home [Solved!]
starmanbrand
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My girlfriend recently became interested in DDR after playing it for the first time at an arcade.
1.) I have a wii, 360, and PC. Which has the "best" DDR offering?
2.) What pad should I get? Are one of those flimsy plastic-mat ones ok if you tape it to some plywood? Or is there something else I should get? Probably not going to spend over 100 on a pad, though.
3.) We live above another apartment. Will the lower unit hate-hate-hate us to the point that I should forget this idea?
1.) I have a wii, 360, and PC. Which has the "best" DDR offering?
2.) What pad should I get? Are one of those flimsy plastic-mat ones ok if you tape it to some plywood? Or is there something else I should get? Probably not going to spend over 100 on a pad, though.
3.) We live above another apartment. Will the lower unit hate-hate-hate us to the point that I should forget this idea?
starmanbrand on
0
Posts
Of course, this also depends on how well insulated your apartments are. I've been in some upscale places that were nigh-soundproof, but I doubt that's your situation here.
Steam | XBL: Elazual | Last.fm
You don't want to get the cheapest ones available, which unfortunately tends to be what the game is packaged with if you get a bundle. If you don't tape them to something, they tend to slip and slide around when playing on higher difficulties. And any tape strong enough to hold them down for that will rip them up when you remove it. Hell, it might start to rip a bit eventually anyways from your moving.
I got a little bit higher quality one that has these interlocking foam pieces inside of it. A little bit more cushioned and lasts longer. Although me and my sister were DDR fiends and played it constantly for about two years, so even those are starting to peel in places.
You don't need the huge metal pads. But make sure you get something a bit better than the bottom line.
I purchased a $50 pad from here. It is just a ps2 ddr pad with a usb converter. Works great and its pretty durable. It has a good nonslip surface and also comes with things to attach it to a piece of plywood or something else.
Shogun Streams Vidya
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
The layout of the stock mat is smaller than the layout of the arcade pad. The difference in spacing can make you look terrible on one even if you're a god on the other.
Back in the day, redoctane ignition pads were pretty much the only soft pad worth getting. Unfortunately, it looks like Activision decided to shut down that part of the company. Maybe look for an ignition on ebay?
Seriously?
From Wiki:
It isn't like some math formula and it isn't dark magic. The arrow hits the top of the screen and you hit the corresponding button.
OP StepMania is identical to DDR. The best part about it is that you can change almost whatever you want. The website has every mix from every DDR game already up there with the exact same step files as the original games so if you're looking for a particular game mix they already have it. I've played both DDR on a metal pad via xbox and I've played this except not with a metal pad. I can assure you there is virtually no difference.
Shogun Streams Vidya
depends a lot on how things are built
go round to them and ask them to test something for you, if they would be so kind
then proceed to jump really heavily up and down in your apartment, land as heavily as you can (You're not going to be trying to land softly when you're struggling to keep steps)
do this at night so there's not a lot of outside noise or distraction
then ask them how much they heard it, then you can make an informed decision
I don't play console mixes anymore but I can definitely provide some input.
Flimsy plastic-mat ones are okay provided you take care of them well. Carpet will be the death of them. The key is to tether them to something, whether it's plywood or a floor, with something strong like duct tape around all the edges (but not too tightly that the arrows trigger by themselves). If you cut a cheap DDR mat open, you'll notice it's two vinyl sheets, two clear plastic sheets with conducive paint lines, and a piece of holey foam. When you step on it, you connect a circuit. If it slides, the paint wears down, or one or more of the layers will be destroyed. The more it slides, the faster it'll break.
When I played at home back in the year 200*cough*, I duct taped them immediately to a hard tile floor. I had the same cheap $15 MadCatz pads for a year and a half and got up to 9's and 10's on them before they started to show wear. The more expensive ones are useful if you get better, but they do also break after wear and they don't tether as well as the cheap ones. Also, if by any chance you or your girlfriend ever plan on playing competitively or become arcade players, playing on foam pieces does not help at all for increasing stamina.
I owned a Red Octane Ignition pad I won in a tournament once, foam and all. It retailed for $80 but it felt like I was playing on a pillow. They're pretty good for home players, though.
The vast majority of DDR machine hardware was built from 1998-2002 and Konami stopped making official hardware parts for a long time so unless you go to an arcade with a dedicated hardcore group of competitive players the quality of the machine will more than likely blow. With that said, the only way to get super-good at arcade DDR is to play arcade DDR or have a heavily modded metal pad at home. There are four sensors on the edges of an arcade panel as opposed to home pads where you just kind of have to touch them to get a response. The upside is, it's fantastic exercise to play at an arcade because the panel spacing is larger and you really have to step as opposed to sliding to get your arrows. Also, if you do a search on DDR Freak, you can find some great techniques to hold freeze arrows on machines. There are a lot of ~90-110 lb incredibly good competitive players out there who do it all the time.
Here is the deal with Stepmania.
Stepmania is awesome for practicing files and charts. There are entire communities built around writing & playing keyboard-only files on fingers and on feet. It's identical enough to DDR that unless you play on a level where you meta-game DDR's files for competition you won't notice a plum difference.
Some issues with Stepmania are syncing and timing. If you plan on porting out Stepmania to a TV, you have to make sure there is no lag on the television, which can be caused by the A/V output as well as the USB converter for a pad. You'll have to have good enough rhythm where you can discern how off the timing is and fix it. Another thing with Stepmania is that traditionally many of the default timing windows (Perfect, Great, Good, etc.) are wide. Extremely wide. To be honest, many of DDR's windows fluctuate between versions of the game; console versions have a huuuuge window to make up for the technical inferiority of DDR pads. There are "accepted" values for timing windows floating around on the internet that you can probably get from Stepmania communities. When I practiced on Stepmania, I used the official DDR Extreme arcade windows someone got from hacking a game disc years ago, but the syncing was still different than what I was accustomed to.
Sounds douche-y but absolutely true.
If you ever play on a competitive level and attempt to submit scores from Stepmania even with accurate version timing windows on score tracking sites you will be reported and laughed at. You can easily manipulate the timing windows to make every arrow a Marvelous and there's no way to verify it. Even if you do show timing windows, it isn't genuine - the framerate for Stepmania is a bajillion times better than arcade versions. So yeah, if you're playing for fun, by all means, go for it, the steps will be the same. But if you ever want to pursue DDR on like, a high level, authenticity is the key.
If you want to get REALLY technical at a metagaming/competitive level, many scores are judged by others based on what mix you get them on. For instance, the song "D2R" is a 7-ft song in difficulty, but is one of the hardest songs to play in a Perfect Attack tournament because the syncing in DDR Extreme is notoriously late. In every other mix it's easy to get a good score on, because they "fixed" it. Also, there is a known bug in DDR until the most recent versions that triplet notes (even divisions of one beat into three) are buggy and offsync - Konami never thought DDR players would be so good as to AAA everything in the game, so they rounded 1/3's off. That's what makes songs like "bag" or "Mikeneko [Calico Cat] Rock" so hard - they will not be the same between DDR (rounding wrong) and Stepmania (syncing right). And it will affect your score... a lot. People have exploited syncing weaknesses in tournaments as a viable strategy of taking down an opponent, and home players/non-arcade players are none the wiser.
To the OP: Basically, if you already have a console, check out reviews for games and songlists and pick one that interests you. I enjoyed SuperNova 2's tracklist quite a bit when playing in passing. If you really get vested in the game, get Stepmania and a USB adapter and do the research on setting up a good system, but a $30-50 investment for an already-existing console game is perfect for a newbie.
PAX Prime '10-'13 Triwizard Drinking Tournament || Hufflepuff Head of House!
Twitter: @jujukoo
[E]
Shogun Streams Vidya
I own Max1/2 extreme 1/2, kona mix, usa, and disney mix with everything AA'd (except paranoia survivor/ max). All with the use of a red octane ignition pad. I also play in the arcade, but my 110lb frame does not weigh enough to keep freeze arrows down without a little bounce.
Pretty much, if your girlfriend is just getting in to it, buy it for ps or xbox and use a cheap plastic mat until she decides she wants to really get in to it, then if she wants to play casually or competitively get her an ignition or a cobalt flux.
I've gone through 5 of the cheap plastic mats shoes off, and i still have my ignition and i play shoes on. I really think it was worth the purchase, 5 years later.
And stepmania was fun for memorizing charts and practicing songs i didn't have available at home, but i never bought a mat for it.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone! I decided to go ahead and download stepmania and I ordered one of those high density foam pads from the link that Shogun listed. I figure if I feel like it is too loud, I can try to mod it and make it quieter.