The primary game type features the following game play: as arrows scroll upwards on the screen, they meet a normally stationary set of target arrows. When they do, the player presses the corresponding arrows on their keyboard or dance mat. The moving arrows meet the targets based on the beat of the song. The game is scored based upon how accurately the player can trigger the arrows in time to the beat of the song. The player's efforts are awarded by letter grades and a number score that tell him/her how well they have done. An award of AAA+ (triple A plus, formerly AAAA or quadruple A) is the highest possible award available on a standard installation and indicates that a player has triggered all arrows with "Flawless" timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings) and avoided all mines and completed all hold (freeze) arrows. An E indicates failure for a player to survive the length of the song without completely draining their life bar. Default scoring and grading for StepMania is similar to scoring in Dance Dance Revolution; however, timing and scoring settings can easily be changed.
Stepmania 5.3 adds "Truly Flawless" timing (formerly known as "Ridiculous" or "Blue Fantastic", within 0.01125 seconds under default settings), and all Truly Flawless is called "Truly Flawless Full Combo" officially .
StepMania allows for several input options. Specialized adapters that connect console peripherals like PS2 and Xbox controllers or dance pads to one's computer can be used. Alternatively, the keyboard can be used to tap out the rhythms using arrow or other keys. Many song charts designed for keyboard are unable to be passed using a pad. In addition, the game possesses the capability to emulate other music games, such as Beatmania itself, o2Jam and DJMAX's 7-key arrangement, Pump It Up and Techno Motion - scoring however, remains similar to old DDR-style play by default (i.e. more weight is given for later notes).
Features
Custom Songs ("Stepfiles") also known as "Simfiles": StepMania allows users to create their own custom dance patterns to any song in .ogg or .mp3 format. The program includes a comprehensive Step editor to aid the creation of these stepfiles. Many Simfile websites exist where users share and distributed Simfiles for songs. Additionally, official DDR and In The Groove songs with their original steps are commonly available for StepMania.
Background animations: Support for many types of animations behind the arrows onscreen, including sprite-based animation sequences, a single full-motion video or multiple FMV visualization overlays but are disabled if the song contains exclusive video.
Modifiers: Visual mods that affect the scroll of arrows and either increase or decrease difficulty. StepMania includes multiple modifiers featured in Dance Dance Revolution as well as dozens of additional modifiers created exclusively for StepMania.
Multiple arrow types:
Mines ("Shock" arrows in DDR X): An object that scrolls onto the screen along with the arrows. If a player triggers the mines, they will be penalized by having their dance gauge reduced. However, the mines in StepMania are different from the Shock Arrows in DDR X in that the latter also turns the notes invisible for a brief period of time and breaks the current combo chain that the player had going. This step type was developed for the StepMania-based arcade game In The Groove, and was ported into StepMania itself during development of that title. There are several variations of these objects that effect scoring in different ways.
Holds (also called Freeze Arrows): A long arrow that requires you to keep your feet or finger on the corresponding panel for its duration.
Rolls: A special hold arrow which requires a rapid tap on to keep alive. This step type was developed for the sequel to In The Groove - In the Groove 2.
Lift: a special type of arrow (colored Gray by default) which requires the key (or panel) to be held down before the note passes and released when the note passes the target arrows. This is different from freeze arrows in that the timing of the press is not important, only when the note is released.
Multiple game types, including partial simulation of other rhythm games like Pump It Up, ParaParaParadise and beatmania IIDX.
Real-time lyrics, which display on the opposite side of the screen for stepfiles that have accompanying lyric data.
Custom themes: users can create their own skins for Stepmania. StepMania themes can vary from simple replacement of images to drastic changes that can be implemented by scripting its Lua backend.
Dancing characters: 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional character models that dance in the background according to a pre-defined routine.
Infinite BPMs: an official implementation in StepMania 4 of a bug in the 3.9 series that could be exploited to create "warps" in stepcharts using negative speeds.
Network play: support for lobby-based online play, dubbed StepMania Online. Typically, users connect through the StepMania Online centralized server. Support for network play was added to the StepMania tree in 2005 and is available in all later builds. All players must have a copy of the song chosen by the host in order to play.
