pydance - a dancing simulator game

pydance [--filename filename [ --mode mode --difficulty difficulty ] ]

--help, -h

Display a brief summary of command line options.

--version, -v

Display the version of pydance (and features found, e.g. Psyco).

--filename, -f

Load and play a single file, then quit. By default, this is in SINGLE (4 panel) mode, on BASIC difficulty.

--mode, -m

Use a particular mode (e.g. VERSUS, 6PANEL, DMX). This only has an effect when you also use --filename.

--difficulty, -d

Use a particular difficulty (e.g. TRICK, SMANIAC). This only has an effect when you also use --filename.

pydance is much like the popular arcade game "Dance Dance Revolution", in which you stand on a mat on the floor, with 4 buttons pointing forward, backwards, left, and right. Arrows scroll across the screen, and you must step on the arrows on the mat when they reach the top. These steps happen in time with music in the background, causing a rough approximation of dancing.

However, pydance also plays more than DDR - it can simulate games like Technomotion, Pop'n'Stage, Pump It Up, Para Para Paradise, and Dance ManiaX (also called Dance Freaks).a

pydance supports most of the features of these games, such as background and banner images for each song, multiple difficulty levels, freeze arrows (arrows you have to remain standing on for a length of time), BPM changes and stops, lyric displays, and so on. pydance also allows you to use a real DDR mat if you have a Playstation to PC joystick adapter supported by the ddrmat kernel module for Linux (which is a modified version of the gamecon kernel module), or a Playstation to USB joystick adapter and the USB joystick driver, for any OS. If you lack a mat, you can play on the keyboard, but it's much less fun.

You can also make your own step files to new music, in pydance's .dance format. dance-spec.txt included with pydance documents this format. pydance can also read the popular Windows .dwi and .sm formats.

The first player's arrows and settings are controlled by the I, J, ,, and L keys, and the second player's by the arrow keys. Enter starts a song or activates a menu item.

pydance is documented more completely in the README.html file included with it.

/usr/share/games/pydance/songs, /usr/local/share/games/pydance/songs, ~/.pydance/songs

By default, pydance will look in these directories for your songs, step files, and other game data. You can configure this with the songdir option in your pydance.cfg file.

Note that for DWI files, you will need to put everything (the music file, lyric file, background, and banner) in its own separate directory, and that directory inside another subdirectory in the songs folder. This is a limitation of the DWI format; it uses its path name and files in the same directory, rather than specifying things in the file itself like .dance files do.

/usr/share/games/pydance/courses, /usr/local/share/games/pydance/courses, ~/.pydance/courses

Similar to above, but for course files. You can use coursedir to override this.

/etc/pydance.cfg, ~/.pydance/pydance.cfg

pydance configuration files. The settings in your local one override the system-wide settings.

~/.pydance/records

Your top scores for each song. This is a pickled Python file. It can be safely deleted to reset your scores.

~/.pydance/input.cfg

Your input settings. This is a pickled Python file. It can be safely deleted to reset your input configuration.

/usr/share/games/pydance

Various data needed by pydance, such as background music and Python modules.

Brendan Becker <tgz@orotech.net> and Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>, with help from many others.

Many of the other dancing games mentioned here are trademarks of their respective owners.

findbpm(1), README.html included with pydance, dance-spec.txt included with pydance.