DDR Cabinet

[Cancer Jeff]

I am planning to build a DDR (Dance Dance Revoluion) cabinet in the fall with a friend of mine. I am fairly good with electrical stuffs, and he is kind of good at... well, this isn't about him...
I am going to have two seperate components for the actual cabinet. the base, for the speakers, and the top, for the screen. the pads will be detachable and made to sit on either side of the cabinet when not in use. I will draw up plans for all of this within the week. I am going to use the demensions of a standard DDR cabinet.

I have a couple questions.
1. Where on earth could i find the  software for the game?
2. Can I operate the thing with a CD-ROm drive from a old computer?
3. Who isn't a fan of obscure Russian Pop/Tech-pop?

[theCoder]

1. Where on earth could i find the  software for the game?
2. Can I operate the thing with a CD-ROm drive from a old computer?
3. Who isn't a fan of obscure Russian Pop/Tech-pop?

1.  I'd go with StepMania.  It is an open source full featured equivalent of DDR.  You can get a copy at: http://stepmania.com
2.  I've got mine loaded on the hard drive.
3.  Not me.

Good luck.

[deadkenndys1105]

I have done full sized arcade pads without the bar for people but never a full one cabinet.  You can do a few diffrent things.  You could use a pc and run stepmania and have next to unlimited songs but most of the time there made for playing with a keyboard not a pad so there a lot hard and arnt alwas on time, or you can use a ps2, x-box or a gamecube (for your mario ddr fix). Limited songs but there the real songs from the arcades.

[Cancer Jeff]

I thought about using stepmania, but yesterday i tried it out and those songs are mostly player made and not equivelant in quality to bemani works. most are unplayable on a mat on heavy mode. I will have to try and find the roms for the DDR games unless i can somehow load them onto my pc from the ps2 and x box discs.

[deadkenndys1105]

There are pc versions of DDR but I think the dropped that quickly and switched to the concels.

[ChriX]

You can get packs of real DDR songs for Stepmania, here is a fairly good one: http://www.fileplanet.com/117415/110000/fileinfo/DDR-Songs

[Glaine]

There are still an aweful lot of near perfectly timed simfiles, 1st mix through 8th mix I can vouch for. Very pad-playable. Don't throw it out cuz you haven't found the right site yet. The downside is your conscience: will you feel bad for playing pirated simfiles? I do. Can't remember any sites for those bemani originals anymore cuz most of the time I get that kinda thing from friends, so you could try hitting a LAN party or searching torrents.

[deadkenndys1105]

I get all my songs from http://www.bemanistyle.com/.  Honestly its the best place for them.

[wana10]

www.ddruk.com has a ton of good pad designed simfiles 

[JonnyBoy]

There is a megapack all over the torrent sites, 5 gigs of songs or so.

Are you planning on constructing pads or buying pads? If you make them you have the benefit of knowing how to repair them, but making them can be a bit of a pain if you're not good at hacking controllers and soldering.

[deadkenndys1105]

I thought ddruk stopped letting people download.

[wana10]

I thought ddruk stopped letting people download.

nope they're back up

Are you planning on constructing pads or buying pads? If you make them you have the benefit of knowing how to repair them, but making them can be a bit of a pain if you're not good at hacking controllers and soldering.

BUILD BUILD BUILD at least i hope thats cancer jeffs plan, and building them is no harder than the rest of the cab...

[deadkenndys1105]

Building the pads are going to be one of the easyest things.  I think you just reveid my DDR plan because I was going to use a ps2 but I didnt like the limited amount of songs.  I hate my stairs thought all of my projects have to be able to be broken down.

[wana10]

I hate my stairs thought all of my projects have to be able to be broken down.

amen to that...oh well a ddr cab could be broken into 5 comparitively small parts
2 speakers
2 pads
main control center with monitor
(now all you gotta deal with is the weight )

[Glaine]

I second bemanistyle.com, they don't offer real bemani songs, but they have TONS of great user made stuff, lots of anime themes. I built my own metal pad (BYOMP?).

[Barry Barcrest]

Step mania is the bomb, once you have the right song files loaded in it really is the business. I would really like to see a DDR machine made...