1 beatscape - the red-headed stepchild of all vertical column rhythm games
3 beatscape is a simulator for vertical column rhythm games. Right now, it
4 simulates 7-key beatmania IIDX (and, by induction, 5-key beatmania), but
5 plans to support the whole line from Pop'n Music to Keyboardmania. It
6 does *not* simulate any arrow games (DDR, ITG, Pump it Up, etc). If you
7 want that, go use StepMania. Right now it reads BMS/BME (pretty well)
8 and StepMania SM (poorly).
11 pygame of a recent vintage (I'm using 1.7.1)
13 a little bit of a clue
17 Add your songs to the 'songs' folder. There is no restriction on the
18 placement of files, other than that all files referenced by a keyfile
19 (WAV,BMP,etc) must be in the same folder as that keyfile. I like to
20 arrange my keyfiles logically by source, but you can do whatever you
23 beatscape does not automatically index your music files (yet), so you
24 will have to do this manually each time you add or remove songs by
25 running 'mksongcache.py'.
27 beatscape accepts a command line argument specifying a keyfile to play.
28 This is handy if you're testing a keyfile and don't want to navigate the
34 This lists configuration variables for various aspects of the
35 game, such as timings and button assignments. Timings are set to
36 what I think is a reasonable approximation of the console
37 versions of IIDX, and button assignments should work with your
38 standard IIDX controller hooked up via a PSX -> USB adapter.
39 Other controllers and adapters will likely require tweaking.
41 There is not (as yet) any per-user configuration or way to install
42 beatscape system-wide. Feel free to contribute. :)
46 Oh, god, too many to mention, but these are extremely noticable:
47 * bpm-change problems on some songs (notably both era mixes)
48 * sometimes a song will just decide not to work after you've selected
49 it. If you select it again, it will probably work.
50 * A lot of undocumented features of the BMS/BME format are still
51 unhandled, and will likely cause errors or crashes. If anyone can
52 point me to a definitive BMS/BME reference, I'd be much obliged!
53 * Sometimes samples will just fail to play. I'm not yet sure if this is
54 a fault of my engine or of pygame.
55 * There's no way to adjust any game options, especially speed (without
57 * It's visually abominable.
61 beatscape is released under the GPLv2. Details can be found in the COPYING file.
65 beatscape might run on windows. I've only tested this a little bit, and it does
66 run, but the sound is usually lagged and choppy.
70 I can be contacted at bytex64@bytex64.net if you have any bug reports,
71 questions, fixes, or other contributions.