[/)eathKiller]

WOW! How interesting! I just happen to be working on a DDR type game myself!!!

Only my version is more like the "action" sequences in Shenmue, that is to say that it quickly flashes "left arrow" and if you don't press it in time you get hurt or even worse [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Such a game is quite easy to make, the only difficulties I've had so far are sound allighnment, becasue you basically have to make it run two paths for each "on Key press" button, one path you press the key in time, another path, you don't press it on time. If you don't you effectivley have caused some action, you may have even lead to a completley differint path in the game, your system will require alot less work though because you can have one "MISS" Action and then create, say, several paths in which a counter counts down. For instance, if you have 3 chances to miss an arrow, and you miss an arrow, you can then have all the arrows do the same thing except have the scene change if they dont get it and have to play either a compeleteley differint series of arrows (which are similar at the start) or t he same arrows, which you copied the button paths of, so that they can continue to play only its a new scene now and they've lost 1 life point, then if they lose another life point the same thing happens and they have one life left, and another effective miss can lead to failure. In order to have failures occur with each one you'll want automatic scene frames where you fail if you dont press the button in time, like with my game. For instance, i keep the button up for about 1.2 seconds, then i remove it. if the player does not press the corresponding arrow key OR presses the WRONG arrow key, they suffer a loss, In some cases I can even have multiple paths with arrows leading down differint paths, you're DDR game will, of course, have times when the arrows are pressed in quick sucession, or even two at once, be sure to have your buttons have "AND" conditions applied to their code, and you dont have to know how to program to apply any of these situatiosn if you use flash MX [img]tongue.gif[/img]


anyway, let me see, what else is there?

OH right! be sure to run at at least 20 FPS, so that you can time the button pressing time precicley, also, be sure to allow for button pressing to occur for more than just ONE SINGLE frame because it's inhumanly impossible to time on-the-dot precisley!

Also: There are many pre-designed games out there which you can use as templates to learn more about game design.

Oh and a final thing: Though a DDR Game is easy to draw, its not the easiest kind of game one can design, that reward goes to button-based adventure games like the Journeyman Project, if you've ever played that.