Dance Dance Revolution

About the game

Dance Dance Revolution is an arcade game that is traditionally played by one or two players who use their feet to press buttons in response to on-screen symbols. As a student, I wrote a version of this game that can be played with a computer keyboard as input instead. Later, I ported it from a browser-based program to a standard desktop application. Both versions can be found below. 

About the code

My current version of Dance Dance Revolution is written in Python, and based mostly around the Python module Pygame. My original code, which was written for a Coursera course, was written to run on an in-browser platform called Codeskulptor, and used a custom library called simplegui, written by a  team at Rice University, in place of Pygame. During the port from Codeskulptor to the PC, I rewrote the code almost entirely, save for a few key logic pieces. The end result is much cleaner than the original, so if you would like to use or modify my code, please start from the desktop version source code. 

About the media

I created all of the visual elements in Photoshop, with the exception of the user-feedback text (things like the score report and the "Good job!" messages), which were done in code. All images are licensed under a Creative Commons share-alike license. 

The music comes from Jamendo, a royalty-free music download site. Both songs are licensed under a Creative Commons license. You will find the artists credited on the first splash screen of the game. 

Available versions

Desktop

To download the desktop version, please click on the link below. To play, unzip the file and run "DDR.exe", which will be in the root level of the unzipped folder. The game does play audio (only after a song is chosen, not right away), so you may want to find a pair of headphones to use. 

Windows only, for the moment.

Checksums for the desktop download are as follows:
  • MD5: DCAFB5C3FD2356736E1B6086BF4FE5AE
  • SHA1: E51E793FEE8E87D42E404B917266686DA48F199E
  • SHA-256: EF375086A860CF0F828F4AE93194ADC542F5124E9984301E52F6A22402CEA9C1

DanceDanceRevolution - Windows Desktop version
File Size: 11009 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
Source Code
File Size: 30 kb
File Type: zip
Download File
In-browser

The browser version cannot be downloaded directly, but rather is hosted by Coursera. Please click here to view the code. To play the game in-browser, click the "Play" button at the top left of the page.

Notes:
  • Some browsers do not play well with Codeskulptor. Firefox seems to be the most stable, followed by Chrome and Safari. It will not work with Internet Explorer.
  • This version of the code is not maintained. The platform has changed since I wrote it, but I am no longer able to upload new versions to compensate. There are bugs now that did not exist when it was first written.
  • I wrote this version as a student. Please do not take it as an indication of my current skill!

Screenshots

Creative Commons License
Dance Dance Revolution (PC edition) by Emily Wachtel Charles is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.emilywcharles.com.