{Watch the video trailer}

What

DSR Squared is a sequel tournament to the highly successful D2SSR that was held in May of 2006.  It is set up as a two day Double-Elimination tournament that will be played on an arcade DDR Extreme "versus" cabinet fitted with Windows XP and Stepmania.  The tournament will feature non-DDR/PIU/ITG songs and original stepcharts written and/or approved by Dyaus and darknote which will have their initial unveiling during tournament play.

When

June 14-15, 2008.

Where

The home of Tyler Harding.  Email for directions.

Fees

Registration: Cost is $10 per entrant.  Players who have not pre-registered by May 31, 2008 will be charged a $5 late-registration fee.  This is designed to encourage pre-reg which will help us with logistics of the tournament, housing, transport, etc. Registration can be achieved by noting your attendance on the Facebook Event Page or by contact either Tyler or Mendel by email so we can make note of it.

Other Expenses: We will be putting together CDs containing all of the content of the tourney and past tourneys, including ITG2 r21 compatible versions.  All media will be free, although donations of $2 to $3 to cover cost of goods and production would be appreciated.

Prizes

1st place: 45% of entry fees, an official DSR Squared trophy, and perhaps some other random goodness
2nd place: 30% of entry fees, an official DSR Squared trophy, and perhaps some other random goodness
3rd place: 15% of entry fees, an official DSR Squared trophy and perhaps some other random goodness
4th place: 8% of entry fees and perhaps some other random assorted goodies
Mulligan 8 winner: 2% of entry fees and perhaps some other assorted stuff.

other random prizes may be distributed for 5th through 8th place depending on number of people and other circumstances.  Updates will be provided on this rule page.

Format

The tournament will be held on an arcade DDR Extreme Cabinet with Stepmania CVS installed. The skin used for the tournament is the latest ITG2 skin downloadable via ITGFreak

Timing windows and judgements are equivalent of ITG2 arcade except the "Way Off" window has been completely eliminated.  Visual synchronization of arrows are more equivalent of DDR than of ITG or ITG2.

Rounds have the following difficulty ratings:

Round 1: diff 7
Winner Bracket Rounds 2-3: diff 8
Winner Bracket Rounds 4 and up: diff 8-9
Loser Bracket Rounds 1-2: diff 7-8
Loser Bracket Rounds 3-5: diff 8
Loser Bracket Rounds 6 and up: diff 8-9
Final Round: diff 9-10
The Mulligan 8: diff 7-8, final round 8-9.

Difficulty ratings have been defined by a standard inbetween DDR and ITG, leaning more towards DDR.  Unlike D2SSR, charts may contain mines or hands.  No charts contain freeze rolls.  Sorry.  We don't like freeze rolls.

Warmup

On day one, all players will be allowed two warmup songs (perhaps more if time permits) prior to the qualifier during the allotted warmup period.  Registrants who arrive in the latter part of the registration period may miss the warm-up window.  Get there early.  Players may not warmup on songs that will be used for the sight-read tourney (duuuuh).  On day two, warmups are restricted to the mulligan 8 and final 16.  Songs available for warm-up will be "pre-synched" to match syncing used for tournament rounds.

Qualifier

All participants upon registration will pick a number out of a hat which will designate what order they will play the qualifier. Players who have not played the qualifier must not be present in the room. Everyone will play the same qualifier which will be rated diff. 8. In the event of a tie, a tiebreaker song will be selected.

Players will be seated on a standard Double-Elimination bracket based on percentage score.  For the qualifier, percentage and percentage alone speaks including any pad errors.

Day One

On day one, each round is played as a Race to Two (i.e. best out of three). Higher seed picks which side they want to play on. The round folder will be opened with three songs on it. Players may scroll through the selection wheel to see song statistics (BPM, number of steps, mines, etc.)  The lower seed will pick the first song that will be played and then the higher seed will pick second.

Songs will be played, and the winner of each song will be determined by percentage score. In the event that a pad error affects the outcome of a match, remaining songs on the list (if applicable) will be played to determine the status of the match. If the match outcome would have been different due to the pad error, players will play the affected song again on Mirror. Judgement on pad error is left to the discretion of the tournament organizers.  Decisions made by tournament organizers are final.

Subsequent matches for that round will contain the same three song options.  New songs will not be revealed until the next round with the possible exception of round one in which songs may switch halfway. Loser Bracket rounds that correspond to Winner Bracket rounds will have the same song selection as well.   Order of play for each round on day one will be determined at random or in an evenly distributed manner to avoid giving certain areas of the bracket advantage by never being the first to play songs of a given round.

Day one will conclude when there are 16 players remaining in the tournament.

Day Two: The Mulligan 8 and the Final 16

On the opening of day two, eight competitors eliminated in day one will be picked randmly to compete in a single elimination race-to-two winner-take-all "Mulligan 8" mini-tournament for a 2% consolation prize pool.  Songs for this mini-tournament will be pooled from those used in day one of the regular tourney.  The final round of the mulligan 8 may come from material that will be used in the first round of the final 16.

The final 16 competitors will be given an ample warm-up period of thee to four songs before competition recommences.  The final 16 rounds will follow the same sound strcutre as the initial rounds on day one with the exception that competitors who have not yet played in the present round must not be in the room until their match.

Finals

The first match between the final two contestants will be race to three.  If a subsequent match needs to be played, it will be a race to two.  The final round folder will have 7 songs on it with a difficulty range of 9-10. Each player will pick a song to be played in order through the two matches.  Lower seed will pick first.  If an eighth song needs to be played (the loser wins the first match 3-2 and the second match is tied 1-1), the Boss Stage Stepchart with a difficulty of 11 will be revealed and will be played by the finalists to determine the crown champion of DSR Squared.

Word.  Up.  Again.

Miscellaneous Rules

Speed modifiers will range from x1 to x6 with x0.5 increments.  CMods are not allowed at any time.

Modifiers which a) disqualify you for ranking and b) modify in any way the placement of the arrows or amount of arrows may not be used at any time during the tournament. All other modifiers are fair game.  Note that mods that reverse arrows for Stepmania have a flaw in that the freeze trail leads the arrow.

Bar use is allowed.  Super power use is prohibited with the exception of certain functions of the green lantern ring.  If you possess a green lantern ring and know how to use its powers, please email one of the tournament organizers to help determine what powers we will consider for legal use.

Who Wrote What

During initial registration, either players OR spectators can opt to participate in the "Who Wrote What" sidequest. Entry fee for the sidequest is fifty cents. Participants will receive a sheet where they can designate who they believe authored the charts that are played during the tourney. The person who gets the most correct will win either a prize package or the entry fee prize pool. In the event of a tie, a tiebreaker game consisting of strawberry jello, speedos, and bowling balls will be played to determine who wins the prize.

RSVP

To help give us an idea of how many people we should anticipate, please let us know if you're planning on attending either as a participant or a spectator and let us know if anything changes via the Facebook Event Page.  You can also email us.   Contact information is below.

Housing logistics will be  addressed soon.  We're a friendly bunch and will most likely be able to find you a place to stay. A running chart of hosts, guests, space available, conditions, etc. is present on the Housing Logistic Chart.

Questions

Questions or issues may be addressed in this forum, my livejournal post, or the ITGFreak forum post i have yet to make.  You can also direct questions directly to the tournament organizers Mendel [darknote at darknote dot org] or Tyler [dyaus7 at gmail dot
com].