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76-517: Several video game series use StepMania as their game engines. This includes In the Groove , Pump It Up Pro , Pump It Up Infinity , and StepManiaX . StepMania was included in a video game exhibition at New York's Museum of the Moving Image in 2005. StepMania was originally developed as an open-source clone of Konami 's arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). During

152-547: A "tune-up" to Windows 95, rather than an entirely improved next generation of Windows. Upon release, Windows 98 was generally well-received for its web-integrated interface and ease of use, as well as its addressing of issues present in Windows 95, although some pointed out that it was not significantly more stable than Windows 95. Windows 98 sold an estimated 58 million licenses and saw one major update, known as Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), released on June 10, 1999. After

228-410: A USB scanner in, the operating system crashed, displaying a Blue Screen of Death . Bill Gates remarked after derisive applause and cheering from the audience, "That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet." Video footage of this event became a popular Internet phenomenon . Build 1998 was compiled as Windows 98 on May 11, 1998, before being fully released to manufacturing on May 15. The company

304-595: A WDM kernel-mode video transport for enhanced video playback and capture. Windows Driver Model also includes Broadcast Driver Architecture , the backbone for TV technologies support in Windows. WebTV for Windows utilized BDA to allow viewing television on the computer if a compatible TV tuner card is installed. TV listings could be updated from the Internet and WaveTop Data Broadcasting allowed extra data about broadcasts to be received via regular television signals using an antenna or cable, by embedding data streams into

380-549: A bug that was also present on its predecessor, Windows 95. Windows 98 SE could be obtained as retail upgrade and full version packages, as well as OEM and a Second Edition Updates Disc for existing Windows 98 users. USB audio device class support is present from Windows 98 SE onwards. Windows 98 Second Edition improved WDM support in general for all devices, and it introduced support for WDM for modems (and therefore USB modems and virtual COM ports). However, Microsoft driver support for both USB printers and USB mass-storage device class

456-464: A certain number of Consumer Page HID controls. Windows 98 also supports UDMA , 3DNow! and SSE . Windows 98 introduced ACPI 1.0 support which enabled Standby and Hibernate states. However, hibernation support was extremely limited and vendor-specific. Hibernation was only available if compatible (PnP) hardware and BIOS are present, and the hardware manufacturer or OEM supplied ACPI-compatible drivers. However, there are hibernation issues with

532-561: A document. The Windows 98 shell is web-integrated; it contains deskbands, Active Desktop , Channels , ability to minimize foreground windows by clicking their button on the taskbar, single-click launching, Back and Forward navigation buttons, favorites, and address bar in Windows Explorer , image thumbnails, folder infotips and Web view in folders, and folder customization through HTML -based templates. The taskbar supports customizable toolbars designed to speed up access to

608-502: A feature ported from and refined from Microsoft Office 95 . Windows menus and tooltips support slide animation. Windows Explorer in Windows 98, as in Windows 95, converts all-uppercase filenames to sentence case for readability purposes; however, it also provides an option Allow all uppercase names to display them in their original case. Windows Explorer includes support for compressed CAB files. The Quick Res and Telephony Location Manager Windows 95 PowerToys are integrated into

684-686: A list rather than having to type them in. Windows 98 supports IrDA 3.0 which specifies both Serial Infrared Devices and Fast Infrared devices, which are capable of sending and receiving data at 4 Mbit/s. Infrared Recipient, a new application for transferring files through an infrared connection is included. The IrDA stack in Windows 98 supports networking profiles over the IrCOMM kernel-mode driver. Windows 98 also has built-in support for browsing Distributed File System trees on Server Message Block shares such as Windows NT servers. UPnP and NAT traversal APIs can be installed on Windows 98 by installing

760-406: A new IP Helper API, Automatic Private IP Addressing (also known as link-local addressing), IP multicasting , and performance enhancements for high-speed high bandwidth networks. Multihoming support with TCP/IP is improved and includes RIP listener support. The DHCP client has been enhanced to include address assignment conflict detection and longer timeout intervals. NetBT configuration in

836-517: A new tool, enables users to clear their disks of unnecessary files. Cleanup locations are extensible through Disk Cleanup handlers. Disk Cleanup can be automated for regular silent cleanups. Scanreg (DOS) and ScanRegW are Registry Checker tools used to back up, restore or optimize the Windows registry . ScanRegW tests the registry's integrity and saves a backup copy each time Windows successfully boots. The maximum number of copies could be customized by

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912-480: A pad. In addition, the game possesses the capability to emulate other music games, such as Beatmania itself, o2Jam and DJMax 's 7-key arrangement, Pump It Up and TechnoMotion - scoring however, remains similar to old DDR-style play by default (i.e. more weight is given for later notes). Some versions of StepMania will run on most common operating systems ( Microsoft Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 / 8 , Linux , FreeBSD , Mac OS X ), as well as

988-543: A performance feature called MapCache that can run applications from the disk cache itself if the code pages of executable files are aligned/mapped on 4K boundaries, instead of copying them to virtual memory. This results in more memory being available to run applications, and lesser usage of the swap file. Windows 98 registry handling is more robust than Windows 95 to avoid corruption and there are several enhancements to eliminate limitations and improve registry performance. The Windows 95 registry key size limitation of 64 KB

1064-443: A player chooses a predefined configuration of songs that may also have a predefined set of modifiers in order to make the songs more challenging to play. Marathon courses typically have four songs, although some have five songs. Battle Mode is a specialized "versus" mode of play. Two players (or one player against the computer) play three individual songs of the same difficulty. During the song, successfully executed steps fill up

1140-545: A player to survive the length of the song without completely draining their life gauge. Default scoring and grading for StepMania is similar to scoring in Dance Dance Revolution ; however, timing and scoring settings can easily be changed. During a song, if the player successfully triggers all arrows with "great" or better timing, the player will receive the message "Full combo" alongside their grade. Players can also achieve "Full perfect combo" for completing

1216-437: A player's "power bar". When the power bar completely fills, a modifier is applied to the opposing player's side. A total of 76 songs were available in the arcade and home versions of In the Groove. Some songs are exclusive to the home version for PC and Mac. Kyle Ward (also known as KaW, Inspector K, Banzai, E-Racer, and Smiley) is the developer's house musician, who composed many of the songs. Another 56 artists can be found in

1292-400: A row. Similar to other dancing games, the player is judged for how accurately they step relative to when they were supposed to step. From highest to lowest, possible judgements are "Fantastic," "Excellent," "Great," "Decent," "Way Off," and "Miss". For holds and rolls, if the player finishes the hold or roll successfully, they receive a "Yeah!" judgement. If not, the player receives a "Bad". In

1368-811: A single INF file format across all Windows versions. Windows 98 Dial-Up Networking supports PPTP tunneling, support for ISDN adapters, multilink support, and connection-time scripting to automate non-standard login connections. Multilink channel aggregation enables users to combine all available dial-up lines to achieve higher transfer speeds. PPP connection logs can show actual packets being passed and Windows 98 allows PPP logging per connection. The Dial-Up Networking improvements are also available in Windows 95 OSR2 and are downloadable for earlier Windows 95 releases. For networked computers that have user profiles enabled, Windows 98 introduces Microsoft Family Logon which lists all users that have been configured for that computer, enabling users to simply select their names from

1444-456: A song to be used in the stepchart/stepfile. The song must be under a compatible license for distribution or be authorized for use in StepMix 4, or the entry is automatically disqualified. Additionally, if the graphics used in the entry are found to have been copied from another artist and used without their authorization (as happened once in StepMix 2), the entry may be disqualified. The scoring

1520-512: A song using a four-arrowed Dance Pad. During normal gameplay, color arrows scroll upwards from the bottom of the screen and pass over a set of gray, stationary arrows near the top (referred to as "targets"). When the scrolling arrows overlap the stationary ones, the player must step on the corresponding arrow(s) on the dance platform. Longer arrows referred to as "Holds" must be held down for their entire length for them to count. "Rolls" (as introduced in In

1596-485: A song with all arrows triggered with perfect timing or better, and a "Full flawless combo" if all arrows are triggered with "flawless" timing. StepMania allows for several input options. Specialized adapters that connect console peripherals like PS2 and Xbox controllers or dance pads to one's computer can be used. Alternatively, the keyboard can be used to tap out the rhythms using arrow or other keys. Many song charts designed for keyboard are unable to be passed using

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1672-408: A special I/O board called "ITGIO" for making a JAMMA connection to the machine. Some Boxors have slightly different hardware than others. The software used to run the game is a proprietary fork of the open source StepMania computer program. Anti-piracy measures are achieved through the use of a "serial dongle" which prevents execution of the software on an unlicensed computer. Certain versions of

1748-427: A standard IDE hard disk (usually 40gb or 80gb in size), single-core 32-bit processor (Usually AMD Athlon or Intel Celeron), 128mb nVidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics card, 256MB or 512MB of DDR RAM , a Gigabyte Technology GA-8IPE1000 Pro2 motherboard, and a USB 2.0 hub (Cypress EZ-USB FX2) for transferring user statistics and edits onto a flash drive. On upgrade kits for Dance Dance Revolution machines, The Boxor includes

1824-486: Is a currently closed-source fork of the 5.0 and 5.1 codebase originally planned to reintegrate in StepMania, however further in development, it was decided to become an independent project due to its larger scope of goals while still sharing codebase improvements to future versions of StepMania. These improvements include modernizing the original codebase to improve performance and graphical fidelity, refurbishing aspects of

1900-407: Is an updated version of Windows 98 released on June 10, 1999, eight months before the release of Windows 2000 . It includes many bug fixes, improved WDM audio and modem support, improved USB support, added SSE2 support, the replacement of Internet Explorer 4.0 with Internet Explorer 5.0 , Web Folders ( WebDAV namespace extension for Windows Explorer), and related shell updates. Also included

1976-451: Is basic OHCI -compliant FireWire DV camcorder support (MSDV class driver) and SBP-2 support for mass storage class devices. Wake-On-LAN reenables suspended networked computers due to network activity, and Internet Connection Sharing allows multiple networked client computers to share an Internet connection via a single host computer. Other features in the update include DirectX 6.1 which introduced major improvements to DirectSound and

2052-533: Is built-in and upgradeable to version 5.6. System File Checker checks installed versions of system files to ensure they were the same version as the one installed with Windows 98 or newer. Corrupt or older versions are replaced by the correct versions. This tool was introduced to resolve the DLL hell issue and was replaced in Windows Me by System File Protection . Windows 98 Setup simplifies installation, reducing

2128-445: Is determined by the overall quality of the song, steps and graphics. StepMania became a quite popular free software game; the game was downloaded alone over SourceForge between 2001 and May 2017 over 6.3 million times. In the Groove (series) In the Groove (abbreviated ITG ) is a rhythm game developed & published by Roxor Games , and is the first game in the In

2204-497: Is eliminated. A Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer licensed from Roland shipped with Windows 98 for WDM audio drivers. Windows 98 supports digital playback of audio CDs , and the Second Edition improves WDM audio support by adding DirectSound hardware mixing and DirectSound 3D hardware abstraction, DirectMusic kernel support, KMixer sample-rate conversion for capture streams, and multichannel audio support. All audio

2280-490: Is gone. The registry uses less memory and has better caching. Disk Defragmenter has been improved to rearrange program files that are frequently used to a hard disk region optimized for program start. Despite this, however, the message "Drive contents changed....restarting." still exists in this version (i.e. if the contents of the hard drive changed, then the entire drive is then rescanned and then progress resumed where it had left off), as with Windows 95. If it gets stuck on

2356-814: Is not available for Windows 98. The Active Channels Channel bar from the original release of Windows 98 was removed in Windows 98 Second Edition and is not installed upon first boot, but is retained if upgrading from the original release of Windows 98 to Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows 98 Second Edition did not ship with the WinG API or RealPlayer 4.0, unlike the original release of Windows 98, due to both of these having been superseded by DirectX and Windows Media Player, respectively. Several components of Windows 98 can be updated to newer versions. These include: The majority of copies of Windows 98 were distributed in CD-ROM . A 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk version

StepMania - Misplaced Pages Continue

2432-478: Is sampled by the Kernel Mixer to a fixed sampling rate, which may result in some audio getting upsampled or downsampled and having a high latency, except when using Kernel Streaming or third-party audio paths like ASIO which allow unmixed audio streams and lower latency. Windows 98 also includes a WDM streaming class driver ( Stream.sys ) to address real time multimedia data stream processing requirements and

2508-440: Is the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95 . It was released to manufacturing on May 15, 1998, and generally to retail on June 25, 1998. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid 16-bit and 32-bit monolithic product with the boot stage based on MS-DOS . Windows 98 is web-integrated and bears numerous similarities to its predecessor. Most of its improvements were cosmetic or designed to improve

2584-738: The FAT32 file system, making hibernation problematic and unreliable. Windows 98, in general, provides improved — and a broader range of — support for IDE and SCSI drives and drive controllers, floppy drive controllers and all other classes of hardware as compared to Windows 95. There is integrated Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) support (although the USB Supplement to Windows 95 OSR2 and later releases of Windows 95 did have AGP support). Windows 98 has built-in DVD support and UDF 1.02 read support. The Still imaging architecture (STI) with TWAIN support

2660-574: The In the Groove 2 cabinet - in particular the ones manufactured by Andamiro, have BIOS passwords. In this situation users have to bypass the password by resetting the BIOS on the motherboard. This is typically done by removing the power cord and CMOS battery, then activating CMOS_PWD reset jumper on the motherboard of the computer. Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It

2736-757: The WINS client has been improved to continue persistently querying multiple WINS servers if it failed to establish the initial session until all of the WINS servers specified have been queried or a connection is established. Network Driver Interface Specification 5 support means Windows 98 can support a wide range of network media, including Ethernet , Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring , Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), ISDN , wide area networks , X.25 , and Frame Relay . Additional features include NDIS power management, support for quality of service , Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and support for

2812-512: The Windows XP Network Setup Wizard. An L2TP/IPsec VPN client can also be downloaded. By installing Active Directory Client Extensions, Windows 98 can take advantage of several Windows 2000 Active Directory features. Windows 95 introduced the 32-bit, protected-mode cache driver VCACHE (replacing SMARTDrv) to cache the most recently accessed information from the hard drive in memory, divided into chunks. However,

2888-490: The Xbox console. It has also been used as the base engine in a variety of free software and proprietary products for various platforms. Several StepMania -based commercial games have been released due to its open nature: StepMania developers conducted StepMix contest for step builders to create stepcharts/stepfiles that can be played using StepMania . StepMix 1, 2, 3, and 4 were run successfully. Participants need to have

2964-546: The vertical blanking interval portion of existing broadcast television signals. Windows 98 had more robust USB support than Windows 95, which only had support in OEM versions OSR2.1 and later. Windows 98 supports USB hubs , USB scanners and imaging class devices. Windows 98 also introduced built-in support for some USB Human Interface Device class (USB HID) and PID class devices such as USB mice, keyboards, force feedback joysticks etc. including additional keyboard functions through

3040-614: The Eastern District of Texas, a district known for its bias for the plaintiff in patent cases. Additionally, they amended their complaint on July 1, 2005, to include the dance game "MC Groovz Dance Craze" (a game produced by Mad Catz to accompany their 3rd party dance mat). Konami primarily claims that Roxor has infringed their dancing game patent rights, but also goes on to claim that the refitting of arcade cabinets "has been done in an infringing and unfair way". On July 10, 2005, however, Konami amended its complaint to include

3116-417: The Groove series. The game was shown in an official beta-testing preview on July 9, 2004, and was officially released in arcades around August 30, 2004. A PlayStation 2 port of In the Groove was released on June 17, 2005, by RedOctane . The gameplay mechanics of In the Groove are very similar to Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series, involving stepping in time to the general rhythm or beat of

StepMania - Misplaced Pages Continue

3192-495: The Groove 2 ), which appear to be spiky, green and yellow holds, must be rapidly tapped (like a drumroll, hence the name) for them to count. Mines deduct score and health if a player's foot is on an arrow when they pass by the corresponding target arrow on-screen. If more than two arrows appear at the same time, the additional arrows are known as "Hands", as players would hit arrows with their hands to complete such steps, though hitting two arrows with one foot also typically works. On

3268-426: The Groove 3 , widescreen aspect ratio support, and Edit Mode. A patch named Song Pack A was later released adding the songs and theme from In the Groove 2 . In the home version, as the player progresses in the game by clearing a certain number of songs, more modifiers, marathon courses, and songs are unlocked. Konami filed a lawsuit against Roxor Games on an infringement of various rights on May 9, 2005, in

3344-560: The In The Groove PS2 game and its publisher RedOctane . On July 25, 2005, Roxor Games filed a counterclaim against Konami. In the counterclaim, Roxor denies the claims in Konami's complaint, stating that 'In The Groove' does not violate patent law and that claiming that Konami has engaged in unfair competition . However, the lawsuit ultimately ended in a settlement. On October 18, 2006, Roxor announced that Konami had acquired

3420-484: The Spinal Shark Collective forked the bleeding-edge branch and continued work on it, branding it sm-ssc. On 30 May 2011, sm-ssc gained official status and was renamed StepMania 5.0. Development on the upcoming version, 5.1, has gone cold over the past few years after a couple of betas were released over at GitHub. Project OutFox (formerly known as StepMania 5.3, initially labeled as FoxMania )

3496-1004: The Web or the user's desktop; these toolbars include an Address Bar and Quick Launch . With the Address Bar, the user accesses the Web by typing in a URL, and Quick Launch contains shortcuts or buttons that perform system functions such as switching between windows and the desktop with the Show Desktop button. Another feature of this new shell is that dialog boxes show up in the Alt-Tab sequence. Windows 98 also integrates shell enhancements, themes and other features from Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 such as DriveSpace 3, Compression Agent, Dial-Up Networking Server, Dial-Up Scripting Tool and Task Scheduler . Windows 98 had its own separately purchasable Plus! pack, called Plus! 98 . Title bars of windows and dialog boxes support two-color gradients,

3572-697: The bulk of user input required. The Windows 98 Startup Disk contains generic, real-mode ATAPI and SCSI CD-ROM drivers that can be used instead in the event that the specific driver for a CD-ROM is unavailable. The system could be updated using Windows Update. A utility to automatically notify the user of critical updates was later released. Windows 98 includes an improved version of the Dr. Watson utility that collects and lists comprehensive information such as running tasks, startup programs with their command line switches, system patches, kernel driver, user drivers, DOS drivers and 16-bit modules. With Dr. Watson loaded in

3648-465: The cache parameters needed manual tuning as it degraded performance by consuming too much memory and not releasing it quickly enough, forcing paging to occur far too early. The Windows 98 VCACHE cache size management for disk and network access, CD-ROM access and paging is more dynamic compared to Windows 95, resulting in no tuning being required for cache parameters. On the FAT32 file system, Windows 98 has

3724-424: The color of the arrow depending on the rhythm of the song). In the Groove offers different modes of gameplay, each with different rules on how songs are selected and played. Dance Mode is the default mode of play. In this mode, a player chooses a number of individual songs to play (the default is three). After the songs are played, the game is over. Marathon Mode is an extended mode of play. In this mode,

3800-524: The computer if a buggy driver is active, so Microsoft supplied instructions for disabling the feature. Windows 98 supports write-behind caching for removable disk drives. A utility for converting FAT16 partitions to FAT32 without formatting the partition is also included, however it is not compatible with DriveSpace . A number of improvements are made to various other system tools and accessories in Windows 98. Microsoft Backup supports differential backup and SCSI tape devices in Windows 98. Disk Cleanup,

3876-538: The core operating system. Windows 98 was the first operating system to use the Windows Driver Model (WDM). This fact was not well publicized when Windows 98 was released, and most hardware producers continued to develop drivers for the older VxD driver standard, which Windows 98 supported for compatibility's sake. The WDM standard only achieved widespread adoption years later, mostly through Windows 2000 and Windows XP , as they were not compatible with

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3952-401: The display of how arrows and other items in a stepchart work. They include Speed Multipliers (to space out the position of the scrolling arrows so less can be seen at once), Perspective (to change the behavior of how arrows scroll, such as having slower-moving arrows at the top and faster-moving arrows at the bottom), and Note (to change the appearance of how arrows look; some Note options change

4028-410: The engine that have been neglected, and to improve and expand its support for other game types and styles. The primary game type features the following game play: as arrows scroll upwards on the screen , they meet a normally stationary set of target arrows. When they do, the player presses the corresponding arrows on their keyboard or dance mat . The moving arrows meet the targets based on the beat of

4104-488: The first three major versions, the Interface was based heavily on DDR's. New versions were released relatively quickly at first, culminating in version 3.9 in 2005. In 2010, after almost 5 years of work without a stable release, StepMania creator Chris Danford forked a 2006 build of StepMania , paused development on the bleeding edge branch, and labeled the new branch StepMania 4 beta. A separate development team called

4180-595: The intellectual property rights to the In the Groove series as part of the settlement to this litigation. The musicians and developers of the game would later go on to create Pump it Up Pro , a spinoff of the Pump it Up series featuring music and features from ITG. In the Groove is built on a complete PC system dubbed the "Boxor" which runs a heavily modified version of the Debian Linux distribution. The computer contains

4256-408: The introduction of DirectMusic, improvements to Asynchronous Transfer Mode support ( IP /ATM, PPP /ATM and WinSock 2/ATM support), Windows Media Player 6.1 replacing the older Media Player 4.1, Microsoft NetMeeting 3.0, MDAC 2.1 and WMI. A memory overflow issue was resolved in which earlier versions of Windows 98 would crash most systems if left running for 49.7 days (equal to 2 milliseconds),

4332-489: The middle of the screen, the game keeps track of a player's current "combo," which is the length of the player's most recent chain of good timing judgements. A player's combo carries over from one song to the next, typically ending at the conclusion of a credit. However, if the player utilizes a USB card to keep track of their scores, their combo will also carry over from one credit to the next. The game has safety nets for players on easy difficulties that allows them to play all of

4408-800: The older VxD standard. With the Windows Driver Model, developers could write drivers that were compatible with other versions of Windows. Device driver access in WDM is implemented through a VxD device driver, NTKERN.VXD , which implements several Windows NT -specific kernel support functions. Support for WDM audio enables digital mixing, routing and processing of simultaneous audio streams, and kernel streaming with high-quality sample rate conversion on Windows 98. WDM Audio allows for software emulation of legacy hardware to support MS-DOS games, DirectSound support, and MIDI wavetable synthesis . The Windows 95 11-device limitation for MIDI devices

4484-495: The player's far side of the screen is a life bar. This is affected by the accuracy judgements the player receives for hitting (or missing) arrows. Most machines have the Auto-Fail feature turned off - that is, any player whose life bar empties during a song can still finish playing that song, but will be failed at its conclusion. All machines will immediately fail any player who stops hitting arrows long enough to accrue 30 misses in

4560-401: The release of its successor, Windows Me in 2000, mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, 2002, followed by extended support on July 11, 2006 along with Windows Me's end of extended support. Following the success of Windows 95, the development of Windows 98 began, initially under the development codename "Memphis". The first test version, Windows Memphis Developer Release,

4636-425: The same area too many times, it will ask the user if it should keep trying or give up. This quirk was removed with Windows Me's version of Disk Defragmenter and will function on Windows 98 or Windows 95 if the user simply copies it over. Windows 98 also supports a Fast Shutdown feature that initiates shutdown without uninitializing device drivers . However, this can cause Windows 98 to hang instead of shutting down

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4712-454: The second quarter. Stacey Breyfogle, a product manager for Microsoft, explained that the later release of the upgrade for Windows 3 was because the upgrade required more testing than that for Windows 95 due to the presence of more compatibility issues, and without user objections, Microsoft merged the two upgrade packs into one and set all of their release dates to the second quarter. On December 15, 1997, Microsoft released Windows 98 Beta 3. It

4788-513: The series. Two home versions of In the Groove were released. The first was released for the PlayStation 2 on June 17, 2005, and was published by RedOctane. The PS2 version contains the Novice mode carried over from In the Groove 2 , Liquid Moon as a fully playable track, and 4 songs from the sequel. A PC version was released on August 16, 2006, featuring 3 songs from the now-canceled In

4864-568: The song. The game is scored based upon how accurately the player can trigger the arrows in time to the beat of the song. The player's efforts are given a letter grade and a number score that tell how well they have done. An award of AAA+ (triple A plus, formerly AAAA or quadruple A) is the highest possible award available on a standard installation and indicates that a player has triggered all arrows with "Flawless" timing (within 0.0225 seconds under official settings ) and avoided all mines and completed all hold (freeze) arrows. An E indicates failure for

4940-479: The songs on their credit without failing out. If the life bar is fully depleted during gameplay, the player fails the song (unless the fail at end of song setting is on), usually resulting in a game over. Otherwise, the player is taken to the Results Screen, which rates the player's performance with a letter grade and a percentage score, among other statistics. Modifiers (also referred to as mods ) change

5016-571: The system tray, whenever a software fault occurs (general protection fault, hang, etc.), Dr. Watson will intercept it and indicate what software crashed and its cause. Windows Report Tool takes a snapshot of system configuration and lets users submit a manual problem report along with system information to technicians. It has e-mail confirmation for submitted reports. Windows 98 includes Microsoft Magnifier , Accessibility Wizard and Microsoft Active Accessibility 1.1 API (upgradeable to MSAA 2.0.) A new HTML Help system with 15 Troubleshooting Wizards

5092-543: The user experience, but there were also a handful of features introduced to enhance system functionality and capabilities, including improved USB support and accessibility, and support for hardware advancements such as DVD players. Windows 98 was the first edition of Windows to adopt the Windows Driver Model , and introduced features that would become standard in future generations of Windows, such as Disk Cleanup , Windows Update , multi-monitor support, and Internet Connection Sharing . Microsoft had marketed Windows 98 as

5168-460: The user through "scanreg.ini" file. The restoration of a registry that causes Windows to fail to boot can only be done from DOS mode using ScanReg. System Configuration Utility is a new system utility used to disable programs and services that are not required to run the computer. A Maintenance Wizard is included that schedules and automates ScanDisk , Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup. Windows Script Host , with VBScript and JScript engines

5244-429: Was facing pending legal action for allowing free downloads of, and planning to ship Windows licenses with, Internet Explorer 4.0 in an alleged effort to expand its software monopoly. Microsoft's critics believed the lawsuit would further delay Windows 98's public release; it did not, and the operating system was released on June 25, 1998. A second major version of the operating system called Windows 98 Second Edition

5320-479: Was available for older machines, albeit only via mail order. The floppy disk version of Windows 98 came on 39 DMF formatted floppy disks and excluded some additional software components that the CD-ROM version might have featured. The original release of Windows 98 was the last version of Windows to be available on floppy disks, as Windows 98 Second Edition was only available on CD-ROMs. Microsoft Plus! for Windows 98

5396-584: Was based on the Windows NT architecture and kernel used in Windows 2000 . The first release of Windows 98 included Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1. This was updated to 5.0 in the Second Edition. Besides Internet Explorer, many other Internet companion applications are included such as Outlook Express , Windows Address Book , FrontPage Express , Microsoft Chat , Personal Web Server and a Web Publishing Wizard, and NetShow . NetMeeting allows multiple users to hold conference calls and work with each other on

5472-521: Was introduced for scanners and cameras and Image Color Management 2.0 for devices to perform color space transformations. Multiple monitor support allows using up to nine multiple monitors on a single PC, with the feature requiring one PCI graphics adapter per monitor. Windows 98 shipped with DirectX 5.2, which notably included DirectShow . Windows 98 Second Edition would later ship with DirectX 6.1. Windows 98 networking enhancements to TCP/IP include built-in support for Winsock 2 , SMB signing,

5548-524: Was introduced to replace WinHelp . Users can configure the font in Notepad . Microsoft Paint supports GIF transparency. HyperTerminal supports a TCP/IP connection method, which allows it to be used as a Telnet client. Imaging for Windows is updated. System Monitor —used to track the performance of hardware and software—supports output to a log file. Windows 98 Second Edition (often shortened to Windows 98 SE and sometimes to Win98 SE or 98 SE )

5624-461: Was later unveiled in March 1999. Microsoft compiled the final build on April 23, 1999, before being fully released to manufacturing on May 5, and publicly released on June 10, 1999. Windows 98 was to be the final product in the Windows 9x line until Microsoft briefly revived the line to release Windows Me in 2000 as the final Windows 9x product before the introduction of Windows XP in 2001, which

5700-588: Was released in January 1997. Memphis first entered beta as Windows Memphis Beta 1, released on June 30, 1997. It was followed by Windows 98 Beta 2, which dropped the Memphis name and was released in July. Microsoft had planned a full release of Windows 98 for the first quarter of 1998, along with a Windows 98 upgrade pack for Windows 95, but it also had a similar upgrade for Windows 3.x operating systems planned for

5776-505: Was the first build to be able to upgrade from Windows 3.1x , and introduced new startup and shutdown sounds. Near its completion, Windows 98 Release Candidate was released on April 3, 1998, which expired on December 31 of the same year. This coincided with a notable press demonstration at COMDEX that month. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was highlighting the operating system's ease of use and enhanced support for Plug and Play (PnP). However, when presentation assistant Chris Capossela plugged

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