IIDX General Info

Text borrowed from the beatmania/IIDX/III FAQ on Bemanistyle, originally written by Kimcicle and updated by rmz. Money score section incorporates text taken from the beatmania IIDX Wikipedia article.

How does the grading scheme for beatmania IIDX work?

The grading scheme, or called DJ LEVEL, is determined by the player's EX Score. The formula to calculate an EX Score is the total number of Perfect Greats multiplied by two plus the number of Greats. To determine the grade, the player must first calculate the maximum score by multiplying the total number of notes for a song by 2, then the player have to use the EX Score to divide it by the maximum obtainable score and multiply by 100 to determine the percentage.

The grades are split into eight levels, from the highest rank of AAA to the lowest of F grade. Each grade above F is separated by one-ninth of the score (for example, getting AAA will require at least 8/9 of the score, while getting less than 2/9 will result in F). In beatmania (2006), these rank criteria were lowered by 1/9 each.

What the heck are people talking about when they use a towel with beatmania IIDX?

Toweling can help to simulate higher speeds in the notes falling. For most players, playing songs at a comfortable rate is usually somewhere in between two high speeds or even beyond the highest speed available. By shortening the amount of time you do see the notes, you can simulate a controllable high speed.

As of HAPPY SKY and IIDX RED CS, you can use the SUDDEN+ modifier, which achieves the same effect within the game interface.

I want to be cool like LISU and use one hand!! Is this a good idea?

Yes and no. The most common way to play beatmania IIDX is to use both hands on the keys and scratching whenever it is needed. However, you should try various different play styles and find one that suits you best.

For example, the current-generation beatmania IIDX top player U*TAKA and South Korean player KKM* both use the left 1P side, while the former top player DOLCE. uses the right 2P side.

What does the DX in beatmania IIDX stand for?

DX stands for Deluxe. The beatmania IIDX machine is actually the second beatmania II machine design. The machine used to make the Tatsujin videos on beatmania IIDX 6th style is an original beatmania II machine, hence IIDX is read as Two-D-X.

Why doesn't (song X) sound the same as (song X on a different difficulty)?

Some songs have different notecharts for the NORMAL or ANOTHER difficulties, and others sound completely different. Although beatmania IIDX 14 GOLD onwards allows two players to play on separate difficulties, both players must play on the same difficulty for these songs.

Here's a list of songs that sound differently when played on NORMAL:

• ANTHEM LANDING
• crew
• GENE
• I Was The One
• Indigo Vision(full flavour hide around mix)
• In the Blackest Den
• Lucy
• murmur twins
• neu
• Scripted Connection
• SHADE
• Spica
• 音楽
• ピアノ独奏無言歌 "灰燼"
• ピアノ協奏曲第1番"蠍火"
• ワルツ第17番 ト短調"大犬のワルツ"

And a list of songs that sound differently when played on the ANOTHER difficulty:

• .59
• 20,November
• 22DUNK
• 5.1.1.
• ANTHEM LANDING
• Attack the music
• BEAUTIFUL ANGEL
• Celebrate
• crew
• Colorful Cookie
• Deep Clear Eyes
• DENIM
• e-motion
• era (nostalmix)
• ErAseRmoToR maXimUM
• Evans
• GENE
• g.m.d.
• GENOM SCREAMS
• GOBBLE
• GRADIUSIC CYBER
• INFINITE PRAYER -floating flock style-
• Innocent Walls
• Karma
• Kick Out 仮面
• LEADING CYBER
• Lucy
• MENDES
• moon_child
• murmur twins
• neu
• PARANOIA MAX～DIRTY MIX～
• Prince on a star
• quell～the seventh slave～
• R3
• R5
• Radical Faith
• REINCARNATION
• reunion
• Schlagwerk
• Scripted Connection
• Sense
• SHADE
• SOMETHING WONDERFUL (CS 6th style only)
• Spica
• THE BIG VOYAGER -INFINITE PRAYER REINTERPRETATION-
• The Dirty of Loudness
• THE EARTH LIGHT
• THE SHINING POLARIS
• Zenius -I- vanisher
• 華蝶風雪
• ワルツ第17番 ト短調"大犬のワルツ"

The following songs sound different when played on Double or 2 player mode without the Battle modifier active:

• 20,November
• crew
• GAMBOL
• GOBBLE
• LOVE SO GROOVY
• OVERDOSER
• The Dirty of Loudness
• X-DEN
• 仮想空間の旅人たち

The following songs have the same sounds across difficulties, but with different BPM scrolling speeds when played on other difficulties:

• ÆTHER
• EBONY & IVORY
• empathy
• FUTURE is Dead
• Little Little Princess
• TITANS RETURN

Due to a glitch in tricoro, 音楽 could be played on different difficulties by both players, resulting in the song being unplayable. The glitch was fixed during the release of SPADA.

What is money score?

Money Score is the score out of 200,000 you get on a song that has nothing to do with anything, and is the basis for high scores in arcade mode.

Given a solid play of a given song, a money score around 154,000 indicates an A, 171,000 indicates a AA, and 188,000 indicates a AAA. These are rules of thumb, not hard facts--money score gives some points for goods, while EX score gives zero points for a good. However, it can be mathematically shown that any score of at least 188,888 is guaranteed to be a AAA, and any score of 177,777 or better is guaranteed to be a AA, and so on.

Money score also includes a penalty for breaking combo; again, this does not affect EX score. This means that if you do not full combo a song, your money score will appear artificially low. It is possible for one player to get a higher money score but a lower EX total if the scores are close.

By "good-attacking" a song and maintaining combo, it is possible to get a fairly high money score but an EX score very close to zero. In fact, if a player can achieve all GOODs on a song, s/he will get a money score of exactly 70,000 despite having an EX score of zero.

It is very possible for a player to achieve a score of over the maximum of 200,000 by utilizing the various bonuses awarded for special conditions, such as the border bonus, all-great bonus, or a combination of the two.

BMUS doesn't record highest EX score; it records highest money score. If you are playing BMUS and entering scores on VJA, you may find that on slight score increases, your EX score actually decreased. The converse is also true--you will occasionally play a song and get a lower money score, but a higher EX value. You may wish to manually calculate your EX score after every play to make sure you're not short-changing yourself.

The name "money score" comes from the fact that in the early beatmania game, your score was called "money", and even included a dollar sign by your score, presumably to represent the riches you make as a DJ. Many people still refer to them as this, even though it's not been referred to in-game as such for ages.

Money score was removed from beatmania IIDX in beatmania IIDX 28 BISTROVER.

How is your money score calculated?

The scoring system used in IIDX has remained consistent throughout the series. In addition to EX Score, or Expert Score, the player can also accumulate up to 200,000 points for any song. This breaks down into 150,000 points for the individual notes and 50,000 awarded incrementally as a combo bonus.

Each note that is successfully hit (with a Good, Great, or Perfect/Just Great) awards points based on the following algorithm:

Let N = note count

Let B = 100000 / N

Let C = current combo including note

Let V = 50000 / (10 * N - 55)

Let S = Point total added to your cumulative score

If your combo is 10 or less:

GOOD: S = 0.2 * B + (C - 1) * V

GREAT: S = 1.0 * B + (C - 1) * V

JUST GREAT: S = 1.5 * B + (C - 1) * V

If your combo is 11 or more:

GOOD: S = 0.2 * B + 10 * V

GREAT: S = 1.0 * B + 10 * V

JUST GREAT: S = 1.5 * B + 10 * V

Extra Bonuses

• Border Bonus (Pass with exactly 80% without Hard modifier): 5,730 points
• Bonus for a full combo with zero goods: 3,110 points
• Bonus for a perfect score of 200,000: 4,620 points
• Bonus for a full combo with zero goods AND finishing with 80%: 11,900 points

During gameplay, the cumulative total is stored in floating-point format, but displayed as an integer. This is evident by the occasional rounding error in final scores, causing them to be one point short. Exact information regarding the format and rounding algorithm is not known currently.

Notes:

• Due to a software bug, IIDX 7th Style CS awards the 4,620-point bonus for results which only qualify for the 3,110-point bonus.
• The Extra Bonuses are no longer awarded as of beatmania IIDX 19 Lincle.

What are the actual values of the high-speed settings?

The actual scalar values for the high speed options vary between styles. This table shows the correlation between the high-speed index and actual speed increases on old versions of IIDX. The number after the "x" designates the factor by which the notes are spaced out, or compacted. Blanks indicate that that setting is not available on that particular version.

CS	3rd	4th	5th	6th			7th, 8th, 9th	10th	IIDX RED - EMPRESS	Sakura (8th), PSM (9th)*
AC					5th, 6th	7th - 10th	RED	HAPPY SKY	DistorteD - Lincle
Low-Speed 2	x1/3	x1/3	x1/3
Low-Speed 1	x1/2	x1/2	x1/2	x1/2	x1/2
Normal / HS0	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1	x1
Hi-Speed 0.5								x1.5	x1.5
Hi-Speed 1.0	x2	x2	x2	x2	x2	x2	x2	x2	x2	x1.5
Hi-Speed 1.5								x2.25	x2.25
Hi-Speed 2.0	x3	x2.75	x2.5	x2.5	x2.5	x2.5	x2.5	x2.5	x2.5	x2
Hi-Speed 2.5								x2.75	x2.75
Hi-Speed 3.0	x4	x3.5	x3	x3	x3	x3	x3	x3	x3	x2.5
Hi-Speed 3.5								x3.25	x3.25
Hi-Speed 4.0				x3.5			x3.5	x3.5	x3.5	x3
Hi-Speed 4.5									x3.75
Hi-Speed 5.0									x4.0

• Note: Special cases exist for such songs as 250bpm (4th Style), SAKURA (8th Style) and PARANOIA Survivor MAX (9th Style) in which the actual speeds are slightly reduced.

Starting with tricoro, the high-speed settings are the multipliers, going from x0.50 to x4.00 in 0.25 increments, or x0.50 to x10.00 in 0.01 increments if FLOATING HI-SPEED is enabled.

Starting with Rootage, there are 10 discrete HI-SPEED settings and they ignore song BPM, though scroll speed will still be affected by BPM changes.

In HEROIC VERSE, FLOATING HI-SPEED use 0.25 increments instead of 0.5, re-enables CLASSIC HI-SPEED and expands Rootage's HI-SPEED to 20 settings.