EKS-D ParaPara is a North American, U.S. parapara organization and dance troupe founded in 2006. The acronym EKS-D is not only a phonetic spelling of the emoticon XD, representing the group’s fun-loving nature, but also stands for Energetic, Kinetic, Synchronous Dance — a quirky but light-hearted description of parapara dancing. EKS-D currently has two branches: EKS-D Prime — the founding and parent branch based in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas, which serves Oklahoma and Northern Texas; and EKS-D Southeast — Prime’s sister branch based in Atlanta, Georgia, which serves Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, North & South Carolina, and Northern Florida.

More information can be found on the official EKS-D ParaPara Website.

EKS-D ParaMania is a music and rhythm, dance game with a heavy focus on Japanese parapara dancing. It is inspired by the ParaParaParadise arcade and PlayStation 2 games released in the year 2000. ParaMania is built on top of Project OutFox and offers unique features not available in the original ParaParaParadise games. For the full experience, the official Konami PlayStation 2 controller for ParaParaParadise is supported.

More information is available on the EKS-D ParaMania Website.

Parapara (パラパラ) is a type of Japanese, choreographed dancing that focuses heavily on upper body movements using primarily arms and hands, while generally limiting footwork to a simple, side-to-side step set in time to the beat. Choreographed routines are set to specific genres of electronic dance music, such as eurobeat, techno, and trance, with each song featuring its own distinct set of moves. In the West, some parallels have been drawn to various styles of line dancing, though with a uniquely Japanese flair. Parapara is most commonly performed as a synchronized, group dance and is closely tied to the Japanese dance club and pop culture scenes.

More information is available at sites such as Wikipedia, EKS-D ParaPara, and ParaParaWiki.

Project OutFox is a fork of StepMania. It focuses on modernizing its codebase to improve performance and graphical fidelity, refurbishing aspects of the engine that have been neglected, and to improve and expand its support for other game types and styles. It is developed by Team Rizu — a team of community veterans and other current members of the current community.

-taken from the Project OutFox Website
(2021/08/01)

An installation guide is available on the EKS-D ParaMania Website. The guide will walk you through the process of installing Project OutFox, adding EKS-D ParaMania to your installation, basic configuration, and updating your installation with new noteskins.

Instructions for adding noteskins to EKS-D ParaMania can be found within the installation guide available on the EKS-D ParaMania Website.

You will first need to have Project OutFox installed on your device. Once Project OutFox has been installed and you have downloaded the simfile files, you will need to properly extract and/or move the simfile files into your Project OutFox installation. Each simfile should consist of at least one chart file (.ssc or .sm) plus a music file (.mp3, .ogg, or .wav). These files should be contained within a folder, most commonly named as the Song Title. Some simfiles may also contain additional sub-folders or files such as images (.png, .jpg, .bmp, .gif), videos (.mp4, .mov, .mpg, .avi, etc.), lyrics (.lrc), assorted meta data files (.txt, .ini, etc.), or scripts (.lua). If a simfile is part of the ParaMania Recommended Groups Index, a recommended installation folder will be shown below the SIMFILE DOWNLOAD button on the individual simfile page, or in the RECOMMENDED FOLDER column on Song Pack/Group pages. These folders will be displayed using the format ..\<SONG_GROUP>\<SIMFILE>. If one is listed, simfiles should be installed in their recommended folders within <OUTFOX_PROGRAM_FOLDER>\Songs. Simfiles without a recommended folder can be installed in <OUTFOX_PROGRAM_FOLDER>\Songs\<SONG_GROUP>\<SIMFILE> but may be updated with a recommended folder at a later time and may need to be relocated to be compatible with the ParaMania Recommended Groups Index.

First download the latest ParaMania Recommended Groups Index (Latest Release: 2021/07/25) DOWNLOAD GROUPS INDEX

Next, unpack the contents of the ParaMania Recommended Groups Index into the your EKS-D ParaMania Theme Folder:  ..\<OUTFOX_PROGRAM_FOLDER>\Appearance\Themes\<PARAMANIA_THEME_FOLDER>\-UNPACK HERE-

The ParaMania Recommended Groups Index can be updated by installing the newest version over the top of the currently installed version and overwriting any existing files.

ABSOLUTELY! Anyone can create a parapara simfile. Creating a simfile will require some multi-disciplinary skills however. It is recommended that you have at least some experience with audio and video editing, basic image editing, and are comfortable using a text editor to manually edit various files. Aspiring parapara simfile creators should refer to EKS-D ParaMania’s Best Practices Guide regarding simfile creation. Remember to be patient when first starting out, especially if you have not previously worked with creating simfiles for StepMania, Project OutFox, or EKS-D ParaMania. Simfile creation will take some time and practice to master. We also encourage you to share your work with us here on the site once it’s done!

Song Packs / Groups listed on the ParaMania Simfile Library are specially curated by our team to work with the ParaMania Recommended Groups Index. For this reason, site members can not publish their own Song Packs / Groups to the site.

If you would like to have a Song Group listed on the ParaMania Simfile Library, or if you feel that your simfile should be included in a pre-existing group, you may submit a request to our team for review. Our team will consider your request and, if approved, we will make the necessary Song Group updates.

To organize simfiles into song groups within your own ParaMania installation, you can place multiple simfile folders within a  <SONG_GROUP> folder inside your  Songs folder. Name each  <SONG_GROUP> folder what you would like it to appear as within the game.

Currently, content created for EKS-D ParaMania is not backwards compatible with its sister project, ParaStar. However, content originally created for ParaStar should work in EKS-D ParaMania.

At this time, ParaStar has been re-released by taikora as a legacy project. The latest available version of ParaStar is v0.4 released in 2009 and built on top of the StepMania SM4 engine.

EKS-D ParaMania on the other hand is under active development and is built on top of Project OutFox. The latest version of EKS-D ParaMania is Alpha 3.5 released 2021/07/17 which has been targeted for use with Project OutFox version 5.3 Alpha 4.9.10 released 2021/08/27.

ParaStar may still be updated and modernized at a later date, however there is no ETA or roadmap for ParaStar updates at this time. For the latest on ParaStar development, visit clubparastar.com or the taikoraLIVE Discord server.