Stepmania 5 Support Questions/Issues?

I know primarily people have posted here for themes, but I wanted to know if anyone was aware of where and how to reach the Stepmania dev team. I've been on the SM website, but it takes forever to actually log on the site, and it errors out even after you log on and you can't really post there.

Regardless, I wanted to bring to the SM team's attention an issue with the bgvids and how they run in SM5. Has anyone else experienced issues with bgvids?

http://code.google.com/p/sm-ssc/

Look at the "Links" part.

This issue you're talking about, please describe it.

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I've been having problems with backgrounds and banners not being detected by the game itself, even though they're in the right folders. And, is there any chance that in the later versions of SM5 to be released, that they will do away with the concept of .ssc files entirely, and simply stick to .sm & .dwi files?

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People with "Fast Load" set to ON tend to have that problems.

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I have Fast Load off, but it's still a problem for me. Is it because of the file formats, probably?

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The issues I've noticed are:

1. I've tested some songs in SM5alpha2 and have scripted the #BGCHANGES for arcade accuracy. However, the videos run only once and don't replay by themselves. Like how if you use Quicktime to watch a video, at the end of the video's run, it stops on the last frame. Also, when the same avi is scripted to run again, the only thing that shows is that same last still frame of the avi, meaning the avi doesn't restart to run. I hope I'm explaining it well.

2. There are some videos that are required to be sped up to 2x or 3x, or slowed down for arcade accuracy. For instance, the song bag, the video bagpipe1.avi has to be slowed down to 0.35 to keep in step with the song. But, during gameplay, the avi only plays at the normal 1x speed. SM5 seems to completely ignore #BGCHANGES speed changes (i.e. bagpipe1.avi=0.35=0=1=0) and only plays it as bagpipe1.avi=1=0=0=0.

I'll also check out the Links you spoke of.

No, since the older formats do not support features added in SM5.
Do you remember how having a simfile with rolls would crash vanilla StepMania 3.9? It's kind of like that.

I'm trying to get rid of pro-timing and get normal judgements but it won't go away.

Any help?

Apply the theme that you had when you activated it. And find hard for it. Try the course mode if it does not show on the regular options menu.

A last resort would be deleting your settings, causing SM5 to load back the defaults. But I don't know which file to delete.

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Which version of SM5 are you using? If you're using SM5 alpha 1 (not 1a), I believe it had an issue with automatically finding graphics that weren't specified in the simfile correctly. Also, I think file formats have occasionally been a problem for someone with jackets (If I remember correctly, JPGs weren't working as jackets for them).

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Then, how can a compromise be reached with the .sm VS .ssc conflict? As much as I like how advanced SM5 is, I hate the very introduction of .ssc files with a passion. It's like it refuses to recognize changes done outside of SM5, because it gives priority ONLY to .ssc files over .sm files when making changes to the data while in SM5's Edit Mode. I want to know how to solve that problem, so that I can make changes with simfiles using both SM4 & 5 without having to cross-reference what changes were preserved between the two versions, so that I can start working on my new songpack.

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Just delete the ssc file when done editing, unless if they have split timings. Isn't that hard?

I think I tried that technique once as a test with some DDR X simfiles, but then for some reason, the charts started to be no longer detected by SM5 (SM5 started thinking that the charts were deleted altogether, and started over with blank charts), but seemed perfectly fine in SM4 as if nothing happened to them.

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StepMania 4 doesn't even look for .ssc files. After you delete the .ssc in StepMania 5, reload your cache and everything should work.

Check and/or turn fast load off both in Song and AdditionalSong folders in Preference.ini, before reloading your cache.

I guess I'll just post this here:

The best way to install StepMania in Windows Vista/7 (with pictures)

Step 1: Go to: http://code.google.com/p/sm-ssc/ and download the latest version of StepMania.



(Oh by the way, alpha 3 just got released)

Step 2: Open the installer, and when it asks where you want to install the program to, change the directory. Here I changed it to C:\. You can install it on your Desktop for all Windows cares, just don't install it in Program Files.



Step 3: Now that you have install StepMania into a more friendly location there's one more thing to do. Open the Start Menu and find the StepMania folder. Inside, you will see Open StepMania 5 Program Folder. Click it.



Step 4: In order to do this, you need to be able to see file extensions. Inside the folder you opened you will see a file called uninstall. Do you see a .exe after the name? If you do, skip to Step 6. If not, click Tools on the menu bar at the top of the window and then click Folder options...

If you do not see the menu bar, click the Alt key on your keyboard first.



Step 5: In the Folder Options dialog, click the View tab then scroll down in the Advanced settings frame until you see Hide extensions for known file types and uncheck it. Click OK to close the dialog.



Step 6: Right-click inside the window and click New in the context menu. Then click Text document. The context menu will disappear and a file called New text document.txt will be added to the folder.



Step 7: Rename the new file (including the extension) to portable.ini. Windows will ask if you want to change the extension, say Yes.



Step 8: Launch StepMania using one of the shortcut links in the folder. When you reach the main menu in StepMania, select Exit to close the program. You will see some new additions to the program folder; Cache and Save.



Congratulations! Not only will StepMania 5 function properly for people without Admin rights, it will also save all its data in that one folder, instead of all over your system where it's difficult to find. Temporary files for all of your simfiles will be placed in Cache. If you have a problem loading a song, especially after you've made a change to it, simply delete the Cache folder completely and launch StepMania again. If you want to make manual changes to your user profile, that data will be in the Save folder.

You can also now move the StepMania folder anywhere you want, another location on your computer, a flash drive, your friend's computer (so long as they're running Windows too), etc... And StepMania will function as it should.

~fin

Thanks for reminding me Aeron, given I kinda started this. I went to the website you posted and chatted with a couple of devs in the IRC chat to make them aware of the avi playing issues.

They are aware of the issues, however the problem stems from the ffmpeg coding that was done to support videos for SM5. The guy who did the coding no longer codes for them (if I remember correctly) and one dev said he really didn't want to downgrade the ffmpeg to an older version. Apparently, they don't know anyone else whom can code to get the avis/movies to play correctly in SM5, and until they can find someone, it's kinda stuck as-is.

That being the case, I'll continue to test SM5, but it won't replace SM3.9 for me...

This is true, but can be easily remedied by selecting "Reload Songs and Courses" from the options menu of the default theme (and many other themes, such as Moonlight).

As others have already pointed out (in posts above), you can alternatively turn off fast load.

Out of personal curiosity, what do you use SM4 for?
EDIT: To clarify, what features does SM4 afford that aren't available in the latest SM5 alpha (3 unless you're using Mac OS)?

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There is no practical use for StepMania 4 outside of certain PC build for certain dance music arcade games...

I'm using a MAC OS, and Fast Load in SM5 has always been turned off on my end. The only problem I have with SM4 MAC is that I can't capitalize the Song Title/Artist during Edit Mode, which I don't really mind at this point.

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