StepMania 5.0.9 released

Hola peeps. I see we have a pretty good release for SM5 now, so I'm gonna transition to make this one my primary version. I do have a couple questions though. I don't know if the website repository they had at first is still available, so if it is, post up the new link so I can reach out and post their as well.

Anyhoo, I'm trying to do some customizing and wanted to know if anyone could lead me in the right direction. First off, it's the lyrics. They show a lil' too high during game play and I wanna move 'em back down. Does anyone know what file would change that, and what section in it would I need to tinker with. I was thinking maybe a metric file somewhere, but wasn't sure. Also, I remember in SM3.9 we could change the font of the lyrics by putting in what font we used as the _lyrics file and it'd automatically use it. I prefer using the font I have as lyrics, so what is the trigger for using another type of font for the lyrics instead of just the default that comes with SM5?

All I can think of right now. Talk lata, and thx!

Lyric position:
Find or add these metrics in the ScreenGameplay section of metrics.ini:

LyricDisplaySetNoReverseCommand=x,SCREEN_CENTER_X+0;y,SCREEN_CENTER_Y+160
LyricDisplaySetReverseCommand=x,SCREEN_CENTER_X+0;y,SCREEN_CENTER_Y-140
# This is used if one player is in reverse and the other isn't.
LyricDisplaySetOneReverseCommand=x,SCREEN_CENTER_X+0;y,SCREEN_CENTER_Y-205

Lyric font:
Modify or add Fonts/LyricDisplay text.redir to point to the font you want, and put your font in the Fonts folder.

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Yep, that did it, much appreciated. I did a lil' tweaking and got it at the right location. Only thing left is to find a working X2 or X3 theme since I kinda prefer that to the DDR 2014 one. Much appreciated for the help!



All righty, figured out a couple more questions for SM5.0.8:

1. I've made changes to the Translation.xml file because I wanted to customize certain artists/titles to show a certain way. Before, we could make changes to this file, clear out the cache and it would appear as we've customized it, however I'm noticing there is no \Cache folder. How would we go about getting any changes to the translation file to take, with no option to "reload" songs under Options?

2. I get the universal sync songs option SM5 brings, however there are some songs that aren't fully synched when playing. Before, when choosing a song, we could hold Start and it would show song options, and player options to keep AutoSync on, but now it seems we have to select F5 each time a new song is chosen. Is this the new norm, or am I overlooking where AutoSync is now?

3. I looked in the Themerdocs folder for the trigger for when you get a AAA w/full combo, etc, however my announcer still doesn't speak when I created the "evaluation full combo W1" folder. Should this be named something differently?

1. The cache is in Stepmania's appdata folder. The docs on stepmania.com lists the locations for all platforms.

2. Press F6 at the beginning of the song until it says it's syncing the song.

3. The conditions for the "try Extra1", "try Extra2" sounds and "evaluation new record" announcer take precedence over "evaluation full combo W1", so if it's playing one of those, that's why it's not playing the one you want. I think you have the folder name right.

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Got it. I know where the AppData stuff is and cleared out the cache.

I meant F6, sorry. I just though there was a way of keeping AutoSync on instead of having to retrigger it each time, but okay.

I'll try the "new record" announcer as well, since all the songs are registering "new" in SM5. Thanks again!

I don't know if this is reported but the announcers don't say the 1st stage, 2nd stage, extra stage, etc. comments. This is not implemented in SM5? Thanks!

Themers can include them via LoadActors.

Did you mean this?


It work, but the announcer will be a fixed file, if you change it, announcer sound won't change, I'll have like that, but I don't like it, it would be better to load like the old system, from an subdirectory in the announcer directory.

If it's not listed in Docs/Themerdocs/announcer_list.txt, it's not a hard coded announcer sound.

Themes can load and play any sound they want, or they can play sounds from announcer folders, including announcer folders that aren't listed.
If a theme calls "SOUNDlayAnnouncer('watman')", then the engine will search the current announcer for a folder named "watman" and play a random sound from that folder.

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All righty, a couple new questions:

1. Is there a way to change it so that "misses" don't combo, or add to a combo. I noticed that if you just let the game play, hit no arrows, that it combos your misses until you hit an arrow correctly, then does the correct combos.

2. With #1, is there a way to change so that GOOD doesn't add to the combos like before, or is this a theme change? I find it odd that getting a Marvelous, Perfect, Great are combos as usual, but also a Good?! Is that a change made in DDRX3 on down, or an SM5 thing we can customize?

Goods started being counted in the combo in DDR since DDR II (Wii). In StepMania, I believe it's a theme-specific setting.

For the miss I've used this values in the metrics:

Minimum judgment to maintain combo is controlled by [Gameplay] --> MinScoreToMaintainCombo in current theme's metric.ini

So if you set like this:
MinScoreToMaintainCombo="TapNoteScore_W4"

^^ That means that the minimum judgment to maintain combo is Good judgment. W1 is Marvelous, W2 is Perfect and W3 is Great. If you want the classic way ala DDR X3 and below, just set the value to "TapNoteScore_W3".

Goods that add combo started in DDR II (CS side) and DDR 2013 (AC side). I believe DrumMania and PIU behave like that way too.

I believe DanceDanceRevolution (PS3) also uses good judgement to continue combo, although I'm not sure if it came before DDR II (Wii)

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New question:

Disregard my last question. I think I figured out a way to "fool" the game to extend it before the doors close. I just create a dummy/empty step chart and make a freeze arrow at the very end of it to coordinate when the song or video ends.

However, that metric change suggested so that combos don't accrue when getting repeated Misses didn't seem to take. I'll look into it to see if I did something wrong.

Hey guys, mind if I ask a question?

I've been snooping around the "Preferences" file of Stepmania and noticed something odd. I saw an option called "LastSeenVideoDriver=Intel(R) HD Graphics Family" and I found that odd because I've set my uncle's laptop to use the graphics card which is an Nvidia GT 630M whenever I run SM5 on the Nvidia Control Panel.

I replaced the line in the option that said "Intel(R) HD Graphics Family" with the name of the graphics card "NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M".

Then I ran Stepmania and checked the hardware usage using both Process Hacker and HWMonitor. When the game started it ran @ 640x480 and most of the graphics settings were tampered with (I set them all to the highest settings except for Refresh Rate and Vsync off). So I set them back to the way they we're (1366x768, the monitor's max resolution) but when I checked he Preferences file again, it said that it was using the Integrated Graphics!

Then I went for a few rounds while keeping on eye on my hardware monitors and saw that the graphics card was only running at 1.35% load at most and the CPU was doing all the work. It's really hot here in the Philippines and the CPU actually hit 90 degrees Celsius, causing it to thermal throttle.

So I have to ask, Is it possible to force Stepmania to use the graphics card in your system?

Sorry if it's a little long!

SM Version:5.0.7
Theme:CyberiaStyle LAST APPROACH

Hi Kh0ldst@re,

I don't use Windows OS, so my ability to offer advice is somewhat limited, but I'll try...

I looked at the source code that uses that preference, LastSeenVideoDriver. It appears that it's not intended to be set by a user. It exists so that StepMania has some value to compare against when it the program is initializing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What you can try changing is the preference VideoRenderers=

Since you're using Windows OS, that preference will probably look like

VideoRenderers=d3d,opengl

I'm fairly sure that is the default configuration for Windows users. You should try changing the preference to:

VideoRenderers=opengl,d3d

This will cause StepMania to try using OpenGL first, and fallback on Direct3D if necessary. In general, StepMania works much better if you can use OpenGL, but (I guess?) not every video card supports it (though that seems fairly unlikely...).

I'm actually not sure why SM for Windows defaults to using Direct3D first. The reason is probably historic, stemming from the 3.9 era and it probably hasn't been changed since. But that's just a guess.

Anyway, try my suggestion and let us know if it's any different/better. My hope is that that will be better for you.

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I tried it and SM did run on OpenGL. But when I checked Process Hacker it showed the the CPU was still doing most most of the work and the GPU was only at about 5% load at most.

But there's 3 things I want to point out:
1.I had "Keep Textures in Memory" enabled.

2.I play with BGAnimations enabled when playing.

3.When I was using D3D and I set the small speed increment to 10 (or the equivalent of 0.1 in Xmod), I get this string of decimals appearing alongside it in the Song Options Menu. But when I switched to OpenGL, it showed up normally as + or -0.1

Thanks for the help anyways but the problem still remians. I'm currently ony Android right now so I can't do much right now.

If im correct that's because OpenGL instructions are made almost all by the CPU... the GPU doesnt require to do so much, thats why u got high usage on CPU instead GPU... is different when a game that requires DirectX, the main unit in do all the work in that case is the GPU...

example, I got very low usage of my GPU and high of my CPU on Stepmania. But in GTA V for example the GPU gets an usage of 99%...

Each game know exactly how to use your CPU and GPU, and also, the preferences lines are always automatic updated... so if you ar using your NVIDIA card it should update automatic to that one.

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Stepmania doesn't use the GPU much because all the geometry is mutable. There is no fixed geometry that is only sent once. At any time, anything can change shape. So everything is sent every frame.
Additionally, Stepmania has extremely few polys compared to a game like GTA V. That's a silly comparison to make because they're not remotely similar in any way.
I talked to shakesoda about the last few posts a bit:

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