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StepMania Helper Program

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Post #1 · Posted at 2015-02-14 08:42:21pm 9.1 years ago

Offline echo404
echo404 Avatar Member
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Reg. 2015-02-14


Last updated: 2015-02-15 12:33am
Hi everyone,

This post isn't exactly about Simfiles, but it does relate to the topic, and I wasn't sure where else to post.

I've been an avid StepMania player for about two years now, and because I'm constantly downloading new songs, my song library has grown to an almost unmanageable size.

As a software engineer by trade, I decided to program an application which could help me to manage the thousands of songs I have in my library. The result of this effort is a program I call StepMania Helper. I originally didn't plan to release the software publicly, but I figured it might be useful to others, and I figured it would be a good way to give back to the StepMania community that has provided me with thousands of hours of free gameplay.

StepMania Helper parses all songs in your StepMania library, and then moves songs (according to filters you define) to directories where StepMania won't detect them. The filters that are currently supported are as follows:
- Detect identical songs (duplicates)
- Detect alternative versions of the same song (using song name, artist, BPM, length, and music files)
- Detect songs which cannot be played on a dance mat (jumps that involve 3 notes)
- Detect songs that have inaccurate difficulties (calculates average step densities and then identifies outliers)
- Detect songs that have no difficulties under a specified threshold (too hard)
- Detect songs that have an average BPM over a specified threshold (too fast)

Once the songs have been moved by StepMania Helper, you can do whatever you want with them (delete them, move them elsewhere, or even put them back where they came from).

After parsing all songs, a "StepManiaHelper.bin" file will be created in your songs directory. This file contains binary information about all detected songs, which will be used to speed up program execution if run again. The file is safe to delete, however doing so will prevent subsequent executions from being faster.

The application requires .Net Framework version 4.0, which if you don't already have installed, is available for download from the following link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17718

StepMania helper was designed to be user friendly and stable, but since this is the first public release, you may experience problems. If you would like to report a problem, if you would like to provide feedback, or if you would like to request additional features be added, please reply to this thread, or contact me via email at StepManiaHelper@gmail.com

StepMania Helper is available for download from my dropbox via the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rygjuu03h2xdqyr/StepManiaHelperV1.01.zip?dl=0

Post #2 · Posted at 2015-02-14 09:31:14pm 9.1 years ago

Offline Silver Spirit
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6,580 Posts
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Reg. 2008-09-14

Nintendo Switch Friend Code: SW-2249-7707-55923DS Friend Code: 2578-3309-2697
"i was born at a very young age"
This seems pretty helpful!
One thing I've noticed, though, is that the _LIERS function tends to catch a lot of slow songs simply because of their low speed. Other than that this is working well for me.

Post #3 · Posted at 2015-02-15 12:40:00am 9.1 years ago

Offline echo404
echo404 Avatar Member
2 Posts
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Reg. 2015-02-14


Last updated: 2015-02-15 12:40am
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad it could be of use.

I don't have a lot of slow songs, so I didn't even notice that particular problem. Right now it determines relative difficulty by calculating the average number of notes in each measure. You are correct though, that measure of difficulty is flawed because it doesn't account for BPM. Perhaps I could fix it by multiplying the notes-per-measure by the average BPM?

EDIT: As per Silver Spirit's suggestion, I created a version 1.01 that takes BPM into account when determining the relative difficulty of each song. I've updated the original post to contain a link to the new version. If you're upgrading from version 1.00 to version 1.01, be sure to delete your "StepManiaHelper.bin" file since it contains outdated information now.

Additionally, while I was looking over the code, I realized I was doing some silly stuff that was preventing the program from making good use of the binary file it creates. The first time you run the application it will still take the same amount of time as in version 1.00, but subsequent runs will skip a lot of the unnecessary logic which makes it much faster than 1.00.
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