Project: Ultimate DDR Simfile Creation Guide

Ultimate DDR Simfile Creation Guide

Link coming shortly -- read below to see how you can volunteer!

Current WIP Task List:
Lowers guide -- eataninja
Audio cutting guide -- eataninja
Gfx guide -- t7r
Compile singles simfile patterning posts from ZIV

-What is this?-

A collaborative document that provides links to tutorials about all aspects of simfile creation, and links to any relevant packs, websites, and discords for DDR-style steppers.

-Why are you making this?-

There's a lot of resources for creating DDR-style simfiles out there; however, a lot of these tutorials are either outdated, have broken links & images, or are located in obscure areas that might be difficult for newcomers to find. Thus, with the help of the community, I want to create a centralized document that can answer many newcomers' questions about creating simfiles. This is something that, I think, the ITG community has excelled at over the past few years, and I think we all could benefit from a similar set of easily-accessible resources.

-What will this document cover?-

-- Using ArrowVortex
-- Singles/doubles stepping and patterns
-- Stepping lowers
-- Creating and using stop/slowdown/SM5 gimmicks
-- Creating graphics
-- Creating / adding background videos
-- Using Audacity to cut and equalize music
-- A short list of recommended packs for beginning steppers to study (or just download).
-- A list of open Discords where steppers can ask for help with their charts, and talk with other steppers and players.
-- Any other miscellaneous suggested topics.

-How can I help?-

Fill out the Google Form at the link below and I will DM you on Discord!

https://forms.gle/nvraWhCPcHNgncLP7

Once you express interest, I will grant you edit access to a Google Drive folder where you can add any tutorials, resources, or information. Once there is enough added to the drive, I will either create a table-of-contents page for all resources, or make the drive itself public to the community (TBD). Any future updates will be posted and linked in this thread.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! I hope we can work together to create something the entire community can use for years to come .

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I really hope this isn’t abandoned! I’d love to see this guide come out and to inspire new stepcharters out there!!

that would be very helpful for us newcomers
I would like to learn to create better songs and to correct my simfiles since I know that they are very poorly designed and I want to improve in that aspect
I hope you don't leave this forum as it is very useful

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I've done simfiles too but my take seems to be already outdated so I need tor refresh myself on the basics and see where I went wrong and learning on how to improve.

So I'll admit that I got busy and lost motivation with this pretty quickly, haha. Since there seems to be interest, though, and a couple people have reached out to me privately as well, I'm contemplating making a "DDR Simfile Creation Help" discord server as a sort of temporary solution? It would be an easy place to link to guides and whatnot, and would be a place for people to ask general questions that don't get buried in the forums / XX & Contest servers. Lemme put out some feelers today and I'll see what I can do.

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Super!!!
that will be of great help to all

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Having talked this out with a few people: no new discord right now, work on this will resume once Summer Contest ends and a few of us are less busy.

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I've only been playing for a few months, and am interested to see this thread updated as well, so wanted to leave a comment. I found about 258 simfiles I enjoy immensely just going through all the summer contest packs over the last month. Lots of you people seem pretty talented at this. It would be nice to be able to edit my own, and also to make edits to some of the ones I found with songs I really enjoy, either because they are incomplete or lacking a full selection of difficulty options or whatever. Thanks for taking the time.

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I'm aiming to get the wheels turning on this once Summer Contest 2022 ends in a week. The guide was originally going to be hosted on the ZiV Contest Discord, but I'm a little leery about doing that after the recent XX server hack, so it's likely it'll be coordinated on there and hosted on a Google Drive somewhere.

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It's a shame that this might be abandoned, I've always wanted to try to make good-quality charts but the tutorials are very out of date..

It's not abandoned at all. Updates are posted more frequently on the Discord server.

Whoops! Misread the thread title!

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Just a note - I found this thread via Google and since it didn't have any great resources, I looked around a bit more. I think the best resource I've found recently is this Discord, which contains a lot of guides.

Hope it helps!

https://discord.gg/5MttFD8MP6

This could be really useful, i create stepcharts for fun for at least 5 years i always struggles with sync bgvideos, adding gimiksand cut songs