Trouble loading some custom simfiles, while others work okay?

I am fairly new to the world of simfiles, and have only been using Stepmania 5 for a few weeks. I'm trying to determine why some custom made simfiles work with the program, while others do not?

(So far, I've had no problem loading the official DDR game songs. Only the custom made songs are giving me a problem.)

For example, the simfiles for song "My Console" (Eiffel 65) look normal when I unzip them. But when trying to load them alongside other custom simfile songs I have in Stepmania, "My Console" does not show up anywhere.

(Here is a link to the file if interested: https://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/viewsimfile.php?simfileid=13992)

Of approximately 90 custom simfiles I downloaded, only 15 have loaded in Stepmania. I'm probably missing a big piece of the puzzle when choosing a song to work with my dance program. Or maybe there are quite a few songs that are just broken or don't work for Stepmania 5? If someone can clue me in, I'd be grateful. Thank you.

Did you download the regular ZIP or the custom ZIP? Either way, I'd just make sure the song files (mp3, sm/dwi, etc.) are in their own folder and that folder is in a group folder. (Example: Songs\DMAxel\My Console\(stuff))

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Hi chewi, thanks for the assist. (And I think I may have downloaded some dance sim files you created, so thank you for making them!)

I just checked my folder organization, and it is layered just as you said: Songs/90s Music/My Console (all the files in here). But that was a good thought in case I botched that.

Regarding the regular vs custom zips, I think the majority of ZIP files I downloaded were custom zips. Maybe I could try redownloading the regular zips if that causes less problems?

When choosing a user simfile to download, do the "SP" or "DP" categories make a difference? I wasn't sure what those stood for, so I overlooked them. (Like with "My Console," there is a difficulty scale for SP but not DP.) I'm just assuming that as long as there is a scale in the "SP" category, it should always work with Stepmania? Just trying to think of anything I might be missing.

The last idea I can think of is that instead of opening each zip file and unloading them one at a time (which for 90 song packs was very onerous), I instead did a mass extract using the windows extraction tool for maybe 70 song zips all at once. I wonder if that could have corrupted the files. I'll try deleting the songs I mass extracted and instead go back to extracting one song zip file at a time.

Either way, I'm really grateful for everyone's hard work on the user simfiles. I'll try a few things and see if redownloading and extracting them may work.

I don't see why not, it wouldn't hurt anything. If anything it would help make sure your current copies didn't corrupt somehow.

SP = Single Play (4 panels), DP = Double Play (8 panels). It only affects what modes the file will show up in.

This might be the issue, maybe try 7-Zip or WinRAR. Windows extraction is hit or miss for me especially when dealing with a lot of files.



Edit: the only other thing I can think of is that some of the files might be so old they don't have a SM file and they have DWI only. In that case, I think you can just go into edit mode and save it again to create an updated SM/SSC. I also heard someone on Reddit say they used itgmania to do that and it worked.

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Ha, thank you! That cleared up the mystery for me. I never thought of the single vs double pad.

Bingo. This was the issue. The standard Windows extraction was not working properly, either due to the number of zip files I was extracting at once, or because Windows itself is so unreliable today. Thank you again, you definitely helped point me in the right direction. This is why I still love forums. You guys are so helpful.

And this is great to know going ahead, in case I do catch files that are missing the SM file. I'm still learning, but I'm getting the feel of things with the software and song files now. Thanks again!