Stepmania Saving Error

So I'm working on a new sim, and when I start a brand new one, I tend to copy an old sim of mine, open the .sm file with Notepad, and edit a few of the top things, like the title, artist, song file, etc. However, after editing these changes in Notepad, I'd open up the sim in Stepmania, and none of the changes would have registered unless it was detecting a whole new folder.

On the other side of the coin, once I make edits in Stepmania and save, those changes aren't reflected in the .sm file and Stepmania won't even do that thing where it writes a new .sm file and turns the old one into a .sm.old file. However, upon shutting down Stepmania and restarting, the changes I made are still there, so I know they're getting saved somewhere. Google and the Stepmania.com FAQ have been of no help to me.

wat do

---

Are you:

running the game on an external hard disk on a windows vista computer?
running the game which you installed on program files on a windows vista or 7 computer?

---

I had the same problem. If you're running StepMania on a Windows 7 computer, the files that were saved but are not updated in the folder will normally be under C://Users/(Whatever user your StepMania is on)/AppData/Local/Virtual Store/Program Files (x86)/StepMania/Songs and then which song it is that you saved. It won't give you permission to move it, as that miiiiiight fuck up the file, but you can always copy it to the folder and overwrite the .dwi or .sm.

As for the other problem... Try to use a shorter simfile, one that you know works and is only, like, three measures of steps. Then change the artist/title/BPM/file path parameters at the top but keep the steps intact. Then, you can just edit it in StepMania without having to make a new folder each time you want to make a file.

This worked, but I'm not sure why I had to go looking for them in the first place. I remember working on a sim maybe a month or two ago on this same computer, and any time I saved, it would save in its usual folder. Don't get why it would suddenly hide itself in a desolate part of my hard drive.

---

Try to turn Fast Load option off.

Edit: include a blank portable.ini file in your StepMania main folder so you can access your Save, Cache and other folders (found in your system users folder), right in your SM main folder (for Win7/Vista users only).

Turning off Fast Load doesn't seem to have done anything.

Also, I have no idea what portable.ini does, so I don't know how putting a blank one in my Stepmania folder would help me. I did, however, find the folder that Stepmania was saving the edited files to and stuck a shortcut to it on my desktop. I know I worked on sims on this computer not too long ago, and everything was working fine, so I don't know why this problem would come up all of a sudden.

---

Tell Windows to make a new Plain Text file in the parent StepMania folder. Rename the file AND the extension of the file to "portable.ini". You're done.

is there a button that says compatibility mode in the folder above everything? If so, you can click that and it will show you extra files.

---

@Zukin-Man: Make a new plain text file via OPENING NOTEPAD FIRST and not via right click --> New --> Text Document. Select Save As Type to "*.*", Encoding option to "UTF-8" and name your file to "portable.ini". Afterwards, put that to your SM main folder.

I know how to make that kind of file. I'm saying I don't know what it does, so I don't know why I need to make one.


Assuming I go ahead with this, do I need to run Notepad as Administrator or can I just do it from the basic user account?

---

either way both work.

The reason why is the presence of that file, even if empty prompts StepMania 5 to save everything in its own folder (including the cache, just like old times), not spread over the system in response to Windows Vista/7 permission issues. Doing this means you should put the StepMania folder somewhere that you have full access to like your own My Documents folder.

I'm still not 100% sure I get it, but I'm just gonna go ahead with this portable.ini thing people keep talking about.

You mentioned Stepmania 5, but I'm still using 3.9. Is this a common problem with SM5?

---

I think it was the assumption you -were- using StepMania 5.

That solved the problem I was having as well. Thanks!