[EyeofEternity]

Originally Posted by trumaestro

How far do you want this converter to go? Do you want it to create actual playable steps? That's probably a bad idea, because you won't like the product.

Do you want it to create a template for you to make stepmania files? Great, but why re-write the serviceable editor already built in?

Does stepmania even support midi? I think your first step might just be to convert the midi to mp3.

Start with reading a .sm file, go read a guide that covers a couple of basics on stepping to see what all the different values are for. Probably a big hurdle would be figuring out BPMs. Or at least doing it automagically.

MIDI is a pretty ideal file type for stepfiles, in essence, every note in a MIDI file is like a hold in StepMania. To convert decently, one would ignore the Note-Off messages, and then keep all the Note-On ones. The timings are also present in the MIDI file, as well as the BPM. To keep the track tidy, you'd use only one track in the file, then split the 127 available notes into quarters, corresponding to the positions of notes in StepMania. In the event that there are 2 notes at the same time, then create a pair of notes, or triplet e.t.c. as needed

I would go into more detail, but it's still an early concept and I haven't fleshed everything out