Starting to step some songs

[DissonantMuse]

Yeah, figured I'd been here long enough to start stepping some stuff myself, I've made a couple in the past but they were terrible. I seem to be getting the hang of it now, and it's actually quite addicting. Anyway just wondering if there are any good tips for beginning steppers, I've gotten pretty much the gist of it though, but I'm open to some suggestions. Thanks.

[00Razor00]

Basic tips:

A majority of the community will tell you, DDReam is the way to go (over StepMania) when it comes to stepping and syncing. If you haven't already gotten this amazing program, I'd highly advise you do so. Upon grabbing a copy of it for yourself, you can then proceed to view Patashu's guide on DDReam to read up on the basics, and learn how to work your way through it. You can also view who_cares973's video on DDReam to help get the gist of it as well. Either way, it's one hell of a program to make charts with.

Stick to constant BPM songs. They're the easiest to step, and aren't usually a pain to sync. That way, you'll have less trouble worrying about whether certain parts are off-sync/in-sync as the BPM will always remain the same throughout the entire song.

In my opinion, starting out with easy files and working your way up to stepping more technical things it the way to go. Sure, you may want to step a really awesome song to its fullest potential, but be weary about doing so as you'll have to learn certain techniques such as layering, pitch relevancy, certain theories, etc. etc. before becoming a top notch simfile artist.


Anyway, hope these help. Hopefully you get the grip of things and poop out some decent charts in the near future.

[bmah]

lmao, I must be one of the few who can't seem to use DDream effectively

DDream isn't at all necessary if you're stepping a constant BPM song. I just use the regular SM editor for that. DDream in my opinion is for those songs in which you can't just easily figure out the syncing due to drifting BPMs, multiple BPMs, etc.

Overall, it's best to use both instead of abandoning either one.

[DissonantMuse]

Awesome, very useful tips, thanks. I'll look around a bit and see what works for me. I'll probably just start with the SM editor as I have been, but for more technical songs I might look into other things. :P

[Gundam-Dude]

play a lot of simfiles. the more you play, you'll start to pickup layering techniques and choices some simfile authors do in which you can adapt and try it yourself. personally when I started out, I thoroughly went through several files in the editor at random just to analyze and pickup how -that- person stepped -that- part of a song.

personally, I use a combination of ddream for syncing my files and doing the actual stepping in the editor. stick with constant bpm songs and songs that don't have too many sounds or noises going on at once so you can learn to do selective layering. remember, not everything in a song needs to be layered

[who_cares973]

Step how I step and you'll be golden

[icontrolyourworld]

my tip is make jumpstream files

[tunsz555]

after you can step some stuff submit to the pack and get rejected then repeat until you got accepted

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Something that can help you out is if you find a song that you both enjoy and already has a decent file made for it, copy the BPM and offset, and then step it yourself. Don't worry about being technical and stuff just yet, just step it how you see fit. After you're done, compare the two files and see what you did similarly and what you did differently and go from there. Also, slow down the song when you're stepping, but don't slow it down to the point that you start to hear stuff that isn't even there...0.7x seems to be a good spot.

This guy knows what he's talking about, especially the part in bold.
Start simple and make files that are about right for your difficulty level first, before branching out into stuff that's too easy/hard for you personally.

Also while DDReam is awesome, it's important to remember it's not totally necessary, especially for songs with a constant BPM. People were making great files for years without it lol

[DissonantMuse]

Yeah, I think I've got a pretty good start so far, I'll probably post a vid or something of me playing through the file when it's done. I'm about half way done with the song I'm currently working on.

[who_cares973]

but most importantly step how i step

[DissonantMuse]

alrighty, well after quite some time spent on making this, I have finally completed my first legit simfile. Just trying to get down the basics so don't expect anything too complex, I see a few spots where I would like to change a few things but overall I'm proud of what I have accomplished with this file. I am very open to some constructive criticism, because I'm definitely going to be stepping more songs in the future.

Anyway, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNfE-18EzU

[bmah]

commented on your file in the ffr video database