How to start your own stepfile from scratch in Stepmania

[Zybanthia]

How to start your own stepfile from scratch in Stepmania.

First of all, you will need Stepmania.

http://www.stepmania.com/wiki/Downloads

Choose the download corresponding to the operating system you're running, install, and you're off.
NOTE: I am using Stepmania 3.9 as it is considered the most stable version and is the most blatantly available. Feel free to use another version and just adjust the directions of this tutorial for it.

Vista users: you may find it wise to install into the documents folder of the user you are currently running as. Multiple people have had problems with permissions, file virtualization, and whatever else by installing into the default "Program Files" directory, so do that at your own risk.

Next, you will need a song. Stepmania supports OGG and MP3 audio formats. If you have anything else, convert to one of those. Free audio converters are easy to find on the web, just use Google. Once you have this, navigate to the Stepmania directory. The default directory is

C:\Program Files\StepMania

Enter the "Program" directory and run the "smpackage" program. Select the bottom option, "Create Song". Navigate to the songs you want to step and select it. It should successfully create a folder for your song in the group directory "My Creations". Note that the smpackage tool creates a copy of your audio file; it does not move the original.

Now we open Stepmania. The EXE file also resides in the folder "Program" in the base Stepmania directory, probably right next to smpackage. There are plenty of shortcuts everywhere though.

On the main menu, choose "Edit/Sync Songs".

Can't access the menu / find your new songs?

Choose "Options" from the main menu of Stepmania. At the bottom will be an option to "Reload Songs/Courses". Do this. You may also want to disable Fast Load, so that Stepmania will check for changes automatically when you load it (depending on how many songs you amass in your Songs directory, you may decide to turn this back on later if you turn it off). To do that, select "Other Options" in the Options menu. Highlight "Fast Load" and select OFF.

When you select "Edit/Sync Songs", you will be presented with the following screen:



An explanation of the options (whose names are on the left):

Group: Shows all folders in the "Group Folder" like you created in the "Songs" folder (currently it shows "My Creations").

Song: This is the current song you are selecting to edit within the Group Folder. Right now mine is "Solar Force", yours will be whatever you named the Song Folder in the Group Folder.

StepsType: If you want to make a standard 4-arrow level like you see in FFR, dance-single is what you want. There are other types of levels you can experiment with.

Difficulty: You can step the same song multiple times, allowing different difficulties. This selects the difficulty you want to edit or create. You can have up to 6 difficulties for each StepsType of each song.

Source StepsType: You can take other StepsTypes as a template for the new songs you are creating. Again, in most cases you will just want to stick with the default "dance-single".

Source Difficulty: If you have already put steps to a certain difficulty, you can copy those steps directly. Note that these are the steps defined by the Source StepsType.

Action: This is what you will actually end up doing with all of the above options selected.

Now for some examples of what can happen.

Say you have absolutely nothing created. The only Action available to you will be "Create with Blank". This will simply allow you to start putting steps to the difficulty you've selected in "Difficulty", not "Source Difficulty". Source difficulty doesn't matter if you're starting from total scratch on a song.

If you have already put steps to a difficulty you have selected in "Difficulty", you can either "Edit Existing", which allows you to use the editor to put arrows down to the music, or "Delete Existing", which deletes this difficulty's steps from your SM file. Other difficulties will still remain.

If you choose a blank difficulty in "Difficulty" and a difficulty that already has steps in "Source Difficulty", you can do one of three things. "Create from Source by Copy" copies the steps in "Source Difficulty" and pastes them directly into "Difficulty", making the two identical (useful if you want a template for an easier or harder difficulty). I'm not sure what "Create from Souce by Autogen" does, seems to act exactly like "Create from Source by Copy". By the way, the "Souce" typo is not mine. "Create with Blank" is what you use to just start from scratch, like if you're going from a blank SM file.

That's it. I realize that somebody may have made a tutorial like this before, but 1: I can't find it, 2: this is detailed, has pictures, etc and if I'm going to say "check the Stepmania et al forum out for a tutorial" I want to be sure there is a tutorial. I'm not exactly fishing for a sticky because even if this isn't stickied, I'm going to copy and paste the link to this thread if someone asks about how to create stepfiles. This is the most basic thing needed for creating stepfiles, you can't even do it if you don't know this, and I don't want to explain it over and over again.

Okay thank you for your time.

[CrunkaMOFUKKalicious]

Isn't easier to use the Stepmania tools and package Exporter to import a song?
..or am I missing the point of this.?
also, Nice guide

[Zybanthia]

Originally Posted by CrunkaMOFUKKalicious

Isn't easier to use the Stepmania tools and package Exporter to import a song?

See, as I'm writing this, it just seems like there should be a wayyyyyyy easier way, but every time this question gets asked, no one suggests something like this. Personally, I didn't even know about it, and I guess a lot of people don't? Or I'm dumb. But I'm going to check it out right now and then probably update the part that requires you to create the .sm file from scratch.

Thanks man.

[trumaestro]

Originally Posted by CrunkaMOFUKKalicious

Isn't easier to use the Stepmania tools and package Exporter to import a song?

yes. takes like two seconds and you don't have to open notepad.

plus you can make a shortcut to it on your desktop so that you don't have to go digging through the program folder of stepmania more than once.

[Zybanthia]

Okay, updated that. Thanks.

[who_cares973]

needs an in depth guide of the editing screen

[Zybanthia]

I'd figured there are already stickied tutorials on that. I could make another with screenshots and everything else, but it would probably need to be its own thread. It's sort of a different task, and has its own share of details.

If somebody wants to make one, go for it, otherwise I can do one tomorrow.

[who_cares973]

as far as i know there isnt one but then again i havent looked lol

[Zybanthia]

Well, I guess I'm thinking that there are guides to making a good file. Tomorrow I'll put together something that tries to go in detail about the many things you can do in the editor, but I don't know everything as it is.

The editor is kind of basic though because you can say "just hit F1" and cover a lot of stuff, but I guess there are some things people wouldn't know.

[who_cares973]

most people dont know about F1 though lol and im pretty sure very few people know about tab which is a life saver

[Zybanthia]

Haha, for the most part I just use Page Up / Page Down.

But maybe most people don't know about that either.

[who_cares973]

let me check to see what you can cover in the guide


EDIT: Alt+1 and 2 is the same as 3 and 4

the tab funtion and pretty much everything mentioned when pressing F1 with screenshots

[juganot]

how do you establish the bpm of a song simply looking for it on google or something?

[Oubliette]

Originally Posted by juganot

how do you establish the bpm of a song simply looking for it on google or something?

There are programs on the internet you can download that can find the BPM of a song out for you, a popular one used by many is called MixMeister BPM Analyzer but sometimes the BPM found may not always be right, its pretty good for a song with the same speed throughout the song.

[Patashu]

use Mixmeister BPM and round it to the nearest 0.05, use that. if as you're stepping the song it drifts off very fast the bpm is erroneous, get out a stopwatch and time out 16/32/more beats, divide the duration by the no. of beats (gives you seconds/beat) than divide 60 by that (minute/(seconds/beat) = beats/minute) to get a bpm approximation. if it takes ages to drift off though don't worry, you only need to adjust it a bit

[QED Stepfiles]

The majority of songs I've had experience with had bpms that fell on precisely a whole number... so yeah once you have the bpm within the general ballpark it's not too difficult to extrapolate and guess the exact bpm (for most songs at least).

[Patashu]

watch out for gimmicky bpms like 222.22 (Freedom Dive) or 123.45 (Macgravel's Starlight) tho

[dore]

that smpackage thing is awesome I wish I had ever heard of that

however it makes it in My Creations which is a ****** folder and I refuse to acknowledge its existence

back to the long way

[CrunkaMOFUKKalicious]

If the song has constant BPM changes (EX: The Rails) Use DDReam studio.

[DJAirWave]

Originally Posted by Oubliette

There are programs on the internet you can download that can find the BPM of a song out for you, a popular one used by many is called MixMeister BPM Analyzer but sometimes the BPM found may not always be right, its pretty good for a song with the same speed throughout the song.

Or simply use and online counter. It varies since you have to tap the key to the song yourself, but it helps alot once you get locked onto the correct BPM.