What keeps you using 3.95?

[Dj_Ossa]

Awesome!

[Xx{Fallen}xX]

I keep using 3.95 because I don't feel like getting used to the subtle timing shift on sm5

[GammaBlaster]

ok real talk

I still use 3.9+ for offline play because..........

...I like XI Black R2

/runs

[xVaLoRx]

u have good taste in themes gamma (:

[YaBoySM]

it just runs faster for me, I have problems getting decent scores in SM5 even after using it for like a month or two and even played around with different cmods but I always got better scores on 3.95 for some reason.

edit:

Originally Posted by Xx{Fallen}xX

I keep using 3.95 because I don't feel like getting used to the subtle timing shift on sm5

this actually explains a lot I didn't even know there was a timing shift in sm5 but i still can't get used to it

[GammaBlaster]

HOLY SHIT YABOY IS BACK PogChamp

tbh, I really don't like 3.95, in fact, I'd rather SM5 ultimately, but since 3.9+ is an option alongside with XI Black R2+, I've stuck with it ever since.

[YaBoySM]

hello

I have problems doing good in Xi Black for some reason, it is a really good looking theme though

[GammaBlaster]

it's probably the bottom bar being a lot more thin compared to the default themes, I ended up preferring the thin bar a lot more since I can parse patterns a lot more easier

[Brilliant Dynamite Neon]

Lua is a very efficient language, so maybe what happened before SM5 is that the timing windows were being pushed slightly late by slow code, allowing the player to fall slightly behind the music with no penalty (which in my experience is far more common than jumping ahead of the music). This would also have appreciable effects on things such as calibration and sync. Perhaps when SM5 came along, the inefficiencies that affected the timing windows weren't there anymore, and so the timing became more accurate...but they'd definitely feel all fucked up to players who've been used to the old 3.95 timing, and it'd also mean that song syncs/global offsets/input lag compensation might be off too, furthering the fuckup.

Even if the timing shift didn't happen exactly as I've described it here, it seems that it would have similar consequences. This needs more detailed investigation...maybe we need to build a "tapper machine" to test things, haha.

--

What I find most interesting about this thread is the revelation that SM5 is particularly not performing well on certain video cards and such. See here and here.

Performance is a legitimate issue and a good reason not to switch, but when SM5 plays nice with one brand of video card and not another, or running flawlessly on cheap and/or old hardware (mine included) while choking on big gaming rigs, it's obvious that the problem runs deeper than just "SM5 is overhyped bloatware lol"

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by Brilliant Dynamite Neon

What I find most interesting about this thread is the revelation that SM5 is particularly not performing well on certain video cards and such. See here and here.

Performance is a legitimate issue and a good reason not to switch, but when SM5 plays nice with one brand of video card and not another, or running flawlessly on cheap and/or old hardware (mine included) while choking on big gaming rigs, it's obvious that the problem runs deeper than just "SM5 is overhyped bloatware lol"

if you read the whole conversation you would have noticed that the reason stepmania ran bad for kommisar was because sm5 used his internal intel inside card as default video card which resulted in the lag, there is nothing about it being worse on diffrent cards, ton of people that run it with nvidia runs it fine, like I said before while it might differ for other people I get better preformance with sm5 than 3.9 on older hardware

[dAnceguy117]

Originally Posted by Jousway

if you read the whole conversation you would have noticed that the reason stepmania ran bad for kommisar was because sm5 used his internal intel inside card as default video card which resulted in the lag

I mean I know you're right and all, but this tone is very unnecessary, friend.

Originally Posted by Jousway

there is nothing about it being worse on diffrent cards, ton of people that run it with nvidia runs it fine, like I said before while it might differ for other people I get better preformance with sm5 than 3.9 on older hardware

ok, so you're ruling out different makes/models of video cards (given roughly the same tier) as a possible explanation for why results may vary for people on different hardware. makes enough sense to me, but for the sake of contributing, could you provide your thoughts on what *is* likely to be causing these discrepancies in performance?

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by dAnceguy117

ok, so you're ruling out different makes/models of video cards (given roughly the same tier) as a possible explanation for why results may vary for people on different hardware. makes enough sense to me, but for the sake of contributing, could you provide your thoughts on what *is* likely to be causing these discrepancies in performance?

there is nothing in hardware diffrence that can result in bad perfomance, everyone has them just some people notice them better, like oscarface has a 144hertz monitor so he can easy notice lag, the lag also happens because of dumb reasons like not setting the audiodrive to waveout, and other programs can result in lag like skype notifications, its is how windows works and newer versions of windows have more of these issues, I dont have any of these OS related lag isues myself on linux
as for why the lag happens thats easy its lua
micro lagspikes are created by the smallest things, like when updating the score from AAA to AA which can be called resulting in a micro lagspike, oscarface and I have had conversations about these micro lagspikes many times, also a ton of themes use a ton of lua calling a ton of stuff from the engine making it heavier,
when I said that sm5 runs better than 3.9 its when I use my quadtest noteskin and my barebone theme compaired to the default 3.9 theme, because my theme has so little stuff its pretty light, same for ultralight, 3.9 uses so many images that it loads and put on the screen becasue there is no code to reuse just 1 image and change is slightly, like header is its own image for every single screen, like in 3.9 default is the basic fallback theme and is so bloated with so many unesesary files to redirect stuff to make stuff work, in sm5 we use the _fallback theme, a theme made for themes to be based on, and is light as hell becasue it has basicly no images aside from fonts and a few others like judgement also the stuff doesnt need to exist and we just use lua to make stuff we can reuse images with code and use quads instead making it a ton lighter, so while lua does make the game heavier it can also be used to make it lighter

[blazziken]

Sm5 dont works on my windows xp , it says me that stepmania 5 is not a win32 app , or something like that

[lurker]

i would recommend not expecting new programs to work on a dead OS

[blazziken]

Originally Posted by lurker

i would recommend not expecting new programs to work on a dead OS

ik , just this is the reason that keeps me using stepmani 3.95

[iCeCuBEz v2]

i cant ma on any other theme besides default sm 3.9/3.95

[foxeS_]

I use stepmania 3.95 b/c Windows XP

[Brilliant Dynamite Neon]

Originally Posted by Jousway

as for why the lag happens thats easy its lua
micro lagspikes are created by the smallest things, like when updating the score from AAA to AA which can be called resulting in a micro lagspike, oscarface and I have had conversations about these micro lagspikes many times, also a ton of themes use a ton of lua calling a ton of stuff from the engine making it heavier,
when I said that sm5 runs better than 3.9 its when I use my quadtest noteskin and my barebone theme compaired to the default 3.9 theme, because my theme has so little stuff its pretty light, same for ultralight, 3.9 uses so many images that it loads and put on the screen becasue there is no code to reuse just 1 image and change is slightly, like header is its own image for every single screen, like in 3.9 default is the basic fallback theme and is so bloated with so many unesesary files to redirect stuff to make stuff work, in sm5 we use the _fallback theme, a theme made for themes to be based on, and is light as hell becasue it has basicly no images aside from fonts and a few others like judgement also the stuff doesnt need to exist and we just use lua to make stuff we can reuse images with code and use quads instead making it a ton lighter, so while lua does make the game heavier it can also be used to make it lighter

That explains why I get better performance with Simply Love.

It's also probably worth mentioning that I recently tried out the 5.1 alpha build, with the entirely new noteskin and gamefield systems, and I ended up having to recalibrate my global offset because notes were consistently arriving early.

EDIT: Oh and I did see that last post Jousway, he just said before that he had played and heard from people on different setups, but apparently it doesn't hold true in all cases. Just being a doof as usual

[Jousway]

Originally Posted by iCeCuBEz v2

i cant ma on any other theme besides default sm 3.9/3.95

there is a 3.9 default theme port in the works for sm5 https://github.com/ListenerJubatus/SM-ThreePointNine

[Mad Matt]

Originally Posted by Brilliant Dynamite Neon

Lua is a very efficient language, so maybe what happened before SM5...

All timing code in SM is, and always* has been, handled through C++, which is wildly faster than Lua. I'll echo what Jousway said in that inefficient/excessive Lua is actually one of the biggest causes of lag in SM5. It certainly lends a lot of flexibility, but it comes at a cost.