Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

The best thing you can do for your simfile is find the correct BPM and offset, and slow down the rate of the song sometimes to make sure you get the tricky stuff correct (whether something is 24th or 32nd, etc). There are plenty of FAQs in the Stepmania forum here.

As for the question, my favorite simfile artist is here is probably hi19hi19. In my opinion, he is the most consistent with delivering good stepfiles.

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...ad.php?t=72047 <-- For making a file for FFR.

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...ad.php?t=82080 <-- For making a simfile for Stepmania. Read it even if you're stepping a song for FFR; it's very helpful.

Also, "Best Simfile Artist" is purely subjective.

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

i'd say the accepted top2 simfilers are behanjc and jimerax. pretty much every single file they submit is quality and well received by the users. other quality simfilers are bluguerrilla, patashu, silvuh, dore, hi19hi19, and a pretty long list of others [so don't be mad at me if i didn't include you!]

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

okay here are some sweet tips

when you're in the editor hit enter, and go to song options. See the rate and assist tick? Turn them on. Turn autoplay on too. Now place down some 4th notes. If they're not on the beat, use F11 and F12 to adjust the second those notes are on (watch the value in the upper right) until they're dead on when you play it back.
If rate 0.3x is not slow enough for you, you can edit the metrics to add in rates 0.2x and 0.1x for even more pedantic syncing

oh and if the bpm's giving you trouble, use mixmeister bpm finder (google it) and round off to the nearest rational value (it's a tiny bit off most of the time). if that doesn't give you the right value then there's a bpm change somewhere in the song and you'll have to work it out by hand, to do this you can run a stop watch for the time it takes 32 (or whatever) beats to happen. Divide that number by 32, you have the duration of one beat. Divide 60 by that number, you have the bpm for that segment. When the bpm changes simply do this again to find the new bpm, but if it's changing constantly find a value that's approximately right than add a bpm change to increase it/decrease it if you see it start to drift off, yeah songs like this are a bitch to sync so only start if you think you'll see it through

the goal of a simfile is to provide an experience that emulates the music it goes to in a pleasing and consistent manner while being fun to hit in its own right. techniques you can employ to aid in this are pitch relevancy, layering, consistent keysounding... but remember that making a simfile is ultimately an artform and sometimes breaking the rules works (see: kil files)

your thought process should be something like this: find the rhythms of all prominent instruments for any given section and layer them in a technical, pitch relevant manner. simplify patterns, layering or remove chords/instruments as is necessary to make the difficulty of the file roughly consistent but still raising/lowering with the song's intensity (for instance if your layering style suddenly crapped out a glut of triples you'd reduce them to jumps)

edit: OH if you're not sure what pitch relevance is, go to the rock section and play 'Guitar vs Piano'. take note of the way patterns are arranged, columns are repeated when the guitar/piano plays the same pitch within a sufficiently small segment. pitch relevance is again ultimately an artform as you only have four columns to work with as opposed to the hundreds of different possible pitches an instrument can express, experiment with it

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Oh, well thanks for advice everyone, I see the name hi19hi19 mentioned by two different people, this person must be good =o. I really like the spacy trance and veterian snare type songs, like in keyboard mega pack 1 and 2, oh and theres this pack I have called Ultimate Simfile pack or something like that, and it has this song called "Contain".

I like that song, I also like alot of songs from DJSHARPNEL, such as:
-Exciting Hyper Highspeed star (Sorry if I don't have the exact song name right, but I'm just being lazy right now don't want to check it)
-Strangeprogam(For the challenge really, not so much for the song D
-Lawn Wake 5 and 7(was that DJSHARPNEL??? >_>;
-Shine bad
-Snows(Prototype 2)
-Be Princess
-20031023(esp. this one )

So umm, yeah this also brings me to a new question, what type of music do most people generally like being stepped? Techno, club rave, progressive trance, rock, pop, hip hop, R&B, Rap??? x__x

Also... Thanks for your post Patashu, but I think I'm still a little too noob to understand some of the things you mentioned such as:
-pitch relevance(although ima look up the link you gave shortly after I post this reply.)
-"you can edit the metrics to add in rates 0.2x and 0.1x "(I didn't know that, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that ^_^;; like what folders to go through to find that metric file thingy..?)
-" simplify patterns, layering or remove chords/instruments as is necessary to make the difficulty of the file roughly consistent but still raising/lowering with the song's intensity (for instance if your layering style suddenly crapped out a glut of triples you'd reduce them to jumps)"( I don't get the "layering" whats that mean? x.x but I'm GUESSING that what you're saying is like, how in the song "Holic" They have parts of the song where it just sounds and feels right to have the same note repeated twice so its all close together and it feels like you're playing the song...is that kinda what that paragraph was about?)

Sorry about my long post D; ack! but I greatly appriciate all your advice and help thank you! >.<v

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Layering is just when you layer (hence the name) multiple sounds on top of each other to get a feel for the whole song at any given time. Sometimes if you stick to a really strict layering scheme you'll end up with some patterns that are horrible to play, and he's just saying that it's good to simplify those to something more playable when that happens.

Electronic music is generally the best for a beginner to step because the tempo remains constant and you're not battling with the band to keep the arrows in-sync. Songs played live by human musicians will fluctuate tempo making it hard to keep onbeat, so classical and rock files tend to be the hardest to make. There are lots of techno files out there but any type of music can make a good file as long as it has interesting rhythms and rhythmical variety. Popular music tends to make the worst files because of its reliance on repetition and simplicity so that the general public can get into it, while more progressive music, though harder to step, will make for more a fun and interesting file.

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Hmm, I'd figure so.. I've tried to work on "Gazette - Zetsu" but it seems to like, get off beat later into the song, I'm not sure if this is my fault, or the song itself just ends up changing BPM.

Also, does putting in pauses/freezes in edit mode(displayed with yellow numbering) mess up timing like, could it change the offset making the rest of the notes following it off-timing?

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

I think a lot of people have expressed an interest in seeing less techno stepped, but it's done so because it's the easiest to find good files in so feel free.
like most mainstream rock isn't good for stepping and is often non-constant bpm, rap usually isn't good for stepping, etc
be on the lookout for promising potential from any genre though

pitch relevance is choosing the patterns when following an instrument with pitch to emulate the changes in pitch. for instance when it's ascending you might have patterns that feel like they're going to the right (12341234, 13241324, 123423123423 etc), when it's descending you might have patterns going to the left, if it's repeating a three pitch pattern over and over you repeat three columns appropriately, if it's repeating the same pitch so do you, if it's alternating between one pitch and random other pitches you'd have it on that one pitch whenever it is to make a runningman pattern (and the other notes rising/falling/repeating as appropriate), etc. like I said it's an artform, especially when you're layering other things in and it all has to compete for the same space

okay, for stepmania 3.9 at least, go to Stepmania\Themes\(themename)\
Open up metrics.ini, ctrl+f for 0.3x. Now edit it so that entries for 0.2x and 0.1x come before it and renumber it all accordingly, for example I might change this:

to this:

(don't forget to make sure that the first line now reports that there are now 20 entries for rate, or it'll screw up)

save and go into the languages directory, open up english.ini (or the language of your choice). again, ctrl+f for 0.3x and before it add the lines
0.1x=0.1x
0.2x=0.2x
and save. And you're done. 0.3x is sufficient for most things but for very fine bursts or freeform patterns it can't hurt


layering is where you step multiple instruments at once. Instead of placing two-note chords ('jumps') to beats you think should be more accented you place them where the instruments you're stepping overlap.

trying to think of a good demonstration of layering...maybe Hero's Theme (w.i.p.) ? the part with the 12ths particularly. oh, the brain of the moon would be another one

you're not limited to two instruments of course, you might choose to layer three, four or more distinctive instruments or sounds at once, but if it randomly and suddenly gets a lot harder you'd simplify or unlayer a bit to keep the difficulty consistent (alternatively, if the music is actually getting more intense for that part you might leave it in!).

edit: yes, putting in pauses will screw up the onsyncness of your file unless it's a rational fraction/multiple of the duration of one beat (that is, bpm/60 seconds), then it will merely shift everything (possibly onto another colour) OR unless the song doesn't follow a constant bpm around that part, or actually does have a pause that changes the timing there. Remember that you can edit the .sm file then reload it in stepmania if you want to edit the third decimal place bpm changes or bpm stops for extra accuracy

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

yes, they offset the song by however many seconds of freeze you add

To combat this, instead of placing stops manually, hold shift to select an area and select "convert beats to pause" in the area menu (accessed by pressing enter) and it will add in a pause relative to the BPM so you don't have to figure it out yourself.

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

oh wow

I didn't know you could do that :learning:

btw what stepcharts would you recommend for demonstrating pitch relevance/layering well? you probably know the song list better than I

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Hey Patashu would you like to train me maybe? I have an idea.

Just like, send me a song file, and ask me to make steps for it. Then when I'm done I'll upload it into this site and you can DL it and try it out and then give me some tips and pointers of the song or whatever, sounds like a good idea to me as far as training would go.

[Of course if you don't want to I totally understand and thanks anyways >w<;]

But if you do however, I guess you can just link me to DL the song you'd test my simfile making abilities on. Anyways thanks for all your help everyone, but I got school tomorrow and umm, hmm, maybe I should start sleeping >_<;;

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

I stopped playing FFR 4srs when the files started becoming actually good so I dunno really, I can vaguely remember a couple files but I forget their names...

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

hmmm okay

step uh this:



bpm's 125.000 and beat 0 offset is -0.086 to save you the trouble

make it as hard or easy as you like, there's potential for both ends imho

Re: Who are the top 5-10 best and favorite simfile uploaders in this game?

Mmk. "Anamanaguchi - Power Supply", got it, sounds fun to work with lol, thanks for the whole offset thing, I'm not sure if I'd been able to guess it for myself! x.x dang this sounds hard, I wonder how I'm going to fit in the first sound with the drum beat and stuff, well I'll report back to you later in the week, I look forward to our next meet. Until then, peace. and good night lol byebye ^w^b