Stepmania the MIDI editor

[Arch0wl]

So I'm not really sure where to put this but I've been dumping all of my ideas here, so, this is another one.

I've been fooling around with Fruity Loops lately and I find the piano roll layout extremely intuitive. But what I really wish existed was some kind of MIDI editor that had much of the same functionality as the SM editor, with the same functionality as Fruity Loops's piano roll -- you can structure chord progressions, arpeggiate, and so on in Fruity Loops's editor.

The reason I find myself pining for a program like this is because while I can read sheet music, it seems so much easier to sense the overall structure of a song when it's scrolling vertically than horizontally. If you could get this game but as a MIDI editor, with the ability to distinguish rhythms by color like in Stepmania, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

I think there's a market for a program like this -- a whole generation grew up on Guitar Hero/DDR and a lot of people buy Fruity Loops for its piano roll feature alone. You could probably sell it for $30 or maybe even $50+ and make a lot of money off of it.

[arcnmx]

Honestly, just use the existing solutions. Things like Fruity Loops are already designed for doing just that (except with more than 4 keys), so why not take advantage of existing commercial products? They can be used to create charts pretty easily. Harmonix' official way of making note charts for Rock Band is through the use of Reaper, an ordinary music/midi editor. They add a few quality-of-life things to it with a simple plugin but that's not particularly necessary. Hell, use their plugin, the drum visualizer might help.

There's no real need to make editors when great ones already exist for a similar purpose. It would only take a few minutes to put together a midi->stepfile converter, which I've been planning to do if I ever get into charting.

[Arch0wl]

I think you read too much into it -- I already use the Fruity Loops piano roll. This isn't "this is why I don't use Fruity Loops"; this is "I do, but this is something I wish existed."

[arcnmx]

Ah, so then is there a converter somewhere then for midi->stepfile? That would make me actually put some effort into making a chart sometime :P

You're right, I missed the vertical part. Thing is, you'll just end up with the same mediocre editors that already exist for SM :/

[Arch0wl]

The closest thing I can think of is midi-->PMS and then PMS-->BMS. Maybe a midi-->BMS converter exists somewhere though.

[Jimmymi1]

I would actually try to step a whole song if SM had a simfile editor like the FL piano roll.