The Ultimate Simfile FAQ

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Because there are many stickies in this forum. I thought i could combine 3 of them.

Here are Arch0wl's and apersons's DWI FAQ'S, and Privateer's How to sync a ffr stepfile.


Syncing an FFR Stepfile...

Originally Posted by Privateer

If you are going to make a stepfile to be put on FFR, I can lend a valuable hand.

I'm speaking about getting around one of FFR's biggest foes--gap. I've found a way around the gap incompatibility FFR has. It's a weird process, but it works pretty well. An example of what I do can be found in one of the upcoming songs to FFR I stepped.

I'll introduce this process with an example. Let's say the song I'm working with has 200bpm, a gap if 500 (.5 seconds), and the first sound of the whole mp3 is at .3 seconds.

This can be done in most any music editting software, like Audacity.

1. Delete all silence between 0.00 seconds and the first sound of your whole song.

2. Because there is no song that has the first noise of the whole song being the first beat (where the gap would be), you need to do something else. Find the number of seconds between the gap and the first sound of the song. In this case, it's .2, because .5-.3=.2.

3. Find the number of seconds between each beat. That can be calculated by dividing 60 seconds by the bpm. In our example song, there is a beat every .3 seconds.

4. The goal of this whole system is to create artificial beats that start at exactly 0.000. To do this, you are going to insert silences. Putting in two fake beats is good, because more than 2 calls for error, and 1 leaves too small of a buffer between the first note and 0.000. Each "fake" beat is .3 seconds, so you would obviously multiply that by 2 (.6). Remember, if you insert .6 seconds, you are saying the beat starts on the first note of the song, which is wrong. You need to subtract what you found in step 2 from .6. That would mean .4. Insert .4 seconds of silence and viola.

*It's very hard to do this well, unless you know why you are doing these steps, and what they mean. There is no way this process will get you acceptable syncing, so after you do this, you should go into SM editor and check the syncing. It'll probably be within .03. Play around with the silences until it's synced to the point where there would only be a few forced greats on a player.*

Arch0wl's DWI making FAQ (better than nestlequicks ohsnap)

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

Since people will mostly make simfiles to submit to FFR instead of making them public to other sites or trying to make them uber awesome, I'm just going to make this FAQ with FFR in mind.

The first thing an accomplished DWI maker needs, is an editor. You can use notepad, but that takes months of experience and only a master can make a great DWI in notepad. And it takes a long time of testing out your DWI over and over.

So since you're new, I bring you the stepmania editor.

This is a very flexable editor. It's tons better than the XStep one and if used right can make some awesome songs. The only flaw in the SM editor is that you can't place 48ths and 64ths, sometimes when you play a song at an odd point in the song it becomes offbeat for the portion you play it, and the recording feature is messed up. But other than that, it's great, and trust me, this is the best editor besides notepad, XStep has way more flaws.

You can get the stepmania editor at http://www.stepmania.com but be sure to download the newest version and not the 3.0 final!

So now, you need to set up the DWI file.

Make a .dwi file, and have .dwi set to always open in notepad.

Put this in as a basic template.

#TITLE:Your Title Here;
#ARTIST:Artist of the music here;
#BPM:BPM Here;
#GAP:0;
#SINGLE:MANIACifficulty here:
;

Now, you're asking. How do I find out the bpm?

That is a question that has been plaguing my IMs I get ever since I started making simfiles.

For BPM, I recommend winbpm. Type that in google or something, there's tons of different versions.

What I do to find the bpm, is headbob to the song. I often get it right too.

As for what gap is, since you're making a simfile to submit to FFR, you will not have to worry about that. Chances are, your simfile will have all yellow arrows or all orange arrows, but that's fine. Just remember to go over it to find out if it should be yellow arrows or orange arrows.

So now that you have the DWI file, create a folder for the song, and put the DWI and mp3 in there. Put it in your SM group folder (example, I always put my songs in Stepmania>Songs>Arch0wl Originals) and load up SM. Go to the editor, and load up your song, now it's time to start making arrows!

Your arrows are assigned by numbers. This is NOT on your numpad.

1 = left
2 = down
3 = up
4 = right

And then you can change the notes from 1/4ths to 1/8ths to 1/12ths 1/16ths to 1/24ths to 1/32nds by moving the left and right arrow key.

Red = 1/4th
Blue = 1/8th
Purple = 1/12th
Yellow = 1/16th
Pink = 1/24th
Orange = 1/32nd

So just start placing arrows.

Since you're making a song for keyboards, try to make the arrows go exactly to the melody or instruments. That's how all the good keyboard songs are done.

So now you're ready to start making your own simfiles!

One big mistake though is to add a spin. This is basically up-right-down-left or any variant thereof. It's really annoying for most of the players because you have to double step, you can't spin on arrow keys.

And don't use freeze arrows/hold arrows! Synth will just have to remove these when you submit your file to FFR as FFR does not support freezes.

Also, although you can, do not use quadruple and triple note presses. FFR can't handle those correctly. I know I did them on holy night but that was a test.

aperson's stepfile creation guide(better than arch0wlohsnap)

Originally Posted by aperson

I am assuming that if you read this guide you at least have a basic understanding of how DDR and its simulators work, and the logic behind creating steps, however a complete newbie should be able to understand this guide as well. I also assume that you have the knowledge to utilize the programs I list below, and that if you don't you can find out on your own. If you aren't intelligent enough to use, say, Goldwave, then you shouldn't be making stepfiles. Furthermore, this guide is intended for keyboard stepfiles, though many of the principles apply to pad stepfiles as well.

HOW TO MAKE SIMFILES THAT DON’T SUCK

1.1 Principles
1.2 - Choosing A Song
1.3 - Understanding the limits of a song
1.4 - When to use what kind of Notes
1.5 - On doubles, triples, and quads

2.1 Beginning your song
2.2 - Finding Gap
2.3 - Finding BPM
2.4 - Setting up for edit

3.1 Creating your song
3.1 - BPM Changes
3.2 - Freezes
3.3 - Streams
3.4 - Gallops

4.1 Banner and background
4.2 - Theory
4.3 - Banner
4.4 - Background

5.1 Publishing

1.1 Principles
1.2 Choosing a song
The first step is to choose a song. Remember, how you build the song depends on the song you choose. The song does not depend on how you build it. You cannot build ridiculous steps for a slow moving, simple song. Always listen to the song, find the BPM and see if it is in a range that you would find acceptable for what kind of song you like (I try to get 16ths at 180 and up for my fast, hard songs.)

1.3 Understanding the limits of a song
This ties in with what I mentioned above. Your steps must fit the song you make. Don't make ridiculous steps on a simple song, don't make overly easy steps on a song that has great potential for difficulty. Therefore, careful attention must be made to song selection, don't just jump in with a song you think sounds cool, it might make a crappy DWI regardless of what you do with it. I have to go through a whole lot of my mp3 list before I find a good song, and even then it might turn out to make a bad stepfile. At that point you scrap it and try again.


1.4 When to use what kind of notes
The logic behind all songs (save some ambient and other small exceptions) is the notion of a rise and fall. You should be aware of this, and you should not place notes that contrast to a song's rise and fall or the steps will come out terrible. Therefore, don't put sixteenth runs in a song's cool down part then jumps on fourth notes when the song is going all out. People expect the song to get harder when it rises, so make it harder. When it cools down make it easier.

Also, you must consider screen aesthetics when looking at note creation… A prime example of this would be BMR's A. The notes look like they are creating the song because of placement of the streams… If a song is broken into fifths make the patterns run in fifths. Or, like in A when the key of the notes on the song increase then decrease he makes the steps have a right to left pattern. This creates a lot of the fun of the song, because the player is almost seeing the song appear on the screen.

Step repetition must also be taken into consideration. This means two things: Don't use the same stream over and over and over… but it also means that certain repetitions can be good. Firstly, songs have to have some diversity. No one likes a song where the only stream is a bunch of 2468 or 2468642468 etc… However, sometime small repetitions can give a song style. Eggmani, for instance, does a good job of this in a lot of his songs. They are given a certain 'theme' pattern that appears at certain parts of the song, and when that part of the song appears the theme pattern does too. It provides a special feel to the song and can make the file much more fun.

1.5 Doubles triples and quads
Doubles are commonplace: When a song has a more explosive note, put in a double. When a song has a resounding in your face note, put in a triple or quad. There, I said it. Triples and Quads are not some unholy thing that must be avoided at all costs. You're playing on a keyboard, you have more than 2 fingers. This ideology of no more than 2 keys at once comes from the stale idea used in foot stepfiles. This doesn't mean you should abuse them, however. Overuse of triples and quads can be the most annoying thing ever done. They are rare and should be cherished.


2.1 Beginning your song
2.2 Finding the gap
The gap is oh so important… The marvelous window is approximately 2 hundredths of a second, that's .02 for the math tards. This means that you damn well better have your stepfile synced to within 5 thousandths of a second or the player is going to be getting perfs instead of marvs.

…So how do you get this precise? You get Goldwave. Once you have Goldwave open up your song… but here's the key. Make sure you have already trimmed and cut everything you want from your song and saved it to your stepfile directory. Why? Because when you save mp3 editors usually add a very tiny amount to the front of a song, thus ruining your gap. Now zoom in on the song, and go to where the first note is, you should be very zoomed in (I zoom to the point where it just shows a line rather than a whole heightmap.) Find the first note of the song and slide the device controller down until the song speed is at .1. Play the first note and listen to where it first becomes audible (usually at the very start.) After you've found this look at where the CREST OF THE FIRST WAVE OF THAT NOTE IS. This is where you want your gap to be. Look at the ms counter at the bottom of the Goldwave bar and take your gap. Voila, you are guaranteed an incredibly precise gap with this method.

2.3 Finding the BPM
There are two ways, one is with WinBPM… this is self-explanatory.

The other is with an automated program, granted this isn't always correct, it can be very useful for songs with decimal BPMs because it's hard as hell to find those accurately with WinBPM. This program can be found here: http://users.skynet.be/bk264570/TestProg.htm

2.4 Setting up for edit
Download XStep, I trust you can find it or you probably already have it. Open it up and plug the song name, author, bpm, gap, and all that information stuff in. Export it to DWI in the folder of your choice and you have the information for your song set up. Now you are ready to begin editing... Go to Stepmania and use SMs built in editor (edit/sync songs)

3.1 Creating your song
3.2 BPM Changes
BPM changes are key in a song, and deal with the rise and fall of the song. In many of my songs the beginnings are slow, but they pick up then explode at a certain point. I create this in the stepfile by using half-BPM while it builds up then using the full BPM (and usually a double) where the song breaks out. Using BPM changes in this style will usually result in a good stepfile, but overuse can completely destroy a file.

3.3 Freezes
Freezes have to be used with caution, and they have to be accurate. A freeze is usually placed when a note causes a harsh stop in the song, placing freezes at places other than where this happens is going to make for a crappy stepfile rather fast.

To get accurate times for freezes:
60 / BPM = 4th note freeze
Divide that by 2 for 8th note
Divide the by 3 for 12th note
Divide that by 4 for 16th note
Divide that by 5 for 24th note
Divide that by 6 for 32nd note
Etc… But freezes for more than a 48th notes and above are usually a bad idea

3.4 Gallops
A lot of songs gallop. If they gallop, good, put in gallops… However it's okay to use gallops when the song isn't doing that sometimes as well. For instance, if a song is stuttering, rather than using freezes you can use gallops… However, these must also be used in moderation, they can get old fast.

4.1 Banner and Background
4.2 Theory
The banner and Background should provide a similar feel to the one that the song creates. This provides greater harmony. No, I cannot describe how to do this, you just have to experiment to get it. This means don't photoshop some tie dye bullcrap for a dark song. Likewise, don't make a black BG for speedcore rave.

4.3 BG
Generally 640x480. The top and bottom 50 pixels or so are cut off by the top and bottom of the screen, so try to keep any text from drifting into that area unless you want it to be covered up after the bars come in.

4.4 Banner
256x80. Always have a banner, that way when people take screenshots it identifies your song. Also, always put the name of the song in the banner.

5.1 Publishing
Open up WinZip and drop the folder of your song into the zip. Submit to bemanistyle, and start hyping it. (Make bumps on your forum post witty and not obvious bumps ) Voila, you have a stepfile.

Enjoy