Patashu PRESENTS: How to make simfiles (for real guys edition)

[Patashu]

Copied straight from bemanistyle, lolol

Originally Posted by TougaKiryuu

Writing this because I saw we needed one, first off your going to open either notepad or wordpad, and your going to paste the following into it:

#TITLE:;
#SUBTITLE:;
#ARTIST:;
#TITLETRANSLIT:;
#SUBTITLETRANSLIT:;
#ARTISTTRANSLIT:;
#CREDIT:;
#BANNER:;
#BACKGROUND:;
#CDTITLE:;
#MUSIC:;
#MUSICBYTES:0;
#MUSICLENGTH:;
#OFFSET:;
#SAMPLESTART:;
#SAMPLELENGTH:;
#SELECTABLE:YES;
#BPMS:0.000=;
#STOPS:;
#BGCHANGES:;

go on and save the document as all types and save the extension as .sm... now your going to go fill in the following between the : and ; of all those captions

#TITLE:;
the name of the song goes here

#SUBTITLE:;
anything you want written between the songname or arist goes here

#ARTIST:;
artist name goes here

#TITLETRANSLIT:;
if you used japanese for the title, english goes here

#SUBTITLETRANSLIT:;
same if you used a jp subtitle

#ARTISTTRANSLIT:;
aaand once again same if you used a jp artist

#CREDIT:;
you go here.

#BANNER:;
the filename of your banner goes here (ex: banner.png)

#BACKGROUND:;
same as banner, but whatever you have for the bgimage

#CDTITLE:;

#MUSIC:;
the name of the MP3 your using goes here (ex:song.mp3)

#OFFSET:;
#SAMPLESTART:;
#SAMPLELENGTH:;
dont worry with these just yet

#SELECTABLE:YES;
do NOT change this unless your writing it for a course :<

#BPMS:0.000=;
song bpm goes after 0.000 (ex 0.000=120.000; this is for a BPM of 120)

#STOPS:;
#BGCHANGES:;
don't worry with these either

from here, you can take the .sm file you created and plop it into a folder with the MP3, the banner, and the background, and if you choose a video file that will play in the background.. move this folder into the stepmania/songs directory and place it in a group folder. After that boot stepman up and go to the edit songs option, from here you can create new stepcharts with ease using the stepmaker. A couple other things you can know

#SELECTABLE:ROULETTE;
If you want the song to only come up when you pick the roulette option, you can place this in the place of #SELECTABLE:YES; ..but for it to work you need the Hidden Songs option in the operator to be set to yes.

for those of you who have trouble making the basic file OR your just lazy: have a template you can just edit in notepad/wordpad:

http://www.pumpcore.com/tougakiryuu/template.sm

Originally Posted by Patashu

ACTUALLY STEPPING THE SONG

Once you've got the .sm file set up and everything, start up Stepmania, go to Edit/Sync songs and create a difficulty for the song to edit. The very first thing you should do is hit esc, go to song options, turn assist tick and auto play ON and lower the rate to 0.6x or less. (This slows the song down to make accurate stepping easier.)

BEAT 0 OFFSET

Once you've done this, place a single note on the first measure and play. Does the single arrow's clap go at the same time the first beat does? It probably won't. If it doesn't, you can use F11 and F12 to move the first beat along (F11 makes the first beat happen later, F12 makes it happen sooner), and hold down alt while pressing the F-keys for greater accuracy. Once you've got it spot on, you can either go back into song options and lower the rate to 0.3x to make sure it's perfect or you can save it and move on.

BPM

If the song has a nice, constant BPM through it, simply google search for Mixmeister and download it. Put the song in, get the bpm and use F7 and F8 to adjust the bpm to match that. (Again, hold alt for small increments.) And to make sure, put 16 red arrows ahead of you and play the song to make sure it syncs up right. If Mixmeister fails to find the bpm, you can find it yourself by putting down several measures of red arrows, with assist tick on, and playing. If the claps fall behind the beat, the BPM is too low. If the claps go ahead of the beat, the BPM is too high. Adjust and re-play again and again to make sure you've got it, and if it goes off later on in the song just adjust it again. And if it just doesn't fit no matter how hard you try, your song may have a varying BPM, in which case you may want to try a helpful program at http://www.geocities.com/jyris1 known as DDReam.

PLACING THE ARROWS
First thing first, hold ctrl and push down to expand the measures. You'll need the visual aid if you go any finer then 8th notes. The controls are all listed when you push F1. The most important rule of all is make sure every arrow is going to an sound in the song. People hate, hate, hate it when arrows are poorly placed or BSed. And make sure you can recognize the difference between triplets (purple arrows) and yellow arrows; they're placed quite close together. Finally: Save early, save often and include as many difficulty levels as you think you can do and the song can work with (if it's not a song suited for anything below heavy, don't put anything below heavy)

Originally Posted by Patashu

BPM CHANGES AND STOPS
Bpm tricks are cool. Often songs will have a point in them where noise dramatically drops or nothing at all is playing; these are good places to put pauses. Figure out the length the pause lasts for in beats, then subtract anywhere from half of that to a beat or two (since arrows can't come instantaneously after a pause ends). Multiply this number by 60 then divide it by the song's BPM; this is how long the pause will be. Raise and lower the pause's value with F9 and F10 (again, hold Alt for smaller increments) and you're done. If you insert a pause after stepping after it, the arrows will be too far away now; go just after the pause and use the Delete key to remove blank bars until they're at the right distance.

It's possible that a complete pause in a song may last for a duration that isn't a number of beats; if so, just fine-tune the stop's length until the arrows that come after it are on-beat once more, and lower the rate to 0.3x afterwards with assist tick on just to make perfectly sure.

Bpm changes are simple: Find a point where the song sounds faster/slower, use F7/F8 to bring the BPM to double or half of what it originally was, then go to the end of this fast/slow portion and raise/lower the BPM back to what it should be. If it gets reaallly slow or fast you could even resort to a quartered or quadrupled bpm. And whatever you do, don't insert a bpm change that looks bad/unneccesary when playing the song, and make sure it actually syncs up with the song well.

Summary: Rate 0.3-0.7x and assist tick, if it sounds like unsynced effortless crap with assist tick on don't release it plz