Sonicbhoc's Step Making Guide

[sonicbhoc]

OK, before we start, here are the tools you'll need (all free of course):

A simfile editor (recommending StepMania or Babelpad )
Audacity, the Free and Open-Source audio editor: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
(optional) SoftJock BPM Pro Scan or counter of choice: http://www.softjock.com/bpmproscan.html
A Unicode Text Editor, if you simfile contains non-standard or east-asian characters: Get BabelPad. http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html

Users of Linux and Mac should have editors that automatically save in Unicode. Just in case, install Yudit.

Now then, go to StepMania/Songs. Make a folder for your username (for me it would be sonicbhoc - WIP) (or just put My Files - WIP)

WIP stands for work in progress. Just so that while going through your song wheel you don't have a whole bunch of half complete songs crowding the one that you do finish.

Now, go into the folder you made. Make yet another folder for the name of your song (example: StepMania/Songs/Sonicbhoc - WIP/Explosion Slider). Make a blank text file with the name of the folder and make sure it says .sm and not .txt at the end. Copy (or move) your .mp3 file into the folder.

Now, open the .sm file in babelpad or yudit or kate or whatever you have that saves in Unicode. Now, make it look like this:

#TITLE:;
#TITLETRANSLIT:; (only required if your song has a name that doesn't use Latin characters)
#SUBTITLE:;
#SUBTITLETRANSLIT:; (like TITLETRANSLIT)
#ARTIST:;
#ARTISTTRANSLIT:; (like TITLETRANSLIT)
#BPMS:;
#OFFSET:; (this is the gap, MUST BE PERFECT or your whole song goes offbeat)
#SAMPLESTART:; (Optional)
#SAMPLELENGTH:; (Optional)

These may not be perfectly right, I'm at school and I don't have a .sm file to check with. Fill in the Title, Subtitle, Artist tags now. If you have to transliterate them, fill in their translit counterparts as well.

OK, now open Audacity and drag your .mp3 file into it. Change it at the bottom to display in seconds. Now, move the cursor to the EXACT location of where you plan to place the first note your first note of your simfile. YOU MUST ZOOM IN using the magnifying glass icons in the toolbar (it's on the far-right side) or your gap will be off. Make sure you have it on the EXACT LOCATION of the START of the beat on which you are going to place your first note, and check the bottom for the selection start time (you can use the drop-down box to change it to display in seconds, which is what StepMania wants all its values in). Now, let's just say, for demonstration purposes, it was half a second on the dot. Put -0.500 in for OFFSET. MAKE SURE THERE IS A NEGATIVE THERE or your song will start .5 seconds early, not late.

Now, play the song in Audacity until you reach the place in which you want your preview music to start. Select the area from where you want the music to start to where you want it to end. Look at Selection Start and Selection Length. Copy those values into the approprate categories on the .sm file, without a negative of course.

Close Audacity, you don't need it anymore. Now, open MixMeister and drag the mp3 file into it. Click rescan BPM so that it does a more thurough pass-through. Now then, in #BPM in your .sm file, make sure it says 0.000=150 if your bpm is 150. The 0.000 is required to tell StepMania the first beat is 150 bpm.

That's the skeleton. If you want you can double-check this stuff with another .sm file just in case I messed something up, I'm doing this all from off of the top of my head in the middle of class. So yeah.

Next thing, open up StepMania (if you want to beta-test SM4.0's editor go ahead, I think it rocks, but you have to save often, as the editor is quite fragile at this point in time). Remember that if you develop in SM4, background effects are not backwards-compatible. I found this out just the other day... Anyway, put the notes where you want them.

NOTES: If your song has BPM changes, split your mp3 into parts for each of the BPMs and drag each part into the BPM calculator. Record the BPMs of each change, and change your .sm file accordingly. Let's say that the song I was doing started out at 70 BPM and 10 seconds into the file, changed to 150. BPMS would look like this:

#BPMS:0.000=70,10.000=150;

Now then, if you skipped getting a BPM counter, here's what you do:

place 4th notes for the whole song. All of it. Next, turn on assist tick, and edit the BPM ON THE FIRST MEASURE (if your song doesn't have a bpm change somewhere) until all of the 4th notes are on-beat. If your song does have a bpm change in it, then make sure you change the BPM on the measure the change starts and not the first measure.

Or, you could always count the amount of beats in ten seconds and multiply it by 6. A stopwatch would come in handy here.