What keeps you using 3.95?

[choof]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

25% of the world uses Windows XP and no one bats an eye

someone prefers SM 3.95 and jousway loses his mind

pls never post again

[SKG_Scintill]

if my stepmania is broken/diseased/cursed, but "somehow" 4-key charts with c-mods work flawlessly, then I'm happy to use it

[dballin4]

3.95 was the last stable build when I stopped playing. Any time I felt like stepping the mania in the past decade (holy shit what) I don't go out and download the newest release.

[Ziemniax]

Jesus Christ the flame in this thread is beyond ridiculous..

What you should do is to tell devs, why are you using older builds, that means what does 3.95 have that SM5 lacks, so that they can upgrade SM5 to fit as many players as possible.

We want the newest version to be the best version, right? That makes sense. Thus, we want to take all the best things of 3.95, add many more, and get SM5. Instead of flaming about the best version of Stepmania, please say why it is best and what can be done to make SM5 better.

And on topic, im still pissed with that resolution thingy, fix that if it's possible.

[tuxdude143]

Originally Posted by Ziemniax

Jesus Christ the flame in this thread is beyond ridiculous..

What you should do is to tell devs, why are you using older builds, that means what does 3.95 have that SM5 lacks, so that they can upgrade SM5 to fit as many players as possible.

We want the newest version to be the best version, right? That makes sense. Thus, we want to take all the best things of 3.95, add many more, and get SM5. Instead of flaming about the best version of Stepmania, please say why it is best and what can be done to make SM5 better.

And on topic, im still pissed with that resolution thingy, fix that if it's possible.

I agree with everything here except the resolution thing.

Edit: If you're refering to the alt-tab thing then I'll pass that onto kyzen, try to replicate it and hopefully try to fix it

I mean, I wanna be serious here, what reason would you have to play in 717x616 or whatever you use. What's the point? What does it have that playing in something like 640x480 doesn't? Please enlighten me

[Ziemniax]

When I alttab the screen gets messed, and playing on higher res causes me to lag
and i play on 640x480

[Kyzentun]

How to keep your resolution from being changed: Set an aspect ratio that matches what you set for width/height. Width is calculated from height * aspect ratio.
If you set AspectRatio to 1.163961038961 and height to 616, your width will come out to 716, which is close enough. (width is forced to be even to fix a bug where 1280x720 was coming out as 1281x720)
Expecting Stepmania to violate the aspect ratio and squish everything is unreasonable, because practically everybody else agrees that displaying things at the wrong aspect ratio is wrong.

[firemon22]

ITG game and ITG3 theme

[aj187]

Originally Posted by firemon22

ITG3 theme

already ported to SM5, a while ago even

[icontrolyourworld]

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

-Default theme doesn't have a bottom bar or "footer" which must be compensated for when switching from 3.95 to 5.0 in order to have the same arrow scroll length. To me this is ridiculous; under no circumstances should the default scroll lengths be different between two versions of a game entirely based on muscle memory.

-The whole appdata garbage. If it's not necessary
a) why have it in the first place
b) why not default merge the folders and give people the option to then put crap in user profile shit, guarantee you nobody on this fucking planet or anywhere else will do it.

-Options menu. Why are there 30 different menus.


I take serious issue with the whole "if you want to make any minor edits to your theme whatsoever, just learn lua!

step 27: somewhere way before here which i forgot to put in but im too lazy to change step numbers was the fact that the game was horribly laggy and incredibly choppy until someone reminded me of the waveout fix. I shouldn't have to enable something as incredibly fucking obscure as that just so i dont get 500 perfects on toml this is probably what most people experiencing lag have to do. Why this isn't enabled by default who fucking knows.

Anyway you wanted specific there you go.

I agree on all this stuff. I didn't know about the Cmod not being the same from version to version though. Kinda wacky

Originally Posted by Kyzentun

I no longer give a shit about 3.9 players if there's that much blithering vitriol involved.

You can add tons and tons of options and features and other random stuff, but that's not what we need, even if it is nice to have. All we need is (preferred) Theme selection, (preferred) Noteskin selection, Background Brightness, Key Config, Speed (and preferred mods), Scoring (and screenshots), and Profile. After that, any feature added is just bonus stuff.

Of course the reality of having to go through so much stuff just to get set up and comfortable to start playing isn't really that cool. My biggest complaint is I shouldn't have to have someone tell me to make a portable.ini file in the stepmania folder, so I can have everything in 1 folder, otherwise I wouldn't know about it. It's easy to get over that though since it's like a 1 time thing. But you can see it's much more extreme for someone like mina to go through all his stuff to get going.

Originally Posted by Kyzentun

I'm looking specifically for features, not graphics.
So, not things like "there's a cat in the bg", but things like the information shown or options available.

If you simply think there isn't a reason to upgrade, you should probably read the release notes for the last few releases, or suggest something that should be improved to encourage upgrading.

For the most part since you're not concerned about what we want in SM5 (smooth transition, 3.9/3.95 themes) but rather just features and options to add, IDK what to say. Add a mod that turns every file into jumpstream.

[Kyzentun]

Originally Posted by Kyzentun

if there's that much blithering vitriol involved.

I bolded the important part for you. If someone has legit points or specific things that are missing, it's worth addressing. But if someone is going to rant incoherently and point to things like maintaining aspect ratio as serious problems, there's nothing that can be done.
Especially when they bring up things that have been fixed for over six months (speed mods), or are trivial to adjust to (lack of a footer, wait, more screen area means you can put your speed mod higher, separating the arrows more, while giving the same reaction time).

The claim that speed mods are different seems completely bogus since I can look at the source code in both versions and see that it's practically identical. If anything, 3.95 had a bug that threw the calculation off because of his weird broken aspect ratio.

I made an effort to look for legitimate points in his rant and address them, but I don't want to deal with ranting lunatics who haven't looked at the game in the last year and make conflicting requests like "get rid of all the options I don't use" and "make sure these options only I use exist".

[SM MaxX]

I'm just throwing my $0.02 in here

Maybe it's just me but I find it an odd concept for this community to expect developers care more about looks (aka porting themes from 3.9 to SM5) than actual functionality. Anyone who says 3.95 is stable is naive as hell; the shit build was literally only meant for arcade machines and nothing else, and you can't convince me otherwise given how half of edit mode functions outright crash the program.

It's even more puzzling that given how long SM5 has been out the number of themers out there doesn't even compare to the 3.9 days. Why has no one bothered to start porting stuff if people really want it? A community this large surely would have at least some amount of people up to the task, and it's not like lua is exactly the hardest thing in the planet to learn for even the basic stuff.

[V-Ormix]

Originally Posted by Kyzentun

practically identical

I'm just bored right now

edit: not bored enough to play sm 3.95 atm though

[tuxdude143]

Originally Posted by icontrolyourworld

I agree on all this stuff. I didn't know about the Cmod not being the same from version to version though. Kinda wacky



You can add tons and tons of options and features and other random stuff, but that's not what we need, even if it is nice to have. All we need is (preferred) Theme selection, (preferred) Noteskin selection, Background Brightness, Key Config, Speed (and preferred mods), Scoring (and screenshots), and Profile. After that, any feature added is just bonus stuff.

Of course the reality of having to go through so much stuff just to get set up and comfortable to start playing isn't really that cool. My biggest complaint is I shouldn't have to have someone tell me to make a portable.ini file in the stepmania folder, so I can have everything in 1 folder, otherwise I wouldn't know about it. It's easy to get over that though since it's like a 1 time thing. But you can see it's much more extreme for someone like mina to go through all his stuff to get going.



For the most part since you're not concerned about what we want in SM5 (smooth transition, 3.9/3.95 themes) but rather just features and options to add, IDK what to say. Add a mod that turns every file into jumpstream.

Ok I'm just going to address some of this stuff here.

Firstly, the options menu. Coming in the next build is a new options menu that has been designed around keeping the menu uncluttered but without removing functionality. What has been done is that settings such as graphics/sound options and key config have been left on the main screen (though they are now near the top) and other, lesser used options are now under submenus. Hopefully this helps with your options menu thing.

The theme stuff is an interesting one. I know a lot of people want to just use themes from 3.95 but 5 heavily overhauled the theming system allowing for more possibilities (and thus breaking 3.95 themes). However many people are working on porting 3.95 themes to stepmania 5.

As of now the default 3.95 theme is having a port worked on. You can also check out the spinal shark collective webpage for a few 3.95 ports.

Noteskins are a similar case. System was overhauled so old noteskins won't work. However a metric ton of sm3.95 noteskins were ported over to stepmania 5 and they work like a treat.

http://jousway.co.uk/ has all the noteskins that have been ported from 3.95. Chances are your fav noteskin is in there somewhere.

The cmod thing, oh boy. Well let me break it down. In stepmania 5 cmods scale the same as mmods do. I.e C625 is equal to m625. In 3.95 and OpenITG cmods did NOT scale like that. C425 or something is equal to m625. I don't know how it really works. I'll try and figure out the scale though and post it somewhere so it's easier for you to find your cmod in stepmania 5.

I do agree that documentation wise stepmania 5 is lacking. If anything I'll try to work on fleshing out the documentation more if asked.

With appdata, like kyzen said it's mainly windows being windows. While it's annoying to have to treck a ton of directories deep we can't do much about it. Would it help if a stortcut was placed on the desktop upon install which links straight to the stepmania 5 folder in appdata? That could probably be done on request.

Let me get this straight. Stepmania 5 is NOT meant to be 3.95 with a fresh coat of paint (we're not doing EA level stuff here). The whole point of a new version is to flesh stuff out like what has been done with the theming system, extra game modes and the like. Sadly this comes at the cost of breaking older stuff and there isn't much we can do about that.

I mean, the whole point of a new version of stepmania was to be new. Not 3.95 with a fresh coat of paint. This means that we can only do so much. There comes a point where the player has to make the switch upwards and no matter what is done it will be a change. It will take time to get used to. We can help make it easier but some responsibility has to fall on the player to get used to some of the changes that are outside our control.

Hopefully this clears a bunch of stuff up. I wanted to try giving a more friendly response as to why stepmania 5 is like this. I hope you guys understand.

However, if you do have any improvements or feature suggestions that you want to be passed on then feel free to pm me. I'll see what I can do.

[tuxdude143]

Originally Posted by Ziemniax

When I alttab the screen gets messed, and playing on higher res causes me to lag
and i play on 640x480

I take it this is in full screen. I'll try seeing if I can replicate it.

Edit: What version are you using? I'm trying this in 5.0.7 and it's working fine for me. Try and get a video of what's going on or update to the latest version if you haven't already

[Kraezymann]

Okay well I have a couple of feature requests/suggestions/questions then:

I apologize if these are really easy/dumb questions, I don't know enough about technical aspects of the game (although I'd really like to learn!)

Currently, when I play the SM5 I installed in one directory (KBSM for now) and then switch to the version I installed for pad (PSM), themes, controls and gfx settings have to be re-inputed for every switch I make. For example, when I have a specific theme/control scheme on PSM and then get tired and want to play keyboard, I exit PSM then start KBSM. But the theme and options I set in PSM can't be reloaded for KBSM, and goes straight to default settings. With the two versions of SM, is portable.ini the only way to keep the configured settings the same whenever I switch between the two? I just have to put it in one SM directory for it to save it that particular way, right? Is this a side effect of appdata?

I really support the idea of doing the screenshot renaming. Maybe the song name, then the date/time? The only problem I can see happening is the very long file names.

Is there a fix (or has one been made and I totally missed it) for VBR mp3 files? During chart editing if you have a VBR file you can't start from the current position in the chart. Is it also possible that this can affect song previews?

[Kyzentun]

Why do you need a different theme and control scheme to play on keyboard? What part of it conflicts with trying to play on pad? It seems like setting a different theme and control scheme is a clumsy workaround for some underlying problem, and solving the underlying problem would be better.

Screenshot naming scheme is this: <song title>_<subtitle>_<date>_<screen name>
Example: REVOLUTIONARY_ADDICT_2015-04-25_205742_ScreenConsSelectMusic.png

Yes this ends up long, but it includes the data people probably want. (the shot is png and full res if shift is held)

VBR mp3s still cause problems in edit mode because there isn't really a reason to save mp3 as VBR anymore. I just ran a size comparison test, and a VBR mp3 (145-185kbps setting in audacity) for a song came up as 4,541,494 bytes, ~4.5 MB. The quality 5 ogg for the same song is 4,633,292 bytes. That's a 90 kB difference.

[Kraezymann]

On my keyboard I have the default controls that I shouldn't change, the solo controls, and the 4k controls. I also use the ultralight theme. For the pad I have an entirely different set of controls because I use a pad, which comes up as joystick1 and so on. I can't have 4 sets of controls schemes on one SM. Regarding the theme, I'd rather play with a fun, bouncy theme for pad than I would something like Ultralight because on pad I get a bit more immersed and enjoy it a bit more with the announcers and colours and music and such. It's the same reason anyone would want to have another theme. It seemed easier to have one SM for one style, and another for the second. Again, I'm not upset, I was just wondering if portable.ini was the only solution.

And regarding VBR, I brought it up because I received a file with it for my pack, and during playtesting I'm forced to start at the beginning every time. Maybe the person submitting it doesn't have a choice. I can resave it as something else I guess, but I just thought VBR would have worked.

[tuxdude143]

Originally Posted by Kraezymann

On my keyboard I have the default controls that I shouldn't change, the solo controls, and the 4k controls. I also use the ultralight theme. For the pad I have an entirely different set of controls because I use a pad, which comes up as joystick1 and so on. I can't have 4 sets of controls schemes on one SM. Regarding the theme, I'd rather play with a fun, bouncy theme for pad than I would something like Ultralight because on pad I get a bit more immersed and enjoy it a bit more with the announcers and colours and music and such. It's the same reason anyone would want to have another theme. It seemed easier to have one SM for one style, and another for the second. Again, I'm not upset, I was just wondering if portable.ini was the only solution.

And regarding VBR, I brought it up because I received a file with it for my pack, and during playtesting I'm forced to start at the beginning every time. Maybe the person submitting it doesn't have a choice. I can resave it as something else I guess, but I just thought VBR would have worked.

Nothing wrong with asking. Personally I can see why you would want to have 2 different kinds of stepmania (one for pad, 1 for kb).
I could throw together a powershell script to automate renaming certain files so you just need to run the script and then boot sm5 and it will be customised ready for what mode you want to play (while only having 1 version of stepmania installed). It's ghetto but it could work. PM me if you're interested and I'll try throwing one together.

As for the mp3 VBR thing, in general most people use OGG anyway as that's machine standard. Mp3 VBR support wouldn't hurt though

[icontrolyourworld]

Originally Posted by tuxdude143

Ok I'm just going to address some of this stuff here.

Firstly, the options menu. Coming in the next build is a new options menu that has been designed around keeping the menu uncluttered but without removing functionality. What has been done is that settings such as graphics/sound options and key config have been left on the main screen (though they are now near the top) and other, lesser used options are now under submenus. Hopefully this helps with your options menu thing.

The theme stuff is an interesting one. I know a lot of people want to just use themes from 3.95 but 5 heavily overhauled the theming system allowing for more possibilities (and thus breaking 3.95 themes). However many people are working on porting 3.95 themes to stepmania 5.

As of now the default 3.95 theme is having a port worked on. You can also check out the spinal shark collective webpage for a few 3.95 ports.

Noteskins are a similar case. System was overhauled so old noteskins won't work. However a metric ton of sm3.95 noteskins were ported over to stepmania 5 and they work like a treat.

http://jousway.co.uk/ has all the noteskins that have been ported from 3.95. Chances are your fav noteskin is in there somewhere.

The cmod thing, oh boy. Well let me break it down. In stepmania 5 cmods scale the same as mmods do. I.e C625 is equal to m625. In 3.95 and OpenITG cmods did NOT scale like that. C425 or something is equal to m625. I don't know how it really works. I'll try and figure out the scale though and post it somewhere so it's easier for you to find your cmod in stepmania 5.

I do agree that documentation wise stepmania 5 is lacking. If anything I'll try to work on fleshing out the documentation more if asked.

With appdata, like kyzen said it's mainly windows being windows. While it's annoying to have to treck a ton of directories deep we can't do much about it. Would it help if a stortcut was placed on the desktop upon install which links straight to the stepmania 5 folder in appdata? That could probably be done on request.

Let me get this straight. Stepmania 5 is NOT meant to be 3.95 with a fresh coat of paint (we're not doing EA level stuff here). The whole point of a new version is to flesh stuff out like what has been done with the theming system, extra game modes and the like. Sadly this comes at the cost of breaking older stuff and there isn't much we can do about that.

I mean, the whole point of a new version of stepmania was to be new. Not 3.95 with a fresh coat of paint. This means that we can only do so much. There comes a point where the player has to make the switch upwards and no matter what is done it will be a change. It will take time to get used to. We can help make it easier but some responsibility has to fall on the player to get used to some of the changes that are outside our control.

Hopefully this clears a bunch of stuff up. I wanted to try giving a more friendly response as to why stepmania 5 is like this. I hope you guys understand.

However, if you do have any improvements or feature suggestions that you want to be passed on then feel free to pm me. I'll see what I can do.

I'd like to thank you for your kind informative response! The stuff in spoilers I'm happy to hear about

I know just about anyone can link to the appdata folder on the desktop or in the stepmania folder, even though it's obvious where it is now, it may not be for someone installing SM5 for the first time so I think it would be a good idea to have that link on the desktop and probably the SM folder.

Like I said, if having a lot of features and options and additional tools for theming and all is what you're aiming for great! And the fact that the options as you mentioned are going to be reorganized so the important stuff stands out and everything else is in submenus, I think that's a reasonable compromise. I was just saying IMO all I need for SM was the barebones stuff in my previous post and that having other stuff is bonus, as in it's cool to be able to do more things with the game.

So let me ask, is it really hard to port over old themes? To me it sounds like it's so easy to make a theme for SM5 that it would make sense to just port them over really fast. I mean all the sounds and graphics are readily available, and the only thing you'd probably have to change would be the option menus if there's something that just has to be there, like supported game modes. I know the ports are being worked on, but just askin

And actually can we add a jumpstream mod o.o Kind of like how there's echo, big, skippy, etc.