StepMania 5.0.9 released

[Kyzentun]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

Custom speed mods have been a solved problem since beta 4 last October (or longer, because it was in the nightlies before beta 4).
You pick the type, and you can increase or decrease it by increments until it's what you want. If you need a different increment size, you can change the increment size in the service menu.

http://imgur.com/a/5D1nI

[YeCLv6mmeBctSErhsPJ7]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

Custom speed mods have been a solved problem since beta 4 last October (or longer, because it was in the nightlies before beta 4).
You pick the type, and you can increase or decrease it by increments until it's what you want. If you need a different increment size, you can change the increment size in the service menu.
http://imgur.com/a/5D1nI

Speaking of, can anyone please explain to me the difference between X, C and M speed mods?

[TC_Halogen]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

Speaking of, can anyone please explain to me the difference between X, C and M speed mods?

X mods mean that your in-game scroll will always be directly affected by the BPM of the song. If you're playing a song that is 100 BPM and you play at a 4x speed mod, your scroll rate will be the equivalent of a 400 BPM song played on 1x. If that BPM doubles to 200, your scroll rate will be the equivalent of an 800 BPM song played on 1x, etc.

The C in C mod stands for "constant". This means that regardless of what the tempo of the song is, your scroll rate will always be the same. If you set your C mod to 750, and the song's BPM jumps to 2000, your scroll rate will not change. If a song has stops in it, you will not see them.

The M in M mod, if I remember correctly, stands for "maximum" (please correct the name if I'm wrong). An M-mod works by setting a maximum scroll rate and then converting that to an X-mod equivalent for play. For example, if you have song that has a 100-200 BPM range, and you set M500, then you will be playing the entire song at a scroll rate equivalent to a maximum of 500, which becomes fulfilled when crossing at 200 BPM section at 2.5x. I am not sure about this, but I recall M mods being particularly bad for songs that have excessively high BPMs, because even if the tempo exists for a split second, it will be parsed into the calculation. This can be disastrous for unprepared players who run into a song with a #DISPLAYBPM in a .sm file to hide the gimmicks -- if a song displays 100-200, but has skipping via stops + 1600 BPM, you're very much going to hate your life.

[Kyzentun]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

Let's start with X mods.
You have a song with a bpm of 120. If you use an X mod of 1, this means 120 beats will cross the receptors every minute. Now consider that each beat is the height of an arrow, and instead say that 120 arrow heights cross every minute. When you use a higher X mod, a beat has more height. So with 2x each beat is 2 arrows tall, and 240 arrow heights cross the receptors every minute. Since X mods multiply by the bpm of the song, 2x on a 150 bpm song means 300 arrow heights per minute.
For convenience, we can shorten "arrow heights per minute" to "ahpm".
Most people have an ideal speed that suits their reaction time. I read at 1000 ahpm on keyboard and 500-600 ahpm on pad. With X mods, people have to divide their ideal speed by the bpm of the song to figure out the X mod to use to get their ideal speed. (usually they compromise by memorizing various X mod * bpm combinations)
C mods and M mods let you set the ahpm directly, so you don't have to figure out the X mod that puts it close to your ideal speed.
C mods take out stops, delays, warps, and bpm changes.
M mods use the highest or the display bpm to figure out an X multiplier to use to get the ahpm the player picked. Stops, delays, warps, and bpm changes stay in, so if part of the song is at a different bpm, it'll scroll at a different speed.

[Red Blaster]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

X mods mean that your in-game scroll will always be directly affected by the BPM of the song. If you're playing a song that is 100 BPM and you play at a 4x speed mod, your scroll rate will be the equivalent of a 400 BPM song played on 1x. If that BPM doubles to 200, your scroll rate will be the equivalent of an 800 BPM song played on 1x, etc.

The C in C mod stands for "constant". This means that regardless of what the tempo of the song is, your scroll rate will always be the same. If you set your C mod to 750, and the song's BPM jumps to 2000, your scroll rate will not change. If a song has stops in it, you will not see them.

The M in M mod, if I remember correctly, stands for "maximum" (please correct the name if I'm wrong). An M-mod works by setting a maximum scroll rate and then converting that to an X-mod equivalent for play. For example, if you have song that has a 100-200 BPM range, and you set M500, then you will be playing the entire song at a scroll rate equivalent to a maximum of 500, which becomes fulfilled when crossing at 200 BPM section at 2.5x. I am not sure about this, but I recall M mods being particularly bad for songs that have excessively high BPMs, because even if the tempo exists for a split second, it will be parsed into the calculation. This can be disastrous for unprepared players who run into a song with a #DISPLAYBPM in a .sm file to hide the gimmicks -- if a song displays 100-200, but has skipping via stops + 1600 BPM, you're very much going to hate your life.

This is literally the most in-depth (without too much specificity) breakdown on SM's mods I've seen.

[gameboy42690]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

if a song displays 100-200, but has skipping via stops + 1600 BPM, you're very much going to hate your life.

If I remember correctly, m-mods actually always go by the display BPM (except if the display BPM is set to random, then it just takes the highest BPM). So in your example an m-mod isn't going to give you a stupidly low x-mod.

If the file uses any scroll rate changes, that's when you're screwed.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

This is literally the most in-depth (without too much specificity) breakdown on SM's mods I've seen.

Kyzentun's explanation of x-mods certainly beats mine, haha.

also, I'm used to the really early implementation of M mods back when they were first introduced in OITG, so it's possible that they were either changed or I simply don't remember them correctly, lol

[Kyzentun]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

TC_Halogen's explanation of M mods is essentially the same as mine.
For calculating the multiplier to use, Stepmania figures out a "read bpm" for the song. If the display bpm tag is set in the simfile, and it's not secret or random, the highest bpm in the display bpm is used. Otherwise, the highest bpm in the file is used.
So if someone sets a display bpm tag of 1, the M mod will come out really high.

[lurker]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

it's awesome to have steady development in this game again
would it be possible to add a way to turn off chord cohesion? maybe to prevent confusion it could be added to kb7 which could then be expanded to include any number of keys from 4 to 8 (lol o!m/bms/etc)

[Kyzentun]

Re: StepMania 5.0.8 released

I think there's been off and on development all along. The commit history has a pretty steady record of things happening over the years.

Chord cohesion will require digging into the way scoring works, but I think it's possible, so I created an issue for it as a sort of reminder for myself and other devs to look at it.

Making it easier to define new styles instead of hardcoding them is one of my goals for SM6. So, I've considered it, but it's going to take a lot of work to do it right and it'll be a long time before it's ready.

[Kyzentun]

Re: StepMania 5.0.9 released

StepMania 5.0.9 has been released, with various minor changes, mostly bug fixes from 5.0.8.
You can read the release notes on GitHub for more details, and the downloads are below the release notes.

Happy Father's Day from the StepMania team!