Help with Stepmania?

[ELRayford]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

I never really had a "lag" issue with SM on vista. I did however suffer from HORRIBAD timing. Install XP or Seven, or get a linux distro.

[Superfreak04]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

I never really had a "lag" issue with SM on vista. I did however suffer from HORRIBAD timing. Install XP or Seven, or get a linux distro.

I had this problem as well. I guess the "lag" is the same as saying "bad timing". The game will run perfectly, but due to "lag" you get "bad timing". Not sure if that makes sense, lol.

[who_cares973]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

screw you WC, its the best thing since sliced bread!

i dont think you got what i was trying to say in that post lmao

[ELRayford]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

I had this problem as well. I guess the "lag" is the same as saying "bad timing". The game will run perfectly, but due to "lag" you get "bad timing". Not sure if that makes sense, lol.

Makes sense to me. OP try disabling all these vista add ons.

Sidebar
You pay a heavy performance price for the analog clock, thumbnail slide-show viewer, and Microsoft-centric RSS news feed that dock in the Windows Sidebar. Turning the whole thing off gives you a big speed boost, especially at boot time.
To remove the Sidebar, right-click anywhere on the Sidebar and select Close Sidebar. Uncheck Start Sidebar when Windows starts, and then click OK.


Aero
To turn it off, right-click the Windows desktop and select Personalize, Window Color and Appearance. In the resulting "Window Color and Appearance" dialog box, click Open classic appearance properties for more color options (if you don't see the option, that means Aero is already turned off). Select Windows Vista Basic and click OK.


Assorted Interface Beautification Options
You can save some additional clock cycles by turning off all or some of Vista's pretty interface options, not all of which are directly connected to Aero.
To see the options, click Start, right-click Computer, and select Properties. Click the Advanced System Properties link, the Advanced tab, and then the Settings button inside the Performance box.
You can uncheck all of the listed options by selecting Adjust for best performance, or you can simply uncheck the ones you don't care for. I unchecked Fade or slide menus into view, Fade or slide ToolTips into view, Show shadows under menus, and Slide open combo boxes.

Sorry for the pasta but yeah good luck!

[ddrxero64]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

i dont think you got what i was trying to say in that post lmao

Oh dayum, I just caught that slight sarcasm. Very sneaky. I just put a post today on SMO talking about how Jousway never sees sarcasm. But that one was hard to catch. Good job.

@Superfreak & el rayford Yea Aero is a problem. I thought that was only windows 7? I've never used Vista so I don't know. But it's a fact that Aero WILL cause SM to not function properly. Other than what El Rayford suggested, if your timing is bad and you're not lagging it's a matter of global offset. Some monitors don't sync with the display, so you need to essentially sync the game. HD monitors are the worst. I've had to sync the game a couple of times on different computers. Sometimes it's a slight difference. If you know how to MA easily, just go to options and there should be an option near the bottom that says sync game (something like that). Then a comfortably paced trill (left and right) will come and you need to hit it according to a sampled beat. 16 arrows on each side, 32 all together. The game then calculates the global offset. I'll do this and it'll fix all my MA problems. Sometimes you may need to do it a second time, but it helps.

Alternatively, you can go into the metrics and search for global offset (CTRL+F, search GlobalOffset). You should use the option though if you're new to it to get an idea of what you're doing. You'll pick it up in like 2 seconds.

tl;dr version.

@Superfreak & el rayford That's a global offset problem. use the option from the options in the main menu to sync the game with your monitor.

[Hakulyte]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

Aero

I'm actually turning off Aero to play FFR but I'm turning it back on to play Stepmania because I lag really bad otherwise. ?_?

You may want to turn off VSync if it cause lags but it somehow helped on one of my computers and made me lag more on the 2nd one.

There's also something about editing SoundWave in data or stepmania.ini but I don't remember exactly what.

Not sure if playing SM on 16bits or 32bits color changes something or maybe it was FFR.. well, it's stuff worth trying.

Yet, I'm still having MA issues since my SM scores don't make sense compared to FFR but whatever..

[ddrxero64]

Re: Help with Stepmania?

You may want to turn off VSync if it cause lags but it somehow helped on one of my computers and made me lag more on the 2nd one.

There's also something about editing SoundWave in data or stepmania.ini but I don't remember exactly what.

1st part. Yea I think you're right too. There's always a solution, it's just that Vista is known to be stubborn about it.

2nd part. cross post from SMO. Fixed 95% of people's problems. It applies to Windows 7. I don't know how it makes a difference, but it does.

Did you try setting SoundDrivers=WaveOut in Preferences.ini? That worked for a friend of mine, it may work for you as well.