Feel free to dispute my difficulty ratings or suggest packs; I'll add them to the list of good packs if I like them or if someone seconds it.
How to play Stepmania online:
Spoiler
You'll need Stepmania 4 or a 3rd-party build that supports online play, like 3.95. 3.9 DOES NOT support online play.
You should have the following options set:
Coin Options > Event Mode = ON
Machine Options > Menu Timer = OFF
Machine Options > Default Fail Type = Whatever. Don't put FailImmediate unless you're a masochist.
Machine Options > Judge Difficulty = 4
Machine Options > Life Difficulty = 4
Machine Options > Marvelous Timing = ALWAYS
Make an account at stepmaniaonline.eu. Once that's done, go in the options menu in Stepmania and create a profile with the username you registered with. Select "Network play" or something like that from the Stepmania menu (remember, you need 3.95 or 4.0). When it asks you where to connect to, enter stepmaniaonline.eu. When it asks for password, enter the password of the account you registered with.
Once you're in a lobby or game room of Stepmania Online, you need to press ctrl+enter to select things! Just plain enter is used for sending chat messages.
On meetup nights, I'll create a room there called Southperry. When you're in a room, pressing up twice will bring you to an options menu where you can adjust your speed mods and other options. (refer to this guide for how to add custom speed mods.) Pressing down allows you to select from the available difficulties of the selected song.
Speed mods info:
Spoiler
By default, Stepmania uses a speed mod of 1x. It's very difficult to read most songs on 1x. I strongy suggest you use a faster speed mod. It will make it easier to play because there will be more space between the arrows. Constant speed mods (cmods) make the song scroll at a constant rate even if the song has bpm changes or stops. A mod of C300 would be as if you were playing a 150 bpm song at 2x. In single-player, you can change your speed mod by pressing Enter before a song starts. In online play, you can do so by pressing Up when in a room. You don't have to only use the speed mods available in that menu; you can add your own to the menu by modifying an .ini file. Follow this guide. I currently use C400, but I'm gradually turning it up.
Stepmania 3.9 users that don't want to copy their songs:
Spoiler
If you already have 3.9 and don't want to waste disk space by copying and pasting your songs, here's how you tell Stepmania to look in an additional folder for songs:
Open up Preferences.ini, find the line that says "AdditionalSongFolders=" (should be right near the top) and put the path to the 3.9 song directory after the =. Example:
If you're using Stepmania 4 Alpha 4, Preferences.ini is in %appdata%\StepMania 4\Save\. If you're using Stepmania 4.0 CVS, it's in My Documents\StepMania CVS\Save\. If you have a lot of songs, be prepared for a long wait, since it'll have to rebuild the cache.
If you're on Vista or Linux, I think you could also do it by symbolically linking the 4.0 Songs folder to the 3.9.
Advice to new players: Use a non-default speed mod, use 2 hands to play, and set your keys something like dfjk so your fingers aren't crowded together on the arrow key.
I'm usually on Southperry IRC, so feel free to ask me questions there (in PM please, I don't pay too much attention to #southperry).
are all good fun, in my opinion. The last requires registration for the forums.
The last one has a wide range of difficulties, and I personally think it should be played without speed mods.[/COLOR]
I've tried Hopscotch mix 2 on keyboard, and it's...quite a bit beneath my level, so I can't really judge. Queen Bee is the only song with some difficulty, but I didn't like the steps. I haven't tried it on pad yet.
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2009-06-19, 06:51 PM (This post was last modified: 2009-06-19, 07:45 PM by Spaz.)
RobMdza Wrote:Sorry, I couldn't make it last week. And I realized that I suck at 13 difficulty steps in SM... It's so different from Pump It Up
Also, how do you do yo press 4 keys at once? My keyboard crashes.
There is no widely-used standardized difficulty scale for for keyboard stepfiles, which is one reason I'm rating the difficulty of packs. Pad difficulties are somewhat standardized thanks to DDR and ITG, so there's usually only small differences between pad packs.
Try a variety of key settings and use the test input option to see if it works. If you can't get any configuration to work, than it's your keyboard's fault. Some keyboards (like mine) won't register more than 2 keys at once and some will only register 3. If no key configuration will let you press 4 keys at once, the only solution is to get a keyboard that can. You can turn off hands (3 or more arrows at once) in the song options menu if you want, but that would only be a problem for you if you had to hit all 4 at once.
I've added a bunch of packs to the "good packs" list: Red Fraction (keyboard:heavy intermediate-light expert), Project Liminality (keyboard:intermediate-light expert), Mintmania (keyboard:beginner-light intermediate, pad:beginner-expert), Keyboard Megapack 1.5 (keyboard:intermediate-heavy intermediate), Hopscotch Mix 2 (keyboard:beginner-light intermediate) and FlipSide FFR Pad Pack (keyboard:beginner-light intermediate, pad:advanced beginner-expert).
2009-06-20, 03:58 PM (This post was last modified: 2009-06-20, 10:01 PM by Spaz.)
GaiabladeX Wrote:Can I join? xD
I thought I was pretty good until I saw you max combo'd Emerald Sword
I'll keep practising =\ And I've only started playing again after seeing your other thread.
Which simfile packs do you recommend to download? I have one of the KoM keyboard packs from your last thread. xD
Of course. All are welcome.
See the first post for a list of recommended packs. If you come to a meeting, you have to have the packs that are listed as "required" or else you won't be able to play.
I'm thinking about adding FlipSide FFR Pad Pack, Super Simfile Song Pack, and maybe Keyboard Megapack 1.5 to the required packs for the week after this week. Thoughts on those packs?
[COLOR="Red"]Reminder: Meetup in [SIZE="7"]3 hours and 15 minutes[/SIZE]from the time of this post.
[/COLOR]
[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]b there or i b4n @@@@@@@@@@@@@
I'm working with the SMOnline developers to extend the protocol so that when the host chooses a song that you have multiple stepfiles of (happens with commonly-stepped songs like A, AA, Kick Your A, anything Dragonforce, a lot of Kyle Ward songs, ...), your game plays the correct stepfile instead of a different stepfile for the same song. I believe I've made the necessary modifications to the Stepmania client. I'm currently working on the server half of it now. The server code relies quite a lot on quirks of gcc, so it took a couple days just to get it to compile on Windows. I'm now working on getting it to run correctly under Windows. Once I flush out the bugs, I can make the actual modification to the protocol, which will be a very simple change.
Hopefully we'll be able to play those commonly-stepped songs by the end of July.
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