StepMania Changelog

What's new in StepMania 5.1 Beta 2

Jul 24, 2018

Player-visible changes:
The new default theme has undergone visual changes, including a revised color scheme and flatter appearance. Other minor adjustments have also been made.
Make announcers repeat their lines less (#1624 )
Add connection timeout to StepMania Online sockets (#1651)
Turn lights off on exit (#1646)
Creator-visible changes:
Fixed handling of ThemePrefs on themes that are children (#1628)
Make getenv() and setenv() actually get and set the current env (52dbc11)
The ScreenFilter env will be nil sometimes, catch that (6452449)
Improve DrawQuads batching in the font render. (#1654)
Bug fixes:
Moved display zbuffer clear to after notefields are drawn (#1679)
Initialise variables to ensure input thread is started (#1696)
Preserve event timestamps in X11 input driver (#1702)
Corrected Lua documentation for SONGMAN:GetCoursesInGroup() (#1712)
Correct implementation of grade tiers in Lambda (#1717)

New in StepMania 5.1 Beta 1 (Jan 26, 2018)

New default theme:
A new high-resolution default theme known as Lambda has been introduced. It features a cleaner visual design with a bold color scheme, a more streamlined layout, and is optimized for high definition resolutions. A new noteskin of the same name is also bundled, which is inspired by the visual design of the theme.
While most themes (including the previous default theme) render at an internal resolution of 480p for positioning actors, Lambda uses 720p. Some content, particularly songs utilizing internal BGAnimations and other scripting, may require adaptations in order to render correctly when using high-resolution themes; although this issue is not exclusive to 5.1, it has greater prominence because of its use of a high-resolution theme by default.
The previous default theme is still included as part of the base StepMania package under the name "Legacy", but it will be removed on a future release. As mentioned earlier, 5.1 remains compatible with themes and noteskins that are compatible with 5.0.12.
Controller support
The DirectInput handler for Windows now supports XInput. (#1443):
"The XBox360 controller driver for windows has a flaw where the DirectInput backwards-compatible driver registers dance pad arrows as a hat and will not allow opposite arrows to be pressed at the same time. This is not a problem in the XInput interface since the arrows are registered as a DPad and each arrow is a button."
Custom songs:
Songs can be loaded from profiles on USB drives. Preferences are avaliable to specify caps on song file size, the number of songs that can be loaded, and loading timeout length. On Linux, StepMania must run as root to save USB profile scores. (#1470)
Other:
The ScreenEdit notefield now scales on themes with internal resolutions higher than 480p. (#1357)
Bug fixed where player difficulty meter and/or color inside MusicWheelItem don't update when switching between difficulties (#1361)
Exclusive and borderless fullscreen modes avaliable on X11 (#1485), and issues with fullscreen fixed on macOS (#1523)
Coin count is now saved to a file in the /Save folder. (#1405)
Unselectable trails are pruned from course selection when AutoSetStyle is active. (#1619)
Installer build script fixes. (#1625)

New in StepMania 5.0.12 (Aug 14, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.12 RC (Jul 2, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.11 (Apr 1, 2016)

Player visible changes:
Edit Mode:
Beat bars are drawn properly when M-mods are used.
Added "Clear timing in region" to timing menu.
Fixed crash that occurs when "Paste timing data" is used after copying a region of timing data that only contains stops.
Gameplay:
Added a pause menu to the default theme. This menu can be brought up by pressing Select or Back twice, or by pressing MenuLeft and MenuRight at the same time. The pause menu allows exiting from the middle of the song or restarting the song or continuing.
In an Endless course, songs will only be repeated after all songs in the group have been played.
Language:
Bahasa Indonesian translation added to default theme.
Minimaid:
Minimaid driver added for Linux. This is practically identical to the
Windows minimaid driver that pkgingo wrote.
Preferences:
Added DisableUploadDir preference to skip saving a score entry to Save/Upload
every time a song is played. Generating the unique filename can take several
seconds when there are years of scores accumulated. This preference defaults
to false.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed No Fakes mod to remove fakes inside warps.
Colon key should be mappable.
BG Brightness is no longer forced to 100% on songs that only have a beginner chart.
Graphics/Sound options screen should not crash or hang on load anymore. The list of resolutions was being fetched in an inefficient and buggy way.
Linux event devices now start at JOY10 instead of JOY1. Without this change, if one dance pad is a joystick device, and the other is an event device, they will both be JOY1, and stepmania will think they are the same dance pad. If you use Linux, assume that you have to remap your dance pad.
Stepmania will force disconnection from the SMO server when entering the jukebox or sync calibration screens to avoid crash.
Themer visible changes:
Bug fixes and new functions:
Bug fixes are marked with [B].
Functions are marked with [F].
Metrics added are marked with [M].
Actor:
[F] get_tween_uses_effect_delta and set_tween_uses_effect_delta added.
Global:
[F] get_sound_driver_list added.
RageFileManager:
[B] OS X special files should be ignored in general.
[B] Lua functions for RageFile should now emit an error when the file was not opened correctly instead of crashing.
Player:
[F] ChangeLife and SetLife added.
Popn:
[B] Judgment levels in popn game mode now use W1 to W5.
ScreenManager:
[F] get_input_redirected and set_input_redirected added.
SelectMusic:
Using lua music files for the section music and similar things works now.
[F] Added CanOpenOptionsList. OpenOptionsList will do nothing if CanOpenOptionsList returns false.

New in StepMania 5.1.0 Alpha 2 (Apr 1, 2016)

NewField changes:
All themes use the NewField in gameplay now. The old NoteField actor does not exist on gameplay anymore.
Compatibility mode:
NewField has a special mode to make it use the old PlayerOptions mods instead of the mods that are built into it. Anything that touches the old PlayerOptions mods will trigger the auto detection to put the field into defective mode for that player.
Edit Mode:
If the beat bars are misaligned and the receptors are shaking when htting play in edit mode, something is triggering the defective mode detection in the NewField. Look for things that touch PlayerOptions and remove them if you're a themer.
NewSkin changes:
Noteskin parameters:
This is a system for allowing a noteskin to provide choices to the player that change the behavior of the noteskin. The noteskin creates some variables and decides what to do with them, the theme provides a menu, and the engine saves the parameters in the player's profile.
Other changes:
Added support for 3D noteskins.
Added anim_time and anim_uses_beats for controlling how fast taps are animated.
Added quantum_time for controlling how many beats the quantizations are spread over. This should make is possible to make a noteskin where half notes look different from 4th notes.
Added edgy, EasyV2 and ExactV2 noteskins, which support dance, pump, and solo.
Removed rotations table from the column data. Set the rotation of the taps with InitCommand instead.
layers_above_notes and layers_below_notes fields merged into a single layers field. Each layer must set its draw order so the NewField knows when to render it. Each layer should also set its fade type and transform type so that the NewField knows which mods to apply to it.
Lifts:
Lifts are rendered with a hold body preceding them to give the player some warning time. The length of the hold body defaults to .25 seconds or .25 beats, whichever puts it further away from the note. The hold body is purely visual, it is not judged with a hold judgment.
Other NewField changes:
reverse_percent changed to reverse_scale to simplify reverse code.
Themers should reread Docs/Themerdocs/5.1_incompatibilities/NewField.md.
Player Options:
The default theme has a new Player Options screen designed to allow setting all the NewField related options.
Other bug fixes:
Fixed bug that broke charts that had scroll segments but not other timing segments.
Themer visible changes:
CustomSpeedMods:
The CustomSpeedMods system that reads SpeedMods.txt from the profile is deprecated and its load function is no longer called. Using CustomSpeedMods or ArbitrarySpeedMods will trigger the defective mode auto detection.
GameState:
The ApplyGameCommand function has been removed. Everything that it did has been possible through other functions for a year, so it's obsolete.
Item Scroller:
A lua based alternative to ActorScroller. Docs/Themerdocs/item_scroller.md.
Judgment/Combo:
The JudgmentUnderField and ComboUnderField metrics are no longer used. The judgment and combo must set their draw order to control whether they are under notes or not. The draw order for the judgment and combo works the same
as for a layer in the NewField. This allows players to choose different settings for judge and combo placement.
Lua config system:
A lua based system for per-profile settings. Designed to save arbitrary lua tables. Read Docs/Themerdocs/lua_config_system.md.
Notefield board:
Graphics/Notefield board is not loaded by NewField. Create
Graphics/Notefield layers instead, which returns a table of actors that are rendered by draw order.
Graphics/NoteColumn layers is loaded by each column in the NewField and also drawn in order of draw order.
PlayerState:
[F] get_read_bpm added.

New in StepMania 5.0.10 (Mar 18, 2016)

BMS:
Fixed crash when an unknown type chart was in a bms.
Fixed bug that would load iidx bms files as kb7.
Added myo2 channel layout and kb7 charts. Added preview point and fixed offset support and linear solo bms layout.
Course Mode:
Fixed loading of courses that use WORST entries.
Edit Mode:
Current Second display no longer has the global offset added in. Good people were using the Current Second when syncing charts, and having the global offset added in made syncing more difficult.
Fixed crash on missing ScreenMiniMenuTimingDataChangeInformation metrics.
.sm files will no longer be saved when split timing is used because per-chart timing cannot be done in the .sm format.
There was some consideration of trying to change the bpm of charts when saving to .sm, changing the bpm of the chart to match the song and moving notes to occur near the same time, but that would cause most notes to be several milliseconds off sync. So the idea of trying to create a similar .sm for compatibility was discarded.
This only matters to people using split timing, which means different bpm and stop data for each chart.
Fixed crash on entering edit mode caused by entering edit mode as Player 2. Edit Mode only works as Player 1.
Gameplay:
Fixed problems with disqualification and charts with attacks. If a chart has attacks, and the attack modifier is used to turn them "Off", then the score is disqualified.
Turning on "Random Attacks" also disqualifies the score, even on charts that do not have attacks.
Fixed timing to apply the current music rate to the global offset so that playing at different music rates doesn't make a chart off sync.
Fixed bug that caused missed holds to be recorded as held in some themes.
Fixed bug that skipped notes on beat 0 in score.
Noteskins:
If the fallback for a noteskin is not found, that noteskin is not loaded, to prevent picking it and crashing.
Fixed bug where the hold body doesn't scroll if it goes off the top of the screen.
Fixed bottomcap when NoteDisplay is zoomed out.
Preferences:
MaxRegenComboAfterMiss preference brought in.
When a step is missed in gameplay, the combo has to get back up to RegenComboAfterMiss before the player starts regaining life. If MaxRegenComboAfterMiss is greater than RegenComboAfterMiss, then each successive miss increases RegenComboAfterMiss until it reaches MaxRegenComboAfterMiss.
MaxRegenComboAfterMiss defaults to 5, the same as RegenComboAfterMiss, so there should be no behavior change unless the preference is manually changed.
Fixed crash on Advanced Input Options on OS X caused by the Axis Fix preference not existing on OS X. The preference does nothing on OS X, but the game no longer crashes on that screen.
Added TimingWindowSecondsCheckpoint for the timing window that checkpoint holds allow you to release for.
Songs:
Changed song loading to allow a song to have a blank MusicFile field if the song has any keysounds. A blank MusicFile entry can result from having '#' in the music file name, or be intended for bms files. If the music file name comes up blank, and there are no keysounds, the engine looks in the song folder to find the music file, which makes loading the song slower.

New in StepMania 5.0.9 (Jun 22, 2015)

New in StepMania 5.0.8 (May 11, 2015)

PLAYER VISIBLE CHANGES:
Service Menu:
Entries in service menu rearranged to hopefully organize them better.
Test Input, Input Options, and Calibrate Machine Sync are now under Input Options.
Appearance Options, Set BG Fit Mode, and UI Options are now under Display Options.
Edit Mode:
Added submenus to the timing edit menu to allow shifting, copying, and pasting any or all timing segments in the selected region or after the current cursor position. Shifting menus in edit mode now have choices for 1, 2, or 4 measures or 2 beats. Revert From Disk actually works now. Fixed bug that made alter menu choices prompt for clearing.
Gameplay:
Holding Select on gameplay now skips the current song in course or endless mode. This is meant to address the problem some people had where they were unable to skip songs in endless mode.
Toasty animation can now occur multiple times during gameplay. The Allow Multiple Toasties preference controls whether it is played multiple times.
Bug fixes:
Fixed bug in screen filter in default theme that made it not appear under the field when a solo file was played without Center1Player.
Fixed crash on OS X for certain dance pads when in Japanese locale.
Scoring bug fixes related to radar calculation.
Scores on edit charts should now be loaded correctly. Before, they were only loaded after the chart had been played in the current session.
Fixed bug that made steps on the same row as a stop and a bpm change unhittable. (and possibly other weird edge cases of multiple timing segments on one row, nothing should accidentally cause unhittable steps now)
Joining on Select Music when on Extra Stage is disabled to prevent crashing on Evaluation Summary.
"Do not show again" button on missing texture dialog works now.
If the background or banner file for a song doesn't exist when the song is cached, the cache file will have a blank path so Stepmania won't try to load the nonexistent banner or background.
Default key configuration for beat game type slightly tweaked, space is now the default scratch key, key7 is now mapped to right instead of key3.
Backwards and shuffle chart mods in beat now ignore the scratch column.
The AxisFix preference has been added which might fix the axis problem for some people on windows or on linux using the event driver.
THEMER VISIBLE CHANGES:
Service Menu:
ScreenOptionsInputSub and ScreenOptionsDisplaySub added. Updating a theme to show the options for the new screens should be a simple matter of changing the LineNames entry for ScreenOptionsService to include "InputOptions" and "SoundGraphics". NoteColumnRenderer:
Added handling for diffuse to make rainbow and related effects work.
RadarValues:
Stream, Voltage, Air, Freeze, and Chaos are no longer capped at 1. Stream and Voltage no longer count hold heads twice. RadarCategory_Notes added, which counts all notes.
ScreenGameplay:
The NoteField board is now underneath everything except the backgound. This means underneath any custom actors on the underlay or overlay or decoration layers, and also underneath the combo/judgment even when the ComboUnderField metric is true.
BUG FIXES AND NEW FUNCTIONS:
ActorSound:
[A] IsAction attribute added. If this is true, the sound will not be played if the MuteActions preference is true.
Global:
[F] commify
[F] convert_xml_bgs
[F] rec_print_children
[F] rec_print_table
XML converter:
A converter has been added that takes care of the simple grunt work of converting an xml bg/fg file to lua for SM5. Read Docs/Themerdocs/XmlToLua.txt for details.

New in StepMania 5.0.7 RC (Mar 10, 2015)

There have been some changes to file loading to speed up startup time, and autosave has been added to edit mode. With those two additions affecting critical features, it is possible that some detail was missed (maybe a particular rare tag in simfiles doesn't work anymore, or maybe files aren't saved or loaded correctly)
Thus, this release candidate build is so that people can test things on non-critical systems to make sure simfiles that worked fine in 5.0.6 also work fine with the changed loader. (non-critical systems just means don't go stick it on an arcade machine where someone might get pissed if a song doesn't load or there's a crash)
If you encounter any problems related to song loading or saving with this build post on the forum or submit an issue with as much info as you have. If it's a particular song that doesn't load right, that simfile will probably be needed to solve the problem.
Next release
If there are no serious bugs in this build, the next release will be in 3 weeks (April 1st), along with any changes that occur between now and then. Work on improving startup time is still ongoing.
Note on loading time
Because this release includes a cache version bump, the first time you load will take much longer than normal because it has to rebuild the song cache. After that, it should be measurably faster. People using SSDs or on modern hardware or with small song collections might not be able to see any difference in loading time.
Now for the notes on the other changes from the last few weeks:
Release notes
This is divided into two sections:
Player visible changes: New configuration options players should try out,
Themer visible changes: New (optional) screens that themes can support, new metrics or lua functions, or fixes for existing functions.
Items are roughly grouped into the general part of StepMania they fit into.
PLAYER VISIBLE CHANGES:
Edit Mode:
Autosave:
The song is automatically saved every 5 minutes if there are any changes.
EditClearPromptThreshold:
When clearing an area with the Alter menu, if the area contains at least
EditClearPromptThreshold notes, you will be prompted. It's a preference
that is settable in the Advanced Options section or in the Options in Edit
Mode. Setting it to -1 means it will always prompt, setting it to 1000000
will make it never prompt.
Per-chart music:
Each chart in a simfile can have its own MUSIC tag, pointing to a music file
to use instead of the normal song music. This does not change the logic for
when the song ends in gameplay. The time of the last step of any chart is
still used as the time to end the song in gameplay, so if you use per-chart
music, make sure your music is the same length.
Preview tag:
Simfiles can have a PREVIEW tag which tells Stepmania to use a specific file
for the preview instead of the song music file. The preview length should
be read from the preview music file, so cut it right.
Preferences:
### HarshHotLifePenalty: Normally, if your life bar is full (1.0), and you get a judgement that would decrease it, 0.1 is taken off your life bar even if the penalty would be less than 0.1. If HarshHotLifePenalty is false, then the penalty is used instead of 0.1.
GENERAL:
DX9 support:
DX9 support improved, giving a large speed boost and fixing the problem that
made people get stuck with 16bit color. [xwidghet]
Mutable actions:
Pause/Break key now toggles "action" sounds off or on. There is also a
button in the F3 debug menu for people that don't have a Pause/Break key
(press A, there are so many that it is off the bottom).
Themer visible changes:
Bug fixes are marked with [B].
Functions are marked with [F].
ActorFrame:
[B] Fixed RemoveChild and RemoveAllChildren Lua functions to delete the children instead of leaking memory.
BitmapText:
[B] Place characters of right-to-left alphabets correctly. (untested) [roothorick]
Font:
[B] Asserts and other things that caused StepMania to crash on font mistakes now emit non-fatal errors.
Global:
[B] foreach_ordered lua function now works on tables that have both number and string keys. Number keys are iterated over first.
PaneDisplay:
[B] Changed to print an error when metrics or player number are omitted instead of crashing.
Screen:
[B] Fixed crash when AddInputCallback is passed nil.
Song:
[F] GetPreviewMusicPath

StepMania Changelog

What's new in StepMania 5.1 Beta 2

New in StepMania 5.1 Beta 1 (Jan 26, 2018)

New in StepMania 5.0.12 (Aug 14, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.12 RC (Jul 2, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.11 (Apr 1, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.1.0 Alpha 2 (Apr 1, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.10 (Mar 18, 2016)

New in StepMania 5.0.9 (Jun 22, 2015)

New in StepMania 5.0.8 (May 11, 2015)

New in StepMania 5.0.7 RC (Mar 10, 2015)

New in StepMania 5.0.6 (Feb 18, 2015)

New in StepMania 5.0 Beta 4a (Dec 18, 2014)

New in StepMania 5.0 Beta 4 (Oct 15, 2014)

New in StepMania 5.0 Beta 2 (Jun 24, 2013)

New in StepMania 5.0 Beta 1a (Apr 22, 2013)

New in StepMania 4.0 (Nov 22, 2008)

New in StepMania 3.9 (Nov 22, 2008)