StepMania Support in The Metronomicon

What Is This?

The Metronomicon (as of the “UGC Patch” on 10/27) is capable of supporting and directly playing several types of dance/rhythm choreography from other existing PC games.
This opens the door to playing songs you may have already created for another game, or even to a collection of songs you may have amassed over time.
All those great songs you already have… but with RPG combat!

• Any songs in the StepMania (etc, see below) format can be played in either FreePlay Mode or Story Mode (but offer no treasure/exp).
• Create a party, choose your difficulty, and dive in.
• Leaderboards will even be created for any custom tracks, if you’re on Steam!

Supported File Types:

1. .SM Files – StepMania files from version 4.0 and earlier
2. .SSC Files – StepMania files from version 5.0 and later
3. .DWI Files – Dance With Intensity files – an older format, but well suited for our use.

Supported Features:

Not all features available across all open-source rhythm games are necessarily supported.
Some don’t work nicely with The Metronomicon’s concept, and some simply aren’t supported.
This is a list of the feature supports only as of the writing of this doc.

• Only “single” dance types are supported. “Doubles”, “Solos”, and others will be ignored.
• Freezes and BPM Changes are supported.
• Any “holds” or “rolls” will be convered to simple taps.
• Any “mines”, “lifts”, “fakes”, “attacks”, etc will be simply dropped. This shouldn’t interrupt the flow of intended notes.
• Because only 3 difficulties exist in The Metronomicon, a mapping of “their” to “our” difficulties will happen.
  • If three or less difficulties exist in the UGC, you’ll get them all.
  • If four or more difficulties exist in the UGC, you’ll get the hardest ones, in order, excluding any ranked “edit”.

Lastly, though the format is undeniably ubiquitous, songs in MP3 format are not supported.
See below for details, and for a very simple fix to this, to convert MP3s to a viable format.

How To Import Songs:

There are two very easy ways to import existing songs of the types above.
Use the first if “The Metronomicon” is the only rhythm game on your computer.
The second is available if you have one or more other rhythm games, and don’t want to have to copy all that data twice.

Copying Songs In Directly:

1. Create a folder called “CustomSongs” in the appropriate folder:
   1. For Windows, wherever the upper “Metronomicon” folder is. This new folder should be a peer with the folder that contains “Metronomicon.exe”. So, up one folder from that EXE.
   2. For OSX, wherever the “Metronomicon.app” is. Right along side it.
2. Copy whatever song folders you want into this directory! They’ll be found when the game launches!
   1. “Song pack” subfolders are supported, but will be honored only for sorting.
      1. Aka: Put songs into any folder, as you please. Subfolders are fine.
   2. Each song folder needs to contain simply:
      1. One of the file types above (DWI, SM, SSC)
      2. One .OGG (or WAV) file

Linking to Songs Elsewhere:

1. Create a folder called “CustomSongs” in the appropriate folder:
   1. For Windows, wherever the “Metronomicon” folder is. The folder that contains “Metronomicon.exe”. So, up one folder from that EXE.
   2. For OSX, wherever the “Metronomicon.app” is. Right along side it.
2. In that folder, create a file called “FoldersToCheck.txt”.
   1. If you’ve already run the game before, it might be created for you already, with documentation inside.
3. In that file, simply add directories that the game should check for song folders/files, one per line.
   1. Ex: C:\Games\Stepmania 5\Songs

That’s It!

I can’t guarantee that 100% of songs will load (I can’t predict what, but I’m betting that some definitely won’t!), but a ton ton TON of songs will. Most, even.
While we can’t offer full-scale support for these files – that come in such a variety of different flavors, shapes, and forms – we can do our very best. 🙂

Enjoy!!!

If you’re Looking to Learn More about Creating Your Own Metronomicon UGC:
Click Here!

Note About MP3 Support:

The Metronomicon does not support MP3 files. Because of licensing fees. (Look it up.)
But! If you need to convert your existing MP3s into OGG format (basically the same – just… free).
We have a free tool you can download here.

Special thanks to both Lame and Vorbis for letting us really just cobble their tools into a UI.