DWI

[SSC]

I just downloaded DWI from dwi.ddruk.com/downloads.php but there's no songs on it and I don't know how to work this stupid thing. Help please.

[SSC]

Actually, I'd rather play off of Stepmania if you guide me exactly how to put songs onto it...

[abrannan]

First off, you need to get songs. Try doing a google search for smzip files. Those are stepmania packages. To install them you simply doubleclick them, and stepmania will do the rest. Try reading through the readme that came with stepmania. It walks you through the whole process.

[SSC]

Argh I despise this, I have Stepmania and I downloaded a song, but I have to export it to some stupid file or something? I read the read-me and it helps with absolutely nothing for we computer illiterates. Damn the complexity of all of this. If anyone could... like, tell me how to put songs on the game that would help... or something.

[abrannan]

From the readme:


How StepMania Loads Songs (top)
All files for a specific song (data file, music file, banner, background) must reside in a single folder. This folder must have the following path:

Songs/<group folder>/<song folder>/

For example, the song Discow Moscow may consist of the following files:

Songs/TournaMix 4/Discow Moscow/Discow Moscow.sm
Songs/TournaMix 4/Discow Moscow/Discow Moscow.ogg
Songs/TournaMix 4/Discow Moscow/Discow Moscow-banner.png
Songs/TournaMix 4/Discow Moscow/Discow Moscow.png
Songs/TournaMix 4/Discow Moscow/Discow Moscow-movie.avi


So you have to copy your song and stepfile, along with any graphics file into the songs directory on your computer where you installed stepmania. It works the same way with DWI. Stepmania went one step further so that people could package up a whole set of songs, stepfiles, banners (to picture that shows during the song select screen), backgrounds (the image on the screen while you're playing a song), etc. into one file, and Stepmania would know what to do with it.

Remember that Stepmania is ALPHA software, which means it's still in the early stages of development, so you are expected to be a somewhat technical user before using it. That means reading and re-reading *ALL* of the documentation, doing Google searches to help with any questions you have, and being willing to generally putter around with it a bit.

Though attmittedly, Stepmania is one of the more convoluted pieces of software I've come across. At least in comparison to DWI. Sure it has that Smzip thing, but I think it's trying to be too much. Pump it up support, Para para support, etc. It's grown into too much of a beast, IMO.

[abrannan]

Given all the difficulty people have been having with Stepmania, I may try to pull together a simple tutorial to get folks up and running. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of spare time in the enxt few weeks, so it may take a while.

[SSC]

I got it all cleared up... apparently the files I was downloading were of the wrong format.