#
The Manual

## Introduction

Welcome to StepMania, a rhythm game simulator. If you're not familiar with the concept of rhythm games, it involves triggering inputs (e.g. buttons, foot panels) in time to the music. StepMania can be controlled with a keyboard or one of various specialized controllers.

## Welcome to StepMania 5

### System Requirements

StepMania 5 can run on this bare minimum:

- Operating System(s):
  - Windows (2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7)
  - Mac OS X (10.?)
  - *NIX/POSIX-compliant OS (GNU/Linux, *BSD)
- 256MB of RAM
- Video Card
- Audio Card

However, we highly recommend at least these settings for decent performance:

On Windows, DirectX 8.0 is required in order to install StepMania. If DirectX is not installed on your computer, the StepMania installer will abort the installation with a warning.

### Installation

If you're reading this, you may have already figured out how to install StepMania 5. Just in case you're reading this without having installed it yourself, however, here are the installation instructions for various operating systems.

#### Windows

The Windows version is available as an .exe installer. You can convert the game to Portable mode by placing a blank Portable.ini inside of the StepMania install directory.

#### Mac OS X

The Mac version is distributed as a .dmg file; Mount it, make a StepMania folder in Applications/, then put StepMania 5 in there, and make folders as needed. That probably isn't the best way to do it, but it is A way.

#### Linux

Linux users are typically expected to build from source. See Compiling on the StepMania wiki for more information.

### Getting Started

#### Song Installation

StepMania requires a specific folder layout when installing songs: `Songs/[group folder]/[song folder]/`

Using one of the included songs as an example:

    Songs/StepMania 5/Springtime/Kommisar - Springtime.mp3
    Songs/StepMania 5/Springtime/spring.png
    Songs/StepMania 5/Springtime/springbn.png
    Songs/StepMania 5/Springtime/Springtime.ssc

Each of these files serves as a part of the simfile. StepMania 5 supports various formats, including (but not limited to) `SSC`, `SM`, `DWI`, `KSF` and `BMS`. With the multi-file BMS and KSF formats, put all the files in the song's folder.

##### Handling Asset Searching

todo: explain how StepMania tries to find files if they aren't defined in the simfile.

#### Connecting Controllers and Defining Controls

#### Configuration

### Song Editor

### Creating Content

If you feel like making custom content for StepMania (that isn't a song), there's lots of options.

#### Announcers

#### Courses

Course files use the `.crs` format.

#### Noteskins

NoteSkins are the shapes of the notes during gameplay. Each game type has its own folder for noteskins, e.g. `dance/`,`pump/`. The game looks for a noteskin called `default` in each of the game directories. If it finds one, it will enable the gametype.

NoteSkins consist of three parts: the metrics (`metrics.ini`), the Lua script (`NoteSkin.lua`), and the various files for the noteskin (graphics, etc.).

#### BGAnimations

#### Themes

StepMania themes consist of various files and folders. The most important file is `metrics.ini`, which controls the entire theme.

The StepMania Theming Wiki is a good source of information on theming for StepMania.