Stepmaniax Xbox

From GameBrew
StepManiaX
Stepmaniax2.png
General
AuthorXPort
TypeMusic
Version12
LicenseMixed
Last Updated2006/05/04
Links
Download
Website
Source

StepManiaX is a StepMania port for Xbox.

Installation

Upload the entire Stepmania directory to a directory on your XBox. All of the files are necessary.

Songs should be placed in the Songs directory, to add new songs:

  • Create a new group by creating a new folder (optional).
  • In the group folder, create a folder for your song.
  • Copy all the files for your song into the song folder:
    • background (optional).
    • banner (optional).
    • music (required).
    • BMS files or DWI file (required).

For Themes/Characters/Announcers/Etc Package, place your SMZIP files in the PACKAGES directory just like you would on the PC version of Stepmania.

User guide

Movies

Not supported. It was almost working at one point, but the additional code chewed up about 15MB of memory which is better used for song storage.

Since it was using up so much memory and it wasn't working anyway, this was abandoned.

DVD Support

All of the files that Stepmania writes will now be written to one location: E:/SAVES/STEPMANIAX

All the cache files, configuration data, scores, profiles, etc will be written there.

This means that you should be able to just unpack this distribution to a directory, add songs to the SONGS directory, burn it to an XBox-compatible disc, and be good to go.

Note that this was not tested.

SM-LAN Support

The first time you run StepmaniaX, it will create the following file: E:/SAVES/STEPMANIAX/NETWORK.INI

To play over a network, edit this file in the following way: To connect to someone else's Stepmania-LAN server use these settings:

[Network]
Enabled=1
Server=###.###.###.###

Where "###.###.###.###" is the IP address of your friend's Stepmania-LAN Server.

To have your XBox be a Stepmania-LAN server so that other people can connect to it, use these settings:

[Network]
Enabled=1
Server=127.0.0.1

Setting the Server to 127.0.0.1 tells StepmaniaX that your XBox is to be the server.

To start the PC version of Stepmania so that it will act as a server, do this:

stepmania.exe --runserver=myservername --netip=127.0.0.1

To start the PC version of Stepmania so that it will act as client, do this:

stepmania.exe --netip=192.168.1.10

Where 192.168.1.10 is the IP address of the Stepmania server you wish to join.

For information on connecting to/from your XBox to another over the Internet, see here.

Scroll down to the "Q: I'm trying to netplay and I cannot connect to my friend's xbox. What's wrong?" question. Or you can check out this link.

It is recommended to establish a connection between the XBox version and the Windows version running on your home PC. Once you've got the particulars down for a basic connection, you can try something more sophisticated like an Internet connection.

PS or PS2 dance mats

Get a PS2 -> Xbox controller adaptor.

The one that was tested was called Total Control from Team5 and it works great. Others should work just as well.

Troubleshooting

Q. It used to work, but now I just get a blank screen. What happened?

The stepmania.ini file was probably changed. Delete it and restart.

Q. I have a PAL XBox and it doesn't seem to work.

Make sure widescreen and/or progressive settings are off.

Try both PAL/50 and PAL/60.

Controls

Any controller plugged into any of the 4 XBox ports can perform certain actions while running StepmaniaX.

Left/Right-Stick - Adjust the screen

D-Pad - Correspond to the dance arrows, Menu scrolling

Start - Select/Start

Cancel - Cancel, Hold to quit current song

Black/White - Adjust the beat offset during gameplay

L/R - Adjust the BPM value during gameplay

Screenshots

stepmaniax3.png

stepmaniax4.png

stepmaniax5.png

stepmaniax6.png

Changelog

V12

  • Added the "Show Banners?" option to Graphics options. You need to replace xboxpackage.smzip on your xbox with the new one.
  • Recompiled with some better optimizations. Things should be a bitfaster now.

V11

  • JPEG files work now.
  • Changing screens not randomly crash anymore. This was caused by an out-of-memory error because, by default, the current screen objects are not freed before loading the new screen objects when backing out. I'm not sure why this is not enabled by default, and why there is no way to configure it in the menus, but it may be because it's buggy. I guess we'll soon find out.
  • Characters now work. If you want to use Characters, download this file and put it in your "PACKAGES" directory. That file contains a set of "bones" that is required for some older character sets to work.
  • Added controls for menu navigation on all other games types (including Pump). If you already switched to Pump mode and cannot control the menus anymore, then delete the e:/saves/stepmaniax/keymaps.ini file. You will have to configure the input to your liking on the Options screen.

V10

  • Core updated to Stepmania 3.9 Final.
  • SM-LAN support (see instructions).
  • Better support for running from a DVD (see below)
  • Should be able to accommodate around 700-1000+ songs depending on how large the stepfiles are and on how many extra themes you have installed. I tested it with 700 average-sized songs and there was still enough space for another few hundred. I imagine this will be sufficient for 99% of the people out there. If you're part of that 1% with 239873298324 song files and claim to like/play all of them, then pick up a 128MB XBox.
  • Important Notes: There have been some miscellaneous updates since v5 and I can't remember what those were or what version numbers they were, so I've just jumped to v10 to avoid any confusion as to what's the most recent version. I started over from scratch with the 3.9 Final sources. All of the previous XBox-specific updates were already merged into the main codebase. There were some new alterations that needed to be made to get the XBox version working. The full source should be in a separate package alongside this distribution. If someone on the official Stepmania team could update the main codebase with these changes, that would be great.

V5

  • Option to turn Banner display on/off. This will solve the song skipping problem on the Music Wheel. Some banners take a long time to load and result in skipping on the music wheel. Go to Options -> Graphics Options -> Show Banners and turn it off to stop the music wheel from skipping.

V4

  • Resizable Game Screen. Use the Left and Right thumbsticks to change the size/position of the game screen.

V3

  • Using 3.9 Alpha 7 sources.
  • Fixed PAL issue (I believe).
  • Scores are now saved correctly.
  • JPEG support.
  • Can run from DVD (sortof - see notes).

V2

  • StepMania 3.9 alpha 6 sources (Alpha 7 came out just as I was finishing this up....but I just wanted to get this one out since it was practically done already. I'll get around to upgrading to alpha 7 soon).
  • Health Meter Bar bug fixed.
  • Sync'ing bugs fixed.
  • MP3 bugs fixed.
  • Default Joypad configuration maps to DPAD as well as A/B/X/Y.
  • Keyboard support.
  • OGG support.
  • You can remap the Joypad configuration if you have a USB keyboard. If you do not have a USB keyboard, do *not* select the option to remap input controls. If you do, you will not be able to do anything (since only the keyboard is read on that screen) and you will be forced to reboot.

External links

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