Submitted By: Date: June 12, 2011, 04:51:21 PM
Views: 6688
Summary: Hello everyone! Today we are going to create perfect stutters in Stepmania! (or OpenITG, whatever you use to edit charts)
Disclamer:Everything I know about this I got from other tutorials on r21freak. The people on there write really good stuff and I wanted to share it here without stealing it, so I wrote one instead!
So you've seen/heard about stutters correct?
They are a common gimmick in a lot of charts now-a-days where the chart will look like it stutters or glitches in time to the music file it's associated with.
Well today ladies and gents we're going to learn how to do those the CORRECT way in the Stepmania editor. So open that up!
Here we go~
First
The wrong way to do stop gimmicks:
Most people who figure out how to do this usually do stutters in a way that leaves the chart to drift off sync just slightly. (I am completely guilty of this myself)
Usually a stutter gimmick involves a section of the chart where its BPM is doubled (or multiplied by 1.5x, 3x, or whatever feels right) with little stops at certain arrows to make it seems like the chart stutters.
Most people find it sufficient to just guess as to what the time of the stop should be and end up being a little off - especially since many players don't know that Stepmania lets you use stops that are not multiples of .020. Please avoid this
Now then: The correct way to do them:
So now lets make stutters the correct way using a little math!
let say a song has a base bpm of 140. This being the most common bpm the player should see during the song.
Now lets say in this song right at the 10th measure there is glitching sounds on the 16th(The yellow ones) notes and lasts until the 11th measure.
First increase the speed on the 10th measure by whatever you want. I find increasing the BPM by 1.5x to be smoother and easier to read for players. Then at the 11th measure reduce it back down to 140 BPM.
So now on the 10th measure it will say 210 BPM 140x1.5=210 and the 11th measure will reduce back down to 140
Now put in those 16th notes until the 11th measure like a boss!
Here's where the fun comes in So for the first stop gimmick to get it exactly what the time needs to be for the arrows to stay on sync you need to measure half of the distance of time in between the arrows.
To do this go to the 32nd note by pressing the right arrow key. Left and Right go to different notes if you are not aware of this.
Since you are on the 32nd notes, go halfway in between the first two arrows. You'll notice a 32nd is exactly halfway in between the 16th notes. At that halfway mark in the editor see where it says "current second" in the upper right hand corner of the Stepmania editor?
Take that number, and then move up to the quarter note at the 10th measure and take that current second number and subtract it. So it'll look something like this for example:
42.100-42.064=.036
.036 is the correct number for the stop in this example
BOOOM! there's your perfect stop number! Assuming the sound you want to follow is consistent through the section, this is the number you want for every stop in this area. But you say "How do I put in a number that has a 100th place if the Stepmania editor only seems to allow stops to go up by .020?"
Stepmania uses the Alt key to switch commands to .001 resolution - BPM, stops, anything that normally moves in increments of .020 - just hold the Alt key while you change it. If you've started using SM SSC (SM 5), you can also hit Enter, go to "Edit Timing Data" and type in values for pauses, BPM changes, etc., rather than homing in on it with incremental changes.
If all else fails, what you can do is "mark" the stop by putting in a .02 stop or getting close to what the number was that you got. Save your chart and now open up the songs .sm file in notepad (quitting Stepmania is optional - Alt + Enter switched between windowed and fullscreen modes). Scroll down a bit an you'll see a tag like this: #STOPS:;
It'll show every stop you've put into the file so far and which second it's at in the song itself. For example: #STOPS:95.500=0.02
Change the stop from 0.02 (or whatever number you set it at) to the number you got. Save the file and BAM! You're done! That's it! Bravo! perfect stop! the chart will stutter and should stay in sync as well!
