MWOK's Guide for Perfect Stops

[TEEX]

The Magic Number Is 15!!!---please stay with me, I explain everything

READ DOWN TO SEE WHY YOU MAY NEED TO USE THIS INSTEAD OF DREAM STUDIO

Alright, you don't need ddream studio to insert you stops for you - all you need is the magic number- This can get a little complicated, and I will go into it for players who want to make advanced stepfiles with a ton of stops. Do not question how I came up with this because it is not worth it.

Here's the most basic form of the Magic Number Method. You take the number 15 and divide it by your BPM --and that's basically it. (Huh)? This number that you have just calculated will always land on a beat. You can double or cut this number in half as many times as you want in order to place the correct stops (Multiplying or dividing this number by a number . 5 (ex. 1.5) seems to work sometimes, but I am not yet convinced).

EXAMPLE - If you haven't seen dancing box in the R21 12 pack, you should download it... But anyway here's an application of it. The bpm of that song is 125. To get perfect stops, you simply divide 15 by 125. I get .12 on my half retarded burger king calculator--from there you can "play your stops by ear", and use numbers such as .06, .03, .24,.48 (ect) for your stops. **But make sure your stops add up to MULTIPLES of .12. For example, you shuld not put 1 ".06" stop. This MAY (once again, still questioning) produce an offbeat stop- you need to put in 2 .06 sec stops, or 4 .03 sec stops to add up to .12.

HERES WHY YOU COULD NEED THIS INSTEAD OF DDR DREAM STUDIO

Unfortunately, this is a rare and simple case, where 15/125 = a perfect .12. If you are just entering one stop in your song, by all means, use dream studio (or the magic # still works!!!). Dream Studio rounds your stop to the nearest hundredth, so if you have many stops and your
stop (15/BPM) is not perfectly out to two decimal places, your song will slowly drift out of sync--here's an example (my song Hasir, which is coming soon) and what you would do about it.

EXAMPLE: My song has a bpm of 115.2 , so when I do 15/115.2, I get .1302--OH NO!

Dream studio will simply round this number to .13 every time. BUT, for every stop that is .13, not .1302, the arrows will speed ahead of the music by .0002 sec. That means for every 49 (Don't ask why its not 50, just subtract one--see final instructions at bottom) stops (which I have way more than 49--look down to final instructions) the arrows will speed ahead of the music by .01 sec. But this is easily fixed!! All that you need to to to neutralize, or even out, this .01 off Sync problem is insert 1 ".14" sec stop for every 49 ".13" sec stops. This "Slow extra .01" will completely counteract the .01 sec off beat "speedup". Try it yourself on a calc...add 49 .13 stops (or 49 x .13), add .14, and divide by 50 to get the average stop time-I get .1302.

I realize that this is not the best example because .0002 sec is so slight. However, if (15/BPM) turns out to be a number such as .1325, and you want to put in lots of stops, you must then put one .14 stop for every 3 .13 stops. Otherwise, you will notice your song drift slowly out of sync.

FINAL INSTRUCTIONS

15/BPM = correct stop time

LONG STOPS ARE WHEN YOU GO UP TO THE NEXT DECIMAL INTEGER INTEGER FROM CORRECT STOP TIME (Ex. .1302, long stop is .14), AND SHORT STOPS ARE WHEN YOU GO DOWN TO THE NEXT "DECIMAL INTEGER" FROM THE CORRECT STOP TIME (Ex. .1302, Short Stop is .13)

FOR REMAINDERS OF UNDER .0050 (Ex. 15/BPM = .1302) To counteract stop offset - take thousandths and ten thousandths places,
multiply by 10,000 (ex. .0002 x 10,000 = 2) divide 100 by this number. Subtract 1- that's your ratio of "Short Stops to Long Stops" (in this case, 49 .13 stops to every one .14 stop)

FOR REMAINDERS OF OVER .0050 (Ex, say 15/BPM = .1375)[/b][/i][/u]
To counteract stop offset - take thousandths and ten thousandths places,
multiply by 10,000 (ex. .0075 x 10,000 = 75). Do 100 - That Number (Ex 100 - 75 = 25) divide 100 by this number. Subtract 1. This Is your Ratio of "Long Stops to Short Stops"

[NIQ9]

*Highlight area
*press enter
*convert beats to pause

done

No matter how you do it, the stops round off to 3 places when you save*, so if you want truly perfect stops, after you convert beats to pause, look at the stop value and manually enter the numbers into the .sm file

*at least in 3.9 and 3.95. I'm not sure about 4.

[Xynn]

*Highlight area
*press enter
*convert beats to pause

done

No matter how you do it, the stops round off to 3 places when you save*, so if you want truly perfect stops, after you convert beats to pause, look at the stop value and manually enter the numbers into the .sm file

*at least in 3.9 and 3.95. I'm not sure about 4.

This is EXACTLY what I do and it works fine for me.

[Patashu]

Even if you do that you have to be able to calculate how long that stop would be anyway, unless there's some version of stepmania that lists more decimal places than it saves.

[mute]

*Highlight area
*press enter
*convert beats to pause

No no no no no. No. Rounding errors WILL accumulate and cause drift. Convert beats to pause is not pro.

I've been using MWok's guide for two years. It is all you need.

[Revolver]

*Highlight area
*press enter
*convert beats to pause

No no no no no. No. Rounding errors WILL accumulate and cause drift. Convert beats to pause is not pro.

I've been using MWok's guide for two years. It is all you need.

Convert beat to pause, do basic math in the .sm. Much easier than that wall of text.

[Spooty Biscuit]

If you're writing something like, I dunno, Printer Jam, yeah I could see the necessity. But 99% of files will work just fine with a highlight -> convert to stop.

[MasterWok]

LOL, this is old.

I actually found a way that's a little bit easier than having to do the math in some instances. No matter what kinds of gimmicks/stops you put in, all of your sounds (and the arrows that go with those sounds) will still land at the same current seconds (number at the top right of the screen in the sm editor). So, if you create another blank file without the gimmicks for a test, you can record the current seconds of your arrows (I usually just do every 4th note) in the blank and make sure the current seconds all match with the file that has gimmicks put in. If anyone is slightly interested, this is how I made Colorful Cookie, Storm World, and Day Dream, by recording the current seconds of where all the arrows are supposed to land, and then placing notes at these same current seconds while running the wrong bpm.

This method could also be used if you want to have gimmicks at an obscure BPM, like 100,000.

Of course, it is kinda tedious and you might only want to use this for extreme circumstances (I used it for Licky and Aiin! in my last pack).

[Siludil]

LOL, this is old.

I actually found a way that's a little bit easier than having to do the math in some instances. No matter what kinds of gimmicks/stops you put in, all of your sounds (and the arrows that go with those sounds) will still land at the same current seconds (number at the top right of the screen in the sm editor). So, if you create another blank file without the gimmicks for a test, you can record the current seconds of your arrows (I usually just do every 4th note) in the blank and make sure the current seconds all match with the file that has gimmicks put in. If anyone is slightly interested, this is how I made Colorful Cookie, Storm World, and Day Dream, by recording the current seconds of where all the arrows are supposed to land, and then placing notes at these same current seconds while running the wrong bpm.

This method could also be used if you want to have gimmicks at an obscure BPM, like 100,000.

Of course, it is kinda tedious and you might only want to use this for extreme circumstances (I used it for Licky and Aiin! in my last pack).

This is actually pretty damn genius. It makes sense to record the current seconds at the top and then when you're adding gimmicks just make sure the current seconds match. Haha nice, Good info Mwok ^_^

[Jayce]

LOL, this is old.

I actually found a way that's a little bit easier than having to do the math in some instances. No matter what kinds of gimmicks/stops you put in, all of your sounds (and the arrows that go with those sounds) will still land at the same current seconds (number at the top right of the screen in the sm editor). So, if you create another blank file without the gimmicks for a test, you can record the current seconds of your arrows (I usually just do every 4th note) in the blank and make sure the current seconds all match with the file that has gimmicks put in. If anyone is slightly interested, this is how I made Colorful Cookie, Storm World, and Day Dream, by recording the current seconds of where all the arrows are supposed to land, and then placing notes at these same current seconds while running the wrong bpm.

This method could also be used if you want to have gimmicks at an obscure BPM, like 100,000.

Of course, it is kinda tedious and you might only want to use this for extreme circumstances (I used it for Licky and Aiin! in my last pack).

Yeah I do something like that except I mark off my stop points with mines first, then record each of their number values, then I record the current second of the final step, after that I go through one-by-one adding my stops, saves the hassle of making a dummy chart and cross-referencing really.

[Vospi]

The Magic Number Is 15!!!---please stay with me, I explain everything

Here's the most basic form of the Magic Number Method. You take the number 15 and divide it by your BPM --and that's basically it. (Huh)? This number that you have just calculated will always land on a beat. You can double or cut this number in half as many times as you want in order to place the correct stops (Multiplying or dividing this number by a number . 5 (ex. 1.5) seems to work sometimes, but I am not yet convinced). (...)

Well.
240/BPM = 1 bar pause
60/BPM = quarter pause
15/BPM = 16th note pause

So, "dividing this number by a number . 5 (ex. 1.5)" works exactly when you need an 32nd note stop.

[MdX MaxX]

Like Revolver said, there's really no reason not to use beats to pause. Just compensate for it later.

Protip: OpenITG shows 4 decimal places for the BPM and Stops in the Editor, but the SM file still rounds to 3 decimal places. So if you try to change stop values inside the editor, just note that the last decimal place won't count.