Courses

Most of this was taken from Docs/CourseFormat.txt, which may or may not be outdated.

To set up a course, create a text file in a folder in Courses with a .crs extension, then fill it with the tags available below.

A complete example of a course (this one comes with StepMania, you can see it for yourself at Courses/Default/Jupiter.crs):

#SCRIPTER:Midiman;
#METER:Medium:5;

#GAINSECONDS:120;
#SONG:StepMania 5\Springtime:Medium:nodifficult;

#GAINSECONDS:25;
#SONG:StepMania 5\MechaTribe Assault:Easy:nodifficult;

Another example:

#METER:Medium:8;

#MODS:
	TIME=1.00:END=50.00:MODS=C150;
#SONG:In The Groove/Dawn:Overhead;
#SONG:In The Groove/Mouth:;
#SONG:In The Groove 2/Funk Factory:;
#SONG:In The Groove 3/Disconnected Zeo:;

Header content

Header Content is any course-defining data, such as the title, banner, and other parameters.

#COURSE

The title of the course. Ex. #COURSE:My Course!;

#COURSETRANSLIT

The title of the course, transliterated into english. Ex. #COURSETRANSLIT:My Course, Translated!;

#SCRIPTER

The author of the course.

#REPEAT

If this is present, the course does not end. Useful for endless & workout courses. Ex. #REPEAT:YES;

#LIVES

The maximum number of lives attainable in the course. Enabling this will automatically force your course into a Challenge course. Ex. #LIVES:4;

Setting it to 0 lives or deleting this tag will make this course a nonstop course.

#DESCRIPTION

A description for your course, if any theme uses it. Ex. #DESCRIPTION:Hello world!

#BANNER

A banner for your course. Ex. #BANNER:My Banner.png;

#BACKGROUND

A background for your course. Currently only available in SM5 and sm-ssc. Ex. #BACKGROUND:My Background.png;

#STYLE

Denote which styles may be played on this course. This is useful for cloning courses or creating CLASS courses for single and double styles. Ex. #STYLE:SINGLE,VERSUS; or #STYLE:DOUBLE;

#METER

A custom-set meter for that course difficulty. You may set the difficulty for Beginner, Easy, Medium, Hard, Challenge and Edit difficulties. Ex. #METER:Beginner:3;

Song Content

Song Content makes up the entries in the course, and also allows for timed modifiers.

#GAINSECONDS

The number of seconds gained before starting a song. This and #LIVES are mutually exclusive: you can either have one, the other, or none: both is not possible. This is meant to be used for Survival courses. Ex. #GAINSECONDS:60.5;

#SONG

#SONG can take quite a variety of parameters, of which may be useful to you for testing or other purposes. * is a wildcard item, meaning that StepMania will always pick a random song for this part of the course. You can also replace with BEST*, WORST*, GRADEBEST*, or GRADEWORST*, where * is a number to retrieve the first of each category above.

Ex. #SONG:*:Medium:2x; or #SONG:BEST1:Medium:2x;

As well as that, you may also do Group Random, like such: #SONG:Dance Dance Revolution 8th Mix/*:Medium:2x;

If the above is not applicable, StepMania will search for the song title as best it can, depending on what you give it:

#SONG:Xepher:Medium:2x; Will simply search the title of the song.

#SONG:DDR Supernova/Xepher:Medium:2x; Will search for the exact directory.

#SONG can also apply different effects on each entry in the course by adding special modifiers to the modifiers segment:

For example, #SONG:*:Medium:showcourse; forces the course to never be hidden, noshowcourse being the reverse of such.

nodifficult also exists to disable a player from changing difficulties, barring the player from making it easier or harder ( Gauntlets & Survivals do not allow you to change difficulties ).

Finally, award*, where * is a number, allows you to control how many lives the player gains from successfully completing a course in Oni mode.

#MODS

To add Modifiers, place a #MODS tag above the #SONG tag with your modifiers.

Modifiers can be assigned in a variety of formats, the most effective three being the following:

1. Repeated Modifier Block w/ Length:

#MODS:TIME=0.500:LEN=0.500:MODS=2x;
#MODS:TIME=1.500:LEN=0.500:MODS=0.5x;

2. Nested Modifier Block w/ Length:

#MODS:
	TIME=0.500:LEN=0.500:MODS=2x;
	TIME=1.500:LEN=0.500:MODS=0.5x;

3. Nested Modifier Block w/ Ends:

#MODS:
	TIME=0.500:END=1.000:MODS=2x;
	TIME=1.500:END=1.500:MODS=0.5x;

Multiple mods can be assigned like this:

#MODS:TIME=0.000:END=300.000:MODS=*2 2x,Metal,Overhead,-1000% Cover,*4 90% Mini;

Some information for themers

If a song in a course uses a wildcard to pick a song like #SONG:*:Medium:2x;, doing course:GetCourseEntry(i):GetSong(); (where course is the instance of your course and i is the index of the song) will return nil. Make sure you account for that and indicate that the song is random in the course screen.