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.
StepMania 5 can run on this bare minimum:
However, we highly recommend at least these settings for decent performance:
On Windows, DirectX 9.0 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.
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.
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.
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 users are typically expected to build from source. See Compiling on the StepMania wiki for more information.
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.
todo: explain how StepMania tries to find files if they aren't defined in the simfile.
If you feel like making custom content for StepMania (that isn't a song), there's lots of options.
Course files use the .crs format.
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.).
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.