/consensual

A theme for stepmania (Ridiculous mod)

Primary LanguageLuaBSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" LicenseBSD-3-Clause

Consensual

A theme for stepmania.

Minimalist in graphics, maximalist in functionality.

Renderer

You must use the opengl renderer for things to render correctly.
If you're not on Windows, you're using the opengl renderer already.
If you are on Windows, find %APPDATA%/Save/Preferences.ini and edit the VideoRenderers line to match this: VideoRenderers=opengl

Minimum StepMania version: 5.0.9

5.0.9 has several bug fixes that affect the logo, crash on d3d from blendmode subtract, the speed of the bubbles, and the image centering prefs.
NPS calculation uses the Notes radar category that was added in 5.0.8.
The screen filter is in the notefield board, which puts it above the judgment in 5.0.7 and under the judgment in 5.0.8 because the TapJudgmentsUnderField metric is true. This is why the render order of the notefield board was changed in 5.0.8.
Transitions and the colored background might have problems in 5.0.6. (untested)

Short feature list:

  • Deeper music wheel sorting.
  • Mark songs as favorites.
  • Tag songs.
  • No "select style" or "select mode" screens, goes straight to select music.
  • Timed sets. No more getting screwed out of play time by picking a 1 minute song or using a rate mod.
  • Auto Set Style.
  • Patched songs cost their full amount.
  • Every mod can be set to any value.
  • Every mod can be set to persist between sessions.
  • Customizable pane info.
  • Customizable gameplay elements.
  • Customizable evaluation info.
  • Customizable grading system.
  • Customizable scoring values.
  • Customizable life values.
  • Menu for picking global offset from a list of choices.
  • Individual customizations saved to profiles.
  • Confetti.
  • Customizable color system.
  • Unique toasties.
  • Random menu music system (if you supply the music and bpm and length data)

Acknowledgments and Thanks

  • shakesoda let me walk in and shape Stepmania however I wanted, even giving me direct commit access when he didn't have time to review my pull requests anymore. The only limitation was that backwards compatibility with theme code written for SM5 beta 2 had to be maintained.
  • freem still hangs out in the IRC channel to give occasional advice and moral support.
  • dbk2 occasionally finds problems and tests stuff for me when he has time away from his thesis. Also big on the moral support.
  • Caitlyn designed the reskin and will hopefully pick colors.
  • hellrazor funded the kickbox game mode. Now if only he would try it out... ;)
  • Midiman polished the SM5 default theme so that I didn't have to.
  • roothorick handles lower-level Stepmania problems like versioning and fullscreen on Linux.
  • Mad Matt was the other loose cannon adding features to Stepmania's theme engine, until he split off to work on his own fork without the hindrance of maitaining compatibility.
  • Vospi read all of the very long release notes I wrote for SM5 beta 4 and Stepmania 5.0.5. This guide is longer than both of those put together, so be warned before you start reading.
  • milistisia made various feature suggestions.

Problems/Editing:

Do not try to edit Consensual yourself, its complicated. If you instead submit issues on github, then everybody can have the improved version.
The best place to report problems with Consensual is on the github page: https://github.com/kyzentun/consensual/issues Click the New Issue button and fill it out with all the info you can give.

Profiles:

If you don't normally use a named profile on Stepmania, you should create one. All of the individually customizable things in Consensual are saved to the profile directory, so if you don't have a profile, you're cut off from many useful things.
Profiles on USB drives should work too, if Stepmania is configured to use them.
Some things like Favor values and Tags can have values set in the machine profile. The machine profile's folder is in Save/MachineProfile.

Cursors:

All cursors have icons on them showing the buttons that can be used to move the cursor.
If the Only Dedicated Menu buttons preference is false, Stepmania will translate some of the buttons on the controller to the menu buttons so that they can be used. The cursor will display the controller button instead of the menu button in this case. Check the Map Controllers screen to see which buttons are translated to menu buttons.

Game Modes:

Dance and Kickbox are the primary supported game modes in Consensual. Pump and Techno are secondarily supported.
Other game modes should work, but might have problems that need to be reported.

Menu Music:

The music system in Consensual takes the bpm of the previous song and finds an entry in the menu music list with a similar bpm and plays that entry. Scripts/02 music.lua has a comment explaining how to add menu music entries at the end of the file.

In Depth Guide

If you are already familiar with Stepmania, you will see some things in here that you already know, but that doesn't mean there's nothing useful to you in here. This guide is written to cover every detail so that it fills in gaps for people who aren't familiar with Stepmania as well as introducing new things.
With that said, typical users should be able to play without problems using the on-screen hints like the icons on the cursors and trial and error. The main target of this guide is people looking for an explanation of some part or details on configuration.

Special Profile Fields

In Consensual, a profile has an Options Level and a Rating Cap.
The Options Level is used to hide menu choices that might obstruct inexperienced players.
The Rating Cap is used to hide songs on the music wheel that do not have an easy chart.
Both of these can be set on the Player Options screen.

Version Test Screen

This screen is the first screen that appears when you select Consensual.
It displays the name of the theme with a fancy animation.
It also checks for version compatibility and shows a message if any problems are detected.

Messages:

  • "You should upgrade to Stepmania 5.0.9."
    If the problem is severe enough (stepmania version too old to support easily), Stepmania will be switched to a different theme that is less bleeding-edge. (It checks for Simply Love, then Ultralight, and if neither is installed, switches to default).
  • "You have the Smooth Lines preference set to false."
    This mostly only matters for the Initial Menu screen, where the fancy animated things are drawn with lines. I have noticed a substantial frame rate improvement from setting the Smooth Lines preference to true on that screen, so this message is to take care of people reporting low frame rates on that screen.
  • "If you see errors, report them."
    If you have problems, report them. Otherwise, they never get fixed. The best place to report problems with Consensual is on the github page: https://github.com/kyzentun/consensual/issues Click the New Issue button and fill it out with all the info you can give.

Initial Menu Screen

This screen shows the number of songs and groups loaded, the current time, and a menu for starting the game.
Both players can navigate the menu and select options without inserting credits. When one player picks Single or Versus, then credits are deducted and the credit started.
The options on the menu can be hidden in the Consensual Service Screen, which will be discussed later. This means that if you're using Stepmania at home, you can have all the menu options visible, or if you're using Stepmania in a public setting, you can hide everything you don't want public players accessing.
Each player has their own cursor that they can use to pick stuff in the menus independently. Any play mode or profile choices must be completed before one of the play options is selected, or the defaults will be used.

Special Days

On certain days, you may see a message above the time telling you that it is a special day. This means that some easter egg has been activated, and if you don't like the effects of the easter egg, you can turn easter eggs off in the service menu. Turning easter eggs off does not disable toasties in Consensual, toasties are a profile option instead, so one player can have toasties off while another has toasties on.

Demonstration Screen

If no input occurs for 60 seconds, the screen will transition to the demo screen, where an AI plays a song for a short time before returning to the menu. The demo screen can also be ended by pressing start.

Event Mode

The length of one credit can be set to as to anything, and it is possible to end a credit in the middle, so event mode isn't necessary for home play.
If you encounter any problems while using Event Mode, report them so they can be fixed.

Menu Options:

  • Single
    This starts a credit for one player. The cursors for both players must be on this option to use it. The player that pressed start is joined and the profile they selected from the profile menu is loaded.
  • Versus
    This starts a credit for both players. The cursors for both players must be on this option to use it. The profiles selected from the profile menu are loaded for both players.
  • Playmode
    The Playmode choice opens the Playmode menu. This has the choices for regular play and nonstop play (also known as course mode).
  • Profile
    Each player can pick which profile on the machine will be loaded for them from the Profile menu. Profiles on attached USB drives should also appear in the menu.
  • SM Conf
    This opens the standard Stepmania Service menu. The Stepmania Service menu is left uncustomized to ensure that it is the same as in the default stepmania theme.
  • Theme Conf
    Theme Conf takes you to the Consensual Service menu, which contains the configuration choices that affect everybody. This screen will be discussed near the end of this guide.
  • Color Config
    The colors used in Consensual can be individually configured to any color value. If you don't like the color scheme, configure it.
  • Edit Mode
    Stepmania's standard Edit Mode. The "Practice Songs" and "Edit Courses" options are not shown because they have problems. If you need to practice a song, I recommend setting Fail Off and using the music rate options.
  • Exit
    Exits stepmania.

Special Keys:

If you have a keyboard connected, there are some special keys that can be used to access hidden menu options on this screen.
Z takes you to the Consensual Service menu.
B takes you to the Color Config menu.
Both of these can be configured in the Consensual Service menu.

Select Music Screen

Help layer:

After 10 seconds of inactivity, an overlay explaining some basic controls will appear. The time can be configured, and the layer disabled in the Consensual Service menu.

Minor Elements:

  • Song Info
    The banner, title, and length of the current song are displayed in the upper left corner.
  • Remaining Time
    The time remaining in the current credit is shown below the song length.
  • Difficulty Selector
    The difficulty selector has a 1 or 2 letter code for the style of the chart and a number for the meter, and is color coded by difficulty. Codes for moving to the harder difficulty:
    • All: Hold Select and tap Menu Right
    • Dance: Down, Down
    • Kickbox: Down Left Foot
    • Pump: Up Right, Up Right Codes for moving to the easier difficulty:
    • All: Hold Select and tap Menu Left
    • Dance: Up, Up
    • Kickbox: Up Left Foot
    • Pump: Up Left, Up Left
  • Sort Info
    The currently selected sort type and the name of the current bucket is displayed between the song banner and the music wheel.

Music Wheel:

Consensual's music wheel is 100% custom written and not the music wheel you see in any other Stepmania theme. Only the song titles are displayed on it because that's what I consider most important.
Technomotion game mode uses the pad codes from dance and pump game modes.

Color Coding:

Items on the music wheel are color coded according to their type. These colors have their own group on the Color Config screen, "music_select.music_wheel", and default to using other colors. The string in parentheses is the name of the color that is used by default.
Normal songs use the dimmer text color ("text_other").
The special "Previous Song" item uses the normal text color ("text").
Groups are violet ("accent.violet").
The special item for the current group is cyan ("accent.cyan").
Special Random items are red ("accent.red").
Censored songs are orange ("accent.orange").
Sort items are yellow ("accent.yellow").

Controls:

  • Menu Left and Menu Right (or controller equivalents) move the wheel.
  • Start can do one of 4 things:
    1. Select the current song for play, ending the screen.
    2. Open the bucket the cursor is on, displaying its contents.
    3. Close the bucket the cursor is on, if it's the current bucket.
    4. Select the sort item to sort the music wheel.
  • Hold Menu Left and Menu Right and press Start to close the current group.
    This also works with Left and Right on the dance pad. If you play a game mode other than dance and want a pad code for this, send in your suggestion.
  • Press Menu Left and Menu Right at the same time to open the sort menu.
    The pad code for opening the sort menu is Up, Down, Up, Down in dance, or Up Left, Up Right, Up Left, Up Right in pump. Send in suggestions for pad codes for other game modes.

Sorting:

Songs on the wheel are sorted into buckets. If there are more than 64 songs in a bucket, the songs are split into smaller buckets inside the first one. There is no depth limit here, and buckets are used no matter how you sort the wheel.
This matters particularly to people who have large song collections and want to be able to navigate by title without scrolling past hundreds of other songs.
The sort options available are more numerous than those available in other themes, offering new ways to find the song you want to play.
When a bucket contains other buckets, or a range of songs, the bucket will be named to show the range it contains. For example, in Title Sort, the bucket named "a...d" contains all the songs that start with the letters a through d.
Some sorting options will place a song into multiple buckets. For example, using Word In Title sort, "Extreme Dishwasher Race" is placed into the "extreme", "dishwasher", and "race" buckets because those are the words in its title. Other sorting options give different results for each chart in the song, so each chart is another bucket the song belongs in. Sorting options that do this are marked with a *.
When a sort option is selected, you might see a brief progress message, sorting takes a bit of time when there are thousands of songs to sort.
On the sort menu, some of the sorting options are collected into buckets because there are so many sorting options.

List of all sort options:

Special options are marked in bold. Sort options that can be explained by "sorts by " are only listed by name.

  • Group
  • Title

  • Word In Title *

    This splits the titles of the songs into words, then sorts songs into buckets based on those words. Think of it as giving you the ability to find a song when you only know one word in its title.
  • BPM
  • Artist
  • Genre
  • Length

  • Step Artist *

    Charts for songs are made by step artists, who usually put their name in a field in the file. This allows you to search for charts made by a particular step artist.

  • Note Count *

    This adds up the number of taps, jumps, and hands in a chart and sorts by the resulting total.

  • NPS *

    This uses the Note Count total divided by the length of the song as the notes per second to sort the songs.
  • Meter
    This is a bucket of 7 sort options. "Any Meter" is special and sorts by all the charts. The other options only sort by the charts in their difficulty slot.

  • Favor

    The choices in this bucket sort the songs by the Favor value recorded in the selected profile.

  • Tag *

    The choices in this bucket sort the songs by the Tags applied to them in the selected profile.

  • Score

    This bucket contains other buckets full of other sort options. Inside each bucket is an option for each difficulty slot, allowing sorting by the score in that slot.
    • Highest is for sorting by the highest score.
    • Newest is for sorting by the newest score.
    • Open is for sorting by how many open score slots are left.
    • Total is for sorting by the number of scores entered.

  • Rival

    Every high score name used on the machine is put into a list, and that list is sorted so that you can search for scores by a certain high score name.
    As with the Score bucket, you pick a property and a difficulty slot.
    • Rank sorts by their position on the high score list.
    • Highest sorts by highest score on that difficulty.
    • Newest sorts by which scores are most recent.

Special Menu

There is a special menu that can be accessed by pressing Select. If you don't have a Select button, it can be opened by holding Menu Left and tapping Start, or holding Menu right and tapping Start.
Opening the menu requires the player to set their Options Level to 2 or higher.
Some menu options only appear at a higher Options Level, these are marked with L and the level they appear at.
Choices:

  • Exit Menu
  • Profile Favorite+/-
    Adjust the Favor value for the current song in your profile. A song's Favor value can be any integer. This allows you to have different levels of how much a song is your favorite.
  • Machine Favorite+/- (L3)
    Adjust the Favor value for the current song in the machine profile.
  • Edit Tags (L3)
    Brings up the tags menu, which can be used to toggle which tags are applied to the song. Create "consensual_ridiculous_settings/usable_tags.lua" in your profile folder and put the tags you want to use in it. There is an example file in consensual/Other/usable_tags_example.lua to show you the format.
    The machine profile has its own set of tags and tag settings.
  • Edit Pane (L4)
    This switches the pane info window into a special editing mode that can be used to configure the info that is shown.
  • Edit Visible Styles
    This brings up a menu that can be used to toggle which available styles are shown. You must have at least one style visible. After you close the menu, the songs will be filtered to remove songs that do not have any playable visible styles and sorted.
  • End Credit (L4)
    This ends the current credit, taking the players to the Name Entry screen. Don't hit it by accident.

Pane Info

Below the difficulty selector, each player has a pane detailing some info about the chart they have selected. By default, it just shows basic info like the number of taps, the top score, the bpm, and the difficulty.
Every element in the pane can be configured, and the configuration is stored in the profile.
Select Edit Pane from the special menu, and the pane goes into edit mode.
Pick a slot in the pane with the cursor and hit Start to change its value. This brings up a menu with a list of what you can change the value to.
Choices:

  • done
  • make wide
    A wide slot is spread across the whole pane instead of using only half.
  • clear
    Clear a slot if you want it to be blank. Blank slots at the bottom of the pane are hidden. If you clear all the slots, the pane is just shown as a tiny rectangle.
  • chart info
    Opens a submenu with these choices: bpm, meter, author, nps, stream, voltage, air, freeze, chaos, taps, jumps, holds, mines, hands, rolls, lifts, fakes.
  • favor
    Pick whether to show the profile or the machine Favor value.
  • score
    Pick whether to show a machine score or a player score and which score slot to show.
  • tag
    Pick whether to show a machine tag or a player tag and which tag slot to show. On the score and tag options, pick "Make Machine"/"Make Player" first, then press Start on the slot number to switch to setting the slot number.

Special Pad Codes

There are 4 pre-set configurations that can be applied by entering a pad code on Select Music. These pad codes set the Rating Cap, Options Level, Pane Info, and Interface Flags for the player's profile. Pad codes only exist for dance game mode because nobody has made suggestions for the other game modes.
The Interface Flags and Pane Info settings for each configuration can be set in the Consensual Service menu.

  • Config Slot 1:
    Pad Code: Disabled because I hit U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, on accident when changing difficulty and then picking a song.
    Rating Cap 5, Options Level 1
  • Config Slot 2:
    Pad Code: L, D, R, L, D, R
    Rating Cap 10, Options Level 2
  • Config Slot 3:
    Pad Code: R, D, L, R, D, L
    Rating Cap 15, Options Level 3
  • Config Slot 4:
    Pad Code: L, U, R, U, L, D, R, D, L
    Rating Cap -1 (no cap), Options Level 4

Player Options Screen

Consensual's options screen is organized around nested menus.

The profile's Options Level changes which menus are visible on this screen. At OL 1, Speed, Perspective, Noteskin, Options Level, Rating Cap, and Profile Options are the only choices. Above OL 1, Noteskin moves into Decorations, and Options Level and Rating Cap move into Special.

In general, the choices that are hidden at lower OL are expected to be used by fewer people, or need some experimentation to understand. OL 4 shows everything.

Each player uses half the screen for their menus, no shared cursor or shared screen problems. Each player has two menu displays, one for the menu they are currently on, and one for the menu it is inside. To solve the problem of new players accidentally going into the Player Options Screen and getting confused, the players' cursors start on the "Play Song" option, which makes it very clear how to leave the screen without doing anything.

Every menu on the Options Screen has a header and a status field. The header is usually the name of the menu or the name of the modifier that is being set. The status field is usually the current value of the modifer.
Every menu also has a "back" element at the top of the list that confirms the current setting and goes back to the previous menu.

Menu Types

Set Peristent

Every modifier has a Set Persistent choice on the menu. When Set Persistent is chosen, the current value of the modifier is saved to the profile and it will be set to that value every session.
Song modifiers like Music Rate and Haste must be set to persistent to not be reset after every song.
Most settings that do not have the Set Persistent choice were already persistent. The things in the Decorations->Effects and Spline Demos menus don't have the Set Persistent choice because they're abnormal and probably not something that anyone wants to persist.
If there's anything that doesn't persist that needs to, send in a suggestion.

Adjustable Float

Most themes limit modifiers to simple on/off toggles, or a few choices between 0% and 100%. Consensual is written to allow setting any modifier to any value, unless the internal code in Stepmania forces it to be an on/off switch.
Choices:

  • "+n" increases the value
  • "-n" decreases the value
  • "scale*10" multiplies the n used to change the value by 10.
  • "scale/10" divides the n used to change the value by 10.
  • "*pi" is a special choice that only appears for the spin modifiers. It toggles whether the value is a multiple of pi.
  • "Round" rounds the value to the nearest whole number.
  • "Reset" resets the value to 0.

Special Modifiers

Most of the modifiers are more fun to learn about through experimenting, but some are worth mentioning here.

  • BG Brightness
    Instead of a screen filter, the BG Brightness preference is in the Special menu.
  • Perspective
    The Perspective has the old style choices of Incoming, Space, Hallway, and Distant, but also has Skew and Tilt. Internally, Incoming and Space apply both Skew and Tilt, and Hallway and Distant only apply Tilt. Having Skew and Tilt separated allows trying out different values for them.
  • Profile Options
    This allows you to set the data that is stored in the profile without using Stepmania's normal profile managing screen or editing the Editable.ini file.
  • Playback Options
    This contains the Rate modifier and the Haste modifier. Haste can be negative.
  • Floaty Mods
    Practically every mod in Stepmania is a number, so they're all in here, organized by type.
  • Judgment Y/Combo Y
    The position of the judgment and combo can be set like any other modifier. A negative value moves the judgment up. The combo position is relative to the judgment. The screen is 480 units tall, so -240 moves the judgment to the top.
  • Chart Mods
    The various mods for modifying the chart are in here.
  • Song Tags
    The same tags menu that was discussed on the Select Music Screen.
  • Decorations
    Many things that appear on the Gameplay and Evaluation screens can be toggled on or off with flags. Evaluation Flags and Gameplay Flags will be listed on their screens.
    Interface Flags:
    The ones with Random in the name toggle per-player Random items on the music wheel. Some use the meter of the last chart played, and allow picking a random song with an easier, harder, or same meter chart. Score Random uses the score to decide whether its songs should be easier or harder.
    Unplayed Random picks a random song that has not been played on the current difficulty.
    Low Score Random picks a random song where the player has scored below the percent set in Low Score Random Threshold. Straight Floats toggles whether to show modifiers as numbers from 0 to 1 or percents from 0% to 100%.
    Verbose BPM toggles whether the speed modifier is shown next to the bpm.
  • Unacceptable Score
    Sometimes, a score is too bad to accept finishing the song with. This allows you to set a threshold for automatically resetting to the beginning of the song if you can't get the score you want. It can be set to either a maximum number of dance points missed, or a minimum score percentage. The number of times to reset is also configurable.
  • Kick Recover Time
    If you're not in kickbox mode, this shouldn't even be visible. In kickbox mode, this sets the amount of time that must be before and after a kick in a chart made by the autogen system.
  • Next Screen
    Hit Start on the Select Music option in this menu to immediately go there.

Gameplay Screen

The song progress bar at the bottom of the screen cycles through several colors to indicate progress through color coding, and has the current time and the song length.

This is a list of the flags in the Gameplay Flags section of Decorations on the Player Options Screen.

  • allow_toasty
    This toggles whether the player should have toasties appear. Toasties are still recorded in the profile, this only toggles the feedback for them. You'll have to discover what the toasty effects are yourself.
  • bpm_meter
    Toggles the BPM display.
  • chart_info
    Toggles the chart info that lists the step artist, difficulty, and meter.
  • combo_confetti
    If this is off, the player will not get confetti for reaching 1000 combo.
  • dance_points / pct_score
    The score display can show the percent score, the dance points, or both, or neither.
  • score_splash
    At the end of the screen, a score over 96.875% earns a score splash, colored by how close to 100% it is.
  • Combo Splash Threshold
    Use this to set the minimum full combo quality for a combo splash. The combo splash is always colored by the worst judgment earned, if it appears.
  • judge
    A list of every judgment earned is placed behind the notefield.
  • error_bar
    The judgment contains a colored rectangle showing how far early/late a note was hit. If the rectangle is left of center, the note was hit early.
  • score_confetti
    A score above 99.5% earns confetti, unless you don't want it.
  • score_meter
    Next to the life bar is a meter showing the current score as a rectangle. It grows according to a formula chosen to make the difference between 98% and 99% much bigger than the difference between 50% and 51%, to reflect the relative difficulty of improving higher scores. For the curious, this is the formula: score^((score+1)^((score*e)))
  • sigil
    The sigil is a piece of art that tracks your current score out of what is currently possible.
  • still_judge
    The judgment will not move or change size with every tap if this is true.

Heart Rate Entry Screen

If one of the profiles in use has heart rate based calorie calculation enabled, the Heart Rate Entry Screen will appear between Gameplay and Evaluation. Simply use the timer to take your pulse and enter it with the numpad.

Evaluation Screen

In single player, score data is on the player's side, and profile data is on the opposite side. In versus, profile data can be accessed by pressing left or right.

If Select is held longer than .3 seconds, a screenshot is taken and named with the current song and saved to the player's profile.

If that profile's Options Level is 2 or higher, the menu can be brought up by tapping Select. This has options for changing the Favor level, tagging the song, toggling the flags for this screen, or ending the credit.

Each of the flags toggles a different element on the screen. Turn them all off, and you're left with just the song background. The banner, judge_list, and reward elements are shared, so if either player has them on, they are shown.

Flag list:

  • chart_info
  • pct_score
  • dance_points
  • offset
  • score_early_late
  • lock_per_arrow
    Per-arrow scores can be accessed by turning this flag off and using left or right.
  • color_combo
  • color_life_by_value
  • color_life_by_combo
  • pct_column
  • song_column
  • session_column
  • sum_column
    The sum column shows a total of the judgment it is next to, plus the number of better judgments.
  • best_scores
  • profile_data
  • combo_graph
  • life_graph
  • style_pad
  • banner
  • judge_list
  • reward

Name Entry Screen

The name entry screen has rows with the alphanumerics and some symbols. The down and up arrows at the beginning and end of each row are for moving the cursor between rows if there aren't Menu Up and Menu Down buttons.

There are also choices on the bottom row for scrolling the score lists, if more than 3 songs were played, and for taking a screenshot.

Consensual Service Menu

Everything in the Consensual Service Menu has a help popup to explain it, so this section is going to be about the inner workings of some systems.
The default time for the help popup is 10 seconds of idle, but this can be configured in the Help Config section, and the change is applied without reloading the service menu.

Censoring System

Consensual has a censoring system that allows a machine operator to mark songs as censored. When a song is marked, it is removed from the music wheel and is not selected by any Random item. The list of censored songs is saved to Save/consensual_ridiculous_settings/censor_list.lua so that the machine operator can look at it later to decide whether to delete the song.

To use the censoring system, you must either be on Select Music, or Evaluation. Press the Censor Privilege Key on a keyboard (default is 'c', this can be configured), and the censoring options will be added to the menu for that screen, and the menu will be accessible even if the player's Options Level is too low.

Censor and Uncensor mark or unmark the current song. If a bucket is currently selected on the music wheel, then all songs inside the bucket are marked or unmarked. This includes all songs inside buckets inside the bucket, and so on.

Toggle Censoring temporarily puts censored songs back on the music wheel. They are marked with a special color so they can be easily seen. The next time the credit ends, censoring will be turned back on. This allows the machine operator to undo an accidental censoring.

Songs that are marked as censored are not deleted because it is not as easy to reverse a deletion as it is to remove an entry in the censor list. The filenames in the censor list are relative to Stepmania's internal view of the filesystem, because Stepmania doesn't (and shouldn't) tell the theme where songs really are. If the filename starts with "/AdditionalSongs/", then it is inside one of the folders loaded from the AdditionalSongFolders preference.

Points of interest:

  • Help Config

    Set the Service Help Time to a convenient value like 1 and read the info.

  • Consensual Config Key

  • Color Config Key

    The initial menu recognizes two special keys, outside the normal mapping. These are intended to be used by the machine operator to access the Consensual Service Menu or the Color Config when those menu options are hidden.

  • Censor Privilege Key

    Set this to the key you wish to use to enable the censor menu options on Select Music and Evaluation.

  • Initial Menu Choices

    Allows you to turn off each choice on the initial menu. Use it when preparing for an event or configuring for arcade use to hide things like Edit Mode and Exit.

  • Idle to Demo Time and Demo Show Time

    Can be used to turn off demo mode.

  • Set Star Points

    Used to reduce the detail level of the stars on the initial menu if turning on SmoothLines doesn't bring the frame rate up enough.

  • MenuUp/Down and Select

    If you have a Select button on your cabinet, you should make sure you use the Set Have Select Button option to let Consensual know. This enables various things that require a select button on Select Music, such as changing difficulty by holding Select and tapping MenuLeft/Right. If this option is not set to Yes, the things that rely on having Select use alternatives instead, and using the Select button won't work.

    If you have MenuUp and MenuDown buttons, or are using a dance pad for navigation (which translates the pad's up/down into MenuUp/Down), or similar change Set Menus Have Up/Down to Yes to allow menus to be navigated with the up/down instead of only left/right.

  • Timed Sets

    Consensual uses a timed sets for credits. Instead of allowing players to pick 3 songs, players get 6 minutes of song time. Playing a song uses up time, scoring high gives a small reward, and when the time runs out, the credit is over.

    The current remaining time is added to the Grace Time, and all songs shorter than that total are filtered out. When the current remaining time is below Min Remaining Time, or no songs are left after filtering, the credit is over.

    The player can be rewarded with either a percentage of the song's length, or a flat amount of time. Be careful when configuring the reward time to not configure it to allow playing forever.

    The reward for a good score is applied regardless of the song's difficulty or meter, so it's not restricted to only experienced players.

  • Grading Config

    The grading system can be configured to have any number of tiers, and use any image you feel like adding, as long as it's a sprite sheet. The help tooltips should explain it well enough. Make sure to pick the "Save Grading Config" option after configuring it to what you want.

  • Scoring Config

    After changing any of the values in the scoring config, you must hit Shift+F2 to reload metrics or restart Stepmania for the changes to take effect.

  • Offset Choices

    The offset choices menu allows you to create a list of different global offsets to choose from before starting a credit. This is useful if you play on pad and keyboard and need different offsets for each.

  • Flags Config/Pane Config

    These two options are used to configure the preset flag/pane config slots discussed on Select Music.

Color Config Screen

Every color used by Consensual can be configured here. Except this screen. This screen uses hardcoded colors to keep someone from accidentally making it unreadable.

Colors can be set to specific hex code value, or set to reference another color by name. When setting a color to reference another color, you must supply the full path to the color like this: "accent.violet". This example tells Consensual to look inside the group named "accent" for a color named "violet" and use that.

Most elements use the basic colors at the top level, such as "text" and "stroke". More important elements have their own named groups for the colors they use.

Set Alpha is provided as a separate menu option so that the same alpha can be applied to all colors in a group.

bg is used to color the background layers of things. It should be a color that text will stand out well from.

bg_shadow is an alternate background color.

rev_bg and rev_bg_shadow color frames around elements that aren't associated with a player.

text and text_other are used to color text.

stroke is used for the stroke layer on text to make it stand out when it's not on something colored with a bg color (like the text on Gameplay.

accent is a group of colors used to have names for common colors. Mostly, these are referenced by credits, player, judgment, difficulty, percent, and so on.

credits is the color used by the credit display on the initial menu.

player contains the colors used to color things associated with one or both players, like the cursors or the frames around pane info, or results on Evaluation.

judgment contains the colors used to color the judgment text on Gameplay and to color code results on Evaluation.

difficulty contains the colors used to color the difficulty selector on
Select Music.

percent is used by various elements that need to show some progress from a low value to a high value. You can add more numbered elements to this group to show progress with a finer granularity, or remove elements to make the granularity larger.

number is used to color ascending numbers that don't have a fixed range. Add more entries to make the colors extend higher. (actually this is only used to color chart meter ratings above 12 right now)

score is used to color scores above 96.875%. More entries means more colors in that range. Since this references percent by default, changes to percent will affect this too.

bpm is used color bpms that are above 200 or below 100.

speed is used to color reading speeds above 400.

hours is used to color the clock on the initial menu. It cycles through the colors in this group.

help is used to color the help layer and text.

music_select has the colors for the elements on Music Select.
music_select.remaining_time is used to color the text for the remaining time in the credit.
music_select.sort_head is the color of the word "Sort", which is the header for the sort info.
music_select.sort_type is the color for the name of the current sort.
music_select.curr_group is the color for the name of the current group.
music_select.music_wheel is the songs used by the music wheel. They are used to color the quads behind the text of the music wheel items, at 0.25 luma. (luma is reduced using a gamma corrected method)
music_select.music_select.current_group is for the current group
music_select.music_select.group is for other groups
music_select.music_select.random is for a random entry
music_select.music_select.censored_song is for censored songs
music_select.music_select.prev_song is for the previous song
music_select.music_select.song is for a song
music_select.music_select.sort is for a sort
music_select.steps_selector has the colors used by the steps menu.
music_select.steps_selector.pick_steps_type is the color of the circle for the "Pick Steps Type" choice.
music_select.steps_selector.pick_song is the color of the circle for the "Pick Song" choice.
music_select.steps_selector.number_stroke is the stroke color for the numbers on the choices.
music_select.steps_selector.number_color is the main color for the numbers on the choices.
music_select.steps_selector.name_stroke is the stroke color for the names on the choices.
music_select.steps_selector.name_color is the main color for the names on the choices.

common_background is the set of colors used for coloring the background.
common_background.center_color is the color of the center of the circle.
common_background.inner_colors is a set of colors that will be equally spaced around the circle's inner edge.
common_background.outer_colors is a set of colors that will be equally spaced around the circle's outer edge. The first entry in outer_colors will be used to color the fullscreen quad behind the circle.
This allows the circle to have one color in the center, then fade to other colors halfway to its edge, then fade to an edge color.
The bg_start_angle value in the bubble config controls the angle the first color is placed at.

gameplay.failed, gameplay.normal_exit, and gameplay.cancel are used to color the circular wipe that is used when gameplay ends without a combo or score splash.
gameplay.lifemeter.battery has the colors used for the sections on the battery life bar.

prompt is used for coloring text entry prompts.

score_list is used for coloring the high score lists shown on Name Entry.

Congratulations

You scrolled to the end of the guide. If you actually read it all, even bigger congratulations.