About
This is the v4.8 release of Simply Love for StepMania 5. It includes new features and bug fixes.
Please note that this requires StepMania 5.0.12 or StepMania 5.1-beta1. Future releases of SM5.1 should also work fine.
Older versions of SM5 are not supported. SM5.2 is not supported.
New Features
Casual Mode Overhaul
Originally implemented for the SLv3.0 release, Casual Mode has undergone a significant overhaul for this release. To summarize, Casual Mode now:
- restricts what song groups are available to choose from
- filters out all charts with a difficulty meter above a given level
- provides a new, dedicated Select Music screen to simplify the process of choosing a song
- provides more prominent on-screen instructions throughout
- simplifies the flow of a game cycle by removing certain screens
While Simply Love ships with some reasonable default settings for Casual Mode, some of the features described above can be configured by machine operators as desired. This is described in more detail in the CasualMode-README.
Options Menu Overhaul
The main Options menu (sometimes referred to as the Operator Menu) has been visually overhauled to more clearly explain what each setting does and offer "recommended" values where appropriate. Many new explanations have been written to facilitate this effort.
I encourage all machine operators to take a few minutes to look through the new Options menu.
Aesthetic Updates
Previous releases of Simply Love allowed users to choose between "Hearts" and "Arrows" as the visual emblems for the theme. This release adds additional choices that can be selected from Simply Love Options.
av01der has kindly provided new menu music for most aspects of the theme. Thank you, av01der!
Riakodoadm, cardboard_box, and dbk2 have also lent their musical talents to this release. Thanks, everyone!
Finally, the UI has been slightly darkened when RainbowMode is enabled to improve legibility and to change up the aesthetic.
Spanish and French Translations
Simply Love's UI has been translated into Spanish and French by Jose_Varela and HeySora, respectively. Many thanks to both of them!
Users can change the current language of StepMania in Simply Love under System Options.
Please note that immediately after switching the language (for example, from English to Español), it may be necessary to restart to StepMania for all in-game text to be properly translated. This is probably a bug, but thankfully you should only need to change the language once.
In-Theme Credits and Acknowledgments
Simply Love now has an Acknowledgments section that can be viewed from the main Options menu. Be sure to check it out!
Bug Fixes
ScreenSelectProfile Cleanup/Improvements
Many users who own their own arcade hardware use ScreenSelectProfile to help manage multiple local profiles. Previously, the screen was inherited entirely from SM5's _fallback theme, exhibited buggy behavior, and was generally thought of as confusing to use.
Issue #115 has been resolved and the screen has been cleaned up for this release. It now:
- notifies players if they attempt to join both sides to use the same local profile
- can unjoin sides by pressing SELECT (if available) or MenuLeft+MenuRight (if
ThreeKeyNavigationis enabled) - shows a USB stick icon if a USB profile is in use
Don't Allow Negative Credits
Issue #111 loosely described a scenario in which StepMania with Premium=Off could enter into a state of negative (coin) credits. I found two means of causing this bug and patched them theme-side (though they should really be fixed in the engine because they can be recreated in any theme).
See commits 25d4f47 and 7574a51 for more detailed explanations.
EvaluationSummary Supports Home Pads
In previous releases it was only possible to navigate through multiple pages of scores in EvaluationSummary using dedicated MenuButtons. This behavior has been changed for this release by allowing players to navigate through multiple pages of scores using their dance pads if OnlyDedicatedMenuButtons=0. If you navigate the game using your dance pad (you don't have dedicated MenuButtons), this setting is already disabled.
For more, see 5ae1066.
Fix Crash with Target Score System
Issue #110 pointed out that failing a song while the IIDX-inspired Target Score system was enabled would cause StepMania to crash. This should be resolved as of d060363.
Fix SelectMusic with MusicRate When Not In Event Mode
The previous release introduced a bug where ScreenSelectMusic would lock up if a musicrate modifier was in effect and EventMode was disabled. This was fixed by @andrewipark in pull request #105.
Replace snow.mp4 with snow.lua
SL v4.4 introduced a winter-themed EasterEgg aesthetic that relied on a 24MB mp4 file to simulate snowfall. In an effort to keep the release's filesize down, this video was replaced with a 3KB Lua file + a 2KB PNG asset.
...but don't worry, this release still ended up growing substantially in filesize! 😂 😂😭
Small/Misc. Fixes
- Reinstate Letter Grades to ScreenEvaluationSummary; see 2286096
- Correctly Display Number of Courses on Title Screen; see c0787e9
- Fix Full Combo flash and make it a little flashier; resolves issue #109; see d869098
- Include ITG2 fonts for "mod charts"; see dd0f809
- Fix font size for Background Editor in Edit Mode; resolves issue #120
- Make Gameplay for Dance "Solo" mode (6-panel) less buggy; see b84b1c2
- Fix wrapping of color indices; resolves issue #106
- "Hide Background" displays on ScreenEval as "Hide BG" instead of "Cover"; see aada2bb
Misc. Cleanup
As always, files have been cleaned up and comments have been added and clarified.
Other Notes
ImageCache System
If you are using SM5.1, you will have the option of using the ImageCache system for loading and displaying song jackets more fluidly in Casual Mode. A consequence of enabling this feature is that it eats up 2x to 3x more RAM.
If you leave this feature off, or if you use SM5.0.12, the frame-rate will take an occasional hit when loading jackets from disk for the SelectMusic screen in Casual Mode. Other modes (Competitive, ECFA, StomperZ) will not be improved by turning on the ImageCache system, though they might actually perform worse if your computer has an inadequate amount of RAM. For these reasons, the ImageCache system is disabled by default, and I recommend leaving it off unless your computer has at least 8GB of RAM. (For slightly more technical info, see: b903825.)
If you wish to try it out, the ImageCache system can be enabled under Simply Love Options. You'll need to restart StepMania after enabling it for it to take effect. Please note that the next SM5 startup will take significantly longer than usual as ImageCache versions of your jackets and backgrounds are created. Every subsequent startup will be as fast as usual.
Change Summary
For a full summary of changes between v4.7 and v4.8, check GitHub's comparison of the two.