About

This is the v5.4.0 release of Simply Love for StepMania 5. It's mostly geared around supporting the upcoming ITL Online 2024 Event but also includes a ton of quality of life changes. It includes a couple new features as well. It is the fourth release compatible with ITGmania but it does require version 0.8.0 of ITGmania for run.

NOTE: ALL RELEASES GOING FORWARD WILL TARGET ITGMANIA EXCLUSIVELY

I've been dual maintaining both StepMania (compatible with GS Launcher) and ITGmania releases of Simply Love for the past couple of iterations, spanning a couple of years. As ITGmania develops and Simply Love grows to make use of its unique features, it's been getting harder and harder to keep them in sync with the updates, especially as others contribute to the project. As a result, to help streamline all the processes involved with making releases, future releases of Simply Love will only consist of ITGmania releases. This release should still allow people on StepMania to enjoy ITL Online 2024 through the GS Launcher, but they should look to migrate if they would like to participate in future iterations.

Thank you everyone for the support thus far and I hope you'll stick around for the future!

Supported Versions of StepMania

Simply Love v5.4.0 is compatible with current releases from the official StepMania/ITGmania project.

Compatible Releases
✅ StepMania 5.0.12
✅ StepMania 5.1-b2
✅ StepMania 5.3-a4.13.0 (OutFox) (preliminary support)
✅ ITGmania 0.8.0 - Make sure you download the ITGmania specific version below.

If you are able to compile StepMania's source code yourself, the 5_1-new branch is supported. The wiki has instructions for compiling.

If you are able to compile ITGMania's source code yourself, you can check out the instructions for compiling.

Incompatible
❌ Forks of SM5 (e.g. starworlds)
❌ Older versions of StepMania (e.g. StepMania 3.9)
❌ Forks of older versions of StepMania (e.g. OpenITG, NotITG)
❌ SM5.2

If you have trouble installing or running StepMania, particularly on macOS, this Troubleshooting Readme may help.

Installing Simply Love

If you are upgrading from a previous version of Simply Love, fully delete the old Simply Love folder first.

Do not merge the new folder into the old.

Full install instructions are in the Installing Simply Love README. It's worth looking at!

Changes

Brand new DEFAULT Visual Theme

The first thing you'll notice when installing the theme is there had been a huge makeover courtesy of @soraeee!

If you still prefer hearts it is still available under Simply Love Options in the operator menu.

Removal of FA+ Mode

With this version, the FA+ game mode is no longer selectable! All of the pertinent features in this mode have been implemented as toggleable options in the Options menu or the standard ITG game mode, rendering this dedicated mode's continued existence redundant. This allows for a substantial amount of code cleanup and a more intuitive and player-friendly gameplay experience. Remember to grab the updated NoteSkins from the ITGmania download to make use of the white flashes when the FA+ window is enabled.

Implementation of Tournament Mode

Tournament Mode is a new setting available in the Operatormenu. Using this will apply a number of changes in gameplay to create a "standardized" game environment for competitive play, such as the option to always enable the FA+ window, toggling the display of Step Statistics, and enforcing No CMOD rules.

Greater focus on EX score

More emphasis and recognition of EX score has been implemented in several locations throughout the theme. This is mostly toggled based off of whether the player has the Show Ex Score player option enabled. This also works alongside the GrooveStats integration which now also tracks EX Scores.

Other Assorted Changes

• Better ScreenSelectProfile behavior.
  • Default to the Guest profile (unless a Default P1/P2 profile is set in the Manage Local Profile options -- then default to that)
  • Both players need to explicitly select a profile before moving forward on that screen.
• The theme now has a new letter grade of "Quint Star" that is rewarded when completing a chart with an EX score of 100%!
• You can now change difficulty on the song select screen with only one menu button button press, instead of two. (Changing difficulty via the pad still requires two presses)
• Bugfix to ensure Autoplay scores result in fails to prevent score saving
• Easy functionality for background music toggle added
• The Colorful error bar now highlights the area for which window the step occurred

ITGmania Specific Changes

Add New Sorting Methods

Introduced a Sort By Level and Sort By P1/P2 Grades

Add Support For Beat Bars

These are the measure lines similar in DDR. Can be set per player.

Added Options for Random/LR-Mirror/UD-Mirror Turn Mods

• Random is essentially S-Rand from IIDX, and just a more uniformly distributed Blender
• LR-Mirror swaps just the Left and Right Columns (also supports doubles)
• UD-Mirror swaps just the Up and Down Columns (also supports doubles)

Contributors

@teejusb - Primary Contributor
@SugoiFactory - Numerous improvements, updates, and additions
@frn1 - Spanish translation improvement
@quietly-turning - Visual updates
@SimplyViper16 - Font filename improvements
@CrashCringle12 - Profile selection and Favorites improvements

Thanks to all who contributed to this release!

Change Summary

For a full summary of changes between v5.4.0 and v5.3.0, check GitHub's comparison of the two.

A full summary of the ITGmania specific changes can be found here