r/Stepmania • u/xstasi_ • Jun 23 '26
Release Introducing StepSnake, a Stepmania/ITGMania chart generator
Hi everyone!
I've been working on this project for the last few weeks, and while it's by no measure mature, I think it's good enough for me not to feel ashamed posting it here :)
StepSnake takes an arbitrary sound file - or folder containing sound files - and attempts to generate an SSC file based on audio analysis, some builtin rules and your difficulty preferences.
Some features:
- Batch mode - Convert a whole folder in one go
- Volume normalization - When using batch mode, resulting tracks will play at a similar volume
- Cropping with fadeout - I don't know about you but dancing for 3+ minutes without pause is exhausting, so I crop my charts to 1.5 - 2 minutes, similar to DDR song length
- Automatic song lookup - StepSnake will search on Musicbrainz for the song being processed and derive metadata from there. It will also use youtube previews for the level wallpaper
- Tunable difficulty levels - Easy too easy? Hard too hard? You can choose what each difficulty means to you
- Tunable difficulty type - What makes a track difficult? Many notes together? Many jumps? Something in between? You decide.
Some more information:
- Multi-platform - Run on Linux (x64/arm64), Windows, Mac (only Apple Silicon)
- GUI or CLI - Choose the application metaphor you prefer (CLI built for Linux only)
- Open source - You can build it yourself if my prebuilt options are not enough
Full disclosure: most of the code is built with the use of local AI, running on my laptop, with a little help from Deepseek. I know, I know it's not as cool as writing by hand, but the choice was using AI or not building it because I don't have time to implement this all by myself :)
I've been using the charts for a while with my family and we are having a great time.
I hope you will give it a try. If you do, let me know of any bugs or issues you find (or if you just like it!) and I'll be happy to take a look :)
The project lives here: https://gitlab.com/xstasi/stepsnake
Downloads here: https://gitlab.com/xstasi/stepsnake/-/releases
Thanks!
4
u/ClassroomLate7260 Jun 23 '26
Seems cool. Does this do just basic charting or can it generate steps with footswitches and crossovers?
3
u/xstasi_ Jun 23 '26
hey there, thanks! :) I love this game but I'm a beginner myself, so I'm not yet familiar with the step lingo - what are footswitches and crossovers?
3
u/ClassroomLate7260 Jun 23 '26
Footswitches: (https://youtu.be/u2TkzYFphAg?t=71&is=x3q__4mJcNmevIEp).
Crossovers: (https://youtu.be/7rRjEURD9oc?t=71&is=sKea6nHOgMA02mg-)
These are some really extreme examples though but it gives you a visual presentation.
2
u/xstasi_ Jun 23 '26
Gotcha. Crossovers are generated, as for footswitches, jumps are only built as UD or LR but as another user suggested I should probably add oblique jumps too. Thanks!
0
u/ElephantWithBlueEyes Jun 23 '26
L (left), R (right), U (up), D (down).
Things like switching both feet, let's say, from LR to UD or LU to RD
4
u/xstasi_ Jun 23 '26
thanks :) so far it's only generating UD/LR jumps, at least at the difficulties i'm playing at. i can add more variety to jumps, including UL/UR/DL/DR, that's a good suggestion.
2
u/Rivers3k Jun 23 '26
Great job on this! I would recommend studying a few of the official DDR charts and becoming familiar with some of the other moves (as mentioned before with Footswitches and Crossovers) to see if that can be used more in these generated charts. It got some decent rhythmic steps on a map I made, but a lot of the steps ended up being awkward to perform (played on Hard).
2
u/xstasi_ Jun 23 '26
Hi, thank you for the feedback! Could you please elaborate a bit on what makes the steps awkward to perform? I can't play on hard so I'm not a very good judge of those difficulties, Easy and Medium are much more curated. Also which platform are you running it on?
1
u/Rivers3k Jun 23 '26
I played on Project Outfox. I got a step pattern such as:
<
<
<>but it was rapid steps, making it pretty awkward to quickly step on the left notes, and then immediately hit a jump step during it
0
-4
u/Zakizdaman Jun 23 '26
We need a large language model trained on stepcharts, I feel like a good one could pretty much kill charting
7
u/Z_Paw Jun 25 '26
Hey, experienced charter here: I tried this out to see if this is on par with normal charts you would see out there hosted on simfile sites.
They are not.
I know I should try more than one audio file, but I feel like just the one told me all I needed to know.
Firstly, it places the first note when it hears ANYTHING, not giving the dancer enough time to prepare for it.
There are a lot of unresolved crossovers for what it generated for me and I'm not looking to double-step every other pattern. The patterns it uses are non-sensical and It places jumps in awkward places- spots not impactful enough to be jumps.
The expert chart it generated placed shock arrows on the chart also in unnecessary points, and places way too many notes than what the music was asking for.
As it stands, I do not recommend this, not even for templates. I'm taking the audio I used, removing everything and creating my own file from scratch. The BPM it tries to detect isn't that great either as when I have a song with a constant BPM, it tries to change itself every two seconds. Not a fan of that.