Stepmania Hiccups with XP/new pads?

Kinglink · Trick Member Joined: 15 Apr 2004

Ok Let me give you a little history, I LOVE Stepmania, it's what got me really into DDR (and now I'm playing in arcades because I'm good enough, just bought a hard pad but more on that later)

So I've been playing it on a Windows 2000 machine with a EMS converter (used a Boom coverter also, but I like the fact I can have a controller always plugged in) worked fine, got some mighty fine scores.

Now I'm on XP, hooked it up again. Seemed to work fine. a few problems when running a Bit torrent program with it. (Azureus) but if I shut it down it would work fine. Don't remember if I ever really had a good session with out hiccups but I have some very nice scores so I must have.

Now I just bought a hard pad for my system (BNS pad if you want to know) and all I get are hiccups, I just clean booted 2 times, Started up Trillian (my aim program, 15k memory) Also have Mozilla and Norton anti-virus running. These are programs I've always ran, they were the first three programs I installed on my XP install.

So here's my question, does anyone know exactly why it's hiccupping? or is there a trick, or setting? I'm using alpha 16 now, is that "stable" in this respect?

All help will be accepted graciously.

Edited:

Btw the main point of hiccups are found in the game while playing a song, I don't care about any other ones. I turned characters to off in options (the hit start twice options) and I changed the res to 640 and both gave me minute changes. the hiccups happen about every 10 seconds. Btw my proc is a 1.8 P4 and I have 512 ram.

kmfdm · Trick Member Joined: 05 Mar 2004 Location: New York

Try to not run any background programs. Even though you normally ran these things when playing Stepmania, remember that XP uses a lot more RAM than 2000 did just to run. Also, try downgrading to 3.0 final. I had a tough time getting the game to work on my laptop, so I went from alpha 9 to 3.0 final, dropped the recolution to 540 (? - not sure about that, I just know I dropped it one down) and I run nothing in the background. I never get hiccups anymore and its supporting two pads with LED lights.

Oh and don't worry, there are only minute changes between 3.0 final and the new alphas. Nothing that will really change gameplay.

Hope that works out for you. Good luck!

Tashi · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 4:51 am Post subject:

it could also be your graphics card, you may want to go into options, im not sure were it is in there, but tell it not to wait for vsync, that greatly imporved my framerate, when using characters its a must for me.
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Kinglink · Trick Member Joined: 15 Apr 2004

NONE of these work. I went to 320 Graphic mode, everything in graphics dropped to nothing. I'm grabbing a new version of SM and seeing if that helps.

Thanks so far. hopefully I'll be back and say "it probably was a bad option"

Kinglink · Trick Member Joined: 15 Apr 2004

NEgative the new version doesn't work at all, I tried DWI to see how that works, works apparently flawlessly so it is probably something with SM?

Any more ideas would be appreciated.

Tashi · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 2:28 pm Post subject:

well, what kind of graphics card do you have?
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Vash_Hiroshi · Trick Member Joined: 20 Aug 2002 Location: Ft. Lewis, WA

No its basically the same with 2000 and XP since both of them are basically the same OS. Stepmania 3.0 Final and higher will hiccup b/c of this. Plus the graphics card and the ram if you have like minimum ram to run either or 2000 or Xp its going to hiccup you need at least 200+ Megs of Ram Also the processor could be part of the problem too
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Kinglink · Trick Member Joined: 15 Apr 2004

I have 512 ram, a 1.8 proc. That should be more then enough for this, I've ran it on both XP and 2000 before and I don't remember hiccups so it couldn't have been this bad..

Video card I have ATI radeon 9600XT, Sound card Soundblaster Live, (new drivers for both of those installed today.) I turned ALL graphical items to nil, (320 graphics mode) DIDNT WORK! still hiccuping.

dj-Luminus · Trick Member Joined: 24 Jan 2002 Location: Atlanta, GA

Stepmania Alpha 14 and 17 seem to be pretty stable checkpoints right now.

I know 16 or 15 has a problem with Beginner mode or something like that.

Go into options and turn the Texture revolution to 1024 instead of 2048 or lower if you need to. Turn down the resolution to 640 and run in full screen. Close some other background applications.

Also run SM without movies and set the standard refresh rate to 60 FPS.

Setting the options to run with minimum/medium settings can help alot.
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Kinglink · Trick Member Joined: 15 Apr 2004

Was somehow the drive it was on? not a fragmentation error. I have an alternate install that works fine. oh well thanks everyone.