Stepmania 5 2a beta not accepting arrow input in songs

I was going through some options to optimize the game for my keyboard. It was going fine, but now even though the keys work well, when I am playing the songs all the keys I have input for the game do not work. The arrows show that they are active but the incoming arrows are not accepted even though the game does show that the keys work fine.
And don't suggest me to download the new Beta because my internet connection runs at 256kbps.

And don't suggest me to download the new Beta because my internet connection runs at 256kbps
I'm sorry to hear about your internet speed. :(

That being said, SM5 beta 2a is well over a year old. Lots of bugs and glitches have been fixed since then, and many aspects of the program have been improved, including a better interface for mapping keys to game buttons. It sounds like upgrading your copy of StepMania will both help you and help us to help you.

Thus, my advice is to upgrade to a nightly build of StepMania 5.

You can download one for Windows from the top of the list here:
http://smnightly.katzepower.com/ (43MB, should take ~25 minutes to download)

or one for Mac OS X here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/fgluolldb2gn5vn/StepMania-v5.0-13-9-2014-mac.dmg (52MB, should take ~30 minutes to download)

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

It might be useful to know what you did while "optimizing the game for your keyboard". Some options can do things you might not expect, and you might have turned on autoplay by accident or something like that.

I updated to the newest version thanks to my BF who downloaded a copy for me.
However, the problem still persists. The arrows simply refuse to be hit.

What I did in the prior version I was using, was that I changed the input to WASD because my arrow keys look like those in the image
:


and it is reeeeally uncomfortable to use. it was alright for a long time. but then that started to happen and even in the latest version
I am still having the issue D:

I never really know what people understand or what they don't, so sometimes I go to unnecessary length to make sure things are explained clearly.
So, I'm going to go over exactly what each of the keys mean, in case you misunderstood anything.
Here are screenshots of the Config Key/Joy Mapping screen, so you can see the list of the keys.
http://i.imgur.com/kwpUvJI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/X54GFjd.jpg

MenuLeft, MenuRight, MenuUp, and MenuDown are meant to be mapped to menu keys, for navigating menus. They only matter if you have the "Only Dedicated Menu Buttons" option set. They do not do anything during songs.
Start is used to picking songs and generally selecting menu options.
Select is mostly unused, but the evaluation screen uses it for taking screenshots.
Back is the general key for backing out of a screen or a song.
Insert Coin only matters if the Coin Mode is set to Pay. It inserts one coin.
Operator is used for accessing the service options screen, which is the menu for configuring Stepmania.
EffectUp and EffectDown are probably unused, and irrelevant for now.
Left, Right, Up, and Down are the keys that are used in gameplay, to hit arrows during songs. If the "Only Dedicated Menu Buttons" option is false, they can also be used to navigate the menus. That is why they have their respective menu directions underneath their main names.
UpLeft and UpRight are used for the solo style.
Clear To Default resets the key mapping to the default. It's useful if you make some mistake like unmapping the start button or similar.
Reload From Disk reloads the key mapping from the disk. Again, useful for undoing mistakes.
Save To Disk saves the key mapping to disk. Settings are not saved unless you specifically tell it to save. Previous versions would save after every little change, and there was no way to undo mistakes.
Assign List is an advanced feature for assigning a list of keys all in order. It's useful for a case where you're mapping the panels on a pad, and don't want to go back to the keyboard to move the cursor after every panel. To use it, you move the cursor to an entry in the list and hit "m" to mark that entry. When you have all the ones you want to set marked, you go to "Assign List" and choose it. It will go through the list setting each one and moving automatically after every keypress.


Hopefully, that clears up any misunderstanding you might have had about mapping keys.

The "Only Dedicated Menu Buttons" option is under the "Input Options" section, where you see the "Menu Buttons" line with the choices "Use Gameplay Buttons" and "Only Dedicated Buttons".
The "Test Input" screen can be useful to see how the buttons are mapped. You should see something like this when you hold down a button on that screen: http://i.imgur.com/WXKNhUh.jpg It tells you what key it is on the device, what controller it is, what button it is on that controller, and what its secondary meaning is. You can also use it to see that you almost certainly will not be able to hit all 4 arrows at once using WASD (best my keyboard can do with that mapping is hold ASD or AWD) (not Stepmania's fault, its an inherent limitation of the way keyboards tell what keys are down).


Other possible problems:
Automap joysticks might be messing things up. You can turn it off under the "Input Options" section and see if that solves your problem.
If you press F8 during gameplay, it turns on Autoplay. You should see "Autoplay" in the center bottom of the screen if Autoplay is on. The arrows do nothing during Autoplay and an AI plays instead.
If Alt is held when F8 is pressed, Autoplay will be turned on, but will not show on the screen, so it won't be obvious that it's on.
If you hold F3, you can see the debug menu, and one of the things on it is whether Autoplay is currently on: http://i.imgur.com/AfFrqFS.jpg


In general, reinstalling or installing new versions of Stepmania will not fix configuration problems. Configuration files are stored under %APPDATA%/StepMania 5.0/Save/
Any config file that is not found when Stepmania starts up (either because it's the first time, or because the file was deleted) will be regenerated with the default settings.
Keymaps.ini has the keymappings in it, though the Clear To Default option on the Config Key Joy Mapping screen was intended to help people avoid needing to delete it after making mistakes.
Preferences.ini has the general preferences, though all the commonly used ones are settable somewhere in the service options menu, and the ones that aren't settable there are advanced enough that it's unwise to change them by editing the file unless you already know what you're doing.

Edit: This post turned out a lot bigger than I expected. Hopefully it doesn't scare people off for having too much info.

-facepalm- the answer was in my face all along, thank you...
------------------

No, the thing isn't working. I reset the whole mappings and reassigned to wasd.
However, the arrows still refuse to be hit even though the arrows are definitely working.

I'm a bit unsure from your last post. The "-facepalm-" part says you solved the problem, but you don't say what the solution was, so I'm not sure.
And then you have the bold section saying it still doesn't work.


So, open up your Keymaps.ini file and paste the contents here. Maybe that will shed some light on it.

Hey Kyzentun, thanks for all the helpful information! I followed the info here and it still wasn't able to solve my problem so I was hoping you could help.

Here are some details:
- I just installed the most recent version of Stepmania for Mac
- When I plug in my pad and go to the Test Input screen. Stepmania sees my gamepad. However, if I press any buttons on the gamepad, Stepmania does not see those button presses. If I unplug/plug it in, it doesn't change. Stepmania sees that my pad exists but it can't see the button presses.
- My pad works fine on my PS2 (it has multiple outputs)

Have you seen this issue before? Thanks!