Stepmania Rating System?

I have never really understood the Stepmania difficulty rating system. It seems like the old DDR rating system, but it doesn't stop at 10. I am trying to make my own Sanxion7 stepcharts, but I don't understand how to rate them with the Stepmania system when the difficulty is 10 or greater. I was also thinking of using the DDR X and above rating system to rate them, but I am planning on sharing these with the community and I don't know if that is a good rating system to use for that.
And also, where is a good place to upload my songs to the community?

Thanks,
Darkanine

If I'm not mistaken there is no sanctified standard for this and depends on the game the stepfile is released with or the author.

For the first few DDR mixes the scale was 1 to 10 but since they released harder and harder songs with every new software the rating and the song difficulty just drifted apart (meaning that difficulty 8-9 for example was easier first).

Later, as players got better and especially since keyboard play became a significant factor, the 1-10 rating was not enough. It was either further rescaling the rating or adding more rates over 10. A little bit of both happened. In theory the ratings are now 1 to infinity, but for songs over 15 the ratings are even less consistent and usually are just "a big scary number to make the song look badass".

Earlier I had a thumb rule that 1-10 is usually for pads and over 10 is for keyboards, but nowadays there are quality stepcharts to be found for pads with difficulties 12-13.

I'm no expert in simfile rating but what I would suggest you to do, is compare your simfiles to others in difficulty. Well unless someone with more experience on the subject suggest something more useful.

And also, where is a good place to upload my songs to the community?

I think uploading a video of the simfile to youtube and posting the video with the simfile on some forums like this one would be ok xD

you're not exactly giving them the simfile by just showing them a video of it

Something like mediafire or dropbox would be places to to host your simfile for download (latter is better because mediafire has been a stingy bitch with copyright claims).

As to what rating system to use, ask yourself what your simfile's style of play is. There's the old DDR scale that goes to 1-10 (very imprecise though since you're given only 10 options), DDR X scale (1-20 but anything above a 15 and the scale is terrible given how konami rates things up there), and ITG scale (technically 1-infinity but as of this moment the humanly possible charts go from 1-24; again on the higher end spectrum of ratings they get kind of inaccurate but I assume you aren't making a chart anywhere near that high if it's saxion7 lol). There's a ton of keyboard rating systems that I have no idea how they work so yeah you'll have to ask someone else.

Well, I decided to make two versions of each song:
DDR Version- This version uses the DDR X+ rating scale (1-20). These songs will be edited to 1:30-2:10,These will only include steps, jumps, and holds.
ITG Version- This version uses ITG rating scale (1 to infinity). These songs will be edited to 1:30-3:00. These will have steps, jumps, holds, hands, rolls, mines, and all that other fun stuff.

So yeah. I will start with his 2004-2009 albums and release them by album, with banners, backgrounds, and jackets.

*One question. I've noticed that many ITG-based songs include a challenge chart, but DDR original songs don't have it as often. Should all my ITG-version songs have a challenge stepchart?

Thanks,
Darkanine

it's customary to put your primary chart to the expert slot in ITG yes; I frankly don't get why DDR still doesn't do it much but meh.

Well here is my first sanxion7 chart. *I have made some changes and those changes will be released with the rest of the album.

DDR version
http://www.dropbox.com/s/e8vo8qojst5rdn6/Gargoyle-2009mix.zip


ITG version
http://www.dropbox.com/s/fcts40nx9crxwtl/Gargoyle-2009mixITG.zip


Thanks for helping me make my first complete Stepmania song in only 10 days! I would love feedback.

Darkanine

There are multiple rating systems available depending on the game series (and even then depending on the specific game). Some use DDR classic, some use ITG, some use Pump It Up, and there are plenty more. Just make it clear which rating system you use.