StepMania 5 beta 3 released

Alright, I've put off announcing this for long enough. StepMania 5 beta 3 is now available for Windows and Mac from here: https://github.com/stepmania/stepmania/releases/tag/SM5-beta3. Tons of bugs have been fixed since beta 2a, and it's recommended for everyone to update.

There's no complete changelog, but here's a few key points:
* A bunch of pump-related gameplay/scoring bugs have been fixed
* Fixed a bunch of crashes
* Everything is on GitHub now, and we're a lot more organized in general (this doesn't have anything to do with the program itself, no)
* XML support is available when QuirksMode=1 in Preferences.ini. This is useful for compatibility with OpenITG content and for porting stuff. It's not perfect.
* Added some Lua bindings for themes to use
* Re-added some stuff that shouldn't have been removed.

Linux binary builds are in limbo at the moment. We had a builder but we took too long to get this ready, so we'll need to try to get a hold of him again.

Finally, the download page doesn't have anything on it because I'm writing a new one which will tie directly into GitHub's releases API. Once this is done there will no longer be delays between uploading the builds and the page having them available.

Known issues can be found on the bug tracker. Please report any issues you find.

EDIT: Need to fix the news page...

I cry for a zipped release

I really should fix the front page, it's grabbing the first reply.

* XML support is available when QuirksMode=1 in Preferences.ini. This is useful for compatibility with OpenITG content and for porting stuff. It's not perfect.

I set QuirksMode to 1, Tried a few gimmick charts that use XML, and they didn't work. I know you said it's not perfect, but when it doesn't even work at all, it might as well not be there. Unless it's just a problem on my side. I'm running the mac version on OS X Mavericks.
Also, these are the charts that i used.



I do see XML files in the charts, so I know at SOMETHING must happen if the files exist.

I just downloaded this new version but it seems like I cannot launch it because of a missing dll (d3dxd9_43.dll)
Shall I download the said dll from the internet to be able to fix it?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

use this.

I've download it, installed it, but what do I do now?

I set QuirksMode to 1, Tried a few gimmick charts that use XML, and they didn't work. I know you said it's not perfect, but when it doesn't even work at all, it might as well not be there. Unless it's just a problem on my side. I'm running the mac version on OS X Mavericks.

Hi TehShroom220, I just your question now; sorry about that. I'm also running OS X 10.9, and I also encountered the problem you're describing at first. Hopefully my solution will work for you.

In order to get the SSC cache to acknowledge that there were XML-based FG/BGChanges present, I needed to manually delete any cache files previously created for any such songs. On OS X, you can find these under ~/Library/Caches/StepMania 5/Songs/

If you:

• don't have many songs
• have an SSD, or
• are unable to find the exact cache file for the song(s) in question

it is okay to just delete the Songs directory under ~/Library/Caches/StepMania 5. It'll get recreated the next time you run SM, which is what we're after anyway: anything with XML-based FG/BGChanges will cached anew and BG/FGChanges will be added to the new cache files appropriately.

For what it's worth: Distant Stars causes SM5 to crash a few seconds into the song, and Electronized more or less works as intended. I didn't try Dial Me In.