Is 9-panel possible?

Hello. I am looking to create a rhythm game that utilizes a whole 9 panels. Most controllers or dance-pads allow for 4 to 6 panels, I am looking to create a 9-panel finger-based game taking inspiration from the traditional beatpads used in midi controllers and drum machines such as the Roland sp-404 (which has 12) to simulate the act of playing music using a handheld controller.

The real question is: would it be possible to add a 9th trigger to the stepmania setup? How would one go about programming such a thing?

Just to give a visual, it would look like the single pad 8-panel setup with one extra key in the middle being the center panel. Much like pop'n'music but with arrows instead of bars. Or if you were to combine the diagonal and center panels of pump it up with the vertical and horizontal arrows of traditional dance games.

As an example in order from left to right:
Down/left
Left
Up/left
Down
Center
Up
Down/right
Right
Up/right

I know that this is definitely possible. The question is how and what coding do I need to do to add this to a stepmania theme?

Just use the popn game mode with a custom noteskin and theme until somebody rewrites the game mode system to use changeable data.

Pop'n Stage.

So you kinda can just use pop'n mode and don't even make custom noteskin :D

Looks nice however, when looking in the select game tab I only see 4 modes. No popn or techno. I am pretty sure I have SM5.09 installed too. Is there something I need to download in order to add these?

ya need noteskins for them to show up, if you dont have any techno or pop'n noteskins they wont show up

Ohhhhh! I had a suspicion that might work. Cool! Thank you very much.

Ok. So I did a bit of searching for some popn arrow themes and found little to nothing. I didn't expect it to be that hard. Can somebody link me to a dl of a popn skin?

http://www.stepmania.com/forums/themes/show/2630 the noteskin is included with the theme