Stepmania on SteamOS

I've been trying to install Stepmania on SteamOS for a good week now and have been coming up on plenty of dead ends, ive tried compiling multiple versions, binaries, and using aptplay libaries to install it. when I try to compile i get a libswscale.so.2 for an error while compiling 5.0 beta 1a and thats about teh closest ive gotten to actually getting it to install properly. How can I fix this?

First, you should be building the source for beta 3, not beta 1a.
In theory, it should be a matter of installing the dependencies on the wiki (http://www.stepmania.com/wiki/linux-dependencies/), then running autogen.sh, configure, and make.
Since SteamOS is built on debian, the packages probably have the same names, and can probably be installed through the package manager.
After installing the packages, bring up a terminal, cd to the stepmania directory, run "./autogen.sh &> agen.out" then "./configure &> conf.out" then "make &> make.out". The "&> foo.out" part tells it to redirect the output of the command to a file so that it can be examined later if there is a problem. You will also need to glance through that file to look for errors.
Which step are you encountering the problem on?

I found out that i didnt have the autoconfig, automake, and the latest gnu libs so i got those now

Useless use of /d modifier in transliteration operator at /usr/local/share/automake-1.9/Automake/Wrap.pm line 60.
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking target system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables...
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking for g++... no
checking for c++... c++
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether c++ accepts -g... yes
checking dependency style of c++... gcc3
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking whether gcc and cc understand -c and -o together... yes
checking for gcc option to use signed chars...
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking sys/param.h usability... yes
checking sys/param.h presence... yes
checking for sys/param.h... yes
checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... no
checking for GL/gl.h... no
configure: error: "OpenGL headers not found."
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

configure: error: "OpenGL headers not found."
This is the important part. You don't have the OpenGL headers installed. They should be in the "mesa-common-dev" package.

desktop@steamos:~$ sudo apt-get install libx11-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libx11-dev : Depends: libxau-dev (>= 1:1.0.0-1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxdmcp-dev (>= 1:1.0.0-1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: x11proto-core-dev (>= 6.8.99.8-1) but it is not installable
Depends: x11proto-input-dev but it is not installable
Depends: x11proto-kb-dev but it is not installable
Depends: xtrans-dev but it is not installable
Depends: libxcb1-dev but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: libx11-doc but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
I feel like im sol. I did a apt-get update between and got bupkiss
desktop@steamos:~$ sudo apt-get install libxau-dev libxdmcp-dev x11proto-core-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-devx trans-dev libxcb1-dev libx11-doc
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package x11proto-core-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package x11proto-input-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
libxi-dev:i386 libxi-dev

E: Package 'x11proto-core-dev' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'x11proto-input-dev' has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package x11proto-kb-devx
E: Unable to locate package trans-devIs this what they call dependency hell?

Is this what they call dependency hell?
Nah, that's just a minor problem. It means the packages aren't in the SteamOS distro for some reason. Thus, apt can't grab them to install. You could try asking on the SteamOS forums for alternative packages to install.
Dependency hell is when you go to install something, watch it crunch through dependencies for 2-3 minutes, then spit out a list of 300 packages it wants to remove in the process of upgrading other packages to the versions required by the thing you want to install (or rather, some dependency they have).

If you feel like being adventurous and the steam forums can't resolve the package problem, you can try downloading a build I made. If it works for you, you're lucky, and you absolutely must read the included readme.
Download link

libavcodec.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavcodec/
libavformat.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavformat/
libavutil.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavutil/
libswscale.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libsw
for clarification stepmania/bundle/whatever is in the file system folder correct?

libavcodec.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavcodec/
libavformat.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavformat/
libavutil.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libavutil/
libswscale.so belongs in stepmania/bundle/ffmpeg/libsw
for clarification stepmania/bundle/whatever is in the file system folder correct?
The stepmania folder is the one that has "autogen.sh", "Makefile.in", "src", and all the other stuff that came out of the SM5 zip that you downloaded.