SSC format

This is just how piuGBA interprets SSC files. In StepMania, things are slightly different!

Header properties

Field	Type	Description
TITLE	String	Id of the song
SUBTITLE	String	Name of the song (30 characters max)
ARTIST	String	Author of the song (27 characters max)
SONGCATEGORY	One of ORIGINAL, K-POP, WORLD MUSIC	Channel of the song
LASTSECONDHINT	Number	(Optional) Timestamp (in seconds) when the song ends. Used when songs have a trailing silence
BGCHANGES	Custom	(Optional) Used to calculate video offset (see below)
PIUGBA	Object	(Optional) Custom configuration of the song. See the example below

Chart properties

Field	Type	Description
NOTEDATA	Empty	The #NOTEDATA:; indicates the start of a chart. It should be empty.
STEPSTYPE	One of pump-single, pump-double, pump-couple, pump-routine	Indicates the type of chart. Single uses 5 arrows and the others 10 arrows. Couple/Routine are co-op charts.
DESCRIPTION	String	Name of the chart, used by the importer. If this field contains the word half the chart will be ignored!
DIFFICULTY	One of NORMAL, HARD, CRAZY, NUMERIC	Named difficulty level
METER	Int	Numeric difficulty level
PIUGBA_ORDER	Int	(Optional) METER override for sorting purposes
OFFSET	Number	Audio offset (in seconds) from the chart notes. If positive, audio starts after the chart
BPMS	Dictionary	Dictionary with all the BPM changes. Beat => BPM
SPEEDS	Quad Dictionary	Speed factors that affect display BPM. Beat => Percent (scroll factor) => Delay (a value of 1 will make it linearly scale from the current scroll speed to the new one in 1 beat/second) => Unit (0 = delay is in beats, 1 = delay is in seconds)
TICKCOUNTS	Dictionary	Affects how often a hold note will fire a combo tick. The figure will be 4 * the number (i.e. 2 means one tick every 8th note, 4 means one tick every 16th note) Beat => Multiplier
STOPS	Dictionary	Completely stops the scrolling and affects all the next events. Beat => Length (in seconds)
DELAYS	Dictionary	Same as STOPS
SCROLLS	Dictionary	Sets the scrolling ON or OFF, without affecting all the next events. Used to fake stops (also called "async stops"). Beat => Enabled (0 = no, 1 = yes)
WARPS	Dictionary	Teleports to another part of the chart. Beat => Jump (in beats)
FAKES	Dictionary	Notes during this segment won't be counted for or against players. Beat => Length (in beats)
NOTES	Event array	The actual notes of the song.

Fast BPM Warps

If a BPM segment sets BPM to anything higher than 999999, StepMania interprets it as a warp to the next BPM change. If there are STOPS/DELAYS in the middle, it stops and then continues warping so it can create stuttering effects like warp-stop-warp-stop-warp-stop...

Formats

Dictionary

KEY=VALUE separated by ,

Object

Like Dictionary, but separated by ,,,

Quad Dictionary

KEY=VALUE=PARAM1=PARAM2 separated by ,

Event array

Note data is defined in terms of "measures" where a measure is several lines of text, terminated by a comma. The final measure in a chart is terminated by a semicolon instead. Each line consists of a set of characters representing each playable column in the chart type.

Valid note types are 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 24th, 32nd, 48th, 64th, and 192nd. Each measure consists of a number of lines that corresponds to one of these numbers. The total number of beats covered by any given measure is 4, and each line represents a portion of that. If a measure has 64 lines, for example, each line represents 1/64th of those 4 beats, or 1/16th of a beat, with the first line representing beat 0 within the measure. The note type of a given line can be determined by taking said beat value, dividing by 4, and then simplifying the fraction as much as possible and looking at the denominator. If the denominator is 96, 192 is used as the note type instead.

Note types

• 0 – No note
• 1 – Normal note
• 2 – Hold head
• 3 – Hold tail
• F - Fake tap
• X, Y, Z - Multiplayer (co-op chart) normal note
• x, y, z - Multiplayer (co-op chart) hold head

#BGCHANGES

This can be a list of multiple videos / backgrounds, e.g.:

#BGCHANGES:-10000.000=black.mpg=1.000=1=0=1===CrossFade==,
-4.100=123.mpg=1.000=0=0=0=StretchNoLoop====,
99999=-nosongbg-=1.000=0=0=0;

The important parts are:

• 123.mpg (name of the video file, has to match the audio file name)
• -4.100 (video offset in beats). If negative, the first BPM of #BPMS is used to translate it to seconds. Negative means the video starts earlier (relative to song start).

The rest of the fields (playback rate, effect, transitions, etc.) are ignored.

Co-op charts

When the importer finds multiplayer note events like XxYyZz, a chart divider (&), or more than 30 "suspicious" events (arrows that are too distant to each other), it converts the chart to multiplayer. These are labeled as ;) in the Arcade section and require using the multiplayer modes.

• When using XxYyZz events, both players need to hit the note.
• When using a chart divider (&), events are not merged, so if one player hits the note perfectly and the other doesn't, the result will be 1 PERFECT + 1 MISS, instead of just 1 MISS.

Example

#TITLE:230;
#SUBTITLE:Name of the song;
#ARTIST:Author of the song;
#SONGCATEGORY:WORLD MUSIC;
#LASTSECONDHINT:99.002441;
#SAMPLESTART:27.322994;
#SAMPLELENGTH:15.000004;
#BGCHANGES:-0.300=123.mpg=1.000=0=0=0=StretchNoLoop====,
99999=-nosongbg-=1.000=0=0=0 // don't automatically add -songbackground-
;

#PIUGBA:
APPLY_TO=101,,,
IS_BOSS=TRUE,,,
PIXELATE=BLINK_IN,,,
JUMP=ON,,,
REDUCE=RANDOM,,,
BOUNCE=ALL,,,
COLOR_FILTER=POSTERIZE,,,
SPEED_HACK=AV,,,
MESSAGE=
This is a message to be
read before the song.
The maximum is 25 cols,
4 lines between \r\n.
;

# APPLY_TO = Indicates what campaign modes are affected by those options (101 means "NORMAL & CRAZY, but not HARD").
# IS_BOSS = Changes the song's channel to BOSS

# Other chart properties can be here, e.g.: BPMS, STOPS, etc.
# They serve as a default value when a chart doesn't include them

//---------------pump-single - s8----------------
#NOTEDATA:;
#STEPSTYPE:pump-single;
#DESCRIPTION:s8 Pro;
#DIFFICULTY:NUMERIC;
#METER:8;
#OFFSET:0.003000;
#BPMS:0.000000=158.000000
,156.000000=197.500000
,158.000000=237.000000
,160.000000=276.500000
,162.000000=316.000000
,176.000000=276.500000
,178.000000=237.000000
,180.000000=197.500000
,182.000000=158.000000
,184.000000=118.500000
,185.000000=104.500000
,186.000000=158.000000
;
#STOPS:186.000000=3.038000
;
#DELAYS:;
#WARPS:;
#TICKCOUNTS:0.000000=4
;
#SPEEDS:0.000000=1.000000=0.000000=0
;
#SCROLLS:0.000000=1.000000
;
#FAKES:;
#NOTES:
// measure 0
00000
01100
00001
00000
,  // measure 1
00000
00200
00000
00000
,  // measure 2
00000
00000
00000
00300

//---------------pump-single - s19----------------
#NOTEDATA:;
#STEPSTYPE:pump-single;
#DESCRIPTION:s19;
#DIFFICULTY:CRAZY;
#METER:19;
#OFFSET:0.003000;
// ...