Help sorting songs

[u/NaturalCatalysis]

Hello, im new to the game and just downloaded a few packs, Im trying to have only 4 groups: anime, vocaloid, kpop, games. And I have a vision of how I want things to be organized but im not sure if its possible.

Im trying to sort the songs I downloaded into only those groups, but in the anime one Im having a problem, I want all those sorted by anime name, so all the "FMA" songs stay together, then the "Chainsaw man", then the "One piece"etc..
This also applies to games i want to keep franchises together.

I would prefer not having a folder for each anime in the song wheel because there would be too many thats only like 1 or 2 songs from each anime

One idea i had was to manually change the metadata of each song so the Artist became the anime name.
Another was to change the song name into the anime name and then put the song name as the subtitle but I prefer having the song name appear bigger

Is there a way to implement what i want or Im I just a goober?

Can someone share how everyone sort their songs?

Any guidance is appreciated

[u/AutoModerator]

Please Re-Flair your post if a solution is found. How to Flair a post? This allows other users to search for common issues with the SOLVED flair as a filter, leading to those issues being resolved very fast.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Dr_Ulator]

You could try editing the song's 'genre' metadata, and then sort by genre in the song wheel (press left and right simultaneously).

Couple ways to do this:

• Via a 3rd party simfile editor like SMeditor, and go to chart > song properties
• Edit the simfile directly with a text editor. There's metadata at the top of the file, so you would type in to look like:
  • #GENRE:kpop;
• Use the built-in editor inside StepMania / ITGmania / Outfox
  • When viewing the chart in the editor, press escape to show the menu, then select 'edit song info'.

[u/Jubo88]

As sidenote/story about this...

Renaming simfiles is sometimes frown or taboo to do in the past. IIRC by doing so StepManiaOnline when there was VS/Multiplayer play, some players songs can be manipulated by renaming the song info. Like Host player picks e.g. Crossing Field by LISA but some other players maybe have KB or PAD ver of it or a totally different song with just named the same. lol very bizarre interaction back then when SMO was alive and active.

But nowadays it is all relied on #CHARTHASH tag so it can be matched directly when played for leaderboards and future VS/Multiplayer Live games modes. So Info Tags can be named anything. But seriously why ruin the meta tag <.<

On to the advice portion...

There is another thing you can do without doing the tedious and mundane work to change all meta/info tags of several simfiles is to have what modern age of the new StepMania Forks should have in the very start.

Search Functions

There are several themes that feature to input a info title for search. like

• AlphaV-Theme in Project Outfox (Straight forward with eithee mouse function to enter it or kb function on select button option for search, Depending on the Options if Enalbe Mouse/Touch Controls)
• Simply Love in StepMania 5 (I don't think it has the option in SM5?) or ITGMania (Enable KB Features in Simply Love Options)
• Digital Dance in ITGMania (Not experience with this one.)
• spawncamping-wallhack in Etterna (I don't think SM5 version has search tho... sadly.)

Hopefully more themes in the future will have search functionality and make end users a better experience.

[u/NaturalCatalysis → u/Jubo88]

Thanks for the advice, I didn't knew it was taboo, I will probably try out simply love, thank you💛

[u/CronkDrums]

Sorting can be tough based on the lack of customizability.

The song wheel is simply sorted based on the folder names. The song name displayed in game is set by the sm or ssc file properties. You could add the name of the category to the start of each song folder title inside the group, and it would sort them in game alphabetically by category, while maintaining the original song title

Personally, I have master categories by game and by pack, then use the genre Metadata tag (exclusive to ssc files and set using SMeditor) to assign general genre tags like house, bass music, rock, metal, etc. Not sure this would work in your case, but it is an option.

There's also preferred sort, but i havent tried using it yet due to its complicated nature and im not sure it works with the stepmania theme I use

[u/NaturalCatalysis → u/CronkDrums]

It would be cool if you could use the subtitle as the sorting data

[u/CronkDrums → u/NaturalCatalysis]

I feel the same. I'd really just love more ways to categorize songs into multiple groups without needing to use duplicate files or without song scores for duplicate files being separate.

Adding the anime or subcategory could be a good thing for you to add still. Many of the themes will display that info on the music wheel.