This thread is for those of you who want to give an extra flare to your simfiles by having the lyrics scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I'll break down the steps for creating a well running .lrc file.
#1: Find the lyrics for the song your doing.
#2: Open notepad then place lyrics, via copy/paste.
#3: Add the proper timing for the lyrics to appear, and start scrolling at the bottom of the screen.
#4: Customizing.(optional)
#5: Saving, and running in Stepmania.
================================================== ==================================
#1: Obviously if you don't know the lyrics you have to find them, and if you do know them you aren't going to want to type them all in by hand. If you're wanting song lyrics try the following sites.
For music from actual music groups. By which I mean stuff that's not from anime, or video games. Try the following websites:
http://www.lyrics.com/ http://www.azlyrics.com/ http://www.songlyrics.com/ http://www.stlyrics.com/
For anime lyrics I would suggest:
http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/
For video game music I would try:
http://www.chudahs-corner.com/
Remember that if you don't find what your looking for
google is your best friend.
So now you have lyrics.
#2: This step is pretty brainless. Just go open notepad, located in Accessories in the start panel. Find the lyrics you're looking for, then copy/paste them into notepad. ta-da!
It looks like this.^^^ Right? Make sure the lyrics are nicely alligned, and
no empty lines.
Ok, that's done, next step.
#3: This is where it gets tricky everyone, the most difficult step. What you need now is make it so the lyrics are displayed in sync with the lyrics in the song in Stepmania. To do this you must...
1: Play the song in Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc., and listen. For example, in my Freedom Call song shown above, the first line of lyrics starts at 0:46.17.
2: So, I know when it starts. Now I have to tell notpad, so I will do this:
[0:46.17]Who wants to live forever
See, I placed the second at which the lyrics will show up in brackets before the lyrics. So everything should look like this:
[0:46.17]Who wants to live forever
[0:48.42]Here in a world of shame
[0:51.09]Living under pressure
[0:54.11]Hearts are filled with pain
x:xx.xx The first number(s) is the minute, the second numbers is the second, and the third numbers is the centiseconds.(one-hundredth of a second)
3: Also, by putting numbers on another line after the lyrics, let's say like this...
[0:54.11]Hearts are filled with pain
[0:57.00]
...will cause the lyrics to cut out. So, if I only wanted for it to show "Hearts are filled with pain" for one second I would do this:
[0:54.11]Hearts are filled with pain
[0:55.11]
Thus stoping the lyrics from showing.
So, I hope yours looks something like the one shown below.
lol. I don't know if all the timings are correct on this, but they're all within a second. But for yours that won't do, make sure everything is within let's say, twenty centiseconds.
I hope you got all that, next step.
#4: Even though we don't have to anything else it's still nice to add a few more details to your .lrc file just to make it seem smoother.
Customizing help 1, creating two lines of lyrics, and delaying the lyrics so they don't light up as fast in Stepmania:
1: Two make it so it displays to lines of lyrics in Stepmania instead of the default one line simply add a pipe in between set lyrics, like this:
[1:26.78]Rise up to heaven,|where eden lies
Note not to put a space in between the pipe, and the lyrics.
Note that this next tip dosen't seem to work on all Stepmanias, it doesn't work on mine, but maybe it'll work for you. So you can give it a try, but I won't guarentee anything.
2: To delay how fast the lyrics light up in Stepmania simply add hypens between letters, and what not. Like this:
[1:26.78]Ri-se up to heaven,|whe-re e--den lies
You can also do this...
[1:26.78]Riise up to heaven,|wheere eeeden lies
...adding extra letters is supossed to delay the lyrics too, but it dosen't work for me.
Customizing help 2, changing the color the lyrics are displayed in:
The default color the lyrics are displayed in is green, maybe you don't want that. Which means you'll have to do the following.
1: to do this you must use hexadecimal, which to tell the truth I don't understand, and can be rather confusing. So just mess around, you'll get it eventually.
To tell Stepmania to run the lyrics in your selected color you must do this on the line above the text you want to change the color of:
[COLOUR]0x0000FF
[0:46.17]
Who wants to live forever
[0:48.42]
Here in a world of shame
See what I added? The [COLOUR] in brackets, and then the hexadecimal code after it not in brackets above the lyrics. Now my lyrics will be displayed in this pretty blue color
Other examples colors you could use are:
FF0000 FF8844 FFFF00 00FF00 00FFFF 0000FF FF00FF(Credit to TNT Xplosive for these)
And remember you can change the color as many times as you want. It's helpful if the song has more then one person singing. I can display one vocalist in green, and another in red.
Here's what mine looks like now that I'm done.
Look at you, you're almost done. All you have to is save it.
#5: To save your file as .lrc simply go to Save As... select where you want the file to be saved, then type in [Insert song name].lrc, and hit the save button. Also, make sure you switch the Save As Type: to ALL FILES before you save.
Make sure the song is in the appropriate folder then enter Stepmania, and play the song. Make sure you have the Display Lyrics option set to ON, and If your file still isn't working try Reloading Songs/Courses.
Congradulations, you have finished your .lrc file. If you have any questions ask here. Thank you.