Frequent Issue: Song Won't End?!

[もも]

My new simfile just won't end. I have no clue why. Help please?
Like when I'm PLAYING the song in Stepmania, NOT playing it while editing it, it won't end.

[Kewing]

Most probably it's something you left out after the steps end. Either you've put a bg change after that point, or you have another chart in the same file which ends up after that point.

[もも]

Originally Posted by Kewing Darksun

Most probably it's something you left out after the steps end. Either you've put a bg change after that point, or you have another chart in the same file which ends up after that point.

I didn't have any bg changes at all. I'll check on that other difficulty thing though.

[Valex]

Delete the .old files

[john11]

I know the
#MUSICLENGTH:<number of seconds>;
tag use to work. You could try that.

[TougaKiryuu]

check your songfile for excess ammounts of empty lines and clear em out

[Akira]

Unless if there is a BGAnimation script, you can delete the SM file and reload the song.

[Xythar]

This is usually caused by either:

1) One of your charts is longer than the others
2) One of your charts USED to be long and you reduced the length since. However, Stepmania is still caching the previous length of your song.
3) You have a bunch of 0s at the end of one or more of your charts.

If it's #1 or #3 the solution is obvious.

If it's #2, you will need to open the Cache directory in Stepmania and figure out which of the files contains the cached SM info for your song (they'll all have fairly nondescriptive names but they're actually renamed SMs with a little extra information). Sorting by "date modified" might help with this. When you find it, either take out the cached #MUSICLENGTH, #LASTBEAT etc information or you can just delete the file altogether (the cached file, not your stepfile, of course!) and it'll replace it the next time you run SM.

As a last resort you could wipe the whole cache directory but then you'll need to wait a bit on next startup while SM rebuilds it.

Putting in your own #MUSICLENGTH or #LASTBEAT to force the song to end at a specific point can also work, but I prefer to do it the way above since the Stepmania editor has an irritating habit of removing stuff like #MUSICLENGTH, #FIRSTBEAT or #LASTBEAT when you save. However both #FIRSTBEAT and #LASTBEAT are still useful if you want to force the song to not end before a specific point because you want to show the player the end of your video or whatever. Or if you want several seconds of lead-in before anything begins.

[TougaKiryuu]

Originally Posted by Xythar

#MUSICLENGTH
#LASTBEAT
#FIRSTBEAT

Last I checked, don't work anymore

[Xythar]

Could be. I don't use 4.0 generally, although I have it installed for SMO.

Anyway, like I said I recommend just deleting the cached file rather than messing around with those tags because it's annoying to have to keep adding them in again when using the editor.

Edit: Yep, you're right, and 4.0 doesn't even seem to have a cache so I doubt this issue would happen on it at all. But for me it's really just one more reason to dislike it, since #LASTBEAT was quite useful.

[MegamanZ]

Originally Posted by TougaKiryuu

Last I checked, don't work anymore

those have to be manually edited in the cache files, alongside the musiclength tag (which serves no purpose as far as when a song ends)

[Xythar]

Originally Posted by MegamanZ

those have to be manually edited in the cache files, alongside the musiclength tag (which serves no purpose as far as when a song ends)

You can actually include them in the SM file and it works in 3.9. I've done it before and it's been tested as working by people who hadn't played the file before, and therefore wouldn't have had it cached.