this document is separate from the normal readme because it's big enough to do
so and actually warrants another file. enjoy.
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Hello, and welcome to another public alpha of moonlight.

This theme works perfectly for me, given some of my settings:
Event Mode - on
Gameplay   - Normal (non course)
Coin Mode  - Home
Gametype   - dance and pump have been tested by me (so far).

If you have StepMania configured differently, or you play different modes
besides Normal, then this theme may not work 100% for you right now.

I hope to fix most (if not all) bugs and visual oddities in this theme,
and by releasing public alphas, I can have that happen, so let me know
if things are weird.

Before you do, though, I have a few things I want to go over, just in case
you are planning a bug report.

 ________________
| general things |
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## As mentioned above, I test in Event Mode. That being said, any error that
happens with Event Mode off means I don't generally see it.
I have been trying to test with stages recently and saw no _major_ problems.

However, if you are still using Alpha 4, please turn on Event Mode unless you
like making me angry. (p.s. shakesoda's build of alpha 5 is fine)

## Edit Mode has barely been touched, it's not a priority, but some things have
been worked on. I probably won't work on it much more since I don't really care.

The course editor will crash since it asks for ScreenJoinPlayers, which doesn't
exist in the public StepMania repository for whatever reason.

## There was an interesting bug related to the ScreenSelectMusic song info
display. If this happens to you, go to Options -> Theme Options -> Select Music
Info Display and pick what you want; it should work then.
I'm not sure if this is an issue in current betas.

## When switching Gametypes, you should restart StepMania. Failure to do so will
result in a crash at some point when you try to select music. If you quit SM
after changing the gametype, this isn't a problem. This is an error within
StepMania itself, but I figured I should point it out.

In sm-ssc, this is not a problem, as gametype switching works properly there.

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 _________________________
| Oni Mode-related issues |
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Please note that Oni mode is being enabled on a trial basis at the moment.

I've experienced crashes on Oni mode with two players.
Nonstop works fine with two players.

If anyone can confirm or deny crashes with the default theme under the same
conditions, that would help lots. :)
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 ______________________
| Cover-related issues |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Screen Cover system is relatively new. Dreamwoods came up with the original
concept in default_plus, breaking new ground entirely.
[I love when people do that. :)]

All I really did was wrap it around a nice user interface and UserPreferences.

That being said, there are some issues with Covers:

## Cover goes over the judgments/combo, among various other things.
IIDX does not do this and I'm not sure how to get around it just yet.

## the Cover Select screen will break on most non-dance modes for various
reasons (including, but not limited to, noteskin and input issues).
I will try fixing this for later versions, but am not sure if I will be
able to succeed completely.

If you need to edit the cover, I suggest going into dance mode, editing it,
then switching gametypes again. However, that may mess up StepMania
(for other reasons, mainly related to AutoSetStyle), so I would restart it
after switching the gametype back from dance in order to prevent errors.

## A player's cover might not always move. This can be due to keymaps, or
using the wrong controller to access a cover screen. (You should use P1 for
changing P1's cover, and P2 for changing P2's cover.)

The cover position values are located at:
	[SM4 install folder]/Data/uPrefs/moonlight/CoverPositionP#.cfg
where # is 1 or 2.

just in case you need to change it and can't for some reason.

## This space used to hold the idea of a custom Cover system. With the current
version of StepMania 4, I don't see this as quite feasible just yet due to a
lack of a way to list available directories. (You'd have to add/remove lines
manually, which sucks for something like this, IMO. Same reason there's no
easy way to add Toasties yet.)

Right now the cover system is very primitive. The same cover image is used
for both players, so if you change it, you change it for both players.

See Graphics/_gameplay covers/information.txt for more info.

If you want to change the cover anyways, edit setting.cfg in the same directory.

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 ____________________________
| Theme color-related issues |
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When changing the theme color, the change doesn't take effect immediately;
this is due to how StepMania deals with the shared background.

If you want it to quickly change, head to the Filter/Cover option,
as that will reset the background.
This may be changed in the final version, if I care to find a solution.

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 _________________________________________
| Widescreen/High Resolution issues/notes |
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Since the shift to the alphas, doubleres and widescreen/hires support have
become things themers need to worry about.

moonlight actually attempts to address these issues, unlike most of
my previous themes.

==Fonts==
Most references to fonts in .lua files have been replaced with AutoText(),
which surveys your current resolution and picks the right file.
Not every font that uses a .redir is replaced, but some are.

The replacement happens on the Profile loading screen, which always gets
called when you choose Select Game on the title menu.
This should cover most cases. If you see an oddity related to fonts, that may
have something to do with this; Let me know.

==Graphics==
A few graphics are implemented as doubleres, sometimes using HDActor().
This ensures that you get the best looking graphics* no matter what aspect
ratio/screen size you use.
---------------
* Reuses graphics from dubaiOne in 640x480 mode; This is particularly useful
for the Judgments, which look bad downscaled.
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 _______________________
| Online-related issues |
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* For some reason, moonlight loves crashing with SMO. I haven't figured out why
exactly, yet. The error will be "32", or if you're using sm-ssc, there'll be
more information on it.

This might only apply to people using SM4 alpha 5 or later.

* Most of the online screens are in shambles. I'm not sure if this will be
addressed for moonlight v1.0 or not.

* Oh, and I still haven't finished converting the Network Eval screen to use
the metrics, which are required for SMO's eval screen. This is a very low
priority because I hate metrics and this screen.
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 ________________________________________
| Reporting bugs and requesting features |
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Finally, with all of that out of the way, I can tell you all how to report
bugs and feature requests.

I want to make this theme the best possible, and with your help, I can do that.

 If you think there's a bug, I want to know.
 If anything confuses you, I want to know.

Granted, some bugs are on StepMania's end and not mine.
StepMania 4 is still in alpha, after all.

Otherwise, without any comments, I can only assume that either everything is
working out fine, or nobody's using the theme. (ha!)

If you're going to post a crash log, read the next sentence carefully:
IF IT'S AN ACCESS VIOLATION CRASH, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!

If you _know*_ that it's a theme problem and it happens to be an Access
Violation, link me to the crash log.

(* SERIOUS THEMERS AND THOSE WITH EXPERIENCE WITH STEPMANIA'S CODEBASE ONLY!)

All of that said...

The best places to report bugs:
* StepMania Forums (http://www.stepmania.com/forums/), specifically in
the moonlight wip release thread (http://www.stepmania.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19621)
(Check Themes, NoteSkins, Game Types -> Works in Progress from the main forums
if you can't find it.)

* Twitter: Send a message with "@kki_ssc" and "#moonlight" in it for best
 results. Next best idea would be to just use "@kki_ssc".
 Direct messages may or may not be read immediately, and may be read by someone
 who is not AJ (namely Midiman or shakesoda).

Feature requests, however, should go in the moonlight progress thread:
http://www.stepmania.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19381
Twitter can be used in the same way as above for feature requests.

p.s. Don't ask for this theme to be ported to other (non-SM4-based) StepMania
versions; Other versions (save for maybe OpenITG) can't really replicate this
theme in an easy fashion, and I'd rather not waste my time porting it for a
version of StepMania that didn't support everything the theme does.

I'm going to focus on 3.9 here, since anything after that at least has some of
what I complain about below:

You can't do math in 3.9, so there goes a bunch of time spent converting
SCREEN_CENTER_X/Y (which you have to do anyways) plus any number into those
numbers. (Or time spent writing a parser to do that for me, OR spending a long
time [but likely shorter than all the rest] crafting a regex to do the job.)

setenv and getenv do exist in 3.9, but you can't persist settings between
sessions without the help of external apps, since there's no way to read/write
files. I think this also effects 3.95 but maybe not OpenITG; check the changelog
to see if RageFile bindings were added.

The life bar is entirely impossible to replicate 100% accurately in 3.9.
Sure, you can fake it, but this theme isn't FAKET, otherwise I would.

There's a ton more, like the wheel items, which I won't even begin to explain.
A lot of this theme banks on Lua to do really nice things which BGAnimations
in 3.9 can't do.

Seriously, if you wanted to see moonlight on 3.9, go find my joke theme called
dubaiOne for Sega Master System.
The graphics are low quality because this theme wasn't meant for 3.9.

Please undersand version differences before asking for backward ports. :p

That being said, I am not a fan of 3.95 either.

OpenITG is decent, but still lacks some of the necessary things needed for this
theme to shine. (MusicWheelItem song is not an AutoActor, so there goes all of
the fun stuff with the wheel items.) Plus, I do not want to work on this theme
any more than I have to. :)

The next theme SSC is creating (SSC-004) is already really exciting to work on,
along with all the advancements that have been made in SM4 theming since
moonlight was started. I'd like to finish this theme up and then just maintain
it until SM4 final is released. During that maintenence period, other themes
will move to the spotlight, and maybe there will be a ton of SM4 themes at launch
of the final version, giving everyone a lot of choices.

You can help make that come true if you learn how to theme now, but if you're
waiting for the final version, I can't really blame you.
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enjoy the theme and read the regular readme as well. :)
-AJ of KKI (http://kki.ajworld.net/) and SSC (http://ssc.ajworld.net/)