NotITG

NotITG is a rhythm game with wacky visuals, designed to make it easier for modfile creators to implement their ideas. It aims to preserve compatibility with all existing StepMania 3.95 and In The Groove mod files, and be the definitive environment for creating and enjoying that content.

What is NotITG?

NotITG is a rhythm game, standing out from others by being visual-artist-oriented, with its unique in-engine features emphasizing ease-of-use for creators of modded game content.

For creators coming from other versions of StepMania, one of NotITG's most important features is an editor that accurately previews modded effects as they would appear in regular gameplay. This allows creators to easily test effects on-demand, without needing to replay the entire song.
It also provides support for GLSL shaders, arbitrary pathing for notes as they approach the targets (and displaying those paths on screen) and even moving the window itself, and much more, all controlled from Lua that can be loaded from the charts themselves!

NotITG's content is primarily community-driven! Our Discord server hosts an active community of user creating and sharing high-quality modded content. Hop in to both play and learn more about creating some crazy arrow game content.

What is an "SRT"?

A "Sight Reading Tournament", or SRT, is an event in which players are tasked with playing modded charts they have never seen before. These tournaments have taken place both offline (in person, at venues) and online (using special builds of the game client).

Some of these events feature ongoing stories, with additional story content including voice-acted cutscenes and extensive lore. The largest of these story-based tournaments is named UKSRT.
The most recent tournament, OISRT, was exclusively run online, and was almost exclusively comprised of community-created content. It took place in December 2021, and a second one will take place at the end of 2022. You won't want to miss it!

Download the game

Installation instructions

  1. Download the game, and extract it anywhere without administrative privileges required.
    For example, your desktop, your documents, or another disk is fine! But do not put the game in C:\Program Files!
  2. Once the game extracted, open the new folder, then the Program folder. From there, you can simply start NotITG.exe!
  3. In order to make yourself more familiar with the game, please make sure to read the FAQ below!

FAQ

What should be my first steps?

As soon as you started the game, you might want to customise your key bindings. The default keys are your keyboard arrow keys, but you can change those by going into the game options, then in "Config Key/Joy Mappings".
From here, simply bind new keys for Left, Down, Up, and Right by going into each corresponding row, hitting enter, then hitting the wanted key (like D F J K, for example). Once you're done, you can save by hitting your Escape key.

Now that your keybindings are ready, you simply can go into "Dance mode", pick the color of your choice, then select "Play Mods". You will be greeted by a vast selection of pre-installed songs.

From there, pick the wanted song by using your Left and Right keys, and hit enter to start it. The song difficulty is shown in the lower-left corner of the game, and goes between 1 and 20. We suggest you to start with something easy first!

During your first play, the game might not be synced to your audio devices. You have 2 choices here:

  • Hit your F6 key twice, then play the song. The game will automatically sync the game according to your inputs.
  • If you prefer manually syncing your game, hold the Shift key and press F11 or F12. This will adjust your game sync with 20ms intervals. Holding Alt at the same time as Shift will allow you to fine tune your offset to the millisecond!
Either way, once you're satisfied with the current offset, you can either finish the song, or back out (by holding the Escape key) to save your sync. All that is left now is to have fun with the game!

Where can I find songs and packs?

For NotITG modded files, the NotITG download already contains more than 120 songs, ready to be played! If you want more, feel free to head over to our Discord server to find a lot of other files.
For non-modded files, you can find a large index of normal ITG files, which are mostly compatible with NotITG.

How do I add songs?

  • If the downloaded song only contains one folder, and inside it, some files (.png, .sm, .ogg, etc.), simply extract this folder from the downloaded zipfile, then drag-and-drop the folder into the NotITG window!
  • If the downloaded archive has a "Songs" folder (and eventually additional ones like "Courses" or "NoteSkins"), just drag these folders in your NotITG installation, to merge these with your existing folders, then restart your game.

In short: song folders must be placed in the hierarchy of NotITG/Songs/Group Folder/My Song Folder.
A song cannot be loaded if it is not within a Group Folder within NotITG's Songs folder.

How do I change the theme, or other game settings?

You can change the theme by going into the game options, then into "Select Theme".
However, if your current theme does not have such an option, you can still change the theme by editing the GamePrefs.ini file found in the Data folder, while the game is closed.

Various other game settings (such as DisplayHeight, DisplayWidth, DisplayAspectRatio and Windowed can also be changed by editing another file: Data/StepMania.ini.
(These, also, can only be changed while the game is closed, as the setting will be overwritten on game close so your changes will be lost)
Please note that themes that were not created for OpenITG or NotITG will not work here!

The game is crashing with Default NoteSkin 'dance' missing!

Don't move the Program folder out from where it's placed in the setup. Similarly, if you created a shortcut for the program, make sure to not edit its "Working directory" in the shortcut properties. In case of doubt, double-click on the .exe directly.

What is "Play Mods"? What is the difference with "Standard"?

The default game mode for NotITG is two player mode, with a setting called "BothAtOnce" - this is a setting that mirrors your inputs to all on-screen playfields. This became the standard in modding, as many charts will use effects that require both playfields to be on screen in order to be readable.

Is there a macOS or Linux version?

Not currently! There are plans, but you may need to wait a while.
However, as of right now, Wine support for NotITG is quite good! You will be able to use this in almost all use cases for the game, without issues.

The main menu has no options available!

You might have accidentally stumbled into Arcade mode! Please hold F3 to bring up the debug menu, then press the 1 key until the option for "Coin Mode" is set to "home".

The game does not start at all, with no errors being shown.

Unfortunately, a few antiviruses (like AVG or Avast) wrongly flag NotITG as being dangerous. Their assumption is only due to the fact it has not been downloaded enough times. You simply need to whitelist NotITG's folder in your antivirus, and it will be able to start.

Acknowledgements

The NotITG Project is managed by TaroNuke & HeySora

Additional contributors include:
Jewel, ArcticFqx, 0b5vr, BrotherMojo, ashastral, XeroOl, NAYOTO., Daikyi, halcyoniix, TheFriendlyRabbit and CosmicLAER.