itgmania212121/Docs/Themerdocs/recommended_practices.txt

Recommended Practices when theming for sm-ssc
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1) Use the --theme= command line parameter to switch between themes quickly.
This way, you don't have to deal with the theme switch and all the possible
nonsense errors that might come up (due to you having a different amount of
song group colors, timer warning states, etc.), and you can quickly switch
themes if you work on many of them at once.

2) If you want to create a theme that targets both regular StepMania 4 and
sm-ssc, there are a few precautions to take care of.

2a) First, decide if you want to develop it on sm-ssc first or SM4 first. It is
usually easier to deal with making the theme in normal SM4 and using _portKit-SM4
to get the theme running up in sm-ssc.

If you do decide to make the theme for sm-ssc first, be prepared to fill in a lot
of files that sm-ssc _fallback makes empty for you, as the metrics, graphics, and
BGAnimations from SM4's default theme will be loaded instead of sm-ssc's _fallback.

2b) sm-ssc's _fallback theme defines a variable, SSC, like so:
[code]SSC = (ProductID() == "sm-ssc");[/code]
This will return true if it's sm-ssc, or false if it's SM4.
You should define this in a file in your theme, so that SM4 will be able to
recognize it.

With this "SSC guard" in place, you can now wrap things in "if SSC then"
statements if they won't work on SM4. You can also provide alternatives if the
player isn't using sm-ssc, since sometimes SM4 will have an approximation or
alternate way to get the data.