itgmania212121/Docs/Themerdocs/recommended_practices.txt

Recommended Practices when theming for StepMania
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1) Use the --theme= command line parameter to load StepMania with a specific theme.
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) When dealing with frame size errors or theme code errors, don't just hide the
dialog and pretend they don't exist. Good themers fix these problems instead of
releasing the theme and saying "oh, just play it in fullscreen mode".

If you have hidden the error dialogs, you'll need to modify Preferences.ini. 
Find the IgnoredDialogs= line and remove everything after the = sign. You will
now recieve the error messages in windowed mode again.

3) While this is not required, having a themeInfo file set up in your theme's
Scripts directory is a good way to store information about the theme (e.g.
version number, date, product code, etc.)

An example of a themeInfo script:
[code]
themeInfo = {
	Name = "Theme Name",
	Version = "v1.0", -- typically a float or string. floats are easier to compare.
	Date = "20140914 1902",
};
[/code]