As it is the thing that makes TrotMania possible period, we’d like to announce that StepMania 5.1 Beta 1 has been officially released. It is designed, mainly, to be an updated version of 5.0.12 with some updates under the hood (including a new default theme, which has some subtle TrotMania DNA in a few places), as well as some insane new capabilities for those who enjoy our, ahem, experiments.

It is also backwards compatible with content designed for for 5.0.12, so the TrotMania themes will work just fine on 5.1 without any need for modifications.

The aforementioned “insane capabilities” are the ones that Trials of the Embers depend on; in other words, this is the version you will need to run them. There will still be a curated experience designed to enhance Trials, but now that we have an official 5.1 build, distributing it will now be just as easy as a Payload when its done, rather than what I originally had in mind.