StepCon 2024

[Zoobin4]

Re: StepCon 2024

My thoughts on charts!!!

Things You Should Know About My Thoughts:
- Chart order shows my overall ranking for the group, ordered from most favourite to least favourite chart. Numbers in bold are ones that I voted for.
- "[...]" denotes my reviewed thoughts after a second playthrough of the chart.
- I also didn't give all charts a second playthrough, so it's extremely likely that my opinions could have differed greatly from my initial feedback for some charts.
- Don't take my "ratings" too seriously (the "x/10" stuff), they're just my way of having fun while summing up each chart.
- I don't know why, but I was surprisingly harsh in a lot of my reviews. Try not to take it to heart if I was harsh to you, I have quite a unique viewpoint after all.
- Above all else I prioritise how much fun I had while playing a chart, which inevitably means that charts on the easier side of things will be to my distaste.

Chart Order: 3, 4, 2, 1


Atohs 1:
Some parts of this chart feel truly immaculate, with incredibly satisfying layering, PR and difficulty balance.
Then other parts have 2 bjillion bpm chordjacks and minijacks that appear out of nowhere with little to no consistency.
Not quite sure what to make of that.

Yin & Yang/10


Atohs 2:
Starts off with some pretty normal patterns, good layering, good melody representation.
Then it goes into a section that closely follows the melody, basically ignoring percussion- which is then immediately followed by a section that closely follows the percussion, ignoring the melody (which was very strange because the focus of these two sections should have been swapped in my opinion, and on top of that they both could have easily incorporated both melody and percussion anyway).
After this point, the chart progressively gets harder and harder, making any difficulty the previous half of the chart posed completely irrelevant.

[f(difficulty) = 2t] / 10


Atohs 3:
Creative and tasteful usage of colour theory throughout the chart.
Overall I think this is a very good interpretation of a high level chart for this song, it's certainly not what I expected but I think it works surprisingly well.
The difficulty is balanced well, with a small difficulty spike near the end (and that ending trill being incredibly rude, but I can trill each side of it so I’ll let it slide).

There was one hard section where I really could not see what was being represented there (I think it was meant to be the strings, but I really didn’t understand it).
Other than that, everything was both creative and had good flow- on top of having very consistent usage of patterning/layering.

[2nd playthrough: I noticed that some of the melody seemed a bit lacking representation in one section, and I think that there could be some better layering choices in the intro- but it was still a very fun and creative chart. A little less polished than my first impression led me to believe but still good.]

D8 chart/10


Atohs 4:
Can’t fault much of the patterning here, everything makes sense, flows well, and is consistent throughout the chart- apart from difficulty.
This chart is very, very spiky. The vast majority of it is simple jumpstream, and then you get jumpscared by minijacks, crazy fast streams, and trills.

[On 2nd playthrough, I kinda disagree with what I said about it being very spiky. It’s true that the majority of the chart is simple jumpstream, but the hard minijacks, fast streams, and trills, are all interspersed throughout the chart commonly enough that they don't feel out of place. There is still a bit of a diffspike at the end though.
But genuinely no idea what I was on about with it being “very, very spiky”.]

Mohawk?/10

Chart Order: 1, 6, 5, 4, 3, 7, 2
Group Notes:
I am Going To Cry if I have to play another group with so many minimalist charts in a row, dear God help me.


Mantle In The Dark 1:
Very well balanced, simple but consistent and very effective layering scheme/pattern choice, overall just felt really good to play.
A chart that perfectly met all my expectations of the song. Great job.

It’s not a masterpiece, simply because it doesn’t exceed my expectations, but rather meets all of them and offers nothing more.
I feel that there's more one could do with the song, but I haven’t yet seen what those things could be.

10/11


Mantle In The Dark 2:
Not much to say about this, very similar to MITD 1 but with considerably worse and less consistent patterning/layering choices- with the added bonus of huge diffspikes in the end because of the jacks.

Literally jumpscared me/10


Mantle In The Dark 3:
Minimalist chart.
I don’t entirely agree with a lot of the patterning choices made here, and for such a minimalist chart some of the 24th streams are pretty nasty.

Minimalist/10


Mantle In The Dark 4:
Solid chart, overall great pattern choices, consistent layering, and good flow- even if a little boring in the first half.
Main issues are the two 32nd roll walls (because diffspike) and the 1(one) single instance of minijack in the chart (because minor diffspike and it feels out of place).

Minijack In The Dark/10


Mantle In The Dark 5:
Another solid chart. I felt that at points (particularly in the first half) the PR was very off (likely due to the abstractions of charting only singles when there was a lot more than one sound going on), but despite that the patterns flowed very well, and the layering consistency was great too.

Definitely another chart like MITD 4 where the second half was more fun than the first half, but unlike 4, this one doesn’t have strange diff spikes, and generally flows much nicer.

[Now that I’ved played it again, this chart is very strange. It really feels like a lot of the patterning is quite arbitrary, while for the most part the rhythms are quite well structured.
And I really do dislike the extreme minimalism here, feels like a bit of a waste, even if it was executed well(?)]

Nice Flow/10


Mantle In The Dark 6:
Not a fan of the triplejack 12ths, but definitely a huge fan of the 20th streams.
Overall very solid file again- much like MITD 5, but with a more conventional layering and PR approach.

[The triplejacks aren’t actually that bad.]

Nice Streams/10


Mantle In The Dark 7:
I am lost for words.
I genuinely do not understand almost anything that is going on here.
Maybe I should take a look at this another time when it's not so late.
I don’t think 1am is the best time to try understanding this one.

Unhealthy Obsession with 24th Streams/10

Chart Order: 2 & 4, 3, 1
Group Notes:
Why are there not one, but two whole ass ITG Stamina charts???


Second Strike 1:
Not actually too fond of unnecessary index streams in my FFR files.

ITG Stamina/10


Second Strike 2:
Why Is Your Audio So Quiet???
Anyway ignoring that, actually an incredibly solid chart, flows great, very sound layering choices form a coherent experience with a consistent difficulty. Really fun to play.

Interesting colour theory(?)
I am not big brain enough to understand it so you do you I guess.

A little bit of a rough cut to the audio at the end, but there's not much you could do with this type of song.

Far In The Blue Sky colour scheme/10


Second Strike 3:
Hello ITG Stamina 2.
I see you’ve brought with you a couple 24th streams, and even some 32nd bursts, how daring.

ITG Stamina v2/10


Second Strike 4:
Another very solid chart, much like SS 2, but a bit more conservative on the minijack usage- both are perfectly valid approaches in my opinion.
Basically exactly what I would expect from this song. Great job.

Oh My Goodness Gracious An Actually Normal Chart Holy Shit/10

Chart Order: 1, 2, 3
Group Notes:
What an absolute banger of a class my goodness.
Smallest class, but by far the best too.


Memories in the Blue 1:
THANK YOU GOD FINALLY.
Congratulations on being the first chart so far that I have actually thoroughly enjoyed the entire way through oh my goodness gracious.

Excellent layering and pattern choice, consistency is on point, difficulty is moderately high but focuses more on short bursts or approachable patterns- making the entire chart quite approachable.
But most importantly, it's fun! Really fun actually!

The charter masterfully incorporates the bounciness of the song into the chart itself, and easily had me swaying side to side along with the music while playing.
Incredible work.

[Honestly a masterpiece of a chart. Hands down the best work in the entire stepcon.]


So Fun!!!/10


Memories in the Blue 2:
Another absolutely incredible chart.
This one focuses more on slightly longer bursts and sustained streams, which is a valid approach, however I do find shorter bursts to be slightly better suited to the punchiness of this song.

That said, this chart absolutely would have won my pick in any of the previous classes.
Absolute banger here. Great job.

So Fun!!/10


Memories in the Blue 3:
My goodness, yet another absolutely incredible chart.
In the first about 1/3 of the chart, there does seem to be just a little bit missing, feels like the chart isn’t quite as punchy as it should be- but it turns into near perfection for the other 2/3 of the chart, just like 1 and 2.

Unfortunately because of that lacking in the first third, I will place it ever-so-slightly lower than the other two, but again, this would have certainly won my pick in any other class.
Another amazing job. Well done.

[I definitely think this is the weakest of the three, much more so than on my initial playthrough. Still pretty good though]

Fun/10

Chart Order: 1, 6, 5, 4, 2, 3
Group Notes:
Actually some really cool charts in this group, weird cuts though.


GET OVER IT ! 1:
Excellent usage of repeating patterns throughout the entire chart, as well as excellent layering choices, abstraction choices, and PR.
Very, very fun to play.

My only nitpick is that one of the repeating burst patterns was a tad too fast for my taste, considering that it was quite an uncomfortable pattern.
Other than that, this chart is very near perfection.

[This really is an extraordinary chart with how it so cleanly directs your focus to certain parts of the song.
The weak part of this chart is definitely the dump section, which was pretty unclear with some of the abstraction choices, and certainly too hard compared to the rest of the chart.
If the stepartists of this and 6 combined forces, they would surely produce a truly perfect chart.]

FUN !/10


GET OVER IT ! 2:
An excellently put together minimalist chart, unfortunately I’m not going to vote for it when there’s a non-minimalist chart of the same quality available.

Minimalist (but actually quite good)/10


GET OVER IT ! 3:
Great chart, very fun to play, it's just that… It has a peculiar obsession with minijacks.
Usage of repeating patterns is once again excellent, however some abstraction choices and patterning choices (particularly with the dubstep-y section) was slightly strange to me, and didn’t flow as well as it could have.

MWC Map/10


GET OVER IT ! 4:
Yet another great chart.
Only slightly on the easier side this time, with great layering and usage of repeating patterns- even a sprinkling of tasteful and natural colour theory.
Importantly though, it lacks the punchyness and bursty fun of 1.

9/10


GET OVER IT ! 5:
Interesting choice to cut it.
Overall this is definitely my second favourite chart so far, it’s incredibly well put together and has just a bit more punchyness than 4, which makes it a strong contender indeed.

I am actually slightly saddened by the cut, I would have liked to play the rest of the song too.

[The cut is certainly less rough than I remember. I think in general this chart tried to do a little too much at once, I think that a less wholesome and more focused layering scheme would have been a slightly better choice. That’s not to say that this wasn’t executed well at all- in fact I very likely would have made an extremely similar style of chart, had I got this as my song.]

Cut Ver /10


GET OVER IT ! 6:
Interesting choice to do a fade-out. I think it works a little better than the previous cut at least.
Very strong chart overall, excellent use of repeating patterns, layering is sound, and it has the vitally important quality of punchyness.

My only issue is that a few (indeed, a very small amount) of the abstractions are somewhere between ‘slightly unclear’ and ‘unclear’.
Still, I think in general the abstract dump parts are ever-so-slightly cleaner than in GOI 1, which puts it on roughly the same level.
Very well done.
(Why did you have to fade it though I don’t get it).

[Rather than the abstractions being ‘unclear’, I think that there were actually a couple spots where there should have been some kind of dumpy thing. The parts that were dumped were exquisitely done, much better than GOI 1.
Other than those tiny parts, it's basically a flawless chart. My main issue is that it's cut! I want to play more of the chart why did you cut it!!!]

Alan Walker - Faded/10

[Tru]

Re: StepCon 2024

Played classes in this order: F, C, D, A, B. Sorry for the weird order, too lazy to change this now lol

Every chart seemed solid. It was definitely difficult to vote for some of these classes. If I had to give some general feedback, I would very heavily advocate for more playtesting. Balance issues, overly rough patterns, even ghost/missing notes sometimes - they can often be discovered with a playtest. It’s understandable to miss this with the time limit and no sharing limit, but some of these charts would have been helped with playtests.

I’m hoping my notes don’t come across too negatively. It’s hard to give specific feedback when you only have half the tools available (playtest/preview only, no editor). If you want more feedback than offered here, feel free to DM me your file and your questions after the voting period!

Well done y’all!~

Class F: GET OVER IT !

Song: - Making something balanced for this song would be a challenge. The wub section kind of overpowers the rest of the song.

1: Wub section is very unbalanced compared to the rest of the chart. Felt rushed in the second half, noted some missing piano which would have helped balance considering how maximalist the wub section was done.

2: This one would need some judge notes to help consistency. The low difficulty approach was somewhat effective, but that one section kind of threw that away lol.

3: Better difficulty balance than 1. The jacks in the wub section were pretty odd - have to be careful with jacks, they can break flow. Otherwise seems fairly decent.

4: This one has my favourite wub section so far. But the intro section and it’s repeat later in the chart feel very confusing. Feels like it’s trying to capture too many elements and ends up as more continuous/jumpstream-y than the choppy nature of the song in that section.

5: A cut! I think that was a solid decision and the file feels more focused and slightly more balanced as a result. I think this still needs some pattern tweaks and a consistency once-over wouldn’t hurt. Last 24th patterns are confusing, would probably need to look in editor to see why they aren’t completely a trill

6: A cut! 5’s cut was better imo. Whistle trills were cute. Not sure how to feel on this one. I can kind of see what it’s going for in the wub section, it just didn’t really land for me. Not sure whether it’s the 32nds being too continuous or some awkward patterning, I’d probably need an AV look.

Class C: Second Strike

Song: I think this was my third choice..? Managing repetition will be key, hoping for cuts.

1: I understand this approach, it just didn’t seem very effective. Probably needed to limit 32nds to just the bursts and choose a different stream snap like 24ths or maybe 28ths for better variety. Noticed a couple missing notes. Very stamina draining with no cut.

2: That is certainly one way to manage repetition… Anyone playing eg. monocolour just gets what seems to be the same chart twice. Anyone with standard colours gets something very hard to read in the second half. The blue/cyan/white colour scheme completely lacks the contrast that standard noteskin players rely on - it all kind of blends together creating a massive reading challenge. Cut the second half and this would be solid - the chart was fun and flowed very well despite the glut-y nature.

3: Going to guess this is a novice stepartist - and it’s a decent start. The stream patterns don’t really make much sense for any kind of pitch relevant approach - seem mostly just random. And the 32nd transitions are very unbalanced in the broader difficulty of the chart. It’d be good for this person to compare to the other charts in this group for some ideas.

4: I’m a bit conflicted on this one. It’s fairly solid overall, I’m mostly just annoyed by how the climax of the song was so comparatively underwhelming. It almost feels unfinished. Very glad to have a cut.

Class D: Memories in the Blue

Song: There may have never been a song more BOF-core than this.

1: Pretty much exactly what I would have expected from this song. This needs a once-over for missing melody notes, noticed a handful and not sure if that’s just because the intro trills spooked me to playing on .8 lol

2: Solid. Might need a pattern tweak here and there, but I have very little to complain about here.

3: While this is a simpler approach, I think this did the best job in the group of reflecting the song’s energy in the difficulty. Similar to 1 needs a once-over for missing melody. I like this one.

Class A: Atohs

Song: Something in this group had better be at least mid-high 90s difficulty.

1: Somewhat understandable to have some missing notes here. This is the kind of chart where it’s good on the surface but needs a fair bit of detail work. There’s some solid ideas but this would need judge notes.

2: This chart seems to have some difficulty deciding what to follow, and how difficult it actually wants to be. Noticed some rough patterns and scattered rhythm errors.

3: Good lord. Props for having the stones to send something so hard. I can’t properly evaluate this, I’m dying in a 0.7x playtest lmao. Uhhhhh… seems good???? If this wins I’d probably want one of our D7+ judges to give this a detailed look, maybe some notes.

4: Wow this one ramps up. Seemed relatively clean in execution. Difficulty balance …makes sense? I really like that aspect of this chart. This definitely needs some smoothing out in some spots, a few yikes spikes here.

Class B: Mantle in the Dark

Song: This one seemed to me relatively straightforward to step, and as a result would be difficult for any one chart to stand out.

1: Relatively inoffensive/straightforward way to keep interest in lower energy parts with the jumpstream. It kind of works but felt like way too safe an approach to me.

2: Spiky. Those handjacks were surprising jumpscare (handscare??) lmao. Pretty solid overall. Probably want to nerf the end jack, it’s pretty rude

3: I’m not entirely sure what this was going for. Some of these 16ths seem very arbitrary, might be to a quieter sound than is obvious in a playtest. Might have been going for something similar to 1?

4: Straightforward, maybe unsurprising approach. Noticed a few missing graces in the intro. Nothing major to fault, but nothing outstanding.

5: Some rhythm errors. Was somewhat difficult to follow at times - most notably in the easy middle, too continuous. This slightly easier approach could be effective with some clean up.

6: Fairly well polished, still some minor things to clean up.

7: Pretty hard to follow what this was aiming for. A lot of these 24ths seem very arbitrary and the second half’s layering seems uncertain on whether it wants to commit to pure handstream

[gold stinger]

Re: StepCon 2024

The First Public Voting Period has Ended!

Here's the results for the First Round:


1st - Snupeh [4]
2nd - mikatheidiot [3]
3rd - E-B-E [1]


1st - Velocity [6]
2nd - TheTrueXFish [1]
3rd - WirryWoo [2]


1st - M0nkeyz [4]
2nd - Wind0ze [2]
3rd - TIE! Hakulyte [1] & DSMLMD [3]


1st - jh05013 [1]
2nd - jacobvl39 [3]
3rd - Durvin [2]


1st - xXOpkillerXx [3]
2nd - Tru [6]
3rd - RakuAvali [5]


1st - Lights [4]
2nd - Dash- [3]
3rd - Ultimate Mike7 [6]

A huge congratulations to everyone that participated, played and voted for their favorites! It was quite a riveting battle over the week from every Class for the coveted 1st Place to participate in the Final StepOff, especially so for Class E and Class F! Very forward and back with many 1st place swaps. So much so, that we saw last-minute tiebreakers be resolved in the last couple hours of voting for some in 2nd & 3rd! I will be getting prizes (credits, badges and the such) out shortly while juggling the rest of the swap-over period as we transition into the Final StepOff.

Participants and voters are now open & free to talk about which file is theirs in-order on the StepCon 2024 engine (if they prefer), and talk about which specific songs they voted for (again, if they prefer).

As for the tie in 3rd on Class C, you will both be receiving the same badge & rewards.


Stay tuned for the Final StepOff announcement.

[gold stinger]

Re: StepCon 2024

The Second Stepping Period has Begun!

During this time, all participants will have received a Direct Message from me containing the Final StepOff song, and their Pre-built .sm File to begin Charting.

All participants will have until the end of Thursday, October 3rd 11:59PM SERVER TIME to complete their submissions and submit it to the StepCon 2024 Batch located here.


Class Exam: t+pazolite / †††Chaos Time the DARK†††

Snupeh
Velocity
M0nkeyz
jh05013
xXOpkillerXx
Lights

Once upon a time, a collaboration effort born between Taiko no Tatsujin and t+pazolite gave birth to a song so devilish, so diabolical, so.. April Fools-ish (specifically this year), that they published this monstrosity to bear to the world on April 1st of 2024, to ruin some fair drum-players internationally in this BPM Powerhouse of a song. Will finalists be swallowed into a pit of despair over multiple genre changes and BPM/notation changes that demand notations that don't even exist in most rhythm game editors, or will they persevere in the onslaught that is 360bpm swing to the bpm slide ending? Time will only tell in this year's Final StepOff!

3 participants will be walking away with an extra-special StepOff profile badge (plus a hefty bonus of credits), and the winner will also have this song released to FFR.

Best of luck to the Finalists! To other participants, I will be sending out 2nd & 3rd place prizes, and participation prizes in a bit. The Second Judging Period will begin on October 4th.

[gold stinger]

Re: StepCon 2024

Prizes, Event Tokens, and Badges have been awarded out!

If you'd like to spend your Event Tokens, head on over to https://www.flashflashrevolution.com.../tokenshop.php and cash them out.

If you happened to get 1st place and would like to spend one of your unlocks on vROFL or STRANGEPROGRAM v0, say so in this forum thread or get in-touch with me on Discord, and I can get that done for you.

[gold stinger]

Re: StepCon 2024

The Second Public Voting Period has Begun!

During this time, the community can vote for the Final round of StepCon 2024. No further submissions for the event will be accepted at this time. You can re-visit the Google Form link in the future to change your votes (until the end of the Public Voting period), and you can vote for multiple options across this Final StepOff (Pick any & all that you like!).

You may fill out the form at https://forms.gle/oYdYExS9gbN5XgeY8 to submit your votes.

Please be advised, participants CANNOT vote for their own Class. Votes for that class will not count for said participants.

https://www.flashflashrevolution.com/batch_submission/engine/r3.stepcon2024.xml
If you navigate to your 'Options' in your FFR Engine, navigate to 'Miscellaneous' settings and click the drop-down for 'Engine Playlist', you should see this at the bottom of the list:



You will get this pop-up:



If you Copy the above XML URL and Paste it there, and click 'Add Engine', you should be able to view/play/observe songs from StepCon 2024. If you do not want to play the song, you may preview the song by right-clicking the song of choice in the song selection menu and selecting 'Play Chart Preview' in the right click menu.

Final StepOff: t+pazolite / †††Chaos Time the DARK†††

Everyone will have until the end of Thursday, October 10th 11:59PM SERVER TIME to complete voting and submit their forms at the above google link.

Furthermore, discussion is allowed in-thread during voting. But please do not deliberately attempt to sway votes/vote brigade particular submissions, and treat your fellow Stepauthors with respect. People of all skill levels participate within this event, and there is going to be good/bad matchups for people's skills and preferred genres. Keep it civil and respectful. There's also the #events channel in FFR's Official Discord for discussing the event as well!

[Tru]

Re: StepCon 2024

Congrats to all entrants. This was a tough song to chart, and it'd be even harder to chart well.

I have to preface this by saying I had to play all these on 0.8x or lower rate. The song demands a fairly hard chart.

1 - Noticed a few scattered rhythm/consistency errors. I'm expecting this will be the among the easiest entries but with some touch ups this could work better.

2 - More of a maximalist approach but some of these pattern choices seem to be a bit rude. Would probably need some specific nerfs/pattern tweaks.

3 - Contrasts a lot with 2, almost minimalist approach. The song isn't quite allowing this chart to really work for me. It feels somewhat unbalanced overall with the speed and jack sections contrasting with other simplified sections.

4 - 3 but with better balance. Felt very clean.

5 - Felt fairly balanced. Not a huge fan of the representation of the airhorn(?) Might need minor touch ups.

6 - phew. Not sure about some colours. I think a bit more colour work could have been done in the fancy rhythm section to further improve readability but this also works better than other submissions. I suspect some playtests would have revealed how overly intense some of the chordjack-y parts and The Trill (tm) are.

[gold stinger]

Re: StepCon 2024

The Second Public Voting Period has Ended!

Here's the Final StepOff results!


1st - M0nkeyz [4]
2nd - Lights [3]
3rd - xXOpkillerXx [5]

A final huge congratulations to M0nkeyz for placing 1st in the Final StepOff, as well as everyone whom played and voted for their favorites! I legitimately got home from work the other day, checked voting, and nearly everyone in Final StepOff was tied at one point or another within the last 48 hours of voting. I will be getting prizes (credits, badges and the such) out momentarily to our finalists to reflect their position!

Participants and voters are now open & free to talk about which file is theirs in-order on the StepCon 2024 engine (if they prefer), and talk about which specific songs they voted for (again, if they prefer).

And of course, to M0nkeyz, you will have an extra week in-batch to submit any fixes or changes related to feedback or discussion on your file. Then it be moved to Difficulty Consultants for another week to rate the difficulty of the file and then released.

Thank you all once again for participating in another year of StepCon! Still not entirely sure if we need to retire the event for a year or not, or reproach engagement or song selection, but we'll have to see whether that all falls in-line or not for next year!

[Lights]

Re: StepCon 2024

oof i lost. GG m0nkeyz