DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

It's kind of funny how Paranoia Revolution keeps getting thrown around as an example of a bad 19 when it's the only one other than EGOISM440 that I've played that didn't suck insurmountable amounts of dogshit. The first half of Endymion looks mostly fine, but holy shit that entire last half just looks like someone smashed their head against a keyboard while trying to write a StepMania chart and was just like "alright that vaguely resembles a chart imma just leave that there"

I managed to clear 888 (and the rest of the pre-X3 18s) like a year before PRO. Those crossovers are pure ass (and not sure what people find that hard about 888, it's not the densest of the 18s since they never do more than like 7-note clusters of 16ths before the speedup and it gives you more than a few breaks, comparing it to ReaF (another Rebirth comparison) it's an absolute joke)


Uhh....

@rayword45
1) At 0:53 yes, they're jacks and you need to spin. It's a 19 what do you expect?
2) At 0:27 you will need to hit the 4th note on the freeze arrow and the 4th note afterwards with the same foot but the only reason this is the case is because of the freeze arrow, so this was intended.

You're implying that we think this chart is great. It's not, it's a 19 and it has its problems. But you are pointing out issues that aren't anything we haven't seen from other 19s, and other 19s have done worse. It's a good 19, but not a good chart in general.

That's what I think at least.

---

1. I expect nobody would ever THINK to put patterns this fucking bad in a chart, besides Bemani that is. You can make a chart as hard or harder than a 19 without sucking this much.
2. NONE of the other freezes require you to doublestep, so that's not a true point. Having only one freeze require you to doublestep yet making the rest crossovers is TERRIBAD DESIGN.

3. I basically said this. It's nowhere near as "I could've written a better chart smacking my flaccid dick on the keyboard" as VDO or PRO but it's still TERRIBLE. And I don't think you should give something props for being trash but still better than the toxic waste nearby.

I don't know, I used to hate PRO too but it actually grew on me the more I played it. Valkyrie Dimension can definitely go die in a fire, though.

Endy looks better than something like VDO in the way that having diarrhea is better than puking. Like, yeah, it's definitely better, but it's not like you'd exactly want either of them to happen to you.

I dunno if having diarrhea is necessarily better than puking. I mean, mad children die from diarrhea.

Wow

OK so I got to play on one of the new Uniana cabs today, here are some observations.

1. The buttons are bigger, brighter, and are now linear instead of clicky, so no tactile feedback. Also, the up/down/left/right buttons do not have any markings as opposed to the original black triangles.

2. The screen looks a lot brighter/sharper. I had to make sure it wasn't running at a higher resolution, it looked so good. The Uniana cabs definitely win on the display.
Old
Old
New
New

3. The speaker drivers are different. I don't know if they're better or worse, but they are different.

4. The pads are not as sensitive. This might just be that the tech at my arcade (Seattle Round 1) hasn't done whatever they did to the other one, if anything, but I definitely had a lot of dropped arrows. I even had trouble keeping holds if I was leaning to the bar too much.

5. The pads to not have as much travel. They feel a little "harder"

Holy gravy eedeeq, I had almost the same feelings as you when I played on a Uniana cab. I didn't see any differences in the screen though.

The pads felt a little more wobbly in my case. I felt the panels shift a bit more than on one of the older machines.

1. Well, I don't interpret all the doubletaps in that section to be interpreted as jacks. For that section in particular I think it would make it a lot easier to footswitch at combos 443 (or 445), and 497 (or 499), instead of spinning.
(And for the section before the 220 BPM Freeze forced quadruple jacks, footswitching at combos 365, 368, 403, 407 also aids the flow of the chart)
2. What hypnoticmarten is saying is that for all the Freezes in that section (starting at 0:27 of yuisin's video), there are "forced" doublesteps with the Freeze arrows. The doublestep applies to all the Freeze arrows in that section, which is something he didn't make clear. Foot usage should be: RLRLR-L-LRLRL-R-RLRLR-L-LRLRL-R-RLRLR-L-LRLRL-R-RLRLR-L-LRLRL-R-(STREAM). With this strategy, the turns become more coherent (although are still exceptionally challenge to excute).

I guess when looking at this chart for the first time, none of this is really apparent, which might give a player the impression that it's a badly written chart. After playing in StepMania and analyzing it over time, it becomes clearer what a player is expected to do (and some of that is up to individual interpretation too, which is one thing I like about DDR charts). One of my friends phrased it pretty well. 19s are puzzles waiting to being deciphered (or something like that) Executing those deciphered conclusions is way harder tho.

This is by far the best-charted 19 IMO. The most technically sound 19 I've seen so far.

---

Especially if you get Giardia Lamblia, that parasite can make you diarrhea 10 times and hour or something insane like that. You'd be dehydrated in no time. Sorry, former lab tech so I had to chime in lol.

Anyway, how 'bout that Endymion chart? It's crazy for me to look at that and remember back when I thought things couldn't get much harder than Valkyrie Dimension or Egoism (while still being relatively playable). I'll never be at that level, I'll stick to 17s and below. Maybe an 18 here or there. I can't wait to see that score get beaten/improved over time.

---

IMG
That convo inspired me to make a chart of all ambiguous patterning in Endymion. Probably missed a few ending jump-related things, but most of them can be done in one of several ways with no ill consequences. Most of that is retarded since it's a bunch of trivial (by 19 standards) steps that will screw you over afterwards if you do them wrong, pop up in a bunch of different places and all require a different approach with little patterns to speak of. Highly technical charts of such a high difficulty do not have to be sightreadable, but there's a difference between signature maneuvers that require very specific setups to perform at all and make the charts unique at the cost of memorization (Endymion's footswitches into/after 24ths, VD's crossover stepjumps, OTP's laterals and halfspins, PRevo's everything) and what we got here.
Also complaining about fast crossovers past 2010 is like complaining about bar use in 00s and in a few years will probably get you laughed at anywhere outside stamina circlejerk.

A bit of statistics on step rethoric: Endymion has 11 turns (incl. 4 rebound), 28 crossovers (incl. 17 rebound, plus 3 repeat steps on one crossover) and 5 stepjumps (1 candle, 1 dual panel switch, 2 1st step panel switch, 1 standard) done at 880spm.

I'm glad someone is on the same page as I am with this. However, I still believe that although it's the best-written 19, it's probably one of the least fun because of how strenuous and painful the patterns can be.

Remember, well-written doesn't always equal fun.


Not too bad of an analysis. I don't think it's fair to say that all the patterns listed in the image are ambiguous, as there are technical footswitching going on in a lot of these patterns, which for the most part, you've labeled pretty well.

Just a few notes (my god, I'm actually breaking down the chart, too):

m13 b1: The D+R jump can be pulled off via a bracket and footswitch. After hitting the up arrow with your left foot, hit the D+R jump with your right foot (heel on down, toe on right), followed by hitting the next down arrow with your left. It's tedious, but it's possible.

m17 b4: The jump you circled can be nailed by bracketing with your left foot.

m66 b3/4: The 8th note up-arrow jacks can be footswitched, alternatively.

m69 b3/4: Either of the down or up arrows here can be footswitched, or if you don't feel like doing that, you can do a crossover on m70 b1.

m112 b4: This is probably the most ambiguous part. As a chart-writer, I hate L+R jumps followed by an up or down arrow, unless the chart seamlessly transitions itself with an U+D jump followed by an L+R jump, or just another L+R jump (hopefully that makes sense).

m146: You can bracket these jumps (L+D on left foot, D+R on right).

m152 b3: Again, bracket with your left foot on that L+D jump.

---

Two things:
-The section with the 12ths and the footswitches isn't really ambiguous - Those are straight footswitches. I do not think doublestepping is at all advantageous there, as then you'll be on the wrong footing for the 12th drills.
-Can you explain what you mean by "rebound" or "non-rebound" turns and crossovers?

I'm trying to interpret the 5-note clusters as LRLRL-R-RLRLR-L but that doesn't really work either. The MAJORITY of that section looks to be made for natural crossovers except for that one doublestep section. Again, making it so identically designed sections require totally different techniques with no indicator is BAD design. Actually, did it out on 0.5x and now I "get it" so I'll concede that it makes "sense" but I won't concede that it's still fucking terrible (if they wanted to indicate doublestepping was the point, they should've extended the damn freezes)

And I'm not complaining about "fast crossovers" I'm complaining about BADLY DESIGNED fast crossovers. Again, compare this to Destination Relapse or many songs in the BemaniBeats packs. Those are GOOD crossovers.

Also I will give credit to Bemani for making the 12th footswitches not... terrible even though they go to NO ACCENTUATED SOUND and the drills are ghost af. At the very least, they're smooth compared to those ass excuses for footswitches in PRevo

I haven't played on a SEA/Uniana cab, but this almost sounds like the original 2013 white cab pads (which I was pretty vocal about that first week).

I just realized that the buttons and switches on the new cabs are the exact same as on the JP x-cabs. We’re those made by Uniana?

Footswitches of any kind are inherently ambiguous. Even the most seemingly straightforward LDDR-type patterns can end up actually being a jack into crossover, depending entirely on what comes afterwards and requiring you to read more than one note ahead to figure out what to do. Jacks have been a standard DDR fare since its inception and are what everyone does instinctively. Which is why footswitch charts should aim to put them in specific spots in accordance to musical and charting progression, not completely random spots mixed in with jacks like in Endymion, and even worse leading straight into 16ths.
White-circled jumps with only one letter next to them are how I mark bracket jumps (and fast bracket doublesteps).

LDRDL starting from left foot is two crossovers: standard left-to-right (entering a turn state via crossover) and right-to-left rebound (exiting it, also via crossover). Turns are analogous. LDRDU is a crossover and a rebound turn, LDUDRDL is the other way around.

What the hell is a "BADLY DESIGNED" crossover?
That chart doesn't have a single fast crossover.
Examples please.
Bemani have never in their history bothered to chart their songs by making the arrows correspond to specific sounds (old examples everyone should know: Paranoia, Trip Machine, MAX 300), and any chart that does fit that mould is more likely than not a coincidence. Instead they chart by putting in arrows to create a very specific rhythm that usually corresponds to some sort of general progression in the music, but not musical notes themselves, and write step rethoric to put the chart's difficulty at whatever arbitrary level they decide. Paranoia is an 11 (a very hard one) despite the song itself not supporting anything harder than a 10 at very most. Trigger is an 18, but I can't see the song getting anything harder than 17 in a more sonic-literal charting style. Endymion's 24th drills separated by footswitches actually have a tense buildup backing them up, so even though there are no musical notes there, they're not a bad charting decision.
FEFEMZ disagrees, everyone else's opinions are irrelevant.

You say that, but both Beatmania and SDVX don't do this - they tend to charted very very very literally; especially notable in IIDX's case, as they sync sounds to the notes in the charts. SDVX is more arguable (given that FX makes changes to the music itself in places); but even still, DDR is close to alone in "steps that go along to literally nothing" (an honour I guess it shares with jubeat).

I guess one of things is that DDR is inherently harder to chart simply because in IIDX even if the whole thing is quad mashes, fingers can easily do that, so you can't really make a chart complete BS because fingers don't need to crossover in the same way that feet do (also, you have more fingers than feet). I honestly think they probably put just as little effort into other rhythm game charts, it's just that charts like that actually work like that (especially IIDX).

EDIT:
You say that, but even he simply doublesteps a few of the footswitches (though yes, he does *almost* all of them legit in that video; it's insane). Also, it's really unfair to compare human players to a DDR robot designed to play with the most technically perfect movements possible (and before you mention Chris, it's worth nothing that he won a Guinness world record for beating a literally 99.8% perfect robot in GH3 (with a 100%) on Through The Fire and Flames, so actually he doesn't count).

new song release on 10/3!! 君氏危うくも近うよれ / A応P
BSP

DSP

ESP

---