Z-I-v Summer Contest 2020

Thanks, I hate it

I don't think Meghan Trainor gave you permission either...

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You're not even participating in this contest, why do you keep butting in?

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Can it be a slightly modified version of the same cut where the beats are correctly adjusted? IIRC Unfair Damnation had a yellow arrow syndrome in the middle when the original song itself never had it.

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You can cut at the same place and keep the same overall structure if you want to try and improve the audio quality.


Here's a link to the artwork as well, it's a nice contemporary piece I think you guys would enjoy.

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Okay, this makes a lot more sense. Can't say I disagree too much either, I usually do step to my own skill level (14s and 15s) cause I feel most confident making good steps for that level. When it comes to 17s and 18s I'm usually making charts to play on my keyboard controls (FYJB). But we're all doing this for fun anyway, and we're all going to bring something different to the table. There's nothing wrong with voting for the steps you personally like the most, whether you could play them yourself on pad or not.

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Anyone interested in stepping Brain system, Laughin' Muffin, and Elektrikshot is more than welcome to use the audio from my files without asking. I'd allow the graphics too if that wasn't against the theme. Would be interested in seeing anyone else's interpretations of these.

I wrote feedback as I was playing the files in case someone asked. Here's what I wrote:

Nu Beat - Arrow placement feels random to me, I think the difficulty is about right for this song, but I think you should have paid more attention to how the feet of the player move around the pad. I'm not against double-stepping/spins I just think less attention was paid to it than should have been paid. Also, 8th note freezes should be used super sparingly at mid-high BPM because you don't need to hold them down to get credit so they just make the chart look messier without doing anything to change them. There's a good foundation here but it needed more care, you should always be picturing how the player would move around the pad *without* holding the bar, even if competitive players often do. Also, I feel like there are just too many full body spins and turns for this BPM/intended difficulty level

If you don’t like harder files, don’t vote for them. I don’t think you can be upset that harder files can be doing better though, because the point of everyone voting is for everyone to get their own ratings in. If a harder file does better, it’s because a lot of people enjoyed it more.

I don’t think there needs to be this much drama, guys. This whole contest is just for fun. For the people who keep posting about how discouraged they are about not placing well, I’m sorry, but hopefully this drives you to push yourself even more or even step out of your comfort zone. A lot of you are still great steppers and you shouldn’t feel like you’re bad or anything just because you’re not doing as well as you think you should be. Keep in mind this is a competition, and there will be people on top and there will be people on the bottom. This changes every round, I didn’t place well the first round but then I placed well this past one. It’s really anyone’s game.

Tl;dr, if harder files are placing better it’s because people enjoyed them more. It doesn’t have to do with difficulty. You can make a fun lower level chart. Look at Round 1. Also, keep your head up if you haven’t been placing well. It’s anyone’s game.

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Sure as fuck doesnt feel like it

OBVIOUSLY everyone can use the audio for all my charts from BR2020.

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I gave my position earlier, but: I don't think there's anything wrong with hard files. My favorite DDR chart is So Deep, a chart that is still pretty difficult today.

I just think most of them aren't tested for pad and I don't think most of the people trying them are playing them on pad so they're basically keyboard files which have different rules. I also think most folks probably think their hard charts are easier/more accessible than they are because they don't play at that difficulty level.

I love hard simfiles and will gladly vote for good ones. That isn't really my conceit. It's more like... sometimes hard files are harder than they are well-designed.

Ditto what forcednature said and the rules clarified you can't reuse graphics (I think official album art/BEMANI jackets should be excluded?)

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I just wanted to chime in with one thought on difficultly:

I enjoy files of all difficulties, so far in this contest I have voted for files that with max difficulties that ranged from 8 to 17 and everything in between. That being said, I do notice that a lot of people submit files that only have an expert/challenge chart and that chart is often rated a 15+. Obviously, that's completely allowed by the rules, but personally it's very hard for me to vote for these files because they have such a narrow range of difficulty. I often times have my partner or friends play Stepmania on my home pad and one of the things I look for in the SC are fun user simfiles I can grab for them to play. A lot of the single-chart simfiles I see submitted to the SC are too hard for even a seasoned player like me to play on pad, let alone more casual players. I know that writing beginner/basic/difficult charts can be tedious and boring, but I find them important because they open up the file to a greater range of players and that in turn may help your files get more points.

Anyways, that's just my two cents.

I thought the spin/footswitch gallops would be fun I put an U-D jump after the gallops so the player could either spin or footswitch them and it would still resolve. I do regret that little 8th note stream spin though. And I never had a planned difficulty for it, I just made the chart fitting to the song and rated it after. I compared it other 15's and 14's around the same BPM and settled on it being closer to 14 than 15.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Overall, I just need to play it more safe is what I'm gathering.

I see a lot of you are feeling frustrated for not placing well, I think some of it can be chalked up to a few things I'm going to list here, many of which are related to first impressions. This is an effort to help. If you feel like you're not improving/not being noticed, here are a few reasons that might be:

1. A "messy" feel to your arrows. If you're following a rhythm in your chart that is particularly chaotic or messy, a good starting point is to keep arrow chunks to 2-3 arrows rather than spreading that chaotic rhythm across all 4. Also, visual breaks in the arrows provide clarity. Keep your arrows readable at 1x. Avoid freeze arrows that don't actually need to be held. Keep in mind other people are going to be playing them for the first time even if you have been looking at them and listening to the song for hours. Simfiles that do well in these contests just have charts that "look pretty."
2. Bad or low-effort presentation. Make sure you have a good song preview set. Try to get some graphics. If you can't make them, ask someone to make them. Many of the graphics produced in this contest in files that have done well are not complicated but are high-impact. It doesn't take a long time to make a simple graphic for your file with a nice font and a couple pixels of stroke/outline.
3. Audio quality and cut. Try to make sure to the best of your ability that your music comes from a good source. YouTube rips sound bad and lower the impact of your player's first impression
4. Difficulties. Try to make sure that players of other skillsets can enjoy your file. Put care into the trick/basic steps. Believe it or not that does impact how many points people give out.
5. Make sure your cdtitle isn't massive. CDTitles should be below 70x70. The smaller the better. Personally I also think the cdtitle should reflect the album the music comes on. "<name> originals" cdtitles are have a lower impact to me but this is a taste thing and I understand why folks use them.
6. Be careful with "Karaoke" steps which just in case you aren't aware, are steps that follow the melody too closely. Be more editorial with how you approach following your song's melodic elements. Don't exclusively follow lyrics/vocals and leave big spaces between those portions. Karaoke steps are harder to read, obvious, and less fun. They have their place, but it shouldn't be your go-to.
7. BPMs. Don't arbitrarily double or halve your BPM unless you're going for a specific feel (bag, hysteria, drop out, max 300).

This applies for easier files too and I don't believe it's a good thing in the context of a stepfile design contest, ideally you should take difficulty out of it when voting. At least in previous contests like TournaMix, DDROSC, Best-Mix, the hundreds of contests hosted at DDRExtreme.co.uk, and a couple others from some other website, the judgment for the stepfile was heavily focused on the chart, and if you factored the song choice too much into your score (3 out of 10, good steps but Limp Bizkit sucks, duhhhr i think its offsync, i cant tweak the offset) then you were just a sloppy judge. Are the steps well designed? Are the steps appropriate for the song, would the song kinda be like this if it was put in DDRMAX or 5th Mix? If the answer was yes, that should be a 10 out of 10 score in the steps department even if the song was a 6 footer on maniac or if it was neoMAX, what mattered most is that the steps went well with the song and were appropriate in difficulty. That's what the judges went by. Of course the contest involved a popular vote as well, but the opinion of the judges weighed heavily and it wasn't 100% popular vote. This contest doesn't work like that because there's nothing resembling a standard to follow and people can just vote for whatever they like with no justification whatsoever. Posting feedback at the time everybody is playing the files is actively disencouraged. It's weird as hell and not very engaging.

Where's the fun in submitting a file (following a specific theme), getting close to 0 points and getting NO FEEDBACK? What do they have to work with for the future? "Wow, nobody liked my file! All of these people had 15 points to spread all I got was one pity vote (or no points)! And nobody posted any feedback so I don't know why my stepfile blows. I'm having so much fun, can't wait to make another". That's fun. Is this a joke

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So much negativity in what I'm seeing as a fun way to see how simfiles stack up against each other.

At least for me, I just enjoy making simfiles that I can play later on pad, and enter some in these contests to see 1) what other simfiles are like, and 2) what others like. I enjoy seeing detailed feedback (positive or not), but seeing what the top-ranked simfiles are and trying them out is itself a sort of indirect feedback. Either way, I'm going to enjoy playing the simfiles I make in the end.

I understand that people want feedback on simfiles, but also understand the discouragement against discussing simfiles while voting is happening. Seeing other people's sentiment towards entries can cause others to try to game the voting (eg: if I entered simfile A, and simfiles X, Y, and Z are popular in the forums, I may vote for simfiles B, C, and D in order to "flatten out" how many votes a single simfile gets).

I'd propose to do one of two things regarding feedback:

1) (preferred approach) Make a Google form where feedback on simfiles can be given. Once voting for that week has ended, release the responses to that form. Here's an example form: https://forms.gle/HaRsVW349DDCchWx7 I'd be happy to share the results after the voting has ended if people want to try this out.

2) Have a separate forum thread regarding feedback - it doesn't solve the issue of others trying to game the votes, but it does clean up the contest thread so that it's focused on tournament discussions only.

This. If your hardest chart is like an X-scale 10 or 11 or something, there's simply not enough actually happening for me to ever really think "yeah that deserves some points". It doesn't have to be EGOISM 440, but it has to be engaging. Some people prefer harder charts and will vote for them more often than simpler ones because they're just straight up harder to do well, so it's more impressive when they are.

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Then why are people complaining about harder charts getting more votes? The point you just made is exactly what I was getting at. If you don’t like a file just because it’s hard and don’t vote for it that’s on you. You SHOULD be voting for files depending on how they fit the song and how well they flow and such, not by difficulty. The difficulty should not be an issue yet it is to some people here, apparently. If someone were to chart a song that deserves a 13 and gave it an 18 or 19 I sure as hell would not vote for it because it makes no sense to give a song like that a hard song. Hard charts go to songs that deserve them.

Some people were posting feedback, and some were unhappy. They stopped posting feedback because people were unhappy with the feedback they were receiving. You want feedback? PM and ask for it. I’m sure people would be glad to give you feedback if you’d just ask for it. It seems as though this was never an issue until this competition specifically, and I’m not sure why. It’s been like this for quite some time on this site, pretty much ever since public voting got axed. People who post feedback publicly do so voluntarily. No one HAS to post it. Just ask for it and people will PM you feedback personally. I don’t see the big deal.

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