Updates on Yoshitaichi's Originals

Hey there everybody! I recently just made a simfile category for my own creations, and just today I submitted my first simfile to the category~!


Keep in mind, I am not at all an expert in making simfiles. This is the first one I have made since I believe early 2017. Back then I created simfiles, but they were solely for me just to see if I could do it. Comparing them to this one I made for Good Stuff they're pretty bad, but at the very least playable. The reason why I made this thread was to receive criticism. Of course, you do not have to do as such, but I would very much appreciate any critiques on the simfiles I make so that I can get better and better! Anything from the stepcharts, how I cut the music, the graphics, etc.. I hope you enjoy the simfile! Have a wonderful day/night, everyone!

Alright, so I just played Good Stuff on . I wouldn't call it a great chart by any means but it's actually a fairly decent starting point. There's only one double-step I noticed in the entire chart (right at the beginning of measure 27 - because you're most likely going to hit the up arrow at m26 with your left foot, you end up hitting the left arrow at m27 with your right foot, followed immediately by hitting the very next right arrow also with your right foot to avoid facing backwards for the rest of the song), otherwise all of the patterns work out okay!

I didn't play light and standard so for all I know those could be half-assed lazy double-step bonanzas, IDK. I can look if you'd like.

That being said, I personally found most of the patterns to be pretty dull. Most of the time you're just alternating between two arrows at a time and only shifting to a different pair of two arrows every so often. Simply alternating between two arrows can work in cases where a trill is being performed in the song (Horatio from DDR X comes to mind), but even then I wouldn't stick to those types of patterns for the entire song. More dynamic step patterns would have been greatly appreciated.

Side note: DDR banners are typically 256x80, not 256x90. (By extension, the larger version of the banner should be 512x160, not 512x180)
Other side note: Don't bother with the 256x80 banner, stick to 512x160. Larger resolution graphics generally look better.

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Hello there everybody! I just thought I'd come in and let you all know that a new simfile for my category will be uploaded here soon enough; it's still being worked on. This one has surprisingly given me a ton of trouble specifically in the music cutting process (I'll talk more about when I upload the simfile, but oh my lord it was irritating), but I've finally cut it in a way that keeps it on its BPM and I'm implementing tempo changes in this one, so that's really exciting for me! I'll give you a hint on what the song is - It's from Ariana Grande's second studio album "My Everything".

Also, thank you very much Gameoson for the critique you did on the Heavy difficulty on my simfile of Good Stuff. Now that I play through it, I definitely see what you mean when you say the arrow patterns are dull. This time around I'm going to try and make the arrows for this upcoming one more dynamic and not overly conservative in one form of pattern.
Speaking of patterns, do you (or anyone else if you don't have the time to get to it) mind telling me what a 'trill' and a 'double-step' is? I'm worried they may be common DDR terms that are flying over my head and my ignorance to them is making me look silly asking what they are (needless self-consciousness intensifies)

btw, you don't have to look at the Light and Standard difficulties of Good Stuff, but you may if you ever feel like doing so~!

Here's a link to a guide on different patterns.

A trill is a musical term used for when an instrument alternates between two notes in rapid succession. I'm pretty sure Horatio is actually just one note at a time with really fast guitar strumming so that song was a bad example to use when talking about trills. Point is, a trill or Horatio's strumming would be an appropriate time to have the player alternate between two arrows since it perfectly describes what's going on in the song at that moment. (That pattern is normally called a drill, although I've also seen trill used to describe the same pattern in keyboard charts.)

Doublestepping is when a player uses one foot two hit two different arrows consecutively, normally to avoid facing backwards. That's what I was trying to say when I said

Here's a visual example from another simfile (can't remember what file I pulled this from, oh well) L for Left Foot, R for Right Foot

Notice how by the time you reach the second set of 16ths, the player ends up facing backwards? Yeah, most players don't like to face backwards for an extended period of time. In most cases, players are going to hit the first right arrow in this diagram with their right foot to avoid being in such an awkward position later. So you end up hitting down with your right foot and right with your right foot immediately after - that's a doublestep.

The doublestep in your file was nowhere near as bad as this example, but still something to be mindful of. Always remember to playtest your files to make sure every pattern flows nicely. If you don't have access to a dance pad, you can always just use your index fingers on either the arrow keys or the number pad (2=left, 4=down, 8=up, 6=right - it's just like a mini DDR pad)

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This is avoidable with a footswitch (anywhere in pink).



I don't think the player would think to do it on a first play but it can work.

Fixing this is easy though: Change the up arrow below the UR jump to right.

Also, it's worth noting that even though I like to avoid ambiguous double-stepping in my files, other people do not feel the same and/or aren't bothered by it. And at 98 BPM, unless a double-step gets mixed into a 16th stream, I don't think you can wreck the flow of your file with them, the player should be able to adjust in time. Your call, though.

Just because something can be treated as a footswitch in order to avoid double-stepping doesn't make it OK. In this case doing a footswitch just isn't intuitive.

And yeah, it's a very minor double-step, so in this case it's not the worst thing in the world. But ideally you still shouldn't do it.

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May I ask why double steps are considered bad?

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It’s just something as a community we have come to believe shouldn’t be in files because it damages the flow of a chart.

The irony of course being that Konami themselves kinda don’t care about them and you’ll notice in a lot of their newer ddr games there’s more of them than in older ones but still for a file to be deemed more polished you should work on removing a double step.

And just to clarify because there’s a possibility you might be confused, having double taps on the same note is ok, if you want the player to footswitch however it should be clear somehow in the chart or be something you can hear in the song.

My second simfile has been uploaded to my category!


This song took me WAY longer to make than I initially thought it would. It was mainly the cutting process of the music that kept me from making any further progress because every time I would cut the music and test it out with ArrowVortex, it would always go offbeat by just a bit, but that bit would really mess up the flow of the arrows, so I would have to go back and finetune the cut, just REALLY use the zoom-in tool on Audacity. It took me I believe 25+ tries to finally make a cut that kept on beat. Am I completely happy with the stepcharts at least?... eh, kind of?? I tried to go for a Sana Mollete Ne Ente kind of Heavy chart, where the slow sections are really dense with arrows, but I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the arrows I placed for it. We'll see what happens I guess~! (At least I'm happy with the Standard and Light charts and the graphics; better than not being happy at all! TTwTT )

If you would like to, please feel free to post your critique on it either here or in the comment section of the simfile's page and inform me of what I might've done wrong and what I can improve on. Thank you and have a wonderful day/night~!

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Appended Message

Hey, for anybody who has downloaded my simfiles, do you mind if I ask you all a question? Is anybody else having issues with the quality of the music? When I listen to them on ArrowVortex, Audacity, and the '.ogg' file themselves in the simfile's pages they sound fine, but when I play them on both StepMania 3.9 and StepMania 5 they sound quieter for some reason. It confuses me because I never adjust the volume of the music when I'm cutting it in Audacity. The only explanation I have for this is maybe the quality I set the cut version of the song in when I'm exporting the audio as a '.ogg' file. I export it with a quality of 8 (1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest) That is just a guess though.

Let me know if any of you is dealing with this as well and maybe some ways of how I can fix it if that isn't rude of me to ask? Of course, if you're fine with the volume it's at when you play it on StepMania then you're free to say so as well!

Side Note: I'm currently in the process of creating another simfile for my category, a song from an artist who... wasn't the most loved. I'm not sure if people still hate her for what she did back then, but I listened to her music a year after the controversy she put herself in and I loved it. Yes, I will agree that what she did alongside with her husband was incredibly disrespectful to the person they targeted, but they have moved on, have apologized for their actions to social media and the victim himself, and are still creating music today. Ooo, how vague of me~ Who is this problematic woman that I'm keeping anonymous~? Well, I guess you'll find out as soon as I release the simfile, but you may just remember her when I say this: New Zealand's X Factor.

I haven’t looked at your files so I can’t check if there’s an issue but a quick answer is that stepmania by default I think plays audio at like 60 or 80 percent volume ? If you can open the debug menu or go into sound options you should see a setting you can change. I could be wrong but it seems worth mentioning incase you didn’t know!

So... this is awkward. Remember when I said I was in the process of working on my third simfile? Yeah, well, I was working on that after I had submitted that text, but I kept experiencing issues as I tried to cut the song down to a duration that's appropriate for DDR standards. Not only that, life in general took major precedence, so any progress I made on my third simfile has been left dormant for a little over a year. I'm not too sure if I'm gonna resume the song I had in mind; I may just leave it to the wayside and work on another simfile if I get the time to do so. For anyone who may have been waiting for the release, I sincerely apologize for never finishing it or even updating you all beforehand. At least on the bright side, I've been doing well. I recently got my very first job, and I've been making money for the first time. It's still a bit surreal to be making money for myself, but I certainly can't say that I do not enjoy it~!

Anyway, I guess something that I learned from this is this: if you do plan on making an announcement for a project that you believe is forthcoming for release, you should make the announcement when you've actually MADE progress beforehand. When I made that announcement about my third simfile that was in "progress", I hadn't even started working on it - there was no step of commitment taken. Nowadays, I know better, and I hope to never make that mistake again. Again, I sincerely apologize for not releasing anything, and just disappearing without any reason why.

As for simfiles, I'll try to get back into it now that, during the time of me writing this message, I have time off for myself. However, I have no idea or plans of what songs I'd like to tackle. I guess we'll just see what happens; sorry for being so vague.