[AC] StepManiaX produced by Kyle Ward

Lightning with a great response to yet another attempt to turn this into an SMX hate thread with “criticism” that in no way attempts to explain how to improve the game, stuff that had all been said already and didn’t need to be gone over again.

---

@LightningXCE

I really enjoy SMX due to the frequent updates and mixture of songs and ease of play.

Im not a high skilled player but have been playing no bar DDR/ITG since 2001 (no bar is a choice as i just enjoy it far more)

One feature that i think would be nice would be the ability to see your high score for a chart/difficulty when signed into your profile, im not sure if there is enough UI space (or limited bandwidth) for this but i find it a little annoying to have to search the phone app to find a song to see if i have played it before or what my high score is as this can take a while in some cases. Say for example if the local high score has been set and im unsure if i have played it or want to see my highest.

Thanks for the great game

Agreed on that, it's a common thing people have mentioned, something I find frustrating personally, and I believe it's on the "to-do".

So I've never been out to just cause any hate for the game, i've just been severely disappointed by the charts considering how well put together the rest of the game is (and i will continue to praise that side of it because it's outstandingly good, even if people gloss over that comment and just say i'm badmouthing the game otherwise). Just putting that out there for a start.

As for charts that are unmemorable on double and calling them out and discussing them, legitimately this is how I know that the charting decisions for Full mode are designed for players who play the game all facing forward crab walking/double stepping because JBean himself said it in response to a tweet someone I know asked him when giving him actual critiques of all the charts released in an update about 4 or so updates ago. Saying that crossovers were overused when they really weren't then citing a charts to try that are actually really not very good examples of doubles charts either (Psalm pilot being one he personally recommended to try as a good doubles chart, which isn't for loads of reasons).

If I personally got any indication that if I gave constructive feedback on the charts for this game, I would literally start writing up comments about every single chart I played and explaining why (As a primarily doubles player) I see it as a good/bad chart and would even offer to make up rewrites of them in Stepmania myself to demonstrate how I think they could be improved if it was asked for. But considering how even after the discussion I've seen with JBean there's been several updates that have all been low to middling in quality in terms of chart design (again for doubles primarily here) I can only assume the feedback/comments aren't actually wanted/needed?

We're constantly looking for an listening to feedback, as long as it's actually constructive and useful and not just "GAME BAD CHARTS BAD", so by all means if you don't want to post too, please feel free to DM me at any point either here or Lightning#1337 on Discord. I can't promise action on every single piece, but know that it's always listened to and considered.

I'd love to invite anyone else to our Discord as well and join the community which is growing so much every day at https://discord.gg/jyJ2QcCvw2

well hey at least nobody said the game has no original music this time, it's a step in the right direction

---

To be fair, i've now messaged Lightning directly with actual feedback and would also like to point out, this isn't the first time I or anyone else I play the game with hasn't tried to contact them with actual suggestions/feedback other than "Charts bad". So far all it's done though is get a retweet of the same response we saw from JBean back when one of us first bought it to their attention which just missed the point entirely. (Claiming nobody wants crossovers at 170bpm when that's literally not what any of us were asking for in the slightest)

And also I feel obliged to mention, we REALLY want the game to be the best it can be and aren't just complaining for the sake of it. We genuinely think it can be better and it wouldn't require much effort and want to actually all help. Just incase anyone assumes i'm just out to complain for no real reason.

I think discussion is a good thing if it leads to improvements in the game / charting / variety.

Although I have played for a long time my knowledge of 'good' charting isn't something I think about, or analyse, too much other than maybe jump stepping in DDR being a thing I hate.
I know Dancefreak makes charts and has excellent knowledge of high level play.
[I definitely don't]

I generally enjoy playing nearly all charts I'm capable of playing, it's more about me trying to improve my own score, most of the time.

Are we really criticizing a guy who has 4 posts for posting his personal review of a game, that includes both positive AND negative feedback and gives specific reasons as to why he is giving negative feedback? You are the guy that posts that this forum is dead once a month, and this is how we respond to new users who didn't bother to read 35 pages of discourse?

Edit:

I think this is the general frustration that people have; any feedback for any reason that people have that isn't a glowing review gets an overly defensive response. It's doubly frustrating because SMX's team HAS listened to feedback to some extent, and yet hasn't figured out that you have to do the "we listened to your feedback!" PR dog and pony show to get people's attention. If you're generally defensive, that's all people are going to remember you for.

---

Yeah I’m not really worried about what people who only ever quote me trying to fight with me think of my posts at this point. And you definitely fit that category.

---

The fact that anyone on the team still pays even a fraction of attention to what gets posted here despite pages and pages of utter tripe including literally just making shit up is kinda showing more willingness to listen to feedback than pretty much any other rhythm game developers I've ever seen. It's crazy how you feel that anything that isn't a glowing review gets an overly defensive response - I think quite a lot of feedback here has been responded to in a perfectly reasonable manner when it actually made fuckin' sense.

I'm not a member of the team by any stretch and even I get pissed off at the amount of bullshit that's been spouted here - and even I've agreed with some negative opinions lmao. I don't understand why people who don't like this game want to be victims so badly. It's actually so refreshing to see a dance game made by a team that listens to opinions from the very ground floor.

Keep biting that hand trying to feed you, it's bound to amount to something eventually.

---

I just want to point out that in my local scene I very much try to get people to go to play SMX and have even lightly assisted in hosting tournaments for it, I support all of the rhythm games. I think everyone is just on the wrong foot here since I don't feel shut down by Lightning nor was I trying to criticize the game in a negative fashion, just giving my thoughts. Actually I was surprised the developers do post here, and I think that's pretty cool and I'm glad they are interested in what people think of their game.

For a few more positives about the game, I think the app for score saving is extremely well done, it's very clean and intuitive and easy to use and it gives me all of the stats and info that I could really want, and it's great that I can just use my phone instead of having to carry an easily forgotten/lost USB card. I also think it was very smart to use a touch screen design. It may increase the cost of the screen by a decent margin, but I have seen even little kids like age 5 who can use find the songs and options with ease, compared to watching them fumble around in DDR or outright having no fucking clue how to do anything in PIU (seriously why is it so outdated). I like the large variety of included arrow designs, even though I mostly just use the stock one anyways, and I really appreciate the way the announcer is implemented capturing that same jabbing but encouraging kind of energy that Lindell brought in DDR but without being intrusive. I also think it was cool how they managed to edit every song to a very standard length of 1:30. I've done a lot of audio editing while making custom charts and capturing the full melody of the song without cutting anything too important and keeping it all a consistent length is actually quite a challenge. Supporting it with updates for 7 years is great to see too, hell many big name AAA high budget titles don't get love for that long. Some of my favorite songs are Got the Rhythm, Have Fun, Shiawase, Link Line, and Rainbow Rave Parade (THESE are the kinds of steps I'm looking for!)



I will say though, and I'm sure there's technical/license issues for why there isn't, but I **reaaaaaaaaaally** wish the game had at least custom charts, if not custom songs, just to see what kind of steps people come up with. Also it's not a big deal, but I wish the game ran at full 1080p with nothing being upscaled (if it is running at 1080 and not 720p then maybe it's just the big TV or the art assets but it could be sharper looking)

It would be nice to see custom chart support, but that might involve them having to make their own chart creation stuff and I couldn't tell you how hard that might be. I just imagine it's pretty hard. Even Konami still can't figure it out.

---

You hit the heads on customs - Huge licensing grey area and unfortunately won't happen.

Game is running at 1080p on the newer systems. If you're playing an older machine with either an older monitor (The one with the thick chunky metal border) or older SMXBox, it won't be at the full 1080p and will instead be sitting at 720p. Good way to check is on the title screen, hit the SR logo in the corner and it will give a serial number. If it starts with AM, it will be in 1080p. IIRC everything is built at 1080p and scaled down for the 720p systems, but Lightning can correct me here.

The main reason is because it takes time to go out of our way to do weird crazy social posts or random spouting of information. I'd rather just spend the time "showing my work" and incorporating that stuff, rather than posting around for clout that we did something that was requested. The other thing is that a lot of those changes don't affect the majority of the public, so it's almost wasted effort for the small audience that is looking for it - that being said, I'm personally trying to be better by posting actions and changes that were done.


Yep! we render 1080p natively on the newer boxes (basically anything in the last like...3-ish(?) years), while the original systems are still 720. The overhead was extremely tight and we'd rather keep a constant 60fps rather than 1080 on those ones. Thankfully, the assets do scale, and even at 720 it's not too bad as we render a lot of things differently based on what res it's displaying.

Just out of curiousity, are custom charts out of the question or a never-say-never thing? Makes total sense that custom songs would be completely off the table due to the whole grey area that we've been living in for like, twenty years, but custom charts don't pose that same problem.

---

So fwiw custom charts would take an enormous amount of work, especially considering there's no way to just "plug in a drive" or something like ITG had since USB ports are internal and all connected, let alone an editor or something for people to work on files to export to it, and then also figuring out sharing etc - would be a massive, massive undertaking.

Yeah, this is valid and I do think you guys have improved on that front somewhat. I appreciate that a cheaper alternative to DDR / ITG dedicabs exists out in the wild, since you guys are filling the niche that DDR Extreme and SN cabs used to fill in smaller arcades and lifestyle centers. Especially since PIU's future remains iffy.

---

Keep it up, you are doing a great job. Personally, I completely agree with you and actually I believe saying "we are listening" without action following is a red flag that a dev *isnt* listening at all (cough cough Valve/Riot Games) and much prefer the "here's an actual update when we have actual content to show"

And yeah, that explains it because the machines here are about 4~ years old now so probably running the old box cuase they are definitely 720p which, again, is totally fine for a 4 panel game.

Idea: What if you guys took submitted charts from top players and put them in as "bonus" charts for songs? Then you would only have to edit a chart instead of having to do any real coding to implement custom additions. I really love how PIU features charts from top players and think it would be a cool idea too.

Edit: Lol I called it 4 panel

https://twitter.com/smxgame/status/1646289002994061313



~100 new charts added.