BEST-mix.net - DDR Simfile Tournament

Posted: **Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:53 am**

B2: 7 Files, 3 will move on to the next round.

Dry The River
Go KK Rider
Lazy
NIGHT FIGHTER
SEPTEMBER
The Party (Overhead champion Remix)
Traveling by Night

All ratings and discussion for these 7 files belongs in this thread.

REVIEWS MUST FOLLOW THIS FORMAT:
Light: /5
Standard: /5
Heavy: /10
Presentation: /5
Tilt: +5 - Used for any reason, like extra charts or similar (This can only fill in points that the entrant missed in other areas!)

For a Grand Total of /25 Possible Points

If you do not judge the entire file (say you did just heavy and presentation), your judging will be worth less.
ALL JUDGING MUST HAVE FEEDBACK ON WHY IT WAS GIVEN THAT SCORE! Judging without feedback will NOT be counted in any situation, and the post will be deleted.

Entrants cannot review their own bracket!
Judging must be consistent for all the songs in the bracket! - All must have the same aspects reviewed.

If you think someone has given a file a bad score, call them out on it! Make some noise!

Posted: **Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:41 pm**

September made me chuckle.

Posted: **Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:42 pm**

x0_000 wrote:September made me chuckle.

AGENTS ARE GO!

Posted: **Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:39 am**

SEPTEMBER's readme is made of win. XDDD

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:26 am**

Yay bump

I'll be lenient with Tilt points. Tilt points from me means you've added some effort into the song, and a readme that just doesn't contain the song info and 4 sentences. I'll do it by just looking that you have additional charts and a well-written readme.
---------------------------
ROCK
Dry The River
Maylene and the Sons of Diasaster

Light: 5/5
-It's a good 4. No major issues. The use of 8ths is creative indeed.
Standard: 4/5
-I felt as if this should be a 6. Other than that, good chart.
Heavy: 8/10
-Some double stepping are present, which I didn't like. Other than that, the rest of the chart was good. Nice patterns.
Presentation: 3/5
-Rock song. Off-sync tendencies, and I FOUND THEM.
-I can't read the title in the banner from afar. Also, the bg image barely showed up in-game.
Tilt: +1
-Edit chart

Total Score: 21/25
---------------------------
SMASH BROS.
Go KK Rider!
Keigo Ozaki

Light: 4/5
-This one's pretty good, except for the misrating. This should be a 4 or a 5. Too hard to be a 3.
Standard: 2/5
-This should've been the Heavy chart. There are some freeze arrows that are misused. Also, this should've been an 8. What's with the 16ths?
Heavy: 3/10
-It's a disappointment. Unnecessary jumps thrown everywhere, plus there are unnecessary double-stepping. Also, there are freeze arrows being misused.
Presentation: 1/5
-Graphics were poorly done. It appears that a little effort was made. BPM changes were also bad, thus throwing off the sync as well.
-The audio has a horribly soft volume, like a certain song in B5.
Tilt: +2
-Readme file is good enough.
Other notes:
-I Googled "Go KK Rider", and came up with the genre "SMASH BROS." because from the results, it has Smash Bros. written all over it. Honestly, I don't have a clue about this. Correct me if I'm wrong. I just like putting genres, that's all.

Total Score: 12/25
---------------------------
TECHNO
Lazy
Beatdrop

Light: 4/5
-Great though, but not perfect. To me, this should be a 4.
Standard: 5/5
-Perfect. Nope, I wasn't (see song title) in writing this. The Standard steps are perfect. NO SRSLY.
Heavy: 8/10
-Steps were good enough. At least, being the complete opposite of what the song title says. Nice job.
Presentation: 3.5/5
-Though those stops were unnecessary (for me), at least they're giving the feel of the song... the techno-ish feel of the song. There were parts of the stops where I can't get Marvelouses. (the 254 BPM parts in particular)
-Creative BG changes. Lovin' it like McDonalds.
Tilt: +1
-Completely contradicting what the song title says by adding a Doubles stepchart
Other notes:
-Same guy who did "Until Forever" in SN2 CS. This song is more catchy than the aforementioned song.

Total Score: 21.5/25
---------------------------
SUPER EUROBEAT
NIGHT FIGHTER
JACKY 'O

Light: 3.5/5
-I felt that the turns may catch the player off-guard. It still has excellent patterns though.
Standard: 5/5
-Perfect.
Heavy: 9/10
-They are good. They are perfect. It got a -1 because of misrating, and when I said they were perfect... they were perfect for Standard steps. :lol:

Just kidding. It's a good Heavy chart for Heavy beginners.
Not a 6, folks. 7. 777. 77777777.
Presentation: 4/5
-The graphics are pretty cute. Synching is perfect. It got a deduction because the cursive text in the artist name doesn't match the feel of the song.
Tilt: +2
-Well-written readme.
Other notes:
-It sounds like FLASH IN THE NIGHT.
Total Score: 23.5/25
---------------------------
70'S POP
SEPTEMBER
Earth, Wind and Fire

Light: 4/5
-Good, but it shouldn't be a 3.
Standard: 4/5
-They were good. The last part is a misfit for a 5. (U-L+R-L+R 1/8th) If that has to be included, it should've been a 6.
Heavy: 9/10
-The steps were great overall. Great, but not perfect. The 16ths in the beginning part should've been taken off, and the 1/8th jumps should've been replaced with U-U-U or D-D-D or something like that. Those should've been done to make it a valid 7. I still like the steps, and I'm also glad that I AAA'd this with the variable BPM.
Presentation: 3/5
-Nice use of the bg movies, and the transition in the last part.
-Banner is slightly unreadable. The text should've been of a different color.
-Light blue lyrics in the light blue background.
-The Variable BPM was well done though. It is synced close to perfect.
Tilt: +2.5
-Challenge steps
-README IS WIN. (.5 for the lol factor)
Other notes:
-The author seems to have major rating issues like SN2 does. This sim needs to be 4/6/8, like how Uranus needs to be 4/6/7/9. (no Beginner steps)
-Yeah. README IS WIN. Read it!! Read it!! 1-2-3-4-5-6 Read it!!

Total Score: 22.5/25

A girl from Botswana named Khalutmatakalukhlataktakmho was raped and murdered at a pink boat near the swamps of the town. If you don't want to share her fate and have your soul stolen and your brains intact as well for the safety of your mother and your family, post this to 10 other comments or face the conswquences! Believe me it's true!!!:

Had to post that, coz I sure dunnat wantz my soul stolen, brainz intact and mummy+family ded. :lol:

---------------------------
ANTHEM TRANCE
The Party (Overhead Champion Remix)
DJ Schwede

Light: 3.5/5
-This should be a 5. Also, jumps are being overused.
Standard: 4.5/5
-Pretty much reminds me of DUB-I-DUB. Still a good chart.
Heavy: 6/10
-The stepchart could've gone away with it, if it weren't for those meddling rhythm busters.
In other words, the stepchart could've been good. There were 16ths there that didn't follow the song. In fact, there were a LOT of them. You get the roku. Sorry.
Presentation: 2/5
-Nice sample, bad banner. I could barely read the title text. Also, artist name is aliased. Anti-aliasing could've looked better.
-Offsync.
Tilt: +2
-Has Beginner and Challenge steps.

Total Score: 18/25
---------------------------
TECHNO
traveling by night
she

Light: 4/5
-Probably the only winning factor of this sim. Chart is good, but this feels more of a 3-footer.
Standard: 2.5/5
-Misuse of freeze arrows, double stepping, and this is definitely not a 5.
Heavy: 7/10
-Double stepping. They were there in 1/3 of the song... scattered. Rhythm is good enough.
Presentation: 3/5
-Banner and bg well done. Perfect.
Q: "Hey t7r, t7r, u sed p3rfect and I shood hav gotten a 5 liek how is me gotten a 3?"
A: Coz ur BPM changes are unnecessary. It also threw the synching off-guard. The sync in the first part was good. The BPM changes ruined it.

Total Score: 16.5/25
---------------------------
And so...
7th - 12/25 - Go KK Rider
6th - 16.5/25 - traveling by night
5th - 18/25 - The Party (Overhead Champion Remix)
4th - 21/25 - Dry The River
3rd - 21.5/25 - Lazy
2nd - 22.5/25 - SEPTEMBER
1st - 23.5/25 - NIGHT FIGHTER

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:12 am**

ANONYMOUS POSTING BY: The Party (Overhead Champion Remix) Entrant

I had some comments on the only review of my file so far. This will probably just come off as sore-loser whining because it doesn't stand up for anyone else, but I really don't have time in my life to play through the pack right now. I would expect fair treatment on these issues for other files as well.

Light: 3.5/5
-This should be a 5. Also, jumps are being overused.
Counterexample: Rhythm and Police Light, which is faster and equally as jumpy and still rated a 4. It is shorter, but I don't personally think length should factor into difficulty rating. Be careful when docking points for anything less than off-by-half or so foot rating, and be very careful at the bottom, where the lines are blurrier and more players have forgotten what the ratings should be like. Also, the jumps do have a thematic element to them, but I'm here to discuss issues of fact, not opinion, because complaining about that is just sour grapes.

Heavy: 6/10
-The stepchart could've gone away with it, if it weren't for those meddling rhythm busters.
In other words, the stepchart could've been good. There were 16ths there that didn't follow the song. In fact, there were a LOT of them. You get the roku. Sorry.
I don't know what you're talking about here at all. Every step goes to something, and it's all pretty prominent in the music. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the file is offsync for you (see below).

Presentation: 2/5
-Nice sample, bad banner. I could barely read the title text. Also, artist name is aliased. Anti-aliasing could've looked better.
If I stare really hard, I can find some spots that aren't as smooth as others, but I'd be hard-pressed to refer to the entire name as "aliased". I also think the banner's readable myself, but again, issues of fact.

-Offsync.
Here's the real problem. On my machine, I was getting upwards of a 20:1 Marvelous:Perfect ratio, which is my personal gold standard before it's just quibbling over milliseconds. So there's something going on here. Even more to the point, you can't dock points for a simple offset issue because different machines have different syncs - it has to be ridiculous (more than a quarter note, on multiple machines) or the BPM has to be wandering, and from my results I'm pretty sure it's not the latter. Weirder, OGGs usually don't have the sync problems of MP3s. My guess is that you have a global offset specified because your machine lags on MP3s, but then this throws off all OGGs the other way. If you adjust the sync and try the charts again (especially heavy) I think your opinion might change. I know I remember an old OSC file that was very well done but was so far off it looked totally random until you fixed it. By the way, to all reviewers, this is NOT an optional step.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:43 am**

Oh, why thank you for this review! It's about time B2 had some late night lovin'.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:44 am**

Here's a partial review. I might finish this later, or tomorrow, or in a year, I don't know. Also I apologize for how terrible this review might be.

Dry The River
Maylene and the Sons of Disaster

First Thoughts: Rawk.

Heavy: 8.5/10- I can't really find any problems other than double stepping in a few parts, but it really didn't stand out to much. Good job anyway, though.

Presentation: 4/5- Video, but the banner is a bit hard to read, even though it looks nice, and the background is of the generic "put text of picture" kind, though I'm not docking you majorly for it because it matches with the video. Also have an extra .5 points for the Edit.

Final Score: 12.5/15

Go K.K. Rider
Keigo Ozaki

First Thoughts: ARRRRRRRGH I hate Brawl because it made me spend less time on my file. Also that synthesized voice will get annoying very fast.

Heavy: 5/10- Not that good, honestly. A lot of it seemed to be really hard for just for being hard's sake, namely the parts where you had the little 16th bursts and then jumps right after it. And what the hell was with the turn-gallops? They didn't go to anything at all ever. It was decent in the beginning, but then it just got harder and harder, and as such got worse and worse.

Presentation: 2/5- I'm not docking you for the banner that much, but the background was absolutely horrendous. Oh my god. I don't care if it's in Paint, you can do so much better, whoever you are. Even I can do better.

Final Score: 7/15

Lazy
Beatdrop

First thoughts: I'm expecting a gigantic stream. Hopefully not. I like the song.

Heavy: 9/10- Pretty awesome, I'd say; other than the part where it was all the same arrow, it was rock-solid, andt the stops worked really well.

Presentation: 5/5- Awesome work on the BPM changes and background changes.

Final Score: 14/15

NIGHTFIGHTER
JACKY 'O

First thoughts: Wee Eurobeat, though it's not too bad. Why do Heavy and Challenge have similar amounts of steps?

Heavy: 7/10- A lot of the time, the steps during the synth parts seemed to be going off and doing their own things as opposed to going with the music, and the verses were pretty bleh, as they were just quarter notes with double stepping (which is OK, I guess) It was OK, but not amazing.

Presentation: 5/5: No problems, AND a CD-title + Challenge!

Final Score: 12/15

September
Earth Wind and Fire

First thoughts: I know this song, and I like it, too!

Heavy: 9/10- Only a few problems; I remember there being a part in the beginning with 16ths that didn't really go to anything, and the 3-jumps part during the Chorus should have just been taps. Otherwise, I loved it.

Presentation: 5/5 Althought your video basically consisted of random dance game movies, I can't honestly dok you for it other files without videos got this much, and at least the videos were disco-related. Oh yeah, the banner and background were cool too, and Challenge charts are always fun. Readme was silly, but it abused 4chan memes too much (more than zero)

Final Score: 14.5/15

The Party (Overhead Champion Remix)
DJ Schwede

First thoughts: "The Party?" What a stupid name. Have you heard of this new rock song called "Concert?" and that video game song called "XBox 360?" Just wow.

Heavy: 7.5/10- The biggest problem with this was the slavish adherence to the vocals (or at least, whatever bastard child of the vocals this might be) There were some fun rhythms in the song you could have easily followed, but you chose to stick with the vocals the whole way through, making it a little more boring and repetitive than it could've been. I liked it a more than the number let on, but it could have been so much better.

Presentation: 5/5- Banner, background, CD-title, and all good looking. Awesome. I also love a full set of charts to not judge.

Final Score: 12.5/15

traveling by night
she

First thoughts: It sort of sounds like a mix between ambient and a CD skipping.

Heavy: 6/10- Basically I had no idea what was going on the whole time, and I blame the song. The first BPM change basically went to nothing, and it's near impossible to combo it, especially considering the speedup. The second seemed to be pretty random, and the speedup was there for no reason, basically. The rest of the song basically consisted of steps that I think went to noises in the song, but it all blended together to much for me to make out anything in the song, and thus the steps. You have potential, you just need a better song choice.

Presentation- 4/5- Banner and background seem unrelated, but both look good.

Final Score: 10/15

Standings:

7. Go K.K. Rider!- 7/15
6. traveling by night- 10/15
5. Nightfighter- 12/15
4. Dry the River- 12.5/15
WITHDRAWN3. The Party (Overhead Champion Remix)- 12.5/15
1. September- 14/15
1. Lazy- 14/15[/b]

The standings go from least favorite to favorite EXACTLY; even though September and Lazy tied, I liked Lazy better.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:16 pm**

BLueSS wrote:-Offsync.

Now forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought that you agreed that we would be adhering to the SM4.0 standardized sync song in order to base our OFFSETS for future competitions since this was also an issue in Best Mix #1.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:52 pm**

BLueSS wrote:ANONYMOUS POSTING BY: The Party (Overhead Champion Remix) Entrant

I had some comments on the only review of my file so far. This will probably just come off as sore-loser whining because it doesn't stand up for anyone else, but I really don't have time in my life to play through the pack right now. I would expect fair treatment on these issues for other files as well.

Light: 3.5/5
-This should be a 5. Also, jumps are being overused.
Counterexample: Rhythm and Police Light, which is faster and equally as jumpy and still rated a 4. It is shorter, but I don't personally think length should factor into difficulty rating. Be careful when docking points for anything less than off-by-half or so foot rating, and be very careful at the bottom, where the lines are blurrier and more players have forgotten what the ratings should be like. Also, the jumps do have a thematic element to them, but I'm here to discuss issues of fact, not opinion, because complaining about that is just sour grapes.

Heavy: 6/10
-The stepchart could've gone away with it, if it weren't for those meddling rhythm busters.
In other words, the stepchart could've been good. There were 16ths there that didn't follow the song. In fact, there were a LOT of them. You get the roku. Sorry.
I don't know what you're talking about here at all. Every step goes to something, and it's all pretty prominent in the music. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the file is offsync for you (see below).

Presentation: 2/5
-Nice sample, bad banner. I could barely read the title text. Also, artist name is aliased. Anti-aliasing could've looked better.
If I stare really hard, I can find some spots that aren't as smooth as others, but I'd be hard-pressed to refer to the entire name as "aliased". I also think the banner's readable myself, but again, issues of fact.

-Offsync.
Here's the real problem. On my machine, I was getting upwards of a 20:1 Marvelous:Perfect ratio, which is my personal gold standard before it's just quibbling over milliseconds. So there's something going on here. Even more to the point, you can't dock points for a simple offset issue because different machines have different syncs - it has to be ridiculous (more than a quarter note, on multiple machines) or the BPM has to be wandering, and from my results I'm pretty sure it's not the latter. Weirder, OGGs usually don't have the sync problems of MP3s. My guess is that you have a global offset specified because your machine lags on MP3s, but then this throws off all OGGs the other way. If you adjust the sync and try the charts again (especially heavy) I think your opinion might change. I know I remember an old OSC file that was very well done but was so far off it looked totally random until you fixed it. By the way, to all reviewers, this is NOT an optional step.

First, sorry for the double post, I figured I'd go ahead and try to understand the sync of this song and give my expert opinion. First impression, the GAP was early. Most simfiles I play are about 20ms behind for me, and our default sync (that we should be adhering to) is 14ms behind for me, so most people are close to that value, your file was 33ms AHEAD for me, meaning it will probably begin about 50ms ahead for others, that's bad.

Second, the BPM seems wrong, the BPM seems to be 145.95 but it could be slightly different than that (maybe 145.94?), I can't really tell because well (see the following for the reason)

Third, there's a BAD song cut at around 55.9 seconds, a cut that causes the steps to become about 13ms late (which all of this may work in your favor, a slower BPM and a bad song cut both work against the early GAP) but if I tried to fix this file (as you say is REQUIRED (bullshit BTW) well it ends up being a big sync mess.

Fourth, then again at about 100 seconds, there seems to be another song-cut that caused the steps to become EARLY again, this is just too much of a mess, I'm not even going to try and evaluate this change. Now maybe you didn't even cut the song, and that's possible, but that doesn't change the FACT that the beats skip around (maybe someone else cut the file, either way there are serious sync issues that you missed).

Oh and the talk about .ogg's and .mp3's, that's nonsense, there's no synching magic associated with .ogg files, they have offset issues, bpm issues, and different CPU's require different global offsets for .ogg's as well.

Perhaps the REAL issue here is that you are not playing the steps correctly. You are highly likely following the visual cues rather than the audible beats (I bet you'll get 20:1 with the game in MUTE). You should have someone playtest your files next time, or learn (and apply) proper synching techniques.

Oh and my opinion is that length of a song does affect the difficulty since it makes sense to me and it appears that in 5th Mix the long versions were given slightly higher difficulties than if they were shorter and well they deserved it (it just makes sense).

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:04 pm**

For now, I stand by what I say regarding The Party (Overhead Champion Remix). I'll see if I would change my mind when I play the song again.

I'll see what I can do before 3:00PM my time... tomorrow, right? I'm +8:00 GMT.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:18 pm**

ANONYMOUS POSTING BY: Go KK Rider Entrant

"plus there are unnecessary double-stepping"

I ask the writer of this review to point out the exact measures that doublestepping occur in- failing that, I ask him to refer to DDRFreak's glossary in order to find out what a crossover is. A low tolerance for jumps and freezes is one thing, but please do not accuse me of faults that do not exist.

"BPM changes were also bad, thus throwing off the sync as well."

As explained in the readme, it was either that or alternating purple arrow syndrome. Which do YOU think would be graded harsher? There are no steps in any slowdown and all slowdowns start and stop on steps (usually freeze arrows) keeping the arrows on sync with the music. I had the song half finished and already registered before I came across this problem, so I had to do one or the other.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:51 pm**

OFFICIAL RULING

To the entrant of: The Party (Overhead Champion Remix)

Since I know who you are, I went ahead and replayed some of your files from before just now. Some of them are in my most frequently played files, and I am very aware of how your files normally are synced. On my unchanged gap SM 3.9 Final install, your other files were SPOT ON.
Unfortunately, hellrazor is not just making stuff up. There is something bad with the gap/bpm/both.

On your past files, I can normally AA them first try, if it's a 10 or below.
Playing the heavy chart of "The Party":
Marvelous - 139
Perfect - 142
Great - 148

That is highly unusual. The last bpm change or cut in the song (not sure what it is) syncs the arrows PERFECTLY; however everything but the end is off.
I'm not sure what happened, but is something off on the file, and it's not just GAP, because the very end was spot on, while the rest gave greats.

hellrazor wrote:Now forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought that you agreed that we would be adhering to the SM4.0 standardized sync song in order to base our OFFSETS for future competitions since this was also an issue in Best Mix #1.

There was never anything along the lines of "everyone's sync NEEDS TO MATCH this file." Yes, we had issues of sync that were a LOT larger last time, and that file was needed more then, than it is this time around.

I know some of you are anally picky about your syncing. Some of us do not have the ability to get it that close, nor will that *perfect* sync transfer to every other computer.

I do not want any points taken off for a reasonable, easy to fix gap error. (If you see a review with points off for gap, PM me and I'll fix the review, or get the author to change it.)

However, "The Party" is not a standard GAP fix, and does not fall under that protection.
Sorry, author of "The Party".

If it would help in any way I can record a fraps screen cap video of "The Party" and one of your other songs and pm you the videos to show the difference.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:00 pm**

ANONYMOUS POST & OFFICIAL STATEMENT

Valex said that my edit chart on Dry The River did not contain anything, I'm not sure what happened, but I would like to point out that I did have an edit chart with steps when I submitted the simfile.

Indeed, the file that I have, which is the file that I zipped, DOES have a proper edit chart WITH steps.

Here is a link to the submitted .sm file, in case it somehow became corrupted in any of the process.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:27 pm**

ANONYMOUS POST wrote:
Valex wrote:Presentation: 4.5/5: The banner seemed to be a cut of the background with the artist put on. Also your readme says:
I wanted these to match the combined fusion between the track's color plus its furry,

Uhh...

As far as I'm concerned, the banner is not a cut-n-paste of the background - while they're fairly similar, I did apply several differences in the banner to make it fit better and I don't think calling it a rip-off is a valid deduction.

As for the quote in the readme, I think I meant "fury" if that typo made it seem weird, but what I was really trying to point out was that the song is both different + unique (color) and energetic (fury) at once. Sorry if you don't understand my way of putting things.

BEST-mix.net - DDR Simfile Tournament

Bracket 2 - Rating and Discussion

Bracket 2 - Rating and Discussion