BRACKET 1 - DISCUSSION

[LK4D4]

You know, I did not realize I forgot something in my sim until now. Oh well. >,>

[neothe0ne]

"Now, imagine a Japanese folk arriving to your country and playing in any hacked ITG cabinet any song with lyrics in romanji...
... How would he think about you?"

I'll give another hint:
ITG doesn't support Katakana, Hiragana, or hanzhi/kanji.

And Xythar, you're not entirely correct....
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/Jap ... yboard.gif

[The Period]

Yes Romaji doesn't exist which is clearly why the Japanese use it constantly
...
I'll give you another hint as well: Japanese keyboards don't have kana on the keys.

P.S. it's "romaji"

Sure,
Ignorance is bliss.
Then, sorry for that, I guess I should have more documentation about romaji use before writing my readme.

Presonally speaking, I don´t like r*ji (the best word which describes you romanized kanji) in SM lyrics.

I left me flow on that readme, kinda embarrased of that.

[BLueSS]

You know, I did not realize I forgot something in my sim until now. Oh well. >,>

You can always post an unofficial update for it. Unofficial updates won't be judged in the official judging (with the exception of my mistake with the Son of Sun AVI, so it's an official update) but it still might influence public opinion.

[Xythar]

And Xythar, you're not entirely correct....
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/Jap ... yboard.gif

I lived in Japan for a year and I don't remember seeing very many keyboards like that, and none with only kana and no English letters. To type Japanese you need to enter the text in romaji and it auto-converts it to kana or kanji based on what you type (you can hit the spacebar to get a list of possibilities when there are multiple possible kanji that are pronounced the same way)

The only reason I can think of to include kana at all is probably for older keyboards before they started using that method.

[CoreyBlaze]

As for "not much going on there", it's a 6, and it's supposed to be a 6. You clearly like harder charts, but that's not what I was going for this time. FWIW, I think the Heavy is better than the Challenge, and I'm a strong believer in always doing five single charts.

I like good charts that don't feel like the author intentionally dumbed down what the chart should have been (examples: Rainbow Rainbow and Under The Sky in SuperNOVA). This is completely unrelated to your file, but I just want to make clear that I am definitely NOT biased towards harder charts. For example, I found the DDR MAX 3 pack to be very enjoyable and that was full of "easy" charts.

[Aki]

Transitioning to those end crossovers wasn't the easiest thing either, and they weren't anywhere else in the song to prepare. That's gonna be tough for a Standard player.

I strongly disagree to this. I am having the feeling that you have been fixated on the fact that Standard charts for any song should be "6-7 footer is the hardest" but then, if you remember DDR 3rd mix, it has a lot of challenging Trick/Another charts. I could've used a 5-6 footer for my song, but it would be what-you-call "awkward" since the song itself has a "boss song" feel to it. If you would step a pop song with a BPM higher than 190, it can be reconsidered to have an easy standard chart. I noticed in the video that the one playing the Standard chart is perhaps still struggling on the middle of the level. Why not let the player on the heavy play the standard chart? My aim here is to have a difficult, but enjoying song for the ones who have mastered Standard, or perhaps initiating and starting on the heavy level, or just misses the old ways.

I respect your opinion but yeah, I just felt that I have to speak my mind on this.


EDIT: I love battle funktastic. Needs a higher bitrate though. Requesting original pic

[jammitch!]

@ Corey: That's fine. I'm just glad you enjoyed one of the two top-tier charts - that's exactly why I like to make both - but I have no regrets making the feature chart a 7, as that was my vision for the file. I write way too many 8s and 9s anyway.

@ Akira: I could rephrase my criticism of those crossovers as "I'm a heavy player and I completely blew the transition, which means it's not as clear as it should be." On top of that, 24 consecutive eighth notes, going from L to R (rather than the easier L to U/D etc.), in a crossover position (a basic one, but trickier than going ULDLU), with a change of pivot from up to down, at 200 BPM, is a hard pattern, harder than the rest of the song.

More than that, I think it needed fewer jumps. I would have gladly traded a few occasional sets of three eighth notes (especially easy ones like LUL and such) for some of those jumps.

These comments are coming from the heavy player, after I replayed it to make sure it wasn't just the difficulty level throwing the rating off. (I will probably take this approach by default in Bracket 2.) I bumped it up a point, but I still wasn't a fan, so it got a "below average" rating. Not a total failure rating, but a below average one.

I see other people like it, and I acknowledge that I have unusual opinions. You can't please everybody all the time; just be glad I've retired from official judging and can't affect your score too bad

[CoreyBlaze]

General observation: This simfile tournament is the first time I've seen people using bg images that change during the song. I don't know if this is the newest simfiling trend, but I think it's terribly lame. Any thoughts on this? Any good simfile examples of how it really should be done?

[Dark Luke]

omg at the vocal range of Anjelier... Going from the E inside bass clef staff to the high F# in the treble clef staff ...

[TheBaldOneMpls]

EDIT: I love battle funktastic. Needs a higher bitrate though. Requesting original pic

http://www.earth-2.net/wallpaper/full/Kill_Bill_001.jpg

Enjoy!

[LK4D4]

General observation: This simfile tournament is the first time I've seen people using bg images that change during the song. I don't know if this is the newest simfiling trend, but I think it's terribly lame. Any thoughts on this? Any good simfile examples of how it really should be done?

First that comes to mind is in a previous Best-Mix pack; "MAX". I also made one about 2 years ago, so some advice; don't use so many images that a video would be smaller.

[Hainaut]

Come Back to Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vltCOgn8AU

Thanks a lot for the video review - always fun to watch someone playing your files on an arcade machine!

Regarding the intro, I can see why you thought it may have seemed a little easy, since it's a Heavy chart after all, but I kind of thought there was no choice but to step it like that because there wasn't a whole lot of backup in the song at that point (unlike later on), and that it may have felt slightly overdone if I made it more complex. Still, all comments for my entry are highly-appreciated, and I'm glad that you still apparently enjoyed it overall!

[Juub005]

I played Anjelier first and got excited that maybe people will be crafty rather than just putting in more steps as a way to make their files more difficult. Unfortunately, I don't feel like that was really the case. And I can't really pick a favorite here, as I couldn't outright call anything a great file. If I had to, it might be Son of Sun, which I was expecting to be a disaster from the song choice, but I really felt like the chart (I should add here that what I did was play only the heavy charts on pad) suffered from its amount of crossovers.

[CoreyBlaze]

I think I have made up my mind about which songs might be getting my vote, and which ones aren't. I explain why I'm not, of course. (Based on Expert and Challenge only!)

Might vote for... (NOT in order of preference)

RELEASE ME - Very very well done simfile, althought I think either of the Expert or Challenge chart could have gone here alone. Expert seems to be "twistier" and Challenge more straightfoward, but I honestly didn't felt the NEED to have them both here. They are both great, and the presentation of the simfile overall is top-notch.

BACK2BACK - I insist that the Challenge chart is much better and fun than Expert, but I understand why you wanted to have an easier Expert chart there. It's just that I'll never play it again after this review . Challenge covered the song pretty well and gave it a lot of variety, which the expert chart lacks in its simplistic nature. It's a great simfile, good job.

KACHOUFUUSETSU - Excellent IIDX crossover! I remember that the first time I played this when the song ended I was like "ok here comes the final section" and then...song has ended o_o. It was funny if anything, but it makes perfect sense. Very solid simfile, enjoyed it a lot.

COME BACK TO ME (TONY MORAN & WARREN RIGG CLUB MIX) - This is absolutely perfect for DDR. Exactly what I'm looking for in these simfile competitions. Fun steps, good music, and adequate presentation.

SON OF SUN - I have nothing negative to say about this simfile, steps were very well thought out and honestly it surprised me, it is not easy to make these kind of songs work for DDR but you just did that. Congratulations.

MY BOY - Jeez, FOUR 200bpm in a single bracket? Haha, this was speedy fun, I have to say that when I first heard the sample of this song, it sounded like a sped-up version of any other jpop song lol, but after playing it I thought it was pretty decent. Video was cool to have too.

Might not vote for... (NOT in order of preference)

ANJELIER - Nooooo, as much as I love this song (my favorite mp3 of this bracket, I already found the full version! =D), I can't vote for it, because I feel it's not as polished as my picks for "best of the bracket". I'm not a fan of that kind of BG changes (more distracting than anything), the sync goes early after a few of the first measures (perhaps an innacurate mp3 cut?) and your insane fixation on making the song twisty. Gah, I'm not afraid to say that your entry would be my bracket's favorite without these not-so-hard-to-avoid flaws .

BARBIE GIRL - Just because you have a video doesn't mean that you can slap anything as a background for the song, people who have the videos off in their preferences will be stuck with that during all the song =/. The song choice as I said before was extremely unoriginal (who hasn't heard this song before and NOT though about making steps for it?!) It needed the mother of all the stepcharts to really shine here, and while it wasn't bad, it failed to impress.

BATTLE FUNKTASTIC - Remix of Battle Without Honor or Humanity, but honestly, I'd rather play BWHOH in DDR. This remix didn't do it for me =/. Steps were not bad at all but at certain points I had flashbacks of BWHOH. PLEASE come back for BM4.

KOKORO NO TAMAGO - This stepchart fits this song PERFECTLY, unfortunately, I'm not too fond of the song. Just like anime-based games cater to their fans and everyone else think the game is crap, I can see fans of the anime enjoying this a lot, but the rest of "us"...PLEASE come back for BM4.

LIKE THIS - I'm really sorry but I didn't enjoyed this at all. To me is on the "weaker" side of the bracket, you have to think twice about stepping a song with changing bpm and with so much musical "variety" not-so-greatly remixed as this one. The presentation was seriously lacking too. You can probably do better than this.

LOST - Another waste of a song with potential, the steps follow the beat pretty well, but the stepchart is lacking "pattern", it's an ugly chart honestly, you're just...stepping around the four arrows without much thought. I'm more inclined to think that this was a rushed stepchart. One can only wonder how long you spent on those bg changes and how much this chart could have been improved with that extra time...presentation wasn't that stellar either.

LUNATIC EYES - I liked this a lot, but I just can't overlook two glaring flaws: I couldn't feel that long 12th arrows run around the beginning, and you couldn't give a proper ending to the song step-wise (it just kept going and going with the music fading out...) The art was nice, but be A LOT more careful with the font choice or whatever effect you apply to them next time.

S.P.A.M. - Author already asked about deeper insight in this thread. Long story short, surprisingly decent stepchart, and good job handling the constantly changing BPM (you're brave lol), but it's just not what I'm looking for in this contest: THE NEXT DDR-WORTHY SONG. It's kinda like a "ghetto-rapper" going to an American Idol audition, he might be a damn good rapper but it's just not what the judges are looking for.

SUPER DRIVER - See Kokoro No Tamago. Except for the "PERFECT stepchart for the song" bit. I thought you had a few too many twisty-ish steps here, which didn't left too much place for step-variety in the song.

YOU CAN'T BEAT AIRMAN - While there's nothing terribly wrong with this, I can't really point out anything outstanding about it...the second half of the song was more fun than the first half for some reason (I think it was for the accurate usage of freeze arrows at certain points). The presentation could have been a lot better, I'm a fan of detailed graphics, and this is totally the opposite.

Well those are my thoughts on this bracket, I though it was better than average, I can't really say something here was TERRIBLE. Waiting for bracket TWO!!