New Songs Genre?

[21992]

I was just thinking if there could maybe be a new songs genre in FFR. This would make it much easier to play/find the new songs. +1?

[Riotpolice]

Dance 3?

[blindreper1179]

Who actually looks through genres anymore? -_-

[noname219]

Imo, with the search function, genres serves no real purpose anymore. But I guess genres could be reworked because, honestly, they don't make any sense now.

And... I'm pretty sure that would need more coding. I recall Velocity saying he didn't want to touch to the Legacy or Velocity engines.

[Charu]

Originally Posted by blindreper1179

Who actually looks through genres anymore? -_-

I still use the genre wheel.

[psychoangel691]

I think songs should just be sorted by difficulty now honestly. The genres are kind of a mess anyway considering we're sticking so much into one label.

[Arkuski]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

I think songs should just be sorted by difficulty now honestly. The genres are kind of a mess anyway considering we're sticking so much into one label.

The search tab makes that pointless, but then again, any song division you'd like can be accomplished with the search tab.

[t-rogdor]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

I think songs should just be sorted by difficulty now honestly. The genres are kind of a mess anyway considering we're sticking so much into one label.

if we're being 100% honest, something i've been wanting to do for a long-ass time is convince someone to (or convince someone to let me) go through all the in-game songs and give them all more concrete genres (i.e. "Breakcore", "IDM", "Piano Solo", etc, instead of shit like "Drill'n'Bass", "Nu-Style Gabber", "Cutie 8-bit Pop", "Intelligent DnB", etc) so that you guys could add a "search by genre" feature to the search menu. Maybe it's just me, but there are times where I really want to play, say, a breakcore file ala VSnares, or maybe a Chiptune file, things like that. It'd be a pretty neat feature and would make all the weird, seemingly arbitrary (and frankly incorrect) genres assigned to the songs be more accessable

[t-rogdor]

also it'd allow moving of files to other genres because let's be real here, Dance 2 has way too many files in it
you can't even click the "next page" button anymore

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Charu

I still use the genre wheel.

Ditto, specifically the favorites genre :P I wish there was a way to favorite stuff from the search dialog.

[bmah]

Originally Posted by t-rogdor

if we're being 100% honest, something i've been wanting to do for a long-ass time is convince someone to (or convince someone to let me) go through all the in-game songs and give them all more concrete genres (i.e. "Breakcore", "IDM", "Piano Solo", etc, instead of shit like "Drill'n'Bass", "Nu-Style Gabber", "Cutie 8-bit Pop", "Intelligent DnB", etc) so that you guys could add a "search by genre" feature to the search menu. Maybe it's just me, but there are times where I really want to play, say, a breakcore file ala VSnares, or maybe a Chiptune file, things like that. It'd be a pretty neat feature and would make all the weird, seemingly arbitrary (and frankly incorrect) genres assigned to the songs be more accessable

The song styles like Drill'n Bass won't change, but I'm definitely wanting to change the various genres that the songs are grouped in. Funk for example certainly doesn't reflect any sizeable portion of songs on the site. I've had discussions about changing new genres to reflect the song list that is FFR today (e.g. 8-bit, Cutie 8-bit Pop, and Chiptune may all fall under a "chiptune" category). You have to consider though that it'd require various changes in the graphics of the game. There's gotta be someone willing to make interesting new buttons/labels for new categories.

However, I do also find it tempting to do away with grouping songs altogether. I could imagine that the proportion of various song genres will change in the future - it would for instance potentially make a new "breakcore" section obsolete later on. Times change. Not to mention, you'd STILL have a whole bag of songs fall into some sort of "miscellaneous" section because they don't satisfiably represent the songlist to warrant their own sections of genres. I always thought that a "miscellaneous" section just made the game look more dumpy.


(While we're at it, if these sort of changes do get underway, I would really really want to change a little bit of FFR terminology: right now, songs are grouped in various headings called "Genres" and song genres are supposed called "Styles". This is confusing as hell. Let "Styles" become simply the song "Genres", and song groupings labelled as "Category" or something to that effect.)

[shenjoku]

At the very least keep the favorites genre D: Without it I would never be able to keep track of what songs I like since there are so damn many x.x

[bmah]

That would make sense to me - except "Favorites" would not be a "Genre", but rather a separate option on its own.

[Ohaider]

I've always used the wheel when i've played haha
Never really used the search, like to browse

[Untimely Friction]

Isnt Funk the new song genre lol

[noname219]

If you want to know, this is the current number of songs in each categories :

187 Dance
213 Dance 2
62 Funk (some tournament new songs are in there)
155 Arcade
143 Rock
106 Classical
200 Misc
78 Secret
65 Purchased
45 Token
30 Hip-Hop
128 Skill Token
66 Legacy
- Favorites
- Tournament

Only 30 songs in Hip-Hop and 213 in Dance 2.
Also, they're not in a logical order (see Hip-Hop between Token and Skill Token), I would suggest :

Dance - Dance 2 - Arcade - Rock - Classical - Funk - Hip-Hop - Misc - Legacy - Secret - Purchased - Token - Skill Token - Favorites - Tournament

I'm not sure we need Purchased, Secret, Token or Skill Token. They could be integrated to other genres. After all, I see them as regroupments of song styles.
There are a lot of songs in the Arcade genre that could fit in other categories as well.

What would be great is to use new descriptors like Techno, Trance, Chiptune, Drum 'n Bass, House, etc and to keep them updated and under a number of songs. After they reach that number, we could divide the genre into more specific genres. (once it reach 150 songs for example and a new genre must have at least 50 songs of the same style)

Originally Posted by bmah

However, I do also find it tempting to do away with grouping songs altogether. I could imagine that the proportion of various song genres will change in the future - it would for instance potentially make a new "breakcore" section obsolete later on.

Same could be said back in 2002-2003 in the first versions of the game. Funk and Hip-Hop had the same number of songs than Arcade or Dance. Now, they're obsolete.

Originally Posted by bmah

Not to mention, you'd STILL have a whole bag of songs fall into some sort of "miscellaneous" section because they don't satisfiably represent the songlist to warrant their own sections of genres. I always thought that a "miscellaneous" section just made the game look more dumpy.

There's a lot of Breakcore and Drum 'n Bass music in there that could create two new genres. As for other types of songs (Jazz, Christmas songs, Bossa Nova, etc) we have basically no choice to list them under Misc... and yes, it feels kind of dumpy.

Originally Posted by bmah

(While we're at it, if these sort of changes do get underway, I would really really want to change a little bit of FFR terminology: right now, songs are grouped in various headings called "Genres" and song genres are supposed called "Styles". This is confusing as hell. Let "Styles" become simply the song "Genres", and song groupings labelled as "Category" or something to that effect.)

+1 Category is a good descriptor.

Originally Posted by t-rogdor

if we're being 100% honest, something i've been wanting to do for a long-ass time is convince someone to (or convince someone to let me) go through all the in-game songs and give them all more concrete genres

I plan to do something similar in the Songs Correction Thread but I don't know where to start exactly.
From what I heard, the style describes the mood, genre and ambiance of the song. That's why you can find "Melancholic Baroque" or "Cutie 8-bit Pop". Getting to a consensus of what genre to use within the community would be the best way to go.
We need to detemine also the correct spelling of each genre. Drum and Bass has many different spelling we are using currently, ex: "Drum 'n Bass", "Drum n Bass", "Drum'n Bass" and sometimes "DnB" when there's not enough space.

Originally Posted by bmah

You have to consider though that it'd require various changes in the graphics of the game. There's gotta be someone willing to make interesting new buttons/labels for new categories.

Judging by the popularity of graphic contest here, I don't think that's a problem. ^^
Some buttons would need a little more reworking, Secret has only the outline and I think Token, Legacy and Tournament are a bit too similar.

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

I think songs should just be sorted by difficulty now honestly. The genres are kind of a mess anyway considering we're sticking so much into one label.

It could be an alternative, but I find it less interesting than song styles. After all, you can rank songs by difficulty in the search options.

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Why not take out genre's entirely. There's so many classifications (most of which I think are nonsense to be frank) that using a more prudent system (the 1-99 scale for example) as a new way of sorting things is honestly the way to go.

There's no reason to bother with even listing the genres in game anymore. (I honestly think there wasn't one to begin with.)

I'm all for switching to a difficulty sort instead of genres. Hell replace the genre list on the info that loads on the right bottom corner with something more useful, like say uh, BPM.

[igotrhythm]

Originally Posted by Xx{Midnight}xX

Why not take out genre's entirely. There's so many classifications (most of which I think are nonsense to be frank) that using a more prudent system (the 1-99 scale for example) as a new way of sorting things is honestly the way to go.

There's no reason to bother with even listing the genres in game anymore. (I honestly think there wasn't one to begin with.)

I'm all for switching to a difficulty sort instead of genres. Hell replace the genre list on the info that loads on the right bottom corner with something more useful, like say uh, BPM.

Except that BPM isn't saved in the .swf, so you'd have to get that data from the .sm file before conversion.

[Silvuh]

To answer the OP's question specifically, there's no need for a New Songs genre in R^3 or the Velocity Engine. R^3's "All" list is sorted by ascending ID number, so clicking to the last tab and scrolling all the way down will get you to the most recent levels. In the Velocity Engine, the levels can be sorted by descending ID number, and the most recent levels will be at the top.

I made two template vectors for making new Genre Wheel icons in the style of the old ones. Here are a couple examples (trance and chiptune).



Having a more appropriate list of genres would definitely still be good for sorting, but it shouldn't be the primary sorting method. I started typing up a longish spiel about this, about expanding the functionality of VE's search tool into R^3, but I thought I should put that into a new topic.

Also, BPM information would definitely be nice. The Ingame Song Information Thread has the BPMs of almost all the in-game levels earlier than Betrayal (ID 1662) (search for "???" and you'll find the ones that are missing), and I'd think all the rest should be able to be found among all the game admins or simfile judges or any other collector of FFR files for SM. Yeah, it'd take a lot of manual work or group effort, but I think it would be worth it. Would be cool to have BPM filters, being able to find songs of a specific BPM, filtering between static, pseudo-static, and greatly varied BPMs and stuff.