Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

[FF_rules]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

4)Bar Arcades
- the equipment needs to get cheaper and the software needs to be more adaptable
- arcades, if they are to be revived, will be for adults (and possibly involve alcohol)
- the subscription model is better than the pay-per-play model

This is basically the only surviving archetype of arcade in Hawaii atm. I agree with the other 3 points too and over all this was an intriguing read. (The only people I see at arcades now a days are adults with disposable incomes who want to chill with friends and drink a few beers.)

[Arch0wl]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

The only real problem is that if a guy is going out with his friends to get a drink, and he's single, chances are he'd rather get laid than play video games -- so he'll go to a club.

But not every guy is single, and for guys who are in relationships, who have disposable income, and who have friends who play video games, arcades with alcohol are an excellent night out.

[EzExZeRo7497]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

Here is a framework I've made to analyze rhythm game skill: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3E...ew?usp=sharing

I find this really really interesting - I've always been very interested in rhythm game skill and improvement, though there are some points that I personally found a little off or vague, and some points that could be included:

Improving skill: the naive approach

Most really good players, I've noticed, tend to gravitate toward songs that are about 70-80% of their maximum skill level without consciously realizing that's what they're doing. Interestingly, this is also the ideal % range for building muscle when you're lifting weights.

How do you assign percentages of their maximum skill level to files? What's a file that are 90-100% of their maximum skill level, a song that they could barely pass at their peak ability? If this is the case, I do think that 70-80% is far too low of a range - especially for top-tier players. Top tier players like Staiain, myself, Etienne and Shadow constantly play songs that they can't AA, generally mid A to high A. I think that's closer towards 80-90% rather than 70-80%, 70% to 80% would be around the range players can comfortably low to mid AA songs at their peak skill, or low AA on an off session. For top-tier speed players and for players who improve rapidly, that's not what they usually play without consciously realising. Aside from wrist speed/endurance and timing, I don't think the 70-80% figure applies to most F2F skillsets. It's probably closer to 80%-85%.

The Isolation Method
While your points are very true, this is almost always not possible in theory. Or at least, the isolation method would not be time-effective in theory because what a player is bad at based on what you said would be specific (e.g. bad at polyrhythms with hidden one hand trills, rather than just polyrhythms in general) to be optimal and there aren't many files that really have those types of patterns that a player is weak at. I'll take Stepmania 4K for instance, the only time I can think that the isolation method would be the optimal method would be if your worst pattern is fast streams littered with tons of minijacks and 3-note long jacks. The player could play Tachyon Beta/Gamma/Delta/any stamina pad pack, as most pad patterns that aren't candley/turny generally are. There are lots of files for that, plus the files for them have streams long enough to be time-effective. Maybe there are some other patterns that you could improve with the isolation method, but usually said method isn't very viable due to a limited selection of files.

Essentially, I'm curious to know if there is a satisficing (not optimal but good enough, noticeably better than "no method" - maybe 150-200% practically speaking) method and how would it be done. I feel that a method like this would be far more practical and probably simpler for people who would want to improve, rather than an isolation method that is probably too situational for players to really apply, unless their weakness is very general, like having a weak left hand.

Isolating for timing
Using a higher judge difficulty is actually something that I'm curious to know how it works, but I've always seen no actual explanation for it. Some people say that it only applies to some people and it doesn't apply to some others, but I would like to know why. For most people, using Judge 7 is easier because they can tell whether or not they're getting a more precise judgement (e.g. a J7 marvelous, on J4 you cannot discern between 11.25ms-22.5ms hits and 0-11.25ms hits), but how does this improve timing when you go back to J4? I actually managed to get better timing when I switched back from Judge 7 to Judge 4 after a few months, but I'm very uncertain as to why this is the case.

I read through this on the way back home on my bus and it's been a couple of hours since then, so I might've forgotten some other points. Regardless, I really like this framework for sure, but I would definitely want to know more about skill improvement and rhythm game ability in general.

[Arch0wl]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

The 70-80% aspect:

I was actually in the process of revising that before you even mentioned it. I wrote it long before I knew what I know now about strength training, so it's outdated and vaguer than I want it to be.

70-80% is referring to the scores you get on Stepmania. So, if an AAAA is 100xxxxx and an AA is 945xxxxx, the ideal range would be 700xxxxx to 800xxxx. However, I don't think that's true anymore. I think the ideal range would be 75-85, +/- 5% depending on how consistent the difficulty is. 700xxxxx is still low enough to be a score on a file you've bullshitted your way through.

Scores beyond full combos are by their nature completely useless for muscular improvement, so by "max skill" I was also referring to skill in actually hitting the arrows vs. not hitting them, disregarding marvelouses or any timing judgments above perfect/excellent. This is understandably confusing because my figures are drawn from a scoring system that incorporates marvelouses.

The isolation method:

The isolation method's viability doesn't really have anything to do with how many files are available because you can make files that target these weaknesses. The files don't have to be good, or even go to the music. Your brain and muscles don't care about the quality of file you're playing.

But the isolation method is something you'd rarely need to do for 4key stepmania. It becomes more of an issue with greater key numbers because players are more likely to have underdeveloped muscles in the rest of their hand.

Why higher judges work:

I don't know either, but I would suspect it's something like this:

On lower judges your brain is only used to being as precise as judge 4, so imagining being stricter than that is impossible. On judge 7 you know what being more precise than judge 4 feels like, so when you go back to judge 4 you have a better sense for how precise you're being.

[kmay]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

Is this a question? I think you're asking how to improve but I'm not sure

no, if you're writing a book things like that need to be addressed

[FF_rules]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

no, if you're writing a book things like that need to be addressed

I understand what you mean but that wasn't even worded as a question lol. I believe he covered Isolation earlier; rates is a branch of something he also said. I don't recall anything about positions (though I recall something about using a bar for DDR for back posture). But do you want that addressed as it's written in a book or just as a short answer to be articulated later?

But why am I asking this lol; Topic 1: So onto another part from me...
I've currently hit a mental/physical cap in FFR; I can't alternate middle/index fast enough as I used to when I was still in high school (wrists etc; probably carpal) and the keyboard I'm using is the slightest bit helpful (but I'm consistent on it; it just requires too much effort and only reads on a bottoming out so I slam keys which isn't good for endurance plays). The mental cap being a point where I can still play songs but I can't physically react fast enough to patterns (I can still actually play; but it's as though I'm in auto-pilot since I myself can't react fast enough and think "Yeah I meant to do this series of key strokes").
The question here is what can I do to prevent more injury while I play these types of games? (My first thought is to get that mechanical keyboard and reduce the tension to bottom out keys)

[Trumpet63]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

In "Improving skill: the naive approach," you make a simplifying assumption that's patently incorrect. You assume that actual difficulty scales linearly in direct correlation with the difficulty rating of the song.

[Arch0wl]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

In "Improving skill: the naive approach," you make a simplifying assumption that's patently incorrect. You assume that actual difficulty scales linearly in direct correlation with the difficulty rating of the song.

The player can re-rate difficulties according to their perceived difficulty, so this objection is irrelevant.

[Arch0wl]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

The question here is what can I do to prevent more injury while I play these types of games? (My first thought is to get that mechanical keyboard and reduce the tension to bottom out keys)

Injury is a complicated thing that I'm probably not qualified to address, to be honest with you.

I can only speak to injuries related to weightlifting because that is what I have more experience with. For muscular injuries like that, I've found I heal faster by actually working out more, but at lighter paces, and slowly upping the loads/weight until I'm back to where I used to be. This is what other strength trainers/writers I've read suggest as well.

Now, I can't say this would carry over to some kind of injury in your hands because the injury could be very different in nature. In your case, I'd ask a doctor that specializes in this sort of thing and just say "playing piano" instead of "playing Stepmania" because the stress on your muscles would be extremely similar in nature and the doctor would immediately understand what you mean.

[Leo137]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

-Tell me about uncommon time measures that i can do mixing colors of notes and such

-What are some of the most unusual patterns that you ever see in 4k stepfiles?

[Arch0wl]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

-Tell me about uncommon time measures that i can do mixing colors of notes and such

-What are some of the most unusual patterns that you ever see in 4k stepfiles?

1)

This is more of a musical question and it depends on the song. I suppose you could look into postmodern classical music if you wanted really bizarre time signatures.

2)

The issue with 4k is that nothing is going to be *that* unusual since you're working with an extremely limited set of pattern combinations.

Polyrhythms in keyboard charts might win that category. The most awkward patterns I've ever had to perform were in some experimental index files I've made but I don't think I've ever released them. The most novel thing I've seen recently is in the Paranoia Revolution singles challenge chart where you're supposed to reverse mid-freeze toward the end to be in the correct position for the final crossover stream.

Also, I realized you specified 'patterns' and this is somewhat outside that, but WinDEU's Perfect Cherry Storm file is one of the most unusual takes on a chart I've ever seen. He even went so far as to make the patterns predictable in certain parts so that you can infer what the patterns would be when the arrows are unreadable.

[Zapmeister]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

so i've been wondering something.

i'm pretty new to this whole rhythm gaming business (started playing ffr in 2012 and never played ddr or even heard of it before i got here). i get this impression that the whole rhythm gaming scene (ffr, ddr, stepmania, osu, kbo (i don't even know what kbo is)) was much, much bigger back in the 2000's decade than it is now. was it seriously a really big deal back then, or is it just one of those things that everyone nowadays thinks was better "back in the old days"? like for ddr, did people actually play ddr competitively on a local scale? was it like the main attention seeker of the arcade, or what? would it have been common to see people practising on the thing for hours on end? would your random person who stumbled into an arcade have been enthralled by it? and not just ddr, but was ffr a big deal at its peak? (just generally, i don't really need intricate details of ffr history) and finally i heard somewhere that osu gets like a peak of 15k users online at one time every day, whereas something like chess.com gets like 20k playing live or 40k online at one time. would it be daft to compare the popularity of osu to something like chess, where professional players exist and get paid off!?

oh and how much of this is country dependent? like i get that osu has a large japanese fan base and presumably an american one, but is it entirely localised? and for ddr as well, i mean i live in england and the only ddr machines i have ever seen are euromix ones from like 2002 or something that miss on like 10-20% of arrows and the only time i actually properly played a game of ddr was when i went on holiday to france for a week (compared to more than two decades i spent in england). was it wholly an american thing?

tl;dr: did i miss the boat?

[kmay]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

yea i took this as a him writing a book and just looking for things he thought we would want to know. if its just a compilation of him answering questions then just pass my stuff bye.

[choof]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

in one of my vids that my brother recorded, he wondered if "the first time you finger a girl will you hurt her"

[Dynam0]

Re: Ask Me Anything rhythm game related

is it true that you and darkmage are the same person??