Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Actually not joking: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...E9Xp2E/pubhtml


...So I need your help and ideas to come up how to fill 25 minutes and represent the game as good as possible, not just play hard songs.




So far, one idea is to have a course with progressively harder songs until it will be on my limit to keep up with, or maybe do some gimmicky stuff (whic hsadly i suck at atm )

General no's are dumps, buzznoise, copyrighted k-pop or that stuff.

Music that will be good will be bms, video game music remixes and such.

I'll update this thread with ideas and suggestions.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

dang that is sic

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

HOLY CRAP. this is amazing. who are the "runners"?

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Not seeing it in the spreadsheet but that's awesome man. I like the idea of courses upgrading in difficulty over time haha.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

what's the speedrun aspect of stepmania, if i may ask?

it will be hard to appeal to the speedrun crowd with stepmania unless you're going to be doing something like the TAS-bot block

that granted, i recommend utilizing VG music to your fullest advantage (using songs from stuff like chrono trigger, castlevania come to mind)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Usually crowds have positive reactions to Xmod charts where you can barely see anything happening. Throw in one of those.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

you should get windeu to throw together a course file for the showcase

edit: he's busy :<

editedit: you should pick a file that you can play on haste and call it a "speedrun"

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

That's awesome. I guess the schedule can change anytime but you're in a good time slot. You could end with a Mega Man song or something.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Thursday 1/7 at 5:07PM

If we're being technical, it would be beating any song in the fastest time, so at the highest rate. Similar to how there are individual level runs for some games.

Though really that would just devolve into 'who can mash at the fastest rate' so there'd also need to be a 'no damage' category whereby no notes are missed.

But doing it as a TAS would be incredibly boring and the whole point of a TAS run is to either break the game or entertain. Can't do that when all you're doing is watching a thousand arrows flash and show perfect, it would be the same as listening to a song on Youtube with a static image as the video.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

get someone to step https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEOrv3XG30c i'm sure twitch chat would appreciate it
oh wait "no dumps" aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

nice :)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I have a number of charts that fit the criteria you want for this showcase.
I'd be glad to help you build a course.

I have a file for this that is almost finished. It's shaping up to be absolutely fucking nuts, the kind of thing I wonder if Staiain can actually even break 90% on.
Might be an amusing thing to end with. A whole course, 22 minutes of legit files showcasing the game in the best light... then end will a full cancer dump to cancer music for the Twitch trolls

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I agree to this post

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

The most important part of this, and probably the hardest part for Staiain, is to be an entertainer.

Let's be honest here, if anyone who is like D3 or better plays this game, it's guaranteed to be mindblowing to anyone watching that hasn't played themselves.
Sadly, very few viewers are going to be able to tell the difference between what Staiain AAs and what, say, I play to AA. It's crazy shit to everyone either way.
People are automatically going to be wowed no matter what you do.



So the raw skill at the game isn't going to be the hard part.
The hard part is going to be making it interesting, to have a character and some kind of narrative for people to follow, or else 25 minutes is going to be a long fucking time.

Look at witwix. Everyone knows he's really fucking good at IWTBTG/Boshy/whatever it is he is playing. That's cool for a little bit, but what keeps people loving him is his character and his entertainment value.

I would be glad to work with Staiain on this because that's what is going to make or break this showcase for the stream, for the charity, and for our community.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

An example of what I mean:

So you sit down, and the first file you play is something like Etude for the Sinners.
Long intro with like 1 NPS gives you time to explain the game, then once the basic concept of arrow -> hit the key sinks in, you get the immediate wow factor of a wall of JS.

That gives a narrative for people to follow. It's more interesting then just sitting down and playing idk, RATO or something, even though to an experienced player it might be way more obvious that RATO is the more impressive file to play well on.

From there, it's important that you KEEP YOUR COMBO.
People who are watching have no concept of accuracy, and are completely unable to read anything.
There's two things they can focus on: the lifebar, and the combo meter.
If you keep your lifebar topped and the combo unbroken, you are a god.

So you do 8 minutes of stuff that's fast, but you can reliably FC.
Then you can say something like "Okay that was a nice warmup" (cue more minds being blown, THIS ISN'T EVEN HIS FINAL FORM!?)

Then you play something that's actually hard like Thunder Light 1.5 (except rates isn't that great to do, because it's hard to explain the distinction between scroll speed and music rate, so I'll try to find/make a suitable 250bpm OH trilling file to recognizable video game music or appropriate bms stuff)

You get your first combo breaker, and everyone understands now like... Shit this is what the real deal looks like. Damn.

From there you can introduce some different concepts that are easy for people to understand.
Say take 15 seconds to explain what a jackhammer is, then play some jack file.
Doesn't matter that you're not the best at jacks, nobody needs to know that, you are more than good enough to entertain and show off some different stuff in the game.

You can show off xmod stuff here too maybe, if you feel comfortable with it.

20 minutes passed.
Now people think they've seen everything.
You take like a minute to explain "Okay so, so far I've been playing some fun legit files. But the Stepmania community is a bunch of nerds, we have our memes... there's something called dump files. The arrows don't go to the music at all, it's just meant to be as hard as possible. This is really, honestly, the hardest thing I can play."
(cue even more minds being blown, IS THIS TRULY HIS FINAL FORM!?)

Then you play a dump to cancer music, Twitch chat goes wild, and you get like a high A and people see what a file that actually makes your lifebar not be constantly topped look like.
You win, you take a bow, that's the end.





That's a narrative and a character.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Another really important consideration, and I'm not making this up:

Make sure your keyboard is mic'd appropriately so that the stream can actually hear it.

The keytaps are like half of what makes Stepmania impressive to witness.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

as a side note very few people are going to be able to tell the difference between a dump and a legit file and I would argue that the existence of "quality dumps" is one of the cornerstones of what truly separates sm from other games

although I agree they should be avoided unless played as one of the last charts to showcase a "lulz level"

but honestly i think the charts that you end up playing are largely irrelevant

i think in order to properly appeal to the speedrunning crowd you essentially have to convince them that what you're doing isn't mindless mashing

for example, when playing a game at 30 fps frame perfect timing falls within 33ms timing windows

frame perfect timing is a concept speedrunners can relate to and even on files of considerable difficulty 70%+ of your inputs fall within frame perfect timing

this should be something that speedrunners can find to be impressive regardless of whether or not they can play the game

e: damn you ninja'd me in large part while i was typing this and eating breakfast

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

actually knew about this for a couple of days when the AGDQ speed running list came out, pretty nice you managed to get this in to the event

The only concern I have is people having no clue what's going on when you are playing, but both hi19 and mina have given good ideas for ways to appeal to the crowd/ make them feel not so confused

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

A big part of it too is going to be addressing the questions you always get and the banter between levels

Like I can tell you right now, someone is always going to be curious why "Marvelous" is better than "Perfect" ("wtf how can something be better than perfect") and being able to joke about how it honestly really doesn't make any fucking sense, and maybe being able to explain the origins of the system (Perfect came from DDR, but then it was realized that something stricter was needed) and, as Mina said, you can even go into the millisecond window (explained in terms of frames, which is something the speedrun crowd is very familiar with) to blow some more minds once they realize "Marvelous" is literally frame perfect.

Also being able to talk while you play, which I know you are already really good at, is something a lot of people find impressive.


EDIT- another question, which I'm sure you are familiar with from streaming, is "do you just memorize everything?"
Being able to answer that with "no" convincingly is important. If people don't believe me I ask them to pick a pack from the pack list I've never even heard of and sightread some files, but you're not going to have that luxury so figuring out another way to explain it is important.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Just play my files

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Crowd participation would be cool too, like making the crowd choose between 3-4 short different songs midway through your run. (even if that won't really prove that you can sightread files, it would create an interaction between you and the viewers)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Or just play my files

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

i just thought of this randomly at 2AM

i nominate leonid's pokemon medley

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

at 1.5x rate

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

at 1.5x rate

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

what you need to try and do is tell everyone that you are playing on a dance pad, and only later reveal after the slot that you were actually just doing it on a keyboard.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

imo the gameplay absolutely 100% needs to be paired with commentary that does a good job of explaining just how nuts said gameplay is and the game itself in general. Not many viewers will understand what stepmania is so a brief "history" so to speak during setup/warm up song is a good idear. I'm sure the freeware/copyright issue will need to be raised etc.

This is similar to the Tetris block where you have someone playing a game fast with no real "best time" implications so explaining the frame-perfect aspect of timing is something speed-runners would be wowed by. Also need to keep things fresh and make sure the files chosen have some kind of climax theory or progression to them with an obvious high speed area. (this will be tough to keep interesting)

I agree that some sort of reading showcase would be incredibly entertaining too but there aren't many who practice this sort of thing anymore (where are you leonid)

Congrats dude! :D
I'm wishing like hell I could make it to this..

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

definitely do not assume there won't be a problem with bms music (did you hear about the shit that went down over maniera's o!m chart)
anyone who's given their blessings to osu (e.g helblinde) would probably be cool with it if you contacted them

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

The advice in this thread is great (especially hi19). To prove you are sightreading, maybe you could play a 16th jack/jumpstream file that would be moderately hard on S. Shuffle, and explain that it completely randomizes the chart, so there's no way you could memorize it all.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

huge grats on getting into gdq i very much look forward to watching this =)))

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I got an idea. What if you show the progression of stepmania over the years? For example, start with the first difficult/popular files of the beginning days of stepmania, then progress into newer and newer stuff until you get to the hardest songs out today. This way you keep the progression of skill, while also highlighting the history of StepMania.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Eze's chart for 300 would be a nice pick (rates obvs), I'll think of more randomly

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Play that megalovania shit that windeu alterego did on rates

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Just say you actually did memorize all hundreds of the charts with thousands of notes each. That's way more impressive IMO

If you are actually gonna do Pokemed don't and try Kirbymed instead

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

course mod files /break/ when playing on rates, so lolnope

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Taronuke is not WinDEU let's stop comparing every person that did a course mod file to WinDEU.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

i agree with this idea. i'd actually wanna see the progression of stepmania, considering ive only been around for a couple years. :)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

how about let's not water down the game just because everyone thinks stian could get away with it
someone will inevitably find this thread and feel disrespected

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

i saw the name of this thread and know it was staiain

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

OMG HYPE!!!!
I guess you could play a famous pack, and at least AA every song in that pack! ;-)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

a whole pack AA'd in 25 minutes

now that's a speedrun

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Thanks everyone for the awesome ideas

¨

Also I talked to Helblinde, he's cool with me using his music so Grief & Malice is something I kinda want to play.


The idea about playing iconic charts from throughout the stepmania timeline is actually kinda cool

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

if that means you wanted to play something from hsmp1 you're pretty much limited to #est and blur unless you like, hit up the berzerker lol

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

#est would be neat
play battle! xerneas and yveltal

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

#est is pretty awesome as a retrospective file cuz like, the dude who made it didn't give a single fuck about playing nice with patterns
nowadays pretty much nobody would take that kind of risk

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Your profile picture would match perfectly with that post, if he does actually AA an entire pack, lol.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

If you have a slot of time, maybe you can pick one song that represents a skill particular to rhythm gaming (Stamina, Speed, JS, Jacking, etc.)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

would agdq allow a song that consists solely of "hail satan" said over and over again at different speeds

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

they watch chrono trigger for 3 hours im sure they can watch hail satan for 2 minutes

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

you dissing chrono trigger bruh?

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

nah bro chrono trigger is good and the music is ace

but who really wants to sit and watch a full playthrough for 3 hours

you could watch the transformers movies and be just about as entertained

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

heh

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Congrats dude :) Super excited to see this.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

robots in discguesds

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

inb4 we DDoS fiffer.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Someone should make a difficult twitch/AGDQ-meme song/chart (better than the Kappa song linked earlier pls) just for this segment. Maybe even keep it secret from everyone (including Staiain) until the event, and have someone else bring it on a USB stick. This kind of secret GDQ-specific planning has been done before by the TAS guys and got a lot of positive feedback and hype, so I bet it'd be appreciated.

for some reason I found this mental image hilarious

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

songs that change a lot will have inherently more audience appeal than songs that are roughly the same for the whole song

example -- MaxX Unlimited is way more entertaining to watch than MAX 300

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

play quasar then play quasar 1.5x afterwards

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I would say do ONLY vgm songs. The audience will relate to it the most. Like supersonic smash kombat or something

Also, play a heavily modded file like Printer Jam. Practice the shit out of it, it will generate the most shock value.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

grief & malice could fill this role easily without konami suing

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

SSH medley

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

It's so hard to decide haha

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

play my legend of zelda medley. everyone loves legend of zelda

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

also play groundhog because the file owns and isn't too crazy but would still get a bunch of whoaoaoaoaAIAOAAaoas from the crowd

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

good ol vgm songs from games like beatmania, ddr, and jubeat

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I used to play infront of people a lot, so I think I'll put down some things that seemed to get good reactions. Most of it has already been said already though.

1. Combo is extremely important. If you fail to hold combo (e.g. breaking every second) people think you're bad. People who don't play these games don't have a frame of reference, so not crushing a song makes it seem like you're getting rekt by the game, rather than pushing it farther than nearly every single other person who has tried to get good at it.
2. Talking about being bad when you screw up seems to get a good reaction from people who have some relation to rhythm games. "Lol this is bad? I can't even read it!"
3. I would personally recommend using at least 1 noisy song since it's like "Dude even the song sounds ridiculous!". Can also pull the "There aren't even normal sounding songs that have enough notes to keep up with my level of play" card. E.G. Nijuu/The Hypocrisy on rates.
4. I think rates can be used to relate your gameplay to speedrunning. Using your skill to allow you to complete songs in less time than they otherwise could be, it'd be like if speedrunners could make auto-scrollers go by faster by getting faster themselves. I was thinking of trying to get in stepmania in myself, and my idea was to make a pack of songs and play them all on rates while keeping track of the time saved or something. E.G. 40 minutes of songs completed in 25 minutes, while still getting AA.
5. If you can learn to read a mod chart that looks really cool, I think it'd be good as a finale/donation incentive if they'll allow you to have one. "So up till now, it has all been the same thing. Arrows go up the screen, and you hit the button when they line up with the ones up top. Not much to it, just getting better at doing the same thing over and over. But what if there was more to stepmania than initially thought...?" *Epic mods*

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

if you do want to do an xmod chart, i'd recommend either groundhog (xoon5) or glitchcraft (smg2)

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Play the wises were wrong

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

the groundhog x-mod file looks very entertaining on an objective level, i like that suggestion

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

I'm just hyped at the fact that the community is going to get some awesome recognition! I hope things go well, as I do not have any particular ideas.
From playing in front of others, who haven't seen basically any rhythm game ever, combo is definitely the biggest thing. To put people's feelings simply, they want to see big numbers. I explained to them what exactly combo does to total score, and they seemed less interested than the fact that I can mash keys 1000 times.

I don't mean to degrade anyone who might read this that wants to become interested in FFR, SM, Osu!, etc., this is just my personal experience. So, yes, people want a good narrative, and they want to be informed. They also want to be wowed, and that is up to you.

GL Staiain

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Play on J1 just to be safe

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

[Insert "Two Thouzand Combo" meme here]

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Now I'm not sure exactly how this will work, but can more than just staiain play during this? Because another idea I had was have a person from each general skill level play a song, assuming that these people could make it to AGDQ. For example, have a person from each general skill group (using the 1-7 division scale, plus staiain because he's just on a different level). This way it shows the variety of skill level in the community. [Redacted]

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

There's only 25 minutes so that would really water it down.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

K nvm

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

i'm sure stian would have to ask the people running this event for that idea to even be considered, which i doubt it would because lol gdq staff

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

rob dwire got aids by stimpy or whatever was a fun file to watch if you're able to play that
edit: this thing http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...p?songid=13332

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

holy shit lol I'm crying

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

Playing some solo files, show off how sm can work with different keymodes? I have no idea what I'm doing.

Re: Guys, I got StepMania into AGDQ!!
 

IMO, choose things with:

1. Interesting music

2. High combo potential

3. Don't go all-out too early. Start out with some easy stuff and slowly work your way up to insane levels at the end. Make people think, "There's no way he could top this" with every song.