Describing stepping/mapping styles

[bmah]

I've decided to write a bit about my ideology in stepping/mapping that I think more accurately and wholly portrays the general landscape of styles. I think this explanation is beneficial to more than just steppers/mappers.

The purpose of this explanation is:
1) to help existing and new steppers become aware of their stepping styles and make helpful, deliberate decisions based off of this awareness.
2) to help judges of FFR and public packs to become aware of the range of stepping styles (become aware of where any given file lies within the spectrum), provide more focused guidance based on this awareness, and to decrease bias in their judgements.
3) to decrease the stigma of any one stepping style, particularly "technical" stepping.
4) to help the general public appreciate the scope of the artistic visions of the stepping community with greater clarity.

I think stepping/mapping a song falls within a range of two extremes: on one end, you have stepping with a focus on the number of sounds present. This is often referred to as "technical stepping" resulting in "tech files" but it's a term I'm trying to stay away from because it is now sadly stigmatized. Recently, a newer terminology has arisen without that stigmatism and so I'll refer to this as "additive-oriented."
The other end is a focus on the nature of the sounds, which I'll just say is "aurally-oriented." Notice how people have already made a term for one extreme ("technical") but not the other. I wouldn't be surprised if this was due to their preferential bias, or what the community at large prefers over the other.

"Additive-oriented" stepping: stepping based on the # of sounds present at any given moment. Because FFR is a rhythm game with only four inputs, creativity is required to best represent a song with the limited number of columns. Additive-oriented stepping is very discrete with little ambiguity. Following it too closely creates a greater likelihood of playability issues through awkward patterning and overlayering.

"Aurally-oriented" stepping: stepping based on the nature of sounds, most commonly the loudness of sounds, which translates to "prominence of an element." Creativity obviously comes with the very subjective interpretation of what sounds are considered worthy of being acknowledged (layering choices) and how they are acknowledged (e.g. jump vs. hand vs. quad). Aurally-oriented stepping is subjective and can range from non-ambiguous to very ambiguous. Following it too closely creates nebulous gameplay that becomes harder to follow or musically appreciate, and can result in underlayering. Homogeneiety in steps increase and distinction decreases.

Most people fall between these two extremes, though of course there is a propensity towards falling more towards aurally-oriented stepping in the name of dumps, especially midare-type dumps. The reason I illustrate stepping styles as a range between two end-members is because I think it better illustrates the vast range of stepping styles without stigmatizing people into black and white thinking of only two stepping styles. The goal is to reduce labelling, such as "you're a technical stepper" or "you're an artsy fartsy stepper."

Ideally, people would want a healthy proportion of both types of stepping, hence being neither too close to either extremes. But this is rarely the case and naturally the stepcharts will wander towards one endmember.

What judges should avoid is to view files from their favored perspective and instead become more aware of stepping styles falling between these two endmembers. An example of a misinterpretation is when an aurally-preferred judge criticizes an additive-oriented file for having layering that "isn't justified" by how the music sounds. Stepping densely in a quieter song is frequently frowned upon for example, but disdain should be reserved. What if the stepper wants to avoid the same song and dance of low-nps quiet sections in favor of a more novel approach that is not frequently done? In this day and age where tens of thousands of charts have been created to date, seasoned steppers especially want to find new approaches and not be constrained by this overarching bias. To be clear, the current bias is heavily trending towards aurally-oriented stepping, both for regular charts and of course dump charts by nature. To quote April, whom I've heavily discussed this topic with:

I think informing judges and stepartists about these two styles is a particularly good idea, though i do want to give some clemency to some judges who started much later than you did that "aurally-oriented stepping" is something that they've taught is the only correct (or at least most logical) way of stepping. the reason for that is simple -- it's just that prominent across all 4K rhythm games except FFR.

The meta that "aurally-oriented stepping" is the only correct/logical way of stepping is incorrect and MUST be amended.

To judges:
I'm not saying judges should avoid criticisms of either endmember styles of stepping. Rather, a greater awareness of these two endmembers should help guide them to understand the minds of the stepper as well as provide better guidance. It's hard to provide guidance when judges themselves are in the dark about understanding where their own ideologies stand in the world of stepping/mapping.

To steppers:
With this awareness, you can better appreciate the stepping styles of other steppers, as well as perhaps better mould your stepping style with more deliberate decisions.

To the general public:
I hope you can appreciate the diversity of stepcharts across FFR, Stepmania, Etterna, and osu. The activity of stepping/mapping has shifted from being a backend element of rhythm games to one where the community is now heavily involved. It provides an additional avenue of fun and creativity.

Thank you.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Good read

[WirryWoo]

I agree with the terminology mentioned here. I hope that moving forward, we avoid using the word "technical", dissociate the self-created negative stigma associated to additive-oriented files, and adopt this vocabulary in all future conversations related to simfiles.

I know from my own reviews as a simfile judge for FFR, I play some responsibility with at least using the word technical, so I'll make sure to reword some aspects to align it closer to this proposed terminology.

Thanks for shedding light on this bmah! Good read and 100% agreed.

[ToonE156]

great read 100%

[icontrolyourworld]

i like the new terminologies here i'll try to use these
actually can we pin this for like a year?

[AutotelicBrown]

Not sure where you got the idea that what people refer to as "technical stepping" has anything to do with using or not additive layering.
In fact, the vast majority of FFR's catalogue (including recent charts) can be unambiguously considered "technical stepping" despite not that many using additive layering.

There's two very distinct charting concepts being conflated in your descriptions that I think become much clearer once separated:
(I) - How a single voice is represented (regardless of whether other voices are layered alongside)
(II) - How the interaction of 2 or more voices is represented

Intentionally or not, those are two distinct and arbitrary decisions a stepartist makes when making a chart under the prevailing paradigm where notes are directly associated to musical elements from the song itself.
Here is a simple example illustrating how (I) and (II) works:

Suppose you decided to layer only two voices, a lead melody and some percussion that at a given point have the following rhythms:

I'll give 3 combinations of (I) and (II) that each lead to distinct placement of singles, jumps or hands despite all adhering to the same choice of layered voices.

Case 1: (I) Each voice is represented by single notes. (II) When both voices coincide, you still have separate notes for each one. This would lead to exactly what is portrayed in the image, jump on the red 4th (1+1) and single notes for the rest.

Case 2: (I) Percussion is represented by 2 notes, lead is represented by single notes. (II) When both voices coincide, you still have separate notes for each one. This would lead to the red 4th being a hand (2+1), the blue 8th being a jump and the yellow 16ths being single notes.

Case 3: (I) Percussion is represented by 2 notes, lead is represented by single notes. (II) When both voices coincide, percussion (stronger voice) takes precedence and the lead (weaker voice) is ignored. This would lead to both the red 4th and blue 8th being jumps, and the yellow 16ths being single notes.

In my view, additive layering refers specifically to the choice on (II) and would match Cases 1 and 2 in my example.
It's true that additive layering often leads to (I) being "one note per layered voice" but I believe that's more due to historical and practical reasons.
The historical part refers to the tradition of keysounded games (iidx, bms, djmax etc) that naturally have this combination of (I) and (II) from their mechanics, which in turn have served as inspiration for many steppers who use additive layering outside these games.
The practical part is due to the limitations of working with 4 columns. As illustrated in Case 2, having a voice be represented by more than one note makes the chart crowded very fast when you are layering multiple voices in an additive manner.

As for what you tried to describe as "aurally-oriented" and where most of your discussion leads, it pertains to the decisions made on (I) and shouldn't be bundled with the discussion on additive vs non-additive approaches.
If you are following a strict and unambiguous association (which FFR judges always favored), I don't think there's much point in distinguishing a "one note per sound" approach from "always use a jump/hand for a given sound" in the larger discussion pertaining to dumps and more abstract approaches.

I should also mention that only "technical dumps" fall in this categorization of (I), other types of dumps are part of a different paradigm where the notes act as one or more independent voices.
That being said, from what I understand, FFR only has "technical dumps" in mind for now so I think elaborating on (I) can still be relevant for those who care about that discussion.
It's also interesting to note that it's entirely possible to make a "technical dump" with additive layering.


Finally, on the topic of preferred terminology.

I think in the context of (II), just "additive" and "non-additive" is more than enough as currently most steppers assume "non-additive" by default and "additive" acts as a modifier when relevant.

In the context of (I), I'd break it down further into two main decisions:
(I-1) - If it is attack-based (either single note or chord exclusively over the attack), dumping (extra notes outside the attack, including sounds without a well defined attack) or a simplification (slower or quantized rhythms over a sequence of attacks)
(I-2) - If the association is strict (consistently used for a given voice) or abstract/interpretative (association can change based on other factors like loudness)

Generally speaking, "technical stepping" refers to the choice of (I-1) being attack-based + simplification, and of (I-2) being primarily strict association.

It's important to note that what I'm presenting here is only a descriptive framework to categorize a few aspects of charting. Same applies to what you presented in your post.
If you really want to talk about styles, the discussion should take into consideration a lot more things both in terms of charting decisions and the cultural context in which those decisions came to be.


Anyway, I personally have used both additive and non-additive approaches extensively (often both within the same chart) and could write lengths on the pros/cons of each and how to use either effectively.
Beyond the importance of judges being aware of those differences, I think any stepartist is missing out by neglecting either approach.

[Wind0ze]

It's nice to see an attempt at replacing the current description of charting styles as technical/dump. However, I think distinguishing styles by additive versus aural isn't the best approach, because the styles are hardly mutually exclusive. As you said, almost all charters fall somewhere between the two, with very few charters that exclusively use one approach. I believe this is because most charters don't really perceive layering as the aforementioned dichotomy, instead handling the choice of how many instruments to layer on a case-by-case basis depending on what their intent for the chart is.

I think this results in your observation of most charters favoring the "aural" approach. Since you define additive charting as one specific case where including as many distinct sounds as possible is the goal, and aural charting as basically "everything else", naturally the more general and inclusive "style" is going to be observed more due to covering a wider range of intentions.

All that aside, I do agree with the sentiment that charters and judges should attempt to understand all styles of charting, including those that strongly emphasize additive layering, which seems to be the main point here.

[M0nkeyz]

I think there needs to be quite a bit of overlap between ''additive-oriented'' stepping and "aurally-oriented" stepping for an additive approach to work.

What I've called people out for when judging their files is them combining sounds that don't play a prominent role in the music and creating artificial hands and jumps that way. For example combining a closed hi-hat and a bass note to create a jump (two sounds that tend to fall into the background when there's alot of other stuff going on).

The way I view songs in relation to stepping is that they're a choreography of musical instruments that move in and out of prominence and make room for eachother. Additive layering makes sense for a song in which the elements stay the same, but in a dynamic song where there is a constant ''ebb-and-flow'' in how the instruments interact with eachother the chart becomes way too convoluted with a strict additive layering scheme.

I disagree that all layering styles are equal, what if someone decides to take a ''subtractive or inverse'' approach where they start with 4 notes for basic sounds, but remove a note for every other sound that comes in. It makes logical sense and there's some clear thought behind it, but does it feel accurate to the music? No.

Ofcourse I'm being a bit ''Tongue-in-cheek'' with my example above, but it examplifies why I think the intensity of the music is important. additive layering naturally follows the intensity of the music, but it needs to be done carefully and it needs to consider more prominent elements of the song over others, because it's very easy to overlayer your chart otherwise.

[XelNya]

Alright i've got about two issues with this thread.

1. Bmah's opening post, to me, reads like you're frustrated with the modern judges, because you're getting push back on your files more than you used to. But to your credit, you make a stronger effort to explain why you're frustrated and its an... Ok read at best, imho.

2. I think you're over simplifying charting styles. By a fair amount. (And I loathe your term choices.) But equally I disagree that FFR has a stigma against technical content. FFR judges have an issue stronger related to trying judge a file within the structure, rather than either of those styles. Which as the person subbing content is one of two issues, either I haven't executed to where it's very obvious, or I didn't add anything to lead them to my different charting style.

I don't even layer files. I pick a structure based on emphasizing sounds as I think they're important. In fact, my more basic files do worse than my more adventerous ones. In short, I prefer to chart based on emphasis and aiming for immersion rather than "technically accurate." My really simplified response is that maybe you should embrace the changes a little. Before I dipped out for a while I was really not willing to do that, but I luckily got some fortunate guidance.

But I dunno, maybe I rambled to much, or am being slightly more uncharitable than I mean to be.

[loftyb]

Originally Posted by bmah

The goal is to reduce labelling, such as "you're a technical stepper" or "you're an artsy fartsy stepper."

Yeah, okay, except these stigmas don't even exist anymore. The problem with purist technical charters ISN'T that people aren't seeing what they are doing as having creative merit (tons of players I know put old-school tech charters at the top of their tier lists) it's that purists were, and STILL ARE, apparently a fucking decade later than they should have initially realized this, too stuck in their ways to see games are lame and boring when they don't align to the player bases abilities. Old heads are staying and getting better. Cater to them. FFR is not blowing up. You aren't going to see an influx of new people coming to this game any time soon. The chance came and went.

What people are able to do in vsrgs, with modern builds, kbs, specs etc are far beyond what people were able to do when "additive" charting rules were thought up and written down. In fact, even in like 2007 people uprated the fuck out of everything because the files were too easy. Soon charters realized this and just started moving to speedcore, grindcore, breakcore, and other lame ass genres as "jokes" to try to fit to a meta which was becoming outdated AS EARLY AS A DECADE AND A HALF AGO.

In my experience, most modern players play rhythm games because they like to listen to good/interesting music (subjective but w/e I can generalize if I want to) and because they like to challenge themselves. You realize that having a MSD (though subjective) of 28+ isn't uncommon right? A dime a fucking dozen. Almost 700 players could come to FFR and literally SDG with relative ease most of the 90+s in this game?

You're missing a shit ton of context here, and I can't help but feel that you being criticized ALONG with the dump thread being a thing got you ticked off, and that this thread was born of that emotion. Dumping is the only thing that needs to be reframed NOT technical charting. All technical charters need to do is get a grip.

[Lights]

Originally Posted by M0nkeyz

I disagree that all layering styles are equal, what if someone decides to take a ''subtractive or inverse'' approach where they start with 4 notes for basic sounds, but remove a note for every other sound that comes in. It makes logical sense and there's some clear thought behind it, but does it feel accurate to the music? No.

I'm ngl, i disagree. I think something like this could be pretty cool on the right song. I don't think its fair to write it off on concept alone.

[ositzxz369]

Originally Posted by M0nkeyz

I disagree that all layering styles are equal, what if someone decides to take a ''subtractive or inverse'' approach where they start with 4 notes for basic sounds, but remove a note for every other sound that comes in. It makes logical sense and there's some clear thought behind it, but does it feel accurate to the music? No.

See Qrrb's Resistance 1 - for an example of this layering style.

[Gradiant]

My thoughts have pmuch already been stated by Xel and lofty.
Imo, there's no good to come from singling everything down to either side of the spectrum created by your two tags, especially when the assertion that ffr thinks 'technical is the only way to go instead of additive' is wrong simply based on the massive amount of chordjack files being released lately. Most stepartists also aren't going to fit to one of these and rather a mix of both. Because of that, this thread feels to me that it stems more of a concern of your own files not getting liked because you think certain judges hate your 'style' rather than a help for newer stepartists making content. With that, I think it does a disservice to the judges that look at files to have most of the notes given basically tossed aside because the stepartist thinks that particular judge just 'doesn't get it'. Those notes would still have a lot of merit to look at when it comes to fixes.

[bmah]

Originally Posted by AutotelicBrown

Not sure where you got the idea that what people refer to as "technical stepping" has anything to do with using or not additive layering.
In fact, the vast majority of FFR's catalogue (including recent charts) can be unambiguously considered "technical stepping" despite not that many using additive layering.

It's important to note that what I'm presenting here is only a descriptive framework to categorize a few aspects of charting. Same applies to what you presented in your post.
If you really want to talk about styles, the discussion should take into consideration a lot more things both in terms of charting decisions and the cultural context in which those decisions came to be.

Anyway, I personally have used both additive and non-additive approaches extensively (often both within the same chart) and could write lengths on the pros/cons of each and how to use either effectively.
Beyond the importance of judges being aware of those differences, I think any stepartist is missing out by neglecting either approach.

Thanks for your really detailed responses. I'm not sure if I fully understand every example you illustrated, but I think I need to clarify that "additive stepping" as I'm trying to describe is not an entirely objective endeavor. Clearly, the subjective aspect comes when in scenarios where sounds/elements overlap and then you need to decide what to acknowledge and how. I suppose this may be a part of what you were trying to demonstrate with your examples.

The dichotomy was created to more easily visualize the "stepping landscape". If we're to get granular with the details, there are so many considerations to be made, but that isn't the intent of my original post or else I'd write a novel.

The stigmatization of "technical" files is often seen in the form of complaints on player performance over such files (as opposed to, say, streamy ones that could be almost performed on autopilot) - additive layering of course if gone overboard can result in extremely uncomfortable to play charts. So a lot of what people complain as "technical" ends up being such charts - that's where the correlation comes from.

And finally, I absolutely agree with your last paragraph, which is why I wrote earlier that ideally, in my dichotomous theory, you'd want a balanced approach of taking both additive and aural (or non-additive as you'd say) aspects into consideration. I do that as well.

Originally Posted by Wind0ze

I think this results in your observation of most charters favoring the "aural" approach. Since you define additive charting as one specific case where including as many distinct sounds as possible is the goal, and aural charting as basically "everything else", naturally the more general and inclusive "style" is going to be observed more due to covering a wider range of intentions.

The goal of additive charting isn't to include as many distinct sounds as possible. It's simply an emphasis on considering unique combinations of sounds that would result in a more varied approach that otherwise may not have been considered. For instance, let's consider a scenario where there are multiple simultaneous elements going on in a song. One of the elements is a running series of 16ths and another element is a very loud cymbal crash on every 4th note. A third element could be vocals playing on occasional 4ths. If I was to be more "aurally-based", I could step every 4th as a hand, essentially resulting in a consistent handstream. However, if I was to have a more additive approach, I'd take the loud cymbal crashes as a single arrow and make room for the third element (vocals) whenever it occurs. This will result in some occasions where the 4ths are hands and other occasions where it may be just a jump. To me, that simply seems a lot more interesting. That's what I feel is a primary benefit of the additive approach. I think a benefit of the aural approach is that it adheres to consistency.

And yes, the other aspect of this thread is to find new terminology to destigmatize old terminology with negative associations, so if you feel that additive or aural are not the best terms to use, feel free to suggest your own - I'm all ears.

Originally Posted by M0nkeyz

I think there needs to be quite a bit of overlap between ''additive-oriented'' stepping and "aurally-oriented" stepping for an additive approach to work.

What I've called people out for when judging their files is them combining sounds that don't play a prominent role in the music and creating artificial hands and jumps that way. For example combining a closed hi-hat and a bass note to create a jump (two sounds that tend to fall into the background when there's alot of other stuff going on).

The way I view songs in relation to stepping is that they're a choreography of musical instruments that move in and out of prominence and make room for each other. Additive layering makes sense for a song in which the elements stay the same, but in a dynamic song where there is a constant ''ebb-and-flow'' in how the instruments interact with each other the chart becomes way too convoluted with a strict additive layering scheme.

Right, you're simply describing the benefits of the aural-based approach and the potential pitfalls of the additive approach. There's nothing to dispute there. As I said earlier, the ideal stepper would have a measured approach with both additive and aural elements.

Perhaps the issue is that the benefits of the additive approach isn't immediately obvious. I think I better outlined it in the earlier example I wrote (creating variability by freeing up "slots" to consider multiple elements).

Originally Posted by XelNya

Alright i've got about two issues with this thread.

1. Bmah's opening post, to me, reads like you're frustrated with the modern judges, because you're getting push back on your files more than you used to. But to your credit, you make a stronger effort to explain why you're frustrated and its an... Ok read at best, imho.

2. I think you're over simplifying charting styles. By a fair amount. (And I loathe your term choices.) But equally I disagree that FFR has a stigma against technical content. FFR judges have an issue stronger related to trying judge a file within the structure, rather than either of those styles. Which as the person subbing content is one of two issues, either I haven't executed to where it's very obvious, or I didn't add anything to lead them to my different charting style.

I don't even layer files. I pick a structure based on emphasizing sounds as I think they're important. In fact, my more basic files do worse than my more adventerous ones. In short, I prefer to chart based on emphasis and aiming for immersion rather than "technically accurate." My really simplified response is that maybe you should embrace the changes a little. Before I dipped out for a while I was really not willing to do that, but I luckily got some fortunate guidance.

But I dunno, maybe I rambled to much, or am being slightly more uncharitable than I mean to be.

Hey that's a fair thing to say.

Regarding oversimplifying things: it's what I wrote above - it's to more easily visualize the stepping landscape. We both know there's a lot more details to be had that I don't exactly have time to outline right now and would be far too long and specific. And perhaps the viewpoint of oversimplification is also that people may be interpreting what I wrote too simply. Even additive approaches have subjective considerations as I wrote earlier (as a result of being constrained with only four arrows).

Originally Posted by loftyb

You're missing a shit ton of context here, and I can't help but feel that you being criticized ALONG with the dump thread being a thing got you ticked off, and that this thread was born of that emotion. Dumping is the only thing that needs to be reframed NOT technical charting. All technical charters need to do is get a grip.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my opinions on dumps from that other thread. I've come to accept those. If you think this thread is riffing off of that, then no - it is not. This was intended to be educational to everyone to have a broad, baseline concept of the stepping landscape. It should be particularly helpful to future prospective judges who will be faced with a myriad of stepping styles. And as mentioned countless times earlier, this isn't the detailed manifesto on stepping, nor am I ignorant to the fine details. It's just a brief summary way of looking at it.

Originally Posted by Gradiant

My thoughts have pmuch already been stated by Xel and lofty.
Imo, there's no good to come from singling everything down to either side of the spectrum created by your two tags, especially when the assertion that ffr thinks 'technical is the only way to go instead of additive' is wrong simply based on the massive amount of chordjack files being released lately. Most stepartists also aren't going to fit to one of these and rather a mix of both. Because of that, this thread feels to me that it stems more of a concern of your own files not getting liked because you think certain judges hate your 'style' rather than a help for newer stepartists making content. With that, I think it does a disservice to the judges that look at files to have most of the notes given basically tossed aside because the stepartist thinks that particular judge just 'doesn't get it'. Those notes would still have a lot of merit to look at when it comes to fixes.

I think you meant to say "aural is the only way to go instead of additive" but I digress. Anyways, read what I wrote earlier. I resent that you're dismissing this thread as me just being salty. There's an educational aspect overall, of which I'm hoping that my short summary could be helpful, and if it's considered too inaccurate, then I'd like to have that refined, and Autotelic's post was very helpful in that regard. Your post is not helpful.

[I Am Jesus]

This seems like a bit much lol at the end of the day you're just pressing a button at the time you are supposed to, some people are better than others are various reasons.

[ToonE156]

Thanks for the insightful commentary Jesus

/uj you know that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes of the game right? People had to make the charts your playing and long ass essays like this are what goes into it. This isn't about playing the game, it's about the styles of charting which are the backbone of the whole game

/rj can you sign my Bible please im a huge fan

[Wayward Vagabond]

Wow I've been out of the game for so long I don't understand at all what's happening

[ToonE156]

Originally Posted by Wayward Vagabond

Wow I've been out of the game for so long I don't understand at all what's happening

better start reading cause you have alot to catch up on lol

[Wayward Vagabond]

Originally Posted by ToonE156

better start reading cause you have alot to catch up on lol

Do You Even Know Who I Am

[icontrolyourworld]

hi wv <3