StepCon 2022

[jh05013]

I'll take The Wises Were Wrong, completing my event token collection. Thanks!

[M0nkeyz]

Gerudo Valley, The Bridgeport Run and Touhou Judgment in the Sixtieth Year please

[gold stinger]

Token unlocks have been given out up to this post.

[M0nkeyz]

bubbles:

I felt number 3 was the most solid and most fun to play overall, but the rest were also enjoyable experiences. I ended up voting for 1 and 3 with my favorite being 3, it being made by psychotik was no surprise and I had a suspicion ELite Ninja made #1 even though I haven't seen much of their charts. I think I suspected 4 being jacob because of the foundation of the chart being pretty good, but the chart suffering from some beginner mistakes.


if you can't hang:

I guessed 8 was made by jh, but that's about the only one I guessed correctly. I thought #1 was pizza, the anchors and the way it was structured reminded me of a mix between ''Son of Robot'' and ''Mariana's Trench''.
I suspect #4 was made by ToonE and #6 was made by mi40, I think #7 was made by wayward vagabond. #5 being pizza surprised me, the chart was obviously good (I voted for 1, 8 and 5), but it didn't stand out to me the way his chart of Swamp Thing did back in stepcon 2020. I have no idea who made #2 and #3


Passing you by:

To me #4 just stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Most of the charts were pretty nice to play, but man #4 is one of the best charts I've ever seen.
I think nearly all of them were perfectly acceptable files. My initial guess for #4 was woker-x because I remember playing his charts back in the day and really enjoying them. It's no surprise to me that trumaestro stepped this, he is a master of intensity and contextual layering.
I think #1 is made by a person that's pretty new to stepping. I have no idea tbh.
I think #3 is made by T-Force and #6 is made by Oppie.
I ended up only voting for #4.

Koneko's Cafe:

#1 winning is not really a surprise. The chart was solid, my only complaint really were the rolls feeling same-y. I immediately suspected #5 to be WirryWoo, because of the bpm gimmicks and the way the patterns were structured. #3 being storn surprised me, I had him as #4, he tends to simplify patterns when he charts.

I think #2 is Kaho(he didn't seem too invested in the results and the event in general, but he seems like a person who would submit something at least), I thought #4 was storn and #3 was Velocity(he tends to chart a bit like this), by process of elimination I think alloyus is #6, I saw him lurking in the thread alot and I think he submitted something. (This is not based on the way the chart was structured, but moreso a guess based on his activity by lurking in the thread)
I ended up voting for #1 and #5


I'm the Boss:

I hated this song, but I felt that part of Stepcon is stepping out of your comfort zone. Regardless I think my chart turned out pretty good. I'm not happy with the ending tho.
#1: I felt this was a pretty lazy and safe approach to the song, solely focusing on the vocals is the most straightforward thing to do since it's the most interesting element of the song, but I feel you could've incorporated the other elements. I had no idea who stepped this.
#2: My chart, I was happy with the syncopated layering of the background instruments in the first half of the chart, I felt the cut I made at the start was unnoticeable(but I guess I was wrong), I cut 2 instances of the refrain and 1 verse out of the middle, but I had no way to end the chart in a satisfying way. Right after where I ended the song there was a lot of white noise which made it impossible to end on, and then the overall intensity of the song goes up by a ton and doesn't stop for like 1.5 min, which made cutting in between a nightmare. I feel I made the best possible cut I could've made, but I probably still have to improve in that regard.
#3: In my opinion the second best chart, my guess was matthia, I thought it played fantastic even though it was overlayered. This did need a cut tho.
#4: I thought this was ositz, he tends to do trilly stuff(Might just be a byproduct of stepping breakcore). Honestly with the info I have now I'm pretty sure this is Mipha.
#5: Pretty decent chart, but the cuts in this were extremely jarring in my opinion(iirc). My guess was that Mipha made this, the chart is solid and obviously made by someone with a bit of experience.
#6: Charsiaha bombards us with ''patterns'' and ''charts'' in discord so I could infer some info from that, I feel this is a bit of an incomplete and underlayered approach to the chart that doesn't really work due to its length.

[AutotelicBrown]

Grats to all the involved, interesting to see the results and who stepped what. For what it's worth my votes were:

I'm The Boss (A): 5
BUBBLES (B): 1
Koneko's Cafe (C): 1, 3 and 4
If You Can't Hang (D): 1 and 5
Passing You By (E): 2

Originally intended to write short comments after I played everything on the first day but, after listening to If You Can't Hang 8 times, my motivation was all gone

[jacobvl39]

Congrats to the winners. I'll take Gerudo Valley for my token.

[xXOpkillerXx]

Congratulations to the winners 🙂 Good luck on final round!

[ToonE156]

Guys.... I have a secret to share

I AM THE CREATOR OF "If You Can't Hang 7"

[woker-X]

Congrats to the winners!!
And thank you for the event, I had a lot fun participating and playing all submissions. Looking forward to play the Final StepOff files.

I'll take Mario Trap for my token.

[trumaestro]

vrofl, Reckless and Bridgeport Run pls

ggs to all participants!

[flat chest choof]

rooting for trumaestro because of his cdtitle

[Mr.Stepmaniac]

I am the stepfile creator of "If You Cant Hang #4". At least 3 people felt it was a good file so I feel it drew some attention. I was making sure it was accessible to a wider audience of players and more for the old school crowd which is where I come from.

Congrats to those who made it to the final round. It was fun to step a song in a long while. I will keep the file I made and add it to a pack someday.

[AAAorQUIT]

i made passing you by #1. i am new to stepping so yeah

[Wayward Vagabond]

Oops

[gold stinger]

A little bit less than a week remaining on the Final StepOff cutoff date!

Just a quick/small reminder for those working hard on files, that the batch (for submissions) will close at Thursday, May 5th at 11:59PM SERVER TIME. At that point, the final public voting week will start!

[gold stinger]

Quick reminder that Final StepOff closes tonight at 11:59PM Server Time. Public Voting will begin afterwards! Today is the final day to work on songs.

[gold stinger]

The Second Public Voting Period has Begun!

During this time, all participants (including and especially people not participating in the event), can vote for songs submitted for the Final StepOff of StepCon 2022. No further submissions for the event will be accepted at this time. You can re-visit the Google Form link in the future to change your votes (until the end of the Public Voting period), and you can vote for multiple options across all Classes (Pick any & all that you like!).

You may fill out the form at https://forms.gle/yPeQHdAHd4wV66Z98 to submit your votes.

Please be advised, participants CANNOT vote for their own Class. Votes for that class will not count for said participants.

https://www.flashflashrevolution.com/batch_submission/engine/r3.stepcon2022.xml
If you navigate to your 'Options' in your FFR Engine, navigate to 'Miscellaneous' settings and click the drop-down for 'Engine Playlist', you should see this at the bottom of the list:



You will get this pop-up:



If you Copy the above XML URL and Paste it there, and click 'Add Engine', you should be able to view/play/observe songs from StepCon 2022. If you do not want to play the song, you may preview the song by right-clicking the song of choice in the song selection menu and selecting 'Play Chart Preview' in the right click menu.

Everyone will have until the end of Thursday, May 12th, 11:59PM SERVER TIME to complete voting and submit their forms at the above google link.

Furthermore, discussion is allowed in-thread during voting. But please do not deliberately attempt to sway votes/vote brigade particular submissions, and treat your fellow Stepauthors with respect. People of all skill levels participate within this event, and there is going to be good/bad matchups for people's skills and preferred genres. Keep it civil and respectful. There's also the #events channel in FFR's Official Discord for discussing the event as well!

[gold stinger]

Video for PYROMANIA submissions are up (for those whom can't/don't want to play it in-game):

[xXOpkillerXx]

Been pretty busy, but played all entries 3 times. Here are some quick notes I wrote. Will gladly go into more details if anyone (non participant) asks, or if a participant wants to after voting period Solid stuff overall~


1.
The layering in this one is its strength and weakness imo. It is the best entry in terms of how it highlights the stops in the song with the broken js and patterns. However, the jumps also kinda get lost in all the different sounds they go to. This one has the strongest first 800 notes. If this had the PR style of #3 in the hands section (so like more same-hand jumps) it would probably be an easy top pick for me.

2.
I wish this one found a way to include the wobs in their first third's layering. The other entries showed that it's doable in a clean and fun way. The minijacks not being there makes quite a few patterns feel generic, which I think is the main issue I have with this entry. Everything is solid and flows well, but it just doesn't catch enough of the song's features.

3.
Is too abrasive at notes 400 through 850, even more so than the similarly charted section near the end which has far more energy going on. The hands stuff at around 2k combo is pretty solid, the best of all five imo. That section is packed with intensity and this section delivers without going overboard.

4.
I'd love to consider this one more than I currently do, but given how much "overlayering" notes I got in round 1, this just goes the opposite way (underlayered) in an even more extreme fashion. Cut is way too jarring also.

5.
The difficulty curve of this is too unbalanced; there are long sections with probably at least 15 difficulty points difference. Not layering the drums in midsection is probably the biggest cause of it. The second half's jumpstream is also the most generic of the entries. Sorry, not my favorite.

[Elite Ninja]

Here are a bit of notes from my playthroughs of the PYROMANIA charts.

Sorry ahead of time for not really having any in-depth constructive notes I just sorta put down what I generally felt on each file x.x

#1) File was very fun and interesting to play overall, very strong entry. Intro felt a bit awkward for me namely the 16ths section around 220-ish combo (PYROMANIA 2 did the same here and felt much better/natural to hit but maybe it's just a me thing). Usually jacks can easily ruin the enjoyment of a file for me (just a me thing) but they were done well here to where I didn't lose any enjoyment so nice job there. This file had my favourite on how the ending was done as well out of all the entries and just overall how it highlighted a lot of the sounds throughout the song. My biggest and only real complaint I have with this file is the 32nds after the break towards the middle of the song. They are just super awkward as hell and actually kind of took a lot of the enjoyment factor out of it for me. Change those 32nds to a less awkward pattern and this file would have gotten my sole vote but I ended up voting for more than one entry. I have a feeling I know who's entry this was haha
The 32nds I'm talking about:

#2) This entry probably has the intro I enjoyed the most out of all of them. Some people say they don't like that jacks are missing from this file but I personally find it fine and enjoy it without them. The area with all the hands in the second half of the file felt like something was missing in that section and lacking inspiration. There's stuff I'd want to combine between this and #1 to make my preferred chart for the song.

#3) /sweats This chart is brutal xd. Kinda hard for me to appreciate something this difficult not gonna lie, wish I could. I'm not really going to be able to give any good input on the chart so I'll just leave that up to D7+ players or whoever can ><

#4) While I appreciate the idea of making an easier version chart for banger songs such as this and making the attempt, I'm afraid it didn't quite work out to me in playthrough. It was hard to follow what sounds exactly the notes were going to and at times just felt off to the song. Felt like I'd have an easier time AAAing the file without the music playing.

#5) Was fun to play for me and feels like a solid file. Maybe less interesting than some of the other entries tho with how the wobs are highlighted throughout the song. Just like #1 the mini jacks didn't take away any enjoyment for me since they were done well so nice job there. Not sure how I feel about the long jumpstream section of the chart towards the end though, something felt off about it even though it was fun to play.