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[Beat Saber] Guitar Hero + VR + Light Sabers.
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aesthetic. The guide videos rightly point out that only one of the core songs is over 3 minutes, and most are closer to 2min. His advice specifically was (paraphrased):
"If you're out of good ideas and just repeating yourself, and so is the song, consider chopping some off because 3min is quite a long time in Beat Saber. Here's how to use audiology to chop out bits and fade the end so it sounds nice. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/beatsaber/comments/8kfpzc/a_brief_guide_to_flowbased_beat_mapping_by/
That is a good read in re: flow. Agree completely.
Not mentioned in the suggestion about song choice: don't pick something that you SUPER DUPER LOVE FOREVER because you will definitely start to hate it a little bit before you're done charting.
I'm really looking forward to this!!
also no spoilers! Y'al;l will be able to imagine a beatmap way better than what I'm probably making here...
editsaber makes it actively hard to do this! I should be able to grab, like measures 60- 72 and paste them at measure 160. instead I have to like, write it all down because there's not even a marker on the scroll bar to so I can go back and forth looking at what I did.
Thanks @Belasco32 for coming up with a sensible notation scheme with pen and paper to replicate earlier sections. Scale is halfnotes, x means no entry, The cursor grid is 3x4 so A is the top row, C the bottom, and 1-4 are left to right. This is a 9-measure section from the middle, that I needed to repeat a hundred measures later.
Any feedback is welcome before I publish it on BeatSaver!
Played it through a half dozen times, got an S rank. One of my favourite songs actually, so I'm super glad you did this.
What I liked; the map was on point, the flow was really good, I didn't notice any hard redirects or jerky movements required, and the song has a really recognizable characteristic in the patterns you used. Most importantly, you've picked a really good song for a map.
What I didn't like; you've used a few too many middle and high notes for my liking. I'll elaborate a bit.
Middle notes are fine, but they should be outnumbered 3 or 4 to one by low notes, because it's always a more awkward motion to hit them. Very hard to get a natural slice in. And high notes should be extremely rare, and when you do use them, try to avoid making them directional if at all possible. One thing you will notice about the default songs is that no song has more than a handful of top row notes, and they are exclusively omnidirectional.
The main reason for the latter point is that directional top notes are super awkward. If they're a down slice, it feels like you have to bring the saber up above them to strike properly. You don't, of course - the game wants you to just strike downwards - but it still feels awkward. And if they're side to side notes, it feels more like you need to wrist flick rather than getting a proper slice in. The only direction that really makes sense for top row blocks is an upwards slice, but of course, then you have to make sure the map fits that, and it's often easier to just let people hit them any way they want, whatever's most comfortable.
The amount of text I wrote about what I didn't like shouldn't be indicative of the proportion of positives vs negatives, incidentally. The song is 95% there, but I do think that you should go through and see which of those middle and top row notes could either be shifted down one or made omnidirectional to smooth things out.
Played it a few times and really liked it! It was fun, flowed well, and the beatmap was different and interesting enough to distinguish itself from other songs. Definitely going to keep that in my library.
I agree with Dhalphir's points above. Especially the point about the middle (eye level) blocks. If there is anything I wish was changed, that would be it. A bit too many eye level blocks.
I feel like swing deserves some syncopation and I haven't played any other songs where people do it, so getting a few parts in that were on the up-beats was important. also really tried to work some breathers in before big complicated sections, and reward large slashes rather than flicking.
It's funny, on my last pass through, I pulled like 40 blocks down to row C because I felt the same. I think y'all are right though, and there are some places where they're up higher because they just are, rather than being up there for a reason. Thank you for the feedback!
I think I took about maybe 90 minutes listening to it and fussing with things. I worked on it for about maybe 18 hours in total over 4 days (including listening to guides and installing software, finding the song, and other non-charting bits) but it was my first one and things sped up A LOT when Bel created that notation scheme for me. I was suddenly doing 36 blocks in the time it took to do 8.
The way I did the alignment was:
Started with Freeek's directions here:
Using those guides I came up with a BPM of 112.93, which is rounded down to 112.9. So I put that in as a starting point. Then I worked on the offset for... a long time. It's super important to get the offset and the first 8-10 notes right, and it can be fiddly. I screwed with it a lot, first just learning how changing it moved the song around and getting a feel for how impactful 50ms was. Then I got it close, slowed down the song playback to 0.1 like in the video, and just tuned over and over until I was messing with 5ms iterations. For that song -25ms was perfect.
Then, it's also SUPER important to go like 50, then 100, then 175 or so beats into the song and do the same listening that you did with the first bits. I don't think Freeek talks that part up enough.... after I got the offset right I went down into the song and it was waaaaaay fucking off in the back half. I ended up playing it from youtube and using https://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm to tap out half the song so I got a really accurate BPM measurement. Freeek recommends doing it over 20ish beats, but I think at least an entire minute's worth is useful to be sure it was correct. My taps ended up dialing in the average until it wasn't deviating more than about a 10th of a second from beat to beat, so I increased the BPM designation in editsaber from 112.9 to 113 and it was dead on. Turns out 0.1 BPM will fuck your shit up over 3 minutes of song.
The height of notes is much, much improved.
I've been playing the new version for a bit and there's a couple new things I noticed that I didn't really pick up on the first time around because I was concentrating on the note height.
In a few spots there's a big issue with visibility - you simply can't see what's coming in some spots, or what's coming is too complex a pattern to parse in the time you have to examine it, and the only real way to nail it is to have it memorised. You should avoid this - it should be possible to sight read your track.
Notable spots;
Right after the first pair of barriers, there's an omnidirectional red block right next to some blue ones. This one flashes right up in front of you with no warning and I've not managed to hit it a single time in half a dozen goes.
On your sections that have six blocks in two columns of 3 (what I like to call emphasis slashes) you've got blocks coming too quick right after them. When you block the player's vision, always leave a couple of beats afterwards to regain your bearings once you can see again. Don't rush people into trying to frantically hit a block right after you've obscured their sight - it does not feel good. If the song doesn't allow for a bit of breathing room after sight-obstructing patterns, consider redesigning the pattern to not obstruct vision. General guideline; Always make sure you map is readable 5-6 beats ahead at any given time, and if it's not (which is fine to do) make sure the map is empty for the few beats after the point at which it's impossible to read ahead.
Similarly, about 20 seconds after the first ducking section, there's a pattern which suffers from the same eyeline visibility issues. This one is mostly because it's too high - this pattern would be great if it was on the bottom row, but it combos between the middle and top rows, which works but not if you're going to hide blocks behind each other.
I don't really have any specific moments to point out for this one but; quite a few times I felt like I was being asked to hit a block in the opposite direction from what made sense. This might just be familiarity. I'm actually going to record a video to make it easier to point out specific good areas too.
One last thing. This is more of a stylistic choice, so you can ignore this if you disagree. I hate curved patterns that require you to slash in a specific curve. You use them twice, and both times they feel awful. In general, I've not seen a single map use curved patterns in a way that felt good. They feel rushed and they don't fit the flow. Try to keep slashes in a straight line.
Both times you used them, it threw me out of the song's rhythm.
To put a number on this version, 8.5/10. The song visibility issues and a couple of the awkward slashes like the curved patterns and the opposite direction slashes are 0.5 each.
Most maps I've done that weren't BennyDaBeast's work I would give less than 2/10, so you're already in like, the top 10 maps I've tried, aside from the defaults.
This 1000%.
Normally, when I load up the game, I hit the built in BeatSaver browser, sort by upload time, then download a handful of new beatmaps that look based off of interesting or fun songs. If I don't like the beatmap, I delete it immediately. I keep probably every 1 in 50 songs doing that. And even that 1 out of 50 is borderline. The rest are basically trash.
If I had run across Spool's song randomly it would have been the 1 out of 100 that was keepable and also not borderline. So this is an amazing first start.
One thing I'd like is the ability to mark a song as something I've already tried and rejected. I don't want to get into a situation where the the public can down-rate other people's work, but I want a reference for myself so I know not to download it again.
a 1-3 star internal rating with a "delete this" flag that prompted and then deleted would be great. As it is, it's hard to make notes to purge them later, annoying to delete from the menu, and just generally very "1st cut" as an add-on.
Still has nothing on Editsaber's aggressively anti-usable UI. Anybody who makes a halfway good map in there is a hero in my book.
So far none that I've tried are as good as the default ones, but I just downloaded Spool's song and the whole library for Bennydabeast. I'm taking a quick break before jumping back in. Will report back.
PS. I didn't like Gangnam Style. This game is not improved by the addition of more notes to hit.
I'm really curious to hear back once you've played BennyDaBeast's songs. Play OtterPop last, its definitely made to be challenging and not as universal as his other ones.
Okay, these longer songs wear me out faster.
@Spool32 I played yours first, it was easily the best of the modded songs I've played so far! Lots of great stuff in there, my only problem is that I don't like it when there's multiple notes in the same swing that have different icons on them, my brain stutters trying to grasp where to go (There's a few swings that have three notes, but the first one is a dot, then down at an angle, then straight down. It's an easy swing, just a little curve to it, but I have trouble with grasping what it wants me to do in the time I have to figure it out. I like the three in a straight line notes, or something like that. I struggle with the same thing in a couple of the default songs, too, even when I've played them a few times). The best thing about your track is that it allows you to dance a bit with the music. Every other modded song I've played to date forgets that, and makes the song about complex patterns, which isn't, I feel, the goal of the game.
Then I tried Burn by Ellie Goulding, a Bennydabeast track.
And I say goddamn that man knows how to make a chart. Easily top 5 charts I've played, including the default songlist. Whoever said Hyperbolic Magnetism needs to hire him is totally right. And it's a song I don't think is the right choice for the game! (Beat Saber works best, for me, with strong, heavy beats that make you want to move with it)
Burn isn't even his best, imo. I personally like Midnight City and Polish Girl from him better. And OtterPop is amazing to me, despite its pretty high difficulty.
I didn't see OtterPop. I must've missed that one.
Rain though next week, hurrah!
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
I actually really like that beatmap
Edit: I kind of want to buy it just to support them even though I don't have a VR setup, lol.
You don't even have to be good at it. Just play it enthusiastically, and you will get fit as heck!
Fantastic map @spool32
Never felt like my sightlines were unfairly disrupted, all of the movements feel intuitive in the right direction, and the patterns feel satisfying to flow through.
I still don't like that one red omni block that sneaks up on you at the end of the first set of barriers, but at this point it's clearly a bit of flavour you like and it doesn't detract from the song - just a little quirk to be aware of which I'm comfortable with now.
No