nickhimself
09-20-2010, 05:55 PM
I have both purchased and played this game today, while $6.99 isn't much money I still feel like I over-payed for something that doesn't feel finished.
I understand the developers obviously want you to have this "Whoa, my music is totally unique because of the stepchart my computer made!" feeling while playing the game. You are immediately ripped out of this immersive experience the moment you hit the first note. Every single song is off-beat. None of the stepcharts feel inspired (which is understandable as it's auto-generated). The only difference between Hard and Expert is every open note is turned into a two-note hit, making some songs look like complete trash.
I think the auto-generated stepcharts should be the first option for a song you've never played before, as you haven't loaded the ID tag for it. After that, the song should be checked against a stepchart database where you are able to download stepcharts others have made for that song.
This would require an edit mode where you are free to load up a song and go through it while adding notes where you like. This really can't be much of a challenge to add, as the developers obviously have something like this already created as the game comes with a handful of songs with stepcharts already added.
Additionally, we would need an upload function added to share our creations with other users.
With these creations would come other PC's having differing configurations and hardware. We would need an offset option to manually adjust the delay for each song, or the entire collection of songs. This really can't be hard to create either.
I feel like if this game had these few options, it could really take this C-list title into A territory as it would completely embrace the user-base and allow us to do what we want for this game: create stepcharts that are enjoyable and share them with the community. This would add a flood of synced, inspired step-charts which could all be separately ranked for scoring (ranked by title / author) to give us a similar but unique experience.
Aside from all of that, Expert needs a severe overhaul. Making everything a two-step note doesn't make it harder with intelligence. It merely makes it harder by adding more of the same thing in succession. Why are there no 3-step notes, or 4? On really heavy synth hits or hard bass hits, that could warrant a higher note-per-hit generation in the auto-gen engine. It's obviously detecting some sort of levels throughout the song.
If none of this is plausible (I don't see why it wouldn't be), would adding a sync check to the auto-gen engine be difficult? After analyzing the song, have the program detect whether it's perfectly in sync by matching beat levels with notes. I'd happily take a few extra seconds after a song is analyzed to get a better experience, I'm sure others would agree.
Anyway, those are my few suggestions for something that, to me, would instantly make this game worth $19.99 at least.
I understand the developers obviously want you to have this "Whoa, my music is totally unique because of the stepchart my computer made!" feeling while playing the game. You are immediately ripped out of this immersive experience the moment you hit the first note. Every single song is off-beat. None of the stepcharts feel inspired (which is understandable as it's auto-generated). The only difference between Hard and Expert is every open note is turned into a two-note hit, making some songs look like complete trash.
I think the auto-generated stepcharts should be the first option for a song you've never played before, as you haven't loaded the ID tag for it. After that, the song should be checked against a stepchart database where you are able to download stepcharts others have made for that song.
This would require an edit mode where you are free to load up a song and go through it while adding notes where you like. This really can't be much of a challenge to add, as the developers obviously have something like this already created as the game comes with a handful of songs with stepcharts already added.
Additionally, we would need an upload function added to share our creations with other users.
With these creations would come other PC's having differing configurations and hardware. We would need an offset option to manually adjust the delay for each song, or the entire collection of songs. This really can't be hard to create either.
I feel like if this game had these few options, it could really take this C-list title into A territory as it would completely embrace the user-base and allow us to do what we want for this game: create stepcharts that are enjoyable and share them with the community. This would add a flood of synced, inspired step-charts which could all be separately ranked for scoring (ranked by title / author) to give us a similar but unique experience.
Aside from all of that, Expert needs a severe overhaul. Making everything a two-step note doesn't make it harder with intelligence. It merely makes it harder by adding more of the same thing in succession. Why are there no 3-step notes, or 4? On really heavy synth hits or hard bass hits, that could warrant a higher note-per-hit generation in the auto-gen engine. It's obviously detecting some sort of levels throughout the song.
If none of this is plausible (I don't see why it wouldn't be), would adding a sync check to the auto-gen engine be difficult? After analyzing the song, have the program detect whether it's perfectly in sync by matching beat levels with notes. I'd happily take a few extra seconds after a song is analyzed to get a better experience, I'm sure others would agree.
Anyway, those are my few suggestions for something that, to me, would instantly make this game worth $19.99 at least.