Purpose
This study will attempt to determine the arrow placement difficulty across all 4-panel dance simulator step patterns and step charts absolutely.
Step Design
This study refers to the decision making process for a person who designs a step-chart; a step-artist. The reason that these people are called artists because it is mainly an art. Many different artists may step the same song many different ways, which each one being a valid executable chart. Likewise, many different painters may create different works of art with the same medium. However, in designing charts each one will also have a different level of difficulty as well. The goal here is to focus on one type of difficulty and determine how to compare charts absolutely.
This study will mainly describe what happens once a pattern is considered for a section of a chart, but it will in no way be able to tell to the step-artist what pattern to use where. This decision is totally up to the step-artist. There are certain patterns (eg.: the scale) that might suggest a type of pattern but are not mandatory. However, what can be noted is that certain patterns are sometimes found to be favorable to the step-artist over others, and in turn might be used more often. There is a positive side to this, where a step-artist might have a "signature" to the charts that person makes. The negative side is much more important, which has to do on a chart-per-chart basis. Remember, the chart is made to go to a song, and songs are made to be individual pieces of artwork themselves. With this, a chart should show itself as an individual piece of artwork as well. The chart identity is what makes one step-chart different from another. When a step-artist creates a chart, one of the best approaches is to create the chart without including your own preference. This makes the chart stand out as being a part of the song, instead of part of the step-artist.
As always, art is subject to criticism. You will have people who will praise a chart, and a similar amount you might dislike the same piece. While this article will not be able to help you in the way an artist decides which beat to place an arrow, what I hope this might help in is the awareness of consequences to which arrow a designer uses on that particular beat. Elements must work together to create an enjoyable song for a player.
Notation
In order to discuss arrow placement within a chart, I will be using DWI file format notation. This notation is similar to the numberpad on a computer keyboard where the even numbers indicate the single arrow positions on a dance stage. The numbers located in the corners indicate the jumps which include the adjacent arrows. The letters "A" & "B" indicate the "8+2 jump" and the "4+6 jump" respectfully. Lastly, the number "0" indicates a rest or gap between arrows. This website has been coded to include a graphical representation of this notation for clarity. For example, here is the numerical and graphical representation of the pattern "left, right, up+right jump, rest, left+right jump, down"
4690B2
Stage Rules
This is a study of the decisions for arrow placement in relation to difficulty. For the purposes of this study we must make some generalizations to the type of player we are imagining.
- The player has not memorized patterns and spends the majority of play looking toward the game screen in order to read and execute patterns.
- The player is able to read and comprehend the position of the arrows on the game screen, no matter how difficult it may be to read those arrows due to arrow spacing or arrow speed.
- The player is able to immediately execute the foot moves necessary to perfectly hit the arrows using only the player's feet (ie.: no patterns of more than 2 arrows on a beat), no matter how fast the arrows are traveling.
- The player uses one foot to hit one arrow. One foot may not hit two arrows and two feet may not occupy one arrow.
- The player will alternate feet toward different arrows whenever possible unless doing so will make it uncomfortable to view the game screen.
- The player's feet move from the center of one stage panel to the center of the next, which helps approximate distance traveled.
What this study will not cover
There are many elements that make a chart difficult. The purpose of this particular study is focused solely on the decisions made by the step-artist as to which arrow direction to use on a beat to be stepped; arrow positioning. To make this more clear I will list other difficulty elements that this study will not be focused on. In the following explanations, I merely state my experience in difficulty for these elements but will go no further in comparing charts with these types of difficulties.
Quantity of Arrows
Playing a chart with 10 arrows will most often be significantly easier than playing one with 100 arrows, with some very unorthodox exceptions (eg.: making all 10 arrows as a rapidly executed jackhammer pattern). If arrow spacing is equal between the charts (ie.: both charts contain only quarter notes and are played with the same BPM) the 100 arrow chart is harder because you must move more and in turn use more energy.
Speed of the Arrows
Executing one set of arrows faster than another similar set of arrows will deem the faster set more difficult. Again, you must use more energy to move faster thereby making faster executed arrows more difficult. This is independent from a fast BPM because any chart may have arrows designed to be executed very fast even at a low BPM.
Rhythm of the Arrows
A chart that is more rhythmically dynamic is more difficult than a chart that is rhythmically regular. In other words, a chart with more steps that are off-beat is more difficult than one containing steady streams of arrows. This is a matter of inertia, as a body in motion will like to stay in that motion. Continuously changing the speed between arrows will cause that motion to differ between steps in turn making the body need to adjust its speed more frequently.
Tick
The elements described above can be summed up to one term called tick. The tick is short for assist-tick, which is a feature in many exergames that assist a person playing a song by helping them find what to beat to step to in the song by hearing a tick when each arrow reaches the top of the screen. The tick describes the quantity, speed and rhythmic decisions made by the step-artist, which is the most of the art of making a chart. If you close your eyes and listen to the tick, you will hear all the decisions made by the step-artist in these areas; except our focus of arrow positioning. The patterns "842" and "80402" are different in tick when done with the same BPM, but the technical aspects of performing the sequence are exactly the same.
842
80402