da-Noob123 Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 22 hours ago, enaysoft said: Just watching that Hatsune Miku video, made me whince. I love music games but I stopped playing them mostly since the PS2 era. I think for me the biggest problem with music games now, is that they slowly became increasingly too difficult. I mean I guess that's to be expected over time. I mean, Beatmania IIDX 30, most of the songs on the game are way more intense than playing actual music on a real piano. The time required to get good at playing musical games now, it honestly seems better to take up a real instrument route, or at least it seems a way more better use of your time, in that you can go over to someone's house and they have a piano there and your skills can be used elsewhere outside of the PS4 and electricity. I think these days something like Rock Smith on PS3 and PS4 that allows you to play on a real guitar, that just seems somehow a slightly better use of one's time. That's just me though I guess. lol Yeah, I am afraid to get Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory since I don't know that I can even beat it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baker Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 16 hours ago, da-Noob123 said: Yeah, I am afraid to get Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory since I don't know that I can even beat it. It’s very easy. Don’t worry. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted November 27, 2022 Author Share Posted November 27, 2022 On 11/21/2022 at 5:14 PM, Thedah said: I mainly lurk in this thread and am glad to see it reopened! Always love to see your approach on difficult and obscure games. I'd like to nominate Mr Driller: DrillLand. It's only got 4 achievers between the PS4 and PS5 versions and they're all from Asia. https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/14525-mr-driller-drillland Here's a thread on the forums about the difficulty. I'm really happy to hear you lurk the thread! ? Thank you! Mr. Driller: DrillLand looks like a great pick! There's not much puzzle game representation on these lists, so it's great to see some variety, especially when the difficulty looks like it may be off the charts. I'll go ahead and add it to the list! On 11/25/2022 at 8:46 PM, da-Noob123 said: Wow that is some insane button pressing you need to do! I have never really been into rhythm games beyond playing Guitar Hero/ Rockband (on easy) at my cousins' houses however when I played Yakuza Like a Dragon, I really enjoyed doing the karaoke songs. Now it is nowhere near as complex as what you're doing in Hatsune but I will admit I liked the challenge of getting at least 90% completion in all of the songs. I am kind of looking forward to this part of the other Yakuza games - right now at least lol. Complexity isn't always a good thing in rhythm games anyway. Having to work around the controller's limitations in Hatsune's case introduces a lot of challenges (some are fun to solve; others are a chore). Then again, if this game were super straightforward, I guess there'd be little reason to write updates on it at all. I really enjoyed karaoke in the Yakuza games too! It's such a simple format, but that's part of what makes it so addictive. I'm always left wanting more songs or stricter challenge requirements so I can sink into the music for just a little while longer. I'd buy the hell out of a Yakuza rhythm spin-off just to see how hard the music videos go! On 11/25/2022 at 9:02 PM, enaysoft said: Just watching that Hatsune Miku video, made me whince. I love music games but I stopped playing them mostly since the PS2 era. I think for me the biggest problem with music games now, is that they slowly became increasingly too difficult. I mean I guess that's to be expected over time. I mean, Beatmania IIDX 30, most of the songs on the game are way more intense than playing actual music on a real piano. The time required to get good at playing musical games now, it honestly seems better to take up a real instrument route, or at least it seems a way more better use of your time, in that you can go over to someone's house and they have a piano there and your skills can be used elsewhere outside of the PS4 and electricity. I think these days something like Rock Smith on PS3 and PS4 that allows you to play on a real guitar, that just seems somehow a slightly better use of one's time. That's just me though I guess. lol I definitely get the absurdity of dedicating thousands of hours to a rhythm game, but I don't really see it as a waste of time. In a way, I think rhythm games are just highly specialized instruments. You can find communities filled with passionate rhythm game players in much the same way you can find communities that are passionate for guitars or pianos. Even though the skills you learn through rhythm games aren't as practical and the communities are generally smaller, it still offers a way to engage with other people (and at a lower price point than most instruments). I've never been great at engaging with the community though, so it probably wouldn't make much difference for me personally. Whether I spend time with a rhythm game or a piano, it would probably be time spent in isolation. I don't see myself going over to a friend's house to rip out a sick piano solo. ? Players that can manage IIDX practically transcend the genre though. They're living machines. On 11/25/2022 at 9:29 PM, Baker said: Hey welcome back. I want to switch my original recommendation of Ys Origin to Pure Pool. With only 13 100% achievers it’s both difficult and obscure. Try and beat my current fastest completion time, which can easily be done btw.. ? Thanks! Glad to be back. ? I actually played Pure Pool back in 2018, but never had any concrete plans to plat it. Since I started it 4 years ago, I'm going to be stuck sitting in the bottom half of the fastest if I ever get around to finishing. I'll go ahead and switch out Ys Origin for Pure Pool! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AihaLoveleaf Posted November 27, 2022 Share Posted November 27, 2022 (edited) On 11/21/2022 at 2:33 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Well, when I was playing through PDF/F2/X, I was discouraged by the lack of a practice mode and assumed that I'd improve at a much quicker rate if I used these other games as a warm-up before moving on to Future Tone (since it includes practice mode). I was able to get a few 8 and 9 star perfects along the way, but I didn't make a serious effort to push any further until Future Tone. As much as I like to encourage players to hone their skills in the edit modes of the earlier games, I personally find it faster to improve through constant repetitions in practice mode. The leaderboards of Future Tone also made the idea more appealing since I'm naturally competitive. I never went back to the older games to clean-up, but the idea's crossed my mind from time to time. Practice Mode is undoubtedly one of the greatest tools for improvement. Some will defend the lack of it, claiming that no practice mode forces you to get better, but I don't buy it. A couple of songs in F 2nd: I'll Miku-Miku You♪ (For Reals) (7★) [#249-258] and Glory 3usi9 (8★) [#443-462] have really simple charts with one tricky part each. What could have been Perfected in a few hours ended up taking weeks because, even with YouTube videos in slow-motion to help, there was just no way to build muscle memory while getting true feedback on those tricky parts outside of playing the entire song and hoping for the best. I wager a proper practice mode would have saved me 100 or even 200 hours on my journey up to this point. Thinking about this did spur me to do some research, though, and I'm just now finding out that PPD -- a Diva simulator for PC -- seems to support F 2nd charting (at least somewhat). This could be my ticket to finally completing F 2nd. I'll look into it ASAP. Anyway, if a trophy-minded player had a goal like 100%ing the Dreamy Theater games, then a few hundred hours of Future Tone is probably their best way forward. Even if the charting is wildly different, the brutal difficulty of Arcade charts will make anything on console look like child's play in comparison. Wishing I knew what I know now while I was still active in Future Tone, but I'm in too deep now to start game hopping. Fortunately, it's mostly downhill after F2nd - besides the Extreme Medley in X, but I won't put as much pressure on myself to Perfect it like I have with F/F2. On 11/25/2022 at 1:58 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Now that we have a template for how to perform these holds, it's time to rinse and repeat! The things we do for points, huh. There a lot of holds during this slow part, and I'm sure doing them all correctly makes the difference between showing up in the top 10, and just getting Perfect. Besides multi-notes, holds are the other thing I'm dreading coming back to, lol. A lot of combos were dropped fumbling around with holds during my time with FT, and I probably could have squeezed out a few more Perfects just disregarding them, but Perfects under 100% hurt me more than just dropping combo, so I'll just have to learn to deal with that somehow. On 11/25/2022 at 1:58 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Usually, it's not very difficult to perform holds optimally even at low level play thanks to shoulder button configuration options coupled with hold transferring. The problem is trying to maximize the number of "Cool" note judgements you receive. "Cools" are usually judged within a 3-frame window while "Goods" (worse than cools) tack on an extra 2 frames to each end of that window. Some notes have a 4-frame "Cool" window for technical reasons and slider notes have an even larger "Cool" window though I'm struggling to find exactly how large that window is. On multi-notes, the value of the "Cool" judgment doubles if you're playing a double note, triples if you're playing a triple note, and quadruples if you're playing a quad note. This is great to know. I've never actually seen discussion on the timing windows for notes in a console rhythm game before now, but it's cool to see that it was figured out for Future Tone. If I ever get good enough at Diva, it would be fun to go for some F0 scores, but my experience from other rhythm games has been that chasing 100% accuracy scores too early is often to the detriment of overall ability, so I'll keep the focus on getting to those 10 stars ASAP. On 11/25/2022 at 1:58 PM, ExistentialSolid said: I miiiiight be using the leaderboard grind as an excuse to procrastinate a little, but managing an 8th place slot on the CT EXEX boards helped me come to terms with years of rust and has given me just a little more confidence that I can actually get this done! Before I start grinding out of my 15th place position on the FS EXEX leaderboards, I want to hunker down and start making progress on Intense Voice. I haven't even passed the next update's "Proficiency Test" yet, so I've got some serious work to do! I can relate to this in a lot of ways, as the temptation to chase some easy progression is always there - like Perf'ing E/N/H charts to prepare for an overall 100%, or going for scores on lower star Extremes. I've been able to keep myself on track in Diva by jumping into the most important task first -- which for you would be getting some practice on the next Proficiency Test straight away. Basically, veggies first, and then some treats. Anyway, great work summarizing and executing this current section. It's a helpful read, as it's gotten the cogs turning in my head thinking about how I'll handle holds and switches myself when I get back to FT, depending on what control scheme I go with, at least. Best of luck getting the next section down soon. ? Edited November 27, 2022 by AihaLoveleaf 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted November 30, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 30, 2022 (edited) The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (EXEX) - Update #3 In this update, we'll be breaking down notes 265-372 of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku's Extra Extreme chart and testing for proficiency! I'll be playing on PS4's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone, but the chart we'll be analyzing can also be found in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix (Switch) and Mega Mix+ (PC). We're up against one of the most difficult sections of the chart today with section #281-305! As such, a large portion of this update will be spent outlining several possible performance methods in my attempts to clear it. While some of these methods appear ineffective, my goal in describing them all to you is to lay out my entire thought process and, hopefully, to encourage experimentation in the face of failure. Analysis: #265-372If you'd like to follow along with my analysis, I've linked a helpful reference video here! Each set of numbers below corresponds to a grouping of notes contained in the chart (chronologically ordered). A combo count will be displayed in the reference video that you can use to identify any particular grouping of notes should you wish to skip around.Button Configuration Recap: = (+) = (+) = (+++) = (+++)#265-272: Today's section opens with two repetitions of a simple four note pattern. In cases like this, I usually make an effort to alternate between both hands for comfort and ease of performance. I begin by tapping at #265, then , then , then . I repeat these inputs for #269-272. #273-280: Like the previous section, we're dealing with two repetitions of a four note pattern. Unfortunately, the presence of double-notes at both ends of each pattern complicate the two-handed alternating approach we would usually take with patterns like this. I instead like to play these by pressing at #273, tapping twice with my right hand, and pressing again. I repeat these inputs for #277-280.#281-305: This one's a monster (you can tell because I made the font size a little bit bigger)! Up to this point in our analysis, I've spent more time with this section of notes than I have with any other. I've been trapped in practice mode purgatory going back and forth between several different methods of attack for this section. Method #1 (problematic, but has potential): Between #280 and #281, I quickly arrange my right hand's fingers into a claw hold with both my thumb and index hovering over the face buttons. I press both and with my right thumb to cover the double note at #281 followed by a tap of with my index and a tap of with my left hand. I then repeat this sequence of inputs from #284-293. From #294-305, I continue pressing and with my right thumb, but I begin tapping with my index and tap with my left hand. Originally, I believed this method would be the best possible distribution of work between my hands. I couldn't take advantage of any sly button configuration setups because I needed my current setup to handle the chart's ending later on (alongside several other sections), but I also didn't want to force one of my thumbs to handle all of the single notes. Lightening the load with my index finger seemed like the obvious route forward. Sadly, my optimism for this method was short lived. I've spent at least five hours attempting method #1 with little success. In theory, these inputs should work, but, in practice, something always falls apart whether I fail to correctly gauge the speed of the pattern or desync my left hand's dpad input with my right hand's face button inputs. Muscle memory, I assumed, would stitch everything together after awhile, but it just hasn't happened yet. Out of desperation, I tried another approach...Method #2 (very problematic; low potential): Between #280 and #281, I place my right hand over the center of the controller with my thumb hovering over the dpad and my pinkie hovering over the face buttons. I press + with my left thumb to perform the double note at #281 and use my right hand to alternate between tapping with my pinkie and with my thumb. I repeat these inputs from #284-293. From #294-305, I continue pressing + with my left thumb, but I begin tapping with my pinkie and with my thumb. The reason this method is tempting is because it's much easier, for me anyway, to gauge my sense of speed with my right hand fully extended and bouncing between two sequential inputs. My left hand handles the double-notes while my right hand handles the singles. Sure, this method may be incredibly uncomfortable, but all it took was one or two successful performances for me to start seriously considering its potential. Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems with this method has to do with a conflict of input. While your left thumb is pressed against the bottom-left of the dpad, you're unable to press or and vice versa. This means each dpad input must be performed with no overlap (quick taps can help) otherwise one of your fingers will be met with a rigid dpad and a missed note. At the high speed that this pattern demands, this requires abnormally precise input and an obscene amount of practice. Some players might be able to make it work, but, after sinking over two hours into it, I'm not convinced it's for me. Method #3 (hard to perform, but seemingly optimal): Before attempting any of these methods, I found a couple videos of other players playing this chart alongside a gamepad viewer. Both players performed this section the same way by pressing all of the double-notes with their left thumb ( + ) and handling all of the single notes with taps from their right thumb ( or ). Because I believed my right thumb was not quick enough to handle all of the single notes by itself, I quickly disregarded this approach in favor of the two methods you've seen above. While still scrambling for a solution, I figured I should at least try this method to rule it out definitively. As expected, double-tapping the single notes with one thumb proved to be exhausting at such high speeds. My timing was all over the place and my rate of success was almost nonexistent. But, after spending some serious time persisting with this method, I started looking at the notes differently... Instead of perceiving the sequence as a steady stream of notes, I mentally divided the section into multiple adjacent triplets with double notes at their centers (, (+), ). The reason I'm imagining them as "triplets" is because triplets, rapid three notes patterns, are usually played with two right-handed inputs and one left-handed input on DS4. As ridiculous as it sounds, something clicked because my muscle memory felt those imaginary triplets and thought, "Oh triplets! Yeah, I can play triplets no problem!" Each set of two single notes transformed into the two ends of adjacent triplets which, for some inexplicable reason, felt totally natural to perform. I don't know if there's a name for this phenomenon or if I've even described it in a way that anyone can understand, but I was thrilled to have found a method that might actually work!Method #3.1 (minor adjustment): After practicing method #3 for awhile, I noticed that the start of the sequence was consistently the hardest part to perform because I was performing two stray parts of a triplet ((+) followed by ) before transitioning into the series of imaginary "full" triplets I conjured up for my psychological comfort. In an effort to make this section easier, I changed up the beginning by pressing (+) with my right thumb, tapping , then immediately moving both thumbs towards their usual position for spamming triplets, as I normally would in method #3. This quick adjustment almost feels like a way to "rev up" my fingers and makes the transition between the partial triplet at the beginning and full triplets afterwards much smoother. #306-322: Now that we've seen our first monster, it's time for a cooldown. I tap three times for #306-308 and handle the upcoming 360 by pressing , , , and . I slide my left hand's analog stick to the right as soon as the 360 ends to play the slider note. At #314, I tap , , , and followed by a reverse 360 that I play by pressing , , , and . As soon as the reverse 360 ends, I slide my right hand's analog stick to the left and hold for a brief moment to perform the extended slider note. #323-330: Here we have two repetitions of a four note pattern. I play these two somewhat improperly by tapping L1 at #323 to handle the double note and sliding my right thumb along and before tapping L1 again. I repeat these inputs for #327-330. You may wish to substitute one or more of the face button inputs with a dpad input to avoid sliding your thumb. #331-339: We have another two repetitions of a four note pattern followed by an extended slider note. I begin by tapping R1 at #331 to handle the double note before tapping , , and R1 again. I repeat these inputs for #335-338. I then slide the right analog stick to the left and briefly hold to perform the extended slider note at #339.The 75 emoticon limit strikes again! For the rest of this post, we'll be using these symbols instead: ↓,→,↑,← (to represent dpad input) and 〇, ❑, ▲, X. #340-358: Without the assistance of the button configuration options, this upcoming section would be extremely difficult to perform. Thankfully, we're able to make full use of our L1 and R1 button assignments to carry us through this without much headache. In fact, we'll even be able to alternate between both hands for the entirety of the pattern (which is helpful in improving consistency)! To begin, I tap L1 at #340 followed immediately by an X. From this point, I mentally divide the rest of this section into triplets. To handle the first triplet (#342-344), I tap ←, then R1, then ← again. To handle the second triplet (#345-347), I tap X, then L1, then X again. From #348-358, I repeat these two triplets until we reach the hold note at #358. Once we reach #358, I press and hold R1 followed by pressing and holding L2 to transfer the hold to free up our index finger.#359-372: Now for one last cooldown as we fade out to the end of today's analysis. You should still be holding L2 from the end of the previous section. At #359, press 〇, X, X, and 〇. At #363, tap X, slide right with either analog stick, slide left, and tap 〇. At #367, tap X, slide left with either analog stick, slide right, and press and hold X. With X held, press and hold R2 to transfer the hold and free up your thumb. Now let go of X and L2. Holds at #358 and #370 should now be stacked onto your R2. From here, slide either analog stick to the right and briefly hold to perform the extended slider note. Press and hold L2 to perform the quad note at #372 which will end the previous hold and initiate a new one as our section comes to an end. Let go of all other buttons.Proficiency Test #3 - Passed!!At the end of each chunk of analysis, I include a video of me clearing the section we've just analyzed three times consecutively in practice mode. Consistency is important if I ever hope to chain this monstrous thing together! Because this section is being performed in practice mode, note that the combo count has been reset and will not match the numbers included in the section above. This may make identifying each section slightly more difficult. I actually finished this Proficiency Test just a few hours before posting this update! My hands were getting shaky during the 3rd consecutive clear (I filmed 6-7 clips of me getting two-in-a-row), so my accuracy started tanking towards the end. Either way, I'm really excited to have achieved some level of consistency over this section! Closing Thoughts I feel as though I've just discovered my white whale is mortal... We still have a long way to go, but seeing myself deconstruct one of the hardest sections of the chart and actually play it perfectly feels incredible. There's another monstrous section in the next update (I'm looking at you #435-447), so I'm gearing up for the worst. I have no idea how to play it, but I'm going to give myself a little extra time to practice (and maybe a day to relax) before posting the next update, so you'll see me back here with #4 in 6-7 days! Thank you for reading and I'll see you all soon with some extra late replies! Edited December 8, 2022 by ExistentialSolid 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 On 11/27/2022 at 4:56 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: Practice Mode is undoubtedly one of the greatest tools for improvement. Some will defend the lack of it, claiming that no practice mode forces you to get better, but I don't buy it. A couple of songs in F 2nd: I'll Miku-Miku You♪ (For Reals) (7★) [#249-258] and Glory 3usi9 (8★) [#443-462] have really simple charts with one tricky part each. What could have been Perfected in a few hours ended up taking weeks because, even with YouTube videos in slow-motion to help, there was just no way to build muscle memory while getting true feedback on those tricky parts outside of playing the entire song and hoping for the best. I wager a proper practice mode would have saved me 100 or even 200 hours on my journey up to this point. Thinking about this did spur me to do some research, though, and I'm just now finding out that PPD -- a Diva simulator for PC -- seems to support F 2nd charting (at least somewhat). This could be my ticket to finally completing F 2nd. I'll look into it ASAP. Moments like #249-258 in I'll Miku-Miku You (For Reals) are exactly why I felt discouraged in F/F 2nd and had to move on. When you don't get a chance to practice the difficult parts of a song right away through something like practice mode, it's all too easy to set the song aside and think "eh, I'll get back to this one later." But, when you get in the habit of setting difficult songs aside, your skill level can quickly stagnate since you're rarely pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Something that's always fascinated (and terrified) me is that the actual arcade cabinet has no practice mode. Maybe the note patterns that give me the most trouble feel more intuitive on the arcade's button layout, but I can't imagine having to spend 2 minutes just to get one shot at this chart's ending. Even with practice mode, I'm going to be spending dozens of hours coming to terms with everything I have left. I'd absolutely lose my mind without it. I hope PPD ends up being worthwhile! I've thought about downloading it myself, but I'm not really sure if my cheap laptop can handle it. If I had a beefier setup, I'd also be tempted to grab the Eden Project mod for Mega Mix+ (for the fun custom charts) and maybe Project Heartbeat. On 11/27/2022 at 4:56 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: The things we do for points, huh. There a lot of holds during this slow part, and I'm sure doing them all correctly makes the difference between showing up in the top 10, and just getting Perfect. Besides multi-notes, holds are the other thing I'm dreading coming back to, lol. A lot of combos were dropped fumbling around with holds during my time with FT, and I probably could have squeezed out a few more Perfects just disregarding them, but Perfects under 100% hurt me more than just dropping combo, so I'll just have to learn to deal with that somehow. I dreaded holds at first too, though I can only imagine how much tougher they would be on an arcade controller. Since most holds on a DS4 are quickly transferred to the shoulder buttons and forgotten at higher level play, they sort of just blend into the background. On arcade, you have to deal with "hold greed" and knowing when to let go whereas, on DS4, holds get to drag on as long as possible with minimal effort. Rare sections like this may involve the occasional hand gymnastics, but they remind me that I have it easy all things considered. Perfects below 100% bug me too, haha! To this day, my only Extreme perfect below 100% is Paradichlorobenzene and I can't help but scowl a little bit every time I scroll by. The max possible % is a fairly generous 102.83%, but the chart is such a nightmare to play on controller that I haven't had the stomach to do it all again. For a 9 star, it's harder than most 10s. On 11/27/2022 at 4:56 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: This is great to know. I've never actually seen discussion on the timing windows for notes in a console rhythm game before now, but it's cool to see that it was figured out for Future Tone. If I ever get good enough at Diva, it would be fun to go for some F0 scores, but my experience from other rhythm games has been that chasing 100% accuracy scores too early is often to the detriment of overall ability, so I'll keep the focus on getting to those 10 stars ASAP. I couldn't find the picture to include in the original post, but there's also a visual indicator of "early", "perfect", and "late" cools that correspond nicely with the timing window. Each cool has a shaded area on the bottom that is slanted upwards (early), slanted downwards (late), or has no slant at all (perfect). Even though it's been right in front of me for as long as I've played the game, I never noticed until I ran into a forum post explaining it a couple months back. Since the "cool" icon is constantly on the move and the slant isn't immediately obvious, it's really hard to gather any useful feedback from it though unless you were to film and play back your runs. Putting off the accuracy grind until you've hit some of the game's highest peaks is probably for the best. Since there were so many moments in Future Tone where I felt "stuck", I started chasing scores in easier songs fairly early on, but, because my skills were still improving, I found myself going back to those same easy songs 2-3 times (often months or years apart) to chase high scores again since my standards had gradually risen alongside my skill. Had I just waited until I could handle most of the game's 10 star charts, I could have saved several hundred hours easily (though a case could also be made that practice like this was what helped me rise to that level in the first place, so it's tough to say for sure). On 11/27/2022 at 4:56 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: Anyway, great work summarizing and executing this current section. It's a helpful read, as it's gotten the cogs turning in my head thinking about how I'll handle holds and switches myself when I get back to FT, depending on what control scheme I go with, at least. Best of luck getting the next section down soon. Your luck pulled through! ? I appreciate it! Now I've gotta buckle down for the faster parts of the chart. I'm finding it much easier to get exhausted, so I'm worried my progress may start to slow to a crawl over these next few days/weeks. I'll keep at it though! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AihaLoveleaf Posted December 5, 2022 Share Posted December 5, 2022 On 12/1/2022 at 11:29 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Moments like #249-258 in I'll Miku-Miku You (For Reals) are exactly why I felt discouraged in F/F 2nd and had to move on. When you don't get a chance to practice the difficult parts of a song right away through something like practice mode, it's all too easy to set the song aside and think "eh, I'll get back to this one later." But, when you get in the habit of setting difficult songs aside, your skill level can quickly stagnate since you're rarely pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. I can't blame anybody for dipping out early on getting some of the Perfects in F/F2; it really is brutal without practice mode, lol. Fortunately, I was at least aware that if I got into the habit of saving a song for later, that later would never actually arrive. I always made sure to play troubling charts like Miku-Miku at least once a day, with no real expectations going in, and I was slowly able to tip the meter of progress in my favor. On 12/1/2022 at 11:29 PM, ExistentialSolid said: I hope PPD ends up being worthwhile! I've thought about downloading it myself, but I'm not really sure if my cheap laptop can handle it. If I had a beefier setup, I'd also be tempted to grab the Eden Project mod for Mega Mix+ (for the fun custom charts) and maybe Project Heartbeat. Unfortunately, there were no ports of F2's Intense Voice to PPD, so that plan was a bust. ? PPD and MM+ on PC should still be stellar resources for FT players though, based on the practice charts I've seen on hisokeee's channel. On 12/1/2022 at 11:29 PM, ExistentialSolid said: I couldn't find the picture to include in the original post, but there's also a visual indicator of "early", "perfect", and "late" cools that correspond nicely with the timing window. Each cool has a shaded area on the bottom that is slanted upwards (early), slanted downwards (late), or has no slant at all (perfect). Even though it's been right in front of me for as long as I've played the game, I never noticed until I ran into a forum post explaining it a couple months back. Since the "cool" icon is constantly on the move and the slant isn't immediately obvious, it's really hard to gather any useful feedback from it though unless you were to film and play back your runs. That is insane -- I never would have noticed something like that, even while watching YouTube videos. Besides the general lack of practice modes, my second biggest complaint with a lot of console rhythm games has been the lack of feedback on early and late notes. The rhythm game osu! on PC gives the most detailed and actionable feedback that I have seen in a rhythm game so far. In that game, there is a bar located in the bottom-center of the screen that reacts in real time as you play through the song: This is pretty cool because you not only know if you're early or late, but you can also immediately see to what degree, as the arrow will shift further depending on how far off center you are. Secondly, the game will show you your average error of both early and late notes on the results screen: Feedback like this is godlike, because you can run some simple math on the error margins (-8.24 and +5.61 in this case) to find your perfect offset on a per-song basis (which would be around -3ms for this specific song). This makes going for 100% accuracy scores infinitely easier to approach, and saves hours of trial and error. We would all have a lot more F0 plays in our records if Diva games offered us such detailed feedback. On 11/30/2022 at 2:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: #281-305: This one's a monster (you can tell because I made the font size a little bit bigger)! This is definitely a monster. Sections like this feel perfectly fit to the arcade controller, as I imagine players would focus on the center while slapping the exterior buttons for the single notes, which I find to be easier for playing fast notes compared to relying on thumb speed. I can see why so much thought had to go into how to approach this section with the DualShock, and without a macro, because my brain immediately shuts down when trying to think about it, lol. On 11/30/2022 at 2:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Instead of perceiving the sequence as a steady stream of notes, I mentally divided the section into multiple adjacent triplets with double notes at their centers (, (+), ). As ridiculous as it sounds, something clicked because my muscle memory felt those imaginary triplets and thought, "Oh triplets! Yeah, I can play triplets no problem!" Each set of two single notes transformed into the two ends of adjacent triplets which, for some inexplicable reason, felt totally natural to perform. I don't know if there's a name for this phenomenon or if I've even described it in a way that anyone can understand, but I was thrilled to have found a method that might actually work! This is a pretty neat breakthrough, however. Even better that you were able to account for the beginning of the pattern with some additional trickery. Little mental tricks like this are always nice when you can find them, and even if they aren't actually triples, it doesn't matter as long as it actually works. ? On 11/30/2022 at 2:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: #340-358: Without the assistance of the button configuration options, this upcoming section would be extremely difficult to perform. This section looks like a beast, regardless of the control method. I can see the logic in it, but the execution is no joke. I can feel my body stiffen up while watching that gif, as if it's recoiling at the thought of the hours of brutal practice it would take to get consistent with these 18 notes, lol. On 11/30/2022 at 2:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: I feel as though I've just discovered my white whale is mortal... On 11/30/2022 at 2:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: We still have a long way to go, but seeing myself deconstruct one of the hardest sections of the chart and actually play it perfectly feels incredible. These are incredible feelings to experience. To go from barely passing a chart, to finally hitting that tipping point where you realize "Holy shit, I can probably full combo this song" always feels great. It's easy for us to get lost in the failure of our current attempts of a difficult challenge, but as you've shown, taking the time to recognize how far you've come along does wonders for morale. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 7, 2022 Author Share Posted December 7, 2022 (edited) The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (EXEX) - Update #4 In this update, we'll be breaking down notes 373-465 of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku's Extra Extreme chart and testing for proficiency! I'll be playing on PS4's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone, but the chart we'll be analyzing can also be found in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix (Switch) and Mega Mix+ (PC). As the next monstrous section looms over the horizon, the seas are growing dark, the chart is getting faster, and the rusty edges I've kept concealed beneath a thin veneer of confidence are starting to break out in unsightly patches across the hull of my ship. Section #427-447 threatens to cut my voyage short with a pattern that, at the time of writing, I've been unable to consistently play. Like the previous update, I'll be outlining several possible methods I've tried in my attempts to perform this section below. Analysis: #373-465If you'd like to follow along with my analysis, I've linked a helpful reference video here! Each set of numbers below corresponds to a grouping of notes contained in the chart (chronologically ordered). A combo count will be displayed in the reference video that you can use to identify any particular grouping of notes should you wish to skip around.Button Configuration Recap: = (+) = (+) = (+++) = (+++)#373-380: Today's section opens with a high-speed warmup that carries its momentum throughout the rest of this update. It can be easy to get overwhelmed or exhausted when practicing high speed sections like this, but it's important not to get discouraged. Pacing yourself is key! At #373-375, we've got a basic triplet that I play by alternating between both hands. I tap , then , and . We then have single notes from #376-379 consisting of two notes and two notes. I use my right hand to quickly tap all four, but it may be less exhausting to alternate between both hands. With an extended slider note at #380, I slide the right analog stick to the left and briefly hold for the max slide bonus.#381-388: Much like the previous section, we encounter a basic triplet at #381-383 that I play by tapping , then , and . For the single notes that follow, I tap twice and twice (alternating between both hands is optional). At #388, I again slide the right analog stick to the left and briefly hold for the max slide bonus.#389-397: We're picking up the pace with two basic triplets this time. At #389-391, I tap , then , and . At #392-394, I similarly tap , then , and . I then tap twice for the single notes that follow. At #397, I slide the left analog stick to the right and briefly hold for the max slide bonus. #398-406: Like the previous section, we've got two more basic triplets that I play by tapping , then , and followed by , then , and . I tap twice for the single notes that follow and slide the right analog stick to the left and briefly hold for the max slide bonus. #407-426: Blending speed with complexity, this section is a rare instance of slider note integration into triplet patterns. Method #1 (what you probably "should" do): If you can, it's best to play the complex triplets in this section the same way you would play any of the other triplets we've seen up to this point. By that, I mean you should use one hand to perform the 1st and 3rd inputs of each triplet while leaving the 2nd input for your other hand. As such, at #407, you would press , then , and . At #410, you would press , then , then slide the left analog stick to the right. At #412, you would then repeat the inputs you performed at #407-409 before sliding the left analog stick to the right and briefly holding for the max slide bonus. Likewise, at #417, you would press , then , and . At #410, you would press , then , then slide the right analog stick to the left. At #422, you would then repeat the inputs you performed at #417-419 before sliding the left analog stick to the right and briefly holding for the max slide bonus.Method #2 (what I actually do): At some point in my DIVA career, I started to get lazy when performing complex triplets and came up with a variety of alternate performance methods to prevent me from getting exhausted. Some of these are risky and often produce sloppy results (low cools), so I can't really recommend them. Either way, I'll briefly describe some of them below using this section as a template. At #407 and #412, I press , then slide my right thumb across and . Likewise, at #417 I slide my right thumb across and before pressing . Finally, at #422, I use my left thumb to perform a 180 by sliding across , , and . #427–447: We're here at last... the main event of today's update and the bane of my existence this past week. Before we look at a few ways to play this pattern, I'd like to cover the first few notes, which I always perform the same way. At #427, I press L1 to perform the double note, tap for the single note that follows, and slide the left analog stick to the right. At #430, I tap , L1, and before sliding the left analog stick to the right for the slider note. I tap one last time at #434 before we reach the monster at #435-447.What makes #435-447 so difficult is the integration of double-notes into such a high speed pattern. Ordinarily, you'd need two-hands to perform these double-notes on a DS4 unless you were to take advantage of the button configuration options or use an extra finger. Having to juggle the rest of the single notes alongside these double-notes at such high speeds requires some out-of-the-box thinking. Let's dive in! Method #1: I took a cue from my recent success in the last update by returning to one of the videos that included a button viewer to see how other players played this section on a DS4. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to replicate what I found... In the video I linked above, the player, starting at #435, plays each (+) double note by pressing both of the corresponding face buttons, presumably with two fingers. The player then presses , then , then again before repeating this set of inputs from #439-446 and sliding the right analog stick to the right. By using this method, you're alternating between both hands throughout the entire pattern's duration which, I'd imagine, promotes consistency and helps you get a good sense of speed to avoid desyncs between your fingers. The problem, for me anyway, is being able to alternate my right hand's input between (+) and while also alternating input from my left hand. As much as I've tried, I couldn't figure out how to perform these inputs even once successfully (never mind consistently), so I decided to experiment a little to see if I could find something easier to perform.Method #2: As I began experimenting, I started trying to play #435, along with every subsequent double-note, with a quick tap of L1 to take advantage of my current button configuration. From there, I tap , then slide my thumb across and . I then repeat these inputs twice from #439-446 before sliding the left analog stick to the right. To my surprise, it didn't take long before I was able to successfully play the section, but consistency never really seemed to develop no matter how long I practiced. I often go too fast or too slow (it's difficult to get a sense of how fast I'm going with method #2's inputs), overlap inputs, or perform inputs out of order altogether. If my experience with last update's section #281-305 taught me anything, it's that I might be better off practicing methods that are more reliable, like method #1, even if they prove to be more difficult to physically perform. The 75 emoticon limit strikes again! For the rest of this post, we'll be using these symbols instead: ↓,→,↑,← (to represent dpad input) and 〇, ❑, ▲, X. Method #3: Still determined to find an "easy" shortcut to success. I persisted with a modified version of method #2 where I'd tap L1 at #435 before rolling my thumb along X and ❑ and, with my left hand, tapping ↓ on the dpad. I'd repeat these inputs from #439-446 before sliding the left analog stick to the right. After several hours of practice, I couldn't develop consistency with either methods #2 or #3. I suspect I need to stop using L1 for this pattern and focus my efforts on either trying method #1 some more or on finding a way to perform this section using only the face buttons and dpad. When I've finally developed consistency, I'll revisit this section in the next update. In the meantime, I'll be wracking my brain for new ideas and giving method #1 more attention.#448-456: Hot on the heels of the previous section, I quickly tap R1 (to perform each double note) four times starting at #448. I then tap X, ←, X, and ← before sliding the right analog stick to the left and briefly holding to earn the max slide bonus (note that the spam at #452-455 is deceptively fast).#457-465: As this section comes to a close, I tap L1 (to perform each double note) four times starting at #448. I then quickly tap ❑, ↓, ❑, and ↓ before sliding the left analog stick to the right and briefly holding to earn the max slide bonus (note that the spam at #461-464, like #452-455 before it, is deceptively fast). Proficiency Test #4 - Not Cleared (Yet!) At the end of each chunk of analysis, I normally include a video of me clearing the section we've just analyzed three times consecutively in practice mode. However, because I haven't managed to consistently perform #427-447, I've decided to instead include a 5 minute video* of me practicing parts of this section so you can see where I stand. In the video, I do a quick pass over all of the notes in this section along with the notes in the upcoming update before spending time focusing specifically on this update's section. I wrap up with some worn out #427-447 practice using method #2.Because this section is being performed in practice mode, note that the combo count has been reset and will not match the numbers included in the section above. This may make identifying each section slightly more difficult.*Note: Video is linked here instead of being posted outright due to some unusual PSNP editing obstacles! Closing Thoughts Any worthwhile voyage is accompanied by obstacles and setbacks. I've been expecting resistance for as long as I've planned to Perfect this chart, so I'm not too bothered by my failure to learn #373-465 in the time I allotted myself at the end of the last update (6-7 days). I underestimated the amount of practice I'd need to put in to consistently clear this section and possibly spent a little too much time procrastinating in other games. I'll spend another 6-7 days practicing this section along with the section I had originally planned for my 5th update, #466-586, and see where my progress stands after that. If I'm not able to perform #373-465 or the next update's section within that time frame, then I'll postpone the next update until I have something new to report! This means that the next update, provided I make progress, will be posted in the next 6-7 days. If not, then I'll be disappearing for a little bit while I spend some extra time practicing. Giving up isn't an option, so you'll hear from me sooner or later–don't worry! Thank you for reading and I'll be back for some extra late replies very soon! Edited December 14, 2022 by ExistentialSolid 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 11, 2022 Author Share Posted December 11, 2022 On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: That is insane -- I never would have noticed something like that, even while watching YouTube videos. Besides the general lack of practice modes, my second biggest complaint with a lot of console rhythm games has been the lack of feedback on early and late notes. The rhythm game osu! on PC gives the most detailed and actionable feedback that I have seen in a rhythm game so far. In that game, there is a bar located in the bottom-center of the screen that reacts in real time as you play through the song: This is pretty cool because you not only know if you're early or late, but you can also immediately see to what degree, as the arrow will shift further depending on how far off center you are. Secondly, the game will show you your average error of both early and late notes on the results screen: Feedback like this is godlike, because you can run some simple math on the error margins (-8.24 and +5.61 in this case) to find your perfect offset on a per-song basis (which would be around -3ms for this specific song). This makes going for 100% accuracy scores infinitely easier to approach, and saves hours of trial and error. We would all have a lot more F0 plays in our records if Diva games offered us such detailed feedback. I wish more rhythm games riffed off each other in the same way that other genre leaders do. Actionable feedback, practice mode, calibration settings, button remapping—features like this should be the bare minimum from any competitive rhythm game. Having a bar at the bottom of the screen that reacts to my input's timing would make it so much easier to get a feel for how fast or slow I'm going when I can't otherwise tell. One of the most unfortunate things about DIVA charting is that the visual arrangement of notes in a flashy or otherwise unusual way can artificially inflate the difficulty. The ending, where the notes are twisting into the shape of wings is a prime example. It's brutal to tell how fast or slow you're going with the notes scattered across the screen. You kind of just have to poke around in the dark until you happen to get the timing right. Had the notes been arranged in clean horizontal sequences (where you can more easily gauge your sense of speed), I suspect the difficulty would drop dramatically. Not to get too sidetracked, but I've thought about getting into osu! for years. High level players reporting wrist pain is what ultimately scared me away. It looks like a blast though (I played a lot of Elite Beat Agents on DS when I was younger which seems to share a lot of osu!'s DNA). Also, what is this mini-GIF sorcery?! Look like I've still got a lot to learn on the presentation front. On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: Unfortunately, there were no ports of F2's Intense Voice to PPD, so that plan was a bust. PPD and MM+ on PC should still be stellar resources for FT players though, based on the practice charts I've seen on hisokeee's channel. Dang. ? I'm sure you'll manage to get F2's Intense Voice perfect with time, but it sucks to hear you won't have an easy way to practice the chart (other than looping sections of YouTube videos or using slow-mo). I wonder if PPD has any of X's charts. It may not be a total wash if it you're able to practice some of the harder charts through there since X doesn't have a practice mode either. On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: This is definitely a monster. Sections like this feel perfectly fit to the arcade controller, as I imagine players would focus on the center while slapping the exterior buttons for the single notes, which I find to be easier for playing fast notes compared to relying on thumb speed. I can see why so much thought had to go into how to approach this section with the DualShock, and without a macro, because my brain immediately shuts down when trying to think about it, lol. Even with years to think about it, I'm still shutting down trying to process sections of this chart. ? I've been running into some unexpected hurdles with some of the next section's patterns in particular. They looked perfectly playable from afar, but when I'm trying to execute, my fingers go "no thanks." On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: This is a pretty neat breakthrough, however. Even better that you were able to account for the beginning of the pattern with some additional trickery. Little mental tricks like this are always nice when you can find them, and even if they aren't actually triples, it doesn't matter as long as it actually works. Mental tricks are so few and far between for me that I always get really excited when that burst of inspiration hits! I can't even really remember the last time a mental trick carried me through a section, but I bet I'd still be trying out different methods had it not clicked then and there. On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: This section looks like a beast, regardless of the control method. I can see the logic in it, but the execution is no joke. I can feel my body stiffen up while watching that gif, as if it's recoiling at the thought of the hours of brutal practice it would take to get consistent with these 18 notes, lol. The execution definitely isn't playing around. I sort of skipped over the amount of time I'd spent practicing this section when I covered it in update #3, but it felt like ages. In fact, much of the time I spent practicing both this section and #281-305 took place while I was still writing updates #1 and #2. I played it totally differently at first with a much heavier emphasis on my right hand. Timing felt funky though so I checked to see if I could play it by alternating between each hand and, sure enough, that little change made it feel much more doable. On 12/4/2022 at 11:51 PM, AihaLoveleaf said: These are incredible feelings to experience. To go from barely passing a chart, to finally hitting that tipping point where you realize "Holy shit, I can probably full combo this song" always feels great. It's easy for us to get lost in the failure of our current attempts of a difficult challenge, but as you've shown, taking the time to recognize how far you've come along does wonders for morale. I don't know about you, but whenever I hit that tipping point in a chart I've been really pushing on, I enter a feverish state where the only thing in the world that matters to me is that full combo. My hour count starts to sky rocket and my eyes may as well be made of glass. Right now, I'm still wading through practice mode muck, spending a couple hours a day learning to play each section, but when the day comes that I play that ending perfectly, I'll be in another world until I earn that perfect. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
You Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 (edited) On 08/12/2022 at 5:18 AM, ExistentialSolid said: #427–447: We're here at last... the main event of today's update and the bane of my existence this past week. Before we look at a few ways to play this pattern, I'd like to cover the first few notes, which I always perform the same way. At #427, I press L1 to perform the double note, tap for the single note that follows, and slide the left analog stick to the right. At #430, I tap , L1, and before sliding the left analog stick to the right for the slider note. I tap one last time at #434 before we reach the monster at #435-447. May I ask, is there any point when learning how to do this... That you just think maybe I should be learning the piano, or something? lol I also think watching the gif, might it not be better to just tore memorise the button order in its entirety on this part of trying to work out what is going on the screen here. Although I think that is (for me anywa) what I find a bit annoying about these Diva games is half the time these notes are not making notes / good enough feedback to make me feel like I am playing any part of the tune I guess, that's just me though lol Edited December 11, 2022 by enaysoft 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AihaLoveleaf Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 14 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said: Not to get too sidetracked, but I've thought about getting into osu! for years. High level players reporting wrist pain is what ultimately scared me away. It looks like a blast though (I played a lot of Elite Beat Agents on DS when I was younger which seems to share a lot of osu!'s DNA). You know how you see frequent warning posts on these forums for Genshin Impact and Elder Scrolls Online? osu! is basically the rhythm game equivalent of those two games -- once you get sucked in, it's unlikely we hear from you again for your next 2000+ gaming hours. It's highly competitive, addictive, and anybody can find their niche to shine in. Songs not only have Global Top 50 rankings, but Country Rankings, and even individual rankings for mods. Imagine Diva songs with leaderboards for each Challenge Item, and each combination of Challenge Items -- it's something like that. RSI's are a big issue, and end a lot of osu! careers at low and high levels. The game allows you to restart songs with a single button -- not pressing , and , but an actual single-button restart, which makes it easy to binge a single chart for hours - often to your detriment - chasing the adrenaline rush of Full Combo or a 100% accuracy play. It's bound to lead a lot of players to prolonged or permanent injury, as you've mentioned with wrist pain complaints from high level players. All of that is probably to say don't do it! ? At least not while you still care about trophies and experiencing a variety of games. It'd be a different story if you were active in the game before getting into trophies, and were just playing for maintenance and fun, but the hours you'd have to put in right now are probably better spent on Diva, other rhythm games, and your backlog. 14 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said: Also, what is this mini-GIF sorcery?! Look like I've still got a lot to learn on the presentation front. ezgif has cropping options that you can make use of after uploading your mp4. I made use of it to crop the gifs in my current forum signature, and you can easily use it on gameplay clips if you want to create a focal point. Also, ezgif won't put a watermark on it like clideo did. ? On 12/7/2022 at 2:18 PM, ExistentialSolid said: #427–447: We're here at last... the main event of today's update and the bane of my existence this past week. Those triples are where my brain officially nopes out, lol. FT's triples are not something that F/F2 prepared me for, which I found out when I recently downloaded an Edit chart created as a "port" of Arifureta Sekai Seifuku to F 2nd. Triples like (#253-255) and (#256-258) are probably bread'n'butter patterns for FT players at a 9★+ level, but my F/F2 brain struggles to translate them into inputs for my hands to execute in time. By the time Chance Time kicks in (#659-725), forget about it. ? It's comical how even FT's 9 stars already dwarf 2D Dream Fever and Intense Voice, because it took a while for me to even crank out a Standard rating on that Edit. On 12/7/2022 at 2:18 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Method #2 (what I actually do): At some point in my DIVA career, I started to get lazy when performing complex triplets and came up with a variety of alternate performance methods to prevent me from getting exhausted. Some of these are risky and often produce sloppy results (low cools), so I can't really recommend them. As mentioned above, F/F2 doesn't have these sorts of triples, but I can still relate to your laziness in a way. The "proper" way to play F/F2 charts is "probably" to fully alternate as much as possible, but I found my coordination tanked if I was alternating buttons for 1/4 and 1/8 strings that eventually led into note switches, so I generally try to play one-handed as much as possible until something forces me to use two, like an arrow note or 1/16ths. The downside is that I had to spend extra time building up one-handed speed compared to players already comfortable just fully alternating everything, but it did eventually work out at least. On 12/7/2022 at 2:18 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Any worthwhile voyage is accompanied by obstacles and setbacks. I've been expecting resistance for as long as I've planned to Perfect this chart, so I'm not too bothered by my failure to learn #373-465 in the time I allotted myself at the end of the last update (6-7 days). I underestimated the amount of practice I'd need to put in to consistently clear this section and possibly spent a little too much time procrastinating in other games. Bound to hit an obstacle eventually with a chart this demanding. You'll get there, though. A lot can happen in a week of Diva, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a positive update soon enough. ✊ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 14, 2022 Author Share Posted December 14, 2022 (edited) The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (EXEX) - Update #5 In this update, we'll be revisiting notes 373-465 of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku's Extra Extreme chart and testing once more for proficiency! I'll be playing on PS4's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone, but the chart we'll be analyzing can also be found in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix (Switch) and Mega Mix+ (PC). While I reassess my proficiency over the section we covered in the previous update, I'm going to be focusing in specifically on #435-456 today as we reexamine a few core sections of the chart. After failing Proficiency Test #4 last week, I've gone back to the drawing board determined to find a solution to my consistency troubles. Let's see how it all shook out! RE: Analysis: #435-456If you'd like to follow along with my analysis, I've linked a helpful reference video here! Each set of numbers below corresponds to a grouping of notes contained in the chart (chronologically ordered). A combo count will be displayed in the reference video that you can use to identify any particular grouping of notes should you wish to skip around.Button Configuration Recap: = (+) = (+) = (+++) = (+++)#435-447 (equivalent to #63-75 in the practice mode gif below): We're still up against last week's monster. I failed to make a breakthrough in the last update, but let's find out if another week of practice can turn things around... I believed, at the end of the last update, that I would need to start practicing this section without the use of (mapped to +) because I couldn't find a way to incorporate this tempting shortcut into the mix without seriously compromising my rate of consistency. Let me explain what I mean as I cover a bit of recap. Suppose at #435 (#63 in the gif) I were to tap with my left hand with the intention of alternating between both hands for the pattern's duration. I would need to tap with my right hand, which isn't especially difficult, but then I'd have to then tap with my left before again tapping with my right (performed in sets of three between #435-446 followed by an extended slider note at #447). At such high speeds, I don't know how to switch my left hand from to quickly enough to perform this pattern while also sandwiching an with my right hand between every input. I haven't built up the dexterity to perform this sort of input and there's little else in the game that could have prepared me to play like this on a DS4. Okay, so if we can't cleanly alternate between both hands while also using , what options would we have that still includes this button? Well, if we accept that things are going to get messy, we can try performing two consecutive inputs with the left hand before performing two more consecutive inputs with the right hand. I described in the last update method #2 which involved tapping and with my left hand before rolling over and with my right thumb (performed in sets of three between #435-446 followed by an extended slider note at #447). While these inputs aren't terribly difficult to perform, it's difficult to match the required speed since I can't tell how fast or slow I'm going. Going just quickly enough without any misinput seemed to happen about 5% of the time even after hours of practice which is nowhere near where it needs to be if I want to Perfect this chart. If we abandon and try to perform the pattern like the player in the video with a gamepad viewer, then we would need to perform the double-notes by pressing + with, I assume, two fingers on my right hand. We would then tap with my left hand, tap with my right, and again tap with my left (method #1 performed in sets of three between #435-446 followed by an extended slider note at #447). Remember how I didn't know how to switch my left hand from to earlier? Well, my right hand isn't exactly any better. I couldn't figure out to alternate my right hand between + and quickly enough while also alternating input from my left hand. Feeling frustrated and confused... I had an epiphany. Method #4: While practicing method #1, I was trying to alternate between + and with two fingers (thumb and index), but then I realized, "Wait... do I really need to use two fingers to play these inputs?" I lifted up my left thumb and hovered it over the face buttons before I discovered: if I were to use my left thumb held facing towards the right, I might be unable to press without also pressing . Hear me out. If you try to tap with the tip of your left thumb, the middle of your thumb will likely rest on the button even if you don't intend for it to do so. So what if we took advantage of that? Instead of all the mental gymnastics involved in alternating between two fingers for the double-notes and one finger for the single notes, what if I used one thumb and simply alternated between and ? Except, every time I tap , I "accidentally" tap alongside it. Alternating these fairly basic inputs with an from my right hand is surely a lot easier, right? I mean, I get an added consistency boost that comes with alternating between both hands and everything. It's perfect! Before I knew it, the entire pattern was being performed using only the face buttons. No dpad or shoulder buttons. I played the section flawlessly about three or four times consecutively in practice mode before I set the game aside and turned in for the night (it was getting last and I was exhausted). I felt as though I'd found the perfect solution to my troubles and slept like a log with plans to film my fourth Proficiency Test the next day. When the following evening rolled around, I sat in my chair—confidence through the roof and... the madness of the previous evening didn't click anymore. No matter what I did, my left thumb couldn't perform the inputs it had done effortlessly the night before. It was like it had never happened at all. I never performed those inputs successfully again and dragged myself back to the drawing board. __________ Method #5: Discouraged, I decided to practice method #2 again (tapping and with my left hand and rolling over and with my right thumb). I figured that a 5% success rate was better than nothing, so why not sink a little more time into it and see where I end up? Eventually, I had an epiphany that freakishly mirrored the one I had days prior: "Wait... do I really need to use one finger (thumb) to perform the face button inputs?" I tried instead using my right index finger to tap while my right thumb was responsible for . By doing this, I was now using the same fingers on both hands to perform the pattern. An index () and a thumb () from my left hand followed by an index () and thumb () on my right hand (performed in sets of three between #435-446 followed by an extended slider note at #447). Within an hour of practice, my consistency shot up from 5% to around 30%. Most of my mistakes resulted from misinput, but these misinputs were both perceptible and correctable with more practice (it's easy for me to accidentally sync taps from my left hand and press both inputs simultaneously at high speed). To give you an idea of what playing this pattern is like with this new method, I'd like to run through a short demonstration that almost anyone could do with nothing more than a nearby flat surface (a desk, chair, etc). 1. Close both hands and gently rest them on a nearby flat surface. 2. Extend only your thumb and index finger on both hands. 3. Tap your left index against the flat surface followed by your left thumb. 4. Tap your right index against the flat surface followed by your right thumb. 5. Perform steps #3 and #4 again, but try to make to make the sound of a galloping horse. 6. If you hear the gallop, gallop three times and you're playing the pattern exactly as I've learned to play it! #448-456 (covered in previous update, but modified): Because my right index finger is hanging out with the face buttons during #435-447, it isn't available to tap four times for the upcoming double-notes. I instead use my middle finger to perform these inputs followed by the quick , , , spam I mentioned in update #4. Proficiency Test #4 - Passed!At the end of each chunk of analysis, I include a video of me clearing the section we've just analyzed three times consecutively in practice mode. In the last update, I failed to pass this test due to my inability to consistently perform #435-447, but I'm back for a rematch! Because this section is being performed in practice mode, note that the combo count has been reset and will not match the numbers included in the section above. This may make identifying each section slightly more difficult. It's kinda surreal. I mentioned in my "Plan of Attack" update that #435-447 might be the "hardest" section to play (at least insofar as knowing "how" to play it), but here I am today performing it. My consistency could still use some work, but I'm relieved to have finally passed my proficiency test and shift my focus onto the sections beyond. Closing Thoughts We only have two sections left to cover before I begin actual full combo attempts! The next update may take some time considering it features a lot of brutal patterns (I'm expecting 1-2 weeks), but I'll be back as soon as I've pulled it off! The final section will likely require a minimum of 2-3 weeks of practice at my current pace, so I've decided that, to make use of this window of inactivity, I'm going to go ahead and begin the next poll using our new nomination list as soon as the next update is posted. If you have a game you'd like to nominate before the poll begins, this is your last chance to speak up! Over on the "Community Events" side of the forums, I'm also taking part in a member interview! I originally signed up waaaay back in 2020 before I started up my checklist, so it's exciting to finally get selected (I couldn't imagine a more fitting time). If you have any questions you'd like to ask me, questions can be submitted from now until December 21st! Thank you for reading! I'll be back soon for some extra late replies! Edited December 18, 2022 by ExistentialSolid 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExistentialSolid Posted December 18, 2022 Author Share Posted December 18, 2022 (edited) On 12/10/2022 at 8:36 PM, enaysoft said: May I ask, is there any point when learning how to do this... That you just think maybe I should be learning the piano, or something? lol I also think watching the gif, might it not be better to just tore memorise the button order in its entirety on this part of trying to work out what is going on the screen here. Although I think that is (for me anywa) what I find a bit annoying about these Diva games is half the time these notes are not making notes / good enough feedback to make me feel like I am playing any part of the tune I guess, that's just me though lol For me, this whole endeavor is about closure. I've spent 1300+ hours over the past 5 years (not counting any of the time I've spent with F, F 2nd, X, or Dreamy Theater Extend) really trying to push myself in Project DIVA: Future Tone. This one chart is all that stands between me and a clean sweep of everything the game has to offer in terms of difficulty. Everything I've accomplished in the years since I gave up on this chart have kinda just... felt hollow. I'd earn some difficult platinum or perform some challenging feat and think "this feels nice, but I bet getting the perfect on Intense Voice EXEX would have felt even better..." It's as though, in my mind, everything else lives in the shadow of this chart. I've had enough and I want to destroy it once and for all so I can move on. As for the section itself, I'm not trying to decipher what's happening on screen. I'm trying to figure out how to play it with a DS4. Many potential performance methods are either physically improbable or far beyond the scope of what my fingers are capable of doing without dozens/hundreds of hours of additional practice. Since this game was designed to be played on an arcade cabinet, players like me sometimes have to come up with clever ways to work around the DS4's limitations if we want to stand any chance of playing along. That said, I know I haven't done the best job explaining what's going on and that I've insisted on stretching 3 minutes of gameplay into a 7+ part update series, but I'm determined to finish this even if I lose everyone else along the way. ? This is ultimately between me and my white whale. On 12/11/2022 at 11:45 AM, AihaLoveleaf said: You know how you see frequent warning posts on these forums for Genshin Impact and Elder Scrolls Online? osu! is basically the rhythm game equivalent of those two games -- once you get sucked in, it's unlikely we hear from you again for your next 2000+ gaming hours. It's highly competitive, addictive, and anybody can find their niche to shine in. Songs not only have Global Top 50 rankings, but Country Rankings, and even individual rankings for mods. Imagine Diva songs with leaderboards for each Challenge Item, and each combination of Challenge Items -- it's something like that. RSI's are a big issue, and end a lot of osu! careers at low and high levels. The game allows you to restart songs with a single button -- not pressing , and , but an actual single-button restart, which makes it easy to binge a single chart for hours - often to your detriment - chasing the adrenaline rush of Full Combo or a 100% accuracy play. It's bound to lead a lot of players to prolonged or permanent injury, as you've mentioned with wrist pain complaints from high level players. All of that is probably to say don't do it! At least not while you still care about trophies and experiencing a variety of games. It'd be a different story if you were active in the game before getting into trophies, and were just playing for maintenance and fun, but the hours you'd have to put in right now are probably better spent on Diva, other rhythm games, and your backlog. Don't worry, as tempting as osu! sounds, I'm not planning to sink into the clutches of another highly competitive rhythm game anytime soon (especially one with risk of wrist issues). The bite-sized commitments of smaller console-based rhythm games are more my speed until I find something that clicks with me as much as DIVA managed to. That day may not come for a long time though considering I've tried most of the remaining big players on console and didn't really enjoy them. ? Speaking of DIVA though, I did try to give Project Sekai a fair shake on mobile awhile back, but it doesn't feel great on a small iPhone and I think my "thumbs only" preference is only going to carry me so far before I start to crumble (I dropped off around lvl 24 on Expert). I'd probably need a tablet if I were to venture much further into mobile rhythm games without putting myself at a serious disadvantage. On 12/11/2022 at 11:45 AM, AihaLoveleaf said: ezgif has cropping options that you can make use of after uploading your mp4. I made use of it to crop the gifs in my current forum signature, and you can easily use it on gameplay clips if you want to create a focal point. Also, ezgif won't put a watermark on it like clideo did. Thanks for letting me know! I'll take note in case I try using ezgif or clideo in the future. Up to this point, I've been using the linked reference video by tsubasata1109 as the source for all my gifs, but imgur and other video-to-gif sites aren't allowing me to use the video anymore (unsure whether it's related to music copyright or if someone requested that one of the gifs be taken down on imgur since they're all public). I'm using my proficiency videos instead for future gifs, but I might be able to work around my issue by downloading the reference YouTube video directly and uploading the video as an mp4 to a site like ezgif. On 12/11/2022 at 11:45 AM, AihaLoveleaf said: Those triples are where my brain officially nopes out, lol. FT's triples are not something that F/F2 prepared me for, which I found out when I recently downloaded an Edit chart created as a "port" of Arifureta Sekai Seifuku to F 2nd. Triples like (#253-255) and (#256-258) are probably bread'n'butter patterns for FT players at a 9★+ level, but my F/F2 brain struggles to translate them into inputs for my hands to execute in time. By the time Chance Time kicks in (#659-725), forget about it. It's comical how even FT's 9 stars already dwarf 2D Dream Fever and Intense Voice, because it took a while for me to even crank out a Standard rating on that Edit. Complex triplets like or might be bread'n'butter patterns at high level FT play, but they're still tough to perform, especially at high speeds! When I hit the point where I'm too tired to play optimally, shortcuts like or really cut me some slack since neither thumb has to commute very far. Classic triplets like or are more fun to play in the meantime, but I'm sure you'll be able to adapt quickly once you're up against the more complex stuff. That said, I've always been curious why triplets rarely deviate from a handful of preset arcade-friendly patterns. I don't think there are triplets in any Project DIVA game that look like or for example. Arifureta Sekai Seifuku on Extreme is actually one of my favorite charts! It's great warmup material and the complex triplets feel slow enough for me to play normally without resorting to shortcuts. ? It's no pushover though, so I wouldn't feel discouraged considering you haven't had much experience with complex triplets yet. 2D Dream Fever (F 2nd) and Intense Voice (F 2nd) look like they go toe-to-toe with Arifureta when it comes down to raw speed, so all you really need is the technical experience to start shredding this chart to pieces. On 12/11/2022 at 11:45 AM, AihaLoveleaf said: As mentioned above, F/F2 doesn't have these sorts of triples, but I can still relate to your laziness in a way. The "proper" way to play F/F2 charts is "probably" to fully alternate as much as possible, but I found my coordination tanked if I was alternating buttons for 1/4 and 1/8 strings that eventually led into note switches, so I generally try to play one-handed as much as possible until something forces me to use two, like an arrow note or 1/16ths. The downside is that I had to spend extra time building up one-handed speed compared to players already comfortable just fully alternating everything, but it did eventually work out at least. Even on DS4, that same sort of one-handed dominance comes naturally for most players. My right hand used to always do the heavy lifting until my left hand slowly started catching up in dexterity. Nowadays, I two-hand as much as possible, but I have a lot of trouble alternating inputs when I see conjoined sets of three. For example, if I see a string of notes that looks like this: My automatic response is to play it improperly by pressing instead of evenly distributing the work between both hands. Starting triplets with my left hand can also feel really dicey if I haven't practiced extensively beforehand. One benefit of having learned PDDTE's Intense Voice chart in prep for when you play the Dreamy Theater games is that you've probably already built up a lot of speed for your non-dominant hand. There aren't many spams faster than that even in FT's catalogue. In fact, only a couple come to mind right away: 2D Dream Fever (#606-621) and Betty the Liar (mess at 2:31). On 12/11/2022 at 11:45 AM, AihaLoveleaf said: Bound to hit an obstacle eventually with a chart this demanding. You'll get there, though. A lot can happen in a week of Diva, so I'm sure we'll be seeing a positive update soon enough. I think this chart may be a case of "oops, all obstacles" but it wouldn't have stuck with me for so long if it were anything less. Fingers crossed update #6 is out in the next week alongside proficiency test #5 (I'd be happy enough if it's out before the end of the year though)! I still have a long way to go. ✊ Edited December 18, 2022 by ExistentialSolid 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moridin83 Posted December 18, 2022 Share Posted December 18, 2022 So I've been lurking this thread since you came back, and I wanted to pop in and say, you do a good job of explaining. It just that the level you're playing at is so far above anything I've even considered attempting that I'm sort of stuck here with my jaw on the floor, and nothing constructive to add.? Looking forward to you killing your white whale though, and maybe I'll come up with a game for your next poll.? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AihaLoveleaf Posted December 18, 2022 Share Posted December 18, 2022 (edited) 14 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said: Speaking of DIVA though, I did try to give Project Sekai a fair shake on mobile awhile back, but it doesn't feel great on a small iPhone and I think my "thumbs only" preference is only going to carry me so far before I start to crumble (I dropped off around lvl 24 on Expert). I'd probably need a tablet if I were to venture much further into mobile rhythm games without putting myself at a serious disadvantage. Project Sekai is such a neat little game. It's uncommon enough for me to see a rhythm game with a story, but to actually see one that contains great story and character development went way beyond my expectations. I was playing on my iPad, which felt pretty good as far as comfortable gameplay goes, but I made the mistake of playing it on the side while going hard with Diva F and F 2nd. I could tell after some time that the amount of repetitive stress I was placing on myself was going to end badly, so I shelved Sekai after a month of play. I did end up around a similar level of play, though; I had gotten my first lv.24 Expert FC before putting the game away. I think I'd like to come back to it in the future, but for now I'll try to keep my rhythm gaming strictly on console. On 12/14/2022 at 3:00 PM, ExistentialSolid said: Method #4: While practicing method #1, I was trying to alternate between + and with two fingers (thumb and index), but then I realized, "Wait... do I really need to use two fingers to play these inputs?" Have to love these epiphany moments while working hard on a Diva chart... at least, when the epiphany actually works. ? It felt like you were pretty close to greatness here. Managing that part with only the face buttons -- even if just for one evening -- is pretty ridiculous, and beyond what I can comprehend of one hand, lol, so the temporary burst of skill is still worth giving kudos. The method you settled on feels like one that should be pretty consistent in the long run. No getting finger-tied or brain-tied between + and ; you have four completely separate buttons to manage instead. Internalizing the "gallop" motion you need to make with both hands, while getting feedback from the game via hitsounds as you tap along will eventually bake this section into your brain as something you perform automatically without even thinking about, so kudos again on finally nailing it in those practice runs. ? Even if you don't feel all the way "there" yet with this part of the chart, I think it's fine. You'll get your consistency when it's time to go for those full combo runs, so, on to the next one! Edited December 18, 2022 by AihaLoveleaf typo 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post ExistentialSolid Posted May 5, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted May 5, 2023 (edited) The Eternal Prisoner: A Sisyphean End After months of silence, I've crawled back here today to put on a show. But... not the sort of show with glittering lights, a luxurious stage, and a date with the unknown. No, this show will tell the story of a little man in a cold, dark room, as he hunches over in his recliner, half a world away, playing a song that haunts his trophy-addled mind in the dead of night. It will be the manifestation of his undying obsession, the climax of a tale begging to be ended. In previous updates, I've likened my struggle with the Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (Extra Extreme) to that of Moby Dick's Ahab and his white whale. But Ahab, determined though he may be, never actually slayed his white whale. No, his obsession drove him mad as he sank towards a watery grave. To repeatedly regurgitate this tired "white whale" rhetoric in light of his failure feels... somehow defeatist. Even if the white whale comparison is purely metaphorical, I will not allow my obsession to consume me. I will not become another Ahab. I will not sink to the depths of oblivion like a fool, possessed. I will persist, like Sisyphus in the underworld, until I've summited my mountain, until my obsession crumbles beneath the weight of my boulder, until I am free from the chains of my self-imposed prison! Part of me is destined to die in the days ahead. The question is... will it be my obsession, or my ego.Where Were We... Several months ago, I began practicing to earn a "Perfect" on the hardest official chart in a rhythm game called Hatsune Miku Project DIVA: Future Tone (a port of the Project DIVA Arcade game). The chart in question, the Extra Extreme version of the Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku, has become infamous in the game's community for its absurd level of difficulty ever since it dropped as free DLC in 2018. In the years since, it has lingered in my mind as the only chart I felt incapable of mastering even after 1300+ hours of play. After a recent bit of housekeeping, it is now the only chart, of the game's 1047 charts, I haven't earned a "Perfect"/Full Combo on (previously, there were a few hundred charts on "Easy" and "Normal" I never bothered to play). In an effort to make practice more manageable, I had divided Intense Voice's chart into six sections. Each of these sections would be accompanied by 1-2 updates which included text-based explanations for how I was playing each set of notes and a "Proficiency Test" video where I played the section covered in the update three times consecutively without making any mistakes. If you'd like to look back at some of these previous updates, I will link each one below, though you shouldn't need to revisit any previous updates to understand what's going to be happening for the next several weeks.Update 1 - #001-235Update 2 - #236-264Update 3 - #265-372Update 4 - #373-465Update 5 - #373-465 (revisit)Update 6 - Never arrived Things were going well until I reached section five (#466-586). While I was successful in learning how to play the notes from #466-517 and from #535-586, the notes from #518-534 tore me apart. No matter how long I practiced, progress felt hopelessly out of reach and I didn't really understand why. I was unable to complete my "Proficiency Test" for the section and eventually set the game aside out of frustration. I've continued to practice previous sections to keep my muscle memory alive, but haven't made an effort to do much else. Instead of letting myself rot in the muck my failures have left behind, I've decided, all these months later, to move on towards the very end of the chart, the hardest few seconds of gameplay I've ever tried to perform. Gameplay courtesy of tsubasata1109 Which brings us to our main event...The Eternal Prisoner BroadcastStarting tonight, May 5th, I'm going to be streaming my attempts to learn the ending of the Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (Extra Extreme) on my YouTube channel. My goal is to stream daily* for a minimum of 1 hour and a maximum of 4 hours until I've either learned the section by heart or have had my spirit so thoroughly broken that I can't help but collapse like a house of cards. In the days ahead, my fingers may turn to dust and my mental health may start to deteriorate, but I'm dead set on doing this. As Sisyphus is doomed to roll his boulder up the mountain for all eternity, so too am I doomed to practice this chart until I've fallen apart. These streams will exist as a way to keep myself accountable, to keep me practicing nearly every day even if I don't feel like it. They will, unfortunately, not be very entertaining. Let me explain why: 1.) I won't be using a mic because I'm not able to practice and talk at the same time. 2.) Stream comments will not be visible on my end (too anxiety-inducing), so I will not be responding to any live chat. 3.) Due to copyright issues, the song's audio will be muted automatically (you'll still be able to hear the gameplay). 4.) I'll be pausing frequently to rest, run to the restroom, or cry (sometimes all three). I don't encourage you to actually "watch" these streams, especially in their entirety, but you're more than welcome to pop in for a few minutes to see where I'm at if you get curious. You may also skim through any concluded stream VODs if you missed the stream or if you'd rather not watch live. If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd encourage you to either leave them in this thread below or in the comment section of any streams that have concluded! Any live comments might never be seen by me. All streams will be linked below in the "Stream Log" section for your convenience once they have concluded!*If I miss a day here and there, that's okay! But if I miss 5 consecutive days of streaming, I will officially give up and move on. Closing Thoughts If I successfully learn how to play the ending, I will continue streaming daily until I've earned the chart's "Perfect." This needs to end. There will be no further updates until I've either learned how to play the ending or have given up. I mentioned in my last update that I would be starting a new poll featuring our new nomination list. That poll is now live, months later than intended, and will run from now until the Eternal Prisoner Broadcast has concluded (you may notice there is one notable omission from the poll - I've decided to leave that game for a certain someone that plans to play it soon! It will be removed from the list once the poll has concluded). Will my obsession finally destroy me? Keep an eye on the ever-updating Stream Log to find out! Stream LogNote: Schedule will be inconsistent.Day 1 - May 5th (2:10:59) I started skipping around through different sections of the ending, hoping to find a foothold to start grinding. I spent most of the stream practicing the last third of the ending and somehow managed to play it perfectly at 1:27:02 and a few additional times afterwards. Day 2 - May 6th (1:40:45) I was able to play the last third of the ending perfectly again. This time, I was able to do it much more quickly (see 04:08 for an example).Day 3 - May 7th (2:25:37) A few button config experiments. No highlights.Day 4 - May 8th (1:00:25) I'm getting worse... Hoping to stream again later tonight...Day 4 (part 2) - May 8th (51:20) Awful. Some days I just feel hopeless.Day 5 - May 9th (1:26:56) In previous streams, I needed to hold my controller in an uncomfortably specific way for my left thumb to cooperate and reach the speed I need to maintain for the ending. Today, I was able to hold the controller normally and my left thumb could keep up. Whether this is progress, I'm not sure.Missed Day - May 10thDay 6 - May 11th (1:21:00) I've never felt so lost... It's painfully obvious that my fingers can't keep up with the speed and complexity of the ending, but I don't know what to do other than keep trying. I make the same mistakes over and over again, but I can't fix them. I watch them happen helplessly on repeat. I feel like I need a different approach, but I haven't found one that makes sense to me. I peaked on day 2.Day 7 - May 12th (47:16) Note to self: Do not schedule late evening sessions. I couldn't even play for a full a hour today because I felt so exhausted. My play today was significantly worse than it was on Day 1. But hey, Tears of the Kingdom came out today! Maybe if I can stomach an hour or two of TotK before bed I'll feel better. Tomorrow's a new day.Day 8 - May 13th (2:01:21) Something strange happened today. For the first 30 or so minutes of the stream, I was practicing with both my left and right thumbs while comfortably holding my controller (I've been making an effort to practice this way since day 5). But I started to get tired and, on a whim, tried to sub out my left thumb for my left index finger. Doing so felt... better. I was more precise, more accurate—as though I were playing with a pair of tweezers—and the speed I needed to maintain felt more manageable than it has all week. I continued to practice this way for the remainder of the stream and quickly caught up to, if not surpassed altogether, my previous two-thumbed efforts. I don't know whether this index finger nonsense is just another detour in a long line of failures, but it's at least given me hope. Day 9 - May 14th (1:01:08) Another late night, another too-tired-to-put-my-all-into-it sort of stream. Or, at least, that's what I'd like to believe. Hilariously, trying to play with my index finger instead of my left thumb didn't work at all today. It all fell apart just as suddenly as it began. Maybe it'll be effective again tomorrow, or maybe never again. Such is the fickle nature of muscle memory. Day 10 - May 15th (1:00:44) After 10 days of grinding, you'd think there'd be some marginal difference between my Day 1 and Day 10 performances. There isn't. In fact, a strong case could be made that I was in better shape during day 1. It's as though the energy is being slowly sapped from me until a lifeless husk is left battering its empty body against an impenetrable wall. The wall will never collapse. Victory has never felt more out of reach.Day 11 - May 16th (1:04:20) The lifeless husk continues to batter against the wall, hoping something will budge someday, somehow. My streams lately have all barely been above my "1 hour" minimum streaming goal as though "success" were not the goal, but just making it to the end of the stream. I do want this, right? Of course I do! Then why am I not pushing harder? For whatever it's worth, I had a strong run right near the end at 1:02:07.Missed Day - May 17th I had a headache and couldn't focus, so I gave Trackmania a try instead. It's everything I hoped for, but I think the difficulty of the platinum may be exaggerated. I don't imagine the platinum will be as rare as Turbo's either given the disappointingly low PSNP player count. Let's see if I'm proven wrong. I'll be playing it off and on for the next several months either way.Day 12 - May 18th (1:10:16) Small hairline cracks appeared in the wall today. My consistency at the first half of the ending is improving and I hit a record number of consecutive notes (56 or 57). Lately, I've been alternating between my left thumb and my left index finger when one or the other gets tired. My right hand doesn't get tired as often as it used to which means less pausing. Day 13 - May 19th (1:00:06) I really need to stop streaming this late. Aside from the first 15 minutes or so, this went terribly.Day 14 - May 20th (1:01:01) I'm starting to feel more and more comfortable with the first half of the ending, but I've been having serious trouble practicing the second half. My fingers feel totally lost whenever I try to play the second half in isolation. I think I might just practice the first half ad nauseum until I can naturally transition into the second half courtesy of muscle memory and extensive trial and error. Another ongoing issue has to do with exhaustion and stamina. Most days, I can comfortably play the ending for 30 minutes without losing steam, but, past that, practice feels almost like a waste of time because my hands feel like they're giving out. I may try to split each daily session into two shorter streams hours apart, but I'll have to put some thought into it.Day 15 - May 21st (41:03) [Part 1]Day 15 - May 21st (50:14) [Part 2] Splitting the stream into two shorter streams helped reduce exhaustion. My hands didn't tire until the near the end of both streams meaning more time spent focusing and less time dejectedly burning time to meet my arbitrary "1 hour" requirement. The only problem with this new approach is that it can be more difficult to coordinate, especially on busy days. I'm hoping to make it work as often as possible going forward.Day 16 - May 22nd (17:10) I couldn't do anything and wanted to cry. If you want to watch 17 minutes of me falling apart in real time, this is the stream for you.Missed Day - May 23rd Sabotage! I've got a fever and am dealing with a case of food poisoning. I feel achy, have no appetite, and spent most of the day sleeping. Maybe my poor performance yesterday was related.Missed Day - May 24th Still recovering. I think I'll be ready to continue tomorrow.Day 17 - May 25th (1:02:40) I'm still feeling sluggish, but I don't want to miss too many days without a good reason. Today I crossed the 1400 hour mark and even hit a new consecutive notes record of 62 (at 41:29). Progress is slow, but it's starting to feel more tangible. I wonder how long the ending would have taken me had I practiced at my peak four and a half years ago... The me of days long past may have been faster, but I have the better mindset. Where he would have crumbled, I will persist. Day 18 - May 26th (1:01:54) Going forward, I think I'm going to change the title of the stream to better reflect the fact that I'm not practicing the ending exclusively. I find practicing other sections of the chart to be easier on the hands when I'm feeling exhausted, so I tend to jump back and forth accordingly. Days like this are always the hardest to sit through. No obvious signs of progress, very sleepy, not in the mood to kill god.Day 19 - May 27th (46:27) Another rough night. I ended stream a bit early, but I may have the time for a split stream tomorrow. Instead of changing the title of the stream per yesterday's plans, I just added a quick note at the bottom of the description. It's not especially important that I practice the ending exclusively anyway.Day ??? - May 28th (1:00:41) When I stopped streaming today and checked my YT channel, the live stream I'd just recorded was nowhere to be found. Maybe it will appear later, maybe it's lost to the void, maybe it was marked as spam and taken down. Either way, I didn't opt for a split stream, practiced late, and made little progress towards the ending. I spent an unusual amount of time practicing "section 3" from previous updates because I've lost the ability to play it (though today's practice certainly helped). Tomorrow, I'm going to spend some time explaining why this is taking me so long and why it may end up taking me much longer.Day 20 - May 29th (45:42) The chart's ending can be divided into several subsections of 8 notes, each featuring a quad note followed by an alternating set of seven single notes. These sections, as I'm currently playing them, require 5 inputs from my right hand and 3 inputs from my left hand. The work balance, as you can probably tell, is lobsided and the sequence feels incredibly awkward to perform as a result. I feel as though I'm starting up an engine multiple times in quick succession, but I keep sputtering out. Here's a quick visual example: () To play this, I press with my right hand to play the quad and immediately tap with the same hand to start the sequence of single notes. My left hand interjects with as I then alternate between and until I reach the sequence's end. These sequences are then compounded without pause such that each tap of (to play each new quad note) and each left-handed input from subsequent sequences breaks the sense of flow. My left hand especially has great difficulty interjecting at the right time, and at the right pace, to hit each of the three notes, per set of eight, it's responsible for on time and without accidental timing overlap with my right hand. Without dragging this on for too long, it's incredibly difficult to deal with so many rhythmic interjections, but... maybe I don't have to.------[Arbitrary 20 Days Gap]--------Day 21 - May 30th (1:01:35) Today, I've begun testing a new button configuration that may make the ending more manageable as far as "interjections" are concerned, but simultaneously more difficult (for my left hand) to perform. If this new configuration works out, I'd need to relearn several sections of the chart using the modified controls which may take dozens of hours. I've remapped on the dpad to quads (+++) for the purposes of shifting all ending input (barring one ) onto my two thumbs. I'd unfortunately also need to find a button to sub 's input out with. If I use , I'll need to relearn one of the most complex sections of the chart, but if I use , I'll need to relearn every one of the chart's holds (including all of section 2). In the hour I had, I had great difficulty adapting to the new configuration, but I'd like to spend a few more days testing it, because, in theory, it should be much easier and much more consistent given that there would be only one "interjection" through this new approach.Missed Day - May 31st Too busy to practice today, but I should have plenty of time tomorrow. Day 22 - June 1st (1:01:23) Using the new button configuration went much more smoothly than it did last stream. I feel as though I'm learning the section more quickly and retaining it more easily. I hit a 56 note streak several times over the course of an hour (only 6 off from my best using the previous button configuration) and am hopeful that I can push even further in the next few days. I've opted to remap as meaning, if this new button configuration works out, I'll need to relearn the rest of the chart, including all holds, with an substitution for any left-handed inputs and an substitution for any left-handed quad inputs. That may sound like a frustrating setback, but it's a small price to pay for progress should this new configuration succeed.Day 23 - June 2nd (1:01:08) Between days 13 and 20, I've become paranoid that my main PS4 controller is dropping inputs. I'm not sure if inputs are actually being dropped, but, as of day 20, I've transitioned over to a PS5 controller and have noticed no such drops (I have three other PS4 controllers, but one is half-broken and the other two are imitations I bought for cheap years ago before I knew fakes were a thing). Some users around here are very vocal about the PS5's inferior dpad, but I haven't noticed a major difference between the two. Maybe my PS4 controller's dpad is in such bad shape that I can't accurately compare the two. Missed Day - June 3rdDay 24 - June 4th (1:25:15) Kick the weakest part of the wall until it starts to bend. Let small victories fuel distant daydreams. Bury yourself in delusion. Day 25 - June 5th (1:04:39) For the last few streams, I've made an effort to practice the final 22 notes of the ending. This section involves a transition between my thumbs to my index fingers and, when played correctly, can feel empowering in short bursts. I feel as though I'm building up more index finger speed by practicing this section ad nauseum, but it may just be muscle memory slowly absorbing the sequence. I've also made an embarrassing discovery today. In the ending section, when transitioning from thumbs to index fingers, I never noticed that I begin the transition using the same hand ( to ) which may be throwing off my sense of rhythm. Had I known months ago, I might have switched the button configurations for L1 and R1. I'll make due regardless.Missed Day - June 6thDay 26 - June 7th (1:00:45) Way back, during days 1 and 2, I was able to perform the last third of the ending using the previous button configuration alongside an uncomfortable controller grip to accommodate my slow left hand. Today, I was able to play the same section using the updated button configuration and a normal grip (see 44:56 for one of three examples). It felt more comfortable and easier to replicate. I plan to spend a few more days developing consistency on this latter third of the ending because I can already play the first two thirds when I dedicate a session towards it. The difficulty is in fusing the two.Day 27 - June 8th (1:01:04) The parallels to days 1 and 2 continue with a freakish reoccurrence. At 4:08, just as I did on day 2, I perform the last third of the ending perfectly. Same time stamp and everything. It's as though my progression is on a loop. How would Sisyphus have dealt with this sort of thing? Disappointingly, I was only able to perform the last third of the ending a single time this evening. I've used the "I streamed too late..." excuse time and time again, but I wish I understood why I seem to perform so much worse in the evenings. I feel like a car that's out of gas. No matter how hard I push, I just can't go. Day ??? - June 9th (1:00:54) Another stream lost to the void. I wish there was some sort of notification system in place so I could understand what happened. Who knows whether the error has to do with the PS5 or if the stream was taken down for other reasons. Missing stream aside, today was another weak showing with only two successful performances of the last third of the ending. Maybe I should invent a new line of excuses centered around streaming too early. I tend to play at peak performance in the afternoon or early evening.Day 28 - June 10th (1:00:42) A day of uncertainty. I couldn't pull off the last third of the ending even once. I tried the previous button configuration on a whim while practicing the first two thirds of the ending and it suddenly seemed easier... as though the "rhythmic interjection" of R2 I had been whining about just days ago had actually been a brief respite in the frighteningly steady stream of thumb inputs. Maybe tomorrow I'll pit them against each other.Missed Day - June 11thDay 29 - June 12th (1:11:26)Day 29 - June 12th (1:01:33) [Part 2] After spending two hours jumping back and forth between the two button configurations, I can't really tell whether one is better than the other. It's all a messy muscle memory soup. Previously, I'd ruled out using L2 on my first button configuration to handle quad notes since stretching my hand to reach the button felt too awkward to attempt in conjunction with the three left-handed inputs per set of eight, but, if I can get used to it, it would take some of the stress off my right hand and help promote an even work distribution with four inputs per hand per set of eight. I'm going to try an experiment going forward. Instead of jumping around between different sections of the ending, I will only practice the ending from 2:21 for the next few days and see how long it takes me to play from that point perfectly, if I manage it at all. I will still continue playing other sections of the chart when I'm feeling exhausted.Missed Day - June 13thMissed Day - June 14thDay 30 - June 15th (1:01:30) Today was a day of backtracking. - I quickly set aside my 2:21 idea and instead opted to practice the first half of the ending alongside section 3. - I've removed the word "Ending" from my stream title to give me more freedom to practice whatever I feel like (I already sort of do that, but now I can do so guilt free). If I get too rusty on the rest of the chart, I'm going to have a much harder time getting a full combo going up to the ending. - I began using my PS4 controller again and am considering buying a replacement if it starts to give me trouble. - I am convinced the new button configuration may not be for me, but I can't quite articulate why. I'm using the old config for now.Day 31 - June 16th (1:01:00) Late night stream. Bad for ending practice (exhaustion), but a good time to practice other sections of the chart. I got some good section 3 practice in today with some casual sections 4 and 5 practice. Mentally, it's been difficult to deal with such a slow rate of progression. I feel as though I've barely scratched the chart's surface and have such a long way to go. If I ever manage to get this done... how is anything else supposed to compare? I'm jealous of those that could get this done with no more than a week of practice. One man's storm is another's hurricane.Day 32 - June 17th (40:37) Ended early. I can't do anything.Missed Day - June 18thMissed Day - June 19thDay 33 - June 20th (30:51) I had to stop. Day 34 - June 21st (1:01:06) I think I will be giving up soon. I can't do this anymore.Day 35 - June 22nd (21:39) This will never happen. My mental health and my motivation to continue are nose diving in tandem. It's only a matter of time before I fall apart. I feel like a failure and often run to other games to escape. There's no noticeable improvement between Day 1 and Day 35. There's no hope. There's no path forward. Day 36 - June 23rd (1:00:18) I'm trying the new button configuration again. I feel aimless.Missed Day - June 24th Day ??? - June 25th (1:40:09) While this stream failed to be archived, I think I've gotten more consistent with the first half of the ending using the new (day 21 onwards) button configuration. I switched button sound effects for the hell of it and I can kinda hear my mistakes a bit more easily. I don't know whether that's actually the case, but I'll probably stick with these sound effects for the time being regardless.Day 37 - June 26th (1:11:13) I spent most of today's session practicing other sections of the chart using the new button configuration. Holds, especially in section 2, will be a bit more complicated now that I have to use instead of to play a quad. Specifically, I can't press two opposing directions on the dpad simultaneously since dpads can't operate like that, but maneuvering my thumb such that a left or right dpad input is held while pressing up afterwards is tricky to manage.Day 38 - June 27th (1:03:41) I learned a new way to play part of section 4 today that works really nicely with the new button config. I'll explain in more depth if I make more substantial progress, but there is a sequence in section 4 with complex triplets interspersed with slider notes. I use my index finger and thumb to tap the first two buttons of each triplet and my left hand to play the last button (or slider). It feels very consistent and I suspect I'll continue playing this sequence this new way regardless of my button configuration preferences. I'm still frustrated with section three. It feels I need to practice it every day for at least awhile so the muscle memory starts sticking again. Missed Day - June 28thDay 39 - June 29th (1:01:22) Is the shell beginning to crack or was it just a string of lucky taps? (44:27) Day 40 - June 30th (1:01:41)Even after 40 days, it feels like there's so much more to do. When trophy hunting, victory feels like an inevitability with practice. Here, I feel as though I'm trying to keep my balance on the steepest of slopes. Some days I go up, others I go down. One misstep, a few missed days of practice, and I'll be sent tumbling into oblivion. All I have to fight against the slope is a routine. I open with a 5-10 minute warm up, start stream, spend roughly 40 minutes practicing the ending and, when I'm all out of steam, spend another 20 minutes practicing other sections of the chart. Sections 3-5 need some serious attention and I still can't play the ending. Will I tumble back to the bottom of the mountain or will I continue persisting? ------[Arbitrary 40 Days Gap]--------Day 41 - July 1st (1:06:33) I spent most of today trying to build up more muscle memory for the last third of the ending using the new button configuration. I haven't made any substantial progress, but I'll continue trying. I'm starting to get a little more consistent at section 3. The bit at the end of section 5 (the sequence that stopped my progress cold a few months back) also seems to be giving me less trouble now that I routinely practice it alongside other sections of the chart.Day ??? - July 2nd (1:00:31) Lost to the void. Section 3 onwards was my focus today since I didn't have the energy to grind the ending. I can feel myself getting better though I can't stand how slow my pace is.Day 42 - July 3rd (1:01:00) Sometimes I feel as though I wake up as different versions of myself, each with different sets of muscle memory. Today's version couldn't play any of section 3 and stumbled all over the ending. Towards the end of the session, I found that remapping a shoulder button for + would make section 3 dramatically easier, but I don't really have the space to make that happen. After the stream, I found out that I'm no longer in the top 10 of the Extreme (Colorful Tone) Clear% leaderboards anymore so I'll be making an effort to regain my spot on the side.Day 43 - July 4th (1:02:01) I still can't play the hard part of section 3. Maybe I'll need to practice it off stream here and there to build up more consistency. After the stream ended, I started playing other charts to improve my clear% and managed to beat my high score on Slump (8.5 Stars) going from 102.05% to 103.13%. Any extra time spent playing this game over other games is a plus if I'm ever hoping to crush this chart.Day 44 - July 5th (1:00:09) My failure feels cyclical. I go back and forth between feeling as though I'm on the verge of a breakthrough and feeling as though the ending is impossible. Today it felt impossible. It's sad that so much of my self worth is tied into this... thing... as though nothing else mattered before and nothing will matter after. I wish I could quit. I wish this could all just end. Not all difficult things need to be overcome, but this one has burrowed so deeply under my skin that I don't think I can get a grip on my mental well being until it's over. I need to do this, but I don't feel capable. But I also know it can be done. But I can't. What do I do? Missed Day - July 6th While I didn't practice today, I found the time to beat my high score on Piano Girl (8.5 stars) pushing from a 104.48% to a 105.52%.Day 45 - July 7th (1:00:06) I'm playing catch up again. I spent most of today playing the first 50 notes of the ending. I built up a little consistency, though that consistency tends to dissipate by the next day. It's as though I'm trapped in a time loop learning the first part of the ending from scratch over and over again. My muscle memory can't count to seven and it has trouble remembering the goings on of days prior. I need to spend more time practicing. I just wish I had the motivation to do so.Day 46 - July 8th (42:59) I don't know which button configuration to stick to and I'm losing my mind.Day 47 - July 9th (1:00:37) I think I've found a good visual representation of my progress after 47 days of doing this while scrolling through Tiktok on my lunch break. For those that don't want to click, it's a frog that repeatedly leaps onto an escalator that is moving downwards. No matter how many times the frog leaps, the escalator sends the frog back where it began. There is the nagging urge to communicate to the frog that it needs to "leap faster" if it wants to climb the escalator and, likewise, I want to tell myself to practice more often than I'm already doing if I want to earn this Perfect. It's just not sticking at my current pace. I need something more intense. (I also played 1925 and improved my score from 102.44% to a 103.90% and am back in the top 10. I plan to climb to 9th to better secure my position.)Day 48 - July 10th (42:26) I spent some time trying to learn the ending of section 5, but came back empty. It still feels just as frustrating as it did months back when I took a break. It feels like the hardest part of the chart even though it shouldn't be.Missed Day - July 11thDay 49 - July 12th (1:06:21) It's time for a change. I've become used to failure. I've said this before, but I feel as though I'm going through the motions and burning time to meet my arbitrary "1 hour minimum" stream after stream instead of making an effort to improve. I need time to think. Day 50 will be my final day... for now. It will not end this way. Edited July 13, 2023 by ExistentialSolid 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
da-Noob123 Posted May 5, 2023 Share Posted May 5, 2023 The man, the myth, the legend has returned! Your dedication to this has me in awe. I truly have no idea how you can keep up up with the button inputs for Hatsune. I just look at the clips you share and just shut down like that is way to much for me to process let alone react to and input the needed buttons. Best of luck slaying this dragon! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YairGOW Posted May 5, 2023 Share Posted May 5, 2023 I've always loved reading this thread and I'm glad to see you're back at it Good luck accomplishing your tremendous current goal and any future endeavors you'll set your sights on! Btw, if nominating games is still viable, I think you might find Black Knight Sword worth checking out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AihaLoveleaf Posted May 5, 2023 Share Posted May 5, 2023 Great to see you back, Mr. Solid. ? I knew you hadn't given up; I figured you were working on those E/N/H charts, and my OCD is satisfied seeing all those zeroes in the right place. Great timing as well, since I've recently started back up with Diva myself. Made progress in both DT 2nd and Extend, though I'd like to make milestones out of both - so I'm holding off on popping any trophies just yet. Also picked up a new Diva fan-game that will last me several hundred hours at minimum, but more on that at a later date. I think skipping to the last part for now is a nice idea. Considering the absurd complexity of the ending, the practice may help make the part you were struggling with a bit easier. I'll keep tabs on your YouTube channel as well - though I can't subscribe, or else it will ruin the Miku number: Just kidding, I'll subscribe after somebody else does. If there's one bit of advice I can throw out there based on my own adventure with the lesser version of Intense Voice: consider adding some Edit charts to your daily rotation, if you haven't already. Playing songs that were effectively 11/12★ (on the F 2nd scale) like Childish War and Coin Locker Baby really helped to defang the beast of a chart I was faced with. In your case, there may be a setup cost of time or money, depending on whether you go for PPD or MM+ on PC (so that you can play AC-style Edits), but once those Edits are set-up then it's a pretty low-maintenance practice routine—only the 10-15(ish) minutes it would take you to play through your curated selection of Edits once a session. 2 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said: I mentioned in my last update that I would be starting another game selection poll featuring our new nomination list. That poll is now live, months later than intended, and will run from now until the Eternal Prisoner Broadcast has concluded (you may notice there is one notable omission from the poll - I'd rather leave that game for someone else that plans to play it soon. It will be removed from the list once the poll has concluded). Left a vote based on whatever I felt had the most interesting gameplay in its trailer. Hang in there with this brutal last stretch of Future Tone! I'll be here for the next update. ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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