I just tried the editor. And I cried.

[uKER]

I just finished the game (again), so I thought I'd give it a go at creating a custom level.

I have created levels for many rhythm games before. I even created an editor for StepMania myself, and created levels for GuitarHero and Beat Saber, so I'm not squeamish to the whole thing.

Now, to my surprise, what should have been the simplest level editor in the history of gaming turned out to be an impossible frustration.

Firstly, defining a level for this game should just consist of a realtime scrolling line, "drawing" the level as the user taps on any key to the beat, as if they were playing. Having to eyeball all the angles is a nightmare.
If you don't wanna go the whole realtime thing, you could just draw the notes in a piano roll like editor.
Point is, the whole thing should be seen as entering the timings for a bunch of beats, not drawing a squiggly line that magically matches them.

Then, entering a spiral (the one that inverts the direction of rotation) should automatically mirror the whole level from that point on. Otherwise you'd have to redo the whole thing!!!

Also, what's with the one miss fail even in the editor??? I asked for this to be changed in the game, but the editor too? Really???

I know this is practically pointless since I haven't had any sort of luck with much simpler tweaks I've suggested for the game, but I just needed to get it off my chest.

[fizzd]

Hey again uKER, thanks for your feedback on the editor. The realtime feature is cool and we've been meaning to look into adding it sometime in the feature. That does come with its own problems, like, what should it quantise to? If you can't play a steady beat shoud the track be an imperfect line, or should it snap to 90 degree angles only?

In our opinion once you get comfortable with reading charts in the ADOFAI way, you can get very quick at drawing tracks that match the music, that's why we didn't prioritise realtime recording over adding new VFX and other convenience features. But we'll try it out sometime, thank you.

Spiral that flips the rest of the track is a good idea, and can be done easily, thanks for the suggestion. There are already ways to flip whole sections of the track (see help menu for shortcuts for that).

[uKER]

Yeah, you should have a quantization feature, both during "recording", and the option to quantize a certain "turn" to a certain precision.

I'm a developer too, so I might give it a go myself at an editor.
I'll let you know if that ever comes to be. :)

Thanks for your reply.

BTW, I had a BLAST with chapter 9. Easily the best in the game. Loved the music.

[fizzd]

Glad you liked Chapter 9! Yeah I'm sure it shouldnt be too hard to make a stepmania editor output the .adofai format code of RRRRURRRDLL etc. if you try it please let us know!

[uKER]

Stepmania has 4 (or maybe even 8 or 16) direction arrows, which ADOFAI does away with.
ADOFAI is just timing-based, so it's much simpler to implement.
I will probably be taking a shot at it.

Now, I've been putting some more thought into it, and came up with these two things which seem simple enough to implement and would make for quite an intuitive way to make this stuff.

How about:
- Having an autoplay feature that just plays back the level automatically, clicking on each block or turn.
- Having an adjustment on each block that adjusts the delay of the following block, which would alter the angle of the road ahead.

I'll get to trying to create an editor right away and let you know.
Cheers.

[fizzd]

We do have an autoplay, its the bottom right robot icon you can click. We should probably have a tooltip of bubble notification on it the first time you launch the editor.

Adjustment on a block by 15 degrees or so that also bends the rest of the track is a good idea, thanks!

[uKER]

Those two would make a world of a difference IMO.

I tried to start throwing some code into creating a realtime editor, but had a hard time finding a timer component with enough precision.

Will give it another go some time soon.

[uKER]

Some more comments:

- Similarly to what I suggested for the spiral, modifying the angle in a tile should rotate the track from that point on. Otherwise it becomes impossible to go back to the beginning of a song and modify anything, without destroying everything we've done afterwards. I guess this is because you're internally storing the tiles as an absolute directions (ie, angle relative to horizontal or vertical axis), instead of just the angle relative to the previous tile. Also, for the same reason, let's say your song starts with a straight horizontal line. You write it all, and then you will try to modify the beginning. If you add a bend to that horizontal line, but then decide not to do it, there is no way to get the line back to being a straight line again.

- Help doesn't mention that mouse wheel = zoom

- It would be nice if after clicking Play, the previously selected zoom level was kept, instead of reverting to the game's zoom level

- Help doesn't mention that del deletes current/selected tile/s (kinda obvious but...)

- No way to insert a tile? AFAICT, if you accidentally delete one tile at the beginning of your song you need to reload the file, since there's no undo and no way to insert a new tile.

[fizzd]

thanks for the comments! When i try changing a tile at the start i can click the second tile and backspace to make it straight again, does that not work?

zoom behaviour is intended like that to standardise it, so level creators wont accidentally be editing a level with zoomed out zoom and not realise it.

help file omissions: thanks for the notice!

[uKER]

Originally posted by fizzd:

thanks for the comments! When i try changing a tile at the start i can click the second tile and backspace to make it straight again, does that not work?

Well, yeah. Backspace does it.
Now, that's another one that isn't mentioned in the help.
I see that it's not just deleting to the left, but more like straightening the track to the left.
Is that it?

Originally posted by fizzd:

zoom behaviour is intended like that to standardise it, so level creators wont accidentally be editing a level with zoomed out zoom and not realise it.

Didn't really understand that.
Zoom level doesn't affect the output at all.
What harm could it possibly do?

[fizzd]

Backspace deletes the current tile that is selected, rather than the tile before it. Level data is stored in the game like 'URRRURRDRR' with r for right, u for up and so on. if you select the second tile and press backspace, that deletes the first U, so you get 'RRRURRDRR'. That means the first direction the tile moves is to the right. If more than a few people are confused by this we'll look into making it clearer.

There are VFX events in the level that can set the zoom, zoom in, zoom out etc automatically. This is a different zoom level than the player zoom, and the total zoom level = level zoom times player zoom. We reset the player zoom so level makers wont accidentally be making all their VFX events with a non-default player zoom, thinking that that would be how other players would see the level at the default zoom.

We have a discord community at discord.gg/rhythmdr with lots of experienced level makers who could help you for further questions, and a suggestions box you can leave suggestions in. Thanks!

[Voodin im back]

PLEASE add an in editor tooltip for what each angle is. I don't want to have to draw the azimuths for what quarter note, 16th note, triplet etc. are myself. without guides, charting anything in a genre like hip hop,trap or idm is nigh impossible as multiple angles may appear to match the beat

Also if possible the ability to adjust playback speed during editing, as you can imagine, the difficulty of charting scales with the BPM in current state.

Furthermore, there's no tutorial for the editor at all so you feel kinda like a programmer tossed in a room full of screwdrivers, and the help bar doesn't mention all of the editors features...and no undo or redo buttons.(This one's especially frustrating as i've accidentally deleted tons of notes and couldn't just get them back)

[fizzd]

Hi Voodin, thanks for your comments and review.

The crux of this all is basically, that the editor is something very much in development still. We're only in the 3rd update of it now, we started working on it after the release of the game, and we still have loads more progress to go, including redos/undos and loads of accessibility features, a tutorial and so on.

It's also why we don't advertise the editor as a complete feature on our store page at all. It's a bonus free feature that our small team is developing in addition to the main game's new worlds. We would hide it in a beta branch but then a hundred people would ask questions specifically looking for it after seeing videos people uploaded.

It's kinda painful for us to see the development of an alpha-stage editor giving a more negative experience and leading to negative reviews, compared to if the editor wasn't there at all. I guess we could signal it more clearly that it's not a complete feature by any means yet. But undo/redo is a top priority for future editor updates (you can expect it by next month most probably). FWIW we do have features for adjusting playback speed (the 'pitch' field), they just aren't clearly signalled yet.

Thanks for noting your pain points and we hope you will have a better experience as we develop it more over the coming months!

[多用小黄瓜]

"Also, what's with the one miss fail even in the editor??? I asked for this to be changed in the game, but the editor too? Really???"

I'm really agree with this!!
as a new player,I hope to listen the whole song before I can 100% finished it.why not autoplay the song, and players just need to catch the beats. if miss one, just decrease some HP.

[slimesarecool]

skill issue

[Salmonilla]

if you can barely handle the adofai level editor... dont even go near the Rhythm Doctor level editor... i almost puked :c