Dynamic Difficulty Creator

[iminashi]

 

 - New process to add measure 0 at time 0.000 when startBeat is greater than 0.000

 

What's the reason for this? Since in ODLC the first beat is at 10.000.

 

Also, I'd really prefer if DDC didn't move sections/phrases to the first beat of a measure. Having to create workarounds like 1/4 measures to get a section to start at the right place feels silly.

[Chlipouni]

Hi iminashi,

 

  Don"t forget that DDC is an automatic process. I'm positive that Ubisoft creates its DD levels by hand ...

 

  The whole DDC process is defined by measure, so the position of notes inside a measure is important.

  If I allow a phrase or a section to start in the middle of a measure, I have to separate the notes of this measure in two distinct sets.

 

  This feature has already been requested by Firekorn and if I want to implement it I will have to change a lot of things in the existing code.

  Nevertheless, I keep it in my todo list ...

 

  About the first time position of a beat, I setted it like that because EOF generates the "0.000" beat by default. 

[iminashi]

 

  About the first time position of a beat, I setted it like that because EOF generates the "0.000" beat by default. 

 

Not sure what you mean by that. EOF sets the startBeat and the first beat at the time where the beat map begins, not at 0.000.

 

It only matters if people want to use ODLC-like leading silence (10+ seconds of silence). I've tried it, but haven't noticed any merits in doing so myself. Anyway, Firekorn advises that people do that in his tutorial. And if you move the first beat from 10s to 0s, it will mean that about half of that silence will not be skipped like it is in ODLC.

[Chlipouni]

 

 

  About the first time position of a beat, I setted it like that because EOF generates the "0.000" beat by default. 

 

Not sure what you mean by that. EOF sets the startBeat and the first beat at the time where the beat map begins, not at 0.000.

 

It only matters if people want to use ODLC-like leading silence (10+ seconds of silence). I've tried it, but haven't noticed any merits in doing so myself. Anyway, Firekorn advises that people do that in his tutorial. And if you move the first beat from 10s to 0s, it will mean that about half of that silence will not be skipped like it is in ODLC.

 

 

It depends on how you use EOF.

 

In my case :

- I update myself the audio file to add the leading silence

- I update the GP Tab to add a leading measure (for that silence)

- I start my EOF project with these files and I move the measure number 2 to the beginning of the audio track

 

So, I set the first beat at "0.000" to manage these different ways to make CDLCs.

 

Did you notice an issue or a special behaviour in RS2014 due to this first beat position ?

[iminashi]

 

Did you notice an issue or a special behaviour in RS2014 due to this first beat position ?

 

 

Only the leading silence thing I mentioned. I don't think there are any other issues.

[firekorn]

@@Chlipouni Your method means that you have to actually sit through the silence though because the game will start at 0s and not around 6/7s if the first beat is at 10s.

 

@@iminashi as for the first beat of the measure obligation, that's why i now make my own difficulty by hand, and even then i get limited by EOF regarding the fact that a section have to be on a beat while oDLC clearly don't have that obligation at all...

 

On another subject, the more i look at oDLC and make my own DD the more i notice that DDC don't create enough level to fit correctly into the difficulty sorting that RS does. I know that a lot of stuff can be hard to program but the idea is that they rarely ever delete more than 1 or 2 note especially in most situation and they also don't hesitate to have empty levels when they want a phrase to actually be higher in the skyline either.

 

When DDC barely reach 8 level of difficulty even with the keep all levels configuration while oDLC can have up to 30 levels and usually sit around 10/15 levels for most riff.

[Chlipouni]

@@firekorn, my leading silence is only about 3 or 5 seconds, so I don't have to wait 10 sec before playing.

 

About the maximum number of levels of difficulty, I agree with you but I had to find a compromise when I started to design DDC.

Some users desliked to have too many levels (too fastidious to reach the highest level)

[firekorn]

@@Chlipouni Nobody ever has to wait 10s if it's done right but if you do it the same way oDLC work but anyway to each their own and as long as there's no issue, it's not a deal breaker regarding CDLC quality if you ask me :)

 

As for the number of level, i can understand the issue when we didn't had any control over DD speed (or to simply deactivate it) but it makes less sense now and the sight reading level at max means that you reach level 16 directly which DDC never reaches even in incredibly complicated solo.

 

I'll admit that some choice made in oDLC could be impossible to reproduce with an automated system (they sometimes do very bold choices that i would have hesitated to make) but i think that by going for a first level that is 1 note every 2 measure like oDLC could already allow DDC to reach 10 level of difficulty a bit more easily.

 

All that being said, i do think an adjustement with a new config and ramp up model could probably already go a long way to make DDC a bit closer to oDLC standard so that would avoid any kind of algorithm modification but i'll admit i haven't looked too much into it right now.

[Berneer]

I actually like the way DDC categorizes notes and I tend to remove levels from the dedault ramp-up since I find much music has a pattern such that if you remove/add next level notes (eighths to sixteenths, for example) in one go the song becomes easy to play and what the user plays sounds natural. I actually find it hard on the user to tell him/her to play a16th note here but not there in the same measure. For the ear to hear and play a note in a measure and then purposely hear and ignore another note in the same measure, to me, feels unnatural and ironically feels harder to play.

 

I never thought of starting a section other than on a beat. I'd be curious to see which ODLC does this, to see why it is necessary. Maybe sporadic tone changes in a measure in crazy groups like SoaD... :)... I recall Firekorn writing something earlier about this, I think, I read back to earlier posts to possibly answer my question.

 

I did notice too some interesting ODLC ramping behaviour of a single note becoming a power chord (G5) becoming a full chord (ex G Major chord).

[firekorn]

@@Berneer Well take The trooper by Iron Maiden, the riff starts on the 16th note before the measure and so does the section that is impossible to even do in EOF.

 

Right now i'm working on Ropes by In Flames and it's the same issue, i have the 16th note that starts the riff that is right before the measure start :

http://imgur.com/CWJ3yfV

And in that song, the solo section has to start on the 4th beat of the measure instead of the first one and that's far from an uncommon sight (and there's note in the measure too though they aren't visible in this case because i already made the different difficulty) :

http://imgur.com/NO7Pirm

 

It's true that probably 90% of the song don't have many situation like that if any but there's still quite a good number of case where a riff starts off-beat or slightly before the 1st beat of the measure.

 

As for the fact that you prefer to get rid of all 16th (or whatever) at the same time is highly debatable. Right now i'm following what i've saw in most oDLC where they simply start by cutting the last note so that the transition is easier to make, that's pretty natural especially when the picking pattern end on a down strum, i think it's easy to agree that i make sense. Then it starts to be harder, they usually cut the riff in chunk of a subdivision (group of 3 for 16th note for example) so it actually allow you to slowly build up speed and have better control over your picking pattern than going straight from 8th to 16th and they will slowly cut the 16th to avoid overwhelming the user. I find it actually quite tolerable in many occasion but some riff will require a very different treatment.

 

As for some chord evolution, i'm not a fan when they start to build one kind of chord and shift to a slight variation of it but sometimes it can make sense, that's really the kind of thing that requires to think about the riff and how could it be played more easily and not just cut note because. There's the same thing when it comes to some bend where they actually introduce the bend note and then will move you to the actual note that will be bend but that is always done without altering the FHP and it's really something that requires to evaluate if it actually make sense to do so. There's also the fact that they cut many slide in and out early and will move the note so that the user will always pick at the same time, some for some fast HO/PO where they will keep the last note and adjust the timing. It makes sense but it really depend on each case, the bpm, how easy will it really be, etc...

 

So i don't expect DDC to go as deep as they do on many occasion but i do consider that the actual level discrepancies which have an impact on the difficulty sorting could use a little more harmonization which is why i suggest to simply change the config files first so that the "issue" can be somewhat simply solved.

[Chlipouni]

@@firekorn,

 

  In order to generate more level of difficulties, modifying the config files is not sufficient.

  It is needed to add logic in DDC process, to split two adjacent levels if too many notes appear.

  For example, in a 4/4 time signature, 4 notes can appear at the same time if they belong to the same category and subcategory.

[firekorn]

So i guess DDC doesn't support a maxsubcategory=0 ?

 

Also since Chord are removed after the rhythm is removed, if the maxchordnote is only change when maxtegory is 1 wouldn't that create a few more level than what the default config would.

[Chlipouni]

@@firekorn,

 

  You are right, we can add 5 more levels in the config file by defining only one change between two adjacent levels.

 

  However, the new levels will be used only if notes exist for these levels and if the merging process is not too high configurated.

 

  If I understand the main purpose of this request is to have more differences between songs in order to select them in Ignition ?

  Do we need to apply these new parameters in the default config of DDC ?

 

Thanks

[firekorn]

@@Chlipouni It has nothing to do with ignition but with the sorting option of Rocksmith remastered. The difficulty sorting take the max level to organize them by order of difficulty, a song that has only 8 level will be put around others song that have only that amount of level so when oDLC use up to 30 levels for difficult songs while DDC barely use 10 you end up with hard cdlc being placed among easy oDLC.

 

If DDC can at least go up to 16 (which is the max sight read level in RS), that means that there will be less difference in sorting inside RS which will offer a better experience when using the game options and it might also allow for greater skyline since there will be more visible difference when a riff is indeed complex.

[raynebc]

@@iminashi as for the first beat of the measure obligation, that's why i now make my own difficulty by hand, and even then i get limited by EOF regarding the fact that a section have to be on a beat while oDLC clearly don't have that obligation at all...

I'm hoping the need for this is relatively rare. It would be very complicated for me to change EOF to allow events to be defined outside of a beat marker's position.

[firekorn]

@@raynebc i guessed so that i wouldn't be easy to allow event to not be tied to a beat which is why i never asked.

 

As for the need for it, well it's a matter of how precise you wanna be, in most case you can get around that "issue" and if you really want, you can always play with the BPM and such to make something that would work anyway even if it wouldn't exactly be as oDLC.

 

So i wouldn't want you to bother with that at all.

[PC Plum]

Hi,

 

I have noticed a few times now that when I use DD it can chop off the last note of the chart

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyOGNDejFrMk9ESkE/view?usp=sharing

 

becomes

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyOXJjNFlmOUs4eU0/view?usp=sharing

 

i.e. it chops off the linknext unpited slide to finish the song.

 

 

I am using rstoolkit-2.8.2.0-273b0ba2-win (DDC 3.3).

 

Any ideas or fixes would be nice, I always like to finish a song with some style :D

[firekorn]

@PC Plum it's your phrase length value that create a new phrase/section right on that measure so the linknext just disappear because of it apparently.

[PC Plum]

Thanks I'll try a different phrase length and see what happens :D

 

 

Edit - I did not try a different phrase length as it was already at 8 and should have been plenty.  What I did was change the position of the outro Section/Phrase in EoF, so measure 368 (where it cuts in the screenie) is the 3rd bar of the Outro Section/Phrase and the DDC phrase length was set to 8 anyway.

 

The last linknext unpitched slide still gets chopped off.

[PC Plum]

Double post ftw :D

 

I wouldn't say solved but I found a workaround.  Placing a dummy ghost note at the end of the chart helped

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyS3VTTkN2bUdfem8/view?usp=sharing

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyZzNnaGtlaUl1cDA/view?usp=sharing

[Alex360]

@PC Plum, hope that not a toolkit linknext mask bug

[PC Plum]

Well you are the expert on that not me :D

 

There are many linknexts that work fine (in this chart and many others I have made) and it's only when I put one on the last note of the chart (lead/bass) that it disappears.

[iminashi]

I would guess that it happens because DDC moves the END phrase to the first beat of a bar.

[firekorn]

@@iminashi That would still be weird on DDC part to move the END phrase on a position where a note exist....

 

@@PC Plum you can try to create a phrase name END on the first bar of the measure 369 to see if that will solve the issue more properly.

[Chlipouni]

Hi,

 

I have noticed a few times now that when I use DD it can chop off the last note of the chart

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyOGNDejFrMk9ESkE/view?usp=sharing

 

becomes

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oZs0ta32KyOXJjNFlmOUs4eU0/view?usp=sharing

 

i.e. it chops off the linknext unpited slide to finish the song.

 

 

I am using rstoolkit-2.8.2.0-273b0ba2-win (DDC 3.3).

 

Any ideas or fixes would be nice, I always like to finish a song with some style :D

 

@@raynebc,

 

  It seems that it is an EOF issue.

  I can reproduce it and EOF omits to generate the last note if the previous one has the linknext status