Warning: contains subjective ideas and thoughts!
Consistency is all about the choices a mapper makes while choosing rhythm, patterns and flow. Consistency is an essential part of creating a map that would feel finished and logically structured.
We get similar in difficulty, rhythm and appearance patterns for similar sounding parts. Different, yet somewhat connected patterns for different parts. Mixing and combining these elements on levels of design, rhythm and sound gets us a map that accurately follows a song, is fun to play and is understandable to a player.
Consistency can be applied on different levels. You can follow the same logic while selecting or creating all sort of things in the editor. Starting with the very simple individual basics and escalating to entire difficulties.
Summing it up: music is repetitive in some ways,but it introduces some variety. Mapping should follow the same pattern, introducing variety in every single aspect and different levels, depending on the changes in music.
Pretty much everything in mapping can and probably should be consistent to an extent. There is a wide diversity of different options to do so. Let's take a look at an example mapset.
cYsmix - House With Legs mapped by D33d
Rhythm & pattern consistency: let's take a look at the Hard difficulty, for example.
- You can see that the rhythm is set with the first combo 00:16:932 (1,2,3,4) - and is primarily built around the bass line.
- Later, the sound slightly changes, yet the rhythm remains relatively similar, 00:22:557 (1,2,3,4,5) - and the map represents just that.
- In the kiai, the music gets some additional juice to the bass line, but rhythm is not entirely different, there are still some similarities, 00:46:932 (1,2,3,4,5) - and this can be traced in the mapping as well.
Mapset consistency
- You can easily trace how the same ideas evolve by looking at these four points or any oher points of your choice in the editor from difficulty to difficulty.
00:16:932 - intro, simpliest part, basic outline of the rhythm
00:46:932 - kiai, more intense, the rhythm gets more complicated
01:31:932 - lower density part, contrasting with kiai times, following main rhythm outline
01:54:432 - second kiai, consistent with the first one
This is, however, just an example. Feel free to share other sets, ideas and your comments!
Consistency
Consistency is all about the choices a mapper makes while choosing rhythm, patterns and flow. Consistency is an essential part of creating a map that would feel finished and logically structured.
- Rhythm Consistency
Songs are based on intervals and repetitive motives, sounds and pitch changes. So, essentially music is repeating itself multiple times with slight alterations layering on top of each other, creating a progression.
What it means for a mapper is that in the end a map should probably reuse a lot of similar rhythm choices throughout is length. It can be exact the same rhythm repeated for 2 or 4 measures(the number can differ depending on the rhythm, artist, genre…) or it can be almost the same rhythm with some changes and alterations.
Essentially it means that instead of recreating every single slider shape/pattern/combo, it could be a good idea to look at the previous one and take some ideas and general rhythm from it, unless there is a dramatic change in sound, of course.
So, let’s agree that rhythm can and probably should be as repetitive in its nature as the song itself is. - Patterning Consistency
What about patterns, though? It is pretty much the same idea, patterns are based on the kind of sound/rhythm being mapped. It would make little to no sense to offer completely different patterns for similar sounding parts.
Usually, a player would associate certain shapes and patterns with sounds they were first introduced on. So, if you were to do a jump on a strong drum crash, players will most likely expect an identical jump for all of these drum crash sounds.
In the end, we would probably see similar slider shapes/patterns used throughout the entirety of a single difficulty or even the whole set of difficulties, supporting the style and feel of a song that is being mapped. - Mapset Consistency
It is also very likely, that the same ideas can be presented in a similar way throughout the whole difficulty. It would make no sense to contradict previous pattern and map something in an entirely different way, as players would simply be unable to follow the logic of a map.
We get similar in difficulty, rhythm and appearance patterns for similar sounding parts. Different, yet somewhat connected patterns for different parts. Mixing and combining these elements on levels of design, rhythm and sound gets us a map that accurately follows a song, is fun to play and is understandable to a player.
Applying Consistent Patterns
Consistency can be applied on different levels. You can follow the same logic while selecting or creating all sort of things in the editor. Starting with the very simple individual basics and escalating to entire difficulties.
- Individual combos.
Usually a combo follows a very short part of a song. And within that part very few elements change, so people often end up with similar shapes and similar rhythm intensity withon one combo. - Map Parts
Very often mappers refer to parts as “the calm part” or “kiai” or something of that kind. They use it to characterize the way a part sounds and, consequently, the way it is mapped. Within the same part variation happens and it is a lot more obvious than variation between combos, but most things follow similar concepts and sounds nonetheless. - Song Level
Parts may differ in intensity, they may differ in the kinds of rhythm followed in each particular difficulty, but the way song is subdivided into parts and difficulty/feel of each parts represents some similar ideas throughout a map.
Ideally, every player should get the same kind of experience from playing a map on different difficulty levels.
A beginner would still experience some rhythm intensity changes and alteration in slider shapes depending on the way song progresses, while a more experienced player would be able to experience the same concepts from different implementations of similar ideas. (i.e. changes in intensity, length and frequency of jumps depending on a part of song mapped)
Summing it up: music is repetitive in some ways,but it introduces some variety. Mapping should follow the same pattern, introducing variety in every single aspect and different levels, depending on the changes in music.
Implementation
Pretty much everything in mapping can and probably should be consistent to an extent. There is a wide diversity of different options to do so. Let's take a look at an example mapset.
Rhythm & pattern consistency: let's take a look at the Hard difficulty, for example.
- You can see that the rhythm is set with the first combo 00:16:932 (1,2,3,4) - and is primarily built around the bass line.
- Later, the sound slightly changes, yet the rhythm remains relatively similar, 00:22:557 (1,2,3,4,5) - and the map represents just that.
- In the kiai, the music gets some additional juice to the bass line, but rhythm is not entirely different, there are still some similarities, 00:46:932 (1,2,3,4,5) - and this can be traced in the mapping as well.
Mapset consistency
- You can easily trace how the same ideas evolve by looking at these four points or any oher points of your choice in the editor from difficulty to difficulty.
00:16:932 - intro, simpliest part, basic outline of the rhythm
00:46:932 - kiai, more intense, the rhythm gets more complicated
01:31:932 - lower density part, contrasting with kiai times, following main rhythm outline
01:54:432 - second kiai, consistent with the first one
This is, however, just an example. Feel free to share other sets, ideas and your comments!