prawndiddy wrote:Very nicely done! Especially as an improvement over the last one. You really polished up the mechanics and kept your own style. I especially like the song choices, the interesting beats, and the themes for each round. I think the more diverse music lends itself to more interesting beats, so those two go together I guess. I'm really glad you added a beat meter, as I think it's what sets the genre apart from a simple compilation or music video rework.
Thank you very much! Glad to see people are enjoying this iteration more, it definitely felt like a step up from my priors. I've been anxious to see how people like the different music, as I'm not so much a fan of pop/dubstep/the majority of CH music. I'm quite the metal-head actually, but I don't think the brutes lend well to the ultimate goal of a CH style video.
prawndiddy wrote:I think one or two more beat types per round would've been good. Many rounds, and maybe round 6 in particular, was very repetitive even though I really liked it. The nice thing about "real" music that isn't electronic/club/techno/whatever is that you can usually find a few different rhythms overlayed to choose from, and one thing you did pick up on well was that they have a better sense of pacing to them in terms of intense parts and mellow parts.
I think this is where my experience as a drummer will hinder me. I have such a hard time NOT sticking to the inherent beat of a song, if I do, it sounds so wrong to me and will succeed in driving me insane, or at least push me closer. Call it an OCD affliction if you must! I do try to pick songs that aren't so consistent, but it won't happen 100% of the time. Fish gotta swim...
prawndiddy wrote:Whenever there was a quick pair of beats (e.g. 12--1---), it felt off somehow. I don't think it was the wrong tempo, but if I understand how the beat tracks are made it may have been slightly offset or something. Oh, and another thing here... since your beatmeter was opaque (which I think is fine), you might want to just shift it down a bit more if you can, to not have the sliver of background video below it.
The whole beat matching fiasco for Round 2 was something that help up production. The BPM analysis said what it said, but I think it must be an average, because (again, drawing on my musical experience) the songs tempo is not constant. This is one of the great things about having real musicians instead of a drum machine and electronic music, we don't have programming to keep us perfectly in step. I noticed it significantly with Round 2, and it almost drove me to find a new song. I just liked the song too much and decided I got it "Close enough". Songs that are
that inconsistent are pretty rare (unless played live) so I don't expect to run into this problem very often.
As for the beatmeter, I tried to use it to cover the watermarks on the video. Again, a bit of an OCD thing...
prawndiddy wrote:I did actually make it through the whole video without losing (including edging each reward round, all the way until the final one, which I kinda skipped through because the girl and the scene weren't doing it for me), which I wasn't expecting to do because when I skipped through it last night it seemed very up-tempo all the way through and figured I'd lose it early.
Heh, the farthest I've made it was Reward Round 3.
prawndiddy wrote:The fast triples in round 5 had me nervous but I found a steady state. I'd say I enjoyed round 3 and 6 the most, because I liked the scenes and the songs the best. The xart/passion/etc videos are probably my favorites as a whole, so I was planning on just finishing up there on the reward section, but I figured I'd see how far I could go. :) Like I said, I kinda skipped through the last reward, so I went back to reward 3 to finally finish.
I imagine Round 5 will get a lot of people, it was definitely my favorite. The song, the girls, the theme, the editing, the fast 3-stroke clusters, the perfect Katie St. Ives commentary, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Definitely a recipe for disaster!
prawndiddy wrote:Who's the girl in the school scene in round 6? She kinda reminds me of "Carrie", who I also really like.
The blond? Madison Scott! Expect to see more of her in my future incarnations. She's a favorite
- Spoiler: show

- who-is-Madison-Scott-is-star-or-no-star-Madison-Scott-celebrity-vote.jpg (81.72 KiB) Viewed 2434 times
prawndiddy wrote:Oh! One other thing... some of the rounds felt like they had a little too much in the way of intros and outros. I liked the fade-in of the 30 second breaks, but coupling that with a 30 second cumshot outro to the previous scene and a 30 second intro before the music starts was a bit too much to stay completely interested. I'd say rounds 4 and 5 come to mind on this one.
I included these as kind of a "You gave it your best", in the event that the content is just too much and the player loses to the inevitable climax on screen. I can't remember which forum it was here, but someone was requesting a bit longer of an on-screen display after a Reward countdown. I totally agreed, who wants to climax to great content, only to have the credits roll immediately after? So I included the cumshots where I could as kind of a tip-of-the-hat. I would have liked to have them coincide with the end of the song, such as in Round 7, but that would have meant cutting more content than I would have liked.
The one round, in hindsight, where I kind of dropped the ball is Round 6. I had originally planned to use the remaining content of those two videos for the Reward Round, but ultimately forgot by the time I got there. Whoops!
I hope this gives some insight to my decisions! Thanks for the critique, keep 'em coming!