Good/stray notes

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Hazyshade
Posts: 12

Post by Hazyshade »

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Are the percentages of good notes and stray notes supposed to add up to 100%? If not, then what exactly counts as a stray note?

EDIT - OK, I did an experiment, played a load of crap before the start of the song, and sure enough I had 28% stray notes to go with my 92% good notes. I thought stray notes = missed notes, but in fact stray notes = extra notes. It also seems that extra notes make no difference to either your score or your combo. I think they should, I think you should lose points for extra notes and have your combo reset to 0, because in a real piece of music putting a note in that shouldn't be there is just as bad or worse as leaving out one that should. I'm thinking of that horrible C-E-D' chord in GHZ, which trips me up nearly every time I play it - it will be much easier now I know I can 'cheat' by bashing the C and E, and the D in between, with my thumb :D

In theory, I could get the maximum score by bashing the keyboard with my forearm. I'd get a stray note percentage of several hundred*, but as long as all the real notes were in there somewhere, it wouldn't affect my score.

*Why display the number of extra notes as a percentage of the total notes in the song? It doesn't seem that the two numbers have any connection to each other.

2ND EDIT - 33/269 is 12.26% anyway. You may have rounding issues.
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Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

(Wow, nice job on your score there.)

You've guessed most of how those numbers work. Stray notes don't effect score, but they should. Key mashing is an effective tactic that shouldn't be allowed.

The percentages are a little unclear. Using your example of 253/269 and 33, there is one number missing that makes all the percentages much clearer. That is, "the number of (good or bad) notes hit total", which in this case are the 253 good ones plus the 33 stray ones, or 286 total.

So, the 11% you see there is 33 (bad) / 286 (all), meaning that "Out of all the notes you played total, 11% of them had nothing to do with the song"

Hopefully that clears things up. The scoring is still a work in progress, so I'd like to hear if you had any suggestions on how to improve it.
Hazyshade
Posts: 12

Post by Hazyshade »

(Thanks! I'm up to 115,000 now, and 98% - the main thing stopping me from 100%-ing it is the lack of a timing click at the start, are there any plans to add one?)

I'd suggest that on the score page you rename Stray Notes to Extra Notes, because Stray Notes could imply otherwise Good Notes that were outside the timing window, and not display the % of Extra Notes because it's not clear what it's a % of. But the important stuff on the score page is clear enough.

And I'd suggest that during the game, you have extra notes reset the combo to 0, and knock x points off the score.

EDIT - Yippee!!!

Image

Ugh, 3.30am UK time speaks for itself. Did I mention that this Synthesia program is BITCHIN' AWESOME?
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Nicholas
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Post by Nicholas »

Hazyshade wrote:Did I mention that this Synthesia program is BITCHIN' AWESOME?
It's great to hear you enjoy it! :D I haven't gotten much feedback from people who already had experience playing piano. It's reassuring to hear that it can help in that capacity too.

Regarding your suggestion about resetting the combo and adding a score penalty when the player hits a note that doesn't match any on-screen notes: absolutely yes. Added to my list for 0.6.3. The penalty will probably be the same as the rewind-note penalty (which I think is fixed at 10 right now).

Some day when you are able to fail out of a song, I don't think extra notes should count towards that -- combo reset and score penalty seems harsh enough.

Regarding changing the text on the score screen, I think "Extra Notes" is better too. However, right now it's important to list the extra notes to identify that there wasn't just a bunch of mashing going on. Once the above penalties are instituted, I think the score will speak completely for itself and the text can be simplified down to: "253 / 269 notes played", not listing the extra notes at all.
Hazyshade
Posts: 12

Post by Hazyshade »

Nicholas wrote:Some day when you are able to fail out of a song, I don't think extra notes should count towards that -- combo reset and score penalty seems harsh enough.
I disagree. Think of the psychological rewards of passing vs. failing compared to high score vs. low score. To your average gamer, passing with a score of 0 by key-mashing is a better outcome than failing accurately.
Nicholas wrote:However, right now it's important to list the extra notes to identify that there wasn't just a bunch of mashing going on.
Agreed, I was suggesting that you just give a number rather than a %.
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Nicholas
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Post by Nicholas »

Hazyshade wrote:passing with a score of 0 by key-mashing is a better outcome than failing accurately.
Hmm, put that way, I think I agree with you. A small enough fail-out penalty shouldn't bother regular players, but it would be enough to discourage mashers.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Alright, I just released an official (bug-fix) 0.6.2a version, but I already had these changes done so they made it in there too.

The confusing percent after (the now renamed) "extra notes" has been removed, and extra notes will now break your current combo. Tell me if you like it. :)
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