ad

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Etterna Online server

Long time ago someone added me to a Czech and Slovak gaming group on Facebook. It's like 70% toxicity and 30% of an actual content of varied quality so I don't usually check it that often. Today though I saw someone playing some crazy chord jack-y song on what seemed to be a Stepmania 5 build. In the zillion of comments underneath I found out that the game is named 'Etterna'. I searched for it and found the Etterna Online website.

Here you can download a SM5 Etterna build, create a profile on the website and gain access to many song packs including 'normal' and keyboard charts. Then you just play, your scores are saved on the server and you can check your standing in the leaderboards. Well, you get the idea.

At first I just downloaded old song packs that we used to play at conventions but then I thought why not give the Etterna ranking a try. I downloaded more song packs, mostly those that had anything BEMANI in the name, and tried some songs. At first I got totally lost on my dance pad and I was unable to sync. There was also something that bugged me but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. It was also making my accuracy go haywire. During this time I recorded some songs via OBS because I thought I'd share few songs so people could see that you can use legs to play 4 panel. Just after that I gave Etterna a bit more thought. I started to look for cell noteskin and after copying to the game I realized what was throwing me off - the note hit animation. The default noteskin in Etterna might actually have some animation but it's almost unnoticeable. Also the colors of that noteskin were messing with my head. When I saw a note that was supposed to be purple it was green! So glad I changed the noteskin. I set my settings to C730, mini 50%, Distant and all was fine. More or less. I'd appreciate a higher speed mod but unfortunately my monitor didn't seem to like higher speed than that.

Anyway here's the video I recorded using my iphone and OBS. Unfortunately I can't seem to figure out how to get record a good video

After playing probably way too much than my body could handle I decided to see if I could possibly play on the keyboard. I just tried the same settings I had for normal play and upped the speed to 750 BPM. I could read the charts more or less but my fingers were kind of puzzled about what to do when seeing certain patterns. I practically failed some tens. Ok, I didn't fail them but my score was around 60% which was unacceptable. I can get way higher score with my legs!

After few more failed attempts at trying to play on the keyboard I realized that I could possibly be playing Beatmania IIDX and clearing tens with 60% instead of this. I didn't switch to IIDX but went back to the noteskins. I downloaded IIDX Empress noteskin and put in my noteskin folder. I set Reverse, Overhead and hit enter on the same song I played before. Suddenly my score went into 90.xx! I struggled with the noteskin a bit for a while and it took me few songs to figure out where the problem was. I was in Perfect window rather than in Marvelous one. I realized that the red target line is not actually where one should be confirming the notes but rather below it on the key graphic. But otherwise I realized that with these settings I can be better at clearing songs on a keyboard. Nonetheless, my legs are still better at accuracy and speed. Here's a video of me playing Destiny, a 10 (not sure what the difficulty is)? The SDVX Station I pack is awesome.

After playing more songs requiring me to do hell a lot of jacks I decided to hook up my SVSE5 controller and try playing 4 panel on it. This time around the game itself started lagging so it even became difficult to record. But when not having OBS recording my game session the client runs fine and I could play eve harder songs than on keyboard.

No comments:

Post a Comment