General Charting Practices

Recommended Precursors:

Finished set up for a .xdrv chart (file organization, metadata, and timing)
Started patterning for a .xdrv chart

Pattern creation is fundamental to the gameplay of XDRV charts: this statement can be read in two ways. Of course, without any notes, gears, or drifts to hit, there is nothing for the player to do for the song’s duration, so the chart lacks any form of gameplay. The other interpretation of this statement is that chart quality is grounded in a different aspect of pattern creation–the theory behind the process. Experienced XDRV charters use knowledge of the game’s mechanics, common patterns, and various goals in making patterns. (They likely aren’t thinking about it 100% of the time, but these ideas can come in handy when charting goes from flow-state to more decisive.)

In next to all rhythm games, the fundamentals of a “good” chart can be broken down into 3 maxims:

Music sync (how a chart fits a song’s rhythms and intensity)
Visual appeal (how a chart looks, including clarity and balance)
Fun (how a chart plays on all intended playstyles)

For most cases of charting, all three of these factors contribute to the perception of a pattern’s quality, and all three of these factors can be achieved through various means. Though you shouldn’t be too worried about memorizing and applying the various means, it can still be nice to know them.

Types of Charting

When charting, there are many basic ways that patterns can be done. Many of these patterns perfectly fulfill one of the three maxims and partially fill a second maxim. Often, occasionally deviating from a singular practice or partially using multiple practices creates the highest-quality charts. As you will find, music sync is often the easiest to fulfill.

Pitch Charting

Pitch charting is a method of charting in which notes are placed relative to each other in terms of their pitch. If a proceeding note has a higher pitch, it may be placed in a greater lane (more to the right). If a proceeding note has a lower pitch, it may be placed in a lesser lane (more to the left). If a proceeding note has the same pitch, it may be kept in the same lane. This relationship can be reversed so that higher pitches are to the left and lower pitches are to the right.

Pitch charting does a great job at music sync–in fact, it is one of the most music-accurate ways of charting. As it replicates movement across an instrument, it also is often naturally fun to play. Visual appeal can be a challenge, however, as some melodies may miss certain notes, and therefore certain lanes. The best way to tackle this issue is to avoid rigidity. Different relationships can be used for similar changes in pitch, and the relationship of all notes to pitch can be reversed whenever.

Sample Charting

Sample charting is very similar to pitch charting except that different note types or lanes correspond to specific sound. If you have a bass-kick pattern, for instance, tap notes may be charted to the kicks and hold notes may be charted to the bass. You may also give these note types specific lanes or even entire tracks. Kicks may stay to lanes 1-3, while bass stays to lanes 4-6.

Sample charting is, again, great for music sync, as these separations, when done well, are easily recognized and responded to by players. As you can pick which lanes to use, visual appeal can also be mitigated. Sample charting can sometimes lack in fun, unfortunately, as patterns can feel static or excessive. Again, willingness to break and redefine the organization of notes to sounds can resolve this. Also, representing only the most important elements of the song is key.

Essential Charting

Essential charting is the method of reducing complicated rhythms to simple, essential patterns. This typically does not mean simplifying the rhythms used; rather, placement of notes is simplified to groups that are common to rhythm games across various genres. You will learn more about these patterns in the next section.

Essential charting is actually great at fulfilling music sync, visual appeal, and fun, as the patterns used in essential charting are tried and true. With that said, the drawback of essential charting is that it can give the chart a generic feeling. It’s good to include classic patterns in your chart, but they should not dominate.

Considerations of Charting

These three principles, in isolation, can get you a good bit of the way in terms of charting for XDRV. With that said, they can also mislead you into thinking charting is more a mathematical process than it really is. Realistically, charting is as much a mechanical process as it is artistic. In each section, you can make decisions that deviate from the above methods, but overall improve the chart.

Mirroring & Hand Balance

In many songs, a specific melody or rhythm, best represented by a pattern of your choice, may repeat a few times. To avoid this pattern becoming repetitive, it can be mirrored where it recurs. This makes the pattern feel fresh while maintaining the relationships between notes, much like flipping the note-pitch relationships of pitch charting. If a pattern is mirrored more than 3 times, however, the pattern may still be repetitive for players. At that point, a new, potentially less representative pattern may be called for.

Mirroring sections also helps considerably with hand balance. When charting, it is a good idea to make sure that the chart overall is not too concentrated on either side of the inputs and therefore, either hand. This creates a fairer experience for players of different hand dominances. It is fine if portions of your chart are kept to one hand; in fact, you can create very interesting patterns by restricting your lanes to one hand for some amount of time.

Continuous Treatment of Track

Although it can be done in purposeful and fun ways, limiting a pattern’s notes to one side of the track should not be your default approach. Having a group of notes occupy only one track can result in excessive density on one hand, making for patterns that require more dexterity than reasonable. It can also make sections of a chart look empty or unbalanced. It is better if you consider both tracks to be a continuous space, allowing you to chart one instrument across 6-8 different inputs. With that said, limiting a section to one track can be fun and purposeful, especially for more technical charts. By and large, choosing to use both track sides or one track side for a group of notes is a matter of your chart’s goals.

Limiting Lanes

In many base game charts, charters exclude certain lanes when patterning specific sections. Limiting lanes can be good for controlling difficulty on dense sections, making the player responsible for less distinct inputs. The strategy can also be useful for creating unique patterns that better represent the sound of a section. When omitting lanes, charters will typically omit lanes symmetrically; either the two outer lanes, two inner lanes, or two middle lanes. Occasionally, especially in easier difficulties where a drift is used, lanes 1 or 6 are omitted. Charters can get very creative, though too much creativity can result in odd-looking or imbalanced sections.

Progression & Pacing

When charting, charters should consider how the difficulty of the chart changes with the song. Typically, more intense parts of songs such as drops, build-ups, and speed-ups deserve more difficult or more technical patterns. Conversely, calm parts of a song should receive easier, less busy patterns.

Syncopation & Omission

Common practice in many .xdrv charts is to simplify complicated or dense rhythms to simple patterns, where sounds of less emphasis are purposefully not recognized with a note. This process is known as syncopating. Syncopating is great for limiting difficulty in easier charts, but it is also great for maintaining proper difficulty progression in harder charts, especially in slower sections.

Although it may be tempting to represent multiple elements of a complex composition with different notes and patterns for each element, it can be easy to overdo. If players are unable to decipher what patterns go to what instrument in your chart, they may feel that your chart is overcharted (where the song is overrepresented / too difficult). Typically, you do not want to represent with patterning more than two parts of the composition at once. The most frequent and well-executed combination is melody and percussion, separating the two by note types or opposite tracks.

Charting to Difficulty

Charting to difficulty is the process in which a charter creates patterns with a specific difficulty rating in mind. Charting to difficulty can be good in stabilizing the difficulty progression of a chart (as it prevents any one section from being charted too difficult), but striving for the wrong difficulty can result in an underchart (where the song is underrepresented) or an overchart. Newer charters should not chart to difficulty too strongly until they have a good understanding of EX-XDRiVER’s difficulty scale, which can only come with time or very purposeful observation.

Stamina vs Tech Charting

If you are familiar with the step-based rhythm game scene, then you will be familiar with stamina and tech charts. Stamina charts are charts where lengthy streams of notes are used, which require a lot of stamina to hit completely. Tech charts, on the other hand, are charts that focus more on tricky rhythms and combinations of simultaneous notes, known as chords.

The basic concepts of “stamina” and “tech” charting can be applied to XDRV charts as well, despite the game not being step-focused. In fact, you can find many of these tendencies in base-game XDRV charts. (Charts like CANDYLAND and LUMINOUS RACE are more akin to stamina charts, while charts like And So You Felt or City in the Clouds are tech-adjacent.) You don’t have to commit a chart to one of these styles, however; you can use as much or as little for each section of the song as you wish.

As you can tell by this section, there is actually quite a lot of nuance as to how XDRV charts can be patterned. Again, you shouldn’t be too worried about adhering to these principles. Rather, allow these principles to naturally guide you towards your decisions on charting certain sections. The next section will go over common note and hold patterns that you can use in charts.