KomachiBaka

formerly known as

FiLm4ik

In my opinion, mapping is a bit stuck nowadays. Usually, people are just seeking for cooler visuals, which led to a ton of similar maps. However, I think it’s too boring and easy to go for visuals only (although maps should definitely look stylish and cool). If you are an expert in mapping, it can allow you to express yourself not only through mapping techniques but also through ideas that you implement. Mapping in its current state does actually allow you to do much more than people do.

The main reason for me writing this is people who kinda understand it, but they still do not realize how deep and complex it can go. I did not plan any of my maps to be explained or “deciphered” by anyone and I don’t think any maps really should have an explanation. However, I realized that my example can make people see that there are different approaches to mapping, and such people will be able to look at other mappers, who take the whole “mapping” definition to another level, from another angle (since such mappers with much more complex maps than mine existed far before me).

Me writing this will definitely bring some bad consequences and side effects both for me and mapping scene as a whole, but I never treated stuff like “community” that seriously and just interested in what’s going to happen.

“Memorial” is a series of 11 beatmaps that were supposed to be different among themselves (both conceptually and mapping-wise), but still having a unifying idea behind them. As pretentious as the name might sound, the main reference to it was a photo memorial from the Life is Strange game, which consists of dozens of photographs that main character, Max Caulfield, took before in her life and could use each of them in order to time-travel to a specific time periods and locations that were present in a corresponding photograph.



Taking it as the main inspiration, I also wanted to connect it with my mapping and music tastes (which would help me to decide which songs I should map and how exactly I should map them).

After a lot of thought, I came up with the idea of making the first map of the series inspired by my first inspirations in mapping, and the song for this then should’ve been a song of a certain genre (or by a certain artist) that I’ve got “hooked on” for the first time ever (at least as how I could recall it). Then I should continue this order and the finishing map of the series then should’ve contained my most recent mapping inspos and the song should’ve been of some genre that I only started listening to recently.

For example, Celldweller was the first artist that I’ve really started listening to for real and my mapping inspirations for the G4M3 0V3R map were my main mapping inspos from the time when I only started taking mapping seriously.

Important note is that I’m not going to go directly about inspirations for each map (only a couple of times), as this is something that can be seen clearly in the editor by experienced mappers, and this text is only meant to tell you about ideas. Each map was inspired by someone and was never supposed to make a direct copycat of some mapper’s style, but to give my own “spin” on it (still making sure my maps look different).

To top my idea off, I’ve also decided to make a #0 map on some Life is Strange OST, that would give a small hint to the time-traveling idea and somehow actually transfer my “mapping identity” back in time so I could do this series going from past to present. This map does not represent my first mapping sources of inspiration, but my inspirations at the moment when I decided to do this whole series thing.

Summing it up, the Memorial mapping series is a series where I go from my old mapping/music tastes to newer ones. The important note here is that I also wanted to make a special concept (or to have a special approach) for each map in the series and now I’m going to talk about them.

beatmapsets/1836317#osu/3770326

General explanation

As I said, this beatmap should’ve utilized the idea of time-travel. In order to make it like that, I’ve tried to reflect the main narrative object from Life is Strange – the tornado which is told to destroy the city the game takes place in. To represent tornado/storm/whirlwind I tried to make the beginning of the beatmap “peaceful” and clean, gradually going for more windy/distracted visuals and structure in the end and finishing with some total chaos. It’s safe to say that in my opinion I’ve got truly skill-issued mapping this (luckily this was one of a couple of cases where it happened throughout the series as I think), but I’m sure the transition is still clear. It just could’ve been done much better.

Notable references:

1) The diffname “Rewind” refers to a game mechanic that allows you to transfer your character back in time.
2) The final pattern of the beatmap (and chaotic/twisting ending as a whole) were supposed to replicate the icon of that “Rewind” mechanic, that would imply that my “mapping identity” teleported back in time after that pattern (which would allow me to upload maps inspired by my old mapping and music tastes after).

I’ve mentioned that every map of my series was going to have some special concept to it (besides this whole Life is Strange idea thing). This map wasn’t an exclusion since I’ve tried to experiment and test my own skills for a bit. Firstly, I mapped all of the red+blue combos, leaving nothing between them and was filling the space with cyan/pink combos only after. This is also why this map doesn’t really look good to me now – the structure is too weak and weird. However, some may interpret it as a distortion inside of the storm and stuff like that. It doesn’t work as a proper excuse for me tho and this idea is not really connected with other ideas which is not cool.


Trivia:

1) I supposed this map to be a collab made by me and Frakturehawkens (which would exclude the “filling the gaps” idea).

beatmapsets/1843776#osu/3787298

General explanation

This song is a mashup of almost every other song from Celldweller’s “End of an Empire” album. This album consists of 4 chapters (Time, Love, Dreams, Death) and each chapter contains several songs. Each chapter was also released separately with its own cover. You can see all of the covers combined below. What I did is that I “decoded” the mashup and determined where each parts’ song sounds. That led to having a ton of bookmarks that you can see in my map. Then, having those 4 parts’ covers in mind let me map each chapter’s songs in their own playfield corner. For example, parts from “Time” songs in the mashup are all mapped in the bottom right corner, as it comes from the cover (to be more precise – colored part of each cover).



What I like about this concept is that everything was basically done for me and all I needed was just to combine it. The mashup structure of the song allowed me to divide the map into parts, while covers of the chapters gave me the playfield idea and combo colors.

The concept could be finished here, but I wanted to complexify it since it was just suggesting itself having so many ideas done for me by the song and its details.

I imagined the playfield as the clockwork dial since the main chapter is “Time” chapter with clockwork being in its cover (the lead single of the album – End of an Empire - is also from the Time chapter). That allowed me to point every slider of each quarter towards the next quarter of the playfield (going clockwise). Funny thing is that it somehow also refers to my time-travel idea. As I said in the Introduction part, this map was supposed to reflect my first mapping inspirations ever. That’s why I went for cleaner structure and simple slider shapes because I liked them a lot (maybe because I was still more of a player than of a mapper at the time).

I also added some ideas to the concept and limitations without really connecting them to the song/covers and everything else. Time/blue parts always contain parallel sliders, Dream/green parts have no overlaps (only perfect stacks for the notes), Death/purple parts always have sliders stacked and Love/red parts contain everything from 3 other parts and basically are mapped without any limitations. I regret doing this and not going for something else that could be connected to the initial idea of the song and chapters since it was just a perfect case for it.

Although you could connect and interpret these limitations with chapter names somehow:
a) “Time” parts have parallel sliders and it could represent different timelines going parallel
b) “Death” parts having stacks could represent the idea of that if something dies then something new can be born in the place of it
c) “Dreams” parts having no overlaps could mean having something clean and peaceful without intersections/contradictions (as this is what people usually dream about)
d) “Love” parts being mapped as I want could mean doing just what you love
..but I did not intend it and these correlations just sound awful imo.

Trivia:


2) Going from straight sliders to slightly curved ones in the second half is the second time in the series where I got skill-issued cuz just didn’t know what else to do in order to make the second half look not that boring after the first one. Should’ve definitely waited for some better idea.

beatmapsets/1852026#osu/3805320

General explanation

This map was supposed to represent three different stages of Skystar’s mapping (as I defined them for myself). In my opinion, their mapping changed significantly 2 times. First “era” peaked in maps like Neuronecia or Dreamless Wanderer. Second “era” map examples are Caramel Heaven or Tokyo. Third era is LOSER map and everything else that is similar. The shifts of his style are clear to anybody (thanks to another eastern mapper who inspired him), but the exact years of them happening can be interpreted differently by different people. My idea here (and almost anywhere else) is not something objectively right, and I think every thematic concept should be like that – not 100% objective that could work for every mapper, but being significantly based on objective things (like Skystar’s mapping changes in this exact case).

The first part of the map represents the 3rd era Skystar mapping. The next parts go 2 – 1 – 1 - 2 – 3. This strange structure is not as strange as it seems (cuz it’s symmetrical) and it also allows me to map at least 1 chorus and at least 1 verse/bridge in a different style, so basically allows me to showcase my idea better. Parts are separated using kiai.

Trivia and references:

1) This is a pattern (00:29:750 (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,6,7)) where my followpoints (that I also did upload some of my other maps with) perfectly work with the background.



2) 01:16:860 – this kiai doesn’t separate anything and is a leftover from older versions of this map that I forgot to remove. It still works the best with the song smh lol...
3) The combo colors in this map were taken from my main Skystar inspiration maps for this (Neuronecia – Tokyo – Loser)
4) The diffname has “131519” in it (referring to 2013, 2015 and 2019) although these years do not align with 3 mentioned inspiration maps just because the diffname looks cooler visually that way (which is something I always pay attention to cuz this is as important as the map itself), still keeping the general idea.
5) Somehow this map also refers to a time-travel concept, so does this 03:18:266 pattern (although it was not meant like that initially).
6) This was my favorite map of mine for a long time and it was probably the last time I had much fun while mapping something (excluding collabs).

beatmapsets/1860305#osu/3824645

General explanation

This map was supposed to be a simple collab between two mappers and has no special idea behind it. This makes it special among other maps in the series.

Trivia:

1) This is one of my favorite maps and the most solid/perfect in my opinion. This also was definitely the best collaboration mapping experience I’ve ever had thanks to cherrymeii. I learned a lot from this map.

beatmapsets/1919207#osu/3960484

General explanation

This map’s idea was to reflect 4 people temperament types through mapping:

Phlegmatic parts were meant to be slow-paced, peaceful, sometimes going lazy and having constant rhythm skips and so on.
Melancholic parts were meant to show instability, weird choices, unstable changes.
Sanguine parts were meant to look like the default generic mapping of a certain style – being expressive enough and good, utilizing different mechanics nicely (but imo having nothing special behind).
Choleric parts were meant to be furious and fast-paced, going kinda insane.

If you google each temperament and align it with the parts it should be totally clear (in case you do not know about it yourself), although I did take my own approach to them to a certain extent and stuck to my own definition of these temperaments.
Parts go Phlegmatic – Melancholic – Sanguine – Choleric – Melancholic – Sanguine – Choleric – Sanguine – Melancholic – Phlegmatic. This is kinda close to Luvoratory map part division idea and here it allows to keep similar song parts stuck to certain temperaments (and basically allows me to map intense choruses as Choleric parts, slower parts as Phlegmatic parts etc).

Combo colors in this map also align with colors that are defined as representing each temperament type. The custom skin is from Senseabel’s She works out too much map

Trivia:

1) With this break 01:07:070 I also tried to represent melancholic instability. Going giga intensive but also going giga passive at the same time. This might also be interpreted as people’s feelings during burnouts, where they have a lot of overwhelming thoughts and events happening but they also lead to your motivation dying. This is something I was thinking a lot about and thought it would be cool to represent it in mapping.



2) This map was supposed to be a collab with 7VII.

beatmapsets/1995573#osu/4147374

General explanation

This is a map that was supposed to represent the proxemics concept in mapping. My parts (red ones) are in the middle and are my intimate space according to proxemics (this is why this exact song was chosen). There are 3 parts on each side of me and they represent three distinct zones. The further other parts are – the more distant these people’s mapping is compared to my mapping (mechanically or “spiritually”) and the larger is distance between me and these people in the mapping community.



Significant note here is that I didn’t try to involve mapping skill in this concept and this idea only represents different mapping approaches, never implying that some of them are better.

Trivia:

1) Each pair of parts look similar to me to a certain extent while this wasn’t meant. Hawkens and Miraui parts (orange) both use a lot of simple shapes and have the lowest starrating among others. Rhythmical and kuyusu parts (green) have the highest starrating and highest density. Seros and xytoper parts are just looking alike to me.

beatmapsets/2033399#osu/4238960

General explanation

Among other ideas, this beatmap also features a puzzle game that is referring to the Bernkastel's Game from the final installment of Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru. The rules and answers for the puzzle game can be found in the map’s description in case you wanna check it out, while here I’m just going to describe the concept, ideas and references (cuz the puzzle itself was not the only thing I did there).

Umineko is a detective. In every detective (let it be a movie, a game or anything else) you don’t have a clue about what the answers could be in the beginning. But as the story progresses, you can even have your own guesses regarding the questions. Any puzzle game is the same – you can’t know all the answers right off the bat. This is what I also tried to represent in the map (while the map is the puzzle at the same time). In the beginning I’ve tried to avoid straightforward decisions and wanted to make the map look as obscure and unclear as it can be. As an example, I can mention constant off-rhythms and offscreens. The beginning sliderarts could’ve easily been placed without being offscreens, but they weren’t. This makes people who watch it question it right away. You have less questions and the map gets more stable as it continues and this was supposed to give the detective experience without actually reading a detective. (Getting things straight, I’m not really satisfied with how this idea was done and it’s not really that clear when looking at the map, since it was rushed. Probably should’ve spent more time on it)

Now I’m going to explain puzzle references that I’ve made (I don’t recommend reading it in case you plan on reading Umineko, however I highly doubt someone can get spoiled by it).

The Umineko novel contains 8 episodes. The puzzle game I was referencing examines only 6 of them. In each episode there is a culprit and you need to guess who it is. In the puzzle you are provided with lots of statements made by different characters. Those statements are colored with light purple in the text. Innocent characters’ purple statements are always true, but the culprit can lie in purple. In each of 6 episodes there is a different amount of light purple statements. So that’s why I split my map into 6 parts and the amount of light purple sliders is the same as the amount of light purple statements in each Umineko episode. Moreover, the order of objects is the same as the order of statements and the number of each “wrong” object in each part is the same as the number of each false statement in the novel. Also, there are hints provided in the original puzzle, and I made sure to provide similar hints to the puzzle in my map.

The bg is the cg art from the puzzle in the novel.

beatmapsets/2089361#osu/4378504

General explanation

This was mapped for the 17th iteration of MBC and is split into 16 parts. In each part I was mapping according to the limitation of a certain iteration of this contest (while also not violating 17th iteration rules).

Sometimes I had to improvise though, since some limitations are mutually exclusive:

1) The 1st MBC required you to map using straight sliders only, while the 17th MBC required you to use sliders with anchors. That’s why in the first part of my map I’ve tried to utilize sliders that have white and red anchors but still look oblong as if they were simple straight sliders.

2) The 5th MBC required your map to have a specific rhythm that was made for you by the organizers. In my case I did not have a reference, so I copied rhythm from this, which is the first mapset on this song that ever got a leaderboard (and it seemed fair to me to use it cuz of this reason).

3) The 12th MBC required you to use red-anchored sliders only, but this was prohibited by 17th MBC rules and that’s why I used white-anchored sliders only.
Combo colors in this beatmap do not play any significant role (unlike colors used for other maps of the series).
The diffname and the background are referring to my Rewriter map, but I’m not going to explain reasons for that this time.

beatmapsets/2103170#osu/4412773

General explanation

The song title can be translated as “Focus” or “Concentrate” and the main chorus line can be translated as “Without solitude I can’t stay focused”. The rest of the song follows this message and tells you about getting distracted. Because of this I wanted to represent how people can get distracted in real life by different thoughts/events or even by other people. In the first part (black combo) I used the style I was inspired from initially. I start 2nd part with a new combo which is inspired by a different map/mapper. When the 3rd part starts, I do it again and new combos are repeated every time (so they go 3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 in the 3rd part). I do it 7 times and it is meant to represent how your initial thought/idea/wants can be distracted and your resources as a human can be spent on something else you didn’t really want to spend your resources on.

It is meant to make the initial idea insignificant in the end so in the final part (8th/white) I mix everything and make sure there are references to each of 7 previous parts. I also added offscreens and 2B elements so it looks more chaotic in the end, also referring to a mental state where you are overwhelmed with thoughts so much that you can’t even separate them. It also gets emphasized with having 1 combo color for this part. So, in the beginning there is 1 combo and it is 100% of the initial idea, while in the end it is also only 1 combo but you can’t see and divide your initial idea at all.

As you probably noticed, there are 8 parts and this is like that due to the combo color limit (8 colors max). Technically, black isn’t even considered as a color sometimes, as “black” is what happens when all other colors are absorbed and do not exist. White, on the other side, is the color which combines every other color. Black and white are opposites of each other, and I make sure to keep the proper order going black-orange-red-purple-blue-green-yellow-white.

Trivia:

1) This is the song I wanted to map for the longest time ever, having like 5 or 6 different ideas since ~mid 2022 and I never was satisfied neither with them nor with my mapping. Later, I’ve got the idea of representing distraction through different styles and MeowUsername helped me with deciding on the proper way of doing it (having 1 new combo/style/idea each part) and I’ve mapped this in like 5 hours right after it. Overall, the majority of my maps take a few months for the concept designing process and a few months for the mapping process itself.

I’m pretty glad how it turned out and I think the method when 1 person helps with the ideas and another one actually maps has some potential.

beatmapsets/2136239#osu/4495158

General explanation

This map was inspired by the cover of the album (Ignorance is Bliss) this song is present on, and the cover was also used as the background for my map. I tried to represent each square’s picture through mapping.

1 - It explains itself

2 – Picture shows a pensive person. My mapping in this part has no special idea behind it, meaning that I wasn’t able to come up with the idea for it =)

3 – Picture shows hands holding. My patterns in this part were supposed to show intersections of people and their feelings (and I made sure that every NC has something that is aimed across something else)

4 – Picture shows a man covering his ears. This part was mapped w/o listening to music. Sometimes objects align with the song perfectly but it was supposed to happen randomly

5 – Picture shows a man hugging a child. Patterns in this part were supposed to make blankets that somehow hug other objects

6 – Picture shows the silence sign. No objects there

7 – Picture shows a phone. Here I tried to represent the scrolling motion that people do using their phones, so in the mapping it is represented through making the flow and visuals going up and down imitating that feeling of scrolling endlessly

8 – Picture shows a screaming person (clearly being afraid of something). Connection is a bit vague here – I tried to depict the whole “socialization” idea that is present in other parts of the cover and wanted to portray something about interpersonal relationships. So, this part has no overlaps in it (meaning the scariness of going into relationships with others)

9 – Picture shows a gun, and I used it for placing the final object there, implying the gunshot happening and ending everything

Besides that, I needed a reason for changing between these parts. I couldn't come up with anything better than utilizing an old mobile phone keyboard idea (which this cover kinda reminded me of, and it also has a phone depicted, even if it’s a touchscreen one). The method that defines the arrangement of symbols on old phones keyboards is called E.161 and I decided to encode some phrase/s in my map using it. Using old phones u had to tap multiple times in order to type a certain letter. So, every NC in my map was meant to represent one tap, and every bookmark was meant to represent the certain letter typing process being done.



So, the number of NC between 2 bookmarks shows the number of a letter from a certain “button”. Kiai was used for splitting up the words (since E.161 type keyboards were 4x3 but the cover/background is 3x3 so I had to improvise and to use different mechanics instead of having a “space” button somewhere). I still was not able to use periods and commas so imo this whole concept isn’t really good. The encoded phrase consists of 3 sentences and basically outlines that idea. I also wanted to give a small hint on my next beatmap, or just on anything else, but it was practically impossible without using such letters as m, n, o, x, y, z since they were “prohibited” to use according to my cover-representation idea I’ve talked about in the beginning.

Props to people who actually deciphered it and got the whole phrase, meaning that this concept was pretty easy to interpret (however I wasn’t aiming for it).

Trivia:

1) Combo colors are

161-161-161
0-161-161
161-0-161
161-161-0

so i could connect them to the whole idea

As this is the final map, I wouldn’t like to talk a lot about it here. It has some hidden references that I don’t think were ever used in mapping, however I did not set any mapping limitations as in previous maps. It still does represent my current mapping state (while other maps represent my mapping state and inspirations from the past).

I also added alternative backgrounds in the folder and I think this is a cool way of showing something that didn't make it to the final version of the map.

As you can see, even if you understood the idea of a single map of this series, it’s almost impossible to see the meaning behind all of them (not even mentioning the whole time-travel idea behind everything). The chance of finding another person who knows Life is Strange, Celldweller “lore”, proxemics, russian language (for Sosredotochit’sya map) and everything else is too low. This is why it should go without a saying that I’ve never wanted other people to understand my maps. It would be great, but my maps are initially made for my own satisfaction. And it is also ok to leave some of the meanings and interpretations existing only in mappers’ head unexplained to others.

However, I’m sure that the majority of ideas are clear (and there were people who guessed everything almost for every map of the series). If you listen to Celldweller and follow the artist, my idea for the G4M3 0V3R map should be obvious. If you know that there are 4 temperament types (which I believe every person does) and you see 4 different parts in my One Thing Left to Try map – it should be obvious. If you know what does the term “proxemics” mean (or if you google the term alone in case you don’t know about it) – my Intimate map idea should be obvious. And so on. I’m literally re-reading all of these explanations and they seem way too trivial and simple to even talk about them, none of this is really complex anymore according to my standards. But it still can be eye-opening for some people and they might see that it’s not really that deep. Of course, sometimes people are just not interested in mapping and do not want to dig into maps of others at all, but at the same time I’m sure there are people who would like to do it but they just do not realize how interesting and complex mapping can get.

I should also note that maps are better to be cool even if you cut the ideas off them. And this is also what I’m always aiming for. It’s not cool to see some boring ass map and seeing its author pretending as he is the prodigy or as if he got some genius idea in it. The ability to go beyond the usual understanding of “conceptual” maps is just not available until you become truly proficient in mapping (and this is what I can definitely see in a lot of modern maps that try to implement non-mapping ideas and thoughts of any kind).

Another important thing I’d like to mention – there is nothing wrong with “normal” or “generic” maps and most of my inspiration usually come from such maps. What I am doing just seems more interesting to me, never implying that every other map should be filled with ideas, references and everything. People just should know it can exist at all.

Moreover, as I said in the prelude, there are also other mappers who implement unique ideas in their maps, and they are totally different from me (sometimes including their maps and ideas being much more complex sometimes, or just them being better at mapping than me). But it’s not really about projecting your ideas as complex as it can get, or being as good in mapping as possible. If your ideas are unique and you are proficient enough to back your ideas up, it's going to make your maps unique, and this is what matters. Maps with unique ideas implemented will always be different from other conceptual maps. They will have something others are never going to have, meaning your maps being better in certain things. That’s why I refuse trying to make maps as complex as possible without a proper reasoning.

My current “ideal” is making maps like Sosredotochit’sya, Intimate or Sur la planche 2013 (even tho I left the latter one unexplained). Such maps allow me to project my feelings and thoughts, express something that I was thinking a lot about in my life. However, I still like making “thematic” maps, that are connected with some other pieces of art (the resurrectedreplayer map or maps like Field of Hopes and Dreams or Out of Tartarus even though they are not a part of the series). The whole series depicts an idea from the Life is Strange game, after all.

Maps like One Thing Left to Try are also cool in my opinion, but they lack a proper connection between the idea and the song (cuz that MGMT song is not really about different temperaments or stuff like that). This is something I really care about since this makes the map better as a whole, and I gave up on this connection only once because it was too hard finding a song that would fit my idea (and I was in lack of other ideas at the time).

I hope people will find this interesting to read and perhaps it will expand their mapping horizons a bit.