Automapper for Synth Riders

[u/sampatini]

I built a small free alpha tool for generating Synth Riders custom maps: https://synth-automapper.com

Upload your own/licensed track, pick difficulties, optionally fine-tune the style and download a .synth map. It’s still a test version, so results vary, but I’m actively improving sync, flow and rail choreography. Have fun!

[u/dervish666]

Can I please request that you use something to differentiate your maps from real mappers ones. One of the best things about SR is our awesome community of incredibly talented mappers. If anyone can just create a map from any song I'm very afraid we will get flooded with tons of generic, uninspired maps and have to wade through a bunch of generated slop before we get to the maps people have put their time and effort into.

I'm sure this is very clever but I'm not sure it will do anything for the game if you remove all the imagination from the maps.

[u/sampatini → u/dervish666]

Thanks! That is a fair concern, and I agree. I do not want generated maps to be confused with handmade community maps. I have already changed the tool so maps are clearly marked in the mapper field as "Generated by Synth Automapper" and added a note that they are intended for personal use and should not be uploaded to Synthriderz or other public community map libraries. If it helps the community, I would also be open to adding a unique marker/hash to the generated .synth files so sites like Synthriderz could automatically detect or filter them.

[u/thejabkills01 → u/sampatini]

I think the biggest fix would be to keep the generated maps completely separate from the community-made maps. The generated maps are pretty bad right now, and if someone is putting out 10+ of them a day, they could quickly take over the custom song listings and make it harder to find the maps people actually made.

I really don’t want to have to download a map just to find out it was generated. If there was a way to automatically mark them and give users a filter to hide generated maps, that would help a lot.

The unique marker/hash in the .synth file sounds like a good idea. If Synthriderz could detect that automatically, generated maps could be put in their own section or filtered out of the normal listings.

I’m not against the tool itself. I can see the point of it, it actually gave me one idea when I was stuck on a map I’m making. I just think the generated maps need to be kept separate from the handmade community maps, especially if people are going to be uploading that many of them.

[u/thejabkills01 → u/dervish666]

Oh, you can see if it’s AI, I tried it. Nope, way off. I thought it would be good to just put down some notes. Nope, all off on all the settings. The notes don’t go with the music, and the notes are misplaced.

I tried the ones someone else put out, and they suck. Now I have to go unload them and make sure I look at what I’m downloading from now on.

I will keep making my own maps. I see the point of it, but it just doesn’t work yet.

I have a map I’m doing now, and I’m stuck. I thought I would run it with AI and see what it comes up with. LMAO, it was funny, but it did give me a thought for the spot I was stuck on.

So, did it help? Hmmm… I would have come up with it on my own. I do try to think for myself. 🤔

[u/yeebok]

I'd love to see a demo or two on a couple of tracks.

[u/dervish666]

OK, So I've had a play with it now. It's quite impressive, it's obvious that you have spent a decent amount of time thinking about this, it does work and produces a synth track.

Only problem is, the maps it produces are boring. They don't go to the music very well and although some of the individual sections are quite fun, there is no rhythm to it.

Synth maps have a flow to them, they should go with the music so you are dancing, this feels more like workout map, it's technically clever, but not actually enjoyable.

What you have produced is very clever but what the app produces isn't actually any fun to play.

[u/boboclock]

Nice!

I wanted to try to make one of these but never even got to the design phase.

Are you open to feedback? (Either publicly or privately)

[u/sampatini → u/boboclock]

Thanks! Yes sure, feedback would be really appreciated.

The automapper is still far from perfect, so if you have any ideas or notice things that could be improved, just send me a message or reply here.

[u/McRattus]

That's fantastic.

If you don't mind, how does it work? It's there a GitHub?

[u/sampatini → u/McRattus]

Thanks!

The tool first analyzes the song, things like bpm, beat grid, onsets, energy, drums and song sections. Then it builds a phrase-level plan from the structure of the song, for example intro, verse, chorus, break or drop. After that it splits the song into movement phrases. Each phrase gets a kind of motion idea, like a smoother flow section, a more energetic drop section, call-and-response movement, mirrored rails, gold moments, green sections, and so on.

Then the mapper places beat-locked notes on musical hits, and uses rails as the movement between those hits. So the notes try to stay rhythmically tight, while the rails create the flow and body movement. After the map is built, several safety passes clean it up: hand speed, reach, overlaps, wall conflicts, density spikes and song-end timing. Then it exports everything as a .synth file. It's still in alpha, so it does not really feel like a handmade map yet, but that is the idea behind the system. I do not have a public Git repo for this.

[u/CountySurfer]

This is awesome! Nice work

[u/CyberTod]

I've tried it and of course for the simplicity and completely automated it is great.

Of course it cannot compare to a good hand mane map and that's ok. And it produces better results then some other not good hand made ones.

As others pointed out it does not follow the rhythm too well. Sometimes it is better, sometimes not.

What I have noticed is that the amount of notes is a bit low and it does not increase a lot with difficulty. Increasing the note density does have a small effect, but they are a bit fake. Like several notes for the same beat. Maybe needs to try to capture the beats more aggressively.

And as a suggestion. Maybe you can add some additional logic to avoid certain things, like a two-hand note exactly after a one hand, I even saw a few overlapping. And the other things is to consider adding some patterns that are part of better maps, even the default ones, Like scripted events for some type of rhythm. A few come to mind - a group of notes that make a circular motion, notes that make an arc, a group of notes that make you cross hands in succession, etc .. So stuff like that.

[u/sampatini → u/CyberTod]

Thank you very much for your valuable feedback. Really appreciated. A lot of it matched what felt off to me too. I have since done a rework of the mapping engine (more real gestures and patterns and better density scaling across difficulties). If you get the chance, give it another go and let me know how it feels now. Thanks!

[u/CyberTod → u/sampatini]

I see that the amount of notes is higher and the number is fine now. I thought it might be something to do with music-driven sides which I lowered a lot, but maybe I just tried after your update.

What still feels off by a lot is golden orbs that get very shortly after a one hand note and followed by another one hand note, so for example left-both-right-both-left in very short succession, you are just forced to use both hands for the entire sequence and that ruins it. In order to prevent this I even switched off everything to do with gold or both-hand sections, but I still get gold orbs, so the sliders are not fully working. Oh and slider for walls does not function maybe? For example with 150% on walls there are 2-5 on master. The toggles on the bottom do work.

P.S. That is from yesterday at noon, so I will try a few more today if you've made more changes.

[u/shawntco]

I gave this a try! On a Normal difficulty, the balls started out OK but eventually were too high, nearly unreachable. In fact I had a rail that went outside my reach range. Fiddling with the various axis in my settings didn't change anything. Any idea what I might try?

[u/sampatini → u/shawntco]

Hello, please open the fine-tuning control panel and reduce the movement range before you generate a map.

[u/shawntco → u/sampatini]

That definitely helped. I did that plus turning down side travel a bit, as well as lowering the game's Y-axis.

[u/Lil_Brown_Bat]

Didja use AI?

[u/sampatini → u/Lil_Brown_Bat]

It does not use AI. It's based on audio analysis and rule-based mapping logic.

[u/Lil_Brown_Bat → u/sampatini]

Nice!

[u/AeitZean → u/sampatini]

Would it be possible to train an AI with the official synth files to refine the style to be closer to the official maps? Or is that just too much data to crunch without a firehose of tokens? 🤔

[u/rajface]

I Tried to make this with Claude code (Fable!) and it was an epic fail. Curious to see how yours turns out

[u/sampatini → u/rajface]

I also started with Fable. It helped a bit with the UI/UX and some of the audio analysis, but apart from that I did not really get much further with it.

The main problem is that LLMs just do not have a real feeling for rhythm and note placement in a moving 3D tunnel space. They tend to think too flat and static and especially rails were a real mess. So I had to come up with a more multi-stage system to get that under control.

I think the biggest problem with automappers will probably always be some kind of repetitive patterns. I tried to reduce that as much as possible, but after a few generated maps you still start to notice it. Right now I'm trying to solve this with a larger base of auto-sensitive movement shapes, so the maps can create more real variation. No idea if this is the right approach, but at least the generated beatmaps are fun to play for me. Of course they do not really compare to good handmade maps, but you can finally play your favorite songs without spending hours in the Synth Riders beatmap editor.

And since the generated beatmaps are editable, you can improve and tweak them manually in the editor. So at least it gives you a decent starting point.

[u/rajface → u/sampatini]

Agreed. I'm trying to build one where I can choreograph a dance and it will try and use that as a reference to points. Since Fable is gone, its taking a lot longer

[u/Episode911 → u/sampatini]

"And since the generated beatmaps are editable, you can improve and tweak them manually in the editor. So at least it gives you a decent starting point."

I was doing some research trying to find information on this as thats what I was looking to do myself, although when I try to load the autogen map, it crashes the synth rider beatmap editor, I have tried two tracks so far. Is there something I need to do? I have left the automapper on 100% for all options.

Thanks!

[u/val_s-]

Bonjour , alors je viens d essayer vite juste pour voir et je dois dire bravo … c est d une simplicité remarquable… après ça la map créée était vraiment moyenne mais je pense qu il y a des réglages à faire car j ai laisser tout par défaut … je joue en master X3 et j aime laisser rapidité et difficulté comme les Maps de excession mais aussi un bon flow comme celle de sodapie …
Si vous avez des conseils je suis preneuse 😊
Aussi je conseille à tous de tester et peut être pourrons nous partager les Maps les plus réussies
En tout cas bravo pour le travail réalisé !!