Cirque du Zonda is a stream pack by Zaia.
It was the sequel to Cirque du Veyron (2012). It is named after the Pagani Zonda.
| Pack Director | Zaia |
| Stepartists | Zaia, Zeph |
| BPM | 205-238 |
| Songcount | 30 |
| Blocks | 14-18 |
| Type | Stream |
| Format | Singles |
| Release Date | Dec 11, 2013 |
¶ Structure
Modeled directly after its predecessor, Cirque du Zonda features primarily Expert charts with some lowers. The target bpm range is expanded from 200-230 to 200-240, and the average difficulty level is higher.
Patterning is more complex than Veyron's, and more attuned to the music. A lot more songs use 24th streams than 16ths.
The chart description field contains the stepartist name as well as the rating down to the approximate 0.1 block accuracy.
¶ Development
Starting around May 2013, I created a thread on AIJ announcing the sequel to Cirque du Veyron. I invited members of the community to submit songs to the project that I would step. This was the list of community-sourced submissions, from the Credits.txt file in the pack, although some on this list are just the original stepartists of charts that I restepped.
Zeph- Ridiculous Ravers- Black Hole
Milk-Chan- Elemental Creation
Hazelnut- Connect
Windeu- Heavenly Spores
mute- Blue-White Crazybits
@@- Call of the Hound
Cosmic Pope- Cry of the Brave
Kommisar- Apocynthion Drive- Determination
Cloud- Toho Mathematics
DukAmok- Return of Salieri- Rain of a Thousand Flames
Happy Feet- Toromi Hearts 2
Music variety was more sparse with Zonda than it had been with Veyron; it was fairly well-known that 200-240 was one of the least populated ranges because of lack of music choice, so many more songs than before had their bpms artificially altered to be able to fit into the pack.
One noteworthy inclusion was the stepartist known as Zeph. This player was a local Brisbane player and a personal friend of mine who was interested in doing some stepping. He found many Guitar Hero customs songs and was able to provide some of his finds to the project. He would continue to collaborate with me on future packs; most notably Cirque du Lykan.
This pack tested out the concept of decimal ratings. Charts were rated to the nearest 0.1, in an attempt to provide greater granularity within blocks. Initially, these were attempted to be entered into the block itself (a 14.4 would have been rated a 144 instead of as a 14, for example), but after poor feedback during beta testing, i compromised with adding the decimal rating into the description following the stepartist name. This system took after the +/- system that would be introduced in SHARPNELSTREAMZ v2 in January the following year (which I had access to betas of).
¶ Artistic Influences and Chart Design
Zonda was the first choice car pick for the pack name, and no other names were considered. It was chosen because, like Veyron, it started with a rare letter.
Rhetoric inspiration for the charts came largely from my time stepping DJ Sharpnel songs for the ongoing SHARPNELSTREAMZ v2 project. Since I had much greater experience writing and playing with patterning in the midspeed range now, I could more comfortably pattern songs organically.
Reviewing the patterning for this pack, I can start to see elements of my stream patterning philosophy beginning to take form. Since Veyron was not focused on patterning, Zonda was the first opportunity to showcase artistic growth in my own packs since Beast, and there were definitely gains made because of everything I'd done in SHARPNELSTREAMZ (2013) and Tachyon All-Stars (Unreleased). Notable charts that demonstrated design principles like axis-swapping and motifs:
- Connect - the candle-UU/DD motif in the chorus
- Long Invulnerability - the candles in the chorus
- Monstrous Turtles - basic candle pattern scaling and axis swapping
- Toho Mathematics - correct pattern sizing, candle scaling and repetition
- Dark Caves of Lolno (Remake) - the box motif and general pattern scaling in the second half of the 82
¶ Graphics
As with Veyron, the reasoning behind the graphics is identical. However, instead of 16th arrow graphics on the road beneath the car, the word “16ths” is used instead. This is because I was lazy and didn't want to process and place all the arrow graphics.
The typeface used for the title text is some kind of Minecraft font. I cannot recall at all why I chose that, or really any of the design choices, for that matter, like the intentional grayscaling of the background, or the red outer glow on the text, or the editing on some of the faces. I suppose, these kinds of unanswerable questions keep the graphics as vague mysteries to me, and it doesn't make a great difference either way if I know why I made those choices. They retain their shitpost magic better if I can't explain what's going on. It won't last, because this is the last of the “random” graphics before the start of more serious and mature design-focused graphics with Cirque du Lykan.
¶ Songlist
Cirque du Zonda contains 30 songs. The internal Readme.xls spreadsheet can be seen here.
| Song | Artist | BPM | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apocynthion Drive | HertzDevil |
225 |
|
| Black Diamond | Stratovarius |
150 (225) |
|
| Black Hole | Schmutz06 |
150 (225) |
|
| Blue-White Crazybits | two hundred thirty-four |
234 |
|
| Call of the Hound | CCIVORY |
220 |
v2 version of the song |
| Connect | Plazma feat. Nahoko |
216 |
|
| Cry of the Brave (Super Dragonforce) |
Dragonforce |
215 |
|
| Dark Caves of Lolno (Remake) |
Prebensoerensen93 remixed by Metallicais1337 |
222 |
|
| Determination | AKIMO |
230 |
|
| Disconnected Hazard | DM Ashura VS Inspector K |
210 |
|
| Elemental Creation | dj TAKA meets DJ YOSHITAKA |
212 |
|
| Gengaozo (Foon) |
-45 |
158 (237) |
Sped up from 153 |
| Gourmet Race 210 | Shroomer Starboy |
210 |
Song is actually titled “Gourmet Race 200” And sped up from 200 |
| Heavenly Spores | Blitz Lunar |
225 |
|
| Lifeguard | DJ Myosuke |
215 |
Sped up from 200 |
| Long Invulnerability | XKirby |
210 |
midi version Correct artist styling is “X Kirby” |
| Monstrous Turtles | zircon |
230 |
Sped up from 206 |
| Over The Frail Dream | PHANTASMA |
205 |
Sped up from 200 |
| Rain of a Thousand Flames | Rhapsody |
215 |
|
| Return of Salieri | Warmen |
143 (215) |
|
| Ridiculous Ravers | XKirby |
155 (237.5) |
Sped up from 150 Correct artist styling is “X Kirby” |
| Thru Our Scars (if u 98 this u have no friends sry) |
Fleshgod Apocalypse |
140 (210) |
|
| Toho Mathematics | IOSYS |
150 (225) |
|
| Toromi Hearts 2 | Goreshit |
218 |
|
| Transparent World | The RiGEL (Feat. Hatsune Miku) |
220 |
|
| V.L.S.I (225) |
Cranky |
150 (225) |
|
| Vertex Gamma (~Zonda~) |
Silvia |
215 |
Sped up from 150 |
| War (wow. such politic. very statement.) |
Rushjet1 |
150 (225) |
|
| Yuru Yuri Last Boss | Kommisar vs. HertzDevil |
235 |
Slowed down from 242.5 |
| Zephyranthes (those hips don't lie) |
2TORI/さ |
215 |
¶ Reception and Retrospect
Though well-anticipated by patrons of the series, Zonda did not fare as successfully as Veyron had, even though it received decent promotion due to the social nature of its development. The best reason I can think of for this is that Zonda had a higher average difficulty than Veyron (Zonda's 16.30 to Veyron's 15.67), which would have made restricted the pack's accessibility. Comparing the number of GrooveStats score submissions between them (516 to 428) is also quite telling. The second best reason, which could be the first best reason, is that the simfiles aren't as memorable. I've spent a long time thinking about this, but I've always had the impression that Zonda was the worst Cirque pack. Reviewing the pack in preparation for this article was quite enlightening because its definitely a marked writing improvement over Veyron (which is the new worst Cirque pack), and I feel like I held that belief because I didn't have any fond memories of the charts in the pack. And although the patterning is better, the music is less exciting and there are more sub-optimal chart structures, and more songs that could be considered filler (more bpm-altered songs is indicative of this).
¶ Trivia
- Thru Our Scars's subtitle is a reference to Cetaka's Cetaka pack, specifically to the Aztec Templing chart which has a subtitle that reads: “if you AA this file nobody will find you attractive sry”
- This is the first of my packs to include statistical data in a spreadsheet format. Packs before it used .txt documents; though this one does as well.
- There are 3 versions of Call of the Hound: v2 is 7:04 in length and v3 is 5:53 in length. The released version is also 5:53 long. You can listen to compare them
- CCIVORY officially released Call of the Hound in 2022, but the v3 version was available as far back as 2013
- v2 is the version the ITG community is most familiar with. All current charts to the song are derived from v2
- Zeph is notable for being the person to introduce X Kirby to the ITG community.
- The version of Long Invulnerability he supplied is a midi version of the song used in the Clone Hero charts
- Decimal ratings were abandoned after this pack because they were meant to help mitigate ratings arguments, and debates over 0.1 block differences were only meant to be argued with 10% of the intensity of 1.0 block differences. However, people started to argue the 0.1 block differences with the same intensity as the 1.0 block differences.
- There were two separate sequels to Cirque du Zonda, but both were cancelled
- Cirque du Tuatara - intended to be the true sequel
- Cirque du Chiron - after Tuatara was cancelled, I started a schranz/hardcore project that shared bpm ranges with Veyron and Zonda, and this was to become its spiritual successor, before ultimately being cancelled