Polyphia is a technical pack by Zaia. It is an artist-specific pack for the band Polyphia.
It is my first technical pack release. This pack is the origin of the fusion tech code BXF, which is a condensing of BR (Bracket), XO (Crossover) and FS (Footswitch). A chart must have all three techs present to meet the criteria to have BXF in its tech notation.
| Pack Director | Zaia |
| Stepartists | Zaia |
| BPM | 117-210 |
| Songcount | 7 |
| Blocks | 10-13 (11-13 target) |
| Type | Technical |
| Format | Singles |
| Release Date | Nov 22, 2022 |
¶ Structure
All simfiles have two charts, but the Hards are identical to the Expert charts with 32nd and 24th notes removed. All songs are cut to 2 minutes, the standard tech simfile length.
The chart #DESCRIPTION field contains the technical code elements and the #CREDIT field contains my name. The spreadsheet information contains +/- suffixes for the block ratings but this information is not conveyed in-game.
¶ Development
The Polyphia project started quite serendipitously in July 2022 when it was asked in Stamina Nation if anybody had stepped Playing God. It was my first time listening to Polyphia, and I found this song to be really interesting and challenging to step, so I thought I'd give it a go. I was very happy with how it came out - it had awesome rhythmic variety and plenty of opportunities for tech use. It was a challenge not to add more and risk overtuning the chart.
3 months pass and I forget Polyphia exists, until they drop their album Remember That You Will Die. Reminded of that one-off 12 I wrote a few months ago, I decide to check them out.
I listen to Ego Death and that pretty much seals the deal. This is a “If you don't step this right now, everyone else will” type affair, and if these other songs are anything like that one I stepped before, then this will be one hell of a tech pack.
I'd just finished grinding out Tachyon Conent: The Next Quantization (Unreleased) for Levitas, and wanted to step something a little more mentally engaging, so I quickly put together a Polyphia songlist consisting of the tracks I liked out of these new songs, as well as some of their other singles and older songs. I found that the further back I went, the further away I got from their current prog style that I like, so the pack size ended up staying limited to their newer songs.
I found it quite difficult to hold myself back with a number of these songs; especially Ego Death. That song could handle so much tech in it, but I didn't want to make any more technically dense than I was already making it, which was a lot. I was also sad that I had to cut the entirety of Steve Vai's part out, but business is business and a viable game cut must be made.
¶ Artistic Influences and Chart Design
Stepping these charts was like going to Five Guys and thinking about getting every topping. I could get every topping every time, but I don't really want to, because I want each burger to be different - otherwise it'll end up being the same meal several times over and that won't be interesting. This was one of the artistic challenges that I faced; I was used to dealing with this because I had a decade of experience making stream charts unique, but this was a little different, as the baseline scaling was set really high across all the songs (they all contain brackets, crossovers, footswitches and burst elements). If I wanted to add character to the charts, I had to do it in other ways.
Fortunately, Polyphia songs leave plenty of room for rhythmic expression, and these blend into the other layers to create some interesting, albeit difficult to execute, potential patterning combinations. They're also structured in a way that seem to allow smooth transitions from tech to tech across sections as the song progresses, and these clear separations between them seem to allow the chart room to breathe without becoming too bloated. Technical elements served as the highlights to emphasize and accentuate the music and its layers and intricacies, rather than being a means to an end.
¶ Graphics
The visual theme for the pack is quite abstract and difficult to define. Polyphia themselves seem to have an undefinable artistic style with their visuals - often involving amorphous metallic shapes, masses of tentacles that vaguely form angels or demons, with wings made of porcelain spikes, all rendered in sharp, glossy 3D models.
I wanted to replicate this “undefinable” style, which immediately got me thinking about that image with the caption “name one thing in this picture”. Abstract things and surreal things were seeming like they might be the way to go. But first, I did the very first thing I always do when making graphics for a song: I google the name of what I'm making the graphic for, add “art” on the end and click on [Images]. I was instantly drawn to this Artstation image. It had showed up because it was titled “The Spirit of Polyrhythmic Polyphia”, and it was some abstract AI-generated art. Looking at the image again, I couldn't tell you what it was an image of, but I could tell you a dozen things it was like, and that felt like exactly the right visual mood for Polyphia. I also really liked the colors, which were unlike what I was used to working with (I have a slight colorblindness which makes me a little anxious about working with colors like purple and green), so this was a good opportunity to explore something new.
I was only making a fallback art, so I only needed the name of the band on the banner. I made things easy for myself and used the official Polyphia title logo (which seems to resemble the aesthetics of their 3D model render visuals).
When charts started being selected for tournaments, they began to require unique graphics, so I started making individual arts for them. I went for a visual style that was similar to Polyphia's own.
¶ Songlist
Polyphia contains 7 songs.
| Song | Artist | BPM | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABC | Polyphia ft. Sophia Black | 140 | |
| Chimera | Polyphia ft. Lil West | 210 | |
| Ego Death | Polyphia ft. Steve Vai | 128 | |
| Memento Mori | Polyphia ft. Killstation | 117 | |
| Neurotica | Polyphia | 140 | |
| Playing God | Polyphia | 137 | |
| The Audacity | Polyphia ft. Anomalie | 160 |
¶ Reception and Retrospect
Despite its small size, Polyphia was very popular and critically acclaimed, even to my surprise. I didn't go into the project expecting much more than a fun minipack, but its popularity spread wide and although it was for a short time, it was bright.
Some of its charts have enjoyed some presence in tournament packs:
- ABC: featured as one of the qualifiers for Rumble In The Prairie 13 and used in ITL 2023
- Ego Death: enjoyed a long tenure in the 2023 tournament circuit (RIP 13, ITL 2023, Storm 2023)
- Neurotica: ITL 2023
Patches:
- Dec 05, 2022:
- changed sync on ABC from +0.009 to +0.008
¶ Trivia
- At 0:22 of the Ego Death music video, the screen cuts to a title card with the title of the song. The simfile does the exact same thing
- Polyphia themselves know that 4-panel dancing game charts to their music exists
- I made a version of Polyphia that would have been submitted to Archi for GrooveStats ranking, and then this version of the pack would have been released immediately afterward, but GrooveStats pack rankings stopped from the end of 2022
- These would have included all the unique graphics
- New songs would have been added
- 40oz has been stepped