Articulate Flow

Somebody please explain to me what flow is, and do your best to describe it like the question has never been asked before!

copy/paste from reddit:

In the simplest of definitions, its the term for describing bosh's movement. It is the combination of bosh's direction, rotation, and speed, and is probably the most important concept in linerider. I think it is one of the few concepts that are learned by playing, rather than observing. I also personally think that flow is objective, that there are inherently good or bad flows, but a lot of it is based on context.

I don't know if flow is objective, insofar as I think that a lot of how we regard something as nebulous as flow simply comes out of a how a track makes us feel, and that is by nature subjective.

I talked with dap about this on skype because he was looking for an explanation, and I think the best analog would be how we treat a "groove" in music, which is basically what you described, along with a sense of pacing. That's why as silly as the phrase "sync to the flow" is, I find that most of the tracks that have a flow that feels good on a visceral level to me match, on some level, the "groove" of the music.

I need more answers

Flow is subjective, and may be the most subjective thing in the game. The reason being, if you have a track with a ton of speed and spin, then you have flow; if you have a track with a ton of spin but no speed, then you have flow; if you have a track with speed but no spin, then you have flow; if you have a track with no spin or speed, then you arguably have flow, but it is just a different style. Flow has gotten complex and is played off of the music that the track is played to, so if you have spinning speed on fast parts of songs then the flow is matched to the song, subjectively. If you have no-spin and speed, that off matches to a song, then you have flow subjectively. This works for many combinations and adds to the style of the rider. So, next time someone tells you that you don't have flow: your flow is just different from their flow.

An obscure piece of jargon people in the Line Rider community often use to cite inarticulable differences between tracks that they personally enjoy more or less based on the subtle movements and rotation of Bosh.

No matter what track you make, you would have flow, very similar to what Rich said. To me, it's not so much of something you can add to a track so much as how Bosh moves through his surroundings, and can add a sense of coherency to a track that would normally have a lot of variety and trick variation. Stop and go is a good example of this, where even though bosh is doing different things, it's all mixed together using a combination of quick acceleration and fake stalls. Likewise, a very smooth, even paced track contains its own similar feel throughout the composition.

Breaks in flow would happen in places where the overall movement of the track is abandoned or misconstructed, such as a track with a smooth flow suddenly changing to high speed without any apparent reason, or bosh coming to a stop in a place that doesn't make sense.

I think the most important thing when it comes to flow is the control the player has over Bosh. If it's obvious that most of the lines were places quickly and haphazardly, then it will most likely feel like the track has bad flow. But if everything is obviously deliberate, then the track usually has very good flow. Speed and rotation obviously will change from track to track, but I think it's difficult to make a track with good flow if you don't have good control of Bosh.

rabid squirrel wrote:An obscure piece of jargon people in the Line Rider community often use to cite inarticulable differences between tracks that they personally enjoy more or less based on the subtle movements and rotation of Bosh.

Who hit your self destruct button?




ANYWAY,

Guys, thank you for the responses. Please, argue amongst yourselves and really get down to what you all can agree on as being the true definition. I need more clarity on the matter. It's long overdue.

Apple wrote:but I think it's difficult to make a track with good flow if you don't have good control of Bosh.

Thus probably has a lot to do with it, but also brings up another question of "How can you prove control over Bosh?" A newer player could make something that looks haphazard to us, but claims it was completely intentional. And if something was intentional, then the person has control.

To bring up an example of good control with bad flow (IMO, of course) the heavily recycled part of interrobang eventually lost its sense of flow when the track makers started sacrificing the consistent speed throughout the track in order to fit in more and more recycles. They controlled his movement very well, but lost the feel that the track originally had.

It is not a matter of which eye perceives, i think chuggers pretty much nailed it. Flow can be broken down into a mathematical equation (not that i'd be able to provide). Flow is a result of the relation amongst the following variables:
Velocity
Rotation
Movement

When bosh stops moving all together, as commonly seen in stop-n-go quirk, the flow breaks. Flow=/=style.

Flow is a part of style, but not all encompassing. I usually consider stop and go a type of flow instead of style because it's not limited to quirk (IE you can have stop and go xy or manuals as well, they just aren't as common.)

Opal Rider wrote:Flow is a part of style, but not all encompassing. I usually consider stop and go a type of flow instead of style because it's not limited to quirk (IE you can have stop and go xy or manuals as well, they just aren't as common.)

no, you see, this is where we disagree. I am not familiar with which contexts the term "flow" has been relevant in the history of line rider, but nontheless i shall voice my opinion. Flow is, per definition: to move or run smoothly with unbroken continuity, as in the manner characteristic of a fluid.

However, there could be flow of style, which would articulate an unbroken continuity in style. such as in stop-'n-go.

If we're trying to articulate flow in the sense of what it means to the line rider community, i think rabid was pretty spot on with his definition. But, I do not believe we need costum meanings of words that already have a place outside of our bubble (because how impractical is that?).

Hey, keep going, but I ave an important point to bring up for Anton:
While you're right that it is objective, just remember that bosh's flow stops even when he's still moving. If any ONE of the variables become out of sync, it is bad flow.

That being said, please help to articulate the relation between subjective viewers and good and bad flow. Like, if it's subjective, why and how come some tracks have more people praising it's flow than others?
And if it's objective, what the fuck why haven't we figured this out already because it would seem simple, right?

Anton wrote:I am not familiar with  which contexts the term "flow" has been relevant in the history of line rider,

In the history of Line Rider, flow is one of the most undefined terms we have. This thread is long overdue, and I wish we had made it official sooner than now.

And now we get into the deeper stuff.

Chuggers wrote:In the simplest of definitions, its the term for describing bosh's movement. It is the combination of bosh's direction, rotation, and speed,

Anton wrote:Flow is, per definition: to move or run smoothly with unbroken continuity, as in the manner characteristic of a fluid.

These two things don't match up to me. I agree mostly with what Chuggers has to say, as do you, but if all flow is is the definition of Bosh's movement, then jerky, stop and go is just as much flow as smooth flow, or fast flow, or slow flow, or so flo Antonio.

And if we settle on flow as being smooth and "flowy" track making, then what would describe the overarching descriptive term for how Bosh moves?

We should all take time to answer questions as much as we ask them, I suppose. Don't get stumped just because you don't know, there is no right or wrong answer so far and it's discussion that will lead us to an answer.

I think the answer to the question Opal posed above me has to do with what Apple brought up, intention. The ultimate thing we need to figure out how to describe is what is obviously intentional or not.

Dapianokid wrote:
And if it's objective, what the fuck why haven't we figured this out already because it would seem simple, right?

It isn't subjective because flow has a determined defition that trumps whatever meaning the linerider community has assigned to it.

We didn't discover singularities until a few months ago, after 10 years of line riding. Why would it be simple to define? Better riders have figured it out, without having to define it to a point of mathematical equations. Either way. Any reply forward should give an indication as to whether they're participating in the debate regarding what this community means by flow or what flow means in a broader sense, because the latter debate was over once i looked up the exact definition.

Opal Rider wrote:And if we settle on flow as being smooth and "flowy" track making, then what would describe the overarching descriptive term for how Bosh moves?

Style. I know this might be shifting a loosely defined term to another, but I don't think there really is a need for a specific term that describes the overreaching movement (unless we start to develop flow theory or describe tricks in terms of his movement and rotation rather than the lines we write down). What we do need is better, more specific feedback than: "nice flow", because it honestly, don't be that guy

Anton wrote:
What we do need is better, more specific feedback than: "nice flow", because it honestly, don't be that guy

If we want better criticism than nice flow (And believe me, I would love that. I've gotten mostly comments saying nice flow on my tracks for years) we need to find terms to use describing Bosh's movement. Lumping it all together with track styles is too difficult of a feat, since we've already decided amongst ourselves that style can be described as "Quirk, manuals, manuquirk, xy, 45 snap). No one mentions stop and go when referring to style, no one mentions the smooth or rough sections, because we haven't found a way to convey them, because for the longest time we thought we didn't need them.

On a side note, if we want to stop describing flow as the overarching movement of bosh, we should stop using it as a noun. Common grammar usage would use adjectives to describe something, so if a track were smooth, it would be flowy, instead of flow. I know it sounds like a stupid change, but that's probably where a lot of the confusion is held in that scenario.

Chuggers wrote:copy/paste from reddit:

In the simplest of definitions, its the term for describing bosh's movement. It is the combination of bosh's direction, rotation, and speed, and is probably the most important concept in linerider. I think it is one of the few concepts that are learned by playing, rather than observing. I also personally think that flow is objective, that there are inherently good or bad flows, but a lot of it is based on context.

I think this is an interesting definition. Described more mathematically:

Flow is the time series of a 3-dimension vector <direction, rotation, speed> (which is actually simply derived from velocity).

Functions of flow can be created, e.g. "jerkiness" (opposite of smoothness) is the total area underneath the derivative of flow.

This also means flow can be plotted on a graph. I'll set aside some time to make a tool to visualize this graph.

Dapianokid wrote:

rabid squirrel wrote:An obscure piece of jargon people in the Line Rider community often use to cite inarticulable differences between tracks that they personally enjoy more or less based on the subtle movements and rotation of Bosh.

Who hit your self destruct button?

No need for that, just expressing my opinion (and providing a counterpoint to everyone who is taking the definition of flow ultra-seriously). I think that while thinking about and discussing Bosh's movement and rotation is definitely worthwhile, distilling that down to the word "flowy" and/or trying to claim objective good/bad "flow" is the epitome of silliness.

rabid squirrel wrote:

Dapianokid wrote:

rabid squirrel wrote:An obscure piece of jargon people in the Line Rider community often use to cite inarticulable differences between tracks that they personally enjoy more or less based on the subtle movements and rotation of Bosh.

Who hit your self destruct button?

No need for that, just expressing my opinion (and providing a counterpoint to everyone who is taking the definition of flow ultra-seriously). I think that while thinking about and discussing Bosh's movement and rotation is definitely worthwhile, distilling that down to the word "flowy" and/or trying to claim objective good/bad "flow" is the epitome of silliness.

In his defense, it did come across as pretty rude. And I think that most people in this thread agree with you on what you're saying. Most have come to the conclusion that we need more descriptive terms for this category, but in order to fill those out, we do need to define the existing terms, and what they mean to the community. Deciding whether flow is the overall movement of Bosh or a term for movement when he's moving smoothly around the track is a large part of that.

I don't think we need new terms or official definitions. I think we need to use words that already exist and have definitions we agree on, instead of using vague words like "flow" which this thread has made clear we all have wildly different interpretations for what they mean. Even if some people do agree on a definition in this thread, you won't be able to convince everyone that is the definition because not everyone is going to start using the word the way you want them to.

Instead of using the word "flow" it would be much more constructive if people used words that aren't prone to misinterpretation. Flow is a word created by laziness - people wanting to leave a comment expressing approval for the way Bosh moved through a track without actually analyzing what they specifically liked and why, so they use words like "flow" and "style" so they don't have to spend more than a couple minutes writing the comment.

Rabid Squirrel wrote:I think we need to use words that have definitions we agree on. this thread has made clear we all have wildly different interpretations for what they mean.

I think this is why this thread exists

Anton wrote:

Rabid Squirrel wrote:I think we need to use words that have definitions we agree on. this thread has made clear we all have wildly different interpretations for what they mean.

I think this is why this thread exists

You are right, this is why this thread exists.

You cherry-picked from my post to skew my point until your "quotation" was practically the opposite of what I was saying. Not constructive.