Line Rider Terminology: A Crash Course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E5WUcl2spQ


Also I wrote some words here you may want to read: https://www.patreon.com/posts/14991560

This video is great! A bit loud with the explosive editing but it's very concise, and adresses the point that anyone discovering current Line Rider will eventually find themselves in.

As for the patreon post: I don't think I'm a pure quirker, but honestly I don't see how you could be insulting quirk. I think that tracks like Light Fantastic can be, eventually, accessible, while tracks like HAM are intentionally absurd. The reason some people don't enjoy it is because it takes the original goal of Line Rider, cuts it in half, and tosses one half out the window—the half about drawing figures that Bosh can ride on. But quirk still focuses on cool movement, which I find is what Line Rider has been distilled into. Other styles like scenery and flatsled/manuals create more accessible worlds to explore, but a quirk track also has structure; it's not as chaotic as it seems. (Just zoom out on the .sol/.trk ^^)

I don't know what stance you'll be taking in your next video, but personally the reason I like quirk is because, honestly, unless it's well done, the accessible tracks like the Mountain King quickly become boring. For example, Mountain King is really fun to watch, and see all the little syncing tricks, but if people were to continue making content, what's next? Another orchestral piece to sync to? This isn't to say that simple tracks can't continue to exist; ones like Daisies and Aria are very relaxing and meditative, but it would be a shame if that's all that were to be created. Plus, I think that they were created within the context of more confusing tracks (like Helios' post-ham series).
So if track makers diverge from just making simple song-syncing tracks (which has become so easy!), there are two general options: scenery and quirk. Scenery is far more enjoyable to watch, especially for non-track makers, but quirk is so fun to make. Plus, scenery takes more of a traditional artistic training/mindset, and it is slower. This post is becoming very long so I'll just say bleagh swoop clink brrap and my answer to people asking, "Why is Line Rider like that [chaos] and not like this [neat syncing track]?" is: because it would be a shame if tracks became secondary to the music they are syncing to, and because the other option, scenery, is more difficult; because, when you spend a lot of time with Bosh, you start to respect technical skill and enjoy messing around with quirk; and if you want to see more of this, it's not too hard (and still some fun) to make a music-syncing track yourself, in the style of Mountain King.

TL;DR (me neither): I don't think you're insulting quirk or quirkers, and to answer the question at the end of the video, quirk tracks exist because, as a track maker, doing flatsled and simple syncs gets monotonous.

EDIT: I forgot about manuals! ahhhh they're fun! If you don't like quirk because it's too obscure, surely manual tracks will satisfy your desire for more LR content. idk

Hello there! I just created an account to give my thoughts on this topic, considering I'm probably part of the intended audience for it.

Short background: I played Line Rider in middle school about a decade ago, nothing fancy, loops and backflips was about the most advanced my tracks ever got, but I remember watching some videos of some amazing scenery tracks with smooth manuals. Fast forward to last Monday: I'm watching some videos on YouTube, including quite a few of various Norwegian folk dances (yes, really), when suddenly a familiar Norwegian composition appears as a related video, except this time it's accompanied by a Line Rider track. So I watched this Line Rider track synced to Hall of the Mountain King, and it was so impressive, and brought back memories of these old tracks that I used to watch. I decided to see what tracks I could find, and expected to find a bunch of 240p videos from pre-2010. But what I found was a bunch of recent, really recent, less than a year old, sometimes less than a month that were all really good. I found out people (i.e. you and ODTE) were even making reviews for them and there was a small but living community still going on this very site.

It was all really fascinating to me, that some people were still playing this "game", and it had a broad set of genres, terminology and individual style that really shone through in the tracks people made. I basically spent all Monday evening watching Line Rider videos and lurking this forum. So that's where I'm coming from when I'm writing this. (I guess it wasn't really "short" at all...)

I'll freely admit that quirk tracks confused me at first, I didn't really understand what was going on, pretty everything going on in quirk tracks are things that I didn't know was possible to do, so it was hard for me to know what to make of it at first. But by the end of my Monday Line Rider spree I felt like I had a reasonable grasp of most terms and fundamental concepts, even if it wasn't something I knew how to do myself, nor am I really able to tell what trick is hard or easy. One video I watched pretty early on, was HAM, and it's so violent and fast-paced that it's just mesmerizing to watch even without any idea of what is going on.

For sure, scenery tracks are more accessible, and I thoroughly enjoy every single one I've seen, but I don't think learning to appreciate quirk is too difficult for someone getting into it now. At least for me it was a matter of curious fascination, rather than just "what is this clusterfuck of lines and erratic movement". One thing that I personally value a lot in a track, is good music sync. Whether that is something smooth like Mountain King, or silly fun like Ragdoll, or an intense quirk track. I'd even argue that there are some aspects of music sync where I think quirk has an advantage, the ability to change momentum really quickly can be used nicely to emphasis sudden changes in energy in a song.

On the matter of the quick reviews specifically, I can see where accusations of "pretentiousness" are coming from, even though I don't agree with them. It's clear to me that you (Rabid) and ODTE really value artistic vision and clean execution of a consistent theme. You like having a narrative and are definitely more into scenery tracks in general. You both seem too have a fairly prominent role in the community and it's clear that the people in the community understand where you're coming from with your reviews. Both casual viewers and track makers have their own preferences when it comes to style, and being vocal about a desire to see a stronger focus on some aspects of a track is fine. While obviously very different, I feel like there's some similarities between your reviews and the reviews of people like TotalBiscuit in the sense that it heavily benefits from prior knowledge of general opinions on the matter (e.g. TB's opinions of FOV sliders and frame rate, as opposed to your thoughts on quirk "tech demos").

This post got pretty long and rambling, I've probably forgotten some things along the way, but I'll just like to thank you for making this video, it would've helped me a lot to get up to speed a week ago. And thank you to all the track makers on this forum and beyond, it's a joy to watch your work, whether it's a beautiful scenery track, an erratic quirk track or a maze contest, it's all really cool to see.

gaoyubao wrote:if people were to continue making content, what's next?

story telling

you don't need tricks or elaborate illustrations to tell a story, and anyone can appreciate and be moved by a good story

Conundrumer wrote:

gaoyubao wrote:if people were to continue making content, what's next?

story telling

you don't need tricks or elaborate illustrations to tell a story, and anyone can appreciate and be moved by a good story

This. Line Rider as a vehicle for narrative is so so underused right now.