Quarterly Pack Submission Guidelines for Guest Charters

Tutorials Apr 3, 2019

General

* You must not release your chart anywhere before the pack is released or it will not be considered. This includes chart previews on YouTube, posting your chart in streamers' public Discord servers (sending it for them to play it is absolutely fine as long as they don't share it afterwards), uploading to Chorus or public drives, etc. It is however fine to submit clips in order to get feedback or help on select sections. The above rule is to prevent premature releases.
* Your song must not exceed 8 minutes of duration (going a few seconds above that is fine).
* All charts must be full difficulty, charted on the guitar track, and contain lyrics.
* All charts must be tempo-mapped and synced accurately with zero delay/offset. If your tempo map requires an x/16 measure, you may reduce it to x/8 if you understand how.
* All submissions must have practice sections, solo markers, star power, sustain gaps and leading silence.
* All submissions must include a 16:9 background image with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 720. It is not necessary to add a lyrics bar onto the image.

Metadata & .ini

* Album art must be included at a resolution of 500x500 and in .png format. 512x512 is also acceptable.
* Files should be named properly: notes.chart/mid, album.png, song.ini, and song/guitar.ogg/mp3.
* Folder names should be labeled "Artist - Song Title [Charter Name]".
* Featured artists should be appended to the song title with (feat. Guest Artist 1).
* Cover songs should be appended to the song title with (Original Artist cover).
* Audio quality must be between 192kbps and 320kbps. YouTube rips are not permitted except in cases of extreme rarity.
* At least 2000ms or two measures of silence must lead the song.
* song.ini template:

[song]
artist =
name =
album =
year =
charter =
genre =
album_track = 
icon = csc
loading_phrase = 
preview_start_time = x (millisecond units)
diff_guitar = x (from 0 to 10)

* Omit count and/or playlist_track parameters from the ini.

Charting

* Include sensible sustain gaps. A good rule of thumb is <100BPM -> 1/32 gap, 100-140BPM -> 1/24 gap, and 140-220BPM -> 1/16 gap. Though it is highly recommended to use time-based sustain gaps instead, with a value of 65-80 ms.
* 5-note chords may not be used in any manner. 4-note chords may only be used if they are "built towards" by extended sustains.
* Exercise care and caution when using GRO and GBO chords.
* Disjoint chords and reverse extended sustains may be used if appropriate.
* Songs which are exclusively electronic should be forced intuitively for players' enjoyment.
* Piano must be charted as tap notes.
* Open notes in charts should strive to enhance the enjoyability of a chart rather than complicate it.
* Back-to-back solo markers are not permitted.
* Lyrics should have at least enough grammar to convey a clear meaning.
* Charts should attempt to be pitch-accurate rather than emulating hand positioning or fingering.

Full Difficulty

NEW: As of June 2023, lower difficulties are allowed to have open notes, provided it still follows the rules below:

Selection Process

* First and foremost, the less fixes a chart needs, the better chance it has of being included in the monthly pack.
* CSC Admins and Charters will come to a consensus on which chart submissions should be accepted.
* In the case of a deadlock, the chart(s) that is deemed to be the most fun will be included.
* Guest charters will be contacted for any potential fixes, both charting and metadata, before the release of the pack.
* No video previews will be made for the guest charters' submissions for the CSC YouTube channel without their expressed approval.
* Please submit your guest charts by the 1st day of the month preceding the release of the pack. The pack is released on the last day of each quarter (March, June, September, December).
* Guest charters may make their charts available on their own Google Drives or repositories immediately following the public release of the monthly pack.
* All guest charts should be submitted via this form. Please only submit one chart per month!