Mono surfers: Hit the grey!

{formerly titled "To grey or not to grey")



This has been inside my mind for awhile, and since today I am pretty much free, I decided to talk about a factor inside a certain mode in Audiosurf 2, in which, I believe, many people still haven't recognize. (By the way, Dylan, this is your fault)



THE GREY BLOCK



First, let me introduce you about Mono in Audiosurf 1, since it will help us a few things to talk about grey blocks in AS2.

Scoring system of Mono in Audiosurf 1 has three factors – Consecutive color hits (CSH), Stealth, and Matches.

CSH means if you keep hitting color blocks in a chain, you will gain points, like 1, 2, 3, 4... to n (with n is the maximum number limit for each difficulty). In Casual Mono, n is 66 (if I didn't wrong, someone correct me?). CSH will be reset if you hit a gray.

“Stealth” mean not hitting any grey block during your run. Doing this giving you a 30% bonus score post-run, which will show on the score screen.

“Matches” has two parts – during the surf, and after the surf. During the surf, blocks you hit in a streak will be stored inside a 7x3 track. The hit streak end after you hit nothing for a while and you score depends on how much color blocks you have and connected inside there (I am not sure if grey counts – someone correct me). The post-surf giving you a bonus based on how many blocks you have in maximum. Like once you have a 7x3, you have a 21% score bonus. It does not stack with other bonuses like Stealth bonus.

There are also other bonuses such as Clean bonus, too.



So, the punishment of grey in Audiosurf 1 Monos are cruel. You have no stealth bonus, you have a stone inside your 7x3 track (which can be break with Shuriken), ruining your formation to have a fancy score.



The official Mono of Audiosurf 2 seemingly to have everythings looks okay, add bonus score on screwloops. But, it removes CSH, stealth bonus, and matches post-surf bonus. But somehow clean bonus still there and didn't get removed.



But, what to talk about gray blocks, and Audiosurf 2? Whenever I am loading songs to play in Mono mode, this message greets me.

“Hit colors, dodge spikes (grays)“

Dodge spikes? But why dodge? What's the penalty? Truthly, this is what the spike do to you whenever you hit them:

greyaction="eraseone"

That's just it. One block of your match will be reduced. Yep, that's the penalty of hitting the grey.



But that's not the only thing grey blocks did to you. The game still treats the grey as a block, therefore letting you maintaining your momentum to gaining a classic 7x3 match.



I don't know about scoring in Audiosurf 1, but I know in both versions of AS, an 7x3 match still giving you more points than an 6x3 and then and 3x1/1x3 afterward.



In Audiosurf 1, players will have no choice in a situation like that and make a hit of 6x3 and 1x3 unwillingly, because he has to care for his stealth bonus.



In Audiosurf 2, the player can decided to make a sacrifice by hitting an grey to keep his hit streak, and finish a 7x3 beautifully,giving him a score of nearly 15k.



This making the fact that “hit colors, dodge greys” into one ot the biggest lie inside Audiosurf 2, and one of the most unlooked factor for veteran when playing AS2.



It is not the same stealthy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anymore. It pains me when I saw a bunch of AS2 gamers still thinking this is the same mono of AS1.



But it is incomplete. There is a bit of potental, and a huge things



Currently we don't know which playstyle in Mono is better? Hitting greys to gaining bunch of 7x3s or stealthy and go low and clean?



Also, here's my suggestions to Dylan with the mono gamemode:



- Bringing back the match post-surf bonus and stealth bonus. Mono is about skills puzzle, not RNG like color puzzles.



- Remove randomization of blocks. I mean, this line.

math.randomseed(GetMillisecondsSinceStartup())

I don't see it fits the purpose for a nice challenge at all. In fact, it makes mono challenges of Audiosurf changed a lot, to a way I could say I pray for RNGesus too many times to have a nice formation to surf.



Give me your comment below about the grey blocks and mono in Audiosurf 2?