Beat Sage launched a new update that adds in more features, including support for 90 degree levels, single saber mode and obstacles. It also makes some minor improvements to the AI modelling used to generate levels, providing users with more options.
Released last month, Beat Sage is a tool that uses AI and neural networks to generate custom Beat Saber maps from any song, based off a training model that uses human-made maps to learn how to make a good beatmap.
With increasing support on Patreon, the tool’s creators have pushed an update that fulfills the rewards promised to supporters, including the ability to generate 90 degree and single saber modes, along with support for obstacles (aka walls) in your maps. The maps environment is also now changeable, allowing you to select any of the standard Beat Saber map environments or any of the DLC song pack environments as well. If you want to generate a Beethoven Beat Saber map and play it in the Green Day-themed environment, now you can!
You can also now select the version of the AI modelling that you want to use when generating a track. There’s an option for original V1 AI, the new V2 AI and an alternate ‘V2-Flow’ AI that supposedly aids flow of maps but results in them being ‘less creative’. In some limited testing, we found that the V2-Flow maps did help constrain the beatmap a bit more so that you arms aren’t wildly flying around, but also resulted in slightly more repetitive maps. It’s a trade off that will probably come down to your personal preference.
We also gave the 90 degree maps a try, and found the results were mixed. You can check out a very short snippet of a Beat Sage-generated 90 degree level, with bombs and walls enabled, above. We found enabling all 3 of these lead to some wacky (and occasionally impossible or illogical) beatmaps — there’s definitely still some issues to iron out with the new features. You might need to do some tweaking to get better results on the 90 degree maps, such as disabling walls, bombs or both.
That being said, we didn’t get to test everything comprehensively and the tool is very much in active development. The developers behind Beat Sage told us that changes will continue to be made to improve the AI, so expect these new additions to get better in the future. If you’re interested in how Beat Sage’s AI works and how it studies human maps to produce better Beat Saber maps, check out our deep dive with the developers from last weekend.
Beat Sage V2 is available now.
