Help yourself osu map

osu!mania mapping guide

Prologue

What is osu!mania?

osu!mania is one of the four game modes. osu!mania falls under the genre Vertical Scrolling Rhythm Game (VSRG). As the name already suggests, that the musical notes are falling down or rising up in a vertical manner. There are many rather similar games to osu!mania such as «Stepmania», «O2Jam» or «Beatmania IIDX».

One advantage of osu!mania is the customisable number of playable columns and its simple to use beatmap editor.

What is the beatmap editor?

As stated, the editor allows a customisable amount of columns. For simplicity, this guide will revolve around 4-key-mapping. Below you can see a screenshot that details the editor compartments.

osu!mania editor

1. Mapping Area: This is where you place your objects.

2. Density Graph: This is the density of individual parts in the map. Pink bars indicates that the density is too high to be shown.

3 & 4. Notes and Hold: These options can be toggled by clicking. Notes are placed by clicking, Hold Notes (also known as Long Notes) can be created by clicking and dragging.

5. Hitsounds: Objects can be assigned with sounds during play. More info on hitsounds later in the guide.

6. Lock Notes: If Lock Notes is activated you can’t move any notes, which is useful when hitsounding. Without this activated, you may accidentally move notes as you hitsound them.

7. Beat Snap Divisor: Using the slider, you can select the beat snap you wish to map in. The slider goes from 1/1 to 1/16, most mappers commonly use 1/4.

Specifics on what snaps should be used for ranking are detailed in the osu!mania ranking criteria.

Shortcut: Ctrl + MouseScrollWheel

8. Sample Set & Additions: Sample Sets and Additions allow you to add even more hitsounds than shown in point 5. As an example, you can layer a drum-finish sound over the normal-finish. Using this, you can give your song a even larger variety of hitsounds!

Shortcut: Ctrl + (W, E, R), Shift + (W, E, R)

Basics

Song Setup

General

Difficulty

Design

Advanced

The point Colours is not used in osu!mania so we don’t need to change anything there.

The point Audio will be explained in the part «Hitsounds»

Timing

Once we finished our song setup we need to time our song. The timing set must be accurate to the song’s beat, else it’ll be hard to map accurately.

Finding the BPM

First you need to listen closely to your song to get a feeling of the rhythm. Once you think you can hear the rhythm, start pressing «T» to the beat until the editor displays a value. You can tap longer to get a more accurate BPM, but most songs have integer BPM values, that is, they don’t have decimals.

There should be a ticking sound indicating the BPM set, if it’s not present, check if your Effects volume high enough.

Verifying the Offset

Most of the time, your offset will be slightly off, that is, the ticking will sound consistently late, or early. Nudge the value until it sounds perfect on the beat.

Verifying the BPM

Usually, the initial BPM found will be slightly off, you will need to verify the BPM is correct.

Note that bad offsets are different from bad BPMs.

If all else fails, you can ask for help in the #osu or #osumania channel.

Finding the First Offset

The first offset is the first beat of your current BPM. Go to the point of your song where you can hear the first beat, press F6, click on the timing point and press «Use current time». Now the timing point should be on the current offset, the first beat.

Should it be right, your song is finally timed!

MixMeister BPM Analyzer

I also would like to show you a little program that can be really helpful to find the right BPM really fast. It is called MixMeister BPM Analyzer. This program will show you the average BPM of your song. It has just one weak point. It can not show you multiple BPMs. It will show you the average BPM of all BPM points in your song. To say it simple: It helps with single BPM only. You can search for it on Google or just click here. Don’t try to use it to time every map of you. You will never learn how to time songs when you let this program time everything for you. Use it to compare it with your BPM to check if you got the right one!

Multiple BPMs

A lot of songs don’t have a constant BPM. For those, you need to add another BPM point on the point of change.

Go to the point where the BPM changes, press F6 to open the Timing panel, add another timing point by clicking on the green «plus» and adjust it to the BPM change while listening to the metronome again. You can also press Ctrl + P to set a BPM point at the time stamp you are currently at. Do this for every BPM change in your Map!

Timing Setup Panel

Pattern

Once you finally have the right timings in your map it’s time to start mapping. Patterns are like building blocks to the map, it is essential to know their names and their purposes. I will add a screenshot for each and every pattern with a short description for what they are and when you should use them.

Long Note

The LN is the «Slider» in osu!mania. Using LNs are the best way to represent long sounds in your song. There are lot of ways to use a LN which I will explain in another part of this guide.

Chord

In the screenshot I have used a two note chord. Chords mean more than 1 note. «Doubles», «triples» or «quads» fall into that category. It is used to emphasise strong sounds in your song like heavy drums or cymbals.

If you are planning to rank your map, you can use up to six notes! Anything more is against the Ranking Criteria.

Burst

Bursts are quick bursts of notes. They are not necessarily 1/4, but is defined by a sudden increase in density for a short period of time.

Staircases

The staircase is mostly used for fast sounds. Note that some stairs get very hard to execute after a certain BPM, this is mainly due to the jacks formed on columns 2 and 3.

Rolling is similar to Staircases. Usually rolls are delimited by a repeating pattern of 4 or more notes, but more generally, it’s notes going in a certain direction. A 1234 is a roll and a 1324 is a split roll.

Jackhammer

Also known as a Jack. It is recommended to use jacks for two sounds that sound exactly the same. Jacks can scale in difficulty quickly when overused. It is recommended to avoid too much of these unless you’re certain.

Shield

The shield can be recognised by the fact that its always note right before or after a LN.

Chordjack

The chord jack is a combination of the jackhammer and the chord. The way to use it is the same as for the jackhammer. For same sounds, just that you use these as chords for heavier sounds.

Trill

The trill is used for two really fast changing sounds in your song. In the screenshot we see the one handed trill, however you can also use columns 1 and 3 instead for a two handed trill.

Chordtrill

The chord trill can raise the difficulty of your map quickly. Like the trill, the chord trill is used to emphasise two much louder sounds that change really fast. A simpler alternative would be using 12 and 34 chord trills instead.

Jumpstream

Jump is a 2-note chord, hence jumpstream is a 2-note chord stream.

A jumpstream can be used to layer strong sounds between a constant 1-note stream, using a 2-note chord whenever feasible.

There a lot of different ways to map jumpstreams. In the screenshot we can see a really safe way to map it because there no 1/2 triple jacks in it.

Okay! These are some of the different patterns you can use in your song! However, there are still many more configurations of patterns not covered in this guide. Many combinations work well together. Try to experiment these patterns in your song and I’m sure you can find a good mix of them for your song!

Mapping

After we finally know which patterns we can use and how they are called we can start with the mapping. Just drag the song you want to map into osu!, fill out the song setup up and add the timing! If your first tries look kinda strange or you don’t like it, don’t give up! No one is born as a master. Testplay your map as often as you can and when it is finished try to get as much feedback as possible! Ask friends that play osu!mania, ask in #osumania or write directly to some player in-game and ask for feedback. It really helps a lot when you use the 25% playback rate while mapping. Alright, let’s go! In this part I would like to explain what exactly you should have an eye on while mapping an Easy/Normal/Hard or Insane difficulty.

Notice: Keep in mind that everything what I will write from here is just a guideline and you should not take this as actual rule. You don’t need to follow this guideline verbatim.

If you want to rank your beatmap there some points you have to take note of.

First: You need a full spread in your beatmap. An osu!mania beatmap needs usually 3 difficulties or more. An Easy/Normal, a Hard and a Insane one. Of course you can decide for yourself if you want an Easy or Normal but it is best to have both. However you are not forced to have an Easy difficulty in your Mapset. The osu!mania Ranking Criteria says that your lowest difficulty has to be below 2*. That means you can have a Normal as the lowest as long as it is below 2*. Maps for approval are not affected of this rule!

While creating a full spread, it is very important to look at the pattern spread, not at the star rating! It can happen that the star rating becomes really high just because of one really dense part in your map. Osu!mania has a really helpful tool for mapping different difficulties when you already have one ready. As an example: You already have the Hard difficulty for your mapset finished and now you want to map a Normal one. Open the new difficulty, click on «File», then on «Open Difficulty» and then click on «For Reference». Now choose the Hard difficulty. Now, a second mapping field will appear next to your current mapping field. It’s the Hard difficulty. It shows you exactly how you have placed the pattern there and you can take this as reference on how to map the Normal difficulty!

Here are also some general tips for mapping:

Be consistent! What does that mean? Do not use different kinds of patterns for exactly the same sound in your map. As an example; if you use a chord for drums or snare, keep it like that! Do not change it to a single note later on. Consistency of the patterns is one of the most important aspects of osu!mania mapping. It just feels wrong when playing if you use different amounts of notes for the same sounds.

Now I’ll explain the general guidelines on what to chart for particular difficulties, ranging from Easy to Extras

Like I said this is just a guideline and you don’t have to follow these 1:1.

The «Easy» difficulty: Like the name already says, we are mapping the easy difficulty here. And this it should be: Easy to play! We want to introduce the newer players to osu!mania and he should learn the basics. That’s why we want to keep our difficulty as simple as we can. We don’t use any 1/4 pattern, even ½ pattern should be used carefully. Use chords only to emphasise the beginning or the end of a part with a heavy cymbal. Make sure you always try to balance the hands very well. Use a lot of LNs for the long sounds in your song and to map heavy 1/4 sounds and above. If you want to use chords for example in your kiai, make sure the player has enough time to react. That means give him 1/1 beat time! In most songs the second down or main beat is always louder than the first one, with heavy drums, kicks or clap sounds. These you could map a chord while you use a normal note for the quiet sounds. But still: In the best case just use normal, single notes. Also do not use single notes while having a LN! The player should first learn how to handle a LN and how to release it at the right time. If you really want to use single notes during a LN you should watch out that the single note is on the other hand. Means, when you have mapped a LN on the right hand, the single note must be pressed with the left hand! Also don’t forget: If you want to add an easy difficult to your song you should try to keep it below 1,5* to have the easy icon.

The «Normal» difficulty: Now that we know how to map an easy difficulty, we can raise the density of the notes for the normal difficulty a little bit. We can use more 1/2 patterns now, but we should try to avoid using 1/4 patterns or just use them really carefully. In the best case only when your song has a really low bpm or only really short stairs. Also we can use more chords now. If you have a heavy snare drum or a heavy cymbal in the middle of the part we can map this with a chord to emphasise these. Also, we can use single notes during a LNs but please try to use different hands like explained in the easy difficulty! Should you have more notes than one during the LN it’s okay to have some on the same hand as the LN, but most of them should still be played with the other hand! Here we should definitely map the kiai with chords and normal notes like already explained in the easy, but do not overuse it. Depending on the bpm of your song you can also add 1/2 normal notes here. But do not forget: The player just learned the basic pattern and you should not overdo it! A also good point for a normal difficult is to follow the PR (pitch relevancy) with your notes. Higher sounds can be mapped on the right side, deeper sounds on the left side of the play field.

The «Hard» difficulty: In the Hard difficulty we can start to add more complicated patterns since the player should have learned the basics from easy and normal. We can start to add longer 1/4 bursts and stair patterns, we can also start to use 3-note chords for heavy cymbals at the end or at the beginning of a part. Also, depending on the bpm and the part of your map, we can use short jump streams but make sure they fit to the part you currently map. When the song gets more hectic and faster, it’s the perfect time to add such a jumpstream. You can start to use short jack patterns here as well. What you should avoid are chord trills. Chord trills have a really high pattern density which may result in a very high star rating. You can of course use short triples of chords, these should not have a big impact on the star rating. The kiai should be the most dense part of your map if possible. Also, you can try to combine more LNs and ¼ single note patterns. Try to combine different lengths of LN patterns at the same time! It can give your map a special feeling by using more than one LN at the same time. But be very careful here. Make sure every LN follows a sound! Do not add these «randomly» into your song just because you think it could play well. Depending on the BPM it’s also okay to add short 1/6 or 1/8 stair patterns. But use these carefully. Only when the song provides enough for these. The 1/6 burst should not be longer than a 1/2 beat and the 1/8 not longer than 1/4 beat! The lower the bpm of your song is, the longer these burst patterns can be.

The «Insane» and «Extreme» difficulty: Now we focus on the insane and extra difficulties. Again, we raise the density of the pattern and start to use even more complicated patterns! You can now use all kinds of pattern and try to combine them. Also, you can now use long 1/8 patterns as well as chord trills! An insane and extra difficulty is mostly for more experienced players, so you should try to make a really nice to play and still exciting difficulty. Try to combine jumpstreams with trills and heavy chord mashing. You can now use 3-note chords for more than just emphasising the ending of a certain part in your song. But keep in mind: Should you plan to add another difficulty like an extra difficulty, you should not go to the limits! You should leave some space to make an even harder difficulty. I can’t tell much since you just have to create a harder difficult than the hard in a good spread. If you plan to add an extra difficulty you can go to the limits of the song. You can use heavy jumpstreams together with heavy chordmash. You can use 3-note chords in jumpstreams between two-note chords. You have to try out what’s the limit of the song. But take note of the following: A guideline says that you must be able to pass your own difficulties and I have to agree with this point. If you really want to create a good and playable insane/extra difficulty you should know how they play and for this you have to be able to pass them.

Hitsounds

You have placed your first notes and you like it? Or you Or you may have even finished a full difficulty or spread? Excellent! But something is missing, right? Yes! The Hitsounds.

Hitsounds are important in every game mode. They give feedback when pressing a note so the player knows what he just hit. Also having different hitsounds in your map can give it a special feeling because the song sounds different all of the sudden, maybe even better than without hitsounds! Osu!mania has two different ways to hitsound.

For now, we want to focus on the normal way of hitsounding.

First you have to decide; do you want to use the default hitsounds that osu! gives you or do you want to add custom hitsounds?

If you want to use the default one you don’t really need to change a lot. Everything you need is to decide which sample set you want to use as a default. Go into the Timing Setup Panel and change your timing point to the sample set you want to use. Osu!mania usually uses «soft» as default because the hit-normal isn’t that loud.

You can always change the sample set for a whole part by selecting all notes and changing it to the desired sample set or you can add an inherited point (green line) and change the whole part to the selected sample set until the next inherited point. Now you just need to add the hitsound you wish! You can choose between Finish, Whistle and Clap. All of these effects sounds different when you change the sample set. Try around for a little bit and i’m sure you can find the perfect one for your song!

Now I will explain how to add custom hitsounds to your beatmap.

Hitsound List

Following hitsounds can be changed in the song folder:

Interface

This article explains everything you need to know on how to use the osu! game client. Here you will find information about the song select screen, the rankings display as well as the results screen. When starting the game client, you can see the following screen:

Main menu

The jukebox has the following buttons:

The jukebox can also be controlled using keyboard shortcuts.

User options

Access this screen by clicking on your profile at the top left of the main menu. You can select any item by pressing its corresponding number:

Play menu

After selecting Play in the main menu, you can choose between three options:

Multiplayer lobby

The multiplayer lobby allows you to play with as well as against other players.

Song select

Before continuing on, this screen has too many elements to note with easily, noticeable numbers. The subsections below will focus on one part of the screen at a time, starting from top to bottom and left to right.

Beatmap information

This area displays information on the beatmap difficulty currently selected. When entering the song selection screen, the song playing on the jukebox is selected by default. The top-left icon displays the beatmap category, where this particular one is ranked.

The song title is normally shown as romanised (lower picture), but if you select Prefer metadata in original language in the Options, it will show the Unicode title (upper picture). The difficulty name of the beatmap is shown between square brackets ( [] ). The creator who mapped the beatmap is shown below the title, and even more information is listed below. From left to right, the values are as follows:

Group and Sort

Click on one of the tabs to sort your song list according to the selected criterion.

Group

These options organise beatmaps into various expandable groups:

The first five groupings are available in tabs below Group and Sort.

Sort beatmaps in a certain order.

Search

Note: You cannot have the chat console or the options sidebar open if you want to search. Otherwise, anything you type will be perceived as chat text or as an options search query.

Only beatmaps that match the criteria of your search will be shown. By default, any search will be matched against the beatmaps’ artists, titles, creators, and tags.

In addition to searching these fields, you can use filters to search through other metadata by combining one of the supported filters with a comparison to a value (for example, ar=9 ).

You may also enter a difficulty or beatmap ID number in your search to get a single result.

Rankings

A variety of things can appear in this space:

These are the view settings:

Click the word bubble icon to call up the quick web access screen for the selected beatmap:

Beatmap carousel

The beatmap carousel displays all available beatmaps. Different beatmaps may have differently coloured boxes:

You can navigate the beatmap list by using the mouse wheel, using the up and down arrow keys, dragging it while holding the left mouse button or clicking the right mouse button (known as absolute scrolling), which will move the scroll bar to your mouse’s Y position. Click on a beatmap to select it, then click it again, press Enter or click the osu! cookie at the bottom-right corner to play the beatmap.

Gameplay toolbox

List of available game modes

This section can be called the gameplay toolbox. We will cover each button’s use from left to right.

Press Esc or click the Back button to return to main menu.

Click on the Mode button to open a list of game modes available in osu!. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl and 1 (osu!), 2 (osu!taiko), 3 (osu!catch), or 4 (osu!mania) to change the game mode. Switching to another mode will also switch to its leaderboards, as one may observe by seeing the displayed rank change.

Mod selection screen

Click the Mods button or press F1 to open the mod selection screen.

In this screen, you can apply modifications («mods» for short) to gameplay. Some mods lower difficulty and apply a multiplier that lowers the score you achieve. Conversely, some mods increase the difficulty, but apply a multiplier that increases the score you achieve. Finally, some mods modify gameplay in a different way. Relax and Auto Pilot fall in that category.

Place your mouse on a mod’s icon to see a short description of its effect. Click on an icon to select or deselect that mod. Some mods, like Double Time, have multiple variations — click on the mod again to cycle through them. The score multiplier value displays the combined effect all selected mods will have on your score. Click Reset all mods or press 1 to deselect all currently selected mods. Click Close or press 2 or Esc to return to the song selection screen.

Click the Random button or press F2 to have the game randomly scroll through all of your beatmaps and pick one.

Note: You can press Shift + the Random button or F2 to go back to the beatmap you had selected before you randomised your selection.

Possible commands for a beatmap

Click the Beatmap Options button, press F3 or right-click your mouse while hovering over the beatmap to bring up the beatmap options menu for options on the currently selected beatmap.

Click on your user panel to access the user options menu.

Click on the osu! cookie to start playing the selected beatmap.

Results screen

Accuracy in osu!

This is the results screen shown after you have successfully passed the beatmap. You can access your online results by scrolling down or pressing the obvious button.

Below are the results screens of the other game modes.

Accuracy in osu!taiko

Accuracy in osu!mania

Accuracy in osu!catch

Extended results screen

An example of an online osu! score

This is your online leaderboard. You can go here by scrolling down from the results screen. Your local scoreboard will show your name and the score as usual.

The categories in the ranking panel are as follows:

Medals

Unlocking a medal

Sometimes, when specific conditions are met, you may receive a medal.

Маппинг

Beatmapping (также маппинг или битмаппинг) — это процесс создания карт для игры в osu!. Маппинг включает в себя выбор песни, настройку тайминга и расстановку игровых объектов. По желанию сюда также можно отнести добавление скина или сториборда.

Человека, создающего карты, называют маппером. Обычно мапперы хотят ранкнуть свои карты и для этого следуют процедуре ранкинга карт.

Поскольку osu! — ритм-игра, ей больше подходят песни с чётким и постоянным ритмом. Если вы только начали заниматься маппингом, то не стоит браться за музыку с меняющимся BPM, а также за слишком медленные треки.

Начало

После этих действий кликните по добавленной песне, чтобы открыть редактор карт и окно с настройками карты.

Song Setup

С этого окна начинается создание новой сложности для карты.

Timing

Настройки тайминга — это принципы расположения нот во времени. Они задаются самой песней и подбираются таким образом, чтобы игровые объекты можно было расставлять под звуки, из которых она состоит.

Точный тайминг очень важен и является одним из условий для ранкинга карты. Убедитесь, что вы его верно настроили перед расстановкой игровых объектов.

Если вы не уверены в правильности своего тайминга, обратитесь за помощью в раздел Modding Queues или Beatmap Help. Попросить о помощи на русском можно в теме «Ваши карты».

Compose

На вкладке Compose в редакторе карт вы будете проводить бо̀льшую часть времени, занимаясь расстановкой игровых объектов и добавляя хитсаунды.

Design

На вкладке Design можно добавить фоновое изображение или видео для карты, а также создать простой сториборд. Впрочем, сториборд можно создать и в текстовом редакторе или специализированной программе — в этом случае вкладка в редакторе не пригодится.

Help yourself osu map

Здесь будут перечислены вопросы, которые возникают у новичков в осу, но которые сложно рассортировать по другим разделами вики.

Как начать играть?

Как качать / что делать с картами?

Как уже было сказано, карты качаются тут. Также можно скачать их пачками, через торрент или зеркало. Преимущество этих методов в том, что по одной карте Вам долго качать не дадут, т.к. есть ограничения, а остальными способами можно скачать хоть сразу всё, что есть.

Чтобы установить карту, достаточно нажать на неё 2 раза или кинуть в папку с игрой в каталог Songs. Также можно перетащить файл в окно игры.

Как играть?

Как вам удобнее, так и играйте. Можете ещё почитать про стили игры.

Кто такие саппорты?

Саппорты — люди, которые поддержали игру денежкой. Да, тут есть донат. Он почти ничего не даёт, но, возможно, вам будет интересно, какие бонусы от него можно получить:

Остальное Вы можете узнать на этой странице, а приобрести сам саппорт — здесь.

В какую сторону крутить спиннер?

В какую сторону Вы размешиваете сахар?

Как мне увидеть список друзей?

Нажмите F9. Вы увидите список всех игроков, которые сейчас онлайн. Нажатием на «показать только друзей», как ни странно, вам покажут только ваших друзей онлайн.

Откуда взять скины?

Почему я не могу скачать некоторые карты (Skrillex или песни из Beatmania)?

Потому что правообладатели несколько раз просили удалить песни, распространение которых нарушает авторские права лейблов или артистов, их выпускающих.

Тем не менее, удалённые с сервера карты можно найти:

Куда пропал мой интерфейс/рекорды при игре?

Во время игры Вы нажали либо Tab (отключает рекорды), либо Shift+Tab (скрывает основной интерфейс). Теперь, зная эти сочетания клавиш, Вы можете вернуть всё на свои места.

Почему в русском чате общаются точками, пробелами и запятыми?

Потому что Вы зачем-то включили настройку «Filter foreign characters» (в русском варианте — «Скрывать юникод»), которая вырезает из чата всё, что не попадает в ASCII-диапазон.

Почему я не могу писать в чат?

Наверное, вы получили сайленс за плохое поведение. Пожалуйста, ознакомьтесь с правилами, чтобы такого больше не произошло.

А IRC тут есть?

Конечно! Об этом написана отдельная статья.

У меня вопрос, на который тут нет ответа!

Осмотрите табличку снизу, в особенности — статью о решении вопросов и проблем. Если там тоже ничего не нашлось, спросите в чате на канале #russian или на русском форуме в теме «Вопросы и ответы» (нет, она не мертва).

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ReadMe.md

Project status: discontinued.

osu!helper is an application that recommends beatmaps in osu! based on your current performance. It searches for players who did similarly well on maps you’ve played in the past and uses their top plays as basis for recommendation. The recommended maps are then displayed in a grid where users are able to see the map’s attributes adjusted by the suggested mods, as well as some other useful information. Maps can also be previewed and downloaded straight from the application.