Osu how to be pro

Osu how to be pro

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Becoming an osu! Pro (Part 1)

NolanM’s current performance chart, as of 3/3/2015 (Going up, still; just started with a tablet.)

With a mouse and keyboard.

How in the world can one be so insanely good at this game, getting SS ranks (100% full accuracy) on such difficult maps? The answer is simple. As mentioned before, it depends on the type of way you play. When you begin to play, you can and will feel that osu! is a very hard game, by how slow your mouse moves, and the limited amount of clicks of the mouse you can do at once. The majority of osu! players play with either a mouse (with x and z keys), or a tablet (also with x and z keys). How do those mouse players play with such accuracy though?

We’ve got it covered that a player is able to «click» notes so rapidly because they are using keys «x» and «z,» but how do they do all those other magic tricks? The other secret is (and this is pretty obvious, many of you have probably figured this out already), sensitivity change. What is that? It’s what it sounds like. It means, for example, if you change your mouse sensitivity level from 1.0x to 2.0x, that would be multiplying the sensitivity by two, and therefore, with the same distance that you would move your mouse with your hand, the distance that the cursor moves on the screen is doubled.

But higher sensitivity = harder to control? This is true, but depending on how motivated you are to move up in rank and start playing new songs, you can get used to it easily. I play at 4.0x sensitivity. I recommend not to move directly up to 4.0x, but instead moving up slightly every once and a while so it doesn’t feel like an immediate and totally uncomfortable change. It will get really easy after a while

How do I use the «x» and «z» keys?! This applies to tablet usage as a type of way to play to, but it may feel very uncomfortable to use the «x» and «z» keys to hit the notes rather than clicking. The answer for you would be to pick one of two paths. One path, the easier-to-grasp path, is single tapping. Single tapping is basically using just one key, x or z (preferably x) to tap for everything except for triple notes or streams (Don’t worry if you don’t know what those are, but they are basically, to sum it up, notes that appear on the screen which require insanely fast hitting of the notes). As for using this path, playing songs with a much faster BPM is very difficult, as you will need to practice single tapping with one finger super fast. The other path, alternate tapping, is more difficult to grasp on to. It’s the opposite to single tapping, and its name describes it. What you do basically is alternate between both numbers for everything. What makes it so difficult is that when you’re alternating between to fingers while playing, it feels very unnatural and does not feel like it goes with the song often times. Anyways, it’s up to you!

This is part 1. Later parts will be posted on later days. Have any questions? They may be addressed in the next part, or you can ask in the comments below! Good luck choosing your tapping style! (I’m personally a single tapper.)

How to Play osu! Like a Pro Megathread

Нет аккаунта?

How to Play osu! Like a Pro Megathread

This thread is for the info not mentioned in the FAQ but still notable and more focused towards self improvement.

Input styles

Try Z/X if mouseclicking and alt clicking is too hard.(this would use both hands, one for mouse and one for Z/X)
If you have the money, see if you enjoy a tablet.
Mess with mouse/ingame sensitivity if you feel like your hand is getting exhausted or flying off the pad.(If your mouse is flying off the pad mouse acceleration can be a culprit.)
Use a solid color mousepad or a sheet of paper.(This only truly applies to cheaper mice)
Turn off mouse acceleration.(google it, even if you suck right when you turn it off it doesn’t matter. it’s like changing sensitivity, just get used to it. It should only take a day at most.)
If your sensitivity is very low, and you refuse to go higher, you may just want to leave mouse acceleration on.

Spinners

Spin small if you spin slowly.
Spin small on harder maps during first playthroughs.
Spin large if you have a high dexterity.
Spin the direction that feels natural.
Smaller circles are more controllable.
Turn off mouse accel and see if you can spin faster/easier. With mouse accel on I end up making small circles around the outside of the play area when I’m making perfect circles on my mousepad, it’s all about the speed/distance garbage mouse acceleration is.

Repeating sliders

Hold until the moment you have to click the next beat, in case one lasts longer than you expect.
Unfortunately, having problems with Repeating Sliders usually boils down to memorizing the map since most don’t follow the beat that well.

Jumps

If you’re having issues with jumps, try experimenting with mouse acceleration off.
If you find jumps to be a big issue, try gradually increasing your mouse sensitivity. This helps with keeping your wrist from getting into awkward positions by minimizing how much your hand actually moves.
Practice makes perfect.

IF YOUR MOUSE IS FALLING OFF THE MOUSEPAD

Either you have some unbearably low mouse sensitivity or it’s mouse acceleration, if it bothers you a lot, turn off mouse acceleration.

Other
Play maps you can’t beat, you’ll get better faster. Trust me.
Watch a replay before playing the map.(Autoplay works too, doesn’t really matter this is just to prep you for some jumps or mapping errors)
Don’t use crappy skins that have too many visual effects that can end up blinding you/cluttering your view.

Taiko

Watch some of the replays first to get an ear for the beat.
Just cause they’re big, doesn’t mean you have to mash both keys.
Sometimes alternating between sides on your drum (like, mine are G H for left and right don(center), and T Y for left and right kat(rim), can mess your timing up. Try tapping on one side for a little and see if it helps.
Just as musicians tap a foot or bob a head to the beat to help them keep rhythm and time, Try this as well! It helps me with EVERY music game I play (beatmaniaIIDX, Taiko no Tatsujin, DDR, Guitar Hero, GFDM, Pop’n music, etc.)
BECOME FAMILIAR WITH THE TRACK! listen to it a few times before attempting it! so you’ll get a feel for how the track flows!

Catch the Beat

Use shift to move faster.

If I missed anything about this very in depth and complicated game please tell me.

All relevant info will be posted in first post, no need to read through the thread.

[GUIDE] How to improve in osu!mania

Нет аккаунта?

[GUIDE] How to improve in osu!mania

Welcome to my magic thread on how to become insta-pro!! Just kidding, just kidding.

With lots of recent threads being about people asking how to improve in osu!mania, I decided to make a how-to to help all players, new or fairly advanced. This thread’s purpose IS NOT to tell people how they should practice or to enforce some methods over others. This thread’s purpose IS to compile different methods people has used to give an idea to players what they could try if things aren’t going as good as they would want to. For starters, I really recommend playing other games like lr2 or o2jam because this game tends to enforce bad habits with it’s mechanics that mostly impedes your progress.

Also, I find that this thread goes hand-in-hand with Entozer’s beatmap list: t/147552

Things to look out for when trying to improve

They’re split between the 4 categories bellow. They’re split since some things aren’t useful for all player levels.

Beginner: You just started, you aren’t at the level to call the osu!standard converts useless and you find that even the easy mania songs are too hard.

Do not be afraid to be bad: Most people get discouraged from the level of difficulty in rhythm games early on. This is because most rhythm games features a seemingly never-ending difficulty scale, and it’s intimidating when you’re having trouble at the beginning. But this is also due that these games uses mechanics that one most likely never practiced before. In osu!mania, it’s finger independence. It’s completely normal to be bad when you start off. Most the time, when someone is better than you, it’s simply because he’s played more or has played more seriously than you. Just keep in mind that he used to be at your level too at some point in time .You just need spend more time playing and pushing yourself to the next level. Don’t worry about it too much, it’ll come.

Focus on training your finger-independence: Finger-independence is what I like to call the skill of being able to move each finger the most independently as possible. It’s not something that’s easy to develop, but it’s an absolutely crucial skill to have in osu!mania. You need to keep your hopes up and practice anything you can get your hands on to improve your ability to move your fingers independence. Once you get accustomed to this, you’re improvement rate will literally sky-rocket. It’s just a matter of getting used to mechanics you’re not accustomed to.

Song choice: At this stage, being exposed to different pattern types isn’t an immediate concern. Since your main concern is getting used to playing a bit. Go ahead and play your favorite songs. But this does not mean exposing yourself to new patterns is a bad thing, it’s always a good thing! If you feel up to it, read the pattern learning section from the mediocre category, there’s song available for all player levels.

Play all keymodes: Try to keep your skill for all keymodes equal. Got 90% on 4k? Don’t play 4k again until you can get 90% on the other keymodes too. The most common mistake for new players is starting off with 4k and completely shunning the other keymodes away, thinking something along the lines of «I’ll get better at 4k before touching the other keymodes, they’re too hard». Why is this a mistake? The more you improve on 4k, the more the thought of practicing other keymodes will become discouraging due to the skill gap. This keeps up until it becomes set in stone that you will never have the resolve to try and learn the other keymodes. To top it off, someone who practices all keymodes will improve at the same rate as someone who practiced a single one. I’ve done this experiment with my friends multiple times. Most recently with my sister and brother. I both got them to start playing at the same time, but told my sister to keep her skill in all keymodes equal. Two months later, with my sister having the smaller playtime, their 4k skills were nearly identical, they would beat each other in turns. Except my sister was that good in all keymodes while my brother couldn’t play anything besides 4k. How is this possible? Because at the early levels, its all about training your finger independence. This means that learning 4k is nearly as hard as learning 7k/8k. Time spent practicing higher keymodes also helps with your skill of lower keymodes more than the other way around. So keep your individual keymode skills even, your overall improvement rate will increase faster rather than slower.

Short form: It’s normal that you start off rough, practice that finger independence and make sure to play all keymodes equally.

Without prior experience, most people stay 1-3 months in stage, if playing a casual 1-2 hours a day. Though this can affected by how seriously you play, and how often you play.

Novice players: You’re good enough to impress your friends. You’ve been playing for a while and started realizing what everyone meant about these standard songs, their notes aren’t as fun to play as mania maps. You were improving so fast but now, it seems like you’ve hit a wall.

Learning patterns: At this point you should realize that mania is all about reading and playing patterns. We’ll consider that a pattern is»known» when not only you can read it, but you can also play it properly. To get better you need to play different songs to add patterns into your «repository». One’s skill is largely affected by, if not directly relevant to, the amount of patterns he knows. As you get better, you’ll encounter patterns that resemble something you know but with a little something new, then again, then again. Until you’re able to read a pattern that looked like a total mess to you a while back. With a little work, you can learn that mess of a pattern that you can now read and later consider it «known». This is the problem with playing osu!standard conversions. Their map patterns can easily be counted on all 10 fingers. Single, double, triple notes. Streams. Simple long notes with or without equally spaced notes. 1/4 beat. 1/8 beat. Some extra rare occurrences. This is due to the limitations that the converter has when trying to translate a song from a single-note «play-along» game to a song for a multi-note «play-the-music» game. At this stage, it’s much better to practice mania maps. Currently, there isn’t enough ranked mania maps to cover all your training needs. So you’ll need to dabble in the unranked songs or conversions from other games. It should be noted that Bobbias’s o2jam converts has a great variety of maps for all levels of players. Oh, and keep in mind that this whole pattern reading/learning/playing thing is completely subconscious. It’s not like we keep track of all these patterns, it’s just the outcome of good ‘ol practicing.

Attitude: You won’t improve unless you want to improve. You gotta play with a mindset positive for improvement. This means setting up goals and milestones and striving to accomplish them. There’s a certain limit to how good a player playing just for the sake of playing can become, and this is pretty much that level. Basically, you won’t improve unless you’re actually trying to do better than your best.

Confidence: This is MUCH more important than people think. This is the biggest reason that «taking a break» or «getting new songs» sometimes results in an increase of skill. Let’s say you have a favorite map that you play daily, but there’s this part in the song you always screw up. Up comes the part and you’re thinking «here it comes. «, and guess what? You screw up again. But then you had to take a break, vacation or whatnot, and something weird happens when you come back; you FC the song. Why? Most likely you forgot about that part, and played through it like it was never a problem. An other scenario to prove this is when you’re having a «good day». Usually starts when you beat one of your best highscores, you start thinking «oh wow, I’m awesome today!». You then proceed to beating a lot of your records. Yes it’s possible you were healthier that day, but it’s mostly due to your confidence again. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by difficult looking patterns and try your best to read em, because you can; you just didn’t find out how yet. Try to keep this in mind when you play, no negative thoughts!

Adjust your speed and where you look: If you’re playing while looking at the bottom of the screen, then your scroll speed isn’t fast enough. Adjust it until you’re looking somewhere around the middle area of the board. You want it to be as fast as you can while still playing good since it spreads out the notes and facilitates the reading. If you’re not used to playing while looking in the middle, try a couple easier maps with flashlight on. Now, don’t expect to do good, it’s just to give an «average feel» of what a good speed and concentration area is. Looking at the center of the playing field with an appropriate speed is crucial to properly read harder patterns.

Adjust how you play: We can all agree that the chances of you playing with most comfortable and profitable posture/techniques possible for you on your first try is very low. Don’t be afraid to test new things to see if it’s better for you. Some people seem to have adapted the proper keyboarding
etiquette in their playstyle. Others spread out their hands a little to feel more relaxed. Others tries to limit the movement of their fingers, keeping em relaxed on the keys instead of «bouncing» them. Some people rather resting their wrist on a surface while others like keeping them in the air. Ask around to see how others play or experiment yourself, I’m almost 100% sure there’s a better technique/posture out there for you that you just haven’t found yet.

Practice: Of course. But why give it it’s own spot? Because the time you need to spend playing to reach the next level is a lot more than most new players think. Were talking anything from 6 months to even a year. Progress will be slower from now on and you’ll start liking songs more based on it’s noting patterns over the actual song. But don’t be discouraged, if it seems like you’re going nowhere, just keep practicing. Just keep thinking positive and have fun, improvement is just around the corner.

Train your accuracy and stamina: Accuracy is the biggest contributor to your score. Someone who achieves an SS can still be beaten by someone who broke his combo midway but hit an insane amount of MAX (the rainbow 300s). But MAXs can prove to be pretty difficult to hit. Make sure to try and hit the notes as accurately as possible, it not only gives you a better score, but also helps in learning harder patterns when you have the habit of hitting 75%+ MAX. But no matter how epic your accuracy, a song that keeps a tiring pattern going for a while will tire you out. Some songs have easy patterns but the length and speed of it all makes your arms turn to jello by the halfway point. To train stamina, all you can do is keep playing stamina songs until your stamina improves. A good thing to practice on are the harder 4k mania songs, since they’re mostly easy to read but requires lots of stamina.

Stay healthy: Yup, eat your meat and veggies and sleep a normal sleep routine. Exercise, workout and take a breather outdoors. No matter how good you are, you’ll still perform better when in tip-top shape. Not only will you play better, you will also improve faster, it’s just how the human body works.

Short form: Practice varied patterns, be confident, adjust your playstyle a bit and practice! You’re at this stage for a while so make sure you’re having fun.

People usually stay well over a year in this stage, only true enthusiasts or competitive players manage to get out of this stage.

Advanced Players: You got well over a year or two of experience. Songs that you cant complete are considered ridiculous or just outside of your reach. You consider yourself pretty good and only the «super crazy guys» can clean the floor with you.

Now obviously everything for the previous category applies, but people at this level mostly know those things. The things mentioned in this cattegory aren’t necessarily better than what was mentioned in the last category, but it’s stuff that might help in the long run and that won’t necessarily be helpful to mediocre players. Most of these revolve around hardcore training and chances are they produce the same results as just normal practice anyways.

Mods: Play difficult songs with mods. Mods like HR or FL helps turn patterns you know into something more like a reflex. Super-familiarizing yourself with the patterns you know will help connect the dots with patterns you have a hard time reading. Of course, I’m not talking about memorizing a song, this won’t help your skill at all. Make sure you apply the mods to a wide variety of songs. Random mod also helps with learning patterns since it forces you play while solely relying on that «repository» of yours. Doing good on a song with random proves that you are familiar with the patterns featured in that song, and not that you familiar enough with the song to have memorized it. Big difference!

Song recommendations: At this level there are some patterns that have a completely different feel to em that will need be practiced. When new, innovative patterns appear, there’s no reason not to play em! Examples would be long note heavy songs, speed change heavy songs and BMS songs, three completely different kinds of insane. Good long notes can be found on the servers or in Bobbias’s converts. Good BMS songs can also be found on the servers or Doorknob’s and Davteezy’s converts. Good speed change songs are a little trickier to find, but they’re out there (Agka-type SV ftw!). Now I’m not saying train these maps to improve. It’s just notifying that the more you improve, the more varied map styles become available. It never hurts to add a couple patterns in that «repository» :p

Doorknob’s and Davteezy’s 7K BMS conversions t/132783

Training yourself physically: I do not think this is common in mania, but this occurs a lot on the professional level of lots of speed-heavy games. Basically, play with physical limitations until you’re as good with em as you were without em, then remove em. Limitations like finger weights or a tight pair of one-size-fits-all gloves are ideal. This is the same concept as practicing with mods but instead of helping with your reading, it’l help enforce your muscles for finger independence and speed. This is also great for building stamina without having to play the hardest songs you can handle over and over again.

Delve deeper into an ability when necessary: With the wide variety of patterns osu!mania can offer, it can prove to be extremely difficult to excel at everything. Many of the best players excel in a couple skills, leaving their performance on other skills on par with some of the better advanced players. A few example of such skills would be; jackhammering, bursting, chordstreaming, long notes, accuracy and reading SV (speed changes). Keep in mind that mastering just one of these skills can easily take multiple years.

Short form: Apply difficulty increasing mods both in the game and physically. Make sure to keep exploring new patterns! Oh and practice for like another couple years.

People stay here for one heck of a long time. People with well over 3-4 years of experience are still in this stage. Someone once told me the rule of thumb to become ET, is to have at least 2 years of gameplay time!

ET: The super crazy guys

Fine-tuning mania to suite your hit-timings

This will be more helpful to experienced players who hops between different VSRGs often or recently changed a couple things in their playstyle. What I’m referring to as a player’s «timing» is the reflexes they’ve acquired to hit a note xx ms after having seen it in their area focus (visual timing) or to hit a note xxms before or after having heard the relating sound (auditive timing). For players that has trained themselves in a specific timing, it’s much more difficult to adjust to a new one than learning a timing for the first time.

First off we need to confirm whether or not your current setup complies with your timing. Also, I suggest having your frame limiter on unlimited. Go ahead and play a couple songs. Try not to focus too much on your accuracy, play in a neutral comfort zone. One the result screen, you should see this little thing when you rest your cursor on the HP graph.

The +/- ms stands for how late your average late taps are (+) and how early your average early taps are (-). The unstable rate is some form of standard deviation on your tap timings, telling us how consistent your timings are. The bigger the rate, the more inconsistent your are in your timings. If you start realizing a trend, like you’re always hitting xxms early or late, then there is stuff you can do to fix that. Keep in mind that playing hard songs won’t yeild reliable results, since players always hit patterns they’re not comfortable with early or late. You should take plays with a low unstable rate into bigger consideration, since this will mean you were «consistently» hitting at these offsets. If you don’t notice any particular trends, then good job! Your game doesn’t need any tunnings.

First off we will be adjusting the game to your visual timing. Pick out some easy songs you can S with FC. Now turn your sound completely off and play these a couple times with hidden. For more reliable results you can try to cover up the judgement or replacing them with 100% alpha images in your skin, since seeing what judgements you’re getting will make you subconsciously try to adjust your timing corespondly. The goal of this is to find where your hit your notes simply by seeing them in the middle-region. Make sure to play them more than, once keep track of your offset and remember to keep plays with low unstable rate into bigger consideration. If you realize that your plays fluctuates between late and early, your setup most likely doesn’t need any visual adjustments. But in the case you do have have consistent offset, then we have some tinkering to do in your skin.

Let’s say you played 3 easy song’s 3 times, and all your plays were 5ms-15ms early averaging at

-10ms. Go in your xK.ini and look for the line «HitPositon: 402». That should be the default value, if it’s not there add it. This value depicts how far from the top of the playfield notes need to be hit for that +/-0ms hit. In our example, we were hitting 10ms early, so we want to raise the hit position. So lower the value by 10, this should leave use with «HitPosition: 392». Save and reload your skin (or restart the game). Go ahead and do the previous experiment again and keep adjusting the hitposition until you find that sweet spot of yours. This should take care of your visual timing.

Now for your auditive timing. Like when we tuned our visual timing without sound, we will be tuning our auditive timing without visuals. I prepared a couple difficulties here from different mappers (feel free to make your own) that is just the same note repeating on a 1/1 beat for about 30ish notes. What you want to do with these is just tap to the beat while looking away from your screen. Make sure to «visualize» the notes in your head when you’re doing these, pretend you’re playing, imagine different patterns. Since let’s say you’ve trained yourself with negative offset, whether or not your aware of it, your playstyle relies on hitting notes a little early from what you hear. Simply taping to the beat in this case won’t yield the audio offset that’s perfect for you. With these, since all you’re doing is consistently taping to the beat, we will be aiming for extremely low unstable rates. Throw away any results over 200, aim for like 150, it’s even possible to get under 100 if you’re extremely consistent. Once you’ve obtained a fair amount of reliable results, you can then judge if your audio needs any offset or note.

Now you can go ahead and try out the new settings, adjust here and there a little more if you find the need to. Just keep in mind that it’s completely normal to consistently hit early or late on harder songs and it doesn’t mean anything needs tuning.

Reading Methods

By reading I’m talking about some of the common methods players use to «decrypt» the notes they see before in order to make sense of them. Enabling the player to play the patterns they know just fine.

Alright, this is something that I’ve actually been curious about for a while. I’ve asked dozens of great players, most better than me, half complete ETs. This section is mostly a «compilation» of the answers I’ve received. Personal opinion probably accounts for 1% of the rendition, the part where I talk about myself haha. If you disagree with anything said bellow, feel free to leave your opinion! I’m always interested in discussing playstyles/training styles.

Alright earlier I’ve touched upon pattern reading and recognition. But as things gets more complicated, it makes sense that players find different ways to read their patterns. But, you can predominately categorize them into two major reading «methods». I’ve come to name them «Vertical reading» and «horizontal reading».

Let’s take a look at horizontal reading fist, since it’s the most common. In horizontal reading, you split sections horizontally making «blocks» to read sequentially. Take a look at this pattern:

Looks like a mess right? Well let’s try splitting it up into blocks. We’ll make sense of this in no time.

If you follow the colours, You’ll be reading this as «burst» «chord» «burst» «chord». Excluding the speed that this may be coming at you, I bet the pattern looks much playable now that you can make sense of it right? This is the basis of horizontal reading. It’s more like taking all the notes and reading them as whole than anything else.

Now for vertical reading. This one is much more tricky. You need to be able to dual or triple task properly to use this method properly. In vertical reading you focus on recognizing all the patterns within the big picture and playing them simultaneously. Let’s take the last example again for the sake of convenience.

The little trills can be grouped as 2 broken trill stairs

This could maybe be interpreted as the green being the drum, the broken trill stairs be the melody and the white notes be the bass line. It’s splitting the map up by it’s tracks. That big mess of notes can easily be split up into smaller patterns that you most likely know how to play just fine. Now it’s just a matter of being able to play them simultaneously. It can be tricky I agree, but trust me it’s not more trouble than it’s worth.

So now to answer the big question, which method should you be focusing on? If we take the previous example, most players would opt for horizontal reading. This is due to the fact that recognizing, isolating and playing multiple pattern simultaneously in a high-density map is no easy feat. But that doesn’t make horizontal reading superior. Take this for example:

Aha, I wish you luck in finding an efficient way of splitting this horizontally. But it’s pretty easy to do vertically;

Inversed reverting stairs, broken stairs and simple long notes!

From these examples you can most likely tell that most o2jam players (LN heavy game) are vertical readers and most bms players (high note density game) are horizontal readers. Now this doesn’t mean this is the only way the reading methods should be used. They are pros and cons for most situations. Vertical reading helps get a better rhythmic grasp of the map, generally allowing for better accuracy at the expense of increasing the chances of missing on more difficult maps. The instant view and perception that horizontal reading offers makes it easier to combo high density notes, at the expense of accuracy.

I’m personally mostly a vertical reader, though I try to read horizontally for high level bms maps. You should try em both and experience for yourself!

Pattern Repository [WIP]

Just a note, this is not in any way a reference for mapping. A mapper shouldn’t focus on what patterns to map, the patterns should just be a coincidental outcome. This is a player reference, since it’s unavoidable for players to recognize patterns within a map even if it wasn’t intended. The way a mapper visualizes and maps a map, and a player reads and plays a map, is two completely different things.

Also, a little something about how these patterns are categorized. A pattern in the novice section does not mean a novice-level player is expected to be able to play it easily, or play it at all. It means a novice will have to work on learning such a pattern in order to improve. If I were to list patterns novices are familiar with in the novice section, then the beginner section would be empty. Since beginners aren’t familiar with anything when they first start off.

Keep in mind that the visual examples are nothing more than an example. Such a pattern can differ greatly from the example I showed. Also, pay no heed about the fact that the examples are in 7K. The only reason for this was that is was the default option in the tool and thought nothing of it until I had to show a patterns in 8K to show it off better. These examples are valid for all key modes unless stated otherwise.

I’ll be using timings to better explain the patterns. Stuff like 1/4 beats and 1/8 beats. The timings will be based off BPMs ranging 120-200 BPM.

For those of who don’t know what this is, I’ll give a quick overview. To start off, notes timed 1/1 mean there’s a note at every beat. Tap your hands to beat; those taps were timed 1/1. From there it’s simple to understand what the other timings mean. 1/2 timings mean there’s 2 notes per beat, or the time between each notes is two times less then the time between each beat. 1/4 has 4 notes per beat, 1/8 8 notes per beat etc. etc.

Beginner:

Simple notes

These are the basics. Simple notes following a simple melody or beat from the song. New players will find these challenging at first most likely due to a lack of finger independence. For players just starting out with these, the thing you need to focus on is hitting them correctly. Make sure you only hit that note, and not that note and the one beside it. A big helper is paying attention to song’s beat to tap the notes instead of visually judging the timing by it’s approach rate.

Simple Chords

These are trickier than simple notes. Two notes at once usually represents an actual song chord, or two notes from different tracks layered on top each other. For example. the melody AND the drum. Track layering is a big thing in osu!mania and players are exposed to it very early on, in the form of chords. If hitting two notes at once seem difficult and confusing, it’s completely normal. This is just further training that finger-independence.

There’s two ways to about playing these. The first and more common way is practicing them until you can recognize and play these chords as easily as single notes. The second way is to think of the two tracks separately, of course this only applies to songs where the chords occurred due it having more than one track. Ideally it’s best to play them like they were mapped, but it’s hard to tell with notes is from what track early on, let alone playing two tracks at once. So just focus on practicing these chords until you can play them easily.

Simple Long-Notes (LN)

Long notes are also very standard in osu!mania, they literally represent a note that lasts for a longer period of time. Long notes seem easy enough once you got the simple notes down. But there’s a catch: you got to release them with the right timing too! It takes a bit of getting used to to get the release timing right, but once you got that down, simple long notes shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Grace Notes

mostly 1/16, 1/32 or 1/64, but can be more

A somewhat rare occurrence. These are usually 2-3 notes in a quick succession, usually near the end of a song to give a «graceful» effect. These are a great opportunity to show what I mean when I say previously learned patterns help connect the dots to learn new patterns. If a player is already comfortable playing chords, he can think of these as chords with one note hit slightly earlier. Which wouldn’t be that hard to do. But a player not comfortable with chords will think of these as simple notes and 1/32 of a beat is too fast for a new player. He’ll most likely mess up.

So just think of these as a chord, with a note hit slightly earlier.

Stairs

Stairs, believe it or not, is usually the easiest way to play a fast sequence of notes. So try not to be too intimidated when you first encounter them. Although they are one of the hardest things you encounter at this level, it’s still very doable!

Now to be honest, this may or may not need some external training. Have you ever been bored and tapped your fingers on a surface in a sequence kind of like these stairs? If so, think about that when trying to do stairs, notice when/where it starts and when/where it ends (like always, depend on the beat for timing, not approach the rate) and do that motion within that time frame. For people who has never done this, then I really recommend you try it, it’s a great exercise for finger independence. Try practicing it both ways and you’ll eventually find out that simple stairs aren’t all that bad!

Simple Long-Note Layering

Now these patterns truly test a player’s finger independence. You’re going to have to keep a key pressed while playing a different pattern. Now I can’t really give any helpful tips on layered patterns other than practice the patterns involved. If you’re comfortable with long notes and the pattern it’s being layered with, and you’re still having troubles, you’re just missing a bit of practice. Just keep trying, remember to focus more on the beat than the approach rate and you’ll soon be able to play these.

Novice

Alternation

Streams

Trills

Advanced long-notes

Advanced chords
(not completely applicable to 4k and 5k)

Skipping stairs
(not applicable to 4k)

Sequential chord stairs
(not applicable to 4k and 5k)

Reverting stairs

Symmetrically layered stairs
(not applicable to 4k, since it simply becomes 2 trills)

Pedal point

Mini-jacks

Shields

or
1/8 beat and up

Simple brackets
(not applicable to 4k and 5k)

Advanced

Double Stairs (or triple/quadruple)
(not applicable to 4k and 5k)

1/4 beats and up

Trees or Runningmen
DDR term, would like to find a more mania-like term

Chord streaming
(This is novice-level for 4k and 5k, so it’s not completely applicable)

1/4 beats and up

Ladders or Trilling stairs
(not applicable to to 4k)

Sheild stream

1/8 beats and up

Asymmetrically layered stairs (intersecting melodies)
(not applicable to 4k, I don’t think it’s possible in 5k)

(colored to better visualize the 2 streams, green is when the note is shared by both streams)

Polyrhythms

Jackhammers

1/8 beats and higher

Jackhammers are when notes come down in a rapid succession, make tap the same key extremely fast, so fast it’s literally impossible without some special practice or training.

Jackhammers are a hard pattern for everyone. Some songs will even feature some 1/16 beat jackhammers that can potentially drain your HP within a second. Of course it’s inhuman to tap that fast, so in those songs, the goal is survival. Practicing on such songs will make the common 1/8 or 1/4 beat jackhammer seem a little easier. Jackhammers aren’t hard to read, it’s all about how fast you can tap. So keep practicing until you can move that fast. An alternative would be to do some finger-muscle speed training.

Chord jacks

1/8 beats and up

Advanced brackets
(not applicable to 4k and 5k)

1/4 beats and up

Bursts (or rushes)

1/16 beat or more

Burst most commonly lasts a short period time, a couple seconds of insanely fast notes. But it’s possible for higher level BMS songs to feature this pattern for the whole song. This requires an insane amount of stamina. Not just physical stamina, mental stamina too. It’s hard enough to perceive and accurately hit every note in a short burst, but doing this for the whole song is on a whole different level.

The only thing special about bursts is their speed. To learn how to do these properly, you simply gotta train how fast you can read and play streams and chordstreams. Haha «simply»

Advanced long-note layering
(Don’t think it’s possible to do in 4k. )

Inverse notes (lifts, LN walls)

Aaaaah long notes, the most hated and equally loved pattern type. What happens here is instead of keeping your keys unpressed by default and pressing a key when a note comes down, you keep your keys pressed down by default and release a key when an «opening» comes down. Flips your whole world upside-down.

Training this is like pretty much learning mania all over again. When advanced players are first exposed to this pattern type, even if it’s just the inverted version of a beginner song, they most likely find themselves failing. What needs to be done to master this pattern type, is pretty much: get some inverted versions of easy mania songs and retrain yourself from step 1. Have fun!

Need some tips on how to improve in osu!mania? Try reading our guide and map suggestions!

Follow me on Twitch!

Очки производительности

Очки производительности, или ПП (от англ. performance points, PP) — метрика, косвенно отражающая уровень навыка игры в osu!.

Система ранкинга, основанная на PP, в первую очередь учитывает мастерство игрока, а не количество потраченного на игру времени. Для этого каждому игровому рекорду присваивается некоторое количество очков, зависящее как от сложности карты, так и от того, насколько хорошо игрок её прошёл.

История

Первая версия новой системы ранкинга была реализована и выпущена в апреле 2012 г. под загадочным названием ‘. ‘. Полное название было обнародовано чуть позже, в том же месяце.

Новая система, известная как PP (в русском коммьюнити — ПП), была призвана заменить собой ранкинг, основанный на суммарном числе очков. Она основывалась на показателях, достаточно точно отражавших навык игры, и большинство игроков отнеслось к нововведению положительно.

Через несколько месяцев после демонстрации ранкинг PP был добавлен в релиз osu! 20120722-24, после чего позиция игрока в глобальной таблице перестала зависеть от числа очков на ранкнутых картах. Поначалу ранк игроков пересчитывался каждые полчаса, позднее (в августе того же года) были реализованы мгновенные обновления.

Примечание: у ppv1, первой версии системы PP, есть своя история изменений, ознакомиться с которой можно в соответствующей теме на форуме.

В таком виде система просуществовала больше года вплоть до момента, когда Tom94, автор альтернативной метрики ранкинга osu!tp, присоединился к команде osu! и улучшил имеющийся алгоритм с помощью своих наработок. Получившаяся система получила название ppv2 и была введена в строй 27 января 2014 г., а прошлая версия ранкинга была переименована ppv1.

16 января 2021 г. в систему ppv2 внесли изменения, улучшив точность подсчёта PP в зависимости от сложных аспектов карт. За внесение правок отвечали преимущественно участники коммьюнити, например, Xexxar и StanR. Подробный список изменений есть в соответствующей новости, ниже — краткое содержание:

Система ppv2 действует в настоящий момент, с её развитием можно ознакомиться в истории изменений.

Принцип работы

Очки производительности сильно зависят от сложности карты, которая рассчитывается по формуле, уникальной для каждого режима игры.

Сложность карты и количество набранных на ней очков определяет конечное число PP. В формулу расчёта сложности входят четырёх основных компонента: аим, скорость, точность и нагрузка. Над параметрами, которые им соответствуют, выполняются разные действия, в результате чего получается некоторое общее число, соответствующее отдельной сложности карты и тому, как игрок справился с её прохождением.

После этого рекорды сортируются: чем лучше рекорд, тем сильнее он будет влиять на итоговую производительность. Эта система, называемая весовой, не даёт игрокам накручивать свой ранк за счёт множества одинаковых и более лёгких карт, поскольку реальное число PP, которое приносит рекорд, зависит от остальных рекордов.

Примечание: игрокам также даётся небольшое число бонусных PP, зависящее от общего числа пройденных ранкнутых карт.

Система весов

Система весов работает следующим образом: полное число PP за сыгранную карту подставляется в формулу со множителем, который зависит от положения рекорда среди лучших результатов игрока. Этот процесс называется взвешиванием, а формула выглядит следующим образом:

Total pp = p * 0.95^(n-1)

Здесь p — полное число PP за сыгранную карту (до взвешивания), n — место рекорда среди всех рекордов игрока, отсортированных по убыванию PP. Например, если 5 лучших рекордов игрока оцениваются в 110pp, 100pp, 100pp, 90pp и 80pp, то их взвешенные значения будут равны 110pp, 95pp, 90pp, 77pp и 65pp.

Аим (англ. aim) — ключевой компонент, определяющий, насколько тяжело целиться по последовательно идущим нотам.

На аим влияет скорость появления нот и некоторые из модов (конкретно — Flashlight, Hidden и Hard Rock): они значительно усложняют быстрое и точное перемещение курсора и, как следствие, влияют на число PP, даваемое за рекорд.

Требовательными к аиму в osu! считаются карты с очень большими джампами — они часто приносят очень много PP. В osu!catch аналогичным образом расцениваются карты с большим количеством гипердэшей. В osu!taiko и osu!mania понятие аима отсутствует в принципе.

Скорость

Скорость (англ. speed) — ключевой компонент, определяющий, насколько быстро от игрока требуется попадать по нотам.

Требовательными к скорости считаются карты, где за короткое время нужно попасть по большому числу игровых объектов: чем выше скорость карты, тем она сложнее и, как следствие, тем больше PP принесёт.

Как следствие, на скорость карты применительно к PP сильно влияют моды Double Time и Half Time.

Точность

Точность (англ. accuracy) — процентный показатель того, насколько своевременно игрок попадает по объектам. Он также влияет на оценку производительности при расчёте PP.

Чем выше точность рекорда, тем более значительным он считается и, как результат, тем больше PP принесёт: например, рекорды с полным комбо (ФК) и точностью 80% могут приносить всего 2/3 PP от рекордов с точностью 95%. Поскольку алгоритм расчёта PP сильно завязан на точность, такие моды, как Hidden, Hard Rock и Flashlight значительно увеличивают число PP при условии высокой точности рекорда.

Нагрузка

Нагрузка (англ. strain) — ключевой компонент, показывающий, сколько в карте секций с высокой интенсивностью. Также учитывается длительность таких секций.

Нагрузку увеличивают участки карты, имеющие крайне высокую скорость или сложные паттерны. В качестве примера можно привести карты с обилием стримов или секциями с быстрыми джампами — они принесут много PP.

Где найти ранкинг по PP?

Как набрать PP?

Ваша производительность преимущественно оценивается по рекордам на отдельных картах.

Самый лучший способ — ставить хорошие рекорды на сложных картах, а также играть карты разных типов.

Советы ниже могут пригодиться:

Почему мне не дали за карту полное число PP?

Очки производительности основаны на весовой системе. Это значит, что 100% PP приносит только ваш самый крутой рекорд, а остальные рекорды дают всё меньше и меньше PP.

Подробности см. в разделе Система весов.

Сколько бонусных PP даётся за много сыгранных карт?

Максимум — до 416.6667 бонусных PP (это значение достигается, если сыграть где-то 25397 карт).

Точное число ваших бонусных PP можно рассчитать по формуле ниже, где N — число пройденных вами ранкнутых карт:

Половину этого значения можно заработать, пройдя примерно 1,155 карт — как можно заметить, дальше прирост бонусных PP сильно замедляется.

Почему за лёгкие карты мне больше не дают PP?

Чем больше сложных карт вы проходите, тем меньше вес у ваших результатов на более лёгких картах. Они будут весить всё меньше и меньше и в конечном счёте будут вытеснены более сложными картами.

Тем не менее, если вы будете постоянно улучшать навык игры, ваше число PP будет расти за счёт всё более и более крутых рекордов.

Почему у меня сняли PP за пройденную карту?

Скорее всего, у нового рекорда выше число очков, но ниже точность, либо не очень хорошая точность с вашим набором модов.

В таблицу рекордов карты попадает результат с наибольшим числом очков. Иногда это приводит к необычным ситуациям, когда старый рекорд перезаписывается новым, но с более низкой точностью, который приносит меньшее число PP.

Я считаю, что за какой-то мод должны давать больше (или меньше) PP

Это ваше личное мнение.

Идеальной системы ранкинга не существует: какие-то карты и комбинации модов могут давать больше PP, но быть субъективно проще.

Очки производительности — это система, которая старается как можно точнее оценивать карты в рамках своих ограничений и работать в большинстве случаев.

Osu how to be pro

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan is a rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. The gameplay consists of only three elements: tapping circles on the touchscreen, dragging a ball across a fixed path and rotating a spinner very fast. All these elements are timed to (covers of) popular Japanese songs. It looks like this on the DS:

Gameplay example of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan in Nintendo DS

The gameplay circles can be seen on the bottom screen, and the story on the top screen. Each stage is basically a self-contained story about a person in trouble. That is where the Ouendan (Cheer squad) comes in. Through the magical power of male cheerleading, the player have to help the people in trouble.

How to play?

While most players may not have a touchscreen at their disposal, the game was made to be playable with a normal mouse in mind, as well as any creative variations of input devices usage. Different play styles can be found in the play styles page. There are some songs which will push the limits of the normal mouse and the player, but all the (ranked and approved) beatmaps have been tested and (most can be) passable using only a mouse.

Gameplay Basics

The gameplay puts emphasis on:

These are some of the vital skills to become an osu! rhythm master. The first step to begin the journey is to learn the basics (and theories) of the hittable objects (referred as hit objects from here onwards).

Hit circles

osu! hit circles

A thin, similarly-coloured approach circle on the outside of the hit circle will shrink over time. Tap on the note at the exact point when it touches the white border of the hit circle. A score burst will appear after tapping the hit circle, showing the score and health changes depending on timing of the tap to the beat. The hit circle will disappear after the score burst.

To understand the hidden charm of hit circles, do not rely on perception only; feel the beatmap’s beats and rhythm. It will help in juggling some of the visually-complex hit circles patterns found in later difficulties.

Sliders

First, tap on it at the right moment, however, it does not end there. A ball will begin to move across the path. Hold the mouse/keyboard-button (or keep the pen onto the tablet) and follow the ball within the thick orange circle, surrounding the ball, as it moves. The orange outer circle, called the follow circle, will appear if when holding onto the slider’s ball, but will disappear when released.

Sometimes, as seen in the screenshot above, the ball may reverse its direction and the player must follow the ball back to the start of the path or vice versa. The visual cue is a reverse arrow at the ending/starting circle of the path.

Spinners

Hold on the mouse/keyboard-button (or keep the pen onto the tablet). From there, use the mouse (or pen) and spin the spinner in a circular motion (in either direction) until the spinner circle grows outwards completely. A Clear notice will appear to indicate that the spinner was completed. If the spinner was cleared early, continue spinning to collect score bonus and gain some health back.

The outer white circle shows how much time left to complete the spinner. This circle will turn red to notify that time is almost out. Older beatmaps, using skin version 1.0, will have a meter/gauge to indicate how close to clearing the spinner.

The small box below the spinner shows spins per minute. The number inside that box translates to the number of spins possible, if to continue to spin the spinner at that speed for one minute. If mouse/keyboard-button was released (or pen did not touch the tablet) early during the spin, the spinner will stop reading the spin.

On the DS, this is a good way to scratch the touchscreen (or screen protector), especially on the higher difficulties. In osu!, spinners have been toned down as to not be such a nuisance to complete. The maximum number of spins per minute achievable is 477 which is also the rate at which the Auto game modifier spins while the Spun Out game modifier spins slower at 287 spins per minute.

In-Game Interface

In-game interface of osu!

The top-left bar is the health bar, which will decrease at a steady rate (depending on the beatmap’s difficulty settings), but can be replenished by tapping notes at the right time or spinning the spinner. A perfectly timed hit (a 300 or Geki) will recover health more than a badly timed hit (50). A total miss will take a good chunk of health out of the health bar.

On the right of the health bar is the total score. Below that is the accuracy. The circle beside the accuracy (and below the score) is a timer for the duration of the beatmap. The number on the bottom left is the combo counter/score multiplier.

Controls

The default controls for osu! are:

The hit objects in osu! will accept any input from the input device, as long as each hit objects was tapped in time.

If Relax game modifier was used, only the in-game cursor will work. Use the in-game cursor to follow the hit objects with automated tap. Spinners must still be completed.

If Auto Pilot game modifier was used, only the input from the input device will work. Time the tap on the hit objects with automated cursor movement. Spinners will follow the Spun Out mod speed.

Alternative Game Modes

Changing the game mode

Mode toolbox in Song Selection (Solo)

Click on the Mode button to open up a list of gameplay modes available on osu!. Click on the desired gameplay mode, and osu! will switch to that gameplay mode style, along with relevant leaderboard change. Alternatively, press Ctrl key and 1 ( osu!) / 2 ( osu!taiko) / 3 ( osu!catch) / 4 ( osu!mania) key on the keyboard to quickly switch to the desired gameplay mode.

What is osu!taiko?

In-game interface of osu!taiko

Taiko no Tatsujin is a taiko drum rhythm game made by Namco (now Namco Bandai). The game involves the simulation of playing the taiko drum to the beat of the music. In osu!, beatmaps can be played in the styling of Taiko no Tatsujin through the use of osu!taiko game mode.

Basic explanation

Playfield

In-game playfield interface of osu!taiko

For players with prior Taiko no Tatsujin experience:

For newcomers of osu!taiko mode, the screen is split to two different sections; the upper section contains the gameplay elements while the lower section contains an image or video for the beatmap. At the upper section, there is the health bar, which unlike other game modes, starts off empty and must be filled up to at least 50% full or half-full to pass the difficulty. At the top-middle part below the health bar, a taiko drum is located at the left-side and a moving conveyor belt which carries the hit objects from right to left passing through a double white circles which serves as judgement circle near the taiko drum. Above the taiko drum is the animated taiko mascot which will react based on judgement received along with upper background colour changes. Lastly, there is the usual score, accuracy, and timer of the beatmap at the upper-right.

Please note that health drain is disabled in osu!taiko, so only the hit objects will affect the health bar. Combo will not break when playing on an empty field. Unlike osu!, the combo milestone celebration is every 50 consecutive hits. The base score will be boosted after obtaining a combo that is a multiple of 10, but stops at 100 (max combo limit for the boost). If the combo is broken, the boost resets back to the base score. During Kiai Time, every successful hit will give the player 20% more points over the current score amount. Score gained from a hit can be checked below the accuracy at the upper-right corner in red.

Taiko notes

osu!taiko notes of various colour and size

Each taiko notes (or notes, for brevity) will appear as either a red or a pale-blue circle. Those coloured circles were named Don (red notes) and Katu (blue notes), respectively.

If it is a small red note, press the button bound to the inner portion of the taiko drum or hit the large flat area (centre) of the TaTaCon. If it is a small blue note, press the button bound to the outer ring of the taiko drum or hit the sides of the TaTaCon. If the note is a LARGE circle, press or hit both of either inner or outer drum depending on the colour of the note for double point (a single correct hit will give single point instead).

The notes must be pressed or hit in the small white judgement circle next to the drum. Hitting the wrong colour, or both red and blue colours at the same time, will be considered a miss.

Drumrolls

Hit the inner (or outer) drum continuously for points until the end of the drumroll. For LARGE note, hit both buttons on the inner (or outer) drum simultaneously and continuously until it is done. Do note that drumrolls hits were hardcapped and only counted when hitting on the tiny hit circles, rather than drumrolling as fast as possible as in Taiko no Tatsujin.

Drumrolls can be ignored with no health penalty, as it does not recover the health bar at all. However, it will cost possible points gained from the drumroll. Each successful hit on the tiny hit circle gives a static 300 score.

Dendens

osu!taiko spinner (denden)

It does not increment the combo counter, and does not recover the health bar in any way. Each successful denden hit only gives a static 300 score, and denden completion will give a perfect(GREAT) large note score.

Controls

The default controls for osu!taiko are:

The placement of in-game cursor does not matter when playing.

If Relax mod was used, the score judgement only account for hit timing only (automatically rectify wrong colour hit with correct colour).

TaTaCon drum controller were primarily made for the home ports of Taiko no Tatsujin and Taiko: Drum Master.

What is osu!catch?

In-game interface of osu!catch

osu!catch (formerly known as Catch the Beat) is the second game mode added to osu!, after the osu!taiko game mode.

Instead of tapping circles to the beat, move the catcher at the bottom of the screen while the fruits fall from above.

Basic explanation

Playfield

osu!catch playfield difference based on CS

The zoom size of the playfield is based on CS (Circle Size) settings, with lower CS means much more zoomed in and smaller space, while higher CS means much more zoomed out and larger movement space.

The catcher can move from left to right, with the fruits falling from top to bottom. The catcher cannot move pass the left and right walls of the playfield.

All fruits will stay at the plate until its combo ends, which the fruits will bounce out of the plate. Timing and where it falls on the plate does not matter; either a full score for successful catch or miss.

Fruits

To catch these fruits, make sure it falls to the plate and not over the plate. Collected fruits will always give 300 points each, increment combo by 1, and treated as 300 in result screen.

Fruit trails

osu!catch fruit trails

A typical fruit trail will contains two fruits (start and end), droplets (slider path), juice drop (slider ticks), and more fruits for each reverse arrow points along with a reversed slider path. Droplet gives 10 points each and treated as 50 in result screen. Juice drop gives 30 points each, increment combo by 1, and treated as 100 in result screen.

Missing the juice drop will break the combo (as it is a slider tick), but missing the droplet will not break the combo. However, missed droplets will not be shown in the local result screen, but will be shown in the website’s leaderboard as Miss Droplet, which notably affects accuracy (missed out the droplet, which is a 50) and score (10 points for each droplet missed).

Bananas

Here, large bananas will rain down and shrink down to catch size as it falls down to the plate (or not). Each collected bananas will give a static score of 1,100 regardless of mod and combo multiplier.

The bananas can be ignored with no health penalty. However, it can cost the extra points and health recovery from collecting the bananas. Notably, Auto mod will go above and beyond to catch all of the bananas without fail.

Hyperfruits

Hyperfruits are special fruits that will appear to help the catcher to catch the next fruit when normal dash is considered impossible to catch it in a strict timespan allocated. All hyperfruits have a signature red colour surrounding the hyperfruit itself by default.

Collecting the hyperfruit will make the catcher’s dash upgraded to hyperdash (just fast enough to catch the next fruit), glows red, and leaves a temporary red afterimage at the collection point, until the next one fruit was caught or dropped, which the catcher will then be back to normal.

Controlling the catcher

The placement of in-game cursor does not matter when playing normally. If Relax mod was enabled, the control of the catcher will be the in-game cursor instead. However, the play unrankable when Relax mod was enabled (as it defeats the only challenge of osu!catch; fixed catcher speed and catcher plate control).

What is osu!mania?

In-game interface of osu!mania

osu!mania is the third game mode added to osu!, after osu!taiko and osu!catch game modes.

The mode has been widely used in almost all of the major rhythm games. It require good hand and/or leg coordination where the notes (with their quantity depending on BPM and difficulty) move on a conveyor. The player will have to press the correct key for that specific note in time. Though the game mode was originally made as an imitation of the Beatmania style of playing, osu!mania allows changing the number of keys or vertically flipping the orientation of the playfield (this means that it can be made to look more like Guitar Hero [5 keys] or Dance Dance Revolution [4 keys] and so on).

When converting a non-specific beatmap, the default key range would be around 4 to 7 keys.

With the xK game modifier, the player can manually set the number of keys from 1 to a total of 9 keys with a score multiplier reduction. However, the game modifier will not work with osu!mania-specific beatmaps.

With the Co-Op game modifier, the stage will be split in two, use Co-Op’s control scheme, and will allows the player to play from 2 to a total of 18 keys with a score multiplier reduction. Do note that while the preset number of keys will not be doubled on osu!mania-specific beatmaps, it will split the stage in two (left stage priority if odd-numbered), use Co-Op’s control scheme, and no score multiplier reduction.

Basic explanation

Playfield

In-game playfield interface of osu!mania

By default, the flow of the notes falls from top to bottom of the conveyor (the starting arrow will show where notes will flow to), with the key control at the bottom and the judgement line above the key control. To change the flow of the playfield from bottom-to-top instead, it can be changed in the Options sidebar; click on osu!mania layout button to set osu!mania keys settings and enable Vertically flip playfield (DDR style) for this key setting manually.

Health bar is located at the right side of the conveyor belt. Please note that health drain is disabled in osu!mania, so only the hit objects will affect the health bar. Combo will not break when playing the keys on empty judgement line.

Notes

Notes are the hit circles of osu!mania. The falling notes must be tapped on the judgement line, with correct key corresponding to each of the note it falls to. More keys corresponding to the falling notes must be tapped simultaneously if the notes fall simultaneously. A score burst will be given when tapped a correct key corresponding to the note in the judgement line.

Hold notes

osu!mania hold notes

Hold notes are the sliders and spinners of osu!mania. When the hold note reaches the judgement line, tap the starting note in time with correct key, hold, and release it at the ending note of the hold note.

Health bar regeneration occurs slowly while holding the hold note(s). Depending on the song and mapping quirks, it is possible that other notes or hold notes to appear while holding the previous hold note(s).

Controls

Input)» title=»osu!mania key layout» /> osu!mania key layout

There two different binding-styles, Symmetrical and Left to Right.

Symmetrical key binding (For DJMAX style)

Left to Right key binding (For Beatmania IIDX style)

Scoring

Detailed explanation of scoring can be found at the game style’s own respective page or the Score page).

Detailed explanation of accuracy calculation can be found at the game style’s own respective page or the Accuracy page.

Grades

osu!taiko

osu!catch

osu!mania

Special grades:

Regarding the Ranks in profile page:

Performance Points

Performance points(pp) is a ranking metric aiming to be more contextually relevant to a continuous game like osu!. It aims to shift the focus from being on the amount of time played to the actual skill of the player. Performance points is heavily based on map difficulty, determined by a unique algorithm in every game mode. Based on this difficulty alone, each of the scores will be rated and assigned a pp value. Performance rank is predominantly based on performance on individual maps. The easiest way to improve it is to score high on difficult songs, and playing more songs. Do note that game modes are counted separately; playing osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, or osu!mania will raise the pp for the respective game mode.

For any questions regarding pp, please refer to the wiki page for pp first.

Common issues and questions

General

I think I’ve found a bug! Where can I report it?

If you have a general technical issue, or if you’re unsure whether the issue you’ve encountered is a bug or not, you can create a post in the Help forum. If you think you’ve found a specific, critical issue with osu!, you can create an issue in the osu-stable-issues GitHub repository. Before posting, make sure that nobody has already reported your problem.

Where to find and get the beatmaps?

Detailed explanation of the beatmaps: Beatmaps

The main page, under the name Beatmaps. Just remember to login to the website with an osu!account beforehand to allow download of beatmaps from the site.

Can I disable Kiai Time?

No, because unlike video, it is integrated to the game (as a part with the hit objects), thus cannot be disabled.

The maps are too hard! Where can I find some easier maps?

For osu!, Pokebis has compiled a set of beatmaps suitable for beginners to play. It can be found here.

For osu!taiko, OnosakiHito has compiled a set of beatmaps for beginners to learn osu!taiko. It can be found here.

For osu!catch, Kingkevin30 has compiled a nice list of osu!catch beatmaps and basic explanation about osu!catch. It can be found here.

For osu!mania, Entozer has compiled a decent list sorted by relative player’s difficulties, with Drace providing an experienced gameplay insight for beginners starting out in osu!mania. Both of it can be found here (Entozer‘s beatmap guide), and here (Drace‘s improvement guide)

Alternatively, the website’s beatmap search bar has a feature to sort the ranked beatmap list by difficulty. The easiest maps are at the top of the list.

Lastly, Rivenation did a project for advanced beatmap searching named osu!search which not only has the same features as the official beatmap search bar but also has some neat features to define a specific beatmap requirement. The unofficial beatmap search bar can be found at this link.

What does Level in my profile actually do?

Absolutely nothing. There is no difference in any way when comparing a Level 100 player against a Level 1 player except the player’s own skills and experience of the game mode in question. There is no handicap for the lower level nor is there an advantage for the higher level (except personal experience and hardware used).

Level will be based on total score accumulated when online with account regardless of pass or fail on the beatmap. Formula given here.

Why is my profile stats different ingame?

Keep in mind that osu! has four game modes so you might be looking at the wrong game mode.

Profile mode buttons

How do I change the default keyboard key input for my game mode of choice?

From the Input icon in the Options sidebar as shown above, under Keyboard section as shown below.

Options Input icon, Keyboard section

Game over? Where did I mess up?

After failing a beatmap, press the F1 key to replay the currently failed play. The replay ends when the screen darkens, with an osu!logo in the middle, rather than the game over screen. To rewatch the replay again, hold the custom default grave/tilde (`/

) key (can be changed in Options sidebar; inside Change keyboard bindings as Quick Retry (hold briefly)) or Ctrl + R for a while.

Due to the non-standard replay screen, use the Esc key to return to Song Selection. Retrying the play (as in, actual play) of the beatmap in this state is not possible. It currently works in Solo mode only when given the game over screen. As of 24 August 2020, players can save failed replays by pressing the F2 key while at the death screen.

Does osu! have keyboard shortcuts?

What should I backup when fresh installing osu! on a new device?

Can I use osu! on my mobile device?

The current osu! does not support any mobile platform.

However, there are other unofficial ports of osu! and a single official spin-off game for iOS which uses their own leaderboard and account system.

A few of the notable ports are:

Why am I seeing random white lines on screen every time I play?

Make sure that the smoke/skywriting key binding is not the same as the key binding used to tap with when playing.

Smoke in key bindings

Why do I not have the max possible combo when I have no misses?

Image showing a slider with slider ticks, with top part during Edit and bottom part during play

A slider was released early (meaning that the ball was released before it had finished the ending slider point).

A slider is composed of a starting circle point, spaced smaller circles known as slider ticks, reverse arrow points (if used, it will be treated as starting circle point instead; it is a proper slider in reverse), and an ending circle point. Each of those points on a slider will add one to the combo. Note that the starting circle point is worth 30 points, the slider ticks are worth 10 points each, the reverse arrow points are worth 30 points each, and the end circle point is worth 300 (or geki), 100 (or katu), or 50 points depending on how the slider was completed.

Slider ticks only appears inside its own slider path; if the slider ticks are too close to the start or end circle as shown in the image above, it will be hidden inside the start or end circle. Hidden slider ticks still counts into combo and score, so it must be collected along with the visible slider ticks. If the slider has one or more reverse arrow points, then the slider ticks will reappear at the same place to be collected in reverse.

If miss the timing to tap the starting circle point, miss the slider ticks, or miss the reverse arrow points, combo will break (it should trigger a combo break sound when the combo is high enough) but it is not considered a miss. However, if miss the ending circle point, combo does not break and does not increment by one. It is also not considered a miss; instead, a 100 (or katu for end of the combo) will be given for the entire slider, assuming at least the slider starting circle point done properly, and completed all the slider ticks/reverse arrow points when given. Notably, Sudden Death game mod will not trigger its effect of immediate game over when missing the ending circle point (since the combo did not break, the Sudden Death effect was not triggered).

These situations, caused by a slider, are collectively called sliderbreak. A max combo play can be known by checking the result screen for the Perfect notice on the performance graph; not having the Perfect notice, especially without any miss, usually means there is one or more sliderbreak occurred during play.

osu!taiko

What does «Use Taiko skin for Taiko mode» in Options under Skin section do?

The button only works if a folder named taiko (capitalisation does not matter) inside the Skins folder of the osu! file directory existed.

When enabled, it will use the taiko folder’s skin elements when playing in osu!taiko, regardless of current skin’s taiko elements. If the taiko folder was not found, or disabled, it will use the current skin’s taiko elements when available; default if all/certain taiko skin element was not found.