Supporting osu!

In this blog post, we will be going over the points of supporting osu!,

Support osu! page. This shows if you have an osu! supporter tag, and a "thank you" to those who have supported the game. 

Why you should support osu!

1. Developed and maintained predominantly by one guy in Australia. That is Peppy (Dean Herbert), the founder of this game. This box is self-explanatory.
2. Takes so much time to keep running that it's no longer possible to call it a "hobby". Originally, or presumably, osu! used to be a hobby project that was just for fun. Now that it's been exploding to a larger and larger community, it has no longer been a hobby for Peppy to keep this game running.
3. No ads anywhere. Wow, you may or may have not noticed, but how convenient it is that there are no ads anywhere! 
4. You get some extra goodies! We will explore this next.

Extra goodies!

1. osu!direct. You know how in order non-supporters to get new songs added to the game, they need to go onto the website, download it, and drag the file into the game? As hard or easy as it is to do it, it can be way easier with osu!direct. With this, a program is implemented into the game which enables you do download any song from inside the game. Swiftly! 
2. Automatic downloads. A continuation for the description of osu!direct.
3. Increased beatmap submission. When you are to first start playing osu!, you have a maximum of 3 pending maps that you can submit for ranking in the game. With supporter, you can submit 1 more! Why does it say up to 10 in the description? Well, everytime a player gets one of their beatmaps ranked, they gain one more slot for pending beatmaps. This is so that player, who has contributed to the game by ranking a beatmap, can rank more of their maps somewhat faster. The maximum for a non-supporter is 9 beatmaps, and therefore, with supporter, you can sumbit 10 at a time! (Example: You rank a beatmap. Instead of having 3 or 4 total slots, you will gain a slot. If you rank another, instead of having 4 or 5 total slots, you will get 1 more slot!)
4. Access to early releases. I'd say that this is self-explanatory, unless you've never played any other game before. Basically, an early release is a new implement into the game in which specific people may test it, while the regular players must wait for its full release. Kind of like a PTR, or public test realm.
5. User page. You are allowed to edit your user page. You can find this on the website account settings.
6.  Filter beatmaps from filtered and unfiltered. Ever felt like you wanted to go back and improve upon those beatmaps that you've played when you were first new to the game, but you couldn't because you forgot what beatmaps they were, and because you deleted them from the game? Well, with this, you can see all the beatmaps you've played or not. So, depending on if you want to explore or dive into the past, this will relieve you.
7. Colored username. Who wouldn't want to be known for supporting osu!? Now, in game, people will be able to see that you're a supporter when you chat. Instead of a fading-yellow color that normal users have, you will have a vibrant yellow!
8. More lenient download restrictions. A continuation for the description of osu!direct.
9. The ability to change your username. You can only do this once max, and you need to be supporter in order to. You can change your name to any name you want, even a taken one, as long as the person hasn't played for a while and has lesser than a certain amount of plays. (It's logical thinking this way.)
10. Skinnables. Ever feel sick of the annoying blue background you see when you log on, with those red and yellow stripes? Now, you can change it to ANYTHING, absolutely ANY picture to soothe your eyes! (I'm just not sure if gifs work, I don't think they do. You may try if you wish.)
11. Feature requests. These are requests made by players alike for the game. You can find the forum here. You can vote on your requests, with a maximum of 2 votes for ever month you pay for supporter. If you happen to not use any votes for one month, you will keep those two votes until you use them.
12. View extra leaderboards for ranked beatmaps. I personally enjoy using this ability very much. I like to see my friends' scores for songs and try to beat them so I can shove it in their faces. It doesn't really work though, as I'm not as good as they are. ;w;
13. The warm and fuzzy feelings. My favorite. 

So how much is it? Only $4 a month! It helps osu! run for a whole 6 minutes! Doesn't sound like much, I know, but it definitely adds up!

More questions? Ask!

The Key to PWNING osu!

How Tillerino calculates the data it gives to you, by showing how maximum combo and accuracy can effect the amount of performance a specific song can award you. (DJ Genericname - Dear You [Dear Rue] for this instance)

At certain points of playing osu!, it may seem like you're stuck at a certain interval, when you may or may not feel like you belong in that interval. If you don't feel like you're in that interval, and you should be a better rank, then the problem is that you don't have enough maps. It means that you keep on playing your same old maps over and over again (you've drained them of your performance points), and you need to get new songs. However, it can be pretty hard to find songs that you like on osu!. Your list of favorite songs are not endless, so at one point you may not have any more songs to look at, though there are thousands of more beatmaps. Then, the harder part comes. Say you're an osu! player. Every osu! player has a specific type of way that they like to play, so that means each and every one of us are picky in what beatmaps we'll want to choose. Me, personally though, I want to just get maps that in my opinion seem well-mapped and can boost me in my rank. The solution is Tillerino.

Who/what is Tillerno? This is an osu! bot. No, I don't mean a cheating bot. You should never use a cheating bot, as those basically lead to a ban (osu! has tons of hidden detectors). Anyways, Tillerino is a bot that helps you with getting more beatmaps. What does it do? Well, when you chat with it ingame by typing a command (let's say, !r), he will help you out, specifically by giving you a random beatmap for this command.

How do we know that it'll give good map recommendation? It chooses the beatmaps with decent rating, and ones that are the most farmable, meaning you can easily progress in the game by rank by playing this map. As I mentioned earlier, every osu! player has the specific type of beatmap that they like to play. I'm not too sure if this bot can analyze one's profile that precisely, but by what I've used it with, it has chosen so many beatmaps that I still have on my game now that are just so amazingly fun.

How do I start? Simply go to its profile and add it as a friend. It won't add you back; but why would you want to be mutual friends with a bot?! After adding it as a friend, the next time that you open up the osu! game client, Tillerino will appear on your online friends list, if you press F9 on your keyboard. Then you can start chatting, and use commands from this link.

Anymore questions? Go here and find it. Still cannot find what you're looking for? Just ask!

*~Sorry about being inactive for a while, I need to focus on real-life stuff a bit and I need to think about what my next topics will be to write about. So, don't expect everyday posts from this blog for a bit from now. Thanks for being patient!~*

My osu! Life

NolanM's userpage information

Above:

• New York-My location, you stalkers!!!
• 15 years-My age, you stalkers!!!
• Studying-Occupation. In other words, to you adults that didn't study, and got a job you absolutely hate, something you dislike very much. (Ew, it shows a pencil. That means work...unless you're talking about osu! pens. Huehue.)
• Not studying-My hobbie. Something I love.
• http://osuguide.blogspot.com/-I have not a clue what this means.
• Minernolan-My Skype username which I do not use anymore (Skype, I mean), I just like having everything filled out.
• Minernolan-My twitter username. You can find a lot of tweets about this blog there.
• 7 months ago-When I first started playing this game.
• About 3 hours ago-When I last logged into the website.
• 123 posts-LOL 123 GET IT HAHAHA! Anyways, the number of posts I have made in the osu! forums.

Here's how I started to play osu!.
At first, I found it out with osu!Stream, which is the app on the iPhone, or IOS store. A friend, who liked anime very much, showed me this game. I thought the style of the game was very different and confusing, because at the time, I was only playing games like Minecraft, or World of Warcraft. Not beatgames. So, I remembered that one day, so that later, when I was bored, I would search in on Google. Then, I realized that osu! was a PC game! Thus, I instantly started to play.

I started with just mouse clicking. I could do hard difficulty on max for some of the base beatmaps that came with the game when downloaded, but I would barely be getting C ranks. So, I decided to try beatmapping. I had trouble, because there was really no tutorial (and I was too stupid for not using Google at the time), and I found a more experienced friend that way.

Then I played with mouse and z and x keys. It was a pretty difficult transition, but gradually I managed to play efficiently with single tapping, and I was able to get a B rank on hard modes instead. Learning triple stacks were definitely hard to deal with at first, but once I got the hang of them, they turned out to be really fun. I mapped some more, but still had trouble. Just because honestly, I was new to this game.

Finally, I started playing with a tablet and z and x keys. It was absolutely magical. I was doing every harder difficulty with more and more ease as if I've been playing the game much longer than I really had. Also turns out, I've had a tablet even before I started playing osu!. I tried connecting it, but I didn't understand how it worked, so I gave up. But later, when trying again, I found out that for my tablet (Huion), I needed to enable raw input on the ingame options.

Questions? Comments? If you have questions, comment them below! If you have comments, well, I don't know what you're supposed to do with those actually. *Hint sarcasm, as well as above somewhere in the post too*

Tips to Beatmap (Part 1)

NolanM's WIP (work in progress) in editor, Remote Control by Kagamine Rin and Len

This is Part 1. In this post, we will be going over some tips before and if you want to start beatmapping.

Beatmapping is a time-consuming process. If you are a fast beatmapper, meaning that you make your maps very swiftly, then chances are, there will be a lot of flaws in it before it can get anywhere close to being ranked. After you are even done with the map, which feels like you've accomplished something great and wonderful (which you have), and feels a lot like finishing a program in Java, there will be a few things that modders would like changed. This part, takes even MORE time. Before you know it, you will realize that you've spent A LOT of time trying to get one map ranked. I won't delve deep into the topic of beatmapping, though, because I haven't gotten any beatmaps ranked.. yet!

You WILL beatmap the difficulty you're comfortable. Don't take this literally. You can beatmap any difficulty, but you will only be really good at beatmapping the difficulty that you are used to, because you play it often. You'll remember a lot of styles of beatmapping while playing so often, and you'll incorporate it into your own beatmap. 

Some things to consider: First, you need a song. Then, you'll need to fill out some lines on the information of the song, and how hard you would like it to be (with OD, AR, CS, and HP), and the audio, etc. Next, you need to find the BPM of that song to time it properly. After that, you can start beatmapping. Finally, you can make it look nice by designing it, using backgrounds (how Kagamine Rin and Len are in the background in the above photo), hitsounds (make the notes hit sound different), or a fully customizable storyboard (small animations that appear on top of the background (or behind it), that enhance the gameplay a lot.

These are just a few of the many things you need to know about the beatmapping process. To learn more, visit this.

If you still have more questions, or requests on what you would like for me to explain or tell you next, leave a comment below! ;) Have a wonderful day.

osu! Simple Terms Simplified

Song setup, where you can find difficulty factors in the song editor.

osu!, as explained earlier, has multiple difficulties. How is the difficulty of these songs calculated though? We will not being going in depth, bur rather looking at simple factors. Each of these factors have a rating from 1-10.

• OD-Overall difficulty. When a higher number, the hit window is smaller and the difficulty of spinners is increased. This means, its harder to hit a beat perfectly, and it's harder to "clear" a spinner.
• AR-Approach rate. The circles around the beats appear and get smaller and smaller towards when and where you're supposed to hit the note. A higher number of this tells us that the approaching circles will appear and gather in more swiftly, so it requires faster reaction.
• CS-Circle size. This is the size of the beats. A higher number means the beats are harder to hit, because they are then smaller.
• HP-Health point drain rate. While you're playing, do you see a bar on the top left? That is your health bar. It constantly gets lower and lower if you don't do anything, and if you miss something, it drops even lower faster. This is then, obviously, the rate of how fast it drains. A higher HP means a faster-draining bar, which is typically used for faster songs with more beats, because hitting a beat correctly keeps you alive.

Fun Fact~Most present-day osu! insane-difficulty songs have around an OD of 7-8, an AR of 8-9, a CS of 4-5, and an HP of 7-8. In the past, the insane difficulties were ridiculously timed and had around an OD of 10, an AR of 10, a CS of 10, and an HP of 10. It seems as if they never really did any analysis of how fun the song would be to play if everything was not 10 until now. It seems like they just assumed that 10=super hard, so it should be 10 everything for something=super hard.

Sorry for no post yesterday! For that, +fun fact!

Fun Fact~Unlike many beatgames other than osu!, the community chooses what songs they like and independently work on them to make their own beatmap (or do collaborations, which are projects that more than one person works on)!! In the beginning, it was relatively easy to get your map ranked (more info here) because not that many people were playing the game as they are now. Nowadays, it's really hard to get your beatmap ranked as there are a lot of people trying to get their maps ranked. 

The current process to getting your map ranked! So complicated!! (Just kidding, if you can understand it)

Once again, and I can't stress this enough, make sure to ask me as much questions as if I was accused of murder and you were interrogating me. It's fun to answer 'em! YES, PLEASE GIVE ME THE ENJOYMENT OF ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS!!!!

Becoming an osu! Pro (Part 2)

My detailed statistics.

Image Above Explained~

• Ranked Score-This is your overall score from all the times you have played a song that is ranked. A ranked song is a song that has fully been established and checked with no issues at all. It's different from pending, WIP (Work in progress), and approved maps.
• Pending-Means that the song is finished with and it is waiting for people to make suggestions to improve it.
• WIP-Means that the song is still being worked on.
• Approved-Close to being ranked, but if an issue is found it can be removed from the approved list and moved back to the pending list.
• Hit Accuracy-This is the overall, well, accuracy that you have while playing. It averages out.
• Play count-This measures how many times you've played any song, ever. (Well not when you're offline..)
• Total Score-This is similar to ranked score, but this number also increases (in addition to ranked map score [In osu!, songs can also be called maps, because beatmaps are the full name for them]) with maps that you have played that can be a WIP, approved, or pending map.
• Current Level-Increased by getting points (from ranked score only, because if it was anything, players would make their own maps that could purposely be made to give the player a lot of points).
• Total Hits-The total amount of hits that you've done, with sliders, circles, or spinners (Ranked score only, same reason above).
• Maximum Combo-Self explanatory. While playing, your combo increases, as long as you don't mess up at all. If you mess up, the counter resets to 0. In this case, my maximum combo was 1,037, so that means that at one time of playing, I got a combo all the way up at 1,037 without messing up once!

The secret to winning in osu!: Practice! Now, you would have probably expected a simple answer such as the one I gave you, but it's the only way to say it. Practice makes perfect! Don't expect to play right away starting with the hardest difficulties ever made. If you haven't had experience in the past, or if you've never played osu! before, you're a noob. Don't take that as a bad thing, to me it just means, "a new player." As you practice a little bit everyday, you will *~magically~* gain ~*mystical*~ powers where you can play more and more challenging maps with ease! Be aware, though, that if you decide to leave osu! for more than a couple of weeks, your skill will not match your skill before you left. In other words, if you don't practice for a while, you won't be as good. It works just like how mainly everything else works in life. Without review, you forget.

Gah, it's annoying to write this, but if you have any questions, write in the comments below! You can also write in the comments below if you have anything nice to say. :3
Want to play? Click here to go to the real osu! website!
Click here for the basics that I explained earlier about osu!!

Becoming an osu! Pro (Part 1)

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

Part 1~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.)

The Other Gamemodes Overview of osu!

Game screen offering to choose one of the four game modes of osu!

Another element of this game that makes it so special is that there are three game modes in addition to osu!. Each of these game modes share the same objective: to pass the song you are playing, and avoid failing it. Here they are:

• Taiko-This game mode represents playing a drum. There are four keys on the keyboard used to play this game mode. Two keys are used to play the middle of the drum (red notes, keys x and c), and the other two keys to hit the outer rim of the drum (blue notes, keys z and v). Finally, there are yellow sliders, which represent drumrolls. With these, the player is supposed to drumroll (well, obviously), or in other words, constantly press two keys of either both red or both blue. However, the drumroll needs to be synchronized with the BPM (beats per minute), or else the drumroll won't count.

Taiko game mode

• Catch the Beat (CTB)-This game mode's name, like most of the others, tells what to do. You control a character with the left and right keys (hold shift to sprint), to catch beats. Beats fall from the top of the screen to the bottom, and your objective is to catch those beats as they reach the bottom. As easy as this gamemode looks, it gets very challenging in the harder difficulties. To be masterful in this gamemode, one must require precise timing (to finely catch the beats without breaking the combo) and have steady fingering, as a slight miscalculation in holding a key will bring you to your doom in fast-paced songs

Catch the Beat (CTB) game mode

• Mania-In this game mode you play what looks much like a musical keyboard. This is the game mode that most closely represents Guitar Hero. How? It's kinda obvious. There are notes similar to normal osu!'s circles and sliders. You hold the corresponding keys for some while simply pressing the key for others. The controls are somewhat complicated. You use keys on the keyboard to play notes, and those keys can be different keys depending on what difficulty you're playing on. But, as the newest game mode in osu! as well as being the game mode that can become faster and faster paced than the other game modes, missing just one note can be an automatic loss in some cases. Without a doubt, osu!mania can definitely be one of the more challenging game modes. If you would like to find out more about this game mode, go here!

osu!mania game mode

One of the Hardest Games Ever?

Rrtyui, one of the most well-performing players on Osu!, while playing Freedom Dive, one of the hardest songs to play.

Often times, osu! can be described as a very difficult game to master. However, what games are easy to master? It mainly depends on your level of skill in that game, and your level of knowledge and analysis of how the game works and the music in it.

Now, why is osu! such a hard game? It's not that this game is completely impossible to do well in, it's that many newcomers who begin to play this game think it is. The game osu! can be played different ways, other than the initial way that most new players come in playing and not doing as well as they want to do.

• The first way everyone plays is the way that most people would expect to play. With a mouse. Move the mouse around the screen, and use the mouse to click, as well.
• The secondary way, which is how most of the players on osu! play is with a mouse and keyboard. Mouse to move, keyboard keys (x and z), or whatever key bindings (custom control assignments) you would want to give to tap instead of clicking to play the game.
• The third way, which a lot of players use, as well, and also where most of the really well-performing players use is with the tablet and keyboard. Tablet (as in a drawing tablet), and keys to tap.
• There are a few other ways that people play, but they aren't that effective and very few people use them. One is with two mice, or a tablet with a mouse. Basically a bunch of different combinations.

Will it be harder to play if I'm left-handed? Not exactly. I have a friend, who is left handed and does as well in the game as I do.

Are even the easiest levels of osu! really hard? Not the slightest bit. As mentioned in the previous post, osu! is organized into several levels of difficulty these levels of difficulty are organized into a star rating. The star rating represents how hard or easy the song is. The more stars, the harder. The less, the easier. *Note the below are rough estimate on number of stars per difficulty, also according to my past experiences.* These are often the difficulties: 

• Beginner is not regularly seen, but if it is, it signifies a song with an easy or easier level, around 0.5 stars to 1.5 stars. Easy peasy!
• Easy is also around 0.5 stars to 1.5 stars. It's easy!
• Normal is around 1.6 stars to 2.5 stars. Meh, it's regular.
• Hard is around 2.6 stars to 3.7 stars. Pretty hard here!
• Insane is around 3.8 stars to 4.7 stars. Are you crazy?
• Extra is also not regularly seen, but if it is, it signifies a song with a very difficult level with a required amount of skill to complete. Ah!!!
• Marathons are songs that have a drain time over 5 minutes. A drain time is the amount of time (in minutes and seconds) for how long the playing time of the song is. One of the longest songs on the game is this one... 45 minutes long!!

Once again, if any of you have any questions that you would like answered, ask! The curious minds are the minds that will be the smartest in the future. 

What is osu!?

The logo of Osu!

So, what is "osu!"?? Well, first of all, it's not pronounced "oh-su," it's pronounced "os." Why? Because it's a Japanese game, obviously! Except it wasn't developed by a Japanese person. In fact, it wasn't developed by an Asian, either! Dean Herbert was who started this infuriatingly fun rhythm game. And yes, the exclamation point in it's name is a part of its title. It is currently (and probably always will be, thankfully) a free PC game.

But what is a rhythm game? Ever heard of Guitar Hero? The style of that game is where the objective is to pass a certain song by "playing" it. By "playing" it, you're essentially doing something specific that can generate the success of passing a song. osu! is nearly the same thing, but not.

What's different from osu! and Guitar Hero?
There's a huge difference, which is why osu! has become so overwhelmingly popular from people around the world.

• Gameplay: The gameplay of osu! is organized into several difficulties and gamemodes. The difficulties are often E (Easy), N (Normal), H (Hard), I (Insane), and X (Extra/Extreme). The objective, much like Guitar Hero, is that you can either pass a song, or you can fail it. How do you fail it? By not doing what you're supposed to do, or by lacking the required amount of skill. To acquire the required skill in rhythm games, the key is to practice. Essentially, the targets of the game are to correctly complete three things: hit circles, sliders, and spinners. With hit circles, you literally hit  them. With sliders, you drag them. Finally, with spinners, you guessed it: you spin 'em. The other gamemodes are Mania, Catch the Beat (CTB), and Taiko. Now, I won't get into the details on the gameplay just yet; I'll leave that to another post.
• Complication: osu! is complicated to the point where one may think they cannot understand everything about it, which is why there's this blog. Just as an example, there is precise accuracy in the game, so your accuracy, depending on how good you are, can range from 1-100%, but are often seen in the 90 percentages. 
• Multiplayer: osu! can be played with your friends and/or the worldwide community! Yay! It's a online PC game!!

Although that's not all there is to it, I think I wrapped up everything basic about the game in this post. Feel free to ask me questions! I'll be glad to answer. :) 

If you would like to check out the website for yourself, click here.