forum

[Proposal] osu! ruleset draft (General+Specific additions)

posted
Total Posts
12
Topic Starter
Okoratu
Hallo,

this might confuse some, but whatever: This draft is aimed to add to the osu!-specific subsection of the Ranking Criteria. As such it will contain additions and removals as well as reasonings for each of the points presented. The following will be additions unless marked otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions

(read this in all cases before posting)
  1. Is it necessary to read the entire draft before commenting or asking questions?
    -> Yes, else you may complain about/mention things that are not related to this draft or are actually already present here.
  2. Is this the entire new Ranking Criteria? I feel like this is missing a lot of things...
    -> This is not the entire Ranking Criteria. This draft aims to be the rules and guidelines that end up under the osu!-specific Ranking Criteria.
Before posting, please think through if what you want to add belongs in any game-mode specific drafts of the Ranking Criteria or should be part of another subsection of the general Ranking Criteria. Thanks!

The proposal starts with the glossary.

Glossary



Common terms


Gameplay
  1. Active rhythm: Rhythm wherein a player actively clicks an object.

General


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Sliders that overlap themselves must not change direction from what their bodies imply. Avoid intersecting the same part of a slider multiple times, since doing so makes the implied direction of a slider unclear.
Guidelines

Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.

  1. Breaks should be used during long songs. This is to allow time for players to adjust their input device. Aim for at least one break if your song is longer than two minutes.
  2. A slider's slidertick hitsounds should be distinctly different from its hitnormal sample(s). This ensures feedback from objects is not ambiguous.

Skinning


Rules

All rules are exactly that: RULES. They are NOT guidelines and may NOT be broken under ANY circumstance.

  1. Combobursts must be oriented for the left side of the screen. Combobursts are aligned to the bottom and left sides of the screen by default, and are just horizontally flipped for the right side. Thus, only the bottom and left sides can be cut off.
  2. Do not skin the hitcircle or the slidertrack set in a different dimension from their recommended sizes.
  3. Hitbursts must be clearly distinguishable from each other. It is mandatory to have noticeable differences in colors to distinguish between hits of different accuracies. Differences in shape or size are highly recommended. (Replaces: "Hit100 and 300 must be different from corresponding geki and katu skin elements. Hit300g, hit300k, and hit100k indicate if players perfectly hit all 300 in a combo.")
Guidelines

Guidelines may be violated under exceptional circumstances. These exceptional circumstances must be warranted by an exhaustive explanation as of why the guideline has been violated and why not violating it will interfere with the overall quality of the creation.

Remove:
  1. Usage of the old style spinners is not recommended
Add:
  • Old style spinners are recommended. If a user’s skin includes old style spinners, they will take precedence over new style spinners. Using old style spinners ensures that there are no user skin and beatmap skin conflicts.

Specific


Normal

Guidelines

Remove:

  1. Avoid long chains of hitobjects with 1/2 gaps. Too many consecutive hitobjects overlapping can be confusing for new players.
Add:

  1. Avoid chains of more than six objects connected by 1/2 gaps. This limit is more lenient if clicking time between each object is more than a beat and a half.
  2. Avoid more than three consecutive sliders shorter than 1/1 connected by gaps less than a beat.
If you plan on using a Normal difficulty as the lowest difficulty on a mapset, it has to abide by the following guidelines:
  1. Avoid more than two consecutive active 1/2 rhythms.
  2. Avoid chains of more than three objects connected by 1/2 gaps. This limit is more lenient if clicking time between each object is more than a beat and a half.
  3. Avoid connecting reversing sliders shorter than 3/2 into other objects by 1/2.
  4. Avoid consecutive sliders shorter than 1/1 connected by gaps less than a beat.
Hard

Guidelines

Add:
  1. Avoid more than two instances of active ¼ per every 4 beats.
Make sure to read the entire draft! It will be up to discussion for two weeks and close on the 18th of June!
-Mo-
I almost feel like the wording of the active beat stuff is pretty confusing especially to newer players to read. Even I need to take some time to actually work out what the guidelines are saying.

Avoid more than two instances of active ¼ per every 4 beats.
For example there's a lot that's being described here. I assume this means to avoid streams longer than 5 notes within each measure, but the current wording as is seems confusing on its own. It would be clearer if each point had an image to show what is actually being described, or at the very least some more clarification written afterwards.
Topic Starter
Okoratu
one instance of active 1/4 would be one 5 note stream
3 instances of active 1/4 would be 3 triples within 4/1

do you have ideas on how to say this in a more descriptive way
-Mo-

Okorin wrote:

one instance of active 1/4 would be one 5 note stream
3 instances of active 1/4 would be 3 triples within 4/1
You see that alone makes me understand it better. I can't think of a way to make the main wording clearer than it is now, but tacking something that on as a clarification would help.

Adding what 1/1 1/2 1/4 etc beats are in terms of coloured ticks or snap divisor to common terms could help newer mappers too since that seems to be something that confuses newer people.
Topic Starter
Okoratu
thing is describing this stuff in words is super confusing

and i kinda don't want the RC to be picture book explanation level

conflict of interests

but we'll look into giving more concrete examples in addition to what the guidelines proposed mean
Monstrata
Breaks should be used during long songs. This is to allow time for players to adjust their input device. Aim for at least one break if your song is longer than two minutes.

---

What? So if I decide not to map a break for my 5:00 song, is "I don't want a break" justification? This seems entirely unnecessary as a guideline, now that guidelines are defined as rules that can be broken under exceptional circumstances. Justifying not using a break should not be an exceptional circumstance at all. Even if a break fits, what if I want to map the section to slow sliders. Would "I want to map this section" be justification?

Two questions basically.

1. What is considered justification for breaking this guideline?
2. Is this necessary at all? Do you believe people will try and enforce this rule? Because if the justifications I mentioned above are acceptable, then there's no point having this rule. And if the justifications I mentioned above are not acceptable, then what is? Either the guideline will be broken with the simplest of reasons, or this will cause a lot of mappers to basically be "forced" to put breaks.




All in all, this seems a lot less like a guideline, and more like a mapping tip, like "you should try to use more slider velocities in your map".
Topic Starter
Okoratu
you would probably be able to justify that if you have a part in your beatmap that isn't as movement heavy where people can readjust their inputs, yes, but i think being more among the lines of encouraging something that's on the slope down to being neglected by the vast majority of mappers being a good thing along with reasoning for doing it.

if that makes sense, we have something among the lines of use spinners when possible to assure score variation and this is a use breaks when possible to not tilt the majority of the playerbase with your map
Endaris
Mh, I have to agree with monstrata here. While readjusting the aimdevice is certainly a good reason to include a break, especially on more intense songs breaks can "break" the flow and be more detrimental than having no break at all. I consider that guideline as reasonable for the lower spectrum of difficulties (Easy/Normal/Hard) as the control is still lacking there but for higher difficulties I would often prefer no breaks as there are often brief moments where you can readjust your aimdevice anyway.

It was already mentioned but especially
Avoid chains of more than six objects connected by 1/2 gaps. This limit is more lenient if clicking time between each object is more than a beat and a half.
sounds awkward as fact and does not add anything the previous wording didn't have. It is a guideline, not a rule so it does not really profit from numbers because it can be broken anyway. Moreso, the actual pattern with the amount of polarity changes and switches between different types of objects is often a lot more significant to the ease of the pattern than a number alone.
I would very much prefer a more general wording like
Avoid too long patterns and have enough breaks and 1/1 notes.
or similar to this line stolen from the Taiko Mapping Academy (words replaced):
That means, a Normal can follow a songs beat or vocal but should contain enough 1/1 gap to give the player the possibility to prepare themself for the upcoming patterns.
That is way easier to read because you get the explanation for the guideline right away with neither going textbooklevel nor down to arbitrary numbers that may be completely illusory depending on the song mapped.

tl;dr:
Guidelines should have a brief explanation with them, otherwise they feel completely random with no orientation why numbers are chosen as they are or why it would be bad if they were broken because obviously there are good reasons to break them so one can ignore them right away, no?
Basically what I like about the one you proposed to remove and what I dislike about all the ones added.
Topic Starter
Okoratu
the aim with this addition was to clarify "occasional 1/2" as mentioned in the density guideline further
so people don't go and claim my 20 object chain is occasional 1/2

we decided to go for numbers for that reason because going the vague route you suggest going clarifies nothing

thanks for the suggestions for guideline wordings otherwise, we were looking on how to make things less abstract and more concrete so we'll definitely consider that while keeping the clarification character in tact
pw384
From my perspective, all 1/2's or 3/4's or whatever in the draft should be marked with a reference BPM, as 1/2 of 140BPM is absolutely different from 1/2 of 280BPM(the latter one is too hard for a Normal!)
Topic Starter
Okoratu
but it is, we just didn't repeat it because all the references for snapping are for 180 bpm maps

"Rhythm related guidelines apply to approximately 180 BPM maps. If your song is drastically faster or slower, some variables might be different. Apply reasonable judgement in these cases."

edit: closing for revision
pishifat
moved because no longer relevant
Please sign in to reply.

New reply