I think I'll start posting this here - just to give you guys an idea of what is going on behind the scenes. Also - I'd like to hear everyones opinions on whether I should release daily updates (as I currently do for testers) or aim for more stable release versions? Personally I'm a cutting edge kind of guy, so prefer to get changes out as soon as possible.

2007-09-09
(+) New class BeatmapManager handles loading of all beatmaps initially.
(+) Metadata input dialog accessible using the "song information" menu option, or from the options menu.
(+) New version of song selection menu. Full song access once again
(+) Options menu. Still empty, but its there!
(*) Fixed some misaligned controls.
(*) Lots of new additions to SpriteManager. Handles easing in tweens, hover transformations, more origin and scaling types and quite a bit of other stuff I needed to get the new menu working.
(*) Default button settings on dialog popups.
(*) High score list stores up to 5 scores per song.
(*) Title song is random.
(*) Removed shortcut keys from main menu (and redirected others).
(*) Fixed bug where md5 could not be read of beatmaps in some cases.
(*) Titles with ':' characters were getting cut off.
(*) Holding down shift while increasing/decreasing bpm.
(*) Video sync added to [Events] section of osu files.
(*) Refinement of video texture copy code. Hopefully improved performance on some systems.

2007-09-10
(+) Ranking screen initial version.
(+) Dynamic health calculation. Totally changes the scoring system to be a lot more dependent on combos (similar to ouendan!)
(*) Fixed bug where mouse cursor doesn't retract during transitions.
(*) Converted all scoring types to enums.
(*) Increased the speed of the hitmetre Ki to match ouendan. Also ensure that it reaches max before the first hitObject is hit.
(*) Added delay where click is not accepted after auto-clicking on hover.
(*) Fixed bug where equal scores would be recorded more times than should be possible.

2007-09-11
(+) Basic options.
(+) New song setup dialog with difficulty settings.
(+) Support for named high scores.
(+) Some basic audio samples in the menus. Spinner bonus sound sample. Fail sample. Weeeeeee.
(+) Bonus shows on spinners.
(*) Editor titlebar displays current filename.
(*) Updated selection screen to show rankings.
(*) Added support for multiple beatmaps per song.
(*) Improvements to interface in lots of areas.
(*) Removed video rendering from editor (video can't skip around yet - need to implement this).
(*) Added a confirmation dialog when clearing all beats from a song.

Daily is too much of a commitment imo, to put out a release every day and ensuring that there are no bugs in whatever is out.. Weekly is often enough

2007-09-12
(+) Difficulty stars next to song in selection mode.
(+) Most of difficulty settings now take effect! This includes beat size, hp drain rate and spinner difficulty. Still a few more minor tweaks to go.
(*) Fix for slider tick rates which are non-integer.
(*) Adjusted menu somewhat. Fixed up the underlying code to support many sprites per song selection box.
(*) Slider lines on timeline were 1 pixel too big. Yes I'm picky .
(*) Limited open/save dialogs to .osu file extension.
(*) Fixed bug where songs that did not yet have an osu were not showing up in edit list.
(*) Set default edit modes on editing a new song - popup song setup window then go straight to timing. Woo.
(*) Fixed bug where screen sometimes does not fade in fully.

2007-09-13
(+) Video seeking, pausing, rate changing. Can now be displayed in the editor . Not on the timeline yet, but hopefully before the first public release this will be complete.
(*) Vast improvements to video synchronisation.
(*) Video texture swapped to managed so changing resolutions wouldn't break. Hopefully not too much performance loss because of this.
(*) Gamefield resizing is back in (ala design mode)
(*) Difficulty wireup for hit accuracy, miss score loss, preempt of circles.
(*) After further discussion, once again changed the hp calculation algorithm. Now ensures a minimum "average HP recovery" per beat in the song.
(*) Slider radius updates after circle size change.
(*) Spacebar plays/pauses the song in edit mode.
(*) Ranking progresses to name entry automatically if left alone.
(*) Graph finishes graphing properly if interrupted with a click early.

2007-09-14
(+) Play/pause/stop controls in editor. About time haha.
(+) Slider points can be removed (right click).
(+) Sliders can be extended to add/remove repeats by resizing the end of them on the timeline.
(+) Grid/time snapping can be temporarily disabled by holding shift. This works for placement and editing.
(*) Fixed bug with gamefield alignment at higher resolutions. Surprised I was the first to notice this!
(*) Fixed spinner placement - behaves more like slider placement with the setting of duration. Doesn't play sounds unnecessarily.
(*) Fixed bug where slider sliding sound would not play on some PCs.
(*) Removed a few redundant menu items.
(*) The osu! logo on main menu now beats in time to timed songs.
(*) TimingPoints are now handled on a higher level (seems like a better place to deal with these too).

2007-09-15
(+) Added version suffix to metadata for songs.
(+) Added a few graphics options.
(*) Same song continues through multiple menus without interruption if possible.
(*) High score entry screen shows what place you ranked.
(*) Slightly more friendly error dialog.
(*) Fixed audio samples a bit more (maximum concurrent samples lowered to more sane limits).
(*) Sliders can be placed with no beat snapping.
(*) Spinner placement icon is smaller.
(*) MPEG and other slow-seeking formats will now behave a lot better.
(*) Added number to fadeout animation for hitcircles. Made them scale a bit further too.
(*) Selection is ordered by difficulty stars if the other fields match.
(*) Fixed video size bug.
(*) Handling no beatmaps present and beatmaps with no notes.

2007-09-16
(+) HAJIMATTAZO! PUBLIC BETA RELEASE!
(+) Osz packaging support.
(*) Fixed md5 checksumming of utf8 containing files.
(*) Slider start circles are closer than the ball.
(*) Score multiple increases with difficulty.
(*) Tweaks before public release.
(*) Fixed bug with osz where it would try to zip itself.
(*) Mousewheel zooms on timeline.
(*) Metronome sound aligned for first beat.
(*) Reduced brightness of screen flashes on selection.
(*) Audio flow is better between same songs different versions.

2007-09-17
(+) Song grouping. How does this work for you guys?
(*) Changed some difficulty settings. HP drain should be a bit more reasonable, i hope!
(*) Extracts .zip files in songs directory as well as .osz. IE doesn't play nicely with archives.
(*) Handle crash when incomplete osz files are still downloading when osu! is started.
(*) Spinner has a bit more acceleration.
(*) Fixed bug where spinner/slider sounds gets stuck playing.

sorry guys - going to have to ignore the results of that poll above for a while. too many bugfixes and feature requests that I am keeping up daily public builds. hope you dont mind ^^

2007-09-18
(*) Fixed some songs not remaining transparent after being selected.
(*) Fixed bug where config file is not saved when using the 'X' button to close the window.
(*) Disabled hitcircle snapping to other hitcircles.
(*) Fixed bug where slider point editing was playing up when a slider was selected, but you hovered over another slider.
(*) Fixed bug where slider end circles occasionally appeared way too large in the editor.
(*) Standardisation of osz extracted directory names and osu filenames.

Keeping up a consistent pace with new features and bug fixes. Surprisingly, there haven't been as many bug reports as I expected. Not sure if people are staying quiet, or the testing process really did filter out the majority of bugginess. Spent most of my time tonight on the filename structure for osu/osz saving and extracting. Everything is really solid now in that regard - and filenames will be assigned automatically based on the provided metadata.

Also started on the video tutorial - did a test-run, but didn't have enough time left for the final take . Tomorrow!

2007-09-19
(+) Basics to allow osu! to check for new updates when it is run, and present an option for the user to get updates.
(+) Linear curve type. Can now place hard cornered sliders.
(*) Md5 can be checked in the currently open application. Changed updater to use this rather than hard-coded version number.
(*) Fixed issue where slider length is saved as non-integer, but causes crash on load.
(*) Fixed bug where resizing a spinner caused the game to crash.
(*) Snapping turned back on for hitcircles and sliders - and extended so circles snap to the end and the start of sliders.
(*) Broke sliders, but fixed them again..

forgot to post last night, whoops.

2007-09-20
(*) Reordered slider-tick sprites to be beneath repeat/end circles.
(*) Two crosses appear when missing a slider altogether, at the start and end points.
(*) No cross appears when missing the start point of a slider.
(*) Fixed bug where short sliders could not be placed correctly.
(*) Fixed bug where end circles acted as start circles too.
(*) Fixed bug where game would crash on entering play mode while a song was playing which does not have any beatmaps.

Graduated from uni - officially! Because of the ceremony I didn't get so much done, but I finished the voice-over for my first editor tutorial, and am encoding overnight

2007-09-21
(+) Circles shake when out of order.
(+) Slider velocity adjustment added to editor.
(*) Hopefully fixed bug with unsupported characters.
(*) Oops, I did a build too early. Removed slider velocity from public version.
(*) Notes under the end of sliders now stack. Makes it a lot easier to see these.
(*) Metronome ticks and metre are a lot more sane.

I'm not sure if I'll have time this weekend to pick up one of the large new features I want to add. Next on the agenda is most likely getting a website together, along with online ranking linked into the game. Might be able to have that done by Monday but no promises .

Been working on a lot of small bug fixes/features which have hopefully made things a lot more solid since the initial public release.

2007-09-22
(+) Login handling.
(*) Update notification disappears while playing/editing.
(*) Increased difficulty of combo end-scores, but introduced a hp bonus even when you miss both types of combo.

2007-09-23
(+) Volume controls in options.
(+) Replay support?
(*) Moved song extraction to selection menu rather than as the game starts.
(*) Game will start even without any beatmaps present. The message will now appear when you try to play or edit.
(*) Menu effects don't play and song selection doesn't change while osu! doesn't have focus.
(*) If fire fails to render, it is automatically disabled rather than crashing the game.
(*) Fixed bug where high BPMs would cause an error when attempting to manually set the bpm via the dialog.
(*) Started on new slider rendering code.

Made some good progress over the weekend, albeit a bit slower than I hoped for. Next public version will probably be a few more days, depending on how things go. I'd really like to get the sliders going with this new code, which will take quite a bit of time.

2007-09-24
(+) Framework for play mods.
(+) Two initial mods - "nofail" and "easymode".
(+) Heavier gridlines to show the centre of gamefield in editor.
(*) Grid resizing/non-standard resolutions handled a lot better.
(*) Fixed bug where editor menu selections would become out of sync after exiting/entering.
(*) Fixed bug with horizontal and vertical flipping losing notes.
(*) Fixed bug where short sliders would not play the end-circle sound in edit mode at higher BPMs.
(*) Fixed bug where songs containing characters which are invalid in filenames were being incorrectly handled.
(*) Fullscreen mode will exit whilst in the editor, and resume on exiting. The editor doesn't support fullscreen at this point in time.
(*) Song continues to play while at the ranking screen.
(*) Added a note to inform about the lack of online ranking functionality for the moment.
(*) Fire starts at 30 combo rather than 40.
(*) Fixed bug where game would not start if fullscreen was set in configuration file.
(*) Made selection of last songs in song selection menu a lot easier.

New version is up! This combines all the changes from the last few days in one major bug fixing and minor new feature effort! A few things have been excluded from this public build - like replay data and new slider drawing code. These will come later this week as they are not yet fully complete and tested.

Enjoy

Edit: Minor public build up after the initial version. Fixed a problem will fullscreen mode.

2007-09-25 (b72)
(+) Added audio offset to options.
(*) Changes to allow other localisations to handle numbers correctly.
(*) Fixed bug where snapping would not work when a song had exactly two timing points.
(*) Changed song selection quite a lot. <b>Need feedback on this.</b>
(*) Fixed sort order when stars are the same but difficulty differs (by a decimal place).
(*) Aaaaaahhh! Fixed spinners being HARDER on easy mode.

Spent quite a while experimenting with new stuff which didn't work out to much in the end. Not as much productivity as I hoped for. Tired too .

Edit: But I fixed two, or maybe even three bugs!

I really wanted to make the song selection centre on the beatmap you have selected if your mouse cursor is outside a certain range, but after implementing this and getting feedback from testers, I removed it before putting up the new public version. I did increase the speed of scrolling through the list while in a smaller area, though. Should help for large lists of songs. If anyone has bright ideas about improvements that could be made to song selection, please voice them!

2007-09-26 (b74)
(+) Basic support for break or intermission periods in songs.
(+) Added '!!' danger sprite when hitting very low HP.
(*) Handle left/right mouse clicks better (there were problems when alternating while one was still depressed).
(*) Fixed bug where sliders would go at old speed even after a new timing point.
(*) Fixed bug where every tick on a slider would be counted as a miss if missed.
(*) Fixed normal hit sound not playing when effect volume is set below 20%.
(*) Allow negative offsets in manual timing adjustment window.
(*) Fixed kanji for 'katsu' combos. The left-hand particle was incorrect in all sprites. Oops.

Got quite a few fixes done in this build - and a bit distracted working on new features which don't appear in the above list .

As for break/intermission mode - it is in the game (albeit untested) but not yet available in the editor. To make use of this, edit your .osu and add and event line in the following format:

[Events]
2,<startTimeMs>,<endTimeMs>

You can add as many of these lines as you want. If you need to find out the millisecond times, you can rever to the [HitObjects] section - the third number in the comma separated list refers to the hit-time of a normal circle.

I'll try and get it in the editor ASAP. At the moment it will simply blackout the screen and stop HP drain. It is also considered when deciding the song's HP drain rate.

Edit: Updated bugs/feature request forum topics. That felt good!

*sleeeeeep*

2007-09-27 (b76)
(*) Increased slider/spinner timeline resize handle by 4 pixels. Should be easier to grab.
(*) Cannot play zero-length spinners and sliders in editor anymore. (caused null reference crashes and other horrible stuff)
(*) Fixed bug where music and effect volume levels would drop if universal volume is less than full each time the options screen is entered.
(*) Fixed bug where sliders would count as two misses when missed.
(*) Fixed bug where registering login details while running fullscreen resulting in abnormalities (windows forms grr).
(*) New songs should be selectable even in a long list (the ones that appear as blue).
(*) Audio offset was applied in the wrong direction! Whoops.
(*) Fixed bug where setting an offset would break seeking in editor.
(*) Spinners give 100 points per rotation, 1100 for bonus rotations. Also ramped down difficulty slightly (around 10%).
(*) Increased the rate at which up/down arrows affect tempo change.
(*) Added an end circle for spinners on the timeline.
(*) First of a number of changes to spinner motion - the mouse no longer needs to remain on the spinner itself, and will be moved back closer to it if too far away.
(*) Ensure sliders are updated instantly after a bpm alteration (as opposed to after a save/load).
(*) Fixed SliderTickRate to not affect the actual speed of a slide - only the number of ticks on it. Setting this higher (2 or 4) will double/quadruple the number of ticks; setting to 0.5 will halve.
(*) Fixed break periods not showing in editor always.

Fear the bug fixes. Didn't actually get around to adding anything new (well, I actually got the "Perfect" graphic done for the scoring screen, and make an uploader for people to use for beatmaps..)

There should be something in this batch for everyone. I will say though, that these fixes have not been tested as thoroughly as I'd like them - please report if they don't work as expected and I'll look further into them. They can't make things worse than before though, right?

I hope you guys don't think I'm ignoring the poll results at the top of this post - I would really like to roll these updates into one per week, but I feel as though these changes should be made available as soon as possible. That, and anyone who can't spare 700kb and a few seconds of their day to actually process the update is a bit too stingy for my liking .

That said, there will probably not be another update until Sunday - unless I decide to do a few more bug-fixes before tomorrow night. In this time, there are a few major features I am looking at adding, so wish us luck!

b76 is up!

2007-09-28 (b77)

1. + Added confirmation dialog for snapping all notes/removing all timing sections.
2. + Editor now remembers preferences for curveType, gridSize, snapDivisor.
3. + Osz packaging provides a default filename based on the artist/title. Hopefully stop people from using []s in the filename (phpbb no likes).
4. + Mouse speed adjustment in options.
5. + Added shortcut keys for specific grid size modes (Ctrl+1-4).
6. + Added slider to adjust beat snap divisor.
7. + Basic static image background support.
8. + Manual entry button added to timing dialog.
9. Fixed stacking of notes at the end of slider causing the slider to move out of place.
10. Fix for one remaining localisation bug.
11. Fixed timeline selection being slightly weighted to the right-hand side with overlapping notes.
12. Fixed crash when nudging notes while none are selected.
13. Fixed spinner first 100-point score coming half a sping too early.
14. Mod buttons stay lit up after finishing playing a song.

Build is up. If anyone got it in the first few minutes, they may have been presented with 2 exe updates. This was my mistake, not a bug in the updater

I was hoping to add break-period insertion in the editor with this build, but its getting quite late so I'll finish that one off tomorrow. Quite a few editor enhancements that should make life that little bit easier. Keep the feedback coming.

To add a background to your beatmap, follow this example:

[Events]
0,<startTimeMs>,"imagefile.png"

So if you want a background from the start, set the startTimeMs value to 0. This is currently very basic support, I know, but it should be enough to take the bore out of that blue background screen. Images are automatically resized to take the full width of the window.

2007-09-29 (b78)

(!) Fixed sliders not displaying for some people. Woot.
(*) Extended timer height so selection can be made easily.
(*) Fixed pause/play occurring even when ctrl is held down.
(*) Added code to detect pixel shader version (reintroduced smooth curves for PS2.0+).

Not so much visible progress today. Spent a lot of time working on the new slider code (but didn't get so far), and also some other new feature which will hopefully be in by Monday evening .

Sliders are finally visible on all PCs! osu! will fallback for PS1.1 support, making less-pretty but visible slider tracks on those graphics cards which don't support PS2.0+. Hooray!

I was planning to get a few more features for tonight's build, but I am really really tired. I wouldn't have put a build up at all, was it not for the sliders being 10x less ugly than the one i put up this morning .

Niite

2007-09-30 (b79)
(+) 90 degree rotation in editor.
(+) Undo support in editor. Still a bit buggy - be careful when using!
(*) Difficulty stars calculation includes the number of notes/second.
(*) Fixed high scores not recording correctly.
(*) Fixed selection area causing PS1.1 cards to crash.
(*) Fixed slider end circles breaking combos when too far away.
(*) Replay support fully complete. Not implemented in public yet.
(*) Fixed perfect appearing behind the line on the results graph.
(*) Fixed ranking screen exiting on hitting 'q'.
(*) Preloading hit-value sprites when entering play mode.
(*) Added graphics fix for cards which do not autodetect a suitable render-mode.
(*) Fixed sliders stacking incorrectly (i hope - eyup can you check this?).
(*) Fixed background images being offset too far vertically.

There's a few semi-major changes this build, which I hope don't break things for you! I was tempted to not put this up publicly tonight, because I really haven't gotten around to doing much testing at all, but there are bug fixes which will fix a few annoying issues that have been going on... so I'm going to release! See my forum title ^^.

Hopefully on-track for the first version of online ranking tomorrow evening or soon after. Things are going along quite nicely, really .

If any of you guys have time, please report any bugs you find with the undo/redo editor code. I know there are a few - so if you can state the exact events which cause these bugs to occur, it would be really helpful.

A quick reminder too -- we will be moving servers today at ~5am GMT. A short downtime may occur.. lasting 1-2hours.

Keep those beatmaps coming!

b79 is up.