Song Setup

The Song Setup is an important screen in beatmapping, as it contains many important settings that are key to a good map.

General

Song and Map Meta Data

• Artist - The artist who made the song. If song is from an anime or video games, don't put the name of the anime or videogame, nor the maker of the same. Please do some research and put the name of the person that made the song
• Title - The title of the song. Again don't put stage names or other names unless they really are the titles.
• Beatmap Creator - Automatically set to the name of the account that made the map.
• Difficulty - The name of the difficulty of map, dropdown contains preset names: Easy, Normal, Hard Insane. But you can change it to anything.
• Source - The Source of the game, only use if the source is more known than the artist. This is where you put the name of the anime or video game. DO NOT put an album name here if its by one artist.
• Tag - Enter words here to help in searches. The search engine uses these words in determining what songs come up. Common uses include album names, guest diff creators and other terms that would be uses by people searching for your map.

Difficulty

This tab has settings related to how hard the map is pass. Each setting effects different aspects of the map.

HP Drain Rate

The rate at which HP decreases, which is always constant except during breaks. Further HP is lost with misses. HP is recovered by getting 300s and spinning spinners. More HP is recovered with Gekis.

Circle Size

Overview of various Circle Sizes

This determines the size of circles and sliders. The value range from 3 to 7 with the smaller numbers being large sizes ( like needle gauges). The smaller circles make the map harder by requiring the player to be more precise. Most maps use sizes 3, 4 and 5. 6 is sometimes used and 7 is almost never used. 7 is most seen when using the Hard Rock mod. It is possible by manually editing the .osu file to assign a value of 0-10, as with the other mods; however, this is possible only for compatibility with older maps that did use them and should not be used. Using sizes not between 3 and 7 will make the map unrankable.

Approach Rate

This is the rate at which the circle surrounding hit circles shrinks toward the center. Since the objects appear when the approach reaches a set size, slower rates mean more objects. When the outer circle touches the white of the hit circle, that is the indicator the timing is right to hit the circle. Since the objects appear when the approach circle reaches a set size, slower rates mean more objects. Thusly, with insane beatmaps, low AR is nigh impossible to read. On the other side, most people are not comfortable with high ARs which makes the circles shrink insanely fast and therefore require very good reflexes to hit. Easy decreases it and can make it harder to read, while Hard Rock increases it. There are very few ranked maps with an AR of 10, but using Hard Rock on a map with an AR of 7 or above will bring it to 10.

Overall Difficulty

This setting does lots of things. Namely, when increased, the timing window gets smaller and harsher. Additionally, it also affects the difficulty of spinners. The Overall Difficulty can affect accuracy greatly, as it imposes a harsher timing window, leading to easier misses and 50's. Note that having too low of an overall difficulty is also detrimental, as the current osu! system does not allow a hit circle to be hit until the previous one has been hit or its time frame has been exceeded (resulting in a miss). With a low OD, the time frame of one circle may overlap with the other; therefore, one could hit the following note with perfect timing (but ignore the first) and completely miss both because the time frame of the current note has not been exceeded yet. As with the other settings, the maximum setting is rarely used.

Approximate Difficulty Rating

This is a summary of all of the settings chosen on this page. More stars mean harder maps and more score. This is not the final star ranking of the song; it is just an approximation based on the settings you chose.

Audio

Default Sample Settings

Here you can configure the hit sounds to your liking. If you have timing sections that change either the set or volume, you will not be able to adjust them here. You can click reset settings to remove them. Most maps use timing sections to set the settings you can find here.

Sample Set Selection

Here you can choose whether to use the Normal or Soft built-in sample set. You can also enable custom sample sets.

Sample Set Volume

Here you can set the volume of the sample set. This is important, because while you want to hear the hit sounds (its an important part of osu!) you don't want the sounds to drown out the song.

Test Sample Set

Here you can test out how the sample sounds. These sounds are additive, Whistle is a combination of Normal and Whistle.

Music Lead-In

This is where you can set a number of seconds to pad the beginning of the song. This is useful when the map starts at the very beginning of the song. If you need more than 3 seconds you can edit it in the .osu file.

Colours

These section is used manly to assign combo colors. Combo colors are an important part of the beatmap aesthetic, because there are lots of circles in the beatmap. Clicking a combo color opens a standard Windows color picker. Choose colors that compliment the background but don't disappear into the background. Up to eight combo colors can be used, although most maps use four. Clicking the Remove Combo Colour will remove the highest numbered Combo color.

The other part of this window assign the playfield background color, but this is a moot point because beatmaps can't be ranked without a background image which overrides this setting

Storyboarding

This tab houses options on how various visual elements look in the beatmap. The first is adding a countdown similar to the official games. You change the speed and offset of the countdown as well. You can also chose to letterbox during breaks(the black bars you see during movies), this is one by default. The next setting allows the storyboard to be in front of the combo fire that happens during the map. The last setting allows you to add an epilepsy warning if your storyboard has strobing or other elements prone to give epileptic fits.

At the bottom you can set preferred skin that will be used if it is on the computer of the player. If the skin is not present a notice will pop up. But most people just include the skin as part of the beatmap file so this setting is rarely used.

Advanced

This article is a stub. You can help the osu!wiki by expanding it.

Stack Leniency

osu! automatically stacks notes that occur in the same place and close by in time. This is so that players can tell the objects apart. The farther to the right that this slider is, the further apart in time stacking will occur. Rules dictate that if Stack Leniency is set so that stacking no longer occurs, you must manually offset the objects. This option is best left along if you don't know what you are doing.

Mode Specific

Normally maps are playable on all three play modes by default. If this is set to Taiko or CTB, then only that mode will be playable.

	Beatmap Editor	[+]
META Beatmap Editor Sections Compose • Design • Timing • Song Setup Components Beat Snap Divisor • Custom Sample Overrides • Distance Snap • Kiai Time Difficulties Easy • Normal • Hard • Insane Mapping Beatmapping • Mapping Techniques • Timing (How to time songs) • Modding • Storyboarding (Scripting) • Skinning (Skin.ini)