Hello, and welcome to this post. Please have a seat. ╞╕

Experiment 00 is a dark, minimalist skin, that aims to provide players with an efficient environment, with the smallest amount of distractions possible.
This skin was composed according to my own taste and to player suggestions. If you find any way to improve it, please feel free to share it via this thread or via MP.
This skin is made from scratch, however, I found inspiration in my favorite skins to this day : Minimalist Miku and Luminance, you may want to check these out as well.

Feel free to give it a try if you like it or if you have some time to kill. I am always open to suggestions and any constructive criticism is welcome.


Main features
• Dark theme
• Minimalistic
• Easy to read
• Moderate contrast (does not cause too much eye strain)
• A nice set of extras to further customize the skin to your liking


Quick notes
• Recommended for any type of players. This skin should suit you even in the hardest difficulties. If it does not, please let me know, and I will work towards improving it according to your suggestions and requests.
• It is highly recommended to play with background dim 80-100% when using this skin
• If you want to play with background/storyboard/videos on, you can find an opaque hitcircle in the extras folder

Screenshots

Download

Current version : OSK Download / ZIP Download (2.0.0)

Changelog

Extras

Credits

Inspiration
- [Garin] for his awesome Minimalist Miku skin.
- Uruoki for the most elaborated skin I know, Luminance and for the very complete feedback and suggestions about my skin

Test Subjects and helpful people
- Myu (Standard / Taiko test subject, a good friend of mine)
- Seunie- (Standard test subject... Also my sister)
- Juuryoushin (Taiko skinning advice)
- Astar (Standard test subject, also a nice person to talk about tomato juice with)

Character font - Geo Sans Light

F.A.Q.

That's my bro! Good job<3

Looks awesome !
Nice job dude \:D/

GIVE THAT MAN A COOKIE ! Or osu supporter! for his first time

So simple...one of the best skins I've ever seen.

This is freaking beautiful <3

Myu wrote:

GIVE THAT MAN A COOKIE ! Or osu supporter! for his first time

this^

Very nice, definitely a skin I'd recommend to a friend.

Edit: It'd be nice if you had an image that said 'Full Combo' instead of 'Perfect', or one that the user could just use instead if they wanted. The font looks amazing.

Experiment 00 Version 1.1 Is now ready !

List of changes :

New mod Icons !
The old mod icons were so much of a disgrace that I didn't even want to post a screenshot of them :/
I finally came up with an idea of a nice looking Icon then improved it with transparency. Both of the versions on the right are available in the extra folder, and transparent version is now default.

Size Adjustments \o/
While playing, what I first noticed on screen select was that the stars were off a bit. Upon closer inspection, I noticed they were off by a lot, so I took some time to adjust them so that they actually fit the way they are supposed to (in my opinion)

New stars ! I mean, circles !
What do you mean it's not conventional ?
Both circles and stars are available in the extra folder. Circles look better with this skin imo, but you are free to choose, as usual =w=
(Also, circles are now default )

Make your own text !
A bunch of .psd files containing most of the skinned texts are now available in the "PSD" folder.
The font used for this skin, Geo Sans Light, is now also included in that folder, along with a "readme" containing full instructions on how to install the font, how to edit and save the files, and a list of the files and mod filenames. "Full combo" is now yours to take ! \o/

More useless extras !
Actually I was experimenting around with modding elements that are not included in the osu template and that I discovered by using other mods. While trying to understand how it worked I ended up getting interesting results so I put these in the extras. It doesn't really fit in with the skin but it looks sort of nice, I think.

Alternate color schemes
Some people told me the default color scheme is too dark, so I tried another one and they said it was ok.
Then I showed the other one to some other people and they told me it was too bright.
Well then, I made a couple of them, and made them all available in the "extra" folder, with default staying default =w=

I'm not very good at making color schemes though. If you come up with a color scheme that fits really good with this skin, please feel free to let me know either on this thread or by PM, I'll be glad to add it to my skin or even make it default if it fits right.

Sound change

I changed a bunch of sounds in the skin that come from either Minimalist Miku, Luminance, or a Frankenskin that a friend of mine gave me. He has no idea where the sounds come from and neither do I, so I only used a couple of them. If you are the author of any of the sounds I am currently using and want them removed, please let me know by PM and I will remove them immediately.
This is still a temporary measure and I'm still only grasping the sound editing aspect of skinning. (However I found a nice source of free raw sounds and a nice program to edit them, so I'll probably deliver this in the next update)



Once again, thank you very much for using my skin and for all the feedback, be it positive or negative, it is always welcome as long as it is constructive
Have a nice day, and enjoy playing !

Ohhhh me likey!!

The cursor looks a bit like the Aesthetic one though, I still love the rest of the skin and the new mod icons

Please add a menu-background for supporters ^^

remove the dots from the name of the .osk else it wont work

volume-bg-effect is not skinned. Spinner would be better with some kind of changing visual so players know how fast they are spinning. Something that is not the RPM meter. Luminance uses the middle of the spinner. Sliderfollowcircle should be skinned. It allows the player to see how much they can follow the slider. That way they don't have to follow the slider all the way to the end. They can end the slider early and go onto the next element. It helps in high level songs. I personally find the score/health bar too bright and distracting from the playfield. I suggest #b5b6b8, it is a bit more neutral. For the selection icons, they could be a bit better in my opinion. The neon bar seems too harsh. Something that blends into the text would look nice, like this. The .osk is not archive correctly. A lot of people seem to make this mistake. Go into the folder itself and archive it. If you archive the actual folder, it puts a folder inside a folder.

Here is a list of fonts that Luminance has used in case you want to change anything.
Caviar Dreams
Champagne & Limousines
Elegant Light
Origin

I believe right now I have reduced the fonts to the first two.

Keep up the good work.

I like it, very nice skin!

Love it please keep it going you're onto something good.

Hi everyone !

Sorry about the lack of activity lately, I've been somewhat busy and only logged into osu a few times, and I will still have things to do until maybe ~25th july.
I will however try to keep an eye on this thread and fix any problems that may occur with the skin.

Thank you very much for taking time to try my skin and for all the feedback, good ideas are always welcome
(Special thanks to Uruoki for the very detailed reply '-')

I will edit the main post with a small update (1.1.1) :
- Changed the selection icons (on the bottom of songselect)
- Added skinning of the "Selection Options" icon (** As I was told this is useless, it will be removed in the next updates **)
- Added a menu background (I will most likely change it soon though)
- Repackaged the .osk to fix some potential issues

----- Answers to previous posts -----

- Gurc - wrote:

The cursor looks a bit like the Aesthetic one though

It actually does ô_ô
It was made from scratch though, and I thought this was the most visible shape I could give it. Might change it one day e_e

[ Pingu ] wrote:

Please add a menu-background for supporters ^^

As I am not supporter myself, I have no idea how this will look, but I added one. I will most likely buy a 1 month supporter to ensure the skin also looks good for these nice fellas.

Icek- wrote:

remove the dots from the name of the .osk else it wont work

Done. However, it worked 100% fine for me when I tested the .osk (win7 64bits)
Could you please tell me what os you are using so that I can set up a VM and run some tests ?

Uruoki wrote:

Spinner would be better with some kind of changing visual so players know how fast they are spinning. Something that is not the RPM meter. Luminance uses the middle of the spinner.

I can't really think of something that would fit in and not be too distracting given the shape of the current spinner ._.
That is however a nice idea and I will try to find something by the next update.

Uruoki wrote:

Sliderfollowcircle should be skinned

but.. but.. D:

Kheryo wrote:

Slider follow circle

Yes, that is an extra. I would really recommend playing without it but the choice is yours to take, and I'd rather have you use a follow circle fitted for this skin than the default one

Also, even though I think the slider follow circle is not annoying on most hard/insane maps, it becomes incredibly distracting to see it expand and retract multiple times per second when you have to tap many small sliders on higher level maps, so I got used to playing without it. But it is still available in the extra folder for those who want it '-'

Uruoki wrote:

I personally find the score/health bar too bright and distracting from the playfield. I suggest #b5b6b8, it is a bit more neutral.

Maybe it is somewhat bright due to the thickness of the HP bar, but I think I will stick with it for now, as I want to keep this skin in a dark tone with some white, colors being used only for hitcircles and menu/songselect UI. Thank you very much for this feedback though, I will look for a way to improve the HP bar ^^

Uruoki wrote:

For the selection icons, they could be a bit better in my opinion. The neon bar seems too harsh. Something that blends into the text would look nice, like this.

Thank you very much, I changed the selection icons to look more smooth (they look like your modded one now).

Uruoki wrote:

The .osk is not archive correctly. A lot of people seem to make this mistake. Go into the folder itself and archive it. If you archive the actual folder, it puts a folder inside a folder.

I didn't know ._.
More people are likely to fall for this trap in the future, as the way I packaged it was following the instructions of the skinning tutorial :

MLGnom wrote:

9. Creating .osk files

All that the user will need to do is open the file with osu!.
You need to create .osk (osu! skin) file. You can create one from the skin selection screen, or manually with the steps below.

Creating .osk file with WinRAR

Creating .osk file with 7-ZIP

In short : You need to create .zip archive and simply change extension to .osk

Since it worked fine for me when installing the .osk of my skin, I assumed it would work fine for others too. Maybe are we using different operating systems ? (Mine is win7 x64)
However I will now archive the folder the way you explained, thank you very much for pointing that out

Also thanks for the fonts, these are exactly what I was looking for, I will try to see if they fit better than the current one ^^

Kheryo wrote:

- Added skinning of the "Selection Options" icon (I assume that is a supporter thing since I saw it here and there but never ingame)

Don't post BS please, that is not supporter only. That was still skinnable 2 months ago. With the new song selection layout, it was gone and disabled since the options from there (showing ranked/ unranked) got implemented into the gouping filters.

ReddScorn wrote:

Kheryo wrote:

- Added skinning of the "Selection Options" icon (I assume that is a supporter thing since I saw it here and there but never ingame)

Don't post BS please, that is not supporter only. That was still skinnable 2 months ago. With the new song selection layout, it was gone and disabled since the options from there (showing ranked/ unranked) got implemented into the gouping filters.

Calm down please, I simply didn't know where or when it appeared, and since it was in the template, I didn't want an additional icon to not be skinned as that would not look nice.
Thank you however for telling me what it is, I will remove it in the next updates.
But please don't get angry for such little things ._.

I love this!

Any update? cx

Hi, sorry about the lack of updates. I'm currently running through a few health troubles (will have surgery again tomorrow)
I however plan on skinning taiko soon.
I also figured out what made the skin hard to read in standard : thick approach circles, and blurry hitcircle outlines. I will try to address these within the next update aswell.
Once again, thank you for using my skin, for the wonderful feedback, and for your patience


14/08/2014 quick update (not worthy of a bump so I edit this) :
The skin blurryness has been addressed (I reworked most elements of std gameplay and it is now much easier to read). This update will be released with taiko skinning. A few more days and everything should be done.
(Still no homemade sounds though .-.)

Thanks for the update, and I hope surgery goes well for you

Honestly though, I'm having fine doing moderately difficult Insane songs with this skin.

this skin is the greatest thing ever

improved my accuracy by a ton, sliderbreaks are pretty much no more

This is a great looking skin, but it's way too dark for me to comfortably play with.