Good luck then ^^
I also use horizontal reading, but sometimes I will subconciously switch to vertical reading if I find it pretty obvious that there's multiple patterns going on at the same time, though I can only do this with 2 patterns at once atm and it's quite sloppy xP

I've only ever played vertical reading in music games but still so hard D:

I don't think that I ever even have reflected on what kind of reading I use lol. I just kinda' read or something. XD

I usually press keys based on the music...not on the notes' distance from the judgement bar it usually helps but sometimes when I've been playing a certain song many times i tend to anticipate the sound in my mind and that would give me 200's XD (this helped me a lot in Technika,Cytus,etc.)

Yeah, I get horizontal reading now. I Actually do horizontal reading. Vertical reading doesn't make sense to me no matter how much I read it haha.

Hm it's not really something easy to explain since it's not something people actually stop to think about. When you walk you don't think about every single muscle you move in your body let alone think about whether you're contacting or expanding them. But understanding this could help in figuring out where you could cut off movements to be more efficient in your actions. It's pretty much the same thing here/

When you're reading horizontally, it's reading everything in sequential steps. "" This, then this, then this, then that"". You don't take the time to break up everything in individual patterns and instead read the whole thing as a whole.

Vertical reading you kind of look ahead and try to make sense of the different patterns coming at you, then playing the multiple patterns you've identified simultaneously as they reach the judgment line. Instead of the "" This, then this, then this, then that"" mindset of horizontal reading, it's more of a "" This and this and that, then, this and that and this"". Or, ""These 3 patterns, then, these 3 patterns".

Drace wrote:

Hm it's not really something easy to explain since it's not something people actually stop to think about. When you walk you don't think about every single muscle you move in your body let alone think about whether you're contacting or expanding them. But understanding this could help in figuring out where you could cut off movements to be more efficient in your actions. It's pretty much the same thing here/

When you're reading horizontally, it's reading everything in sequential steps. "" This, then this, then this, then that"". You don't take the time to break up everything in individual patterns and instead read the whole thing as a whole.

Vertical reading you kind of look ahead and try to make sense of the different patterns coming at you, then playing the multiple patterns you've identified simultaneously as they reach the judgment line. Instead of the "" This, then this, then this, then that"" mindset of horizontal reading, it's more of a "" This and this and that, then, this and that and this"". Or, ""These 3 patterns, then, these 3 patterns".

I guess I'm in reality doing vertical reading then. But when I come to the point at which I can't devide them notes into patterns I just kinda' lose control and start spamming all over the place, lol. At least until I get to a part which I once again can read like that.

Drace what you're describing there as "vertical reading" is basically how your brain's pattern matching works. You build up a collection of small patterns that your brain recognizes on instinct, and then you break more complicated patterns into collections of smaller ones, usually in multiple levels. Its also a way to do "clustering", as it's sometimes called.

Clustering is a memory technique. It's often mentioned that your brain can only remember 7 things at once, but everyone knows you can easily recall things like 10 digit phone numbers (or however many digits they are where everyone lives) even if they're longer than 7. How do you do it? You break it into sections. Here in Canada, a typical phone number might be something like (684) 721-8632. Your brain would break it into 3 sections: 684, 721, and 8632. Each of those is less than 7 digits each, and there are less than 7 of those clumps there. when you have a whole bunch of notes on screen, this has to get a bit more complicated, but the theory is the same.

You break large patterns into smaller ones, and those smaller ones into even smaller ones over and over. This is all totally subconscious, but as far as we know this is basically how your brain actually processes things.

I think the reason people tend to read "horizontally" is because when you have so many things to try to pay attention to at once, you try to decide how to use your attention, and I think most people try to consciously read each "horizontal pattern" (all the notes that happen at the same time) and try to ignore the other notes around it.

The way I read is that as notes pass through the area I concentrate on, I build a mental picture of the entire pattern and identify all the "sub-patterns" while the notes are moving fro the area I focus on towards the judgement bar. By building a mental image I can identify the patterns, compare them with the music and use that to predict the upcoming patterns. It's a bit hard to describe exactly.

You're still clustering in horizontal reading, it's just sequential instead of simultaneous.



Take a sequence of stairs that go throughout a long section with chords here and there. Reading it vertically you will read/analyze and play the whole stair while simultaneously doing the chords as they come down. Reading it horizontally however you won't analyze the stairs any further than the change in pattern (the chord). The outcome will be the following for each readings;

Vertical => [(Stair) and (chord then chord then chord)]



Horizontal => [ stair then chord then stair then chord then stair then chord ] (Though stairs will most likely be partial or broken at this point)



Both readings utilizes patterns players have learned throughout their playing, but the way they go about analyzing and playing them are fundamentally different. A recent example I've stumbled upon recently was how stepmania colourizes their notes based on beat instead of lane. Like 1/1 notes will be one colour, 1/2 another, 1/4 another, 1/3 another etc etc. This really enforces horizontal reading due to how the notes are.

Clustering isn't really necessary in horizontal reading, at least for 7k and lower (although you're right, it likely happens for everyone except complete novices).

I would call how I read a combination of horizontal and vertical reading. As the line of notes passes by, I read it horizontally, and as my mental image of the pattern builds, I can begin predicting and seeing the vertical patterns, so I see both horizontal and vertical representations of the patterns simultaneously. Well, except on stuff like REALLY dense BMSs where I can't identify the patterns in any term aside from as a series of chords, or a series of chords with bursts mixed into them.

And while stepmania encourages horizontal reading, I could still do vertical reading there (not that there's much need for it in 4k). I used the note coloring as a timing cue, and I always saw it as a separate "layer of information" on top of the column/location/music.

I'll be honest now: I just hit the buttons and hope for the best.

The Muffin Man wrote:

I just hit the buttons and hope for the best.

same. lol

I actually got better at those LNs But I'm not that good still, but defintely better than 8 days ago from that post.

That's great! It's always feels awesome to see improvements.

Even a 1% score improvement on a song I tried hard on feels so rewarding nowadays, haha.

Xcrypt wrote:

Even a 1% score improvement on a song I tried hard on feels so rewarding nowadays, haha.

I know that feeling lol. I always run songs the best the first time I play them as well. It's like I start fearing some parts of the song the next time like "oh right this was that hard part".

When I keep playing a map I can barely combo, I eventually start making the very same mistakes in the same places.. It's like my mind has been polluted with muscle memory and I can't actually read the map anymore .-. Even if I get more skilled, I can't improve at maps I remember. And since mania has very little maps, I'm pretty much stuck unless I stop playing for a few weeks... I'm not good enough for BMS converts and almost all o2jam converts are low quality or mistimed.
And before anyone suggests it, I dislike random mod because it ruins patterns :/ There's very little chance for patterns i'm bad at to appear.

I think I mostly avoid that issue because I have so few plays on most maps I play. I might manage to rack up 20-30 plays on my most played maps, but I tend to search through my collection and play lots of random things since I have a huge collection of o2jam charts.

/me F2 -> Mania charts -> play, :3

ArcherLove wrote:

/me F2 -> Mania charts -> play, :3

This is how you improve lol

Talk much play less think alot, do nothing. Just play

Tear wrote:

I'm not good enough for BMS converts and almost all o2jam converts are low quality or mistimed.

What's with all the o2j hate... I admit, some of them are mistimed, but in my experience that doesn't occur too often. What I dislike though is there are a lot of ghost notes, and the song difficulity is often not very well distributed across the map. Still, there are tons of good o2j charts aswell. I like BMS as much as the other guy but I think some o2j charts can be more intriguing since they usually have a larger variety of patterns.

I like O2Jam maps because they're completely different from Mania maps, but I also dislike some for the same reason.

I use Random occasionally, mainly on osu!standard auto-converts. Strangely, I can do better on 'streams' (quick single notes?) when they aren't stairs. As in, go and try Almagest with Random on. I did rather a lot better on timing.

The Muffin Man wrote:

I like O2Jam maps because they're completely different from Mania maps, but I also dislike some for the same reason.

I use Random occasionally, mainly on osu!standard auto-converts. Strangely, I can do better on 'streams' (quick single notes?) when they aren't stairs. As in, go and try Almagest with Random on. I did rather a lot better on timing.

Same for me. I tend to time my hits better when the streams are random, but this also heavily depends on BPM. On a medium or low BPM song I know I prefer playing random streams than stairs, whereas on gigh BPM songs I prefer playing stairs rather than random streams.

I've been recommended o2jam converts mapped by Glenn Joseph, those seem to be good quality so far Except SV changes are done with redlines and I can't see notes under all those horizontal lines x_x I guess I should disable those for converts..

Yeah, the way o2jam's song format works, there's no way to properly use inherited sections. You'd have to figure out how to tell the difference between a speed change that's for effect, and one that's a legitimate speed change in the song. I'm not sure why the lines would be hiding the notes though, I actually prefer the use of uninherited sections because osu tells you the BPM range, most common BPM, and you get visual cues based on measure lines when you play the song, so you always know there are speed changes, and can read them easier when playing (assuming the measure lines don't cover your notes).

Glad you're enjoying GJ's maps. Rubythespamer/Apenix, yumel the lightbringer and FF Ken Yu all have some maps at lower levels as well (and are all pretty good quality), though I think they all have fewer low level difficulties then GJ has. Kuliner also has good low level diffs (on the ones I have uploaded, his easy diffs range from level 5 to level 13, and normals 15 to 24)

It's hard to play like that x_x And in motion there's several copies of each line because I can't afford a 180Hz screen

And I'm not *that* bad, I play level 20-25 now

hm I've always liked how the converts did that with the beat lines for purpose of sightreading SVs. And very few ETs play on anything higher than 60hz, shouldn't come as a problem (though getting would certainly be a good thing haha)

The lines definitely help me sightread SVs. And doubled lines aren't that bad. I get "ghost" notes at high scroll speeds, which are harder to read.

For the names "Runningman" and "Trilling Stairs", why not use the names "Trees" or "Ladders"

I picked up both terms when I used to play Guitar Hero more often than not.

A ladder is exactly what the trilling stairs is portrayed as, and can work both ascending and descending.
A tree is typically a three note stair (I.E. 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 2 1), but I feel like either that name would fit better than running man.

Anyways, great guide. I read this at school when I had free time and I now know what I should work on exactly.

I don't understand why this isn't sticked yet... It's pretty much essential reading for anyone willing to take up this mode. It's much more important than videos of someone playing.

Agreed. this really should be stickied.

This helped me find maps, +1 for sticky. Plus the patterns section is wonderful.

Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm just glad to be of help ^^

New section added -> Fine-tuning mania to suite your hit-timings

I encourage everyone to give what ever feedback they may have in hopes to improve this guide for everyone o/

always play in 7K. then the lower keys will come at you naturally.

I've been an o2jam player for a while, and stopped for about a year or two. despite never playing 4K 5K 6K, I can "read" them just fine.

My problem is there's little available ranked maps meant for Mania. and they're not physically as tiring as its STD counterpart. I've lost some chunks of skills due to this.

What about 8k? 9k? 12k?? 16k???? D:

jubeat D: ??? ARCADE GAME D: !?!??!

Thanks for the timing part Drace, I'll see how mine turns out when playing on my mech (I could do it with my lappy's kb but it randomly lags when registering keys...).

I must be a freak of nature. I can notice offsets that are off by a few ms (like 2-3ms off) with an unstable rate that's almost always above 200 <_<

I've been playing rhythm games for like... since I'm... 12? 11? I'm almost 20 now. Left O2jam after starting for almost a year, and then somewhere at 16 I think I started playing BMIIDX (Actually LR2 but just the same thing). In Double Mode. On a keyboard. Gosh it was hard. I never knew it could actually be done. Nowadays I play both games, more inclined on BMIIDX since it just feels like a more challenging game (16keys ftw).

Thing is that I constantly felt as if I'm reaching my own skill cap, and there's not much room for improvement, months of playing, maybe almost a year, and I'm still at the same place as before, I improve in only some songs, but there are just some patterns that won't cut it for me. It could possibly come from me not having an expanded list of songs that I was able to play with LR2 because there's not much songs for that game anymore. I haven't even seen anyone who would play it like I do since I first started. But then who knows, I just started out playing osu! again because of the mania mode, see how it works when I try out all the cool stuff. P*light is awesome btw.

Now I have to say that your body condition actually plays a huge role in performance, well at least for me. There are some times that I just felt like my fingers aren't going as I wanted them to, but then there are some times, where everything.... just goes so smoothly. I could play a lot of songs and pull off strings of melodies I never knew I could. My laptop does lag out a few times making me break combos, but that doesn't happen so often, I just wait it out and retry so it's kind of fine.


What's jackhammering anyway? Edit: Ah just read the Advanced section, I see. I'm probably around the Novice -> Advanced borderline. I thought you meant something as hammering your feet down according to the rhythm and play along. I do it a lot when I like the song, and a few times I'd stop playing just because my feet was so tired.

It's pretty common to hit these so called "skill walls". To me and many others improvements in the upper levels has been done in small bursts. Feels like you're capped out for a couple months then bam, magical day where you beat everything. Constant improvement for a couple days until you hit your next wall, rinse and repeat.

Personally, I don't like "sticking around" in areas I don't see much improvement. Like if there's a handful of songs I can't beat my top anymore on, time for new songs. If I can't clear anything harder than I already have, I'll go back to easier stuff and aim for full combos. When I can't full combo anything harder than I already have, I move on to the mid-range, trying to ace songs I have Bs on, trying to S songs I have A on. When I hit a wall in bms, I move on to LNs. I bounce around my whole "skill spectrum" and usually when I get back to where I started, there's enough improvement in me to push a little further.

An other good thing to have is motivation, simply saying you want to be better at times isn't enough to push yourself to surpass your own abilities. I've seen people improve much faster when they set "achievable" goals one after the other; "Alright this week I'll S this bad boy...!!". Or two people of the same level range acting like rivals can really fuel up greatly fastened improvement.

All in all, just keep a positive attitude and play for fun. The wall you're facing is bound to crumble eventually!

Entozer wrote:

TRUST. BELIEVE. SUCCEEDED