The system is still in beta. Please be patient with bugs, and join the discord to see updates or leave feedback.
This is a 1v1 matchmaking bot. The system will attempt to match you with an opponent of similar skill. The bot has full support for all game modes.
Pools are taken from recently released mappacks. The newest pack is used each week, and packs are kept for two weeks before being retired.
The system will assign a rating for each mod to each difficulty in the mappack. When a match is played the pool used will be created from maps/mods where the rating is close to the players' ratings.
After a match finishes, player ratings are updated based on the match winner. Map ratings are updated based on the score each player got.
The method for tiebreakers is still under review. Currently one player will ban two extra maps and the other picks one. This is subject to change.
The bot also offers a pve "endless" mode. A similar idea to endless in Mario Maker. You start with 50 lives, the bot picks a song for you, and you will gain or lose up to 5 lives based on your score. Failing the map will lose a flat 10 lives in addition to the score-based count.
The same mod won't be picked twice in a row, except nm which is unrestricted. You can also spend one life to skip a map.
The website is designed to function fully independently from the bot. As a leaderboard system, any 1v1 match or mp lobby can be submitted, as long as you yourself were a player in the lobby.
Commands
The bot is running on my account, pending enough usage for osu support to give me a dedicated bot account. Message `Malikil` with these commands.
PvP:
PvP:
- !q [mode] - Join queue for the selected game mode. ALL modes are available (osu, ctb, taiko, mania, 4k, or 7k)
- !unq - Leave the queue
- !r - When a match is found, indicate you're ready to play
- !invite or !lobby - If you leave a match in progress, receive a new invite
- !info - In #multiplayer. Get a link to the mappool, and see the score, who's pick, and available maps
- nm# - In #multiplayer. Pick or ban a map.
- !pve [mode] - Create an endless lobby for the game mode. ALL modes (osu, ctb, taiko, mania) are available. Use 4k or 7k as the mode to limit selected mania maps, or simply 'mania' to allow any key count.
- skip - In #multiplayer. Spend one life to skip the current song.
I've seen a couple of solo queue bots released and eventually fade over the years. Most notably for me personally were the Solo Queue Ladder (osu! SQL) from back in 2016, and Matchmaking Thing from somewhat more recently than that. I'm willing to say, for SQL especially, that without them I would not have involved myself in the tournament scene, and I would not have gotten to the level of play I did.
I can also see a world where, without these solo queue matchmaking bots, I wouldn't still be coming back to at least check in on the game over (wtf) 10 years later.
It was so sad to see SQL get taken offline. Though admittedly it's fair enough, spending time to keep things like pools updated is hard. So one of the core values I wanted to achieve was to design something where even if I abandoned osu tomorrow, the system would still carry on, and people could still use it.
EDIT
So apparently RomAI is a thing. They've got a wonderful system set up, and a large enough player population to actually find similarly skilled opponents most of the time.
I do still see a niche that I'm able to fill here though:
- Multi mode: ctb, taiko, and mania are all available.
- New maps: Mappacks are made with recently ranked maps. So the maps played here will be relatively fresh.
- Repeatability: There must be a limited number of pools on romai, but I haven't encountered it yet. Playing maps and being consistent on them is a major tournament aspect, rather than just sightreading all the time.