osu! UCI is proud to present the osu! UCI Summer League 2015 (OSL)! For unfamiliar with us, osu! UCI is a new up and coming club at the University of California, Irvine. We formed back in November 2014 with a slow start but we're been picking up a lot of steam since then. Check us out at http://osuuci.com/ ! It's been an exhausting first year as a club with trying to get things off the ground and helping to organize Press Start LAN, but all of us here at the club have loved it every step of the way. After planning Press Start, we realized that we loved planning these sort of events out and finding ways to bring the community together. We've spent the last couple weeks discussing and planning the OSL, and we're now open for registrations. To sign-up check out the link here: http://osuuci.com/tournaments/osl/ and fill out the google form. Sign-up's are open until June 30th so be sure to sign up asap! We're currently looking at running around a 32 man tourney but we're always willing to modify our plans and adjust them accordingly if we get more applicants than we expected. Since the club is operating out of California, the match times will be operated on a PDT time zone. Because of this we are encouraging mainly North American players to enter due to time zone constraints, but if an entrant from a different continent is willing to make the time slots we'd be more than happy to have them on board as well.
For the map pools, check out the full list here. Each week 3 maps from each mod pick and one tie breaker will be chosen to construct the songs to be played for the upcoming weekend.
The objective in the league is to try to go one step beyond the traditional single or double elimination tournament format that osu! tournaments usually see. OSL will be run under a Swiss tournament format, featuring multiple groups, giving all of our entrants a chance to not only compete, but to improve as well. The participants will be split into several groups, much like how other sports do, and will compete against each other starting from there. The 10 week Swiss rounds will give every player a chance to scout out their upcoming opponents in their respective groups and do a bit of research on their own. What map picks can you use to give yourself an edge? How can you work on your own play to even out the enemy's advantage? And most importantly, how can you prepare for the inevitable rematch? Following the swiss rounds, the next two weeks will be dedicated to going from the top 16 all the way down to crowning the champion of OSL 2015.
The full tournament will span 12 weeks from July 11th to September 27th. The Swiss matches will be played in 30 minute time slots on Saturday and Sunday from 8-10PM PDT (GMT-7), featuring best of 3's. A massive map pool will be released on June 15th and each of the weeks of the Swiss rounds will have a handful of maps drawn from the larger pool to be played. To make things more interesting, every several weeks the Swiss round maps will feature themes. These could be anything from community related, such as "Broken Dreams" (Maps with high scores that were later on reset due to disqualification such as Pensamento and Super Nuko World) to musically themed maps such as "DnB" or "Touhou". Players will have one week's notice as to what maps they will be available to be played. After a week's break, playoffs start September 26th and September 27th, featuring the top 16 from the Swiss rounds to be seeded in the playoff bracket. From that point on the tournament is to be played as single elimination as a best of 5. Following that the semi-finals will be played as a best of 7 and the grand finals as a best of 9. Each stage will have map pools constructed for them accordingly.
During the play hours, some matches will overlap but we plan to feature at least one song of every match via stream. Be sure to follow us at http://www.twitch.tv/osuuci every weekend after OSL starts from 8-10 PM PDT to cheer on your favorites!
The top 8 of OSL will be featured on the club's website at http://osuuci.com/tournaments/osl/ (Check there for additional information as well) and the top three of OSL will be receiving osu! Supporter as well as products from our club's first proud sponsort, Huion! More details to come regarding prizing soon, so keep updated!
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to message me directly on reddit, or on osu! (ign is Jim). The rest of the tournament staff: Max (osuuci dot com), Victor ( lalipo), and Aaron (Xenocidel) are also more than capable of helping you out with any concerns you may have. Hope to see you competing at OSL!
Best of luck!