FLASHLIGHT!? LMAO
Indroduction
Flashlight was a mod I always wanted to learn, but I never knew how to get started with it and there was no guide out there that would talk about flashlight. It sucks to see such a unique mod to be unpopular and it's very hard to find someone to teach you how to get into it. That's why i'm creating this guide for everyone to see. I wanna help people to be able to start playing flashlight. Even if i'm not a flashlight god like Ekoro or Mesita. By following this guide, you'll be able to get into the flashlight game and learn that it's easier than you think. Some people think that people can play flashlight because they have good memory and it's true to some extent, but it's not that they naturally have good memory but instead it's because they PLAY flashlight. Yes, apparently the answer to everything is to play more. Even though, finding the most effective tactic is important. Anyone can learn flashlight and it's not that complicated. So turn the page (or in this case scroll the page) and discover the secrets to being a flashlight pro!
Understanding Flashlight
I know most people just want to jump in and make a sick flashlight play, but let me tell you that you're most likely never gonna FC a 4-star TV-sized map without any flashlight experience. Some of you might not even know that reaching 100 and 200 combo with flashlight will make the visible area of your flashlight smaller (I know I didn't). The idea is that when learning anything new, you have to treat yourself as a beginner. A skilled-based game like osu! has no shortcuts so it's best to start with something easy, but first, let me explain the two parts that determines your flashlight skill.
Sightread: Your ability to sightread flashlight. majority of people are sightread-flashlight players and it's easier to learn to sightread rather then memorizing. If you look at any 1-star map, they are filled with HDHRDTFL scores done by sightread-flashlight players and all of them make little to no effort in memorizing. They rely on their sightread skills and the better your sightreading, the higher the star difficulty you will be able to play without memorizing anything. although if your not gonna memorize anything, it would be difficult to sightread stuff above 3 stars.
Memory: Your ability to memorize maps. The better your memory the faster you memorize. Being naturally good at memorizing isn't important but instead consistently memorizing new maps will make your flashlight memory more efficient. It takes time to develope your memory since at first you will take a long time just to memorize something 30 seconds long. But the more you play flashlight, you will be able to memorize quickly and handle longer sessions.
Most people will lean towards one side of these two skills. Personally i'm more of a memory player as I rather make flashy FL plays rather where most sightread-flashlight players enjoy to top 50/top 1 farm. The lower the star-difficulty, the more you would rely on sightreading and higher star-difficulties relies more on memory. For example a 1-star map would probably be 95% sightread and 5% memory while a 5-star map (about 1:30 in length) would be around 15% sightread and 85% memory.
Tap into the Basics
Now just where do you start? based on the type of player you want to be either sightread or memory you might wanna start different places. I will mostly be talking about memory as it's a more complicated skill to understand then sightread.
If you just wanna learn to sightread and farm 1-2 star maps, you just simply need to start off by playing low difficulties. The flashlight is bright enough to see where the circles are since there are very small spacing in low star difficulties. Just click from note to note. If you can't find the next note you might wanna whip your cursor around to scout for that pesky circle. It's worth mentioning that old maps are the easiest kinds of maps to sightread since old maps follow the rhythm in a simple way and it's mapped in a way that makes the circles very visible with flashlight. Lastly, it's highly recommended to use a skin that has followpoints because it helps a lot with sightreading especially when there's two circles that are far apart within the same combo. Other than that, Sightreading with flashlight is pretty easy to learn.
Now with memory, it's more difficult to learn. Even if it's more difficult to learn, it doesn't mean that it's complicated. It's best to start with something short and easy, typically a 30 second map that you can easily FC with no-mod. At first you wanna get used to aiming in the dark and memorizing patterns. reaching 200 combo for the first few times with flashlight will throw you off as you will see what it seems like virtually nothing. You wanna be able to aim without hesitation even when you can't see anything. Try to memorize whole patterns and be able to tap to them. Being able to tap to patterns is more important than being able to aim. You're gonna retry a lot and with each retry you wanna try to make progress in the map. For example if your best combo was 205, then you want to go and beat that combo. It doesn't matter if you beat it by 206 or 220 you just wanna make progress. Lastly, play without hidden first. I remember trying to memorize a map with hidden on which made things much harder. Playing without hidden first is so much better as you would be able to sightread some parts because the approach circle helps indicate where the next circle is. After being able to FC some short maps and you wanna move to some longer stuff, there are more strategies to use to play longer maps.
Memorization Methods
I always found retrying a map from start to end a waste of time because that would mean if you're trying to memorize the end of the map, you would have to waste time playing through the beginning of the map which you're already practiced plenty of times. In most cases you would want to practice the end with 200 combo flashlight. So if you missed in the middle of the map, you'll be stuck with 0 combo flashlight which isn't what you want. Because of this, people would use different methods to memorize maps like. Keep in mind that everyone has their own way of memorizing maps since almost every memory-flashlight player is self taught. Most people constantly retries a map slowly memorizing the map, others create custom difficulties , and someone like NerO plays a map with no-mod over and over again somehow memorizing it that way. You should find what works best for you. The next part will talk about using custom difficulties.
Using Custom Difficulties
By using custom difficulties, you can choose where you want to practice. All you have to do is to go to the editor of the map you're trying to memorize, delete all the parts from the beginning up to the part you want to practice on, and select "create new difficulty". Now you can start practicing the exact part you need to memorize! except one problem. Playing your new custom difficulty will leave you with 0 combo flashlight which is a big deal. 0 combo and 200 combo flashlight feels widely different and so you need to be able to practice with 200 combo. But no worrys, this could be easily solved by using a buzz slider. By going to the editor and putting a 1/16 buzz slider that last for what ever combo you want (usually 200) you can start practicing with 200 combo flashlight. This is what -GN did here. Using custom difficulties should be easy to understand and it's easy to do whatever you want with it. Custom difficulties are most useful on long maps as something 5 minutes long seems terrifying to memorize without creating a custom difficulty. Rather a 30 second map would most likely never need a custom diffculty, although don't hesitate on creating a difficulty when trying to memorize something less then a minute long. If you play flashlight enough, you wouldn't need to create custom diffculties when memorizing short maps.
My Way of Playing Flashlight
The Backwards Theory
From here on i've already covered the important parts of flashlight and the rest of this guide is my opinion, but continue reading if you wanna see how I do things. Memorizing a map from start to finish had always felt very inefficient for me. Replaying the same parts that i've already mastered over and over again was a waste of time and one day I thought; what if instead of memorizing a map from start to finish, but instead memorized the map backwards? That moment I came up with a genius method that would help me memorize maps faster and longer. But Mr.Voo-roop-roop what kind of hacking program do you use to memorize a flippin' map backwards? Now don't take it litterally, is not that the song is gonna play backwards or anything. You're simply creating custom difficulties that skips the beginning of the map so you can choose to focus on the end. The advantage of this is that after you memorized the end, you will move on to memorizing the middle or beginning and now you can choose whether or not you want to continue playing through the end. Here's how it works.
Let's say you're trying to memorize a map. First you'll FC the LAST 100 combo of the map. Congrats! you FC'ed the last 100 combo that means you should have no problem with FCing the last 110 combo, It's only 10 combo more no big deal. Great! now you FC'ed the last 110 combo that means FCing the last 120 combo should be a breeze. This continues on until you finally FC'ed the whole map. Some people might argue "can't it be the same when playing the beginning of the map first? If I could memorize the first 100 combo then I could memorize the first 110 combo right?" I mean yeah that's absoulutely true, but doing it backwards is just more efficient and let me explain why. let's say you completely memorized the last 150 combo and you passed the last 250 combo of the map but still need more practice on the remaining 100 combo you didn't memorized yet. You would create a custom difficulty with the last 280 combo adding 30 new combo to learn and you could practice the remaining 100 combo you partially-memorized before playing the last 150 combo you already memorized. If you break it down, playing the map this way proritizes New Combo>Partially-Memorized Combo>Memorized Combo in order. If you were to memorize a map playing from the beginning instead, it would proritize Memorized Combo>Partially-Memorized Combo>New Combo In this order. Now which of these sounds better? Would you rather proritize learning new combo or proritize playing the combo you've already memorized. Of course you would rather proritize learning new combo! Playing a map from the beginning forces you to play the parts you've already memorized, before you can reach the parts you need practice on. Take some time to think about what i've just said and understand why memorizing a map backwards is better than memorizing a map from the beginning. You might be confused to what the heck I just said which is natural. explaining things like this can get confusing and whether you understand or not, move on to the next part which is where you will teach you how to use this method step by step and it will help you understand better.
The Vararaup Method
Let me just start off by showing my step by step process of memorizing a map instead of explaining with confusing text.
1. Pass the map with FL
2. Create custom difficulty that covers the last 200 combo (combo differs)
3. FC that difficulty with FL
4. Create custom diffculty that adds around 50 more combo from previous difficulty (combo differs)
5. Repeat step 3 and 4 until I can FC whole map.
This method is using the backwards theory (after all the backwards theory and my method are technically the same thing). Remember when I said if you can FC the last 100 combo of the map, then you can FC last 110 combo of the map. This is the same thing except i'm not going up by 10 combo, i'm going up by around 50 combo each difficulty because I feel like that's the most efficient for me. I'm also starting from around the last 200 combo because FC'ing anything that doesn't get to 200 combo flashlight is comfortable. If you were to use this method and you decide to go up by a enormous 200 combo each difficulty you've FC'ed, that would mean your memorization skills would need to be pretty decent to handle memorizing 200 new combo each time, and chances are your memory is garbage (atleast that's what you might believe). It's best to make sure that you're gonna make progress. That's why you want to add a small amount of combo for each difficulty you FC'ed but at the same time not add to little because if you went up by only 10 combo for each difficulty, that would mean you'll be creating new custom difficulties non-stop.
Here's a accurate process of me FC'ing this map with FL as a example.
Max Combo: 602 | Length: 1:39
1. Passed map with FL
2. FC'ed last 146 combo (last 146 combo was the chorus) using custom difficulty
3. FC'ed last 181 combo (adding 35 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
4. FC'ed last 272 combo (adding 90 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
5. FC'ed last 339 combo (adding 67 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
6. FC'ed last 485 combo (adding 146 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
7. FC'ed last 602 combooh wait that's the whole map (adding 118 new combo) finally FC'ing the map
In all, I've created a total amount of 5 custom difficulties and the last difficulty was the whole map. This was the exact process of me memorizing this map by creating custom difficulties.
From here on i've already covered the important parts of flashlight and the rest of this guide is my opinion, but continue reading if you wanna see how I do things. Memorizing a map from start to finish had always felt very inefficient for me. Replaying the same parts that i've already mastered over and over again was a waste of time and one day I thought; what if instead of memorizing a map from start to finish, but instead memorized the map backwards? That moment I came up with a genius method that would help me memorize maps faster and longer. But Mr.Voo-roop-roop what kind of hacking program do you use to memorize a flippin' map backwards? Now don't take it litterally, is not that the song is gonna play backwards or anything. You're simply creating custom difficulties that skips the beginning of the map so you can choose to focus on the end. The advantage of this is that after you memorized the end, you will move on to memorizing the middle or beginning and now you can choose whether or not you want to continue playing through the end. Here's how it works.
Let's say you're trying to memorize a map. First you'll FC the LAST 100 combo of the map. Congrats! you FC'ed the last 100 combo that means you should have no problem with FCing the last 110 combo, It's only 10 combo more no big deal. Great! now you FC'ed the last 110 combo that means FCing the last 120 combo should be a breeze. This continues on until you finally FC'ed the whole map. Some people might argue "can't it be the same when playing the beginning of the map first? If I could memorize the first 100 combo then I could memorize the first 110 combo right?" I mean yeah that's absoulutely true, but doing it backwards is just more efficient and let me explain why. let's say you completely memorized the last 150 combo and you passed the last 250 combo of the map but still need more practice on the remaining 100 combo you didn't memorized yet. You would create a custom difficulty with the last 280 combo adding 30 new combo to learn and you could practice the remaining 100 combo you partially-memorized before playing the last 150 combo you already memorized. If you break it down, playing the map this way proritizes New Combo>Partially-Memorized Combo>Memorized Combo in order. If you were to memorize a map playing from the beginning instead, it would proritize Memorized Combo>Partially-Memorized Combo>New Combo In this order. Now which of these sounds better? Would you rather proritize learning new combo or proritize playing the combo you've already memorized. Of course you would rather proritize learning new combo! Playing a map from the beginning forces you to play the parts you've already memorized, before you can reach the parts you need practice on. Take some time to think about what i've just said and understand why memorizing a map backwards is better than memorizing a map from the beginning. You might be confused to what the heck I just said which is natural. explaining things like this can get confusing and whether you understand or not, move on to the next part which is where you will teach you how to use this method step by step and it will help you understand better.
The Vararaup Method
Let me just start off by showing my step by step process of memorizing a map instead of explaining with confusing text.
2. Create custom difficulty that covers the last 200 combo (combo differs)
3. FC that difficulty with FL
4. Create custom diffculty that adds around 50 more combo from previous difficulty (combo differs)
5. Repeat step 3 and 4 until I can FC whole map.
This method is using the backwards theory (after all the backwards theory and my method are technically the same thing). Remember when I said if you can FC the last 100 combo of the map, then you can FC last 110 combo of the map. This is the same thing except i'm not going up by 10 combo, i'm going up by around 50 combo each difficulty because I feel like that's the most efficient for me. I'm also starting from around the last 200 combo because FC'ing anything that doesn't get to 200 combo flashlight is comfortable. If you were to use this method and you decide to go up by a enormous 200 combo each difficulty you've FC'ed, that would mean your memorization skills would need to be pretty decent to handle memorizing 200 new combo each time, and chances are your memory is garbage (atleast that's what you might believe). It's best to make sure that you're gonna make progress. That's why you want to add a small amount of combo for each difficulty you FC'ed but at the same time not add to little because if you went up by only 10 combo for each difficulty, that would mean you'll be creating new custom difficulties non-stop.
Here's a accurate process of me FC'ing this map with FL as a example.
2. FC'ed last 146 combo (last 146 combo was the chorus) using custom difficulty
3. FC'ed last 181 combo (adding 35 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
4. FC'ed last 272 combo (adding 90 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
5. FC'ed last 339 combo (adding 67 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
6. FC'ed last 485 combo (adding 146 new combo from previous difficulty) using custom difficulty
7. FC'ed last 602 combo
In all, I've created a total amount of 5 custom difficulties and the last difficulty was the whole map. This was the exact process of me memorizing this map by creating custom difficulties.
Conclusion
That's it! That was my in-depth guide on flashlight. Writing this guide actually suprised on how much frickin' text I wrote for just one mod. If you actually are planning to be a flashlight player then that would be great. We need more flashlight players in this game. The way flashlight is weighted in pp makes flashlight not worth learning. If they buffed flashlight it would be broken on short maps. I don't know if there would be much questions to ask me since I covered so much already, but feel free to ask me questions.
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