hi

this will replace the "Audio" section of the current ranking criteria. it's basically the content you already know with irrelevant stuff removed, incorrect stuff adjusted, and wording modernized

see the proposal here: https://gist.github.com/pishifat/423d28fadf16f8090feb7f61fa00bc38

this will be up for discussion for about 1 week, then it'll be revised if necessary

audio.md wrote:

Active hitsounds must use the .wav file format. Active hitsounds are those that reach their peak impact exactly when they are clicked. .mp3 files have slight delays, and therefore are reserved only for longer passive hitsounds, such as ambient noises. .ogg files are deprecated and no longer used.

What do you exactly want to say with that? It feels like you're allowing .ogg files although they're not being used. Better to add something like using .ogg files is not allowed to avoid missunderstandings.

audio.md wrote:

Storyboarded hitsounds cannot be used as replacements for active hitsounds. These give an inaccurate form of player feedback. Storyboarded hitsounds in other situations are acceptable, but discouraged. osu!mania is exempt from this rule.

What kind of other situations? I mean, if you're allowing it, better to know what possibilities the mappers has. Otherwise better to prohibit it

iYiyo wrote:

What do you exactly want to say with that? It feels like you're allowing .ogg files although they're not being used. Better to add something like using .ogg files is not allowed to avoid missunderstandings.

Like mp3s, he's describing it as a file type and why it isn't used. Seems clear enough to me.

iYiyo wrote:

What kind of other situations? I mean, if you're allowing it, better to know what possibilities the mappers has. Otherwise better to prohibit it

During breaks and/or additive hitsounding during sliderbodies (typically on long sliders like without the usage of increased tickrate). Example: https://osu.ppy.sh/b/27168 01:14:988 -

Some additional concerns I have:

If you do not map the first 30% of your map's audio file, it must be cut. This is longer than the outro time because it's assumed that players will listen to more of a song's intro.

Not really seeing why this is an issue when the general criteria has file size as a guideline removed, I consider it unnecessarily restrictive as a rule and should be moved to being a guideline to account for stuff like pre-gameplay storyboards like https://osu.ppy.sh/b/263070 and ambient parts of the song that don't support engaging gameplay such as https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1302335&m=0. At the very least though, please make the wording consistent with the rule about cutting the end of a map's audio file.

A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file available rather than ripping a file from a streaming video website. Songs should be normalized and not include clipping.

I think the last two sentences should be swapped, since the second sentence seems more like general advice while the third is an actual description of what "reasonable quality" entails. Actually though, since there's a bit rate limitation you could just use the third sentence as the rule rather than having to define what quality is.

Can we add something about how hitsounds shouldn't be too long, this hitsound is 6 seconds and 2.4mb, but cutting out the end which is almost silent reduces the file size by a megabyte.
Looking at this set I was modding, doing that would cut the total non-mp3 size of the map by 30-40%

missing something that requires clickable objects to have active hitsounds, current draft allows mappers to use passive ones exclusively

I gonna have to agree with Halfslashed about the cases with sb and all with the 30% intro rule


There is songs that has intros literally doesn't support to be mapped but at the same time, I felt it be wrong to cut off such as it were some vocals or some instrumental that just feel so part of the song that cutting it out in some form would feel like there is something missing and it not like there isn't a skip button if nobody wishes to hear it

this is just a unnecessary restriction to future maps imo and should just be a guideline and only apply to maps where there truly isn't a need for such a long intro such as a whole lot of nothing or when it isn't not significant enough to where it be miss if one wishes to save space

other than that I don't have that much of a problem

Halfslashed wrote:

A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file available rather than ripping a file from a streaming video website. Songs should be normalized and not include clipping.

I think the last two sentences should be swapped, since the second sentence seems more like general advice while the third is an actual description of what "reasonable quality" entails. Actually though, since there's a bit rate limitation you could just use the third sentence as the rule rather than having to define what quality is.

Don't forget that clipping may be part of music arrangement, or part of bad production in origin source with no better available. Also normalizing should be as software option not an obligation, afaik planned in lazer. While it makes some kind of sense if you have only similar in nature tracks different kind of music may not benefit from everything being normalized, also there are may be possible quality losses as you also increase noise levels, some kind of intermodulation distortions or whatever shit in rare cases. Thus I suggest to remove last sentence "Songs should be normalized and not include clipping." and keep just reasonable quality thing.

iYiyo wrote:

audio.md wrote:

Active hitsounds must use the .wav file format. Active hitsounds are those that reach their peak impact exactly when they are clicked. .mp3 files have slight delays, and therefore are reserved only for longer passive hitsounds, such as ambient noises. .ogg files are deprecated and no longer used.

What do you exactly want to say with that? It feels like you're allowing .ogg files although they're not being used. Better to add something like using .ogg files is not allowed to avoid missunderstandings.

audio.md wrote:

Storyboarded hitsounds cannot be used as replacements for active hitsounds. These give an inaccurate form of player feedback. Storyboarded hitsounds in other situations are acceptable, but discouraged. osu!mania is exempt from this rule.

What kind of other situations? I mean, if you're allowing it, better to know what possibilities the mappers has. Otherwise better to prohibit it

-changed "used" to "allowed" in the .ogg sentence
-don't think rc needs to explain where sb hitsounds are allowed if the one unallowed situation is defined already

Halfslashed wrote:

If you do not map the first 30% of your map's audio file, it must be cut. This is longer than the outro time because it's assumed that players will listen to more of a song's intro.

Not really seeing why this is an issue when the general criteria has file size as a guideline removed, I consider it unnecessarily restrictive as a rule and should be moved to being a guideline to account for stuff like pre-gameplay storyboards like https://osu.ppy.sh/b/263070 and ambient parts of the song that don't support engaging gameplay such as https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1302335&m=0. At the very least though, please make the wording consistent with the rule about cutting the end of a map's audio file.

A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file available rather than ripping a file from a streaming video website. Songs should be normalized and not include clipping.

I think the last two sentences should be swapped, since the second sentence seems more like general advice while the third is an actual description of what "reasonable quality" entails. Actually though, since there's a bit rate limitation you could just use the third sentence as the rule rather than having to define what quality is.

-removed the intro time thing. realized it doesnt work when there's a few featured artist songs that promote breaking it lol. haven't seen issues where people map only the end of a song while the beginning is mappable, so removal shouldnt cause harm eitehr
-sieg sort of explained why it's better to not emphasize the last sentence of the quality rule. wording was changed according to that

Sinnoh wrote:

Can we add something about how hitsounds shouldn't be too long, this hitsound is 6 seconds and 2.4mb, but cutting out the end which is almost silent reduces the file size by a megabyte.
Looking at this set I was modding, doing that would cut the total non-mp3 size of the map by 30-40%

for the same reason as the bg filesize limit thing, don't think this would be necessary. if you see people using stupidly high filesizes you can tell them to adjust though

UndeadCapulet wrote:

missing something that requires clickable objects to have active hitsounds, current draft allows mappers to use passive ones exclusively

added All clicked objects must have active hitsounds or active hitnormal samples.

Sieg wrote:

Don't forget that clipping may be part of music arrangement, or part of bad production in origin source with no better available. Also normalizing should be as software option not an obligation, afaik planned in lazer. While it makes some kind of sense if you have only similar in nature tracks different kind of music may not benefit from everything being normalized, also there are may be possible quality losses as you also increase noise levels, some kind of intermodulation distortions or whatever shit in rare cases. Thus I suggest to remove last sentence "Songs should be normalized and not include clipping." and keep just reasonable quality thing.

adjusted wording to account for that kind of composition

gonna leave this up for a while longer for people to doublecheck/point out anything potentially missed

Proposal wrote:

Maps must be hitsounded. While every game mode has its own techniques, effective hitsounds in all modes accent the most important parts of the music.

what does "hitsounded" exactly mean? i think it would be cool if we could have something about encouraging the usage of actual hitsounds (finish, whistle, clap) instead of changing the hitnormal. would be useful for drawing a line on people who use the so-called keysounding and avoid silly stuff like hitsounding with green lines with different samples on every note.

having it as a guideline would be enough in my opinion.

Kagetsu wrote:

what does "hitsounded" exactly mean? i think it would be cool if we could have something about encouraging the usage of actual hitsounds (finish, whistle, clap) instead of changing the hitnormal. would be useful for drawing a line on people who use the so-called keysounding and avoid silly stuff like hitsounding with green lines with different samples on every note.

having it as a guideline would be enough in my opinion.

I think this would cause a problem with mania guys since from what i've heard, they do most of their hitsounding on keysounding, but I'll let one of them comment on that. Taiko would also likely have an issue with that from what I know, since I don't think they even have hitsounding, but again someone more familiar from their game mode would probably be able to add to this.

I think the specification about active hitsounds is good enough - there's nothing wrong with the hitsounding with green lines in the way you mentioned either, and additions don't always fit the song well, so enforcing them on an RC level isn't a great idea.

Active hitsounds: Hitsounds that reach their peak impact exactly when they are clicked.

What does "peak impact" mean? Peak impact in volume, frequency, etc? I will guess it is meant to be "sound the player would want feedback from", and I will run with that to show why its meaning needs to be defined or certain rules be adjusted.

All clicked objects must have active hitsounds or active hitnormal samples.

If peak impact means "a sound the player would want feedback from", then for mania you wouldn't want feedback for every note in streams. It would be just noise then. So in that case you would have the completely silent hitsounds? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of my assumed meaning of "peak impact" then? What would be the point in applying that to some 1k+ hitobjects?

you're saying it's normal for mania to not have hitsound feedback for every circle/sliderhead right?

im not familiar with mania at all so if this is a rule that doesn't apply to the mode, it can be adjusted.

I actually made a thread about it a few months back here: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/687270

The censuses is that some players use hitsounds for feedback and other wouldn't want them. I think having feedback for every 1/2 meter or so to keep track of rhythm would be a good compromise, at least for higher dense stuff. For less dense maps where the notes intervals are sparse enough to allow to hear hitsounds in a meaningful manner, I think hitsounding like in osu!std would work.

Halfslashed wrote:

I think this would cause a problem with mania guys since from what i've heard, they do most of their hitsounding on keysounding, but I'll let one of them comment on that. Taiko would also likely have an issue with that from what I know, since I don't think they even have hitsounding, but again someone more familiar from their game mode would probably be able to add to this.

I think the specification about active hitsounds is good enough - there's nothing wrong with the hitsounding with green lines in the way you mentioned either, and additions don't always fit the song well, so enforcing them on an RC level isn't a great idea.

just to clarify, i was mainly referring to osu standard maps so the idea can always be modified to work on specific modes only, also the idea i proposed is by no means trying to disallow keysounding but rather set a standard way to do it.

i believe the purpose of hitnormals should be give players feedback on the thing they're playing so it's usually a bad idea to use the hitnormal slot as actual hitsounds, since it could blend too much with the music (examples vary from using a snares/kicsk on hitnormals to things like using piano notes). it's usually a better idea to have something standing out on the background and using hitsounds in the additions slot (because they're actually meant to be additions)

on the second thing you comment, there are actually some few points that hitsounding with green lines / avoid the usage of additions cause, although they're "secondary", hitsounding like that would result in converted taiko maps be red notes only which i believe is something we should avoid since it's wrong from a design standpoint given the fact that osu! maps are meant to be playable in all modes and not exclusive to osu!standard. it's true that we should prioritize the mode we're aiming the map will be playable on, but if there exist an alternative that achieves the same with better results, i don't think we should be giving up on that idea.

using hitsounds that are meant to be additions on the hitnormal slot is something we should avoid because it goes against the purpose additions were made for. things that are designed to work with hitsounds such as custom skins or even if the beatmaps we're making now are ported to work in a new client could end up messing with future implementations. we could even go further and guide the mappers to use the slots properly if we go deeper on this point (like using cymbals in the finish slot), although that would be probably too much to expect to be honest.

i should also mention that this is really a super common thing and would represent no big changes to the way people are used to hitsound their maps.

anyway, i could elaborate more on this but it would be more or less the same thing.

Well, I'm agree with Abraker concern regarding hitsound in mania.

Generally having constant dense 1/4 jumpstream or even chordstream in higher key while having each of the note can be audible on its own prove to be more detrimental rather than helpful. I'm really sure that even the minority of mania players that actually rely on hitsound won't even bother hearing feedback on every dense 1/4 or even 1/8 stream for their accuracy, and instead, they will rely on existent hitsound to make them keep track on their timing (I mean like clap, whistle, snare, finish, etc, you name it) , but make each of hitnormal be audible even in high level mania map is overkill and too nitpicky to actually be useful. Because let's be honest, how many mania player actually rely on hitnormal when they have to concentrate hitting really dense pattern anyway?

There's also a fact that mania has some distinct unique things when we compared it with other mode. Most if not all mania mapper will map something that normally won't be presented in other mode, because mania itself is the mode with the most dense pattern while reaching high level difficulty (have really high NPS), no other gamemode does this. And with that in mind, it's actually logical if mania has separated rules featuring and allowing silent hitnormal to be present, as long as the existent hitsound keeps to be audible to some extent (clap, whistle, etc.)

Recently our mode has massive DQ events because we must follow the rule that actually supposed to be presented for STD mode (each object must be audible), so having leniency regarding this issues will be much better for mania.

"A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file"
"A mapset’s audio file must be no lower than 128kbps and no higher than 192kbps."

In some cases these rules can contradict, as the highest quality file legally given out can be 328kbs which will then require the mapper to export the mp3 as 192kbs anyways. I'd say remove the 2nd part of the first rule mentioned as mappers might read that as "It's the highest quality and not ripped so it's okay it's above 192kbs"

"Every .wav file must be at least 100ms long to prevent issues with soundcards."

What exactly is a 'soundcard?' I don't see any other use of this word in the criteria so this rule might be overlooked simply because mappers don't know what it is xp I feel a definition of what a 'soundcard' is should be included or at least worded differently so newer mappers understand what that means.

Bubblun wrote:

"A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file"
"A mapset’s audio file must be no lower than 128kbps and no higher than 192kbps."

In some cases these rules can contradict, as the highest quality file legally given out can be 328kbs which will then require the mapper to export the mp3 as 192kbs anyways. I'd say remove the 2nd part of the first rule mentioned as mappers might read that as "It's the highest quality and not ripped so it's okay it's above 192kbs"

"Every .wav file must be at least 100ms long to prevent issues with soundcards."

What exactly is a 'soundcard?' I don't see any other use of this word in the criteria so this rule might be overlooked simply because mappers don't know what it is xp I feel a definition of what a 'soundcard' is should be included or at least worded differently so newer mappers understand what that means.

Feels redundant to explain it but older systems don't have built-in soundcards. Nowadays video cards provide audio hardware built-in and external soundcards are optional (i.e. Sound Blaster).

Nitrous wrote:

Feels redundant to explain it but older systems don't have built-in soundcards. Nowadays video cards provide audio hardware built-in and external soundcards are optional (i.e. Sound Blaster).

I don't think older systems will be supported much longer judging the they way osu!lazer is headed. A common video card will be a must.

Kagetsu wrote:

what does "hitsounded" exactly mean? i think it would be cool if we could have something about encouraging the usage of actual hitsounds (finish, whistle, clap) instead of changing the hitnormal. would be useful for drawing a line on people who use the so-called keysounding and avoid silly stuff like hitsounding with green lines with different samples on every note.

having it as a guideline would be enough in my opinion.

i think this may be more appropriate for the standard-specific ranking criteria. not appropriate for taiko and mania

abraker wrote:

If peak impact means "a sound the player would want feedback from", then for mania you wouldn't want feedback for every note in streams.

excluded mania from the rule. i hope mania rc is done some time soon

Bubblun wrote:

"A song's audio file must be of reasonable quality. Try to find the highest quality source file"
"A mapset’s audio file must be no lower than 128kbps and no higher than 192kbps."

In some cases these rules can contradict, as the highest quality file legally given out can be 328kbs which will then require the mapper to export the mp3 as 192kbs anyways. I'd say remove the 2nd part of the first rule mentioned as mappers might read that as "It's the highest quality and not ripped so it's okay it's above 192kbs"

"Every .wav file must be at least 100ms long to prevent issues with soundcards."

What exactly is a 'soundcard?' I don't see any other use of this word in the criteria so this rule might be overlooked simply because mappers don't know what it is xp I feel a definition of what a 'soundcard' is should be included or at least worded differently so newer mappers understand what that means.

- considering featured artist songs are available at a max of 192kbps, the rc should stick to that as a max despite the sound quality concern.
- nitrous explained the second point. rule may be removed eventually, though accounting for people with bad hardware with this rule isn't gonna harm anyone


pr coming soon

applied in https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/1164

.ogg files are deprecated and no longer allowed.

I don't see the point from adding this, since the rule already says "Active hitsounds must use the .wav file format." or in mp3 for really specific hitsounds.
It's already enough obvious than you don't have to use anything else than these two audio extentions.

Nozhomi wrote:

.ogg files are deprecated and no longer allowed.

I don't see the point from adding this, since the rule already says "Active hitsounds must use the .wav file format." or in mp3 for really specific hitsounds.
It's already enough obvious than you don't have to use anything else than these two audio extentions.

It can be less redundant if you specify why other formats are not allowed. Saying "this must be like so" conveys a rule, but saying "this must be so and not so because reasons" conveys a rule in an more understanding manner.

merged