There's a number of maps with nice custom hitsounding but completely failed at matching the custom samples to the right names. For example, if a tambourine sound moved to the file normal-hitfinish.wav, any players playing without custom hitsounds on will hear the default (or their skinned) hitfinish instead. As a player who plays without custom hitsounds on, this can become ridiculously annoying. Some of the worst offenders:

1. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1169701&m=0
2. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/1607120
3. https://osu.ppy.sh/b/965243&m=0

Is there anything that can be added to the ranking criteria to ensure that custom samples are mapped to the correct names?

EDIT: wording is a bit different from what I intended to say, I don't really want this to be a strict hitsounding organization guide but rather just making sure people aren't ignorant when it comes to choosing which of whistle clap or finish to choose in order to make gameplay experience better for those who play without custom samples.

maps are made to be played as they are - if you use custom hitsounding that makes the map sound annoying the obvious solution would be not using custom hitsounding over the actual hitsounding of the maps

I'm talking about having a requirement in the ranking criteria that hitsounds should sound right even with default samples, so it's not annoying to players who have beatmap samples disabled.

i know

read what i wrote - maps are made to be played as they were intended to be played, if you chose to manually modify your gameplay experience then how should someone possibly account for whatever you chose

And in addition, many hitsounds cannot be name after something like "whistles", "claps", etc.

Even so, it shouldn't make sense for someone to , for example, name all their custom samples "hitfinish" when there are better matches (see Logic Agent's map that I linked where he skins whistles to finish).

If some sounds can't be matched exactly, they should try their best. I'm only talking about the case where there's clearly a better option and the mapper doesn't choose it, so it sounds bad.

If you want to value the map experience, you can do so through the editor, as many mappers do already. But when playing, I find custom samples to be auxiliary rather than necessary.

Yes, some mappers can replace the default hitsounds accordingly, however, that doesn't mean it's possible for all other mappers. If so, there would be additional burden for mappers to satisfy those who'd like to disable hitsounds, which would be a pain as mappers endeavor to provide best hitsound experience for players and some are even begging them not to disable hitsounds. So it is recommended that players put on the hitsounds, not mappers cater to players insisting on their own hitsounds in the skin.

And also, if such a rule/guideline existed, there would be too many ambiguous cases and exceptions due to various use of hitsounds, and thus it would work terribly to the extent of execution, as you even need to take the variety of players' skin into consideration, which goes too far.

Your average player is not going to be snooping around files in the osu! editor.

Just generally playing the beatmap.
This generally shouldn't be a problem. Because it's a lot simpler for amateur beatmappers to understand hitsounding better.

- [ Nizzy ] - wrote:

Your average player is not going to be snooping around files in the osu! editor.

Right, so for an average player who plays without custom samples, there is nothing you could do about a poorly hitsounded map.

Okoratu wrote:

maps are made to be played as they were intended to be played, if you chose to manually modify your gameplay experience then how should someone possibly account for whatever you chose

I'm not talking about changing the gameplay experience that the mappers had intended for players; players who play with custom samples on can still enjoy the map's hitsounding to its fullest, but mappers shouldn't be ignorant towards players who don't play with custom samples. This should not be that hard, just check your samples before you hitsound.

I'm not asking mappers to change how they hitsound, I'm just asking for the samples to be used on the right hitsounds.

so you want to prevent people from using:
drum based custom sounds as finish, hitnormal or whistle in the editor.
cymbal custom sounds as clap, whistle or hitnormal in the editor.
....

so in a map that the mapper wants two types of cymbal sounds besides the default ones and if he is not using any default whistle in the map, he will not be allowed to use the 2nd cymbal sound as soft-hitwhistle. he would be forced to use it as soft-hitfinish2

this would usually create a more consistent hitsounding for people that disables beatmap's custom hitsounds. this is what you mean, right?

I think really the only thing he doesn't want is having a hitsound that is very frequently used in a map tied to hitfinish, because default, as well as most skins, will have a finisher on the hitfinish hitsound, thus making it a bunch of finishers everywhere for anyone not playing with the map's hitsounds.
Whistles or claps don't really have the same problem as they're meant to be used often.

It would be a nice guideline I think, but making it a rule means if you're doing some more complicated hitsounding the mapper has to go to the TSP a billion times, which isn't really fun.

Simple wording for a possible guideline could be something like "Avoid putting frequently used custom hitsounds on the hitfinish samples, as most skins' (including the default skin) hitfinish hitsounds are loud and meant as finishers" or something or other.

just a no for this proposal in 2 sentences :
- it makes hitsounding even less intuitive because you can't use your own organisation to make your hitsounds and increase the time to make them.

if i have a song that use mostly drum electronic sounds and you add keysounding, you must use drum sampleset for the hitnormal drums and soft additions on whistle for the keysounding with this proposal. ok it's fine but if i add a kick and snare hitsound, i'm forced to name them on drum hitsounds cuz they are electronics drums then you want to merge the keysounds and the hitsounds ????? it's impossible to merge them with this proposal

-how you name a hitsound that have multiples hitsounds at once ?

i want to use 4 hitsounds : still taking the example above, keysounding for the whistle, and electronics drums for the clap/finish. i want to use a extra finish with all the hitsounds but the editor is very limited on the usage of 3 hitsounds at once only. i have 2 choices, replacing the hitnormal for this but i would be unrankable (not sure) with the "keysounding rule", you have to avoid keysounding without hitnormal support or merging it with a current used hitsounds but you can't name it correctly cuz for players who force their custom hitsounds, they might think there is something missing in the hitsounds.

it increase the size of the beatmap folder with the hitsound organisation but it's less of a issue
overall i think people would just ignore this proposal cuz every map with a lot of custom hitsounding would break this guideline too often due to the forced "organisation" that this proposal have and adding that the forced custom hitsounds are not enabled by default in the options

Hey everyone thanks for the input

I agree with CXu that a guideline would be the best option for this kind of proposal because it's often unclear what the most appropriate way to do something is but more clear when something is done inappropriately.

In response to realy0_, I'd like to think that the ranking criteria exists to ensure quality for players, not to maximize convenience for mappers. Additionally, programs exist to organize keysounding for you to make sure this scenario of naming hitsounds by hand isn't a problem. With regards to using multiple hitsounds, if such a sound was so loud and important that it justifies having over 3 hitsounds at a time, I'd say that wouldn't violate the guideline I proposed.

To close, I'm not trying to propose some ridiculously strict hitsounding specification, just making sure that people aren't ignorant of the fact that they're using hitsounds wrongly and then mistakenly skin whistle to finish without any reasoning. Please don't see this as an attack towards carefully, well hitsounded maps.

a guideline would be fine, so the community could just take their time to adapt to it.

would this work?

Drum Hitfinish is a big kick and can be used often without seeming out of place

same meaning, more understandable wording:

Avoid replacing the hit finish in soft/normal samplesets with frequently used custom hit sound samples. This can sound obnoxious for anyone disabling beatmap hit sounds. Replacing hit whistles/claps is recommended because those samples are used more often.

I would be okay with a guideline, but i doubt many people would follow it.

Some people put alot of effort to make really nice hitsounds and if you just replace it with your clickly clacky skin hitsounds? well that's your problem.

I think you misunderstand, this isn't about restricting custom sample usage, it's about picking which hitsound to map it to. I'll use the first example again: in this map, the whistle hitsound is mapped to soft finish. As someone who plays without custom samples, it's incredibly jarring to hear soft finish on the down beat of every measure. A more appropriate choice would be to map it to soft whistle. This might be a trivial
choice for mappers but it makes such a big difference for players. I'd suggest you play the map with and without custom samples and see for yourself what I mean.

As for the reason I play with "clickly clacky skin hitsounds" all the time, since hitsounds give feedback about player input, it's a lot easier for me to get feedback using hitsounds from a skin that I've been playing with for several years than it is for me to learn a different hitsound set for every map that I play. I can't speak for everyone out there but I'm confident that there are many who share my sentiments.

Thanks pishi, that sentence pretty much sums up what I had to say.

Well, my opinion would be biased here since i dislike people who put on custom hitsounds, it just ruins the hard work and the map :S

If the player chooses not to use the map's custom skin, hitsounds, or storyboards that is their fault. They are choosing not to fully experience the map. As long as not having one of these enabled doesn't give a disadvantage to the player, I don't see anything wrong with the mapper implementing them how they see fit. Pretty much: its the players fault they are hearing loud annoying hitsounds, not the mappers. At least thats how I feel.

With more and more people just ignoring hitsounds by default I think this change is for the better?
But then again that limits a bunch of hitsounding options that rely on having 4 samples play at the same time because with hitnormals and the other 2 samples you get a max of 3

unless you violate this guideline you wouldnt be able to hitsound such maps

if it's something completely avoidable like the map linked by OP I can see why no leniency should be given to them though.

maybe the wording needs a softener?

Okoratu wrote:

But then again that limits a bunch of hitsounding options that rely on having 4 samples play at the same time

sounds like a valid reason to break the guideline (or mapper could use drum sampleset idk). wording around an exception that's in so few maps doesn't seem worth it

yea ok fair

this has been applied in https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/1651 and will be amended to the ranking criteria in about 5 days

if anyone has concerns about the change, now is the time to show them!

I have a question about this Guideline.

Where would we draw the line?
What exactly would we be looking for and how do we judge? As one example, what if a song has a common bass/kick on whistle/clap, but then also has a third frequent other sound that's mixed in with them from time to time where a usual finish wouldnt suit? Is that fine or nah? How frequent is "frequent"? Feels a bit arbitrary to me.

As example; This Hitsound diff at 01:01:591 (19,20,21,22,23,24,25)

I guess you could duplicate the hitsounds from soft-whatever1 to soft-whaterever2 and soft-whatever3, but it seems really unnecessary to have every hitsound double or three times, additional with the greenline spam you'd have to add just for those few odd ones. Switching to another sampleset, like from soft to drum, wouldnt work either for obvious reasons.

I feel like this just puts a lot of unnecessary work and confusion towards a mapper just because someone doesnt want to listen to hitsounds that are confirmed to suit the song.


Edit:

deadcode wrote:

it's incredibly jarring to hear soft finish on the down beat of every measure. A more appropriate choice would be to map it to soft whistle.

The Koi no Uta linked by op follows a pretty similar case to my example, probably even more extreme to the point where I feel like it'd be beyond painful to work around with greenlines and sampleset changes, since both whistle and clap are used as even more frequent hitsounds compared to the finish.

if i were hitsounding your map, i'd rename soft-whistles to drum-finishes and soft-finishes to drum-whistles. allows you to use whistles normally and when bass/whistle overlap, you'd just need to use drum additions (so no green line spam or duplicating samples more than you already are)

i don't think it's any harder to do if you hitsound with it in mind from the start, but i can understand how it's annoying to switch after you've already hitsounded

---

"how frequent is enough to matter"

there's no straight answer because every map is different, but if you're using default normal/soft finish as a replacement for how you'd normally use whistles or express bass/snare drums, chances are you're crossing the vague line. i could add a sentence like that to the end of the guideline so it's clearer

That sentence was added, https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/1651 merged