trig0n

Welcome to my profile!

When you look at other profiles, they're colorful, full of different content which is enjoyable to watch. My profile, however, is different. Not only profile image is a black square, I'll write here a wall of text. Why? Because my content is targetted only to people who really want to read something about me. I don't care about other people. However, some useful information can be find below. Please, don't read everything other than that if you don't want to read it.

About me

I'm 21 (as of 2024) and I play osu!catch since December 2013 when I was 10. Yes, I've been playing for half of my life. My other interests are mathematics and cubing: solving Rubik's cube with as few moves as possible. I achieved something in cubing as I'm Polish and European Champion 2022 and I was second at World Championship 2023. I'm currently studying maths at university and I'm associating my future with it.

I have severe issues with my eyes since I was born. The shape of my eyes is neither orb nor ellipsoid. It's very complicated which caused my vision to be bad. I always look only with one eye as my right eye isn't able to read. Moreover, my left eye isn't in a good condition too with glaucoma, keratopathy, nystagmus etc. and also a massive nearsightness. I am lucky that my vision isn't getting worse so I could get used to it. However, it still make me different from other people. I write about it because it has an impact on osu!catch, especially on "horizontal reading" at high AR (high spacing is impossible for me). I'm practicing it but I just have some limitations.

Why am I playing osu!catch?

It is a question that, in my opinion, should be answered by every CtB player active for many years. The most crucial thing is: do you really enjoy it? Why? Is it the best thing you could do for hundreds of hours?

It isn't obvious but, at this point, I'm sure the answer is YES in my case.

I quit 3 times throughout my career. But I was always coming back, even after months. I felt burnt out, I thought I was wasting my time. But no, I wasn't. Every time I wanted to quit completely, something told me that I'm missing something.

But... what? First thing is that CtB gives me a unique experience. There is no other thing in the world that can give me this feeling of sudden satisfaction after FCing a map. It may look weird but I convince you that I'm usually very calm and almost nothing makes me react in any way. What about CtB? Well, maybe I'll make a video someday... I love the feeling of stress while FCing the map, I'm very happy that, after years of practice, I'm finally close to be free from chokes. In fact, after some FCs, my heart beats so rapidly that I have to take a break to be able to continue playing.

It isn't only about something I feel for a few minutes per session. It goes deeper. osu! is a perfect way to de-stress. For example, I love to play right before my exams. Not only exams: I use this game to "reset" my brain. While learning or doing maths exercises, it's easy to get stuck because your brain is overloaded. Playing CtB for, let's say, an hour per day during exam periods works well for me. After that, I'm more likely to learn quickly. While playing the game, my entire body is immersed in the gameplay so it can finally rest and get ready to new challenges. Of course, it's only possible when I'm fully focused on the game. This is one of the reasons why I value FCs so much. Without FC, I can't feel this pressure and satisfaction.

However, there are many other situations in life that can be compared to FCimg maps. It's very useful to be able to finish something without any mistake. It's funny that I was quite bad at it. I'm much better now, I don't know what's the exact reason but I think osu! makes me more experienced.

The next point deserves a whole new section in this essay.

Music

osu! is a rhythm game. It's all about music and beatmaps that can be considered as some kind of an art. I'm lucky to play a gamemode with arguably the most enjoyable music (at least with my taste). I have a weird skill: listening for a song a few times is enough for me to be able to fully remember it (unless it's very long and complicated). Moreover, I'm constantly playing music in my mind. That's why I never use earphones etc. I don't need to do it.

Which music? It's easy to guess: music from CtB! With considering maps as an art, I can feel the music even more. I can enjoy it even better with rhythmic clicking and a sense of a challenge. Of course, it can be achieved by playing different rhythm games. However, in my case, pure listening to music which doesn't involve me in any way doesn't satisfy me that much.

For me, music I hear in CtB is better than popular music listened by other people. There are many beautiful songs in osu!catch (there is a reason why I add "catch" here, there is a reason why I hate many converts). My favourite music genre is artcore: something I met thanks to this game and something I can listen to while playing.

For reasons explained above, music is very important to me. I always have some music in my mind, no matter if I want to or not. Songs from CtB are often so good that I enjoy it. Of course, there are worse ones (look at my top plays, lol).

One more thing to note: I play without hitsounds (100% music, 0% hitsounds). Music sounds worse with them and they don't help me while playing (I play better with an enjoyable music).

Community

It's tough to write about it. I remember times when I truly hated the community. It was in mid 2022, after CWC which was my first tournament ever. But I don't want to talk about it here.

What I want to write is that I can say that the community is divided. Not every player is the same, not every group of players behave in the same way. From my experience: I have a hard time dealing with some people. However, when I went deaper, I met some valuable people. They are usually more quiet so it's harder to meet them. But it's worth it. Sadly, there are still some players that make this community awful, there are dramas, controversies, bans etc. But it happens in every community in some way so don't be afraid of that. You'll meet many rude people in your life and you have to be prepared for that.


Lastly, osu! is a game you can play however you want. You can farm pp or play tournaments to feel a sense of competition. You can play with your friends (or players you know only via internet) to calm down. You can chill with a good music. You can become an "artist" and try to "visualise sounds" in the mapping editor. There are many other things to do. You can choose what to do in the particular session. And the best thing is that you are always improving while playing.

I think I explained why I keep playing osu!catch. I really enjoy it. Moreover, I became good at it and I earned some recognition. At this point, starting a new hobby etc. would be harder because improvment wouldn't be free so I prefer playing catch instead.

I also love when you send me some challenges (I generally feel that there is no "proper" score I should achieve, I can just send what I'm able to do at this moment). I also very like when you read my Tweets, this text, comment and like them.

CWC 2024

I somehow became on of the best active players. After years of being mediocre, I invested my time to improve and I eventually reached rank #7, my long-term goal. There was only one more goal I had in mind. Despite my aversion to playing in tournaments, I was dreaming about the CWC podium. Back in 2017, I wanted to play in Polish CWC roster. But I was too bad and I didn't want to improve that fast.

Finally, in 2024, my dream came true. We were third. Thank you, my teammates!

But I'm not writing it just to boast about my achievements. The more interesting is how much did I learn during my short tournament career.

The most important skill I could practice is to cooperate with a team. For someone without such experience in life that was quite difficult. Especially given that the atmosphere wasn't the best at times. The ability to communicate within your team and to know what may be difficult to understand by the other person is crucial. The skill of stopping arguments and to keep everyone motivated is something completely different than I've been doing before. I learnt very much and, which may sounds strange, I like that there were some problems. Because I learnt how to solve them.

CWC was a marathon. After reaching top3, I was exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. Luckily, the feeling of achieving my goal was very rewarding and I don't regret anything. The finals weekend (long matches against Chile and Canada, but also 2 hard exams on Friday and Saturday that I somehow passed with max grades) was the most intense weekend of my life and I won't forget it.

Tournaments taught me how to prepare for the "test", how to perform well from the beginning to the end, how to be calm despite huge adrenalin rush which makes my scores better.

I'm happy to gain this experience. However, because of how tiring tournaments are, I decided to finish my tournament career.

My playstyle and setup

To mid 2023 (including CWC and reaching #1 PL): iMac 2017. After the change of equipment, everything became easier. Earlier, any edge dashes were almost pixel-perfect, I experienced lag spikes and reading was much harder (ok, low AR was easier a bit).
I was also well-known for playing with a default skin with changed colours (top30 with it is a nice achievement). I had to change it after replacing my iMac with a new monitor with higher refresh rate but worse colours at the same time.
I also played on the membrane keyboard to mid 2024 including CWC.

Now, I play on Windows 10.
Keyboard: Wooting two HE
Monitor: AOC Gaming Q24G2A/BK 23.8" 2560x1440px 165Hz IPS 1 ms
Skin: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AijTaIGGK5LN0wbCbn-9sUBrFSQnXM6_ - it was originally only for high AR but I realised that changing skin while playing causes me to miss in random places. I consider coming back to default skin on low AR maps.
Dash: shift, I click with both index and middle fingers of my left hand, main force is focused on tha middle finger
Left/right: arrows (index and ring fingers of my right hand)

Movement and #trig0nacc

#trig0nacc refers to my low accuracy while FCing some maps, expecially +HR or +DT. For years, I was thinking about optimal movement, mainly for speed and stamina. Moreover, I struggled to read high AR (AR9.6 was too high in early 2020) so I was sometimes starting panicking because I didn't know what I should do.

I think that ignoring droplets is a good practice in that case. Less density at higher AR makes everything easier to read. Now, I have no idea if a map that I FCed has any droplets.

I follow the "minimum movement" rule. I want to use arrows as rarely as possible. I mainly operate with my dash button. I prefer going left, pass the droplet of the straight slider, and to the right in the good place, than going left, standing and going right. Same applies to curved sliders that "forces" player to release their dash button. I don't do it and I lose acc. But all those players who care more about acc have much more chokes so I don't care. And my stamina isn't good so I really need to work on it, one solution is to minimise number of inputs done with my right hand.

Achievements I'm proud of

1. Top7 global, the best peak rank among Polish players,
2. CWC 2024 3rd place,
3. community award for the best CWC 2024 player
4. 7th person to have 100 >700pp scores,
5. dominating lists of top Polish pp plays
6. many scores that made me happy,
7. this:

My goals

I'm proud to announce that I achieved all my main goals.

Now, I'm focusing on mappooling (note that I'm only a beginner, but I'll improve at it!) and just enjoying the game. I also have some scores to set - we'll see if I'll be able to do it.

Links

1. Twitter: https://twitter.com/trig0n_osu
2. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@trig0n_osu
3. Spreadsheet with all my good plays: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hZ29QDejVuK6B6Lxl_mfWKVE6fyBRmu3uYVsYEcn3n4/edit#gid=0
4. Spreadsheet with best Polish plays and some stats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qLbmYdfz14zeoytudwHZQzFN7J04GaFvt5f2reRV4zU/edit?ouid=118043711000391696101&usp=sheets_home&ths=true
5. Essay written after reaching CWC top6: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hwC4uAKo1uZ6zOwP-uyMqwhCtYnifu0nufVcG0gKZMw/edit

Thank you for reading!