Compose tab

Compose editor for osu! in Windowed mode

Compose for osu!mania using osu!screenshot (only the external upper menu is not shown)

Compose is the place where a mapper spent most of the time mapping out his/her design with respect to timeline after setting the BPM and Timing Sections. This is also the place where players can practice a ranked difficulty and inspect its design akin to DDR's Training mode.

Due to different needs in mapping style (osu! is very flexible, allowing much room for creativity while osu!mania is restrained to selected key, demanding extreme precision to evoke the keysounds harmonically), osu!'s editor and osu!mania-only's editor are given their own features section. You can easily access osu!mania editor by setting your difficulty to osu!mania-only.

Features (osu!)

For a newbie guide: Beatmapping.

(Starting from top-down left-right order)

Top-Left (Hit Objects Timeline)

Hit Objects Timeline

Shows the timeline for hit objects with respect to Beat Snap Divisor and timestamp.

Hit Object Timeline

Top-Right (Beat Snap Divisor)

Beat Snap Divisor

In layman's's term, adjusting given length of a coloured sewing thread (timing section) for an embroidery design space (measures, divided by the divisor to be called beats) on the cloth (song).

Hold Alt to trigger Distance Snap. The value can range from x0.1–x2.0.

Divisor 1/1

Divisor 1/1

• Full Beats
• White ticks only
• Best used for Easy difficulty

Divisor 1/2

Divisor 1/2

• Half Beats
• Adds red ticks

Divisor 1/3

Divisor 1/3

• Triplets*
• Has two purple ticks between each white tick
• Compound timing

Divisor 1/4

Divisor 1/4

• Quarter Beats
• Adds blue ticks, in addition to the red ticks
• Useful for general mapping

Divisor 1/6

Divisor 1/6

• Double Triplets*
• Has two purple ticks between each red tick
• Compound timing

Divisor 1/8

Divisor 1/8

• Eighth Beats
• Adds yellow ticks, in addition to the red and blue

Insert Break Time button will start/stop "Break Time" in current timestamp and x/y is current mouse coordinate.

Centre-Left (Selector)

Hit Notes Selector

Your construction toolkit, made for DIY (do it yourself).

Please note that in osu!, default note hitsounds work differently than in osu!mania.

• Adding clap on a notes will play hitclap + hitnormal sound on hit while in osu!mania: will only play hitclap sound on hit

Selector

Centre (Playfield)

Visual representation of mapping based on current timestamp. Map your design here and your design will appear exactly like you mapped during play. This is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) mapping. For text-based (usually for fine-tuning) mapping, you can open the .osu file directly using Notepad.

Centre-Right (Hitsounds & Assist Tools)

List of available subtools complement to the original DIY toolkit.

Hitsounds & Assist Tools

Hitsounds

Assist Tools

Bottom (Song's Timeline)

Song's Timeline

At the bottom-left, there is the timestamp in milliseconds (ms) and song duration in percent. The percentage may be switched to "intro" or "outro" if there is storyboarding before or after the music.

At the bottom-centre, there is a timeline with markings and the compulsory music player buttons. The Test button to the right of the timeline will save your beatmap then allows you to play test it, starting at the current timestamp.

Colour markers

Colour Highlights

Bookmarking command

At bottom-right, you can adjust the Playback Rate by per quarter value.

Features (osu!mania)

(The top-left hit objects timeline holds no significance. Please ignore it.) For a simple guide: Basics Mapping & Keysound

Top-Right (Beat Snap Divisor)

Beat Snap Divisor (osu!mania ver.)

Main article: Beat Snap Divisor

In layman's term, adjusting given length of a coloured sewing thread (timing section) for an embroidery design space (measures, divided by the divisor to be called beats) on the cloth (song). Since osu!mania highly prioritise every timing of the notes, Time signature (MM:B) from the Timing section is added (15:3 = 15th measure 3rd beat) beside the adjustment bar for easier mapper's reference. It can go to negative value (-8:-3 for example) if the first timing section is a few seconds away from the start of the beatmap's song file.

Insert Break Time button will put/stop "Break Time" in current timestamp. Beside the button is the short sound file name storyboarded to the selected(blue) note, known as keysound (refer to "Sampling" section at the end of this page).

Centre-Left (Selector)

Your construction toolkit osu!mania ver., made for DIY.

Please note that in osu!mania's default notes hitsound works different with Standard/osu!

• Adding clap on a notes will only play hitclap sound instead of hitclap + hitnormal sound on hit while in osu!mania :

Hit Notes Selector (osu!mania ver.)

Selector

Centre (Playfield)

osu!mania playfield

Visual representation of mapping based on current timestamp.

Playfield Boxes

Colour notes

Divisor 1/1

Divisor 1/1

• Full Beats
• White ticks only
• Best used for Easy difficulty

Divisor 1/2

Divisor 1/2

• Half Beats
• Adds red ticks

Divisor 1/3

Divisor 1/3

• Triplets
• Has two purple ticks between each white tick
• Compound Timing

Divisor 1/4

Divisor 1/4

• Quarter Beats
• Adds blue ticks, in addition to the red ticks
• Useful for general mapping

Centre-Right (Hitsounds & Assist Tools)

Hitsounds & Assist Tools

List of available subtools complement to the toolkit.

Hitsounds

Assist Tools

For keysound (adding SE on hitnotes), select the note and Alt + Left Click on the selected note (a pop-up window will be shown with sound samples inside your beatmap folder). Refer to "Sampling" section at end of page.

Bottom (Song Timeline)

Song Timeline

At bottom-left, it shows timestamp in milliseconds (ms) and song duration %.

At bottom-centre, it shows the timeline with markings and the compulsory music player buttons. For "Test" button, your beatmap will be saved to test the beatmap starting on current timestamp.

Bookmarking command

At bottom-right, you can adjust the Playback Rate by per quarter value.

Sampling

Sample pop-up window (Windows 8's ver.)

Sampling is a process of adding sound to the note. To begin, select the note and Alt + Left Click on the selected note (a pop-up window will be shown with sound samples inside your beatmap folder).

Sample import

Left-section is the list of sound files you have in the beatmap's folder.

Right-section is settings for the selected sound file.

Basics

Buttons

Sample event list

Actual storyboarding. Click on "Sample list" will summon another window (shown in right-side of the picture) named "Sample event list", which would be this. The two buttons should be self-explanatory (Delete = Delete the selected event. Close = Close the window). These storyboarded elements will go to the .osu file (the selected difficulty).

The coding is MM:SS:XXX {Sound_file}@{Volume} where MM:SS:XXX is Minutes:Seconds:Milliseconds respectively.

Example: 1:57:745 kick.wav@100% means at 1 min 57 second 745th millisecond, trigger the "kick.wav" file at 100% volume regardless of condition.