History of osu! 2013
January
osu! now supports widescreen in all modes (including the editor too)! Database size was reduced by 10%. The ability to reset key bindings to their defaults was added. Hyperdash issues in Catch the Beat was almost fixed. The main menu's copyright graphic was updated for 2013 without the copyright text. Results for the annual "Best of" is out. (Best of 2012).
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February
A new version of the osu!mania editor was being worked on. Taiko mode skinning now has a "metadata" bar (song title and artist below the playfield), taiko playfield was no longer transparent and fades in and out of kiai time. The original FAQ has been superseded by the osu! wiki.
BanchoBot's !faq command has been open to public for translation. The legendary BanchoBot finally has a profile! The user panels display now adjusts to display four columns on all widescreen modes.
osu!mania now support vertical flip (upside-down), making gameplay similar to that of DDR/o2jam. Skinning now supports double-resolution sprites when the window width was greater than 1600 pixels. To add support to a skin, add images with double the width/height containing the @2x suffix before the file extension (eg: cursor@2x.png).
Ranking support for Hidden and FadeIn mods in osu!mania and lastly, less widescreen limitations in the editor when it comes to placement and selection.
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March
osu! received a complete overhaul of the UI (User Interface)! The osu! game mode received a new leitmotif symbol (previously, it was a circle with "osu!", was now a circle with a "1"). Buttons on the editor has been updated. Special mode has been combined with Song Selection menu (named under "Mods"), allowing players to switch modes quicker and hassle-free. All Game Modifiers buttons received their respective image overhaul. The result screen now shows the beatmap's background image rather than user skin's result background.
Hit-Offset can now be known by hovering to the Accuracy from the result screen. Do note that it will disappear and can't be saved. Online Results was now hidden below the result screen rather than forcing you to see it. You can scroll down to see or you can just click the button and you will be directed to the Online Results screen.
In terms of skin, "osu!default by peppy" was replaced by "osu! by peppy" (art by RBRat3). Since osu! now can support both widescreen HD and standard size, a new button was added to the "Skins" tab under "Options". By default, old skin behaviour was used for compatibility and enabling the button will force the new skin behaviour to be in effect instead. Combo fire was removed due to performance concerns. At the Multi side, hosts have a new special command called "Free Mods" and the "Game Style" was removed (Host can adjust the Game Style in Song Selection now under "Mods"). #userlog was introduced to showcase your recent playing achievement privately.
Ranking scoreboard, on the other hand, received two revisions in a single month. The first revision was "unified scoreboards", where the scoreboard the separated into four parts (Mods, Friends, Personal Best, Local) with score difference given below the accuracy of the layer, the removal of local scoreboard and the inability to scroll to see more of the later Top score players. Despite it was limited to osu!supporters only, it received much criticism and as such, a second revision has been issued at the near end of the month. The scoreboard was basically revered back to how it was previously, keeping the score difference gap. The prominent addition was the tabbed drop-down menu, where it house various types of ranking scoreboard. However, the new types of scoreboard [Country, Global (Selected Mod), and Friend] were still limited to osu!supporters only.
Lastly, player's profile picture has been added beside the grade mark of their place in the ranking scoreboard. When hovered to the tab, the placement can be known as the profile picture was darken to show the placement number. Please note that this simple addition does not affect Local scoreboard in any way, as it will most likely to be flooded with your own play results with minimum to no intrusion from other players (unless the beatmap was received from other players in folder form).
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April
This month's updates were mostly made up of patching up the previous major update, but that doesn't mean that was the end! First, it was the initial implementation of "Collections" support that will replace the long-standing "Favourites A/B", making it simple for player to put in their favourite beatmaps in one "Collections" and able to share it with others by transferring the "Collections" rather than "Favourites A/B".
Game modes can now be easily switched at song selection by using Ctrl + 1, 2, 3, or 4. A new game modifier was added specially for osu!mania, Random. Some adjustment has been made on Multi's "Quick Join" button behaviour to direct you to a room with respect to your average pp against the room pp's deviation.
For beatmap replays, stale-standing comment has been switched to moving nico-style comment style and comment colour can now be customised (for osu!supporters only).
In the beatmapping side of things, all MAT members became BAT members as MAT has been officially dissolved since the power boundary between MAT and BAT members were too close to each other.
peppy released one of the initial osu! builds from 2007 to 2009 (the one he had hoped to release for the 5th anniversary of osu!).
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May
Game modifiers naming in results has been shorten (e.g. "Hard Rock" to "HR") to decease the limited space usage. Most of the broken replays in the past have been fixed. A new spectator system where you can follow the spectator target if they were spectating someone else. The update system has been reworked, most notably it will no longer force restarts unless required.
During replays, half-speed replay has been added (after pressing 2x Speed, it will show 0.5x Speed). The playfield will not flash out the background at 100% dim. Catch the Beat received joystick support (Up/Down: change song, Right: select, Left: exit).
A new ranking/modding system is in development which will replace the ancient forum-styled modding threads.
For Multi mode, players can now use Special mod (Relax/Autopilot/SpunOut/ManiaKeys) when Free Mod is enabled by the host. At the skinning side of things, widescreen taiko (taiko @2x) default sprites have been added. Favourite A/B have removed completely and superseded by the Collections.
Three brand new Dedication achievements for osu!mania have been released (40,000 / 400,000 / 4,000,000 keys pressed). User profile design has been reworked and your "last visit" will be based on connection to Bancho (that was, in-game sign-in) rather than visits to the forum. Finally, osu! hit the milestone of having 10,000 users connected simultaneously!
June
osu! Beatmapping Contest #4 has started. As a counter-measure against players creating lots of accounts, clarity of messaging during account registration was improved and infographic showing that you can't register from phones/tablets has been added to prevent players creating more accounts for personal reasons.
Away with the security measures, users allowed to choose which game mode their profile defaults to (such as osu!mania, Taiko) and last.fm support to profiles. User profiles now have country performance rank on their profile and a new pp graph.
In-game wise, the main menu gets a new visualisation, with a blazing flare around the osu! symbol dependent on intensity of currently playing song's BPM. Performance have been optimised in song selection with many (more than ten-thousand) maps. Update process robustness and performance have been improved.
Gameplay-wise, lead-in time was automatically add to any beatmaps which start abruptly to allow enough time to adjust Visual Settings and total press counts for each key on the input overlay was added. For online results storages, personal best rank was show on beatmap info pages besides the #1 player. Score submission from mania charts was allowed and Top 50 replays was stored rather than the usual Top 40. Quick repeat sliders not reaching their maximum combo has been fixed. Disqus comments added to beatmap pages. Finally, prototype testing of score meter for all modes was underway for osu!test.
Account creation process
Example of attempting to create multiple accounts
Example of comparison in beatmap info pages
Example of current date user profile
Disqus implemented
New main menu visualisation
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July
The new regional BATmanagers began their first major recruitment of new BAT in to the team with the Summer 2013 NewBAT Applications. This provided a chance for the new managers to adequately handle new applications. The new regional managers were NatsumeRin representing Asia/Oceania, Kurai representing Europe, and Garven representing America.
On 2013-07-02, peppy made the osu!api open to the public (previously available only through private requests). This allowed independent developers to work on third party services for osu!. On 2013-07-11, the previously broken "forgot password" page has been fixed. 2013-07-18 brought updates to Bancho's fallback connectivity. On 2013-07-21, widescreen support for storyboards was added in the song setup dialog. Two new in-game overlays were added to track accuracy as you play or watch others play. Refer to Options page for further information.
Hit-error overlay
Colour overlay
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December
Guest appearance at Comic Fiesta 2013
peppy was confirmed for Comic Fiesta 2013 in Malaysia at 21st and 22nd of December in Kuala Lumpur City Center. For day 1 (2013-12-21), osu! was shown as a stage event, demonstrating the game in four different game modes (osu!, Taiko, Catch the Beat, and osu!mania). For day 2 (2013-12-22), peppy gives an insight of osu! along with his future update plans at the panel room and showcased osu!tablet for the public to try it out.
One of the current hot-topic for debate right now was that peppy was making a new game mode and was testing it as a proof-in-concept (testing if it's playable, competitive or flexible enough). Some players speculate it was Touhosu! (dodging the bullet-hell, that was, inverse of Catch the Beat). By time of writing, not much information was discovered about the new game mode. A video clip about the talk was in ppy's blog
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