History of osu! 2018
January
After a six-month long hiatus, flyte posted on the osu!next blog with some teaser pictures for the next website design. He explained that the current state of the website had many UX problems, from various functionality specs to user feedback, that wasn't considered at the time of designing. Since then, he had been taking some time to redesign the website's current design from scratch.
The osu!mania 7K World Cup 2018 registrations opened. Community Choice 2017 (previously known as the "Best of" series) voting was opened.
In the lazer version of osu!, background blurring and the hidden mod were added. osu!mania scrolling speed was implemented. Thanks to cYsmix, a fresh set of default hitsounds was added. osu!catch was vastly improved and autoplay was fixed to be more human-like.
In osu!web, beatmap pack listings were improved, hype and nomination counters were visible to the beatmap listings. Obtaining a permalink to beatmap discussion post was made easier to copy, localisations can now resize the menu upon hovering over the locales, star ratings can be seen on the beatmap listing via hovering the difficulty icon, and sorting of beatmap discussions was added. A limit to only load 250 forum threads and unload others was implemented to avoid heavy memory consumption.
peppy tweeted that the new t-shirt inventory (along with their new designs) has arrived. Six days later, they were up on the osu!store.
The ability to see star ratings in the osu!direct was backported from the lazer version of the osu! client. Lastly, thanks to nekodex, the scoreboard redesign was implemented.
peppy briefly opened a GitHub issue to discuss about passive HP.
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February
In the lazer version of the osu! client, the infamous catmull styled sliders were implemented; thus allowing older beatmaps to be played the way they were meant to be played. The revert button in the options was redesigned. SS+ and S+ statistics were now visible. osu!catch's scoreboard now appears, allowing players to actually complete an osu!catch game. cYsmix has been in the works to create the new default hitsounds. Muting the client through action keys was implemented, however, the design is still in progress. In-game URL handling was added and were said to stay (opening chat channels or osu! links will use the client, instead of leaving to open via a web browser). Adjusting visual settings can be done in the "loading screen". Replay importing now works, again.
In osu!web, the total play time was implemented in user profiles. Elasticsearch was updated. The old site was depreciated almost entirely (a new banner is now present almost everywhere on the old site, linking users to the new site). Genres and languages were added to beatmap pages. Recent activity now shows the "show more" option. Searching users was improved. Icons for the forum topics were changed to be more colour-blind friendly. Users are now able to set their default game mode (shown with a star next to the game mode) in their user profiles, rather than assuming the last viewed game mode. The changelog builds now have an osu!supporter promo at the bottom. An experience bar for the user's level can now be seen by hovering over the level badge.
The Community Choice 2017 results were released with Doormat, Backfire, Ascendance, and Protastic101 winning the community's vote in osu!, osu!taiko, osu!catch, and osu!mania respectively.
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March
Trial & Error was introduced as a new Featured Artist.
In the lazer version of osu!, basic skinning support was implemented. The parallax effect was reduced during gameplay.
In osu!web, the play history and watch replay history graphs (the design is temporary) and post count in the user profiles were added. The mobile view of the website will now have a dedicated search box. The page titles were rearranged to prioritise the page name (rather than the game's name) allow easier navigation between tabs. The forum search results are threaded. Thanks to nanaya, user badges are now displayed on the user pages.
On 2018-03-13, peppy opened the #ranking-procedures channel (now called #modding) in the osu!dev Discord to give BNs and QATs an area to discuss topics they want actioned upon. This was done so allow more transparent and open discussion, but to also prevent outsiders from assuming that the "osu! staff" are the ones who were making decisions BNs and QATs make.
MWC 7K 2018 concluded with South Korea, Malaysia, and China taking first, second, and third place respectively.
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April
The cookie in the main menu slowly rotated clockwise as time passed. Whereas the cookie in the song selection screen would slowly rotate anticlockwise. Hovering over it would enlarge the cookie, as normal, but would also make it rotate faster.
Main menu
Song selection screen cookie
Song selection screen when hovering over the cookie
The community contributor badge was updated to match the new display of user badges; shaping the guidelines for how existing and future user badges should look like.
The old contributor badge
The new contributor badge
In osu!web, thanks to nanaya, the header has been updated to match flyte's new design. Showing username history was added to the userpage. Username history were now visible and missing userpages now display a similar message from the old site, rather than giving the vague 404 page.
The header before
The header's menu before
The header after
The header's menu after
Thanks to nekodex, the osu!supporter status is now visible in the support the game page and adding your Discord username to your user account was implemented.
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