osu!weekly #22

Hey everyone, Tasha here! Would like to apologize for the lateness of this issue of the osu!weekly, I've had my niece and nephew visiting most of the week so its been pretty hectic! There's a lot to go through though so lets get right into it!

The results of the 2015 North America osu!standard Tournament have been decided, and the winning player is none other than rank #85 player [Toy] from the United States after winning against rank #21 Azer from Canada, whom achieved second place. This came after Azer had beaten [Toy] in the winners bracket final, making Azer the winner of the winner bracket. [Toy] then had to win against 3rd place, rank #53 player Natalia from the United States to come back as the winner of the loser bracket before pulling off a victory with two set wins in a row. To see how the tournament fully played out, be sure to check out the tournament bracket.

The results of the Monthly Beatmapping Contest #10 are now available! ZiRoX was the winner this time around, achieving a score of 125 points. WildOne94 and Xinely took 2nd and 3rd place with 115 and 111 points respectively. If you'd like to take a look at the winning map now before it gets bundled into the game, you can find it here. As usual there's also the results page for those of you who like to see the judges comments and how other contestants scores turned out!

For those who have been wondering where the skin showcases had gone to, it looks like we have a new skin showcase for you to enjoy! This skin showcase features the skin IA - Aria on the Planetes, made by user Elzapatoverde. Skin showcases should be coming on a more regular basis now, so look forward to more soon!

The next osu!talk discussion has been made available on the osu!academy youtube channel, this time around the discussion revolving around the CtB community, why they like the game mode so much, as well as some discussion about what they'd like to see for the future of CtB. Guests to this talk include - Magic Bomb -, KingKevin30, Saki, Candlestrom (previously YuukiZazuto) and Zak.

For those of you who haven't been keeping tabs on peppy's blog, there was a video sneak peek of the new profiles with the profile covers revealed, showing off some of the different profile cover options that will be available on the new forums. There was also a rather neat set of skinning elements made available for sliders, allowing people to make sliders with no circle at the ending without using odd workarounds, giving more options to skinners. Lastly, there was discussion about the currently available API and what the future plans for the API are. In the future the API will be just like the one used for the game and the website with some limited restrictions, which should allow third party program developers to make programs for osu! much easier.

Following osu!next showing us a glimpse of the new song select screen last week, we have a few interesting new screenshots this week. This time we were given a sneak peek at the new achievement icons and the new profile cover for use with the new forums. There was also a highly pixelated image of something Flyte isn't allowed to show just yet. I wonder what it might be?

A new community voice poll was made early in the week regarding the different t-shirt designs that are planned for the osu!store, asking players which of the designs available in the poll they would like to see the most. There are many interesting options, such as the what the firetruck? and pippi t-shirts, so be sure to vote on your favourite options, as it may decide what designs are brought to the osu!store! sooner!

A pretty interesting tool was posted for that lets you modify a .osu file from a taiko beatmap, making a custom taiko difficulty that has unique mod effects, such as Abekobe, which is a mod from Taiko no Tatsujin that reverses dons and kats. This tool made by community member _Gezo_ essentially allows you experience some old beatmaps you have from a different angle. Who knows, a map you found easy might suddenly become quite hard with the custom difficulty, I'd definitely suggest giving this a try!

That's all for this week everyone! As always you can send any news you'd like to be represented in the osu!weekly to news@ppy.sh and I will do my best to include that information. Now off to get hugged to death by my niece and nephew (send help D:)

—Tasha