osu!weekly #41

It's upon us! The last week of the year! Now that we have tossed out the hastily destroyed wrapping paper, let's take a look at what is happening around the game as we are going through the last days of the calendar. Read on!

It seems that we still have more tournaments going on straight into 2016! The USA Taiko Tournament is now nearing its conclusion. Coming to the winners finals are two of the oldest american taiko players still around: MMzz and OzzyOzrock! There are also a couple of matches on the other side of the bracket featuring FLANKs, Kuro, Shyguy and Two Fruit Cakes. Tune in on January 2nd and January 3rd to get in on finals action! If you plan on watching, a detailed schedule is available here.

The Taiko Beatmap Nominators have banded together to create a streamlined queue for modding Taiko maps! As you may know, the Taiko mapping and modding community has been falling behind the other communities in terms of size and ease-of-access. Now, with the help of the requirements of the new queue, more new mappers are encouraged to mod other maps as well as getting the chance to get themselves noticed. The early results of the project look promising!

New Skin Showcases have arrived in the osu!news YouTube channel! Please show your appreciation to deadbeat for putting these together and uploading them. The new showcases feature a wide variety of community created skins:

• YUGEN (Created by Garin) - A minimalistic skin focused on providing comfortable and unimpaired gameplay with slick aesthetics, available for all game modes!
• Summer Flowers (Created by SweetSweet) - The cold gets the better of all of us eventually, but it certainly isn't cold on osu! Here is a heated up and easygoing skin featuring warm colours and neat hit-bursts!
• Summer Skin (Created by Raidexx) - Can't get enough of summer, huh? Well it seems that we got you covered! Here's another skin to warm you up for new years, featuring a full set of skinned elements for all game modes!

The November Ranking Charts have arrived! This year in February, we completely overhauled the way we select maps for the ranking chart. The new selection method makes it so that every map selected gets a paragraph from a member of the community telling us why they think the map deserves to be in the chart. In addition, the mapper of the featured set of each mode gets a prize! This way, great maps are given a spotlight and mappers have a chance to be rewarded for their efforts.

While Stefan may have forgotten to poke me this time, I have not forgotten about him! I swear! The 2015 Holiday Beatmap Pack is out now! Since we haven't had a new holiday themed pack in a while, this pack features a wide selection of great festive beatmaps that were made throughout the years. If you still haven't really had your fill of Christmas beatmaps yet, you know where to go!

We have some staff retirements this week. Onosakihito, Asphyxia, Garven, lolcubes, and Lust have bowed out and joined the ranks of the Alumni. Thank you for all of your contributions to the game throughout the years!

Whew! Not a week goes by without something interesting happening in the community. I want to thank you all for sticking with us through the entire year. Whether it's the latest in tournament coverage, or inside scoops on things to come in the game, the osu!news team will be there to live it with you. Starting in 2016, I will be looking to start having themed weeks, such as mapper appreciation week or 4K mania week, where we feature more than just the every day! Let me know what kind of themes you would like to see as well as what news you would like to see in future issues at news@ppy.sh. I will also be looking to start up community interviews again, so let me know who you would like to see appear on the weekly!

That's all for this week! The next time I join you will be in 2016!

—Nyquill