Community Mapping Contest #1 - yuki. (Nadeshiko Sensation)

Another talented artist emerges as an official osu!musician. To celebrate, we're holding a brand new collaborative community mapping contest in a brand new, never-before-seen format with community voting! Come check it out!

We're back at last with a new mapping contest! To formally usher in our newest osu!musician, we've decided to hold an all-modes mapping contest with a brand new twist. yuki. has stepped up to the plate alongside IAHN, cYsmix and nekodex to form our first set of featured artists.

yuki. is a Japanese artist primarily focused on creating J-Core and UK Hardcore tracks designed for rhythm gaming. Having a strong founding in producing music for rhythm games due to his participation in several major rhythm game music tournaments (such as BMS Of Fighters and K-Shoot Mania Shooter's Festival), yuki.'s music is positioned perfectly for osu!, having something for every intrepid mapper to discover across all game modes!

Don't just take our word for it, give yuki.'s first osu! exclusive track track a listen, titled Nadeshiko Sensation:

Interested? Good, here's the details about the contest proper:

• Only a single difficulty will be accepted per difficulty tier per gamemode. To clarify, difficulty tiers are represented by the standard range of difficulty - Easy, Normal, Hard, Insane, Extra as represented by star rating in the game client.

  • For the purposes of the above, any difficulty above 5.5 stars will be considered as an Extra difficulty.
  • You may also submit a full set for one gamemode consisting of a maximum of one difficulty for each difficulty tier.
  • You are not required to submit an entry for each difficulty tier if you do not want to. You may skip tiers completely, but you may only ever submit one of each tier.
• Each game-mode will be listed as a separate contest in the contest system. Users that wish to participate in multiple gamemodes must submit at least one difficulty for each gamemode that they're interested in.
• Difficulties will be grouped within their specific difficulty tiers per gamemode and then opened to a community vote (using the new contest system) to determine the winner for each tier. The most popular entry will be considered the winning difficulty for that gamemode, and will be bundled together with the winners of the other difficulty tiers in the winning mapset.

  • For example, all of the 1-2 star maps submitted for the osu!standard gamemode will be competing for the same spot, and so on for each gamemode and difficulty tier.

This is considerably different from our other contests held thus far. We hope that this format will allow more people to participate, as less experienced mappers may feel more comfortable submitting a few highly polished entries for the lower difficulty tiers as opposed to creating a full set with high level difficulties beyond their area of expertise.

The prizes are as follows:

• Winning difficulties will be bundled together with other winning difficulties to create a bundled mapset for that particular gamemode. This may seem like a smaller prize than other contests, but do note that bundled maps recieve millions of plays over the course of a year where most maps are lucky to receive a hundred thousand at best. It is a huge amount of exposure.
• Acknowledgement for producing the difficulty/difficulties will be denoted in the mapset's metadata and description.

Have any questions about the contest or its prizes? Head on over to the discussion thread on the forums and ask the organizers!

To get started, download the pre-timed beatmap osz from yuki's featured artist page (or this link for the lazy) and start mapping!

Submissions are open at the beatmapping contest portal page.

Entries must be submitted by the 7th of November. No entries will be accepted past this date under any circumstances.

We're really excited to see how this will run, especially as it is the first time in osu! history that an official mapping contest will be judged purely on a popular vote.

Good luck!

—Ephemeral