osu!weekly #76

It's been a hectic time this week, between the announcement of Loved, a bunch of incredible players setting some truly outstanding scores, major progress on the development front and a whole slew of other stuff! Read on and see for yourselves what's been going on in osu! in this week's edition of the osu!weekly.

A brand new ranking status has been added for community loved maps that don't qualify for ranking. This new ranking state has been dubbed "Loved" and grants maps their own leaderboard, but doesn't reward users with pp, similar to how Qualified maps work. For the time being, maps can only enter the Loved state by being voted in. There are plans to automate the system, but that's still a ways off while we iron out the particulars. But for the time being, Ephemeral has opened up the first vote for what you want to see receive some love. Head on over to the Community Voice forum to vote on your favorite maps.

For the fist time in osu!'s history, the Global Moderation Team (GMT) has started taking applications. Formerly recommendation based, the GMT has largely been a very insular team as far as selecting new members has been concerned. shARPII has announced a brand new way for people to express interest in joining the GMT and helping keep osu!'s community enjoyable for everybody.

Competition over rank #1 has been especially fierce lately, with the osu!titans Angelsim and Cookiezi battling over the spot in the last week.
Mouse and tablet collide in a spectacular display of competitive spirit, with Angelsim being one of the very few players to take #1 as a dedicated mouse player since the days of Doomsday's hegemony. Cookiezi quickly recovered though, snagging an impressive HDDT score on Remote Control for a whopping 717pp. Since then, it has been a constant battle between the two - Angelsim versus Cookiezi, mouse versus tablet. Who will emerge victorious at the end of all this?

Those were the days.

The osu!academy team has come out with a new time lapse mapping video featuring Evening. Focusing on a osu!mania 4K map, this video delves into the processes that go into creating a new beatmap in super speed. Watch on to see how it all works!

A new skin showcase and storyboard showcase has been released by the academy team. Firstly, we have the SKINWITHOUTNAME skin, created by _indeketsu. We also have a new storyboard showcase featuring Can't Keep Johnny Down, created by Doodley. While in the past we posted these out with announcements containing interviews, we've discontinued this for a few reasons - mainly because it allows us to post out storyboard showcases more frequently, which gives us the opportunity to share a lot more amazing storyboards the community has created. Expect more of these going forward!

Our newest QAT member pishifat was recently interviewed on the osu!talk, and a video of this interview should be up in the next day or so over on the osu!academy channel. But it doesn't stop there; both Rafis and Spare are scheduled for interviews on the 25th and 28th respectively. More info regarding dates and times can be found over on the osu!talk thread.

While the agonizing wait over the staff's official pick for the osu!taiko community mascot continues, a new fanart contest has been announced for the main-menu. This time, entrants are challenged to make a main menu background with the theme being "the mascots in Halloween". Submissions for this contest end on the 29th of October at 23:00 UTC, so if you're planning to enter, you might want to get that creativity flowing and fast!

Over on the new website, the new beatmap information page is complete thanks to the hard work of LiquidPL and our resident webdev nanaya. Might I say, it is looking pretty fine. While a lot of talk about osu!next always gets thrown around, it's always refreshing to see parts of it brought to life!

Speaking of osu!next, take a look at this teaser snippet from a recent osu!lazer build featuring the new hitcircle implementation. It's smooth, it's shiny, and it's a centipede. A lazer centipede. With textured hitcircles!

It's also been a while since we mentioned some of the awesome projects members of the community are involved in. ErunamoJAZZ has released a new site that takes all the maps linked in #modreqs and posts them out for everyone to see. The site currently only holds maps linked in the past 2 days. While he has stated that he won't be able to work on it due to time constraints, ErunamoJAZZ has said he would accept code for the site. Just head over to his GitHub page and submit a pull request.

A new Community Mentorship program is well under way. Yuii- and Okorin are holding the program again for the winter season. If you're interested in being mentored by some of the community's best mappers and modders, now's your chance to apply. Applications close on the 30th of October at 00:00 UTC. Feerum is also hosting a similar program for the osu!mania mappers with the help of juankristal. Check out the threads for more details!

Reddit user DoctorLevi created some massive starter packs for people looking to get into Catch the Beat and osu!mania. The packs include every current ranked map, and also link to a few pro player skins. Also for those maybe looking to try Taiko, DoctorLevi is currently working on getting a Taiko starter pack uploaded. Do note though that these aren't exactly small downloads. The CtB pack is around 1.8GB while the osu!mania pack is just over 5GB.

Former rank 1 hvick225, who was inactive for a period of time due to input lag issues, recently came back and set an awesome HDDT 98.11% FC on Kanon Wakeshima - Tsukinami [Fragile], granting him 687pp. We're hoping to see more of him!

A certain Japanese player by the name of rrtyui shocked the community by submitting a 95.03% FC on the Aspire 2016 map winner, IAHN - Transform (Original Mix) [Aspire]. Talk about giving us butterflies.

A young American prodigy has joined the 700pp club! Vaxei, known in the community for his legendary chokes, set a surprising HDDT FC on Chino(CV.Minase Inori) - Shinsaku no Shiawase wa Kochira! [Happy~!] with 99.12% accuracy, granting him 715pp.

A German veteran, Dustice, has emerged into the single digit ranks with a 682pp DT FC (98.64%) on kradness&Reol - Remote Control [Max Control!]. He became the second only player to FC this with only DT besides HappyStick.

An old osu!mania legend is poised to return. One of the best LN players, Sern888 made an exceptional play on Kurokotei - Galaxy Collapse [Cataclysmic Hypernova] ending up setting a #20 score. Even after missing 6 times (which is insanely good anyway), he still managed to maintain whopping 99.34% accuracy, which gave him 675pp.

That was a lot to go through this week, and there's undoubtedly a whole lot more next time. As per usual, if you have any suggestions for what you would like to see in the weekly, feel free to drop by the osu!dev discord and directly highlight Nyquill or myself (deadbeat) in the #osu-weekly channel. Alternatively, you can also e-mail as usual at news@ppy.sh.

—deadbeat