osu!weekly #83

2016 is slowly coming to an end, people are starting to ease into the holidays and kick up their feet. Amusingly enough, more things are happening in osu! than ever!

Weekly news

Another new month, another new dev meeting. Last week we held our third public dev meeting in which we covered progress on osu!next, modding v2 and lots of other things. If you'd like to read the recap, you can head over to peppy's blog and read the summary courtesy of Ephemeral, or if you have a bit more time on your hands, you could also check out the full VOD.

Mentioned briefly in the dev meeting, some new Featured Artists are looming on the horizon. Two new high-key artists have joined the ranks of osu!musicians, and while preparations are still underfoot to get them properly sorted, there's no better time to start building hype for what's around the corner. They'll be formally introduced in the coming days, but in the meantime, keep your eyes and ears peeled - it's rumored that they've made appearances in the OWC inter-match playlists already!

The QAT have recently posted an enlightening blog post about the most recent osu!taiko, osu!catch and osu!mania BN exams. The blog post talks about the both the results of the exams and about how the exams went from some of their perspectives. Good reading if you're interested in becoming a BN yourself at some point in the future.

The osu!academy channel has released a new episode from the mapping bytes series. This video covers star patterns, a mainstay mapping technique used since basically forever. The video covers the basics of how to place them, where to place them, and some neat features you can use to make them look nicer.

The October ranking charts have been released. Head on over to see some of the better maps ranked in October for every game mode. We also have ranking chart beatmap packs thanks to Stefan.

After a long wait, the first Community Mapping Contest is open for voting. If you have the time, head on over to the voting page, download the map packsand vote for what you think is the best out there.

Jlastino is back again this year ready to make another amazing osu! wallpaper featuring the names of users from the community! If you'd like to be a part of this year's piece, make sure you head on over to the thread and fill out of the form listed in the OP. If you're unaware of his previous work, have a glimpse of last year's wallpaper. Any names in there you recognise?

Scorewatch: December Week 1 (with Raveille)

Another bustling OWC weekend comes to a close! Let's put your mind to rest with some amazing scores!

Cookiezi has surged into the 13,000pp zone, setting a 99.03% 2 miss HDDT choke on kradness&Reol - Remote Control. This play gave him 743pp and the second highest standard pp play. What can't this man do?

Speaking of chokes, Vaxei makes it into a pasttime, but he sure didn't choke a HDDTHR pass on Team Nekokan - Can't Defeat Airman. I wish I was making this up. He managed to pass the map with 81.50%, and at one point managed to hold 130 combo. This is something you need to watch cause even some top players) were shocked by his performance.

Someone must've kidnapped HappyStick, because he managed to pull off a DT SS on Diana Garnet - Spinning World (Anime Ver.), grabbing 527pp in the process and the first ever DT SS on that map. Check out the live VOD of the play, all covered with the glorious HappyStick himself and the "AR10" chat. ;)

Halogen- has gotten the 1 '200' curse alongside cheetose with a 1 '200' play on Spawn of Possession - Apparition. There are now 2 100% scores on Apparition that are not an SS.

OWC Week 4: Semifinals Gets Serious (with Evrien)

Among the chaos that has unfolded this past weekend, we have witnessed many things that reminded us what being a community means. There was laughter, tears, joy, and anguish, all reflected in the movement of a cursor towards a hitcircle.

The semifinals weekend is often cited as one where things get a lot more heated in many tournaments, and OWC is no exception. If you were unfortunately away, here's what transpired:

The ironclad South Korean warriors came into this OWC with the mindset that had won them 3 world cups in the past, and in a fight with their close rival and friend Taiwan, they secured a 6-2 win, knocking the latter down into the loser's bracket.

On the other hand, the defending champion, team USA, encountered yet another bumpy challenge against their fated rival from last year - team China. With neither team playing in their preferred time (the US playing in the early morning while team China was playing in the middle of the night), the match came down to a gruesome test of endurance and stamina. However, team Build-A-Wall (US) came out on the top against team Built-A-Wall (CN) in a 6-4 set. Team China, who smooth-sailed into the Grand Finals last year, now has to struggle through the same hellish path that their rival strode through last year in order for a chance to redeem themselves.

Down in the loser's bracket, the matches were quite interesting. The Russian Federation and Germany got locked into a dogfight which went all the way into the tiebreaker, where Germany barely claimed a narrow victory.

The French team dominated Finland with a 6-0 win, but was stopped in their path by Germany during the second day of matches. Team Canada, a widely celebrated and highly-seeded team, appeared to have all but fell apart in their last dance, and became a 6-0 victim of the Polish team.

The United Kingdom got the third and final clean sweep on Brazil, and surprised a lot of us when they came across to conquer Poland, besting the crowd-favorite team in a close and tightly contended 6-4 match.

Doomsday (UK) securing the final point for his team with a superb performance on Euclid

This coming weekend will mark the beginning of the Finals. At this stage, only 6 teams remain from the initial 32. USA and South Korea will compete for the secured 2nd place in the Winner's Bracket, meanwhile China, Germany, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom will make use of their last chance to the fullest.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the beginning of the end. Come aboard our final roller coaster ride because it's a wild one that won't run again until next year!

To end this week's edition, we have a brand new puzzle for you, thanks to Starrodkirby86. For this month, we've gone with something a bit more tricky, and have decided to go with a Code Cracker. The theme this time around is none other than the OWC.

Things are looking to get rather busy as the holidays ramp up into full swing. We've got art contests, beatmap contests and the OWC grand finals to look forward to over the next few weeks.

But for now, that's all. 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.

See you next week!

—deadbeat