osu!weekly #91

January? Events. February? Events. 2017 is packed full of stuff and it's barely even started! Buckle your pants people, it's gonna be a busy year, but for now - here's the weekly.

Weekly news

The first dev meeting of the year has come and gone, and it was a rather large one to make up for skipping December. While the meeting focused a lot on the development of osu!lazer, it also gave a lot of focus to the community side of things covering a few things like modding v2 testing, more discussions regarding featured artists and even some talk about expanding the use of the osulive twitch channel. To read the full recap, head over to birdsblog.ppy.sh

Following on from that, we have 9 maps ready to go for live modding v2 testing. The maps included span across all game modes giving everyone a chance to test the system. So if you're looking to see where the future of modding is going, now's as good of a time as any to head on over and give the system a whirl.

HappyStick has decided to create a new style of tournament, the HappyStick Seasonal Tour. Hosting brackets for players of nearly every skill level, this series is something that most will be able to try their best in. Each year there will be 3 tournaments for each season excluding Winter, as it will be skipped to avoid conflicting with the OWC. The registrations for the Spring Tour recently opened and already has over 900 people who signed up! The schedule and mappool will be released on the 20th with the group stage starting on the 25th. To learn more about both the Spring Tour, and the tournament structure as a whole, head over to the google docs page and have a read.

There's always been a lot of osu!standard tournaments running, but other game modes need some love as well. The osu!catch AxS tournament (hosted by Wesley) has just recently finished with itsnotCWCteam claiming first place after a spectacular match against 0 Consistency that went all the way to a tiebreaker! If you have the time, you should make sure to watch the full VOD.

The Community Mentorship program is back up and running for the Spring rotation. The mentor application stage is all done, and now the mentee applications are open. So if you want to learn from some of the top notch modders around, now's your chance. Just head on over to the thread and fill out the form. Mentee sign-ups end on the 19th at 00:00 UTC time, so be sure to register in time.

Scorewatch: February Week 1 (With Scorewatch Patrol)

We've got a double play on kradness&Reol - Remote Control (seriously, I think this map has had enough time on the scorewatch)! Rohulk managed to squeeze in a crazy 97.63% HDDT 5 miss 577pp play, becoming his No.1 Top Rank, and Cookiezi finally fixed his 1 miss choke with a staggering 98.58% HDDT FC, setting a 761pp play. Simply outstanding plays, but the latter's score will be shown in video form here.

I just really think Cookiezi wants to be featured more. Sorry to those who expected a different player in the second segment here, but this is just not to be missed. This time, it's on Imperial Circus Dead Decadence - Yomi yori Kikoyu, Koukoku no Tou to Honoo no Shoujo., where he pulled off a mindblowing HD 99.07% 4 miss score, grabbing 692pp. We are speechless. Even he is speechless. It's something that felt impossible to be done yet it has been. This requires a liveplay, and an amazing one at that.

FunOrange returns with a huge play on Sleeping With Sirens - If You Can't Hang as he pulls off the first mouse HDHR FC on Bearizm's Extreme, setting a 99.52% 591pp play, making it both his and Canada's top play as well. This play also skyrocketed him back into the Top 50, and a really great one at that. Boasting the highest accuracy with the mod combination, his fight for No.1 Canada is still going on and strong. Check it out below.

Our fellow scorewatch member n1doking has made it here again with an astounding and weird mod combination of EZHDNCFL on DJ S3RL - T-T-Techno (feat. Jesskah), scoring 99.17% and 699pp. It's sad that he didn't manage to get a 700pp score, but he sure was close!

Estonians sniped jakads' 2 month lead off the scoreboards on gmtn. vs. kozato (fw. LUZE) - squartatrice with a crazy 99.92% FC. A long 4 minute and draining song, this score will shock many professional players. Check it out.

NOTABLE MENTIONS

HappyStick managed to finally pull off an FC on Imperial Circus Dead Decadence - Uta with 98.92%, scoring 594pp.

Gayzmcgee almost had a heart attack by HDHR 98.94% FCing xi - Blue Zenith on ktgster's Extreme, grabbing 618pp.

Cookiezi took determination to the next level and set an amazing HDHR 99.88% FC on goreshit - burn this moment into the retina of my eye, gaining 693pp.

osu!mania 7K World Cup: And then there were 2

The Finals Week 1 opened with an exciting match between the United States and Indonesia, both teams off to a strong start after winning on their own first picks. It wasn't long before Indonesia took an early lead after taking the break point on Dreamin' attraction. The United States did their best to catch up, even taking a few risks like picking Demons. In the end, Indonesia proved simply too strong for the United States soaring ahead to a comfy 6-2 win.

Our second match was between Thailand and the Philippines. While this match appeared to be one of the closer matchups, the Philippines took control very fast. It wasn't until Philippines' match point where Thailand mounted a counter attack taking the score from 5-1 to 5-4 in what threatened to be the reverse sweep of the century. A tiebreaker was looking to be the only way to settle this colossal match. It came down to a 1v1 on PEACE BREAKER. S h i r o vs arcwinolivirus, with arcwinolivirus claiming the 6th and final point for the Philippines!

The third match was between Indonesia and the Philippines, who had both won impressive matches to get so far in the tournament already. Only one would get the chance to go up against China and guarantee themselves a top 3 finish. This match unfortunately was a lot more one sided than previous matches with Indonesia stealing the show with a dominating 6-0 win, despite the Philippines' impressive performance versus Thailand earlier in the series.

Our last match of the weekend rolled around the great decider for the bronze and who would get to face South Korea was between Indonesia and China - our top and high seeded teams for Group C respectively. In fact, it was originally one the first matches of the tournament. With the group stage match results going China's way 5-1, it wasn't looking good for Indonesia, with history ultimately choosing to repeat itself once more. China continued to demonstrate their dominating streak, and moved on to face South Korea in the Grand Finals after a clean 6-0 win.

Following on from osu!mania World Cup news, the osu!taiko World Cup 2017 registrations have opened!. There are a few changes this year, most notable being the new Score V2 system. So if you're looking to get in on this years osu!taiko action, now's your chance to sign up. Registrations last until February the 19th so make sure you've signed up by then. If you aren't looking to play, but rather just looking forward to the action, the live drawings will take place on the 5th of March. If you wish to learn more, head over to the wiki page to check scheduling and the updated rules.

And to wrap up this week's issue, we have the solutions here for the crossword that we released a few weeks ago. We'll have a new puzzle ready to go for next week so be sure to keep an eye out for that, and Thank You For Playing our fun little puzzles.

Click here for a larger version

That's all we have for this week. If you have any suggestions for what you would like to see in the weekly (and have some spare time), 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