Osu! Mania 7K Improvement Comparison 1! Video on left - 7K Normal Difficulty (1.6*) [ 28th Oct 2018 ] Video on right - 7K Hard Difficulty (2.49*) [ 11th Jan 2019 ] When I first started with 7K and when I first started to get a hang of where the notes are and which buttons to press... I think that because I spent so much of my time playing 4K over the years I picked it up rather quickly! It was frustrating though, I could see the notes and interpret them, but my hands just didn't want to co-operate.. I guess it’d feel a bit like learning two hands on a piano after already sight-reading sheet music at a decent level on another instrument. I would even go back to <1* difficulty maps just to try to hit the right notes, get combo and get that into muscle memory, it was a struggle and a half. Perseverence is key when first starting out, and im glad that I have toughed that part out. In a way I am still a beginner when compared to many, but I am having a lot more fun doing some complex patterns and chords. The maps that I play now are rhythmically dense enough that it actually feels like i’m playing a song and not a metronome! At the moment I feel pretty comfortable with 2 note chords, with some 3 note chords mixed in, but hopefully I can push that further and be able to comfortable S rank 3* maps soon. The most trouble i’ve had so far with 7K in particular is that chords are so much more complex and varied to read and execute when compared to the 4K I am used to! Similarly, transitioning from FFR to Osu! Mania means my skill level when it comes to holds (especially notes during them!) is very much behind my streams and pattern recognition, so I have that to improve on too. My Stepmania Journey has influenced my skill set heavily. These games require so many different skills in some games, maps are even categorized and seperated into different skill difficulties, for example this map could be a 0.6* for holds, 2* for chords and 2.6* for bursts/streams. Thus, since fast bursts and streams are what i’m better at, I can get a good score. But for another map with its difficulty placed much more in holds, I might get a terrible score despite them being the same overall difficulty rating! So don’t feel discouraged when comparing yourself to others at your hobby, they have an entirely different journey to you, and you should be proud of your own achievements. TL;DR: If you are struggling when you just start out a new skill - persevere. You will be glad you did. Compare yourself to yourself, don’t put yourself down just because you feel like other people can just do it so effortlessly - chances are they went through the same frustration at one point, even if they took a different journey. This short post will explain the ranking system in Osu! It’s a convoluted system with many flaws, but it works. Essentially, your rank is dealt with seperately for each of the game modes (Standard, Mania, Catch the Beat and Taiko), but it works the same way for all of them, with differing results. Performance Points - What are they? Your rank is calculated based on the amount of Performance Points (PP) That you accrue over time by playing. Each beatmap has its own maximum PP it can give you. Your accuracy, combo and score all factor in to calculate how much of that maximum PP each play of a song is worth. The maximum PP score for each ranked song you play is the one that will count towards your ranking. Higher difficulties means more PP for that song, and things such as patterns within the song also count towards it’s PP weighting. (i.e lots of jumpstreams will result in a larger than normal PP score for that difficulty song) So to rank up you just have to play a lot of songs? Not Necessarily! Your PP is collated yes, but also weighted by its rank in your ‘Top plays’ List. In essence, your best PP score will count for 100%, its full value will be added to your PP total. However, your second score will only have 95% of its value added, and this continues to taper off so that in order to get a better rank, you have to play harder songs! An example of my current top PP plays are given below, and some even show their weighting! Total PP = Rank Your overall ranking is determined by your total pp in comparison to all other players on the leaderboards, meaning that as the game gets more popular, it gets harder and harder to stay at a certain ranking. When I first joined the game, I was able to get <10k Global ranking with <1k total PP. Nowadays, in order to get <100k Global ranking, you need over 2.5k total PP! With so many players, and so many of them getting better, the ranks are getting more and more inflated. Osu also keeps track of your rating within your current country, by use of the same metric, and I have managed to make it into the top 1k players in the UK for osu!mania! (Rank 824 at time of writing) That’s pretty much it in terms of what performance points are and how the osu! Ranking system works, there are some flaws in how pp is calculated for certain types of map that bias towards so-called pp-farming beatmaps and types of song, and this results in ridiculous pp gains. For example, there is a 4* difficulty mania map that is mostly chordjacks. In reality its probably around 3* difficulty but its pp is inflated because the game looks at so many chords close to one another and thinks its much harder. Osu! Difficulty scaling Osu beatmaps are rated in difficulty by a star rating system. 0* being the lowest and 10* being the highest (displayable), they are calculated automatically by osu! to 2 decimal places. That being said, in mania difficulty scales quickly, 1* are beginner maps, 2* are intermediate, 3* is advanced, 4* is expert and anything higher is essentially for the professionals. Even a 0.5* change in difficulty can mean alot in terms of a difficulty spike, and certain maps require very different skillsets to complete effectively, rendering them much easier or harder than their star-rating. Particularly I struggle with holds, and notes during them, so some 2-2.5* hold maps I can barely even complete, while I can S Rank some 3* maps with 95%+ This post will contain most of the general information and terminology with regards to Osu!Mania, many of these concepts and names are shared across stepmania games, however in the context of Osu! there are some terms which are exclusive, such as ‘Beatmap’. General Gameplay The Chart/Beatmap - The chart refers to the file that you play when you select a song and difficulty. Each song can have many different charts/stepfiles/beatmaps of different difficulties. In Osu! Each chart is made by a ‘mapper’ (which can be anyone!) and generally put through a ranking process to ensure its quality and to allow players to compete for rank when playing them. 4K/5K/6K/7K/8K/9K etc - How many keys the chart is designed to be played with, example of a 7K map Full Combo - Hitting all of the notes of a song without missing Chart Terminology 4ths, 8ths, 12ths, 16ths, 24ths, 32nds, 48ths, 64ths - These are in reference to the type of arrow/note speed according to the current BPM of the song. e.g a 4th is a quarter note in the song. Chords/Jumps/Hands - These refer to when more than 1 note is pressed at once, like chords on a piano or jumping to hit two notes at once in DDR. These can also be called doubles, triples,quads,quints depending on the number of keys pressed in the chord. ( Example ) Long Notes/Holds - These are simply notes that are held. In Osu!Mania, letting go of the hold is also counted as a note, so it must be let go with precise timing for a good score! ( Example ) Bursts - These are exactly what they sound like, a quick burst of notes in comparison to the rest of the song, think of like a complex drum roll. ( Example ) Streams - Think of a waterfall of notes, notestreams are like bursts but longer, a fast series of notes that can be made up of staircases , rolls , jacks (Jackhammer notes) and trills , if the mapper is feeling mean they may add some chords or holds in for good measure. Shields - A note before or after a long note. ( Example )

Jumpstreams - Combining chords/jumps and streams, a fast series of chords and notes, nastily difficult. ( Example ) Chordtrills - A combination of trills and chords, with practice they are a much easier form of jumpstream ( Example ) ChordJacks - Jackhammer notes, but chords ( Example ) Different scores are given for hitting each note within different timing windows, which can have many different names depending on the game and skins used, I’ll use Osu! Terminology. In order of shortest to longest timing window: Marvelous or Rainbow 300 - Matches maximum requirements of accuracy, with the shortest timing window. Worth 100% of total available points the note can give to you. Perfect or Yellow 300 - Ironically, a perfect does NOT match perfect requirements, it instead is worth only 66.66% of the total points you would receive for that note. In order to hit a perfect, you must be outside of the Marvelous timing window, but still near perfect. Hitting only marvelous and perfect notes in a song will result in 100% ‘accuracy’, however a better score can be achieved for a better marvelous to perfect ratio. Great or 200 - Gives the player 33.33% of the total points for that given note. In order to hit a great, You must hit at LEAST a great or higher in order to keep up your combo, and to prevent life bar loss. Good or 100 - Worth 0 points, but also does NOT take away life from your life bar. The best of all of the CB's (Combo breakers). Bad or 50 - Worth 0 points, but also subtracts points from your life bar and breaks combo. For every mania map, the maximum possible score is 1,000,000. This is achieved with maximum combo and all Marvelous note ratings! Score ranks are divided into letters, in traditional stepmania these are F-AAAAA, with F being a fail and AAAAA being the most perfect score possible, in osu! mania it is D-SS, where D is a passing score but the lowest possible, fails do not grant a grade, ans SS is the most perfect score, the S or SS Grades will be silver coloured if the score was done with mods enabled to make the song harder, they are awarded as follows: SS - 100% accuracy S - 95%+ accuracy A - 90%+ accuracy B - 80%+ accuracy C - 70%+ accuracy D - 60%+ accuracy This is notes hit accuracy, so ‘perfect’ and ‘marvelous’ both count for 100% What you are looking at is my current profile on flashflashrevolution.com. It really hasn’t been changed much in its 5 years of existence, there’s even some really cringy high school quotes and an old tumblr link on there! Flashflashrevolution (FFR) Is a Stepmania clone made in flash, which in itself is a clone of the classic arcade game DanceDanceRevolution (DDR). (Yep, the one with the dancemats and the arrows!), it is here where I was first introduced to Stepmania properly by one of my friends, and where the inspiration for this blog comes from. At its core, Stepmania games simply take DDR, and allow you to play it via a keyboard. Through years of development and popularity for these games especially in the Asian arcade scene where DDR was first introduced. There are lots of complex and insanely difficult rhythm games nowadays, most of which you would only see in Asia, however, Stepmania has a solidly large community worldwide. FFR is only one of the Stepmania clones that exist, and so is Osu!Mania my current main Stepmania game. I’ll have some follow up posts to this one explaining some Stepmania Terminology and differences between the games. I was a fan of Osu! Standard (A rhythm game thats more ‘Point and click’-ey) in around 2013, and my friend had been playing FFR for around a year. He’d made some friends in the FFR Community that were among the top in the world. At the time, the community was so active, I was a little overwhelmed. There was Tournaments for almost every skill level, and a yearly official tournament where you were automatically entered based on your estimated skill level. I had just started around the time of the yearly official tournament, and I could barely react or press the correct keys for even the easiest of charts. I wish I had a replay that I could show, but rest assured that I had the rhythm of a toddler on strictly come dancing. Each week I would see such significant improvement, as it tends to go when you are learning something new. But as with all hobbies or skills, I got better and better, and progression slowed, it was a lot harder to see that improvement, so I started to document and come up with lists of milestones that I would work towards to help improve different aspects of my game. I was young, so many of the goals weren’t too relevant to specific areas of improvement or anything, I guess I just felt very satisfied ticking those boxes. It was a way of staying consistent which worked really well for consistently improving. That’s where the inspiration for this blog came from, back then those goals were a way of documenting, discussing and comparing personal progress within the community, and a great way of seeing improvement, looking back at your achievements. I played FFR for around a year, maybe longer, before it started to take a backburner, other games and life got in the way of practicing but FFR and Osu! Standard were always games I would come back to for periods of time over the years, I even won a Division 1-2 FFR Tournament once! (Probably the peak of my gaming career). Skip forward to today, I started playing Osu! Mania in October last year, due to it having a better ranking system that I was more comfortable with from Osu! Standard, and more complex mechanics. I was really interested in trying out and getting better at 7Key Stepmania too. FFR Was a very simple, flash based game that had only simple arrows, with no hold notes, no mines, and strictly 4 Key charts with a limited selection. This made the transition difficult, and somewhat frustrating. I could interpret charts of a much higher difficulty than I could actually complete, because I was used to a faster, but simpler type of chart from FFR, and with mechanics like holds I was a beginner. This has been a bit of an intermediate post, serving as an introduction to the stepmania side of this blog. From Humble Beginnings Part 2 Will focus on my Osu! Mania Experience from there, and where I am just now. However, I will include some posts going over some of the terminology and how things such as the ranking system work beforehand to ensure everything in it is understood. See you next time! Tags: @minusfractions <3 It’s been a little while in the making, but if I don’t start posting I never will! Lets get dug in. From Humble Beginnings I started playing Tetris properly around a year ago now (had no idea its been that long tbh), very much stagnated practice and have been juggling it around different games. Sometimes it feels like a bad habit, like by juggling the practice of so many different things and just becoming a jack of all trades, master of none. In a sense that is how I tend to be, however I believe that its been for the best. Without turning my hand to explore different things I’d just get burned out, ultimately not enjoying myself and ruining progression in the long run. My Tetris Journey started in February of 2017, when friends introduced me to multiplayer battle on Tetrisfriends.com. I hadn’t really played before and was about as bad as they come. Frustrated I didn’t play again until the next year when we started to all play a bit more during uni time. That’s when I decided it’s time to finally get better at the game. The earliest sprint I can remember was my countless 4min+ sprints on tetrisfriends, it was very obvious I was new and just had to play more to improve. Within a month or so comes the earliest recorded sprint I can find. A 2:32 jstris sprint. https://jstris.jezevec10.com/replay/398628 I also cant get videos to upload so heres the link! This replay shows clear space for improvement, I only rotated one direction, my piece placements were rarely thought out - if at all - and most of the time was spent moving pieces back and forth for no reason before deciding where to place it. These are all things I improved on mostly by just playing the game to get to where I am now! https://jstris.jezevec10.com/replay/1195302 This is my current PB, I have been SOO close to breaking the 1 minute barrier for so long, but its just a matter of time as long as I keep enjoying playing. My main areas for improvement right now are finesse (Amount of key presses per piece placement) and decision making. I need to focus on the next piece previews more to help place pieces in a much smoother, controlled manner. So far I have found raw speed to be less important than having a good rhythm and flow when placing pieces. If you can place pieces perfectly to a metronome, its just a case of ramping up the BPM from there. Stay tuned for a humble beginnings part 2!